Jim53's 2014 reading

Here is a link to the books I've read so far this year.

I decided I'd wait to start a thread till I had a book or two to comment on. I finished my first book of the new year, The Good Lord Bird, a few days ago, and was considering a pile of possibilities. Then I received a notice that the library finally had a copy for me of Dream with Little Angels, this month's selection for my mystery book club. I had given up on getting it in time--the meeting is tomorrow evening--but I picked it up on Friday and finished it today. I've written reviews of both books.

These first two books of the year are both narrated in the first person by pre-teens. Interesting coincidence. The Good Lord Bird didn't quite live up to my expectations: I found it repetitive, drearily so in a few places, and the repetition of colloquialisms grew tiresome. But Onion is a fun storyteller, and there are some hilarious moments in spite of the overall serious story. I liked the theme of hiding vs. being oneself, but I would have liked to see it played out more.

I'd never heard of Michael Hiebert, who is a LibraryThing author, before picking up his first novel. It's really a family drama played out through a mystery. Abe, our narrator here, is engaging without being as obviously special as Onion. Hiebert uses some ingenious techniques to enable him to tell the whole story, largely by having him eavesdrop continually. The book is a coming-of-age story for Abe, and we see through his eyes the crises that his mother and older sister are going through. I'm looking forward to the discussion tomorrow night.

Now to go catch up on reading everyone else's journals!

In addition to having lots of fun lurking in lots of y'all's journals, I knocked off The Skeleton in the Closet, a pretty classic British village cozy. The ending was pretty predictable, but it was fun in a fluffy way.

Now starting A Cold Day in Paradise, for next month's discussion.

I don't read many mysteries, so I may not comment very often but I'm looking forward to following your reading this year!

Hi, Jim. Now I have found your thread I will be lurking.

Welcome, friends!

This seems like it might be a good place to record some books that I hope to read this year, beyond the selections from my two book clubs. In no particular order:

The Given Day - I almost always enjoy Lehane.
Hav - saw some very interesting discussion of this.
Seth (no touchstone) - a self-published novel by my friend Bill Offutt, author of Bethesda.
At least one of the Lee Smiths that I have but haven't read.
Maybe another Wallace Stegner after enjoying Crossing to Safety so much last year.
Drift - I enjoy Rachel on TV, let's see how she writes.
A Soldier of the Great War - I have loved a couple of Helprin's but haven't tried this one.
The Middle Passage - a look at midlife (even if I'm a bit late)
Gilead - one of several that I noted in The End of Your Life Book Club.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore - first book I added to my list this year form someone else's Green Dragon journal.
Where Trouble Sleeps - Clyde's a good guy.
The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain
Wonders of the Invisible World - I haven't read much F&SF lately, want to catch back up a bit. Would love to have other suggestions.
Life After Life - the one I haven't read.

If anyone has opinions about any of these, I'd love some help in prioritizing and/or culling the list!

I read Hav when a hot review of it piqued my interest a few years back. I absolutely loved it; the place and its society and politics was fascinating and evocative. Several of us have enjoyed Mr Penumbra recently; hope you do too! And I was given Wonders of the invisible world for Christmas so will be reading that this year as well.

Looking forward to your thoughts and opinions on all the titles on your list!

Jim, I have finally started reading The Eyre Affair and am enjoying it. I recall our discussing the Thursday Next books on my 2013 thread.

Yeah, the Penumbra people finally got to me, too. It's on my wishlist.

8: The Penumbra people! :) I'm proud to count myself one of them. *grins*

But Penumbra is just so much fun...

OK, I'm in line for the kool-aid, I'll be joining the shadowy horde soon...

It looks like we are all moving to the nearly dark side, or at least the lighter fringes of the darkness.

Who says bibliophiles are immune to peer pressure?
*stands in line for her copy*

I finished up my book for next month's mystery club meeting so that I could return it quickly. A Cold Day in Paradise was the first Alex McKnight mystery by Steve Hamilton. A former cop from Detroit, forced to retire by a traumatic experience and now living in the UP, is lured into doing PI work by the attorney of a friend. There is a mix of cliche and new twists on a few elements. I don't particularly like Alex or care about what will happen to him next.

Having dispensed with that, I have begun and read the first few chapters of Mr. Penumbra.

I sense the approach of the darkness.

Finished the first big section of Mr. Penumbra. Heading from the bookstore to the Library (cue ominous music of your choice). I like the difference between the painstaking manual labor of Mat and the too-quick-to-believe hacking that Clay does.

Lots of back pain over the weekend made it difficult to read attentively, so I spent some of my time re-skimming old favorite fantasies. Also watched Big Fish, which is a lot of fun, because my meetup group's book for February is Wallace's The Kings and Queens of Roam. I guess that jumps to the top of the list after Mr. P.

Into the library in the second big section of Mr. P. I detect a distinct odor; can't tell yet whether it's a parody or whether Dan Brown is co-writing this section. Or maybe neither; time (and more pages) will tell.

#17 I detect a distinct odor

So, it's not so much a penumbra as a "pen & ink"?

Stayed awake last night to finish Mr. Penumbra. The latter part of the second section eased back on the DaVinci Code flashes (thank goodness) and called to mind the brothers of the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz (and if anyone doesn't recognize that reference, I have another book that you absotively posilutely must read). The final section took on a much lighter tone and did a good job of bringing some threads together. I loved the link back to the fantasy author whom Clay and his living ATM (updated mythological "type"?) loved years ago. Having the final "big reveal" presented in PowerPoint played very nicely on the combination of old knowledge and new technology. The epilogue felt a bit rushed, like a bulleted list of what happened to whom, but it was still kinda fun; good to see how he saw some of these threads progressing, and I'm not sure I wanted to spend a lot more time on it. Thanks to all of you who coerced, er, encouraged me to read this one!

At work I've started a re-read of Alfie Bester's The Stars My Destination for a February group read. For those who don't know, it's a true early classic of SF, and a personal favorite. Come join in!

Well, that does it for me. I'm just going to break down and buy Mr. Penumbra. I've had it on my wishlist for two months now. I just keep waiting for the price to drop a dollar or two so I can feel like I got a bargain. LOL

20: *hums* And another one bites the dust... And another one's gone, another one's gone, another one bites the dust...

Or perhaps I should sing: And another one buys the book... And another book gone, another book gone, another one buys the book...

:oD

That's a great review of Mr Penumbra, Jim! Glad you enjoyed it as I was one of the enablers!

Thanks, Sakerfalcon! You do indeed get some of the blame, er, credit.

As a palate cleanser between courses, I tried Justin Halpern's Sh*t My Dad Says, because I had seen a couple of references to its inimitable humor. Apparently the author moved back in with his parents as an adult, and decided that his father's conversation was entertainingly unique. It's true that I don't know any fathers who use "f*cking" kind of like italics, to say there's an important word coming, and if any of the fathers I know are as concerned as the elder Halpern is about the elegant productiveness of his eliminatory experiences, they have managed to keep this concern within their inner circles. There were a few bits that were sorta funny, but I had to shovel my way through a large steaming pile of, um, less-funny stuff to unearth them.

Finished Kings and Queens of Roam, and I'm still deciding how well I liked it. It's a "tall tale" about an imaginary town that was founded by a man who had kidnapped a Chinese man who knew how to grow and make silk. The primary characters are his orphaned granddaughters, the notably ugly Helen and the younger Rachel, who is beautiful and blind. The town is dying. Many people treat one another badly. There is some good storytelling, and some people grow and change. I think it will make for interesting discussion in my meetup group.

Oh my. My Early Review book from October, which I marked as not received, arrived today. I guess The Divorce Papers is up next, along with finishing my re-read of The Stars My Destination. I would have finished it by now except that I've worked at home the last couple of days due to the 1 1/2 inch blizzard we've had.

I saw an ad for a movie of Winter's Tale, which makes me want to go back and read that one again too. It was the first Helprin that I read and I loved it. Oh well, I guess it's better to have too many things I'm eager to read than too few. (Too few? Is that even possible?)

Finished The Divorce Papers and wrote a review. Not bad. A modern epistolary novel about a young criminal defense lawyer who is sucked into handling a divorce. The case brings out all her neurotic tendencies, as well as the pain of her own parents' divorce. Rieger gives us a few interesting characters and a quick, fun read.

