Chatterbox reads -- and reads, and reads, and reads: Chapter 2

If there is a single poem that is emblematic of the carnage on the Western Front for me, this, by Wilfred Owen, has to be it. Owen was killed only eight days before the war's end, and that tragedy has always seemed to me to reflect the broader tragedy that was the war.

What is startling is to realize the evolution of poetry from the more flowery writings of Rupert Brooke, to something like this. And if you want a mind-bending experience, go and listen to Britten's "War Requiem", which juxtaposes parts of Owen's poems with the classic Latin requiem.

Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
---Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,---
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

I think that the first year I jumped aboard this particular bandwagon was back in 2010, and I've gotten hooked -- the book bullets, the companionship and friendship of those who see nothing whatsoever that's unusual or abnormal in reading dozens of books a month, and hundreds a year. Excessive, perhaps, but not abnormal...

I've dialed up my total objective this year. Since I'll be reading a lot of essays on top of this, for my 2014 categories challenge, I may well be overly optimistic. But, why not??




I usually keep tabs on my books one by one as I read them, and probably will finish five separate batches of 75 books over the course of the year. When I wrap 'em up, I'll post a mini-review or other comments here. I'll also post comments on the essays that I read for the categories challenge, but these will NOT be included in the total # of books read (unless I complete an entire book of essays.)

Anyone curious about the essays can follow that thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/161117




I'd like to keep re-reads to about 25% of my total reading, and the target for non-fiction is about the same. So roughly 50% of the books I read this year should be "new to me" books, whether by authors I've never read before or old favorites. I'll mark all re-reads with an asterisk (*), and note whether a book is fiction or non-fiction, and also whether it's an audiobook.

A guide to my highly subjective ratings system. Don't treat it as gospel or anything more than my opinion. I'm not trying to second guess the rest of the world, just chronicle my own experience with a book. With fiction, I value strong and compelling characters, a convincing plot (that doesn't have to move at the speed of light) and what, for want of a better phrase, I can only characterize as unpretentious writing. By which I mean, I have a strong and ever-growing aversion to authors whose primary goal seems to be to demonstrate how clever they are, rather than to write a great and convincing story. Clear and elegant prose trumps convoluted and overly structured Big Themes and Ideas every time.

Genres? Well, I'm an avid mystery fan; I read a reasonable quantity of chick lit, and have taken some baby steps into fantasy, mostly via dystopian lit. I also read a reasonable amount of "classics" and literary fiction, although I tend to take a wary view of the "insta-classic": the novel by a previously unknown writer who is suddenly hailed as the next Salinger/Kafka/Bellow/Thomas Mann/Tolstoy/whoever. The publishing industry has a strong incentive to promote this kind of stuff; I've got an equally strong instinct telling me that about 75% of this stuff will be merely OK reading and only some of it will survive to earn the title of classic in 50 years' time. In the world of non-fiction, I look for a strong narrative arc and a clear, coherent voice and thesis -- and readability, above all. I tend to shun polemical stuff -- there's enough of that flying about elsewhere. I'm somewhat reconsidering my aversion to memoirs, although not the "I had a tough and horrible life event/disease/abuse situation, and I'm writing about it now because memoirs make money" sub-genre, which I loathe with a growing passion. The grief memoir is a prime example of this. At the other end of the spectrum are books about books, history tomes and books that make me look at the world in new ways and via a different prism.

The Ratings!
1.5 or less: A tree gave its life so that this book could be printed and distributed?
1.5 to 2.7: Are you really prepared to give up hours of your life for this?? I wouldn't recommend doing so...
2.8 to 3.3: Do you need something to fill in some time waiting to see the dentist? Either reasonably good within a ho-hum genre (chick lit or thrillers), something that's OK to read when you've nothing else with you, or that you'll find adequate to pass the time and forget later on.
3.4 to 3.8: Want to know what a thumping good read is like, or a book that has a fascinating premise, but doesn't quite deliver? This is where you'll find 'em.
3.9 to 4.4: So, you want a hearty endorsement? These books have what it takes to make me happy I read them.
4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes sentimental faves, sometimes dramatic -- they are a highly personal/subjective collection!

The Books! (Being the First Chapter of Suzanne's 2014 Reading Adventures...)




1. Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd (3.9), STARTED 1/1/14, FINISHED 1/2/14 (fiction)
2. *Kingdom of Shadows by Alan Furst (3.75), STARTED 12/26/13, FINISHED 1/2/14 (fiction) (audiobook)
3. Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang (4.1), STARTED 1/1/14, FINISHED 1/4/14 (non-fiction)
4. The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam (4.2), READ 1/4/14 (fiction)
5. An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (4.75), STARTED 1/2/14, FINISHED 1/5/14 (fiction)
6. My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead (4.1), STARTED 1/2/14, FINISHED 1/6/14 (non-fiction)
7. No Man's Nightingale by Ruth Rendell (3), STARTED 1/4/14/, FINISHED 1/6/14 (fiction)
8. Garlic, Mint & Sweet Basil by Jean-Claude Izzo (3.85), READ 1/7/14 (non-fiction)
9. Teatime for the Firefly by Shona Patel (3.2), STARTED 1/6/14, FINISHED 1/8/14 (fiction)
10. The Eternal Wonder by Pearl Buck (1.6), STARTED 1/5/14, FINISHED 1/9/14 (fiction)
11. *Confusion by Elizabeth Jane Howard (3.9), STARTED 1/6/14, FINISHED 1/10/14 (fiction)
12. A Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth (4.3), STARTED 1/2/14, FINISHED 1/12/14 (fiction) (audiobook)
13. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (4.4), STARTED 1/2/14, FINISHED 1/13/14 (fiction)
14. *The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough (3.9) STARTED 1/1/14, FINISHED 1/14/14 (fiction)
15. Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare (2.8) STARTED 1/14/14, FINISHED 1/16/14 (non-fiction)
16. Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis (3.4) STARTED 1/13/14, FINISHED 1/15/14 (fiction)
17. Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo by Anjan Sundaram (3.4), STARTED 1/5/14, FINISHED 1/13/14 (non-fiction)
18. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith (4.3), STARTED 1/16/14, FINISHED 1/17/14 (fiction)
19. Bluffing Mr. Churchill by John Lawton (4.3), STARTED 1/15/14, FINISHED 1/18/14 (fiction)
20. The King's Hounds by Martin Jensen (3.75), STARTED 1/17/14, FINISHED 1/18/14 (fiction)
21. The Shadow Tracer by Meg Gardiner (3.5), STARTED 1/18/14, FINISHED 1/19/14 (fiction)
22. *Archangel by Robert Harris (4.1), STARTED 1/12/14, FINISHED 1/20/14 (fiction) (audiobook)
23. Last Friends by Jane Gardam (3.8), STARTED 1/19/14, FINISHED 1/20/14 (fiction)
24. A Play of Lords by Margaret Frazer (3.4), STARTED 1/20/14, FINISHED 1/22/14 (fiction)
25. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (3.85), STARTED 1/19/14, FINISHED 1/23/14 (non-fiction)
26. Alena by Rachel Pastan (4.1), STARTED 1/23/14, FINISHED 1/24/14 (fiction)
27. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (4.2), STARTED 1/24/14, FINISHED 1/25/14 (non-fiction)
28. The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard (3.75), STARTED 1/20/14, FINISHED 1/26/14 (fiction)
29. The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer (4.2) STARTED 1/25/14, FINISHED 1/26/14 (fiction)
30. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett (3.7), STARTED 1/6/14, FINISHED 1/29/14 (fiction)
31. Year Zero by Ian Buruma (4.2), STARTED 1/19/14, FINISHED 1/30/14 (non-fiction) (audiobook)
32. The Final Whistle: The Great War in Fifteen Players by Stephen Cooper (3.8), STARTED 1/24/14, FINISHED 1/30/14 (non-fiction)
33. Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders (3.5), STARTED 1/17/14, FINISHED 1/29/14 (fiction)
34. 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz (3.8), STARTED 1/21/14, FINISHED 1/28/14 (fiction)
35. Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally (4.6), STARTED 1/19/14, FINISHED 1/31/14 (fiction)
36. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee (4.5), STARTED 1/30/14, FINISHED 1/31/14 (fiction)
37. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths (3.8), READ 2/1/14 (fiction)

*- re-read

Some other goals & objectives:

I'm setting myself some sub-challenges here: to read or re-read 20 books with a theme that revolves around World War I, its causes or its aftermath. These can be any kind of fiction or non-fiction. I'm also going to try to read 20 books published by Europa Editions. These are starting to pile up on my TBR mountain and it's a shame as they often are very good and a way to discover new to me writers.

Herewith, the tickers and the place I'll log these in addition to the "main" list. I'll list the books I intend/hope/plan to read, and check 'em off as they are completed. Subject to change!!!

World War I: The Great War, its Causes & Its Aftermath




1. The Beauty and the Sorrow by Peter Englund
2. The Final Whistle by Stephen Cooper FINISHED 1/30/14, 3.8 stars
3. The Cartographer of No Man's Land by P.S. Duffy
4. The Archduke's Assassination by Greg King
5. The Unending Vigil by Philip Longworth
6. The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard FINISHED 1/26/14, 3.75 stars
7. *The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
8. *The Missing of the Somme by Geoff Dyer
9. Vimy by Pierre Berton
10. Roses of No Man's Land by Lyn Macdonald
11. Death's Men by Denis Winter
12. Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden
13. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning by Jay Winter
14. Peacemakers by Margaret MacMillan
15. *Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders FINISHED 1/30/14 3.7 stars,
16. The Wars by Timothy Findley
17. The First Casualty by Ben Elton
18. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
19. *Regeneration by Pat Barker
20. Rising Above the Ruins in France by Corinna Haven Putnam
21. At Break of Day by Elizabeth Speller
22. Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson
23. Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan
24. Fallen Soldiers by George Mosse
25. Stella Bain by Anita Shreve
26. The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold
27. The Absolutist by John Boyne
28. Wake by Anna Hope
29. The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden
30. Gossip From the Forest by Thomas Keneally FINISHED 1/31/14, 4.5 stars
31. Empires of the Dead by David Crane
32. 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz FINISHED 1/29/14, 4 stars

Europa Editions: Old Friends & New Discoveries




1. The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam READ 1/4/14, 4.2 stars
2. Last Friends by Jane Gardam FINISHED 1/20/14 3.8 stars
3. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
4. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
5. Zeroville by Steve Erickson
6. Lazarus is Dead by Richard Beard
7. The Have-Nots by Katharina Hacker
8. The Dream Maker by Jean-Christophe Rufin
9. Bound in Venice by Alessandro Marzo Magno
10. Summertime All the Cats Are Bored by Philippe Georget
11. Garlic, Mint and Sweet Basil by Jean-Claude Izzo READ 1/7/14, 3.85 stars
12. Bone China by Roma Tearne
13. The Thursday Night Men by Tonino Benacquista
14. Dispute Over a Very Italian Piglet by Amara Lakhous
15. Last Train to Paris by Michele Zackheim
16. Cecilia by Linda Ferri
17. The Frost on His Shoulders by Lorenzo Mediano
18. Heliopolis by James Scudamore
19. The Nun by Simonetta Agnello
20. Twelve Who Don't Agree by Valery Panyushkin

Reserved, just in case!

*ba-ding*!

Sorry, Tui, no RL prizes here (unlike Paul), just a shiny silver cyber-medal for being particularly quick off the mark!!

I was eating my lunch in front of the pooter so was in a position to ring the bell on the counter.

"Yes, ma'am, can I be of any assistance?"

Got anything to read? *snort*

Hello from me too! Breakfast time over here. Coffee and fruit toast. Suz, I love both those lists and think you might cause even more books to enter myhouse than in 2013.

Forcing. People. To. Buy. More. Books. Is. My. Assigned. Mission. On. This. Planet.

Oh dear, did I tell you that goofiness is a byproduct of migraines? Time to pop a pill and curl up with a cat on my bed.

*plops down with a bowl of popcorn*

Happy New Thread! Sorry to hear about the migraine, though. You know, I used to get giddy sometimes in the aftermath, right after the pain left. Dizzy with relief, I suppose. And my appetite would skyrocket. I remember after one awful bout in college, when I finally emerged from my dorm room, I went straight to the dining hall and snarked down 3 heaping plates full of spaghetti. And a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, which was my go-to dessert back in the day.

Just checking in on your new dangerous thread.

>11 Chatterbox:: Well. You. Are. Generally. Successful.
Really, you are! :-)

I've read and liked My Brilliant Friend as well as the first two Gardams. So, I can read Last Friends and The Story of a New Name with you. Or in the same year, anyway. :-)

I hope the pill and the cat and that nap help the headache.

Regarding Dead Souls, I read it in 2010 or so and decided that was recent enough, especially as I couldn't find the book. No reason to finish it, Suz - Gogol didn't!

Wait....a second thread. Good grief! Congratulations! And best wishes for cat and nap.

You can read "more" about the change in ending to Gone Girl here

I agree with you Suzanne, a more satisfactory ending to the story isn't possible with these characters. Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris as Desi? Yeah, no.

Suz - I am so pleased to see your thread so buzzing this year. See what happens when we send the vibes we all sent to get rid of that pesky neighbour? Your thread is energised even through the migraines. Trying manfully to get the Gods to rid you of that too so please be patient my dear!

Last year on 15 January you had 219 posts.
This year on 11 January you already have 279 posts.

Thanks for getting everyone going with the WWI centenary reading. Your reminder of Owen's masterpiece is a sobering beginning to my Sunday. xx

Lovely, sad poem at the top, Suzanne. I hope your migraine was fleeting and the rest of your weekend is just what you hoped it would be.

drive by waves *fluffs pillows* . . Also I hope you get over your migraine toot sweet!

Hello all...

Alas, evil demon migraine still lurking. I'm going to make myself some reheated dinner and then it's time for more ice packs and pills, so shall respond properly tomorrow, I hope. Amber, it's funny, I crave carbs during an attack! Weather almost certainly to blame for this.

I should have acknowledged that fine poem instead of being silly. So sorry you still have a miserable head. I sometimes get ravenous when I have a bad head.

Oh no, I'm perfectly willing to be silly, pretty much 24/7.

Waiting for the WholeFoods chicken parmignana that I picked up this morning to reheat, and I'll eat it with some baby peas.

My Guardian editor sent me an e-mail at about the same time I crashed into bed this afternoon to ask me to take yet another look at what is likely to be a controversial story that we're running tomorrrow. Of course, I didn't see it until 9:30, and have just spent much of the last hour taking a fine-toothed comb to it. Hopefully, if she had seen anything that jumped out at her, she would have called to let me know. She does sometimes prod me to use a more provocative and personal voice than I'm comfortable with, but this piece has been "lawyered" at least twice, in both the US and the UK. Ho hum. Well, she has my phone, and it's on, and there's one of the handsets beside my bed, along with my annoyingly loud mobile.

I've listened to a bit more of The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth, and am admiring the latter's ability to tell a first person tale and yet still show his narrator to be a naive and vain, if well intentioned person who seems to be in the process of being used as a tool by those around him. His character is a young man who dreamed of becoming a knight, until his father sold his patrimony (or gave it to the church) and became a monk. He works for 12th century King Roger of Sicily, one of the famous Norman Kings of Sicily, whose reign saw a kind of "covivencia" that also existed in parts of what is now Spain at this time (in spite of the crusades -- this is set in the early decades of these crusades.). It reminds me that I really want to read John Julius Norwich's massive, gargantuan tome about The Normans in Sicily.

Well, Judy, I'm supposed to lead Monday's discussion. So I really think I should finish this... :-) The Gogol, I mean. Once I'm into it, it's no hardship. I've just been procrastinating. Yet again...

Ooh, hope you'll let us know when the story is up (and/or in print).

It will be somewhere on this page, sometime before noon US time tomorrow. I'm bracing for a blizzard of Tweets.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog

Ooh, controversy. Bound to get those tweeters tweeting :)

By: his piece has been "lawyered" at least twice, you mean been run past a lawyer so you/the establishment you are writing for won't get sued? Sounds serious.

I hope the lurking migraine has got the message and buzzed off already.

Yup, that's what lawyering is intended to do -- but it's also a second line of defense, to make sure we've been scrupulously fair in any criticism. We're taking a look at marketing claims that spill over into encouraging investors to take risks -- i.e. marketing writing that isn't intended to be investment advice, but that could be interpreted as such by unsophisticated investors, frustrated folks eager to do better with their portfolios, who might not be inclined to read the fine print once past the marketing pitch. The line to walk is that we need to make clear that it IS intended to be marketing, while still noting how investors will respond to it -- it's that gap between intent and audience reception that is the tricky one to navigate. It's all very stressful; I don't particularly like writing articles that folks won't like, however important the topic is. It's my instinct for conflict avoidance, honed by all my early years trying to deal with a rather bullying father. I hate any kind of conflict/dispute, etc.; makes me feel physically nauseous. The people I've written about are completely clear about what we are saying -- there has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with them -- so nothing should come as a surprise. But still...