The Stars My Destination is still lots of fun, although I found myself a little less crazy about it than on previous reads. The suck fairy hasn't really struck; I think I've just read it enough times, and I'm reading more critically than when I first encountered this one. I'll save my specific comments for the group read. Come join in!

I have read about Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore on your and Sakerfalcon's thread, and have been intrigued. I am looking over the book's Goodreads reviews now. But one Goodread review has given me pause, and I wanted to check with you about its accuracy:

Is it true that the female lead simply disappears from the novel when she's "no longer useful"? I would be disappointed if she were not a major character throughout -- particularly since the media in general (though books far less than TV and movies) do an abysmal job of depicting female geeks, contributing to the illusion that geekery or nertidute or whatever name we wish to call it is somehow unique to guys, and female geeks, if they exist at all, make about 1% of the female population.

Welcome, Kelley, thanks for stopping by. I started writing my response to your question, but then I decided that this book and this question are worthy of their own discussion thread, to encourage more participation. So I created a thread over here. Everyone, especially those of you who browbeat, er, encouraged me to read this book, please join in!

#29 ...especially those of you who browbeat, er, encouraged me to read this book...

I am glad you have experienced some of your own medicine. Now you might appreciate the tribulations I have had to go through.

Ok, now to finish The Stars My Destination and get started on Mr. Penumbra.

See you on the other thread some time soon.

:-)

29: Good idea, @Jim53!

A Reader's Book of Days is a fun compendium of tidbits about events in the lives of authors and characters for each day of the year. The author provides a two-page essay and list of several suggestions for each month. Fortunately there's a very large index, permitting the curious reader to find entries related to favorite authors.

I saw a blog post by Julia Spencer-Fleming in which she gushes over meeting Lawrence Block when she was starting out. I had never read any Block, so I tried the first of his series featuring burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, Burglars Can't be Choosers. It's a first-person story whose tone reminds me a bit of Ross MacDonald, although Bernie is a bit less worldly. A corpse is discovered in an apartment that he's been hired to burgle, so he goes on the lam while trying to solve the crime to save himself. I wasn't terribly impressed; will probably go try one from Block's other series featuring PI Matt Scudder.

Currently finding all sorts of things to go out and do, and reading less as a result. I'm in the middle of Big Machine, which is intriguing but not as much fun as some of my recent reads. I picked up Ancillary Justice at the library after seeing some positive comments about it in several threads, and I suspect that will be next.

>26 Jim53: So they actually made the movie of Winter's Tale? I remember hearing rumors about it, then nothing. I'm terrified of seeing it--that book is so rich that I can't see a movie being able to do justice to it.

33: It's so nice to keep seeing Ancillary justice mentioned in the reading journals. I really enjoyed it.

>34 Marissa_Doyle: I agree completely, Marissa. "Rich" is a great word to describe it. With luck they'll have caught just enough of the story that it will be pretty satisfying to those who don't know the book. But I can't imagine it capturing the experience of reading the book.

>35 zjakkelien: That's the problem, and the attraction, of reading the journals. I keep finding new things that I have to figure out how to integrate into the queue. I just have to remember that they're opportunities, not assignments ;-) I'd much rather have spent the weekend reading and walking, but I spent a lot of it heating my back and working on my taxes.

36: True! But I like knowing that I still have a bunch of really good books on my reading list. I think I'd feel a bit lost without that, so all the suggestions are welcome! Recommendations can also be a bit dangerous: if everyone is raving about a book, it might disappoint. Haven't been lead astray so far, though.

Finished Big Machine, which I found used and cheap last year after reading about it in The End of Your Life Book Club. What a strange book. I'm still figuring out what I think of it. Will try to concoct a review soon. Currently paying the price of too-ambitious snow shoveling. Will have to see if I can stagger out of my heated recliner to pick another book. Might be time for Ancillary Justice.

I read the first few chapters of Ancillary Justice last night. Very interesting start. The narrator, who is no longer what she once was, and her mysterious quest... the ability to tell several stories from the viewpoints of the same (person? being? we'll get there at some point, I guess)... the idea of ancillaries, which isn't fully baked yet, and will no doubt have some interesting repercussions... the naming schemes for ships and people... the use of the feminine pronouns for generics... even the book's title, all have sparked my interest.

Ancillary Justice continues to impress and confuse ;-) I'm about halfway through and beginning to understand the relationships among the narrators and others. The conscious ship, with its multiple "I"s, is quite cool. The political scheming is getting a bit laborious, although the multiple versions of the supreme leader, with some acting against others, has promise. We've got echoes of everything from Dune to horcruxes.

Finished Ancillary Justice last night, or rather this morning, after coming home from bridge to watch the end of UNC-Duke. A very impressive piece overall. There is a lot of ambiguity in the final section, which moves along very well. I thought the next steps for various characters were tied up with a bow a little more neatly than was really necessary, but it certainly sets up an interesting sequel.

One thing I wonder: given the situation, with the multiple instances of the supreme leader, what sort of change is possible? I'd be interested to hear what those of you who have read it think. Also, does the final section suggest that Breq is becoming human? Have enough people read this to think it would be worth a spoilerific discussion thread?

Started A Study in Scarlet last night and finished it today; read about two-thirds of it in a doctor's waiting room, waiting to get some drugs for my sore back. It's interesting to see Holes and Watson being presented for the first time, with an explanation for Watson's fuzziness, and Holmes showing so many of his defining characteristics right from the start. My edition has a nice intro by Anne Perry, who points out that Watson is not really as dull as some make him out to be; he is the voice of moderation giving some ballast to the excitable and extreme Holmes. Only my second of these, after Hound, and I anticipate I will want to read more. Now to find something that won't suffer too much from being read while on Vicodin...

Jim, be sure to contribute thoughts over in the thread about the Holmes stories, please? :) I think I always defended Watson from being the bumbling ignorant man, but I love what some of the modern takes on him have done.

Thanks, MrsLee, I will drop by when I'm a bit more coherent ;-)

Started Sacrifice Fly last night. So far so good.

Finished Sacrifice Fly, which took a little while to get going but picked up nicely. The protagonist is a former cop now teaching eighth grade in Brooklyn, and a pretty interesting character. It kept me interested throughout.

Started Don't Ever Get Old, which is sort of entertaining, featuring a curmudgeonly 87-year-old who is called to the bedside of a former concentration-camp bunkmate, who tells him that he (the dying bunkmate) allowed one of their jailers to escape with a lot of gold bars after the war. Will he or won't he try to track this guy down? There are too many pages in my right hand for the answer to be no.

However, my new ER book, Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths has just arrived, and I'll probably start it tomorrow if I'm able to concentrate. Still taking a bunch of chemicals for back pain, but seeing some improvement, just slower than I wish. Tonight we're off to see Wessell "Warmdaddy" Anderson of LCJO playing at Duke.

#42 - "Now to find something that won't suffer too much from being read while on Vicodin..."

How'd that work out for you? Hope your back mends quickly!

42 (@Jim53), 47 (@clamairy): I can recommend White tiger and sequels. Interesting Chinese mythology, repetitive language and storyline, quite a few flaws, but excellent for when your mind is not quite clear. I felt like a zombie last week, and raced through the first three books. If you like them, there is some frustration involved though: the author seems to be dragging the story out indefinitely...

I've been continuing with Don't Ever Get Old, which reflects my interest in books featuring geezers as protagonists. The narrator isn't quite curmudgeonly enough to be really amusing, but he tells a pretty good story. When I find I can't concentrate, I've been re-reading The Lions of al-Rassan for the six hundredth time. What a great story.

I re-read The Book of Three, a fun YA title from many years ago. Finished Don't Ever Get Old, which didn't really grab me.

I moved on to next month's book for my mystery group, Death and the Lit Chick. It's a fun mystery set in a Scottish castle, featuring DCI Arthur St. Just. He's there to speak to a conference of mystery writers and agents about police procedure, then gets to demonstrate it when one of the authors is murdered. A bit frustrating because numerous crucial clues come out only at the end, making it a bit frustrating for those of us who like to solve the mystery as we read. I thought of Jane Eyre's cousin St. John Rivers and wondered if Arthur's surname would be pronounced "Sinjist." He's a fairly appealing character; I might look for more of this series when Mt. TBR has shrunk a bit.