Migraine still lurking. I slept so much earlier that I can't sleep now, so I've been watching old Inspector Morse episodes and am now watching the 2008 "Sense & Sensibility" from the BBC, all thanks to Hulu plus.

>26 Chatterbox: I think I would have a migraine too with all that to-ing and fro-ing and lawyers and stress.
I have a friend who writes for my town's paper, he says he has nightmares about getting letters from lawyers regarding things he has written.

I suppose there's nowhere as good as the internet for those angry people out there to vent. #gladI'mnotonTwitter ;)

Nice piece, Suz. I get those emails all the time, because I do subscribe to a newsletter or two. I consider them spam, especially when phrased like the first one you cite. Sometimes, Stock Gumshoe works out which stock might be revealed or recounts the history of the pitch. Entertaining.

Nice article, Suzanne. It must be very tempting for some people, when the Market is doing so well, to succumb to these enthusiastic pitches. Fortunately (I guess) I don't feel that I have the money to risk so I just try to be satisfied with what I've got going already. I was pretty pleased with what they did last year. Hoping it continues.

Here is the full link: http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jan/12/avoid-sheep-wall-stre...

Thanks for the comments. Yes, Judy, it is a kind of spam, and it's hard to separate the value of the newsletters from the way they are being pitched. Both my editor and I got the identical pitch in our inboxes at the same time, and it arrived after I'd already been looking at Realty Mogul, and started drafting a piece about how "wolves of wall street" are one kind of risk, but it's like being paranoid about airplane crashes when the data show you're much more likely to wind up dead as a result of a car accident. In this case, there wasn't data to show, so that analogy doesn't appear, but the pattern is similar: it's the everyday mistakes that are more likely to cause you problems than the spectacular misfortune of running across a Madoff or Jordan Belfort. A dozen Tweets so far; awaiting word from the Fools.

Woot, headache finally gone. Now I can get Dead Souls finished, wash dishes, put out $$ for cat sitter and vacuum and clean.

So glad to hear you've kicked the migraine, Suzanne!

Good news! So glad that the 'egg head,' as Charlie calls them, is gone!

Ha, "egg head" is a great description!!

Finished listening to the audiobook of The Ruby in Her Navel, which is just as good as Morality Play, if a little slower to get started.

So...

12. The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth is the story, set in the mid-12th century, of Thurstan Beauchamp. Deprived of his chance to become a knight by his father's decision to turn over all his worldly goods to God and enter a monastery, Thurstan, when the reader meets him, is working for one of the "diwans" of the king of Sicily. It's a Norman kingdom, but multicultural, home to an array of faiths, from the Muslims and Byzantine Greeks to the "Latin" Catholics whose influence -- and pressure -- is growing. Thurstan works for Yusuf, the king's right-hand man, but when he meets two young women -- Nasrin, an Anatolian dancer, and Alicia, the love of his youth, now widowed -- his naivete, ambition and vanity will take all around him to near-disaster. Narrated in the first person, we see the world through the eyes of Thurstan, but at the same time, because Thurstan himself is looking back on his youthful folly, we realize that he is making one misstep after another, leading toward decisions that will haunt him for the rest of his life. It's impossible not to be scornful of his blindness and vanity; impossible, too, not to hope for the best for him. 4.3 stars -- definitely a fascinating read for history buffs (the plot revolves around a critical time in history, the failure of the Second Crusade in 1149). Intriguing and also very compelling reading (and adequate listening).

Bus to NYC leaves at 6:45 a.m. ARGH.

I'll try and grab a few hours of zz's.

Enjoyed your article, Suz, and hope you get good feedback. I'm also happy your headache has vamoosed.

I thought your article was terrific, Suzanne. As a financial advisor I consider one of my most important jobs is to steer people away from hype in either direction - promises of wild returns in good times and dire predictions of ruination in difficult times.
Hope you enjoy your NY trip.

Really good article, Suz. And no negative comments there so far! Hope you keep your egg head pain free for a while.

Excellent article, Suz. And another book bullet too. I haven't read anything by Barry Unsworth yet and it sounds like one I would really enjoy.

Glad to hear about another good Barry Unsworth novel.

Really good article, and I shared it on fb for all my monied friends!
I'm so taken with your enjoyment of *Ruby/Navel* that I have ordered it from PBS and Land of Marvels too. I really, really liked Sacred Hunger, so maybe the new influx will inspire me to read more Unsworth now rather than later.

SWinging by to say hello and that I enjoyed that article.

"...one of the most hyperbolic stock pitches I’ve seen this side of the record Dow."

Loved that line. Can imagine those on the other end of the skewering weren't pleased.

They've been eerily quiet so far, those Foolish folks...

Although the main PR guy has started following me on Twitter.

Early morning started with Tigger escaping from the house and me have to chase him all the way around it at 6 a.m. Really. It got worse from there. I got down to Megabus stop and realized had left ticket at home. Taxi zoomed back to house and back to Megabus stop in 9 minutes, and by pulling up in front of the bus as it was about to pull out, ensured I was able to get on. What with one thing or another, not a good day. Really, on many levels. Only one of which is the (multiple expletives deleted) headache.

Hi Suz, got The Ruby in Her Navel yesterday finally, along with The Songs of the Kings before seeing your review for the former, but it definitely looks promising. I rather like Andrew Sachs as a narrator, and he does both, so I should be fine there. I know very little about the crusades, though very curious to learn more. To that end, one of my last Folio Society purchases (meaning last one hopefully for a very long time as I practically ruined myself last year with my compulsion to acquire all their books) was The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Amin Maalouf. I practically never read French books in translation, but this edition is really gorgeous and Maalouf himself was thrilled with it, so we'll see. I've got A History of The Crusades by Steven Runciman on my wishlist, which I can get from the library. I'm sure that would give me a very good overview, considering it's a three-volume work, but it's size does intimidate me. Have you read it?

Two other historical fiction novels I got yesterday on Audible are Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell and Seven for a Secret by Lyndsay Faye, which is the follow up to The Gods of Gotham. I don't see those in your collections, but the first comes highly recommended and I really enjoyed Faye's first book, and the second is promising too.

Forcing. People. To. Buy. More. Books. Is. My. Assigned. Mission. On. This. Planet.

Well you certainly do a good job with me, though I'm also grateful the library has lots of your recommended works available for free!

eta: had somehow missed your post just above. Really sorry you've been having such a rotten day. Yikes! Hopes it gets better going forward.

I know it was a Miserable day for you, but I did smile at the mind picture of the taxi barricading the way for you.

I was surprised at the pitch from those Foolish folks. The thing is, the do have a good rep. I would likely just delete anything in my inbox from RM, but MF would have a chance of my reading it. Haven't bought any stocks on their recommendation, but have decided to hold onto some positions based in part on whT we've read there. So discouraging.

Thanks for exposing this. Will be glad to see the Foolish response.

The Foolish people say: "the general consensus at the office today was that the article was quite fair." This via e-mail today.

Ilana, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes is an excellent book, IMO! I'll look forward to your comments on other two new audiobooks.

Very tired. Had a good book circle meeting to discuss:

13. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol -- a small but elite group hung out to chat about this novel that is billed as a satire but is at once more moving and thoughtful and simply funny than a satire would be. In world (tsarist Russia circa late 1830s), dealing in live people -- serfs -- is legal, but Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov is buying up the title to dead serfs, aka dead souls, as part of a complex plan to turn himself into a man of means. Full of wonderful portrayals of seriously goofy characters -- self-important petty bourgeoisie -- this was a hilarious novel, albeit one that required a lot of attention and a detailed reading to truly appreciate. 4.4 stars.

Glad you've been enjoying Barry Unsworth He's probably Mr SandDune's favourite author. Have you read After Hannibal at all? That's probably my favourite one of this.

>42 Chatterbox:: Oh boy, sorry to hear about your bad day. But, hey, at least you didn't miss the bus altogether, right?

Glad you ended up liking Dead Souls!

Noticed Gossip from the Forest on your WWI TBR list.

It's a good 'un.

Has Thomas Keneally ever written a bad book?

I'm going to try to sneak this one over on my other book group.

Hey Suzanne, I'd no idea Dead Souls was a hilarious novel. Must check it out, Pronto!

<img src="http://www2.mar.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fisheries/res/imp/IMAGES/Whelk.JPG" width="285"

Hi Suz! I hope you migraine has been well and truly vanquished by now.

I think you had recommended the audiobooks of the Ben Aaronovitch series? I just finished Midnight Riot last night and loved it. I then went to my library's online ebook/audiobook portal to see what they had available for sequels and low and behold...there's the audiobook for book #2. I plan on checking it out, so thanks for the rec!

I'm glad you made it to your destination after all of the trouble you encountered while trying to get there. I hope your return trip is smooth and stress-free! (And migraine-free, too!)

Suz, Dead Souls has been on the tbr for a while now, and you make me want to put it higher up on the pile for sure. You didn't say whether you'd read Steven Runciman work on the crusades however.

Rhian, adding After Hannibal to the wishlist based on your recommendation.

Headache is STILL here. It cleared up enough yesterday to enjoy the small but elite group who showed up to chat about Dead Souls, but was back by morning. Piffle. I'm sure it's the rain. I have finished volume 1 of the Colleen McCullough series but won't bother adding it until tomorrow. Just got in the door and I'm tired. A MOUNTAIN of work awaits me, including two columns to write before 10 a.m. And other anxiety-inducing stuff.

Heidi, there should be three of the Ben Aaronovitch books on audio; a fourth has been published in the UK and will be released here in early Feb, but Audible doesn't yet have the audiobook version of it listed. My audiobook sub. is a US one, for obvious reasons. I know there is a UK audiobook, but no hints as to when it will be out. So, I'm divided: do I wait, or do I go ahead and read it instead of listening? The audio was soooo good. Sigh, decisions.

OK, unpack. Then icepacks, drugs, bed. I lead such an interesting life. *eyes roll*

Nope, haven't read the Runciman. Did read an older book by Zoe Oldenbourg, and then some specific books on specific elements, like Jonathan Phillips on the Fourth Crusade, where they ended up sacking Constantinople instead... whoops...

Suz, I am so sorry the migraine is dragging out. I hate those drawn out episodes. I hope it goes away soon.

Me, too, especially since I've got a MAJOR work backlog to deal with...

OK, off to bed.

I'm glad that you enjoyed Dead Souls, Suz. Hopefully I'll get to it later this year.

Best wishes for a good day today, Suzanne. Dead Souls sounds like a winner. Another book to strain the shelves, although I find that I'm putting more and more books on my Kindle and liking the Kindle better all the time (or perhaps just finally getting used to it). I read at night, and the backlight works so well for me. No more waking up at 3:00 a.m. with the light shining in my eyes. I also broke my reading glasses recently, so being able to increase the font until I get my new pair has been a real reading boon.

Sending anti-migraine whammys and a reblog of your Fool piece and a hearty agreement about Dead Souls.

*smooch*

I have had a pig of a day. My editor turns out to object to stories about overseas investing because these markets didn't do very well and (b) she thinks that we'd be telling them they have to go and sort through the Hang Seng index by themselves. I pointed out that it's no different from biotech investing: in the latter, a mutual fund manager screens for science risk in the same way one would screen out geopolitical risk/corruption, etc. etc. and do stock picking. "Our readers just aren't interested". I'm speechless; I don't think she's remotely correct, but I also cannot get her to accept that. So I had to report and write a completely new column in three hours. Which threw the rest of my day into chaos. I still have three articles unwritten and had to push another interview over until tomorrow. If each published story is going to start requiring two or three complete rewrites to address editorial changes, this simply isn't going to be worthwhile. EVERYTHING else that I have had to do workwise for the last 10 days has been thrown into chaos by this back and forth stuff. I'm messing up other major deadlines. I have two magazine stories to write -- one 800 words, one 400 words -- and a 900 word piece about US oil prices. It's almost 7 and I'm going to be working all night. I'm twice as far behind as I was when I started the week. What I dislike most is the -- "it's your column, but..." nonsense. You know, it isn't my column. Not at all. Or, only as long as I don't write about certain topics and don't quote institutions the editor doesn't think are "credible". Which include some that Barron's thought were very credible indeed.

I'm sorry, I'm ranting. But really, I'm furious. Especially when the same person insisted that the term BRIC was coined in 2005. It was 2001. I have the original piece of research sitting on my desk in front of me!

14. The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough is the first in a series of seven very very long but interesting books set in the final decades of the Roman republic. In this one, Gaius Marius finally achieves his dream of becoming consul, and trounces North African rebels and the first wave of Germans in Gaul. But military success against impossible odds is easier than dealing with the conservative faction at home... It's fascinating historically, and in terms of the amount of research it reflects, and I always find something fresh to ponder -- in this case, when being a contrarian risks making someone a threat to stability. I had fun this time comparing the ideal "Roman virtues" to a lot of the talk about "American values". Still, a big investment of time and not to be undertaken lightly. I plan to re-read the rest of the series over the course of the year. 4.1 stars -- fascinating but the writing isn't brilliant. (By the end of this book, incidentally, we only just meet one Julius Caesar as a tiny baby.)

Poor baby! (Yeah, that didn't make my me feel much better even when my Mom said it. Worth a try, though.).

I feel your frustration. For what it's worth. We would definitely read about an article about overseas markets. That's what diversification is all about, right? Not necessarily about specific stocks, but definitely about markets to look into. So there!

BTW you are fast becoming Mr. Trumpet's favorite person on LT. :-)

A pox on bad editors everywhere! I feel your pain, Suzanne.

She wouldn't even just try it to see how it might fly, Suz? How disappointing.

I just got lectured. And lectured with erroneous info. Which is even more annoying. Sadly, Julia, she's not a bad editor. Just over-confident and out of the habit of second-guessing her assumptions, which is not good.

Yes, stories about specific stocks are rarely good ideas, unless they are offered up as examples of a trend (eg, a stock with global exposure and a big dividend payout ratio might look like XYZ)

I think I'm going to go to bed right now, and set my alarm for v. early in the morning. Try to blot out what is left of today.

Have finished another book, but I still have one to read before Amazon Vine deadline at 3 tomorrow afternoon. Ho hum.

Thanks for the moral support, and pls thank Mr. Trumpet, too, Marianne.

Eh??? What does she mean? (don't answer that...) I spend quite a bit of time deciding which overseas markets to invest in (well I used to before I had a full time job) and love intelligent stories about ETFs/ specific new markets/ blah blah. It's half the reason I spend a fortune on an FT iPad sub from New Zealand. That, and the utterly rubbishy stuff that passes for news in our own papers.

Hope tomorrow is better.

I'm sorry you've been having a hard time with your editor Suz. Hope the migraine lifts soon, though it does sound like you're under an immense amount of pressure. Mine tend to act up when that happens.

Speaking of which, I had my biannual appointment with my neurologist Dr Aubé yesterday (I mention his name because he enjoys a reputation as the best in town), who completely changed my meds around. Put me on cortisone for the next two weeks and I'll be switching progressively from Gabapentin to Atacand (a blood pressure medication) as a preventative since the former obviously has been doing a lousy job. In a lot of pain this week, but I'm feeling hopeful that pain-free days might be in sight.

Going to bed and getting up very early is sound practice. I hope it works for you this time, and I'm sorry about today's troubles.

>66 Chatterbox:: Oh, boy. Being lectured by someone who thinks they know better when it's clearly not the case - that makes me more furious faster than nearly anything else! So sorry that you're going through that right now.

Cushla, "our readers just aren't interested in this; they aren't that sophisticated." It's very frustrating, because I'm being pushed to do take-downs of things that investors are far less likely to be involved in -- options strategies, hedge funds, etc. But there's a big blind spot when it comes to international investing. Great editors believe they aren't infallible and they are calm when challenged, not hysterical.

Ilana, thanks. the head has been better since I got home from NY, but I'm very tired and just, I dunno, jaded and unenthusiastic. It doesn't help that I'm behind on absolutely everything now. Too bad about the Gapapentin; a friend of mine had good results with it. I think my mother tried it, too, but she's now on some very convoluted kind of vitamin regime that may be helping around the margins. But I think her experiences are different enough from mine for it not to be that helpful. Pain-free days are definitely to be worked towards.

Amber, yes, I think there may well have been flaws in the way I wrote the story. But that's a different matter from assuming that the arguments/perspective behind it is flawed. It's as if she has a blind spot. I rather resent the conflicting message that it's "your column", while at the same time not having the freedom to reject her ideas ("just do it", even if it's a topic that doesn't interest me.) The biggest issue, I think, is that she truly believes she is giving me the freedom to do whatever I want; there's no self-awareness and no self-questioning. Increasingly, I'm finding this a difficult relationship, in part, at least, because this attitude goes along with a kind of manic approach. We'll see, but I'd be surprised if I stick it out to the end of 2014. And I probably shouldn't even be discussing this here. Sigh.

Finished another book last night but it wasn't very good. Piffle.

Sorry about your editor, really very sorry. I wonder if she is being pressured from above? Who knows. Ugh.

I enjoyed just now going over to your Essay Challenge thread. Looking very interesting indeed! I've been on some essay binges over the years, and I still read some. I think it is a great great form!

Lucy, alas, I think the problem is exactly the opposite -- that she has become overly confident because she has no one second-guessing or questioning her.

I do need to update the essay challenge. But I'm behind on that, as well as on so many other things! ARGH.

OK, a quick book update. I'm tired, but have to do ANOTHER column by 10 tomorrow, and do a phone interview at 8:30. I'm divided between trying to get an early night and a fresh start tomorrow, vs. trying to write when tired. Neither sounds really appealing.

Doesn't help that none of these books really stood out much for me.

15. Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France by Nicholas Shakespeare is the kind of book that happens when the author has connections in the publishing world and is fascinated by his own idea -- in this case, revealing the truth behind his mysterious aunt's secretive past. She never discussed the years she spent in France when it was under Nazi occupation, but somehow all her friends and extended families ended up with vague beliefs that she was a resistance heroine, had been imprisoned in a concentration camp, tortured, etc. Shakespeare decides to find out, and uncovers a much less savory tale. (he still calls the camp a concentration camp, but it was really just an internment camp -- nasty, but not what we think of in the same breath as Bergen-Belsen, and she only spent three months there.) Part of the problem is that I had no idea why I was reading this or why it had been written other than the author's curiosity about a family member. Part was the lingering sense that what could have worked as a novel with an unlikeable or unadmirable heroine, really didn't work as a non-fiction account. Just, no. Don't bother. There are far better books about France in World War II. 2.8 stars.

16. Death of a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis is the third in a series of "Scandicrime" novels featuring nurse Nina Borg, and it's by far the least impressive. It follows hard on the heels of book #2, Invisible Murder, and I wouldn't suggest reading this one before it. A young Ukrainian woman escapes from custody, tries to reclaim her daughter, bad guys pursue her, etc. etc. Nina, intent on saving the world, has buggered up her own marriage and her relationship with her children and is now living on her own, and tries to protect both Natasha and young Katerina. Very action-oriented, and although there's an interesting flashback to a 1935 scene set in the Ukraine, the relevance of these segments becomes obvious far too late and without enough detailed groundwork. Indeed, this novel is like the skeleton of a story, left underdeveloped. Not all that impressive a contribution to the series. 3.4 stars.

17. Stringer: A Reporter's Journey in the Congo by Anjan Sundaram asks you to imagine that one day a grad student in math decides to chuck it all in and go off to become a journalist -- in the Congo. Yup. Really. This got big plugs from Barbara Demick and Pico Iyer, but it wasn't all that impressive, really. While not quite gonzo journalism, there's way too much about Sundaram meeting the Congo vs. the Congo itself -- not a sin that Sundaram's self-proclaimed idol Ryszard Kapuscinski would have committed. OK, but more as memoir than as a look at the Congo.

For my essays challenge:

E2. "Dead Souls" by Vladimir Nabokov, from Lectures on Russian Literature was an excellent deep dive into this iconic Russian novel. Except that to Nabokov, the setting was immaterial -- it could have been anywhere, and the characters are of no time and place, with Chichikov being a kind of traveling salesman for the Devil himself. That's interesting in light of Gogol's later religious 'awakening', and it's the prelude to a fun analysis of the myriad character who people Gogol's "fundamentally unreal world", a novel full of "Gogolian gusto and wealth of weird detail". Recommended, although it's long and dense.

Suzanne,
ugh, just ugh on the editor

The Priscilla book is on the radio here and I'm finding it quite interesting, but maybe I can hang on to be able to get a library copy (or Kindle it).

Just caught up on your threads as I somehow 'ignored' you when using the iPad - seems to be easy to do on a touchscreen with a bad wifi connection.
Going right back to The Man in the Wooden Hat, I also waited for the Bletchley Park / POW camp explanation when I was listening to the audiobook. Didn't take back my enjoyment o the book and I'm hoping to get to the last book asap.
Have been hit by several book bullets while doing catchup, An unnecessary woman and the Izzo essays in particular. I read the Masters of Rome books as they were published and really enjoyed them, not sure if I read the last 1 or 2 though.
I finished Leo Africanus this morning and The Salt Road last week. Both were great reads for me. I saw loads of Maalouf's books in the museum bookshops in Andalusia, all in Spanish of course. The bookshops here are full of a great range of literature and loads of interesting Spanish writers, unfortunately most English language sections are a combo of airport thrillers and Wordsworth classics.

Kerry, hope you can find some decent airport thrillers or classics you haven't read! I think I stumbled over Nicci French thrillers for the first time thanks to FNAC in Madrid. Thankfully, I can read in French, so I can get hold of more of Maalouf's novels that way, if I want. Another author I like who isn't much translated (or possibly at all) is Gilbert Sinoue, who has written some great historical novels. I've got a bunch still unread on my TBR mountain.

ETA: I blame touchscreen keyboards. It's very easy to do stuff like that. My sweater sleeve has bought books on my Kindle fire.

18. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith is a winner, and I would never have known this had I not heard about the author's foray into historical fiction (Hild), and then had not Kerri/DorsVenabili not read this mystery and alerted me to the fact that Griffith is a triple threat -- she has written not only HF but mysteries and sci fi as well. I'm not a sci-fi fan, so those probably will remain unread, but not the sequels to this mystery. Yeah, I don't really 'get' Aud, the half-Norwegian kinda-heroine/narrator of this -- she's really tall, super fit and a paranoid ex cop with a taste for violence that sometimes unnerves her (but not that often), a penchant for martial arts and appealing young women -- but that didn't matter. The mystery is an intriguing one, although this is more of a book of character studies, and the last 50 or 60 pages alone are 4.5 star material, completely unputdownable. Details would be spoilers, so you'll just have to read it. 4.3 stars.

And The Blue Place just got requested from the library...

19. Bluffing Mr. Churchill by John Lawton (also published as Riptide in the UK and non-US editions) is my second "thumping good read" in a row from this author, and perfect escapist fare of a kind for which I have a desperate need right now. Billed as an Inspector Troy novel, it really isn't, but that's OK, too, since one of the things I liked about both of the two books I've read is that they really feature an ensemble cast of characters. One of these is Wolfgang Stahl, who appeared in only a page or two at the beginning of Second Violin, but whose flight from Heydrich's offices and Nazi Germany is the catalyst for all that follows. Stahl took secrets with him that the Germans desperately don't want to reach the Allies, and a spy war of sorts is waged in the streets of London, involving Polish and Czech exiles, Special Branch detectives, American officers and Troy. It's May 1941 and the world is lurching closer to total war... This novel sets the stage for the following books in the series, which I'll be moving onto very, very soon. I'm very glad that there are still several of them to read! 4.3 stars. Just don't look for lots of likable characters. Troy himself is an odd bird; guarded and distant, whose brother himself called an habitual liar, and a cold fish in some ways. But then, not finding a character nice doesn't mean that they aren't interesting...

ETA: I'm reading these novels in chronological order, not in publication order. My choice; I suspect you could do it either way, but I wanted to avoid any spoilers about who lives/dies and what happens to various characters. Some events toward the end of this novel make me glad I made the choice I did.

Now, I just need to find something equally engaging and just as much of a distraction from real life to follow this up with!

You probably guessed that I (probably along with most of your pals here) always read your Guardian articles and I follow the debates and disputes over material for articles avidly. I have one premise though when it comes to investing. I only invest in myself. I buy companies or stakes in companies I think I can have a beneficial impact upon and to seek out business opportunities. I like to reap the rewards, albeit often modest ones, from my own endeavours. Investing on the public markets in any form I don't do because of relative ignorance - I don't know enough about all the variables that go into deciding whether this or that will realise me a gain or a bloody nose so I leave it well alone. I'm old fashioned I guess.

I am a fan of Unsworth's, Suz and will probably read something more of his this year.

Have a delightful weekend. xx

Hi Suzanne!

#79 - I'm so glad you liked The Blue Place (I was a bit worried)! I think you even gave it a higher rating than me. Although, I think we may have had a flipped reaction, as I wasn't wildly impressed with the mystery, but I was fascinated by Aud and her story. I'm going to at least read the next in the series on my trip this coming week, if not the next two.

Hi Suz!

Sorry to hear about the crappy boss. I hate bosses like that. Also, I had no idea you were a columnist/journalist. *hugs*

Kerri, the mystery was OK, but the suspense of the last pages was unbeatable! And yes, I did like Aud. I just am in no way like her, which limits the extent to which I can get "inside" her mind and understand her as a character. Which doesn't mean that she isn't interesting!

Paul, your approach is the single best way to get wealthy. At some stage, if you want, you can use some of your profits to diversify (excellent idea...) and in order to stay wealthy and get more wealthy. Frankly, I'm not at all sure that it's possible to become wealthy just by investing. You can preserve money and increase it slightly, but if you don't have it to start with, the rates of return are not going to vault you out of your current tax bracket. You're investing because you have to set aside money in savings in order to retire, and you can't simply stash that $$ in your bank account, or you'll lose spending power in both absolute and relative terms. But becoming wealthy? You need to make it through whatever you do for a living, not by taking $1,000 and turning it into $1,000,000 in the financial markets.

>71 Chatterbox: "our readers just aren't interested in this; they aren't that sophisticated."
Dumbing down of the information presented to the unsuspecting customer. Yikes.
What a busy and frustrating time you have been having. And with a migraine to boot. I hope your 'boss' has pulled her head in (yea right?) and that at least your workload and migraine have dissipated.

>78 Chatterbox: My sweater sleeve has bought books on my Kindle fire.
LOL
I hope it was something good!

>82 PaulCranswick:/85 if I had money to invest, I wouldn't have it in shares. I am deeply uncomfortable with the way shareholders and their 'needs' are used as excuses for poor behaviour towards employees. My mum has a portfolio managed by some financial manager, she knows about as little about the whole thing as I do. I wonder what she thinks when people are fired from Telecom under the rationale that the shareholders are looking for increased return.

Megan, the problem with NOT investing in shares is that you do yourself a disservice. If you simply put it in a bank you will quite literally end up losing money, since you won't earn enough in interest to keep up with even modest inflation. I suppose you could ethically invest in whatever the local equivalent of municipal bonds may be, since they are designed to raise capital for a kind of "common use" projects, whether roads or airports, hospitals or schools. But if you don't have some stocks, history shows you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face. Take a look at some of the corporate social responsibility or ethical investing funds, and look for one that many of the CSR gurus believe is good at emphasizing whatever factors are important to you -- employee equity, 'green' environmental impact, etc. It's a dreadful juggling match. The problem companies face is that if they can't maintain a rate of return that is attractive relative to other investment options, they will lose that capital, and see the share price fall. That limits their ability to expand, to update production facilities, etc., and ultimately will take a different kind of toll on a workforce. If that happens, and their revenues and profits decline, there will be no money to reinvest, and that can produce a toxic circle, a death spiral. If profits turn into losses, then workers will lose their jobs. The harsh reality is that corporations ARE run for the benefit of shareholders, not employees. The shareholders are those providing the risk capital: if the business doesn't thrive, they lose their money, lock stock and barrel. Do companies exploit that requirement to act in the best interests of shareholders (which, incidentally, is a legal requirement in corporate law across much of the world)? Absolutely. Only labor standards encoded in law and other offsetting legal guidelines will change that on a systematic basis. I'm not suggesting that individual CEOs aren't great people, who will fight to the last breath to keep their people happy, healthy, well paid, etc. Just that the system happens to be one in which that isn't a requirement, especially as you go further down the skills ladder and there are more people you can bring in to flip burgers or ring up a sale at a cash register. A lot of the soundbites we hear in the current war over the minimum wage here are actually, at their core, true. You really should treat some of these minimum wage jobs as "starter" jobs, and find ways to move up that skills ladder. The big problem is that there are far too many people for whom that strategy simply isn't an option, and we're not doing enough either as a society or within business to make sure that happens. And that in turn is aggravated by the fact that nobody really knows how to do that effectively and on a large scale. And I think there's a very deep anxiety about whether there will ever be enough of the higher-paid, more skilled jobs to accommodate everyone at higher wages. We're already seeing that reflected in what I think of "education inflation" -- where once a high school degree was enough, now you need some college education, perhaps a two-year community college degree. Where once a BA was OK, now you need an MA, and so on. The educational barrier is getting artificially high. Let's face it, decades of business people did quite well with basic knowledge, on the job experience and common sense and without an MBA. An MBA shouldn't be a requirement for a business career. (Clearly, professional degrees are different: law, medicine, etc. require specialized knowledge that people shouldn't have to obtain on the fly, as it were, because the stakes are infinitely higher.)

The bottom line: if these are important to you, seek out companies (like the old Ben & Jerry's) that choose to operate in ethical ways. Perhaps not Apple, which outsources to Foxconn in China, whose employment practices have been, ahem, problematic. But perhaps Google, which has publicly said it will put people before profits in its mission statement. Companies like this do exist, but the problem is that many of them are not publicly-traded, because going public makes you accountable to more investors who may not share your interpretation of a mission like this -- but that doesn't mean you don't have a duty to them anyway.

Sorry for the bloviating, but there really aren't any simple answers to any of these questions. The problem I find is that too much of the critique of the way things are today comes from those who don't look at how things evolved, the legal structures, etc. There are foolish and greedy CEOs who interpret the rules in the way that best serves them, but while we can view them scathingly, they are acting within the letter of the law, and sometimes within its spirit, too. To upend capitalism at it exists today, you need to go back and rewrite corporation law, I think. And even then, you need to take into account human nature: greed and fear. Also the desire among a small group to innovate, to take great risks with their money and their careers and then to be rewarded for it. Look at the Google guys. They created something utterly new and different -- their vision, their hard work, their risk, spending years tinkering with the idea and developing it and begging friends to pay for their pizza and beer. We didn't do that. We didn't have that idea, that vision or that willingness to risk our lives. So, there's a big difference between an entrepreneurial business owner/creator and the kinds of returns they could/should get and what a "manager CEO" earns, IMHO. Interestingly enough, some entrepreneurs prefer to keep a stake in their businesses to having a higher salary -- and that is ultimately how they become very wealthy. As Paul has noted, they invest in themselves.

OK, Tigger is pawing at my leg, which means I have to stop or I'll have to seek medical attention.

^Great post, Suz. I appreciate your "bloviating," especially since you have the background and knowledge to speak on the subject!

There is no way I can respond appropriately to all you have said (wow!). My brain is too tired and under-caffeinated. But, here goes.

Only labor standards encoded in law and other offsetting legal guidelines will change that on a systematic basis.
That is what I am after, a systematic change. I am a batty idealist and think that even if the wretched CEOs are working within the law, they should still do the right thing, and be just.

...ever be enough of the higher-paid, more skilled jobs to accommodate everyone at higher wages.: growth growth growth. It is enough to make me want to drop out altogether. We cannot sustain perpetual growth.

The whole risk/reward thing is interesting. My BiL is a builder, he was earning good (enough for me) money working for someone. He complained about how little he earned, thinking it unfair I suppose that he worked so hard for so comparatively little when everyone could see how many new cars/houses his boss owned. Then he started his own company, almost to spite his boss, and hired 'boys' (like his former self). He pays them as little as he can get away with, took the risk of the new business, works all hours of the day, and is raking it in.

To me that is a hypocrisy. He could not stand the conditions he was working under so took the risk to start his own business, in order that he can then impose those conditions upon his workers. I know I am looking at this from a socialist pov, and a naive idealist's, but I prefer to think that we would all be better off if people settled for less bottom line and shared the benefits.

Re: investment in green or socially responsible places. Great idea. As soon as I have some spare $$ that is :)
I suppose I already do though, as the compulsory retirement savings I earned in Australia are still stuck there in a SRI (socially Responsible Index) and earning rather than decreasing. I can get it when I turn 65.....a few years away yet.

Not to defend your brother in law, but if his employees acquire the skills and have the incentive to do to him what he did to his former boss, he could end up hoist with his own petard! You're quite right that it's hypocrisy, Megan -- but the trick for anyone doing this is to treat employees well enough that they have less incentive to bugger off and worker for a nicer guy or someone who pays more, or to head off to start their own business. It's all of a balancing act.

I agree we can't sustain perpetual growth. But we have population growth. So the question is how to accommodate that in terms of income and employment? I think the most worrying thing that I witness is the widening of the wealth gap, which makes successfully managing that balancing act much trickier.

I agree with you that systematic changes are what's needed. But those need to be made thoughtfully, knowledgeably and with an understanding of "unintended consequences", not just "throw the bastards out". They may be bastards, but sudden, violent, unplanned and poorly-conceived changes can result in something that is far more chaotic and ultimately no better than the former system. I empathize with a lot of the Occupy folks but there were too many who weren't knowledgeable and pragmatic. I wouldn't call myself an idealist in practice -- I'll always go for the pragmatic option -- but if we don't keep ideals as a long-term goal, we lose our souls.