Song of the Vikings is a pretty comfy read. Brown does a nice job of telling us what she knows and what she guesses, and adds an occasional bit of dry wit. I'm learning about Icelandic history, including their emphasis on genealogy as the basis of complicated inheritance patterns and other aspects of law. I'm only a couple of chapters in.

>51 Jim53: Jim, I knew right off that was one for me. I've paired it with the Prose Edda and will probably read them either serially or in tandem, as I've done with a few other ancient texts.

Lots to catch up on. I finished and reviewed Song of the Vikings. It's a mix of scholarship and appeals to relevance by referring to popular culture. I would have liked to see more about the composition of his works and her arguments for their importance; maybe that's the sequel.

I read Ron Rash's The Cove in a day, mostly because I spent it on a train. Pretty good story. Once we got to the mention of Mozart I was confident that certain things would happen, but had to see how. There was one character who seemed like a caricature but was necessary for certain plot details. The point might be that this person wasn't so far from the norm at the time as one might think. Still not entirely sure how I feel about this one. Mrs53 (more properly Dr54) is reading it now.

On the train ride home, I tackled my friend Bill Offutt's self-published novel Seth. This is Bill, Sr., also the author of a history of Bethesda, MD. In Seth he tells the story of several generations of a family who settled in the Bethesda-Rockville area, beginning with a teenaged boy's participation in the US Civil War. It was a long but fun read, illustrating the development of the area, the social norms at various times, and an interesting description of one young man's participation in WWI.

My wife read The Writing Class by Jincy Willett and thought I might like it, which I did, mostly ;-) It tells a story about a writing class at a university, taught by a writer who found success too early and has subsequently been unable to write anything. She and members of the class begin to receive critical and threatening notes that could only have been created by someone within the group. Interesting mix of psychological drama and mystery.

I've been reading Liz Squires's Is There a Dead Man in the House? in short bits at work. I like seeing seniors portrayed as capable humans, but this one didn't do much for me.

Having enjoyed Death and the Lit Chick, I tried its predecessor, Death of a Cozy Writer. This one has more overt humor, but some of the same problems as DatLC: too many clues are unavailable till the big reveal, and the protagonist, DCI Arthur St. Just, isn't well developed as a character. There's no detail about him to latch onto and like or dislike. SA quick, fun read but nothing special.

Looking back at 1Q14:

21 books read
3 non-fiction
18 fiction, 10 of them mysteries
8 by women, 13 by men
5 for book clubs
2 Early Reviewers

None that I got really excited about. The best were:
Mr Penumbra
The Good Lord Bird
Big Machine

with honorable mention to The Cove and Ancillary Justice.

I'm starting 2Q off with Conundrums for the Long Weekend, which arrived yesterday. Thanks to those who mentioned it on LT. It looks very interesting.

The last couple of times I accepted a suggestion from the gang here, it worked out pretty well, with Mr. Penbumbra and Ancillary Justice. So I am taking the plunge into The Windup Bird Chronicle. I read a few chapters yesterday, and I may never answer the phone again.

>57 Jim53: Is she calling you too?

>58 pgmcc: No, so far I just keep hearing from her cousin, who has an important message about my credit card. Her voice is rather eerie, almost as if it's recorded.

I'm approaching the midpoint of Wind-Up Bird, down in the well and feeling a bit sluggish.

<60> It must be the build-up of carbon dioxide.

Still working my way through Wind-up Bird. This morning I worked at the library's book sale, and of course, since I was there, I had to pick up a few. I thought I exercised great restraint.

Cutting for Stone: several freinds have recommended this.
The Historian: not sure about vampires, but I've heard it's a good read.
Lost: Someone on the mystery discussion raved about Robotham as a writer.
A Light in the Window: my wife and I both enjoyed the first one.
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza: who can resist a title like that?
The Windsor Knot: the McPhersons are not McCrumb's best, but they're usually an easy read.
Shooting at Loons: another great title, another NC author.
The Lincoln Lawyer: read this years ago but didn't have a copy, decided I'll read it again some time.

There were lots of other attractive possibilities, but none that grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Plus I still have a pretty good stack from prior sales awaiting my attention.

>62 Jim53: - Nice haul!

I'm still wandering through Wind-up Bird as well. I am enjoying it, but it's not a fast paced read, that's for sure.

I understand completely about answering the phone! LOL

"Taking the plunge" is a severe understatement of reading Wind-up Bird. It feels more like I'm swimming across the Pacific Ocean. There is an awful lot of detail in several of the stories. I'm curious to see how well they come together into a whole; "coherent" is certainly not the first word that comes to mind with this book. OTOH it's pretty intriguing, with several mysterious characters whose purpose I'm trying to figure out as our mostly plain vanilla protagonist bounces off them.

Heh heh, and he is bouncing off some of them. In his dreams, at least.

Yeah, intriguing is the perfect word. And I'm swimming as well, but quite a way behind you. LOL

Confusion. Mild satisfaction. Annoyance. Curiosity. More than anything, relief.

>66 Jim53: You're done?

Oh dear. Well, was it worth the slog?

(I still have a sizable chunk of it left.)

Yeah, I finished it last night. My experience was somewhat like the narrator's: I sense a pattern below the surface but have trouble bringing it into focus. I don't think it's too spoilerific to say that he doesn't tie everything up neatly, and I certainly didn't expect him to. It would be interesting to discuss a few aspects of it after you're done, along with others who have read it. As far as "worth the slog," it's hard to say, and of course it depends on why you read the book and what you're looking for. I wanted to read it because I'd heard a lot about it, it's a bit of a stretch from a lot of what I've been reading lately, and Peter urged me to take the plunge (we'll blame it on him). I'm not sorry that I took the time to read it, but I wasn't continually eager to get back to it. For me, it was more a book to appreciate than one to enjoy. YMMV.

>68 Jim53: I am happy to take all the blame. Discussion may have to wait as I am off to France for ten days and will not necessaroly habe Internet.
I can say I unreservedly enjoyed the book and am starting another Murakami in the nect couple of days. Kafka on the Shore.

I liked Kafka on the Shore quite a lot better than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Not that I didn't still end up with questions.

I think I'm ready for a comfort re-read of something old and dear (like me). I might try another Murakami later, but not right now.

I agree, I wouldn't turn to Murakami for anything resembling comfort. I like to keep at least two sure things ready to hand on my TBR shelf for that purpose.

>68 Jim53: "I wasn't continually eager to get back to it." Yes, that sums it up nicely. I'm enjoying it when my nose is in it, but it isn't calling to me when I'm doing other things. I really really need to make myself finish it off, though. It's keeping me from getting to other books.

I read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter while traveling this weekend. The beginning was a little confusing--I wasn't sure who was going to continue being in the story--but it turned out to be a very good read. Review coming soon.

Started a recent acquisition, Mary Lou's Bridge and Murder Club, in my ongoing search for mysteries related to bridge. I found a copy cheap on eBay and I'm glad I didn't pay more for it. It's self-published and poorly written, and doesn't use bridge at all except to get four older women together. Had I been home with other options, I might have put it aside, but without other options I stuck with it. I'm about three-fourths done so I'll finish it to see what he's up to and what I can learn by counter-example.

Finished with Mary Lou and her friends. There were a few entertaining moments, but pretty forgettable overall. I hoped that the ending would be satisfying enough to redeem the poor writing, but no such luck.

Back to Conundrums for the Long Weekend, which I was reading before that darn bird leaped in. Slow (which might be me) but quite interesting. I also completed a re-read of Murder Must Advertise, which I think is my favorite Wimsey. I've been carrying it around, reading bits at lunch, at red lights, and while waiting for other things. I'm afraid it's grown quite a set of basset ears.

>76 Jim53: You mean the &%#*ing bird? ;o)

>70 Meredy: There is a part in Kafka on the Shore in which Miss Saeki is talking about a book she wrote. What she said about it sums up my feelings about Murakami's books, but could also be taken as Murakami putting a bit of self-justification propaganda into his own work. The quote is not a spoiler and it is:

"...The book didn't come to any conclusions, and nobody wants to read a book that doesnt't have one. For me, though, having no conclusion seemed just fine."

I think a book with no conclusions and leaving questions unanswered is more like life than a book in which all the loose ends are neatly tied up. Of course, such books are not always light entertainment or easy reads.