I'm tired, too. Grey, gloomy day and it can't decide whether to rain, sleet or snow. I did manage to race downtown to the library to pick up a library book and found four of 'em waiting for me, including the new Jussi Adler-Olsen. I may finish the new novel by Jean Echenoz, but really am still in the mood for escapism. The books of choice for the moment are The King's Hounds by Martin Jensen (set in Anglo-Saxon England) and the latest from Terry Pratchett.

good post, Suz, as always. When wages are discussed, i'm constantly reminded of Henry Ford, who paid his factory workers more than was strictly necessary in that economy, because he wanted them to be able to buy the products they made. Now that's the way to build a market!

It seems to me short-sighted to cut costs at the expense of the workers to benefit the most immediate bottom line. That, to me, can lead to a vicious spiral. Invest in your company and your workforce for at least the medium term, and the money will start to circulate.

Did you hear that a very conservative California politician is advocating a $12 minimum wage? His idea is that people will be able to make do without the social services they now need if they actually earn enough to live on. What a concept!

Judy, exactly!!! If a Wal-Mart employee can't afford to shop there; a McDonald's employee can't afford to buy food there, then there's a problem. And kudos to the guy who had the wits to realize that if people can support themselves, they will. That's the way to end social services payouts to those who aren't unemployable -- i.e. who aren't disabled, elderly, the young, etc. -- except as a "bridge". But we've really hit the depths when someone who is employed still ends up relying on food stamps or food banks to cope.

I am ridiculously pleased that you agree with me!

Hi Suz! Sorry to see your editor is being so annoying. Hopefully things start to work out with your deadlines!

Thanks, Chelle -- I have caught up with one or two of them, but I'm behind on reporting a very big project about philanthropy -- a major feature that will run in ten city magazines in March. I have to write the bloody profile of Donald Trump (that's my bad -- I could have done it over the holidays) and then I have to get back to my Fiscal Times routine. They have been v. patient, but other stuff has been buggering it up, and I've no longer got a smooth rhythm going for work.

There's a good Kindle sale on in the US; they're calling it "the Big Deal", with 600 plus books. You have to winnow through a lot of stuff that doesn't seem all that appealing (how to build a church congregation, Amish romances and the like) but included in the list are several of the John Shakespeare Elizabethan mysteries by Rory Clements, a handful of Archipelago titles, several novels by Justin Cartwright (I picked up one of those), and there's some other appealing stuff. I snagged a copy of a dystopian/post-apocalyptic book by Marcel Theroux, and Voltaire Almighty, which has languished on my Amazon wishlist for years, literally, and now is only $1.99.

Now I need to catch up on other peoples' threads, or I will be LT persona non grata....

There is a lot of chaff to wade through in that sale, but I picked up some interesting ones, including the Theroux, and several NF titles (Fever Season, Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace, Beyond the BLue Horizon and The Snoring Bird). And some other stuff because I'm a book glutton :)

I restrained myself and got just two, the Voltaire and the yacoubian building

Wow Suz, Megan gets her own Guardian article, for free!
As for diversification with profits I think that there is a subtle Cornwallian hint involved there. xx

I am proud to say that I waded all the way through that big list of Kindle sale books without succumbing to a single one. I did cave in on the Nook Daily Deal yesterday, All the King's Men, which has been on my wishlist for quite some time. Win some, lose some.

Paul, you may very well think so. I, however, could not possibly comment.... (kudos if you get the reference...)

Julia -- I am impressed! At least, I think so. I do hope that at least you were strongly tempted... The NetGalley version of Bellman & Black isn't terribly readable, so I also picked up that for $1.99. Wouldn't have paid full price, but would rather do that than feel bullied into reading it because of the inflexibility of having only one renewal for library books. Although the lovely library lady today did give me a second renewal on another book that is overdue, unasked and unnoticed until I got home, which was greatly appreciated!

20. The King's Hounds by Martin Jensen is the first in what appears to be a series of mysteries set in the early years of the LAST millennium, when the Danes finally dethroned Aethelred the Unready and Edmund Ironsides. King Cnut (he who in legend tried to control the waves) is trying to forge a new kingdom into which Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes and others can all call live under a common rule of law; then one of his Saxon thanes is murdered. On the scene are Winston, an illuminator, and impetuous young Halfdan, raised as a nobleman but who has lost his estate to the Danes despite being half-Danish himself. The two are charged by the new king with solving the crime, and given three days in which to do it. The writing/translating aren't all that great, but perfectly adequate (would an 18 year old of 1,000 years ago really say "yeah"?), and the plot is conventional mystery fare, but the setting and context are very interesting. I recently read a novel by Patricia Bracewell that is the first half (at least) of one focusing on Emma of Normandy, who first married Aethelred and then was "inherited" by Canute, and who was the mother of Edward the Confessor. She doesn't appear in this novel in person, but it has whetted my appetite to read more about this era, either in fiction or history. So for that fact alone, a 3.5 star book becomes 3.75 stars.

Now, off to find some more escapist fare.

Thanks for the info about The Big Deal. I'll have to go check it out.

Suz - hahaha neither of us look the slightest bit like Francis Urquhart!

#99 - Where is Julia? What have you done with her?!?!

Suzanne, I wasn't really tempted much at all. I didn't recognize many of the authors or titles, for example I've never heard of any of the ones you or Katie mentioned in your posts. It's possible I missed some real gems, I know, but I reckon I'll survive.

Katie, I surprised myself even. I gave myself a good talking to about having more books than I can possibly read and it's about time that I limited my book buying only to books that have been highly recommended to me here on LT or that I already knew I wanted to read. We'll see how long my resolve lasts.

Hmph.

Confess I'm tempted to summon the paramedics to ensure Julia hasn't been replaced by bodysnatchers. Just saying...

That said, I'm getting ready to prune my physical library yet again. I realized, for instance, that I'm never going to re-read all my "Inspector Morse" books by Colin Dexter. And there simply isn't space to hang on to them. Another birthday is looming; I'm mortal, and new books keep appearing. I don't think my TBR mountain has ever been this large. I'm less fussy about Kindle sales, however, as the prices tend to be so low and the books don't require physical space in my home. Then, too, I'm trying to exercise a bit of discipline. For instance, there are a few books available on Amazon UK that I'd love to add to my Kindle but they aren't "must have" titles at their current prices. For instance, I'm sure I will be able to pick up Death of an Elgin Marble by David Dickinson for less than 8 pounds, and 11 pounds for a Kindle version of A Ghost at the Door by Michael Dobbs (speaking of Francis Urquhart!!) is too much to pay when I still have the previous two in that series unread. I'm slightly tempted by The Lie by Helen Dunmore, but even more so by the new Amin Maalouf novel, Les Desorientees, available in French for my UK kindle. That's a more likely purchase, despite the high price tag of 13 pounds, because the prices of the French novels available for UK Kindles don't seem to move much.

So my five Big Deal books came to a total of $13.75. Not that much, really. And no shelf space required!!

I will probably end up wading through the Amazon pile Suzanne but your saying that you will be culling your shelves brings up an interesting thought that I might be slaughtered for saying. Since we all end up culling titles that appealed to us at some point in the far distant past but that we probably will never read would we all be better off using the library and only purchasing books that we want in a permanent collection? I've been thinking about that lately as we ponder whether we want to downsize our living quarters.

^Bonnie's question is well-timed for me, as I just spent much of my evening going through my Amazon wishlists and moving most of them to my library WL. I use the library but should use it way more than I actually do.

I empathize with a lot of the Occupy folks but there were too many who weren't knowledgeable and pragmatic.
Oy, I feel for them too. So easily written off as drifters/hippies or drop-outs. If the group had been made up of suits, it may have at least appeared more credible.
They may not have had a clear message, but what I took from it was "it's not fair that there is so much inequality", what the media ran with as the first three words of that and that seemed it.

Megan, I think they began by asking the right questions, but to the extent that they proceeded to answer them, it devolved too quickly. But that's just my POV.

Katie/Bonnie, that's a good issue. I'm going to try to confine my buying to books that I know either will be hard or impossible to find at the library, that I'll probably re-read continually, or that have some kind of sentimental value. For instance, I just purchased Distant Intimacy for my Kindle, an exchange of e-mail letters between Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein. I don't want to feel constrained to read it in a finite time frame -- even if my library system had it (which it doesn't). I can see myself re-reading bits of it in the future. On the other hand, the Inspector Morse tomes will be readily available via some library system or other if ever I feel the urge. I'll probably end up buying more UK Kindle books than US titles, with the latter being confined more toward "must have books", like the upcoming historical novel by Sharon Penman or toward replacing physical books with cyber books.

21. The Shadow Tracer by Meg Gardiner is the kind of suspense novel for which libraries were invented. (This one is a few days overdue, so I had to bump it up the priority list so as not to rack up too much in fines.) It's what I would call a borderline thumping good read, reminiscent of, if not as good as, Thomas Perry's novels featuring Jane Whitefield. Sarah has spent the last five years caring for her niece, Zoe, as her own daughter after the violent death of her sister Bethany. A freak accident reveals the truth -- and Sarah has to run, as both law enforcement and Zoe's other birth family, bunch of criminal fundamentalist zealots, are desperate to lay hands on the child. The plot is a bit improbable, but it takes a back seat to the suspense, anyway, so what the heck. Not as good as Gardiner's Evan Delaney mysteries (China Lake, etc.) which often are quite good, but much better than the dreadful Jo Beckett series (The Memory Collector), which I loathed. Recommended if you're looking for an adrenaline-driven thriller and don't mind that if you stop and think about it, big parts don't make much sense. 3.5 stars.

The David Dickinson is a brand new publication from a publisher who discount almost everything at some point.

#100 Suzanne
lovely reference ;-)

Suzanne, I'm so sorry about the tension with your editor. It sounds very frustrating!

I'm enjoying skimming through your thread and am relieved to see a few books get ratings that excuse me from adding them to the wish list. Whew! On the other hand, I already have The Blue Place on my TBR shelves (Kerri strikes again!) and now I really want to get to it sooner rather than later.

Luci, thanks for that reminder! I noticed that all the earlier books in the series are now at about 84p for Kindle, and while I have enjoyed the series, I recently de-accessioned many of the hardcovers I bought -- they fell into that category of "unlikely to be re-read", especially the later ones. I may pick up two or three of the early ones for my Kindle at the sale price.

It's hard to resist the temptation, but I know if I spend that much on a Kindle book that I already know I won't read before I spot it on sale two months from now, I'll be kicking myself...

Stephanie, tee hee! That's a fave of mine. I've even used it to elicit indirect confirmation of sensitive facts for stories. "Is that a real 'no comment' or a Francis Urquhart 'no comment'?"

Ellen, thanks for the moral support. The tension has been dialed down a notch, but I remain wary. Can't vent re any of this on FB, because editor is there and all over social media. I've worked with so many great editors where it's genuinely collaborative that feeling myself being pushed is uncomfortable. And it's not really because I don't want to leave my personal comfort zone, either. Ho hum. Well, the latest piece is going gangbusters on Twitter: http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jan/18/financial-investing-a....

I think venting is healthy. At one point when the pressure at my job got too much and my manic boss was committing one outrage after another, I started an anonymous blog and spilled all my venom there. I won't own up to anything I said there now, but it was highly entertaining at the time and I got plenty of moral support from sympathetic strangers.

I'm glad I took a chance and checked out some of the titles in the "Big Deal" Kindle sale. Of course, you can't find this sale listed on the Canadian site, but as I saw mention of a couple of titles on my wishlist on your thread (The Jacoubian Building which was a 5-star read for me borrowed from a friend, and Mrs Robinson's Disgrace) I went to see if they might be similarly priced here and was delighted to find it was indeed the case. So I looked up the whole list on the .com site and ended up getting the two aforementioned, plus The Snoring Bird and Voltaire Almighty, all at Daily Deal pricing. I'll use this strategy next time I see mention of a Kindle sale normally not available to us.

Ilana, so you found the same titles at the same prices on the .ca site, but just not being promoted? That's cool...

Another topical piece that may give Megan, in particular, some food for thought and perhaps even some reassurance? http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?smid...

Suzanne, After watching the US series with Kevin Spacey, I tried to watch the UK series and just couldn't do it. Francis Urquhart in the UK version was far too creepy for me. I adore Kevin Spacey and while he went over the top a lot, I think he got a lot right. Second season starts on Valentine's Day, exciting!

Another very good article, Suz!

Just finished watching a DVD of "The Wipers Times" -- blackly hilarious, with Ben Chaplin as a captain whose battalion discovers a printing press when scavenging in Ypres and decides to start a newspaper, in the midst of the Great War. Amusing reference to R.C. Sherrif, whose play, Journey's End, takes the bleak and black and loses all the humor (appropriately so). This was a UK DVD (with all thanks to my fabulous multi-region DVD player...) but if you can find it somewhere, it's worth seeing.

Ooof, they are doing renovations on the upstairs apartment -- not all that much and not that bad, except for the facts that (a) they started at 7 a.m. (which is legal, natch!) and (b) the migraine is back for the first time seriously in nearly a week. If it weren't for the renovations, given that it's a quasi-holiday, I could just curl up in bed and banish the head, or rather, the headache.

Have been listening to Archangel by Robert Harris, which is slow going at first but gets significantly better about 1/3 of the way through. It's part of my re-reading of his earlier books after An Officer and a Spy late last year. I'll also finish up Last Friends sometime later today. What does it say about me, however, that after reading The King's Hounds, I have a yearning to escape via a book to late 10th century England? I do have one book that would fit the bill, The Forever Queen by Helen Hollick, but it's a chunkster, and I'm not in the mood for one of those right now.

Sorry about the migraine making a return Suz. Renovations are what started my now 3-month long bout, when the landlords decided to dig a basement. The constant pounding and low frequency sounds of the trucks and machinery were real torture, and then suddenly on weekends I was more or less pain-free, so it was clear that was the major cause. They contractor's taken a two-month break since, but my head didn't get the message apparently. Cortisone not working. At. All. So I'm getting discouraged again. Waking up at night from the pain. Left a message with my neurologist this morning and we'll see what his next move is.

An Officer and a Spy made me want to read more Robert Harris too. I followed it up with Fatherland, which didn't work all that well for me. I think I got confused with the fact that it presented an alternate history with the Nazis having won the war, but at the same time dwelled on the war itself instead of carrying through what a world ruled by the Third Reich might be like, which was sort of what I was expecting. I see Michael Kitchen narrated Archangel. I quite like him. Will look out for further comments from you on this one.

I don't imagine the dust and whatnot being disturbed by all the pounding would help either of you very much either, never mind the noise. So sorry for both of you.

This is very minor, compared to what happened next door when I was still in Brooklyn in 2010/2011, when we endured a year's worth of major renovations next door. Most of them were done on the bottom two floors of the adjacent brownstone, which happened to be the same floors that I occupied. The worst was when some more minor conversion work was done on the brownstone on the OTHER side at the same time -- about 5 or 6 weeks.

I'm fairly sure there is a weather migraine. The noise really isn't that bad, it's just that it started early. Clearly, nothing of the kind that you're enduring. Gah. Although it does remind me that I must redouble my quest for a neurologist. The Rhode Island folks have waaay too long wait lists, so it's on to the next name on my list from my now-retired guy. I've got a long list of things that I MUST do in the next 2/3 months -- neurologist, renew Canadian passport, get driver's license. All requiring paperwork and effort.

Thanks for the sympathy Tui.

Ilana, massive dose of empathy. Do you tend to hear from your neurologist promptly? Would an ER dose of what I call "the cocktail" work? (I can never remember all the names, but there are three separate components -- one of them is Reglan.)

I really do think that trend-wise, the headaches are starting to get a bit better. This is only the third or fourth migraine I've had so far this month -- New Year's Day was a bad one, and then last Monday/Tuesday (I'm not sure whether to label the previous Thursday & Saturday as part of that same migraine cycle.) On the margin, they also seem to be more easily contained -- had I been able to stay in bed for a while last Monday instead of getting up at dawn to get on a Megabus, I'm fairly sure I would have been able to fend it off. And by evening, it was down to a 3 or 4, from a 7 or 8 earlier on in the day, which rarely ever happens. This is very much "on the margin", but compared to summer/early fall, it has been better. Even today is a 6 or 7, not an 8 or 9. (on the 1 to 10 pain scale.)

>116 Chatterbox: Reassurance is not what I got from that article, sorry Suz ;)
It confirmed my worst ideas about what goes on in those places, and also re-affirms my decision to not go and see The Wolf of Wall Street.

"Let’s create a fund, where everyone agrees to put, say, 25 percent of their annual bonuses into it, and we’ll use that to help some of the people who actually need the money that we’ve been so rabidly chasing."

The guy has just spent the whole article talking about being addicted - in the exact same way someone becomes addicted to alcohol and drugs - to money. He would never have foregone that extra bit of power that came with receiving the whole bonus when he was trading. And I can't see any of his ex-peers doing it either.
It is a lovely idea though, and I love that he 'got out'. (The Tobin Tax was also a lovely idea, but the folks with the cash want to keep it that way, and these ideas don't fly.)

Colour me cynical, but that article left me feeling disillusioned and angry. These feelings are not unusual for me, so don't be concerned :) In fact, it has given me an idea.....maybe my upcoming course of study could include a paper on Local Corporate Responsibility?

Well, the idea that someone can wake up and smell the coffee does encourage me...

And I think your idea re corporate responsibility -- juggling responsibilities to investors and to employees -- stakeholders -- is a fab project. How do they do it and what models are they following or creating? What works and what doesn't?

Just here to say hello as I try and get caught up on threads just a bit. *smooch* and (((hug))) for you, Suz!

Thanks for the smooch/hug, Laura -- always appreciated! Especially this winter, which seems to be becoming a bit of a bear. (Alliteration unintentional)

Amusing -- Tigger and Molly are arguing about who gets to sleep atop the most conveniently located hot air vent from the furnace. It's ideally cat-shaped, and Molly won!

22. Archangel by Robert Harris was my latest audiobook, and part of revisiting early books by this author, after listening to the audio versions of his Cicero novels last year (excellent!) and reading the also excellent An Officer and a Spy. This didn't quite measure up to those and was rather slow to get going, despite historian Fluke Kelso's discovery of a gruesomely murdered man early on. The final half, however, is jammed full of suspense, and the ending is one of those cliffhangers that is a bit annoying, until you realize that it leaves you, the reader, free to create your own afterward, which I found kind of amusing/entertaining. The premise is far-out, but not too far-out. Kelso, a gone-to-seed historian, is attending a symposium on the 'opening' of Soviet era archives (this was written in the late 1990s) and he's approached by an elderly man who has secrets to tell him about Stalin's final hours. That sets Kelso off on a quest for what may be Stalin's lost notebook, but turns into a search that may be much broader and have all kinds of ramifications. One reason this was as interesting to me as it was is, I think, the question that engrossed both Harris as an author and his character Kelso: what accounts for Stalin's popularity, when he was so oppressive and murderous? Hitler's behavior may have been sociopathic but he didn't go around bumping off his closest allies and family members the way Stalin did. (All this is a reminder that I need to read Bloodlands.) 4.1 stars. Read by Michael Kitchen, which was reasonably good. I'm not all that fond of Kitchen's occasional habit of pronouncing. and. emphasizing. every. word., which. is. somehow. more. noticeable. when. you. listen. than. when. you. watch. him. onscreen.

23. Last Friends by Jane Gardam is the third volume of the Old Filth trilogy, at once the most ambitious and, at least IMO, the least successful of the three books. When it works, it is because Gardam is focusing on the last friends of the title -- the only two survivors of the "out East" crowd, Dulcie (widow of Pastry Willy) and Fred Fiscal-Smith, who forced himself upon Filth as his best man, and, it becomes clear, viewed that as the best day of his (Fiscal-Smith's) life. But neither of these are as interesting as characters as Filth and Veneering, and the segments on Veneering (the book kind of jumps back and forth) were quirky enough to be interesting but sometimes stretched my credulity. It's as if Gardam was exaggerating her characters for effect to a degree that didn't appeal to me. Oh well, c'est la vie. 3.8 stars. Intriguing, but for me, not compelling enough to want to own a copy. (This was from the library.)

Now, back to Quiet by Susan Cain and some (hopefully) mindless novels.

Nice reviews, Suzanne. I've had Old Filth on my wishlist for a while now. I think I need to actually look for it at the library next time I'm there.

Oooh, I loved Quiet, I found it really useful reading and because of it can now forgive my lovely other for doing things like not coming out to parties with me.
I would recommend any bosses of people read it, as it is such a good tool for figuring out people, in general.

I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking as an ER book when it was just out. As a dedicated introvert, I didn't find anything in the book that was particularly new or that surprised me. I remember thinking that this is a good book for extroverts who may not have thought very deeply about the subject--I mean, why would they, right? "Everyone" is like them--sure.

Additionally, Cain pretty much lost me with the insertion of her politics in this book, which seemed pointless, as in her example of "sensitive" introvert Al Gore {{rolls eyes}}.

The question I asked after finishing this book: Who is the audience for this book? Again, I think this is a good book for extroverts who want to attempt to go beyond the "shy" stereotype that is so often pinned on introverts. No, we are no more likely to be shy than anyone else. But in an attempt to "understand" us, that's the label that many extroverts pin on us.

I would say that if you are (or think you are) an introvert, but you haven't read anything on the subject, then this probably isn't the place to start.

Suz, I've taken note of the Cicero books and they will eventually get traded for Audible credits. I also really love Bill Wallis as a narrator, so it's a can't lose proposition. Not sure I'm eager to jump onto Archangel, though as you say, the premise seems interesting enough. I've just finished my mindless bit of listening, which is David Sedaris reading Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls which had me laughing and chuckling quite a bit more than I would have expected (comedy and humour that most people find funny doesn't always work with me). Anyway, deciding which book to listen to, I first think of those I've listed on TIOLI challenges of course, but having seen repeated mentions between you and Heather about the Cazalet Chronicles, I'm very tempted to jump into The Light Years (will have to see if it fits into a challenge). I was considering Quiet for this month; I got it as download from the library, but after seeing labwriter's comment above, am thinking I probably won't bother at all with it, unless I see a writeup from you to convince me there's something to be gained by reading it for anyone but extroverts. I've been a convert since birth.

I think I'm in Becky's camp, more or less. I suppose if you're an introvert, it offers moral support for being one (if you happen to feel isolated or insecure) as well as a roundup of the behavioral psychology focused on the topic. The bit about Gore that I found interesting and relevant (and really, it could have applied to any anomaly from any party with any cause) is that of an introvert trying to make himself and a cause heard in a world of roaring extroverts. It reminded me of how much of a misfit Gore is in the rough and tumble world of politics, where being an introvert places you at a BIG disadvantage. What I hadn't realized was that Gore's interest in the global warming topic dated all the way back to his college years.

So, I would see the audience as being as much introverts seeking reassurance as extroverts seeking knowledge. Perhaps even more the former since, all things being equal, the extroverts think of us introverts here should be like them, rather than them needing to understand us.

I think my reaction to this book is tempered also by my reading of Party of One by Anneli Rufus, which addressed many similar issues from the POV of loners, who are a subset of introverts.

What I'm still struggling to understand is how I can be assertive and even garrulous among those that I know, or online, and yet feel hideously uncomfortable in large groups demanding small talk. I think Cain's view of stuff as a continuum is a bit of a cop-out.

So overall, I'm enjoying the book and finding it an interesting and straightforward read. In contrast to Becky, I'd say it might well be a good place to start, since other than the more personal Anneli Rufus book, I really hadn't read anything on the Myers Brigg tests and the various types, and I have no idea, even, of what mine might be.

ETA: Snowing heavily again here; it started early afternoon and the pace has picked up. Utility company warning me (again!) about the possibility of outages. At least this time I feel more prepared! About 5 inches out there to shovel, if I felt so inclined. Which I don't.

Hm. I've long ago stopped feeling inadequate about it and now embrace it as a way of life. Being an extrovert online is easy. Most of it happens in your own head and the visual cues are practically nil. If you're comfortable with written communication to begin with, it's an introvert's heaven. I know my online activity doesn't at all reflect my social life in RL, unless I happen to be in a manic mood, which my meds have taken care of relegating to the past.

#132 labwriter
Oh I disagree. Although I confess to reading Laurie Helgoe's Introvert Power first, I found Quiet helpful and reassuring.

You see, I didn't know I was an introvert until a couple of years ago. I always thought there was something wrong with me that needed to be "fixed" so I could fit in. I even had friends invite me to events with the express purpose of "fixing me." Once I learned I was an introvert and started reading about it, I felt so much better about myself. I didn't need to be fixed, I'm just fine the way I am.

LOL, Stephanie, I hear you! That said, I'm still completely convinced I'm an introvert -- I'm an extroverted loner, perhaps?? -- but I do know that I loathe being amongst large crowds of extroverts. But I gave up thinking I was fixable before I hit 30. Which, of course, has not stopped people from wanting to "fix" me!

Ilana, The Light Years would fit perfectly into Challenge 20, in fact this was inspired by EJH.

Whoops, there's a leak in my ceiling... Have e-mailed the landlord. Just a small one, but it seems to be part of a hairline crack cutting across a corner of the bedroom ceiling. Wonder if it was caused by the work being done upstairs? Have e-mailed the landlord... Fingers & toes crossed!

>133 Smiler69:/134 I thought of myself as an introvert until I read Quiet- now I can see that I have some aspects of an extroverted personality in me (which explains why when I used to be in meetings where no-one would take the floor first, I would. I suppose).
I believe she labelled Barbra Streisand as an extroverted introvert.....but I cant lay claim to being anything like her ;)

how I can be assertive and even garrulous among those that I know, or online, and yet feel hideously uncomfortable in large groups demanding small talk
Interesting. Is it the small talk- or the fact that there are a lot of people listening?

Streisand got the label because of her stage fright, it seems.

Hmm, I'm not sure. I loathe small talk. And I hate having to have essentially the same banal conversation with a dozen people I don't know. It's the ultimate form of tedium.

Suzanne those are classic signs of introversion. I would rather have my belly button pierced multiple times simultaneously than do small talk. Introverts really like conversations that delve below the surface. Which, I suppose, explains why I've been called stuck up for being more inclined to read a book than engage in boring conversations with people I don't know.

While at a movie theatre waiting for some friends, I took out my book. A young woman made a beeline for me and would not stop talking to me even though I clearly wasn't paying attention and was burying my nose deeper and deeper into my book.

Just stopping by to catch up and say Good Morning. Woke up with what is a very minor headache compared to what you and Ilana suffer, and it made me think of the two of you and hope that you both find some relief soon!

I too liked Quiet, Suz, precisely as affirmation. It might work as a guidebook for some extroverts but I've met a goodly number for whom a good whack over the head with the physical book would be just as effective. My work required the simulation of extrovert behaviour in certain situations but fortunately, as it was at a university, what passed for small talk was pretty comfortable stuff. I don't know how I would have fared in the world of business (which liked to refer to itself as the "real world"). They did the Meyer-Briggs tests on us as one of their periodic attempts at creating workplace harmony through increased understanding of each other. Several extroverts expressed astonishment that I wasn't among their ranks but sat huddled over in the middle of an introvert quadrant. "But you're funny!", one of them said. *eye roll*

The thing about the hinternets is that you can step back from them whenever you feel like it. You don't have to engage in conversations. But when you are interested, the words can flow right from the brain through the fingertips and they're out there. It's the perfect medium for an introvert. And LT is the perfect site in a perfect medium, which is why so many of us are happy here. We're thinking pretty much all the time in our busy interior worlds so having a forum where ideas flow, and arc and spark, well!

Another introvert checking in. I am very uncomfortable in new situations. I always look for a corner to hide out in at parties and I am always just miserable when forced to go to one. I got a little better with age, but I can remember a company Halloween party about ten years ago where I brought a book, found a semi-quiet table and settled down to read. My friends were very peeved with me.

100: Re: having a character in the times of King Canute say "Yeah".

I guess I am wary of books of that period that get the characters buried in nine yards of "Hey Nonny Nonny" and "Thou Varlet".

Wolf Hall was the one where Thomas Cromwell and others talked a very modern conversational English - was shocking at first, then it worked.

Over at the Pride And Prejudice thread, I've just been sticking up for Darcy on the back of this:

"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy, "of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done."

Like many of us, he's an introvert in an extrovert's world. :)

Agree totally with Tui about the internet. I always tear my hair out over the "desocialisation" argument - which is usually not an argument so much as a statement. I am much more socialised than I was pre-internet, inasmuch as I have the regular opportunity to talk to people I like about subjects I'm interested in. I have made numerous attempts to get people to explain to me why a face-to-face conversation about something I'm not interested in is "better for me" than an online conversation about something I am interested in, but the answers rarely boil down to anything more than, "It just is."

And, oh yes - "You're reading a book, so it's a perfect time to start a conversation with you!" !!!!????

#147 Liz
Everything you wrote == "YES!"

I hadn't thought about the socialization issues of the internet in terms of being an introvert, but I do find that I am allowed to be more thoughtful when using email, social media, etc. over face to face encounters. I don't think well on my feet, but give me some time to consider and I will know how to respond. It took a very long time before I figured this out and gave myself permission to say, "I need to think about this first."

Couldn't agree more with both Liz and Stephanie!

Yes, I concur with the views expressed above as well.

Glad to see this has sparked such an active discussion!

I'm kinda caught up in the near-collapse of my bedroom ceiling (temp in there is no only 45 F, as I had to crank windows to air out the stink of wet plaster) that followed a radiator leak upstairs overnight. Got almost no sleep and (surprise!) my head dislikes this fact. Hoping that changes tomorrow -- I have way too much to do and wouldn't mind having some time to read as well...

Shall try to comment informatively on "Quiet" tomorrow, though.

147: explain to me why a face-to-face conversation about something I'm not interested in is "better for me" than an online conversation about something I am interested in
Oh my, yes. Trouble is, RL groups formed around things I'm interested in tend to meet once a month for two hours, and the schedule is often inconvenient. I'm fine chitchatting with the neighbors in passing, but I wouldn't make an effort to go to a formal social event for the same conversation.

Urgh, sorry about the editor.

Can sympathise with your ceiling horrors, Suz: I recently had a branch fall and break roof tiles, which led to MAJOR flooding (water running inside the upstairs walls and emerging through the kitchen ceiling). This was then topped by a falling tree crushing the front corner of my roof, which I'm having enormous trouble progressing past "we put a tarp up".

I agree with Stephanie about online conversation allowing for a more considered response; perhaps we're just strange for wanting to give a considered response?? Katherine, if you've got the option of RL groups formed around the things you're interested in, you are way ahead of me! That's the other joy of the internet: no matter how obscure your interests, you can always find someone to talk to about them.

Now Liz, I find it hard to believe Australia isn't just crawling with groups of people who gather to discuss the origins of the detective novel, or who are reading the 20th century in chronological order. You must not be looking hard enough.

...or analyse the polito-sexual literature of the Glorious Revolution.

I know, I know - what's wrong with them, hey!?

Suzanne - argh! I'm sorry to hear about your ceiling. I hope things get fixed toot suite.

Liz - wait wait wait ... polito-sexual literature of the Glorious Revolution? Trying not to think about adding that topic to my already too long list of topics I'm interested in.

Well, you don't have to read it yourself, Stephanie: you could just {*cough*} pop over to my blog...

a BLOG??? There's a blog? I will be right over directly Liz.

Whoo-hoo! Another sucker valued visitor!!

Sorry to hear about the ceiling, Suz, but wanted to chime in with all my fellow introverts in preferring the "cool" medium of print to "hot" media!

LOL, the ceiling is an introvert's version of drama, perhaps! The pipes have been clanging like castanets all evening, too, but at least there's no more dripping/water seepage. I just really do NOT want to be forced to relocate my bedroom. The other bedroom is still chock-a-block with boxes and stacks of books, completely unorganized. Clearly, this is a call to snap to it, however.

Lyz, surely there MUST be a secret coven of folks interested in early 20th century popular literature and the socio-political undercurrents of the Glorious Revolution? I've spent part of my evening pondering the civil war (the 17th century version between King and Parliament) myself... and the geopolitics of early/mid 15th century England, Burgundy and France. Hmm, no wonder I'm a loner...

Pipes are banging in the bedroom -- like a non-stop thumping -- and I can't sleep. So here is the latest book:

24. A Play of Lords by Margaret Frazer. The author, who died last year, was/is a great fave among historical fiction buffs, and I suppose I can see why. Her historical knowledge is impeccable, and she paints an evocative portrait of places, characters and an era (in this case, London in 1435.) But the plot is rather washed-out, in comparison. This is ostensibly a mystery, but it's more the tale of a group of traveling players who end up being co-opted into power politics and asked to create a play by the king's great-uncle to skewer the French and the Burgundians. There's a lot of reference to the politics of the day and relatively little in the way of other suspense. I've also tried the Dame Frevisse mysteries, and with so much else out there waiting to be read, these won't be a priority for me. Not bad, but just not compelling. 3.3 stars.

>>#161

...and this is why we yet again turn to the internet: we put it out there, and kindred spirits find us.

"If You Write It, They Will Come."

In many ways I agree with the advantages of the internet, but as a person who has to deal with a (very) far-flung team at work, I really miss the clues and non-verbal communication and inspiring synergy of a team present in the same space. Sorry, folks - it's not the same. My boss was just talking about going down to one of our other locations, and realizing how many times the people there didn't tell him he was wrong, when one look at a face while there told him all he needed to know.

#164 ffortsa,
I don't disagree with you on the importance of physical clues of non-verbal communication. It isn't an either/or proposition.

When I was working in an office, I did pick up on the cues but if asked to come up with something on the spot, I would rather think about it first and report back. Even if it's only a few minutes. Often I would say to my manager, "Let me think about that," go into my office and then a couple of minutes later be back in hers.

Large groups of people wear me out. I prefer small, one to one conversations with room to think and breathe.

I entirely agree. One of the worst problems about all the 'online' (aka phone) meetings I have is that too many people are invited, making a bad situation worse. I prefer small teams, small meetings, smallish conference rooms - and maybe a little food. Never hurts.