PS I think @clamairy and @Jim53 didn't enjoy The Wind-up Bird Chronicle as much as I did.

>78 pgmcc: Just having some fun with you, pgmcc. I didn't hate it, and parts of it were wonderful.

>78 pgmcc: I prefer books that don't tie everything up neatly. Also books that let me discover things along with the protagonist--thinking here of F&SF when there are things to be figured out about a new world, but also many other situations where a protagonist has to decipher what's happening. I have no trouble at all doing some work to "perform" the book, which is how I think of the ideal reading experience. Murakami just takes this to the other extreme: not only is there no neat giftwrap, my presents are strewn about the room so that I have to collect all the pieces, figure out which ones go with which, and try to fit them together. I'm still wondering whether Mr. Takada learned anything in the course of his adventures. It's possible that on a re-read I would see many things more clearly; that's certainly been my experience with, say, Gene Wolfe. But it will be a while before I would tackle this one again.

>80 Jim53: Murakami just takes this to the other extreme: not only is there no neat giftwrap, my presents are strewn about the room so that I have to collect all the pieces, figure out which ones go with which, and try to fit them together.

I love your description.

>79 clamairy: I thought you hated it and were in the process of thinking up a way of saying that without hurting my feelings. :-)

BTW I am less than 50 pages from the end of Kafka on the Shore and I am wondering if it will have a neatly tied up ending. I suspect it would be difficult to neatly tie up this book.

I decided to finish up The Principle of Restricted Talent, a Christmas gift that I have been reading in short bursts. It's your basic humorous account of a demonic bridge-playing computer and the people who work on it and play with it. Lots of interesting hands, lots of amusing insults from the computer. There weren't any reviews posted so I composed one.

>81 pgmcc: I'm sorry you thought that. :o( I really need to get my thoughts together and write up something about it for my thread.

I've just begun reading Conundrums for the Long Week-End now. Thanks for the boost to get me started on it, @Jim53.

I read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and South of the Border, West of the Sun when I was in high school (about ten years ago) after reading that an anime I was was influenced by Hardboiled Wonderland. They have, however, generally remained in the category of "books it might be better not to reread" because of how I know my taste has changed since then- especially Wind-Up Bird. (I have vague memories of some really odd sex scenes with the protagonist and Creta I think her name was?, for example, that make me wary- and wary of revisiting his work in general now, really.)

Hardboiled Wonderland was probably my favorite of the three (the ending scene of that absolutely haunts me, like the Well scene in Wind-Up Bird), and I also liked some of his short fiction in The Elephant Vanishes too, but I could never get into Norwegian Wood or A Wild Sheep Chase.

The English translation of Wind-Up Bird is abridged and re-edited somewhat from the Japanese version too, I believe, but I'm not sure what the changes are, only that they were done with Murakami's consent and because the English translation was too long for one volume (it was three volumes in Japanese, though Japanese books seem to be split far more often than English ones). One of the translators of Murakami's work, Jay Rubin, wrote one of my most-referenced books on learning Japanese- Making Sense of Japanese- as well as a work of biography and literary criticism of Murakami's work, Haruki Murakami and the Magic of Words which I haven't read.

I believe that the Western music references and so on (eg Norwegian Wood) are all probably original rather than localized- Murakami ran a coffeehouse and jazz bar before becoming a writer (possibly continuing while he was a writer), and they recur throughout his work, so I would suspect the Western food is original as well.

Thanks for stopping by, sandstone78, and for your comments. Hard to imagine what would have been cut out of Wind-Up Bird. I wonder if his style is based on his favorite jazz solos. He probably preferred Lester Bowie to Miles Davis.

I've been continuing with Conundrums and enjoying it. It's really making me want to re-read (or, in a couple of cases, read for the first time) all the Wimseys in order. In fact, I've decided to lay it aside for a bit and pick it back up after I start re-reading--or any time the impulse hits me.

I started Windsor Knot, one of my recent acquisitions, and was thoroughly unimpressed. I have never liked McCrumb's McPherson mysteries as well as the ballad novels or the Jay Omegas, but this one is particularly annoying right from its implausible beginning. Oh well. If I don't ever want to spend fifty cents on a dud I'll have to stop buying books I haven't read.

I started The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza and am enjoying it quite a bit. Block seems more assured than in the first of the series. He doesn't have to spend so much time introducing his protagonist, and he has surrounded him with more acquaintances. Seeing Bernie interacting with these others is more fun than hearing him explain himself. The tone is still quite breezy.

>86 Jim53: I've been looking, and I actually found a summary (PDF) of the deleted and rearranged Wind-Up Bird scenes here. It's been too long since I've read it for me to make much sense of it, but I'm curious if any of them seem major enough to have significantly changed things- the author of this paper seems to think so!

I own the first of the three volumes of Wind-Up Bird in Japanese, having found it on a library sale shelf, but I suspect it is much beyond my reading level, especially being several years out of practice with reading any Japanese at all.

Bernie the burglar was lots of fun, better than the first in the series. Maybe the Spinoza improved his narration.

Started a library book, Thirteenth Night, which I think might have been recommended here. The Guild of Fools in the year 1200 are the unseen masters of Europe, performing surreptitious manipulation to keep things from going awry. Based on the title, I was not surprised by the assertion that the narrator had arranged for the marriage of Duke Orsino to a young woman named Viola, who had temporarily disguised herself as a man. Shades of Sarah Zettel and Jasper Fforde. The novel begins as he is leaving the Guild's home to revisit the area and investigate the mysterious death of the Duke. As he leaves, his unruly horse is calmed by a young man from Assisi. I assume we'll be playing the find-the-reference game throughout; this can be fun if it's not the sole point of the book. The narration is irreverent and fun; after enjoying mt latest foray into Lawrence Block I suspect that's what I need right now. Maybe I'm still recovering from being down in that well.

Thirteenth Night was a lot of fun, seeing old buds like Sir Toby (My high school did Twelfth Night while I was there). The projection of the story years into the future was interesting. I enjoyed Feste's narration.

I started Realms Unreel, which appears to be at least my third self-published book this year. The beginning is a bit slow, but it morphs into an interesting account of a young woman who is immersed in the world of the alternet, which was created because of the problems we see with the internet. The world of user experience is king here, and we see some of the development of new tools and domains. I'm curious to see how she will tie it back to the frame tale.

I was reading Greetings from Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer, based on seeing it described by richardderus, mckait, and others, but I decided not to take it into the nursing home I was visiting over the weekend. It's off to a promising start and I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

Also just found out that I'll be getting an ER copy of Lee Smith's latest, which is exciting. Finishing these that I've started and getting Lee's new one will keep me from wondering what to read for a while, at least till my library holds, like The Martian, start showing up.

I finished Realms Unreel. It was quite good in stretches and pretty good overall. Not much of a resolution; the story is continued in another volume. I'm not going to search it out right now.

Also finished Greetings from Jamaica... Wish You Were Queer. It was a lot of fun, and a little different from my usual reads. I'm not quite as enthusiastic as those who have posted reviews, but I definitely enjoyed it.

And the library has finally come through with The Martian. I just took a quick peek before Castle last night. The first sentence gets it off to an interesting start.

I loved The Martian - great humor, quick, fun read, all the Right Stuff.

>91 Jim53: & >92 JannyWurts: Stop! LOL
Humor you say?
Blast...

I'm on the OverDrive waiting list for the e-book. Goodness knows how long that will take.

The Martian has been sneaking higher and higher up my 'must read PDQ' stack, past all the other contenders.

>94 SylviaC: As of about 4:17 PM (EST) today, so am I.

Aquaman! Disco! The Ropers! Enjoying the hilarious choices of Mark's fellow crew members.

Finished The Martian while traveling. I would say Weir's big accomplishment is maintaining the tone of the book through all the trials and tribulations. All the McGyvering was well done, although I could have done with a little bit less of it in the middle. And I didn't really need to hear the very end of Johanssen's conversation with her dad. But Weir does a great job of showing the frantic work of the NASA folks as well as Mark's continued ability to shrug and keep going in the face of setbacks. Lots of fun. Much of, if not quite all, the RS. Four stars.

Now I'm eager to hear what others are saying... will check your threads but please comment here too!

Last night I started Living with a Wild God. So far she's setting the stage by discussing her childhood, which included alcoholic parents and lots of moving around. As another person who is, as the philosophers say, exploring the great WTF, I'm very interested in reading about her mystical experience and her attempts to make sense of things.