Book du jour -- after all the debate above -- is....

25. Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain was a book that I quite liked, but not massively, and don't feel that I would have missed out on something tremendous had I never read. The biggest problem I had, I think, was that little really surprised me or forced me to rethink my assumptions. The world needs extroverts and introverts and needs them to work together; we're all somewhere along this continuum; here's the science and here are the ways real people have found to negotiate ways to cope as introverts in an extrovert's world. It's hardly surprising that it is an extrovert's world and that that is considered the norm, etc. Did it make me feel better about being more of an introvert? Not really. In part, because the definitions were a little too fluid and shifting for my taste. What does it mean when my answers to some of Cain's back to back tests suggest that I'm both an introvert AND an extrovert; that I'm simultaneously comfortable AND uncomfortable with pretending to be more extroverted than I am? The part that annoyed me was the chapter on cultural tendencies, in which Cain tilted so far in the direction of accommodating the introverts that it actually bothered me significantly. There is a lot of emphasis on the upside of the Asian tradition of consensus and not wanting to challenge the group, but rather little given to the downside. If children are told from an early age that "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down", they become more accepting of totalitarian institutions. They can close their eyes to injustices, just as students at Japanese universities object to personally but never blew the whistle on "rape clubs" among their peers. The amount of innovation can be dampened. It's probably fair to say that students at American colleges talk in order to hear their own voices and demand respect for poorly-formed opinions, but what is one to make of the fact that a student in a Japanese graduate school can be told that his or her voice should NEVER be heard? I had some similar questions about the power of "passivity" in connection with Gandhi. That happened to work well for him in the context of the challenges he faced, but as I read recently, Hitler wouldn't have given a damn for peaceful passive resistance on the part of Jews in the Third Reich. I suppose that what I'm saying here is that on the margins, too little of what's in here felt surprising or generated any epiphanies (more a nod, and an "okay, I see that, it makes sense) and there were moments when Cain's emphasis on the merits of introversion (which I would agree generally get short shrift) were too little thought through or considered. It was certainly an interesting enough read, and often an engaging one, but it never felt like a "must read" book to me. A lot of folks here clearly found a lot in this book to love as well as respect, so I'm likely to be in the minority, but that's fine. It was a Kindle sale book; I'm not sorry I read it but I don't regret not making time for it earlier.

And now on to the next book!

I was VERY lucky in today's Amazon Vine list, after having a dreadful one last week. I snapped up the last copy of Sharon Penman's new novel about Richard I of England, and two mysteries, the new books by Elly Griffiths and Greg Iles. There were four or five others that I would have been delighted to choose, too...

Oh, here's the latest column. For heaven's sake, please click on it, share it, force people you know to read it so it gets lots of views. I had another editorial tussle today; apparently my stories risk becoming boring (not getting enough traffic)...

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jan/23/gold-investing-wall-street-banks-va...

Hi Suz! I clicked the link and read your article. Very interesting. I also appreciated the considered discussion here about minimum wage and the ethics of corporations. I am constantly amazed at the amount of insight I gain on a wide spectrum of topics here on LT.

I have been on the fence for awhile about Quiet and based on your review and the discussion here, I guess I am still on the fence! I will probably pick it up if I come across a fairly inexpensive copy but I doubt that I will seek it out.

>167 Chatterbox:: very fair assessment, Suz. I thought back when I read it that the book would probably have more meaning to someone who didn't really know that they were introverted. There would likely be some "hey, that's me!" moments in it for such a one. I think that if you have a good understanding of being an introvert and have accommodated yourself to that fact, a book like this doesn't shed any light, it just affirms it. I have forgotten or didn't pick up on the cultural tendencies bit.

Looks like your article stirred up quite a discussion among the goldbugs, Suz.

Gotta love it when the gold bugs come out to play! I think I'll just let them comment away. Nothing there seems to demand my input, and it's entertaining. Thanks to anyone who is clicking!

Tui, I agree the ideal reader for this is someone on either side of the divide who has never read anything else and who ends up having some kind of epiphany. Even with insight, I would still have welcomed something fresh, or surprising or provocative, but nope. Had that been there, my view would have been more upbeat.

I've been reading Alena by Rachel Pastan this evening, and liking it a lot more than the reviews might have suggested. It's another Vine ARC, one of those from my December spree, and I think the problem that other readers have had is that while it's a very explicit homage to Rebecca, they're limiting their view of its merits to seeing it as a shadow version of that iconic novel rather than as a book for which that parallel functions primarily as a "spine" or narrative device. The reactions say as much about how we read novels as it does about the merits of the book itself.

Anyway, I'll probably finish it later tonight or tomorrow (after writing the NEXT Guardian column, which will be all about bonds... and which is due by 10 a.m.). While I'm still thrilled to have found new books by favorite authors in today's Vine newsletter, Alena and An Unnecessary Woman are reminders that it's great to explore new-to-me writers even if, in too many other cases, the result is a giant "meh".

It was a rich list. Other books there that I'll want to read at some point:

The Other Story by Tatiana de Rosnay (I've been dithering about reading the French version)
Wake: A Novel by Anna Hope (another WW1 related novel)
The Idea of Him by Holly Peterson (classic mindless chick lit)
The Steady Running of the Hour by Justin Go (another new to me author; hoping to get it from NetGalley)
All our Names by Dinaw Mengestu
Love and Treasure by Ayelet Waldman
the Counterfeit Agent by Alex Berenson (brain candy of the suspense/thriller variety)
Fallout: A Novel by Sadie Jones

That doesn't include novels that I'm ambivalent about, or about half a dozen I already have from NetGalley. So many books, so little time...

164: Sorry, folks - it's not the same.
Oh, I agree. I actually _like_ talking shop; the issue is not face-to-face vs internet, but socializing for the sake of socializing vs socializing in a context of interest. I miss an office environment and the casual conversations; there’s so much that doesn’t seem important enough, or isn’t thought through enough, or seems too risky to convey by email (too formal and permanent) or phone (can't see reactions), but mentioning in person can get an immediate “oh, I’ve been wondering the same thing”, or “yes, I’m worried about that too” and lead somewhere useful.

167: Thanks for the balanced review. I might read it sometime, but I’m in no hurry.

168: Well, it’s generating some controversy. Is that good?

Clicked, read, tried not to go cross-eyed (I'm a complete imbecile when it comes to finances, I'm afraid), and shared on Ye Olde Facebooke.

Boring?! Not in the slightest. That was the most engaging article I've ever read in the subject area - you've a real gift for making your topic accessible without dumbing it down.

Remember "Adam Smith" writing on "The Gnomes of Zurich" many moons ago.

The Gold Bugs wouldn't be Gold Bugs without someone to encourage their vile habits.

Katherine, controversy when it's between readers is always good. When it involves people sniping at me, I don't enjoy it all that much (that introvert stuff again...) but at least it gets eyeballs on the story!

Amber, i do hope the crossed eyes reverse themselves. I'm crap when it comes to my own finances, and failed high school math class. So if I can figure this stuff out... *grin*

Bond column will be out on Sunday.

Meanwhile...

26. Alena by Rachel Pastan was a pleasant surprise after reading some of the reviews. Yes, it's VERY clearly an homage to Rebecca (it even opens with the words, "Last night I dreamed of Nauquasset again.") But viewing it just as a contemporary rewrite of du Maurier's novel is seeing this through a very narrow prism. Pastan has done an excellent job of reimagining the backdrop, making the young, nameless narrator a contemporary art curator who is plucked from obscurity and given the opportunity to reopen a once-iconic boutique museum on Cape Cod, closed since the presumed death of its founder, Alena. Pastan does something clever with her linkages: a quotation at the beginning cites Rebecca's importance to Manderley as that of a curator, picking the best objects and showcasing them. Alena, too, had a reputation as a brilliant curator, although as the uneasy and out of her depth narrator discovers, one who had a curious and deepening fascination with bleeding edge "body art". The love story between Maxim and the new Mrs de Winter is AWOL, since Bernard Augustin, the curator and longstanding friend of Alena's who hires our narrator, is gay; instead, their bond is their shared love of and appreciation for art -- Pastan does the best job I've seen yet of conveying just how someone can "see" into the spirit of contemporary art works. She satirizes the self important and self-referential members of the art establishment and conveys powerfully what the art of creation and appreciation might be and feel like. So, Rebecca is the skeletal structure; the backbone on which Pastan has built up a different kind of tale, reminding us that some emotions and kinds of relationships persist, even if they take shape in different ways. History may not repeat but it can echo or rhyme, and that's how to view the link to Rebecca. I've not been a big fan of most of these retellings/follow-on yarns of favorite novels, but this worked for me in a completely different way. It's just as disturbing and creepy as the original, but in a more contemporary setting and revolving around related but not identical themes. The more you can nod and smile at the similarities and then place them firmly in the background, the more you might find here to like. I still think it's not going to be for everyone -- at the end of the day, while the writing is excellent, the plot and character development is somewhat constrained and Pastan sometimes takes shortcuts that I don't like or appreciate -- but it was a fun book for me. 4.1 stars.

I've dipped into several more books, most of which look as if they'll be good. So my weekend reading is shaping up as follows:

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett (this has been a slow read for me, alas)
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (50 pages in, and it's excellent)
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee (the first pages look great)
Ways of the World by Robert Goddard
Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally

On deck are several more Amazon ARCs, including
Vienna Nocturne by Vivian Shotwell
Dark Invasion by Howard Blum
The Tulip Eaters by Antoninette van Heugten

And from the library, Norman Stone's brief history of WW1 augurs well, too.

My audiobook is Year Zero by Ian Buruma, which I really like in spite of the fact I'm finding the narrator getting on my nerves. I may end up returning this. We'll see...

And here's something y'all should read about Danny Pearl, a one-time colleague and a friend. It may end up on my essays list, but right now, after postponing reading it for so long until I could face it, I'm too sad to do that. But then, Asra, the author of the piece, has really said all that's needed.

Men we Reaped is right at the top of my wishlist. Glad to hear it's turned out well so far.

Oooh, Alena sounds good, but I need to read Rebecca first - it's been on the pile for too long...

I've never much understood gold but I enjoyed the article, not the comments so much Suzanne. Oh good more books that may end up on my teetering tower;-)

Amber, yes, you do need to have read Rebecca to follow Alena; that's a good point that I'll have to make in my Amazon review.

Suz, did you want to give us a link for the Danny Pearl piece?

Didn't I, Roni? Mea culpa....

http://www.washingtonian.com/projects/KSM/index.html

I'm up very early because I've been worried about Tigger. This hyper bouncy cat (the same one I chased around the house ten days ago) has become very lethargic and even a bit clingy. Nothing clearly wrong, no vomiting, sneezing or anything obvious, but this isn't normal. The vet (a specialist cat practice) isn't open until Monday, I just realized. Thankfully, Tigger is not clearly sick, just behaving in an unusual fashion -- less hyper, less passionately excited about stuff. I'll keep a close eye on him and make sure he's eating and staying hydrated. All he seems to want to do is curl up on the mohair blanket on my bed, for half a day at a time. I don't think he budged all night long. He's eating and drinking, but.... I have to go down to NY for a work thing (interview for a magazine profile that I can't move, and that -- unusually/uniquely -- the guy refuses to do on the phone) on Tuesday afternoon, coming back after the interview on Weds afternoon, so the risk is that I might not be able to get him to the vet until Thursday. So please keep your collective paws crossed.

I'm sending my good-health vibes to Tigger. I hope he's just feeling the winter blahs (as are we all) and not truly sick. I love his name, and so appropriate for a bouncy hyper cat. :-)

>183 Chatterbox:: do you have a storm coming in? Cats are sensitive to these things. Be well, Tigger!

Tigger has bounced back to life a bit; the son of a friend has been here this afternoon to deal with some computer stuff and is now helping me assemble an Amazon Vine cupboard/storage thingummy. Tigger clearly just needed someone to pay more attention to him, and has been "helping". He even made a break for it and got two houses down the street before I caught up with him. Phew.

What a relief! Always hate to hear about pets having radical behavior changes of that kind. I remember reading in some book about cat health (or maybe it was about all animals) that the thing to remember with them is that there is no such thing as a goldbricking cat. If they start acting unlike themselves there is often a health reason behind it. Two houses away before you caught him - my, he is a sprinter, isn't he!

I fell behind - will do my best to catch up - liked your long comment on investing, first of all.... (that's how far behind I am)

Let's see.... introversion.... overall even though the internet is not the same as connecting in person, I think the fact that I have found a group like this, of people who are really interested in books the way I am has been incredible, given where I now live especially. When I worked as a librarian in Wellfleet lo these many decades ago, is the most similar experience I've had, people in and out all day, mad for books. So this comes the closest.

The social activity that is PERFECT for me (a hopeless introvert) has been playing Irish music, going to sessions etc. - I kid you not. Even the extroverts that play tend to be the quieter variety. Anyhow, we do chat in between tunes, of course, and when you play with the same folks for a long time and see them every week, yes, they become friends, but it is so focused around a non-verbal activity, it really really works for me.

Leak in the ceiling..... Golly, I hope that gets resolved quickly.

I read your column, I always enjoy it. I can think of a few folks who might like to read it too and I will suggest it ...

and I'm very glad Tigger is bouncing around again.

Whew. I'm glad to hear that Tigger is himself with a vengeance. Did he know that gallivanting was an option? Now you really will have to watch him.
As to all the rest, I've been lurking and with nothing to contribute, haven't!

Tigger has always been an escape artist. That's how he arrived chez moi and became a resident feline. He and two siblings were dumped in a box a few houses from mine, aged 5 or 6 months (at the age where they stop being cute kittens). He escaped from the box and ambled down the street until he got to my old brownstone in Brooklyn. I suspect he peered through the window, spotted Jasper and Molly and figured he could boss them around. Then he spotted the gap where the sleeve of the elderly A/C met the wall & the window's edge, wiggled through the bars on the window & the gap and just broke in. A cat burglar, really. I came down to breakfast to find three whiskered faces staring up at me. (Cassie joined the menage about 18 months later). Tigger has never stopped being a rambler, although in Brooklyn, he tended to stay nearby. For a year or two, I'd let them into the back yard, and while Jasper would leap the fence and vanish for hours at a time to the Kit Kat Klub (leaving me v.v.v. anxious), Tigger would usually only end up in a neighbor's back yard. Once, the folks who lived to the back of me spotted him lazing in their garden and wandering in and out of their house, and called me to come & get him (the phone # was on his collar.) But he really took to jumping the fence separating him from next door, and wandering in to visit my next door neighbor's cat. Eventually, we stopped all outdoor rambling, but that never stopped him from trying. The others? Whatevah... Jasper was a bit more interested, but Molly & Cassie really couldn't care less (Cassie is definitely a house cat; couldn't care less about the scary outer world.) Tigger? I'm convinced he is utterly fearless and his curiosity would be his downfall. He'd trot up to a rabid squirrel, or a giant SUV about to pull out of its parking place, or go play in traffic. So keeping him from trying to escape every time I open the door is a skill I have acquired. One that failed me today!

Hi Suzanne! Sorry to hear about editing woes and ceiling worries. I've added a couple of books to my wish list--Men We Reaped and The Blue Place and maybe Alena, while brushing up on my financial literacy and pondering the introvert/extrovert question. I have a friend who calls herself "a shy extrovert" and I've always felt myself to be on some kind of line between the two, or with characteristics of both. When I've had to do Myers-Briggs type tests they've been rather inconclusive. I'm not sure whether I'll read Quiet or not--perhaps if it comes my way.

What a heartfelt and moving article about Daniel Pearl. It seems remarkable that the US government doesn't add the charge of his murder to the other charges. I am opposed to the death penalty but really some people don't deserve the institutional mercy that they themselves refused to someone who had caused them no ill.

found and starred you!

Oh, dear, these fur friends are such a worry.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)--spit! Thank you so much for the link to the Daniel Pearl "final story" by Asra Q. Nomani. To those, like you Suzanne, who knew Pearl (#177, 183), his story is just so sad and tragic. To those like me who didn't know Pearl, the story is maddening, sad, and horrific beyond words; however, we all need to know this story. I am completely sick of people who "hear no evil" and refuse to know what's going on in the world:"repeating to myself a prayer for protection that my mother had taught me as a child: 'In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful . . . .'”

"Reading one account after another, my mother began to feel as if she were in the head of the kidnappers and witnesses. 'Attaur Rehman, Faisal Bhatti, Fazal Karim, I see them in my dreams,' she said."--Ach, that poor woman.

This story makes me weep--as should we all.

"Wound collectors"; "the man who boasted about decapitating Danny"

Anyway, thanks for the link.

Asra's comment about "wound collectors" struck home, I confess.

Just a brief book note, since I've been headachey all day and still have a major magazine feature to write, meaning I'll have to set my alarm clock for 7 a.m.

27. Men We Reaped is a poignant memoir by Jesmyn Ward, that flows in two directions -- backward in time via the memories of each of three young black men, including her brother, who died young -- in accidents, via suicide, drugs or murder -- and forward in time, as she revisits her own youth and adolescence, growing up in the Mississippi community that was her home. It's moving and fascinating, although it's primarily a personal tale -- and perhaps rightly so. She turns statistics into individuals, and largely refrains from sweeping statements about cause and effect. It's poverty and lack of opportunity across the board, and the lingering racism that appears to be a particular feature of the American south, the more so the further south one goes. How that flows back and forth is a difficult and controversial question -- to what expect does one expect to be treated in a certain way and thus produce exactly that treatment because you're already anticipating it? Ward mentions her own issues with bullies -- both black and white -- and explicitly deals with the fact that her conviction that she deserved to be bullied made them see her as "bulliable". There's a lot of food for thought here, and it's presented in a personal and moving way, yet without melodramatic emotions. Definitely worth reading, 4.2 stars.

Migraine day three. I have to finish this mammoth, complicated philanthropy story and do a lot of reporting. And tomorrow (god help me) it's Megabus time.

More details on the following later; just didn't want to forget that I finished them.

28. The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard was an intriguing, sometimes suspenseful yarn set against the backdrop of the Versailles treaty negotiations in 1919. Sir Henry Maxted falls to his death from the roof of a Montparnasse apartment building; his younger son, James ("Max"), is far from convinced of the official version, which seems designed to brush potential scandal under the carpet. It's a sometimes rambling tale of master spies that drags on a bit too long and is far from the author's best work, but still worthwhile if you're a fan of Goddard's tales, which involve around unwrapping layers of intrigue. If you're not a fan, this is NOT the place to start. And annoyingly, the novel is "to be continued". Grrr. 3.75 stars.

29. The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer was an imaginative romp. A fictional (?) alter ego, failed novelist and househusband Adam Langer, is in the backwater of Bloomington Indiana, when an author he interviewed in the past, thriller writer Conner Joyce, comes to him with a tale of a mysterious Chicago arts patron who commissions authors to write one-off personal manuscripts for his own collection. Joyce is the patron's latest "acquisition", but is there a dark tale behind this apparently benign patronage? Ultimately, the story isn't just a second-hand tale of whether Joyce can trust Dex, his patron, but whether "Langer" can trust Joyce's version of the tale. It's a fun, creative yarn with a dark undertone, and a satirical look at today's publishing world. I enjoyed it tremendously, although I suppose there's an argument that it's lightweight. So what? It's different without being pretentious. 4.2 stars.

Oh, dang. I'm so sorry that you're still suffering from the migraine! Sending pain-free thoughts your way.

Hey Suzanne! trying to catch up a bit on this frigid morning. As usual, your Money piece is so timely. I've seen a few celebs hawk gold on tv and they make a very convincing argument. I can see why a lot of folks would make their portfolio gold heavy. Your column may open some eyes to the other side.

The Daniel Pearl article was a tough read. Horrifying when it happened but even worse to see how long this and other events continue to drag on and on.

Migraine be gone karma on the way and get perky wishes to Tigger.

Thanks. Just a very bad night, up and down to change ice packs. For the last week, I've had headaches every other day, but Friday's returned on Saturday afternoon and hasn't left since. If I didn't have quite so much on my plate, I would be less anxious.

Tigger is bouncing once more; I am going to put off the vet until next week when things are calmer around here.

Here's the next column -- taking on bonds this time.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/jan/26/how-did-bonds-become-...

Still fairly annoyed about the editorial confrontation. Editor is still sending me forwarded clips of media pieces about how badly emerging markets are doing. Which just proves that she completely failed to understand the point of the story, which is that investors should maintain an allocation to non-US stocks (not just emerging markets, which make up only 25% of non-US stocks). I wasn't saying that this is a bet that people should take for the next year or two, just that by failing to maintain an allocation, the odds are greater that people will miss out on the early stages of a recovery. Look at US stocks: up 150% or so in the last five years. But individual investors, who are so delighted by their 30% return in 2012, didn't get back in until the last 18 months or so, missing out on more than 2/3 of that rebound. If you wait until a trend is in place, that's what happens. Even if she did understand what I had tried to do -- and if she doesn't, that's certainly my fault for failing to explain it clearly enough -- this barrage of e-mails is either a "nyah nyah nyah, you're wrong" or else an implicit demand that I recognize that she is correct. In either case, it's inappropriate.

Re KSM. Paul, I'm opposed to the death penalty, even for creatures like this. For one, it creates martyrs. For another, a more appropriate punishment is for a KSM to be ignored while Danny's memory is celebrated. If killing KSM would bring Danny back to life, that would be another kettle of fish, of course. But I can't see the Danny who I knew wanting this. He didn't believe in "the other" being an enemy, and I suspect however afraid he was in those final days, he would have made every effort to engage his captors as human beings.

ETA: I've made my notes on the books above.

OK, back to work. I'm procrastinating.

The Daniel Pearl article was a tough read, as Lynda said. But I agree with you completely about the death penalty, Suz. It would make him a martyr to the sick others of his ilk, however much part of me would like to tow him behind a boat in shark infested waters. I hope your head clears soon; there are many fronts and air pressure things going through right now, from the southern US where Darryl is to my part of Canada. Fierce winds here today.

I'm so sorry the migraine is hanging on, Suzanne. And that your editor is engaging in such weird passive-aggressive type behavior still. But I'm glad to see your positive review of The Salinger Contract, as I picked that one up in an ebook sale recently.

I hope your Monday improves.

Suz, sorry to hear about the roof and Tigger, but glad he's feeling better. Quiet and Alena sound interesting, will be adding those to the giant tbr. I definitely understand changes in cat behavior related to sickness. Both my diabetic cats had severely lethargic behavior before they were diagnosed. I hope Tigger remains in good health.
Isn't it funny that Japanese and American culture seem to be on polar opposites of the introvert/extrovert scale? I think we should meet in the middle.

So sorry to hear about the continuing migraine, Suzanne.

>199 Chatterbox:. I don't believe in the death penalty, and I absolutely wish we could abolish it in every state. I think the place for someone like KSM is "the Alcatraz of the Rockies," a supermax prison that, interestingly, is just down the road from where I was visiting in Colorado last week (although there is no indication that the facility exists, if you don't know where to look for it). Yet what a soulless place for anyone to work. There are simply no good answers for such evil in the world.

Trying to catch up. Hoping Tigger's adventuresome tendencies don't get him too carried away. Hoping Tuesday is a better day.

Thanks for the links to your articles, Suz.

Suz, I am sorry to hear you are suffering from a prolonged migraine episode. I had a migraine hit me yesterday and while it has subsided somewhat today, it is still lingering up there. I think the weird weather patterns are contributing for sure. I know what its like to have to work to deadlines regardless of the migraine...it sucks. Like I said yesterday, I cannot brain, I have the dumb. That's how I feel when trying to work with a migraine.

Lots of luck to you and best wishes for a migraine free day.

Thanks, Heidi... I actually borrowed your mantra, "cannot brain, I have the dumb", for my FB status...

Safely in NY. No checks in mailbox, just 1099 forms. Piffle.

Migraines are no fun. Hope you feel better today.

Just climbed out from under my rock and getting caught up. (Long story, read my thread if enquiring minds need to know. I see I've missed quite a lot.

Some thoughts:

Jane Gardam has been on my list for AGES! Another push to move her up the face of Mount TBR.

So ... ahem ... where are those Inspector Morse books ending up? ...

Minimum wage. Big issue, but I generally come down on the side of "If someone is doing what we expect and respect, i.e., putting in a solid 40 hours per week of honest labor, week in and week out, they should be able to house, feed and heat their family without resorting to government assistance." Between handling Workers' Compensation cases, and some volunteering at a homeless shelter, I've got some up close expereince with people who are one disabling injury or blown head gasket from being on the streets. Which leads to ...

Income inequity. This indeed bears a LOT of watching. Given the hoopla over those unfortunate remarks recently defending the 1%ers, if there is anything which will motivate the pitchfork and torch brigades, I suspect this might be it.

Migraines and celing leaks -- ouchie. Hope your week is looking up.

BTW, the bond article? Didn't think it possible, but my husband likes you even more!

Hang in there!

Phew, brain functioning better; head has less pain. En route home to PVD on a delayed Amtrak train. Had I received a check, I'd be feeling better still!

The trip to NYC was to interview Ian Schrager for a magazine profile. Yup, the Studio 54 dude. Who is now in his 60s, says after doing "pretty much everything you can imagine", now says his most fun times are spent with his 3 year old son. I'd feel better about the interview had I not been required to do it in person, thus incurring train fares that the magazine won't pay. grump grump grump.

More book chatter later.

have to go write about emerging markets, philanthropy, and the new MyRA thingummyjig. Not in the same article, clearly.

From Schrager's website about his hotel Public: "The brand will only offer services that matter, those that guests really want and need rather than an array of superfluous services they do not use. "

Does that mean no coffeemakers, no shampoo and soap, no sewing kits, no $75 toblerone in the mini fridge?

Of course I am not in the demographic Schrager is aiming for but what does this all mean? And how will it work?

Stephanie, I suspect no coffeemakers! But shampoo and soap are more products (and stuff people will use...) than services. I think his focus is on the hotel experience -- restaurants, events, etc. So, do people really use the small hotel stores that sell overpriced souvenirs?

(but I will pass on the query for clarification!)

Oh thanks Suzanne. I was more making fun of the market-ese than anything else.

I once temped for the marketing guy at a law firm and asked what a law firm's marketing department did. I was standing right there next to him when I asked. He could have given me a "straight" answer but what I got was something incredibly market-ese which told me nothing.

Oh I know what you mean. That drives me crazy. I always try to prod at them to see if there's a real answer underneath the BS. Usually there isn't. For this, the questions were more general, and I did end up with some interesting stuff. Though I'm still annoyed at being required to spend 8 hours on trains going to and fro for a 40 minute interview. Really....

Good news on the free book front. I did get a copy of A Burnable Book from the February ER batch, which is fab. And via NetGalley, I was approved for The Steady Running of the Hour. Both novels with the potential to be thumping good reads.

I got a copy of A Burnable Book too Suzanne. I'm really looking forward to it:-)

A Burnable Book looked quite interesting. Looking forward to your review.

Re : Toronto book stores- the loss of the Book City store on Bloor St. is terrible-at least the other two Book City stores in the city will still be open. Two newish stores are still carrying on- and they are good-Type and Ben McNally Books.
At the same time, many of the Indigo/Chapters bookstores have less to read in books and more items for interior decoration.

Marianne, let me know if you want the Inspector Morse books. I can either ship or deliver to Boston sometime.

I'm boulversee by the simultaneous demise of Book City AND the World's Biggest Bookstore, where I used to work back in 86/87. Sniff, sniff. A former bowling alley converted into two stories of BOOKS! It used to be a great place to find obscure titles, although zero ambiance. (No carpeting anywhere to be spotted... and nothing for interior decoration beyond calendars and suchlike...)

Still, the day I will really mourn is when the bookstores in Hay on Wye have to close.

30. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett. Is it me or Pratchett? I don't know, but this latest Discworld novel took me an age to read. Perhaps it was because the wry satirical stuff is starting to feel obvious (this is the third Moist von Lipwig book -- having sorted out the post office and central bank, the Ankh Morpork dictator forces him to oversee the development of a railway after an ingenious little guy from the middle of nowhere invents Discworld's first steam engine). There are bits and pieces that are very amusing: there's a riff on E. Nesbit's The Railway Children that made me laugh out loud (Pratchett conflates a plot element in the book with a Discworld version of the young Edith Nesbit); Lord Vetinari's constant threat of being "sent to the kittens" (apparently a form of torture) was amusing, as was the idea of goblins fighting by getting inside armor and simply making themselves unpleasant. And the second half was faster paced, as the fledgling railway including the anthropomorphized (sp? not even sure this is the right word) Iron Girder engine plays a key role in averting a dwarfish coup d'etat. The final third was much better than everything that came before; while the first chunk of the book wasn't bad, it just wasn't as light, tight and focused as I've become accustomed to with Pratchett. I know he's dealing with the early stages of Alzheimer's, but I'm hesitant to attribute my "meh" reaction to that. It just may be that after 40 some books, it's a bit harder to keep generating something really distinctive. 3.7 stars.

A quick update...

31. Year Zero by Ian Buruma reminded me a great deal of a course that I took in high school about European history post 1945. Except, of course, that Buruma's book focused squarely on the year 1945 itself, and ventured far more broadly afield than Europe -- especially to Asia, Japan, China and Korea. I'm a BIG fan of Ian Buruma, whose books I consider to be fascinating and overlooked. It's ironic that this is the book that seems to have won him a broader audience, as it's the most mainstream one out there. Which is why I can't rate it any higher than 4.2 stars. He's done a great job of assembling all kind of tiny puzzle pieces in the right order, from the forced return to the Soviet Union of displaced Cossacks to the Korean bid for independence and the division into two nations; from the postwar elections that saw a landslide for Attlee over Churchill to the struggles that Jews who survived still faced not only from anti-Semites in their former homes but even on the part of some of those that rescued them. He has even managed to make a coherent whole of them all, under the broad theme implied by the title: that the world to be reconstructed in the wake of 1945 and the end of World War II would be new and radically different. (In contrast, perhaps, to the unsatisfactory settlement of 1919, after which little really changed for survivors of that particular carnage.) I suspect this is in part my own problem: over the decades, I've read way too much history focused on each of the component bits, so while I enjoyed Buruma's narrative style and appreciated the book as a whole, there was little here that surprised me or made my jaw drop in admiration or awe. I do suspect that folks who are only intermittently history buffs will find MUCH more to appreciate here; clearly, this will be a great one-stop resource for anyone wanting a thorough grasp of postwar politics, economics, social trends, etc. Recommended.

32. The Final Whistle by Stephen Cooper was a look at the First World War through the experiences of 15 men who had played, at one point in their lives, for Rosslyn Park rugby club. The big problem for me? I don't play or follow rugby, and Cooper clearly assumed that anyone who would read his book would be a fan. Thus, he saw no need to even try to explain what being "capped" meant (I did figure it out, but it's always annoying to have to stop reading to figure something out or look it up online), much less the jargon associated with the game itself. I was fascinated by the points of connection of the people Cooper focuses on, by his comments on the public school system and how the social culture of pre-1914 for the class of young men who played rugby or (in one case) who rowed for Oxford or Cambridge prepared the way for a willingness to sacrifice themselves for their nation. One young man, sailing for Gallipoli, is entranced by the idea of possibly fighting on the plains of Troy (a reflection of the emphasis on the classics), but wouldn't even make it a mile from the landing point. When the narrative doesn't get bogged down in the minute details of each person's sporting track record, but pulls out more broadly or focuses on the war experience, it's fascinating. But I had to knock about 1/2 point off for the deeply annoying jargon. If you're not an avid rugby fan, you simply won't make it through pages of this, which is a pity, as the rest is worth reading. It's a sports fan's book, which is a pity, as it's a reasonably clever alternative way to look at what has been dubbed a "lost generation" via mini profiles. Had Cooper assumed that he might reach a broader audience, he might actually have done so. 3.8 stars; recommended if you don't mind skipping the chunks aimed at insiders, or are a rugby fan. (I got very very weary of his comparisons of the dimensions and records of the 1914 players to names of today, all of whom are dropped into the book with no context -- we're simply assumed to know who he's speaking of.)

An intriguing note on the latter. For some reason, I had never heard of "The Wipers Times", a satirical trench newspaper published for more than three years by a group who stumbled across a printing press in the ruins of Ypres. Then I spotted a new DVD of a British television film focused on their tale, and watched it only a week ago. Now, reading The Final Whistle, I found lots of references to specific articles or features, including one piece about how many poets (including bad poets) were spawned during the trench wars. Apparently, there were reasons for this: men were banned from keeping diaries, and writing a novel or even a short story required more uninterrupted periods to think and plan and write. Whereas scribbling down a few lines of poetry was a much easier task for many. (Also, poetry was a reasonably respectable thing for a young man of a century ago to do with his spare time...)

OK, must get back to work...

Great reviews! I love those little moments of connection such as between your discovery of "The Wiper Times" and then finding the reference in the book. (Although, for me it might be like those occasions when you learn a new word and suddenly see it EVERYWHERE.)

Suz, I gave the book The Wipers Times as a gift to my boss, an historian whose specialty was WWI. It was a compilation of those newspaper articles. It was also a huge hit. ETA: I believe I got it through the BookDepository.

Another interesting twist to the rugby/WW1 book was the links that some of the profilees had to other places and people. For instance, the oldest man covered by the mini-profiles is Guy du Maurier, uncle to both Daphne du Maurier and the young boy, killed only a few days later, who had inspired Peter Pan. On doing some more research, I was startled to see just how many of Daphne du Maurier's books were inspired by her own family, as well as her own setting (Rebecca, The King's General and The House on the Strand clearly owe their existence to her living in Fowey.) She wrote a book about a royal mistress of the 18th century, Mary Anne, I just discovered that the woman in question was an ancestress. Similarly, a novel focused on The Glassblowers is because of the family's discovery that their ancestor was really a glassblower, not a "petit noble" escaping the French revolution, as he had pretended.