>99 Jim53: I heard an interview with the author just a few days ago on NPR--Monday, I believe. If you're interested, I can probably produce a link. It was very interesting to hear her talk about that mystical experience that occurred at the age of 16 or 17 and answer questions about it.

>100 Meredy: Thanks, Meredy! I searched and found this:
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/06/tom_frank_interviews_barbara_ehrenreich_youre_th...
and this:
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/08/300520210/a-nonbeliever-tries-to-make-sense-of-the...
These are from April. If you have a different one I'd love to hear it.

Here's the one I was thinking of:
http://www.ttbook.org/book/our-minds-barbara-ehrenreich-and-living-wild-god
I heard it on Monday the 19th. Apparently it was recorded last Friday, the 16th.

Finished Living with a Wild God and had mixed reactions. She provides a lot of autobiographical detail, which was often interesting, but she spends less time that I hoped for explicating her thinking about the Other. I'm wondering ow about going back and re-reading some of the mystics, to see if I'm more ready to appreciate what they're offering.

>103 Jim53: Who's on your list, Jim?

>104 Meredy: The main ones that I remember reading are Teilhard and Eckhart. I also want to broaden out beyond my prior education. I've heard some interesting things about Sufism, and I know very little about any form of Buddhism, so there's plenty of room for expansion. I definitely welcome recommendations from anyone!

>105 Jim53: Some years back I took a brief course called something like "The Wisdom Traditions" with Jacob Needleman at U.C. Berkeley Extension. It had a very interesting reading list that included Eckhardt, along with selections from Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and other traditions. I think I may still have most of those works on a single bookshelf. Shall I look them up?

I've also done a fair amount of reading of Zen literature, and here--truly--is one of my favorites (if I can even speak of favorites in this context without doing a disservice to the practice). I know that others around here are better read in this field than I am, but I wouldn't mind sharing some suggestions if you're interested.

>106 Meredy: Thanks, Meredy! I found a copy of Zen to Go on eBay and ordered it. Sounds like the sort of intro that might fit well into my attempts to calm down my sometimes-frantic life. I think you can have favorites just about anywhere except among your children, although that might be my ignorant western sensibilities ;-)

I'd be glad to hear more about the course that you took and the books involved. I've heard of DT Suzuki and wondered whether he would be an accessible starting point. But it appears that you have some works by a different Suzuki. Do you remember any particularly striking reading that you did then?

Yesterday I started The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which is supposed to be a classic mystery from the early 70s. The first few chapters haven't excited me, but the style is interesting. Most of the story is told through dialogue, often involving the recounting of prior conversations. For some reason Higgins doesn't use Coyle's name in describing the scenes; he's always "the stocky guy." It's certainly intriguing enough to keep me reading.

>53 Jim53: Great! Do read the introduction, and not just once. It was the last paragraph of that that whetted my appetite and led to my seeking out my first zendo.

Having preferences, wanting one thing above another, liking this and disliking that, are things that students of Zen work to overcome through detachment. It's an extension of the Four Noble Truths.

A very good starting point is Suzuki-roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I once bought about a half dozen copies of that in order to give them to people who asked to borrow mine (which was annotated with personal reflections and which never came back after one lending); I have one left. That Suzuki is Shunryu Suzuki, who founded San Francisco Zen Center and has a considerable legacy in the Bay Area and around the country. "Roshi" is a title of honor for a master or teacher, and I never think of him without it.

Another good source on Buddhism is What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula. And of course there's the Dhammapada, which, like so many other things, looks simpler than it is. When it comes to Zen in particular, I can think of many.

I'll put together a little list for you and come back, rather than just scattering thoughts as they come to me.

Finished and reviewed The Friends of Eddie Coyle. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them. The technique of using lots of dialog to tell the story was interesting, but the dialog didn't really characterize the speakers in any meaningful way, with the possible exception of Dave the cop. Higgins shows us the unhappiness of the criminals (basically everyone in the book), and it's clear that none of Eddie's "friends" are worthy of the name. The ending is quite predictable, and there really isn't anything for the reader to do except to be thankful not to be living that kind of life, or to have friends like that. I need to go read something more cheerful.

>109 Meredy: Meredy, thanks very much for all your contributions on this subject. I'll be delighted to receive a list, although I think getting started with Zen to Go and maybe Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind will keep me going for a while, so there's certainly no rush.

>110 Jim53: I've just reread Zen to Go from cover to cover, including the bibliography. I'm remembering now (from my first reading 20 years ago) that the list of sources in the back was a set of pointers for me. Many of my first readings in Zen came from that list. As usual when I'm on a subject, I follow trails, and reference lists are a great resource for that.

This little book could be compared to a Picasso line drawing. How easy it is to declare it simple and trivial and turn away. But every line from the lips of a master has a meaning and purpose. Among the many lines quoted here--not all from masters, to be sure--are some that stayed with me and continued and continue to teach me.

One of the arresting phenomena of perception is the experience of coming back to the same reading after a passage of time and having the sensation that it has changed. The same book has sat unmoving on my shelf. My bookmark may still be tucked between its pages. My notes may be in the margins or on the back flyleaf. Yet it seems different, even new. That's a measure of what's changed in me.

And here, Jim, is an example. (I apologize if I'm going on too long.) This is transcribed from The Little Zen Companion, another easy-to-overlook compilation that I have found so very rich.

A man walking across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

The first time I read that Zen parable, I reacted with an utterly baffled "What?" It made so little sense to me that I wondered if there were something wrong with the text.

When I came back to it some years later, the sense of it was so plain that I thought I must have been out of my mind to miss it. Now I think that if I could just learn to live by that parable, it would be enough for this lifetime.

I knocked off The Burglar in the Library for my library mystery group. It seemed a bit bloated compared to the two prior Bernies that I read; he's got some clever metafictive stuff going on, but I'm afraid it comes at the expense of the usual fun that this series usually provides.

Zen to Go arrived yesterday and I read the introduction. Tonight I'm going to reread it and then read the first chapter. I'm not entirely sure whether it will be good bedtime reading; time will tell.

Struggling a bit with Zen to Go, but then I pretty much expected to.

Not a literary note, but RIP to Don Zimmer, a true baseball lifer, whom I saw play as a member of the truly dreadful expansion Senators in the early early 60s. (Note to Paul Simon: it should have been "Where have you gone, Harmon Killebrew, a lonely city turns its eyes to you..."

Yes, RIP to Don. :o/

I've been reading Hubbert and Lil: Partners in Crime and not really getting into it. Doesn't seem to compare with Casey or the dead detective. But I'll plug away a little longer before I give it up.

I hung in there with Partners in Crime and it improved enough that I finished it. There aren't any reviews so I'll add one soon when I have a bit more time. Time will be in short supply, though, because the library finally got to my name on the list for Capital in the Twenty-First Century. I swear my car was tilting all the way home from the library, with the book overbalancing my own substantial frame.

Jim, as best I can reconstruct it from memory and what I see in my bookcase, this was the reading list for Jacob Needleman's 1991 course called "In Search of Wisdom" at U.C. Berkeley Extension in San Francisco:

Dhammapada
Tao Te Ching - Lao-Tsu
Flight of the Eagle - Krishnamurti
Book of John
Book of Job?
Meister Eckhardt (selections) (touchstone isn't right)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Suzuki
Legend of the Baal-Shem - Martin Buber
Upanishads (selections)?
Bhagavad-Gita
Open Secret - Rumi

The class, the readings, and the discussions had a tremendous impact on me, one that I still feel to this day.

I might have part of that reading list mixed up with the readings for a course I took later with Huston Smith, but the point is that they are all worthy inclusions on a list of wisdom teachings and are all to some degree accessible to a lay reader.

I read some of them in several translations. In general, with things such as the Dhammapada, I made an effort to find at least one very beautiful, poetic translation that could convey the spirit of it and another as literal--even academic--as possible so I could grapple with the meaning of the words and ideas. Using two or three translations side by side has always proved enlightening to me.

Meredy, thanks so much for this list. I see that my library has Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, so I plan to pick that up after a short trip. I'm currently re-reading Aging as a Spiritual Practice, in which Richmond mentions meeting Suzuki. It's an interesting contrast with my other current read, which is my newest Early Review selection, Cop Town, a noirish police story set in 70s Atlanta.