The Final Whistle sounds a good read for Mr SandDune, being interested in both rugby and history! Incidentally, I don't think the term 'capped' is peculiar to rugby: in the UK certainly it's used for quite a few sports and would probably be fairly widely understood.

I do think it's probably a difficult thing writing a sports book that will cross geographical boundaries easily, as the level of knowledge of a particular sport can be so variable. There is a certain amount of knowledge that even a non-sports fan imbibes from living in a country where a particular sport is popular that someone from a different country would not have. For instance, although I have absolutely no interest in football (soccer variety), would never willingly watch it or read about it or have a conversation about it, I've got a basic understanding of the rules, the major clubs, players and managers, and how the game is organised and managed. I've never set out to acquire that knowledge: it's just been in the background all my life. And I suppose if you're using a British rugby club as a hook for your book most of the readers will be British and have at least a passing interest in rugby, and will have at the minimum the same level of knowledge that I have for football, and so if the author had explained the basics in too much detail he might have alienated his core market?

Rhian, I take your points, and I considered them when making my own comments. But I think he is drastically reducing his audience, probably to the UK and Australia/NZ. Certainly "capping" isn't done in Canada (or referred to via that phrase) and despite having lived in the UK, not being that interested in sports, I still hadn't picked up references to it in casual conversation, from watching television news, etc.

An example of what I'm talking about "the Quins romped home by four tries to one placed goal, although the points system only scored this as 12-5". Now, one of my high school teachers played rugby; I have friends who have played. In some ways, I am more familiar with it than I am with US football. But this sentence alone violates several rules of good writing. Eg, the Quins -- who are they? Never mentioned before by that name, so presumably it's a nickname, but you'd have to be a rugby fan to know who for. Tries vs placed goals and scoring -- Easy enough to spell out four tries, which gave the victors xx points to the xx that their opponents earned for the placed goal. Or something like that; if that's what is meant. And is the author suggesting there's a discrepancy between what should have been scored and what the points system scored? No way to even figure that out.

My own profession -- financial journalism -- can use a lot of jargon, and there is an art to finding a way to make sure that someone coming to the story should find it an accessible read, without alienating the cognoscenti. It can be done. I've done it in a book myself. It's not going to alienate a knowledgeable reader to identify them -- eg Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and newly-appointed Treasury Secretary. Just tossing a name out there and expecting people to know who that person is and why they are important is more arrogance than anything else on the part of the writer. It's one thing if it's in a sports magazine or newspaper, where space is tight and the readership is much more likely to be specialized. In a book for which rugby is presented as the backdrop, and where its details make up less than 1/3 of the book and that is being pitched to a general readership as a book offering a window on WW1, it behooves the author to at least try to make it accessible. This isn't a sports book; it's a book about people, unified by the shared experience of war and sport. And Cooper himself clearly indicates that what he is trying to do is show how the experience of this 15 men captured in miniature the entire scope of the war -- battlefields, land, sea and air, etc.

I've read all kinds of books -- science, sports, military history -- that relies on background and special knowledge that is beyond my ken, yet this is the first time I've ever felt this alienated and annoyed. (I'm omitting academic press tomes, which clearly are aimed at a specialized audience.) This book was pitched to me as being of interest because of its WW1 link, by both the publisher (The History Press) and by Amazon. Not because I had bought books about sports. They are looking for a US distributor for the book because of the WW1 anniversary stuff, but I'd be surprised if they succeeded. Not because it revolves around rugby, but because of the way the rugby detail is handled. I'd say the same thing about a book on WW1 that focused on the diameter of the guns and difficulties with trajectory and tossed off names like von Schlieffen and Bismarck without telling me who they were, incidentally.

Yes I can see your point. I looked at the Amazon UK details and it looks to me as if it was originally intended as a 'sports book' (apparently it won the rugby book of the year award ) but the publishers are now trying to market it to an audience beyond what it was intended for.

This is what I understand by the first paragraph is this by the way:
The 'Quins' are the Harlequins, another London based team still in operation.
His point on the scoring isn't altogether clear but I think what he's trying to get at is that the points system was very different then, and so nowadays four tries would give a team much more of a commanding lead. To be honest that is a very obscure point: I did know that (not quite sure why I know that) but I would have expected the scoring system in operation at the time to be explained, as many people would not.

Thanks for the clarification! Yes, if you intended this to be more than a boutique market book (in which case I would have expected a much greater portion of the book to be devoted to the sport, and less to the war and their background and all kinds of other issues) it should have been edited or revised. It does the author a disservice, too: he is clearly witty and intelligent, and very knowledgeable about his material. This SHOULD have a broader audience, but it's been edited as if it's destined for a rugby fan magazine, in the parts where it deals with rugby.

I've finished 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz, but am going to wait to comment on it until I finish Gossip from the Forest by Thomas Keneally, which probably will be in another hour or two; I want to talk about the two of them jointly, kinda sorta. My final book of the month likely will be Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee.

OK, here we go: some WW1 novels on which to comment...

33. 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz
34. Gossip From the Forest by Thomas Keneally

I'm commenting on these two novels since they seem to me to offer at least some similarities or points of comparison. Both drill into very specific experiences of the war: in Echenoz's case, he's offering the reader the experiences of a group of friends from a French town along the Loire, and primarily those of Anthime, with an emphasis on the transition from adventure to horror show. Keneally, in contrast, is focusing on the group of negotiators charged with reaching an Armistice in the gloomy November of 1918.

Hands down, I preferred Keneally's novel. Echenoz's has brilliantly evocative moments, but he glosses over so much -- he is describing, not giving me a glimpse into Anthime. Yes, I know that is his style - dispassionate chronicling, the omniscient narrator, the apparent non-sequiturs. There were points when Echenoz's ability to grasp an essential truth or irony, or portray a vignette, awed me. But overall, this was a novel to appreciate rather than relish. And when I read his comment about trench warfare that "all this has been described a thousand times, so perhaps it's not worthwhile to linger any longer over that sordid, stinking opera", I couldn't stop myself from thinking -- so what is this, just an intellectual exercise for you, Jean? And then I thought that that is really what it felt like. I believe I'm becoming less enamored of Echenoz with the passage of time -- his style is oddly distancing, which clearly is a conscious choice, but one that I'm finding a tad monotonous. 3.8 stars here.

In contrast, Keneally's novel wowed me. Not so much the first chapters, in which we meet Marshal Foch, who will dictate terms to both his allies and adversaries at Compiegne, but Matthias Erzeberger, the hapless Reichstag deputy turned minister without portfolio, dispatched to the front to meet up with a slightly mad aristocrat, a Prussian general and a stiff-necked (literally) junior naval officer, charged with extracting at least some minimal concessions -- and doing so before revolution unseats the government of Prince Max von Baden and deprives them of their power to negotiate at all. "Erzberger thought this has all the marks of dream: impossible time-tables, nebulous instructions, undisclosed fellow-travellers and destinations." Poor Matthias's scramble to extract accreditation papers -- until the last minute, he isn't sure whether they'll arrive on time -- is the tip of a shambolic iceberg as the deputies encounter mishap after mishap en route to the forest of the title. Max von Baden assures him Germans will be grateful to them for their efforts... Instead, the melancholy count tells Matthias he is "mourning my good friend the twentieth century. Like all the other youngsters, about to turn his toes up in his eighteenth year." This was a tight, dramatic narrative, emphasized by Keneally's decision to write the dialog as if it were in a play, eg: Erzberger: says whatever, followed in the next line by The General: etc. etc. It's coherent, immensely readable and alternates moments of tremendous tragedy and suspense with almost comic interludes in the oddly-assorted parties of negotiators on both sides. 4.6 stars.

Both novels play with structure and narrative voice, but Keneally does so in a way that it never feels as if the author's voice has taken the place of the tale. It also does just a vivid job of hinting at the horrors of war, indirectly -- including a vivid portrayal of a German general who has suffered a stroke on one side of his face and is using his glasses to hold up a corner of his mouth so that he can speak somewhat coherently, making him look like a fish squirming on the hook.

35. Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders is, by contrast, a completely conventional chick lit/historical romance type novel, following the various paths of four friends who make their debut in London society on the eve of war. It's a notch above the usual such books, and akin to The Passing Bells by Phillip Rock, which I re-read and enjoyed last year, but to be avoided if you don't like this type of novel. For me, a 3.5 star book.

I've got another 50 or 60 pages of Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee to read tonight, so will neatly finish that by month's end, enabling me to "sweep" the TIOLI challenges!

Book Bullet! Kenneally Book Bullet!

She shoots, she scores!!

I'm off to choose my birthday reading -- going to be sheer mindless pleasure, and probably one of my newest Amazon Vine ARCs...

Happy Birthday dear Suzanne. I hope this coming year enables us to meet-up and discuss that little bit of Cornish business further, hahaha. xx

I had made my plans for February reading but I may amend them to include the Keneally which has been on the shelves a goodly while.

Have a lovely, lovely day.

Happy Birthday, Suzanne! You hit me with another Keneally Book Bullet.

I haven't read anything by Thomas Keneally except Schindler's List, but I saw him speak at the National Book Festival last year, memorably about nurses in the context of The Daughters of Mars, and that plus reviews have been drawing me closer. Alas, I my reading pace doesn't remotely approach yours. Happy birthday!

Happy birthday! I almost typed birdbath. Have a happy birdbath too!

Happy birthday Suzanne

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Suzanne. I wish for you a migraine-free day filled with books and friends and laughter. And LT, of course. :-)

Happy Birthday!! I hope it turns out to be the best one yet!

Happy Birthday, Suz!

Thanks for the good wishes, all! A quiet day here, just books 'n cats and maybe some good DVDs in the evening. I chased off the minor headache that I started the day with, so it's all good.

Finished Waiting for the Barbarians by Coetzee last night, but don't feel like commenting on it just now -- need to let it percolate. I'll be back to do that when I post my first book of the month...

So, I'm off to do some reading, or was some dishes, or summat like that.

Happy, happy Suzanne and many, many more. I'm adding the Keneally book to the teetering tower and right now I'm being wowed by An Officer and a Spy and I have you to thank for that:-)

Happy birthday.

Robert

Hippo birdie two ewe.

My fave (well, my only) b-day gift is an ultra-short video from my fave six-year-old, Theo, my former upstairs neighbor in Brooklyn, that popped up on Facebook!

Happy Birthday, Suzanne - hope it's been a good one so far and will be for the rest of the day.

Happy birthday, Suzanne! How cool that Theo sent you a video.

I have Daughters of Mars here and now I am going to look for Gossip from the Forest - it's in the library.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SUZANNE!!! Enjoy! Enjoy! --- and wishing you fewer headaches of every sort in your new year.

Hi Suzanne, I'm delurking long enough to take a few book bullets and more importantly to wish you a Happy Birthday.

Happy Birthday, Suzanne.

Yes, Happy Birthday Suzanne. Thank you for being a part of my LT life.

Aw shucks, Stephanie... You're most welcome...

Had a lovely surprise; a friend of mine whom I first met when I hosted her and her then-bf from Vienna chez moi more than a decade ago via one of those host-a-student-traveler sites, and who now lives in NYC, sent me an Amazon gift card! Yum yum yum... Enuf for two lovely Kindle books, or else Dubravka Ugresic's dead-tree book of essays and a Kindle book to be determined later. Quel luxe!

Judy -- well, if you've gotta take book bullets, it might as well be on my b-day!

Bonnie, I'm so glad you're enjoying An Officer and a Spy. That reminds me that I still have The Fear Index here to read. Another treat in store!

Glenn, sending you & even the Skutch-monster a hug; we need to plan to meet up sometime before your next bday...

Clearly, I need to read more Keneally.

I've been reading the new mystery from Elly Griffiths in between doing laundry and dishes and suchlike stuff (and napping with lap cats), but am boycotting book updates until tomorrow. Instead, I'll go watch a DVD or an old Inspector Morse episode, do some knitting, finish the mystery and go to bed. Clearly, I'm getting old... :-)

Hi Suz, happy birthday. Hope it was a good one for you, the start of a great year.

OK, my birthday is over, and my self-imposed ban on anything that felt like work -- including making notes about reading, but NOT reading itself! -- is over. So here are my comments on my last book of January and the first book for February:

36. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee is a chilling tale set in an unnamed frontier city of an unnamed Empire, narrated by an unnamed Magistrate. Indeed, only two or three characters throughout are named, one of them being the impassive Colonel Joll, who has arrived in the borderlands to investigate reports of a rising among the barbarians. As in Cavafy's amazing poem that Coetzee borrowed his title from, the barbarians in question are more myth than reality, and what matters most is how the "regular" citizens respond to them, from Joll's impersonal torture to the ill-conceived and clumsy efforts of the Magistrate to bring a form of justice to the situation. As the book careens toward its end, it becomes less novelistic and almost hallucinogenic. Compelling, but bleak and almost eerie. 4.5 stars. Probably one of the best books I read in January, but it would be hard to describe as a favorite, if that makes sense. It's an impeccably written and fascinating novel, but one that's hard to love on a more than cerebral/intellectual level.

37. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths, the latest mystery featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, was a welcome contrast. It's a straightforward police procedural, blending a past puzzle and a wave of current crimes, linked by the theme of mothers and childminders/babysitters. For me, in these books plot tends to take a backseat to character development and the stories of the people from previous books; in other words, the mystery provides the backbone of the tale, but I can put up with a fairly basic plot because I find Ruth an interesting character, with her relationship and family struggles. That said, I think this worked better for me than the last two books in the series, if not as well as the debut book and the later one, House at Sea's End, which I also liked a great deal. 3.8 stars.

I've been listening to the audiobook of The King's Mistress by Emma Campion, which I just confirmed is a pen name for Candance Robb. I remember there was a lot of curiosity about the author's identity when the book was first published, and I'm not sure if Robb ever formally owned up to it. That said, it's interesting, if conventional: the fun part thus far is a very interesting twist on the Edward II/Isabella of France/Roger Mortimer menage... Now, off to pick out my next book! After the Coetzee, I'm still not ready to go back to On Such a Full Sea, so I'll have to look for something MUCH less intense.

Hi Suz,
I just bought 1914: A Novel today and now I very much want to get a copy of Gosip from the Forest. Thanks for the wonderful juxtaposed reviews!

And happy birthday!, perhaps a tad belatedly.

Happy birthday, Suzanne! I'm glad to see the new Elly Griffiths is a good one.

The Coetzee sounds interesting but daunting, Suzanne. I know what you mean about having the balance the intense books with lighter fare; I do the same thing.

...and then there is such a thing as TOO lightweight...

38. The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette van Heugten is, alas, quite bad. I had to finish it in order to review it for Amazon, but got angrier with every chapter at having to waste my time on dreck. Set in 1980, the implausible plot revolves around Nora de Jong, a brain surgeon (of course!) coming home from work (at 5 p.m.? really?) to the home she shares with her mother and infant daughter, to find the former brutally murdered, the latter missing, and a strange man dead on the floor. Nora's reaction, and the next few chapters, read like something from a B or C grade Hollywood film of the 1920s, all exaggerated drama, with little that is really emotionally convincing. Worse is to come. By the time we have read 50 pages of a 350 page book we know who is responsible and why along with a bunch of other improbable twists that should have been revealed gradually over the course of the novel. The police investigation (into the kidnapping of an infant?!) is inept. Throw in language like "her tears fell like prisms" (ouch!) and you'll have a sense of why I finished this with relief. Had the author confined herself to the mysterious past of Nora's parents in wartime Holland, and dialed down the melodrama, it could have been somewhat interesting, but... 1.5 stars.

OK, on to the next one, quick! I have to get the taste of this out of my mouth!

Happy belated birthday, Suzanne!

Great comments on Waiting for the Barbarians - not my favorite Coetzee novel, but a powerful one for sure.

That one sounds horrific. I'm glad you can now put it behind you, Suzanne.

Happy belated birthday! Looks like you've done some fabulous reading -- great reviews!

Your last book does sound awful, but I love that the heroine's tears fell like prisms (the snarky part of me loves awful tripe like that). All the same though, I have to wonder how anyone can write that and not hear how dopey it sounds? And worse - how can a publisher inflict such writing on the reading public? What were they thinking?

What a waste of a good title. The Tulip Eaters should be recycled for someone better at this's use. Une livre dégoûtante.

When I read the tears/prisms nonsense, I simply thought "how uncomfortable for her"... :-)

Kerri, which is your favorite Coetzee? This is only the second novel of his that I have read, the other being Disgrace. Both are compelling and complex, but neither is at all comfortable to read! That's obviously the author's intent, and it's fine, but I feel a need to scurry off and read something else as an alternative. I suppose the word is "disquieting". It's not always a characteristic of excellent literary fiction, but Coetzee clearly excels at adding that to the mix... :-)

Yaah, that's got to hurt ...

For some reason I'm thinking of that ol' country music song "I've got tears in my ears lying on my back in my bed crying over you ..."