Finished Cop Town and reviewed it. The description of a police department in Atlanta in the 1970s is depressing. The story, which focuses on the emergence of a couple of female officers, is pretty satisfying as a noir, but nothing special as far as characters.

Drove to Maine and back to drop my sweetie off on the AT. This is the final year of her hike. While waiting for her one day I finished off A Case of Two Cities, which was odd but interesting. The Chinese detective reflects frequently about the political situation, and relates many incidents to poems or old stories. Some of his conversations stray into "As you know, Bob" territory, seemingly there primarily to educate the reader rather than to move the story along, but overall the tone makes it an interesting variant on the detective story. It's the fourth of a series, which I picked up at a used book store; I don't know how the experience would be different if I had read its predecessors.

I've been re-reading Aging as a Spiritual Practice in small chunks and getting a lot more out of it than I did the first time. I'm trying to do some of the practices that he recommends and reflect on it at the beginning and end of the day.

I've also been reading Molly Fox's Birthday, a very well written novel by the Irish writer Deirdre Madden. A playwright reflects on her relationships with a couple of friends, including the stage actress Molly Fox. There is a lot about the presentation of the self in the acting context, which I assume is also intended to apply to everyday life. I'm nearing the middle and am captivated.

>121 Jim53: Jim, has she completed the trail a bit each year then? Kudos to her!

>121 Jim53: yes, Clam, she started ten summers ago in Georgia. As a college professor, now retired, she had the opportunity to knock off a couple hundred miles each summer, and is going for her longest section of all this year. It's a pretty awesome feat. This will be the longest we've been apart in 36 years of marriage, and I already miss her terribly. Ah well, solace in books...

Hope you read A Walk in the Woods in her absence. :o)
*hugs*

>123 Jim53: That is very impressive! You can always chat with us on LT when you're feeling lonely. :)

Inspired by seeing others' acquisitions in honor of their thingaversaries, and having missed mine last month, I picked up a few used goodies this weekend:

Signposts in a Strange Land - I enjoy Percy a lot, and I couldn't resist after seeing it includes a brief piece about A Canticle for Leibowitz.
The Water Room - I have been enjoying some of the mysteries that I've read lately that feature senior sleuths, so I'll try another.
The Fourth Bear - Jasper Fforde's second nursery crimes fable.
Money to Burn - I've read and enjoyed all the Casey Jones mysteries but didn't have a copy of this one.
Southern Discomfort - Another NC writer. I enjoyed the first of these and have the third, so now I can continue the series in order.
Tigana - My wife and I have about worn out our ancient MM paperback of this, so I grabbed a trade pb that's in good shape. I was really looking for a new copy of Lions, but this is a good find too.

I finished Molly Fox's Birthday, which might have been the best book I've read so far this year. More after I've digested it a bit.

Belated HAPPY THINGAVERSARY!

Thank you, Peter.

Looking back at the first half of the year, I see that I read fewer books in 2Q (17) than in 1Q (21), probably because of all that time I spent down in the well. I also didn't count a coupe of books on which I spent a bunch of time but plan to come back to, such as Conundrums. Here are the stats:

39 books read
7 non-fiction
32 fiction, 19 of them mysteries
13 by women, 26 by men
7 for book clubs
3 Early Reviewers
7 LT book bullets

My favorites in 2Q were Molly Fox's Birthday, Aging as a Spiritual Practice (a reread), Crooked letter, Crooked Letter, and The Martian.

>128 Jim53: Keeping track of book bullets--that's interesting. I hadn't thought to note that. At a quick count, I'd say about 30 of the 47 books I've finished so far this year were LT book bullets (if you count books in a series where the series itself was a bullet, such as Brother Cadfael). I wonder what on earth I'd be reading if I weren't collecting recommendations here.

>129 Meredy: LT is certainly a fertile source of ideas. I've taken more than seven bullets this year, but several are still on my list at the library or internet searches. Keeping up with two monthly book clubs adds to the list, as does trying to get through the piles I've accumulated over the years, keep up with favorite authors, etc.

Wow. I just finished a wonderful book, Barbara Brown Taylor's Learning to Walk in the Dark (click the link to see my review). It really speaks to my spiritual condition in a deep way, including some issues I have with the Friends. It's a wonderful complement to my recent reading of Richmond and Ehrenreich and points me in new directions.

>131 Jim53: And onto the wishlist that goes. Sounds intriguing. I call the path I am on at the moment the "wilderness," knowing at some point I will return, but not the same person I was as when I went into it. I didn't enter this willfully, and so I believe that it is meant to be, but have no clue yet why. It's kind of exciting to know there is work being done, but not knowing what the result will be. Like a surprise remodel. Thanks for the recommendation.

>131 Jim53: Thank you for that recommendation. I'm an atheist myself, but I remain interested in (some) discussions of spiritual matters and am an admirer of a number of writers on spiritually related topics. I've also attended quite a few workshops given by Jonathan Young, psychologist and founding curator of the Joseph Campbell Archives, whom I've heard quote Campbell as saying, "The gold is always found in the shadows."

I've thumbed your review and added the title to my wishlist.

Read A Drop of the Hard Stuff for my library reading group. This year someone picked mysteries of different types and this is the choice for hardboiled. It's the 17th in Lawrence Block's series featuring Matthew Scudder, and I have not read any of its predecessors. Perhaps my experience of it would have been different with some prior exposure. In this one, Scudder, who retired from NYPD after a shot that he fired at a criminal killed a little girl, is nearing the end of his first year of sobriety after years of drinking. He runs into a childhood friend who lived a life of petty crime, and before too long the friend is murdered. Scudder investigates, first because he's hired by the friend's AA sponsor, and eventually because he fears for his life.

The book moves quite slowly. It's typical of hardboiled crime novels that I've read, in that it's told in the first person, but the narrator reveals very little of his reasoning or motivations. He just reports on what he saw and what he did. Scudder's fight against alcohol adds some interest and is almost the only real characterization of him for those of us who haven't read the preceding volumes. The solution was interesting, but Block seemingly felt obliged to provide some karmic justice in an epilog, which didn't improve the story for me.

I started The Snow Leopard and am finding it tough going. This might be more because of my state of mind and recent lack of sleep than because of any particular issues with the book itself.

I found The snow leopard hard to get into because of the author's self-centreness and navel-gazing. It got much better once he paid more attention to the landscape when they enter Inner Dolpo. So it may not be you after all ....

>136 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, it's good to know others have a similar experience. I've stepped back from The Snow Leopard for the moment. A few nights ago I wanted something familiar to read at bedtime and picked up The Folk of the Air. I ended up reading it all the way through over the last few days. Great mix of silliness, mystery, etc., and probably my favorite Beagle. His books are somewhat more different from one another than some authors' books are.

I gave up on Matthiessen for now; there were people waiting for it at the library who would probably be more ready for it than I was. I had seen several mentions of Bruno, Chief of Police, so I gave that a try. It was kinda slow, which wasn't bad for how I've been doing lately. It took me most of the book to see why people like him as a character, but he grew on me a bit.

Just placed a pre-order for Louise Penny's new one. We'll be going to McIntyre's in Fearrington to hear her. Anyone else? We enjoyed her a lot when we saw her in Raleigh last year.

>131 Jim53: I have been remiss in checking in with people, so this may seem terribly out-of-sync with what you're reading right now. But I have an enormous respect for Barbara Brown Taylor. She has a depth of wisdom about her that I find useful (if not always reassuring).

>140 jillmwo: Thanks for stopping by, Jill. I've been delinquent myself about getting around to others' journals. And comments on anything are always welcome. I, too, am very impressed with BBT and am looking forward to tackling more of her books, probably in reverse order. I'm also eager for my wife and my sister to read Learning to Walk and discuss it with me. As you say, she's not always reassuring; she's on the challenge end of the challenge-support continuum for me. But that's good--I need a good kick from time to time.

I knocked off a couple of mysteries recently while travelling. I grabbed Scene of the Climb because of a positive review, and the thought that my wife the hiker might enjoy it. Generally underwhelming, as I wrote in my review. Also Southern Discomfort, the second of local author Margaret Maron's Deborah Knott series. I'm not jumping-up-and-down excited about this series, but Maron's prose is easily digested and her characters, if not terribly subtle, have their endearing quirks.

I'm in the middle of The Given Day, and it's wonderful. I tried it once before and couldn't get into it, but now I can't figure out why that would have been. Excellent characters facing tough situations.

I couldn't make myself put down The Given Day last night, so I finished it in the wee hours of this morning. Wonderful novel about race, class, policemen, organized labor, baseball, corruption, but most of all integrity, set mostly in Boston in 1918-19. Lehane weaves stories of several protagonists, linking them effortlessly, and providing the sort of tenuous resolutions that combine realism and hope. It's interesting to see how he uses Babe Ruth as a character throughout: he's not exactly a Greek chorus, commenting on the action, but aspects of his story play into the book's themes and sub-plots, and he gives us the view from the uneducated bleachers. I see there is a sequel, so it jumps to the top of the to-be-acquired list.

I have an excuse. I'm traveling and am getting through the books that I brought with me more quickly than expected. That's the only reason why I took a break from shopping for my granddaughter's birthday and picked up three books for a dollar at a thrift shop:
Taft by Ann Patchett
The House on the Strand by Daphne DuMaurier
At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien

And why the heck can't I find a play tent that isn't infected with garish My Little Pony images?!!

I thought The Secret Life of Bees would be a complete change from The Given Day. It is radically different in tone and voice, but the books share a common theme of race relations in America in times of social change. I enjoyed Lily's narrative voice, and I thought the changes in her feelings and outlook were realistic. I enjoyed the women's Mariology and the linking of her story to their history. Most of the characters had interesting or entertaining quirks that helped to depict them. The book's big coincidence is a bit much to swallow, even with a dollop of honey, but I read it as more of a fable or tall tale than a strictly realistic novel.

Back to The Fourth Bear.

I finished The Fourth Bear. After a slow start, it was fun, with the usual bits of nursery-crime silliness. I particularly enjoyed Ashley and Mary, and Jack's having to face up to being a Person of Dubious Reality. The mystery brings together a lot of diverse bits of evidence and creative reasoning. The occasional metafictive comments by the characters are sometimes quite good, as are the elaborate build-ups to bad puns, for those who like that kind of stuff. These aren't as good as the earlier Thursday Next novels, but they're entertaining.

>147 Jim53: Now somewhere I read that Nursery Crime books were written while he was still thinking about writing Thursday Next. So maybe they're not as good because they were "practice runs"?

>148 hfglen: Could be. I hadn't heard that, but of course that doesn't mean it isn't true. Couldn't get published till The Eyre Affair (much his best book, IMNAHO), and then after that success they asked what else he had in a drawer...

Reading The House on the Strand. I was very surprised to see that it was published in 1969. Both because I didn't realize that DdM had lived that long (1989, actually), and because the style and tone are very different from other books that I read from the end of the sixties. I'm just a few chapters in.

More importantly, my wife and I have returned from a triumphant reunion in Maine, where she recently completed her ten-year project of hiking the Appalachian Trail, all 2175 miles of it from Georgia to Maine. I can't begin to express how proud of her I am, or how glad I am to be back home with her. Along the way we saw #2 son, who summitted Mt. Katahdin with her, #1 son plus wife and our granddaughter, and my parents. Ready to settle back in here for a while.

>150 Jim53: Congratulations to your wife.

>150 Jim53: That is a major achievement! Congratulations!

Will she start in the opposite direction next year?

That is an impressive achievement!

>150 Jim53: I don't remember caring much for The House on the Strand, but I can't remember why, it's been so long since I've read it.

Your wife is amazing! You are too, for supporting her. :)

Agreeing with >155 MrsLee: I didn't either, Jim. My reasons are listed here in my review.

Congratulations to your wife, and to you, too. I'm sure your part was significant.

>151 pgmcc: >152 hfglen: >154 SylviaC: >155 MrsLee: >156 Meredy: Thanks.

>153 suitable1: No!

Re: House on the Strand: it's quite an oddity. Perhaps it's because my only prior experience of DdM is Rebecca, written thirty years earlier, but my sense of the book is that it's from an earlier time. Hard to imagine that it was written in the same year as The Left Hand of Darkness, several years after Dune, etc. The feel is more that of Out of the Silent Planet crossed with a tale of medieval jockeying among the minor nobility. Beyond all that, I don't particularly like anybody in it. I haven't abandoned it yet, but each time I pick it up I'm looking at the shelves to see if anything else is calling to me.

>157 Jim53: That's an interesting point. Just being in the times doesn't necessarily mean we're up with the times, though, especially if we're older.

If I were to publish a novel this year and it were by some miracle to last half a century, readers in 2064 would probably say it didn't sound much like 2014--not like whatever is the voice of 2014 now. What would it sound like? Probably like a blend of my youthful worldview (by then a hundred years behind) and what I've read since then, which includes literature that goes back a couple of centuries, and yet with enough 21st-century awareness (technology, world events, social changes, language) that it couldn't have been written earlier.

>157 Jim53: I see what you're doing. You're using reverse psychology on me. You are saying House on the Strand is not great knowing that I haven't read a bad du Maurier book and I will go out and buy it to see if I think it is bad or not. Well I have put it on my wish list. Yes, I did see it in a bookshop today but I was strong. I did not buy it. I kept calm. I steadied my breathing. I bought a different book instead and walked surefootedly from the shop. I think I can get it cheaper somewhere else.

>159 pgmcc: definitely not this time. I wish you were local so I could just hand it to you (and so we could have a couple of good long chats, too). I've given up on HotS for now and am reading Work as a Spiritual Practice. I have some significant challenges in dealing with my current development team, and hope of moving to a much more attractive group, so it seems like a good time to learn some ways of thinking about things. I was very impressed with the other book of Richmond's that I re-read earlier this year.

>159 pgmcc:, >160 Jim53: Read The Scapegoat instead.

>161 Meredy: It appears that Peter has already read it, or else he's written quite a review out of thin air! I'll keep an eye out for it.

>162 Jim53: You're right--I'd forgotten. Well, then.

>162 Jim53: >163 Meredy:
Meredy, you hit me with the Scapegoat bullet some time ago. I enjoyed it a lot and lent it to my son's French teacher who also enjoyed it. She pointed me towards The Glass Blowers which is a period piece based on the lives of du Maurier's ancestors who lived in France. I have the book but have not read it yet.

>164 pgmcc: The Glass Blowers is great to read after The Scapegoat, you can see her inspiration for the novel from her family's story.

>165 MrsLee:
I love it MrsLee. We are bound to hit someone in the crossfire. ;-)

>166 pgmcc: Oof. Thanks, you just did. Ducked it before, but not this time.

Finished and reviewed Lost, which I liked quite well. Will look for more of his. Back to Lewis Richmond for a bit, then I'll be picking up The Bridge for my meetup group. I'm curious to see whether Veranda Tadsworth appears.

It appears that the bullet passed through cleanly. I've got The Scapegoat on my list too.

Work as a Spiritual Practice hasn't spoken to me the way that Aging as a Spiritual Practice did. I'll probably give it another look later.

I've been reading slowly through The Bridge by Doug Marlette, who used to write the Kudzu comic strip. It moves quite slowly, with what I'd call an excess of detail (for example in conversations), but having accepted that it's that kind of read, I'm enjoying it pretty well. I'm into the second portion, where the narrator's grandmother, a worse-than-cantankerous ninety-year-old in the first section, is a young mother working in a cotton mill and dealing with a strike and harsh reprisals.

Finished and reviewed The Bridge. Many of the characters are pretty interesting, and his blending of the present with the area's history of labor strife works well. The ending wraps everything up almost too neatly, but ultimately it works. I'll be interested to hear the discussion in our meetup group.

Started the third in the Deobrah Knott series by another local author, Margaret Maron, Shooting at Loons.

Lovely time last night, seeing Louise Penny speak at McIntyre's in Fearrington and getting a personalized copy of her new one, The Long Way Home.

We flew to Houston and back this weekend to attend my nephew's wedding. Great fun. On the way down I read this month's book for my library mystery group. The Detroit Electric Scheme is set in Motown in the days when electric cars were still competing with gasoline-powered vehicles, around 1910. Will Anderson, the son of the owner of one of the electric-car companies, finds a former acquaintance dead and becomes caught up in trying to solve the crime to clear himself. Johnson hints repeatedly at various secrets, which are unsurprising when revealed. The writing is clunky, the characters (with one well-done exception) unappealing, the plot all too easily guessed. Don't think I'll be pursuing this series.

On the way back today I read Jonathan Carroll's Sleeping in Flame, an early novel of his that I picked up on sale recently. It starts off pretty normally and ends up pretty weird, which is par for the course with Carroll. I found the narrator appealing and enjoyed Carroll's approach. He seemed to have difficulty wrapping up the story, or maybe I just had some trouble apprehending his intentions. I didn't like it quite as well as some of his later works, but still quite a fun and stimulating read.

Getting started today on the new Gamache, The Long Way Home. So far, so fabulous.

Finished The Long Way Home. Very good but not her best. Review tomorrow I hope.

Finally managed to concoct a review of The Long Way Home. While wonderful in many ways, it had some problems that kept it from being quite as good as the last couple in the series.

I also finished Margaret Maron's Shooting at Loons, which I'd been reading at work for a while. It's the third in her Deborah Knott series. In this one Deborah, now a judge, fills in for an ailing colleague at the NC beach and runs into problems among commercial fishermen, longtime residents, and new developers. We get what I'd call a welcome break from Deborah's extended and intrusive family. The novel meanders around, and we don't see anyone working to solve the murder that Deborah witnessed. I was partially right in guessing the culprit. The book ends with Deborah facing an interesting ethical dilemma. I'd give it three and a quarter stars if I could make the image come out right.

Just back from a wonderful week of visiting the state of Washington. Attended a wedding in Seattle, spent a couple of days at Mt. Rainier National Park, and had a wonderful visit with some friends from grad school who live on the coast. The beginning of the trip was almost disastrous: our flight was cancelled, and our re-routed flight was delayed, so that we arrived at our Seattle hotel about 2:15 on the morning of the wedding! Fortunately things improved from there and our trip home today was pretty trouble-free.

Got a lot of reading done, especially on that long first day. I was quite disappointed in The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love... lots of melancholy, lots of explicit sex, but not much growth in the characters or story. I followed it up with Whose Body, the first Wimsey, which I had never read, and which was fun. Finished both of those last Friday. Then I read Dennis Lehane's follow up to The Given Day, Live by Night, which was not quite as good as TGD but was pretty enjoyable.

While in Washington I picked up a used copy of Seattle author Michael Gruber's first book, Tropic of Night, based on a recommendation by Salem Macknee, who writes a monthly column of mystery reviews for the local paper. Whoa! This is powerful stuff. When a grisly murder of a pregnant woman happens in Miami, homicide cop Jimmy Paz investigates, while ex-anthropologist Jane Doe realizes that her sorcerer ex-husband must be involved. Lots of detail about magical practices and relations among Cubans in Miami at the turn of the 21st century. Jane and Jimmy are both interesting in different ways.

phooey.

?

Yes. What >178 Meredy: said.

>178 Meredy: >179 jillmwo: Thanks for asking ;-) I was trying to link to a picture that I had posted on facebook. Tried a couple of tags but couldn't make it work. So I erased the post in the hope that LT would delete it for me. No luck and I didn't have time to play around more. Now I see that under More I can delete the post. Always more to learn.

I've gotten bogged down in Tropic of Night--there's a lot of backstory, some of which is quite interesting and some clearly necessary, but overall I'd say there's too much. I'm still reading, but with less excitement than I was feeling after the first 150 pages. I also had a small oral surgery today (yanking a tooth in prep for an implant), so I'm having some trouble concentrating, although my wife insists that I seem no less coherent than usual...

>180 Jim53: You do know about the "fancy things" post, don't you?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/177029#

I positively cannot remember the syntax of even the simplest of the links, so I keep that link on my own profile page and copy and paste it every time I want to link to something. Just paste the IMG SRC picture link into your message box and then replace the part inside the quotes with your picture's address. You should see it in the preview box, and if it's too big you can size it down using the height and/or width specs.

>181 Meredy: Thank you for the tip. I now have the link on my profile. I have used it before but each time I have spent time searching for the thread.

>180 Jim53: Sympathy for the mouth. Good luck with the implant.

>181 Meredy: I have that topic starred, and i consulted it again, but I think there's something odd about how pictures are stored on facebook. I'll have to download the picture and load it into my collection here.

>182 pgmcc: Thanks, Peter. I learned something interesting: they had to build the bone up a bit because the implant won't go a deep as the rather long roots from the tooth that they extracted. I asked what they used and got the very casual reply, "Oh, it's cadaver bone." So I've got another person riding around in my jaw now.

I slept a good bit yesterday and had trouble falling asleep, so I finished off Tropic of Night. It's a very interesting story that is undermined a bit by the way he presents some lengthy backstory segments, in the form of journals. Some of the information from the journals is critical to understanding what's going on, and some gives a little depth to the characters, but somehow I would have trimmed it down. I really liked the narrator, an anthropologist who gets involved with African sorcery. I will look for more of Gruber's books, after getting through some high-priority reads.

The authors of two of my favorite mystery series, Julia Spencer-Fleming and Louise Penny, have both said enthusiastic things about Deborah Crombie in the last week or so. I'm going to start Crombie's series tonight with A Share in Death.

>183 Jim53: "Oh, it's cadaver bone."
That does seem a very casual introduction to someone who will be in your mouth from now on! I mean, you should at least be on a first name basis! Hope quick healing comes your way.

>184 MrsLee: Thanks, MrsLee. I agree that an introduction would have been more proper.

I breezed through A Share in Death. Crombie's style is light and she makes good use of the almost-closed-room scenario, with two murders occurring at a time-share resort. Her main purpose seems to have been to introduce Duncan Kincaid and to a lesser extent, Gemma James. It's interesting that she chooses to introduce them in this alternate setting, rather than at their "day jobs" at Scotland Yard. I'm curious about how things will proceed with and between these two. Other characters were deftly sketched even when they had fairly minimal substance. I'll grab another of these pretty soon.

I joined in with other Durhamites to read Representative John Lewis's March: Book One, a graphic "novel" describing Lewis's upbringing, his exposure to non-violent resistance, the lunch-counter sit-ins, SNCC, and other events leading to the civil rights movement. It's interesting to see what can be done with the graphic format. The book is a nice brief presentation of some key ideas. I plan to attend some of the local events related to this, although I think I'll skip the dessert fund-raiser. I would join a small symbolic march on Saturday morning from the library to a civil-rights-themed mural in town, but I committed to work at the library book sale during that time. Oh well, if you're nearby, come buy a book!

For another change of pace, I've just started Something Rich and Strange.

I finished the McKillip. It was a bit of a disappointment; the characters were vague and their choices seemed to be made with minimal consideration. She did her usual good job of blurring the line between the sea and shore worlds, but this one just didn't grab me.

I decided to revisit The Tao of Physics, which I haven't looked at in many years. It's almost forty years old, and I'll be curious to see how it holds up. I suspect the insights that he cites happening in modern physics haven't altered the general public's worldview as much as I recall him hoping. I might have to look for a more recent update on some of the material too.

Continuing my re-read of Capra, but I also picked up a few things at the library that I'd seen mentioned here and elsewhere. Pretty sure it was Clam who mentioned enjoying Penny Marshall's memoir, My Mother Was Nuts. I started looking at that and am enjoying it.

I'm thinking of trying to get to Malice Domestic next Spring and Bouchercon, which is in Raleigh next fall. So I decided to catch up a bit on some of the guests of honor. I've read NC author Sarah Shaber's Simon Said series, but I hadn't seen her WWII series, so I grabbed a copy of Louise's War, the first in that series. I can't remember if someone here mentioned it, or maybe someone at my library mystery group. I also worked at the library's fall sale today, which of course put me in a position to check out the inventory. Pretty disappointing overall; I did grab a fe of Sara Paretsky's early VI Warchawski mysteries. She's getting a lifetime award at Malice this year. So I've got several things queued up, but I'm not looking too far ahead.

Finished My Mother Was Nuts, which was funny in spots, sad in others. I was impressed with Marshall's ability to make so many friends and sympathize with many different people. Interesting to see how casual and matter-of-fact she was about trying various recreational chemicals. I hadn't known that she and Art Garfunkel had been an item for a while. Not sure I'll make any use of that particular datum, but it's sort of interesting.

I've decided to try NaNoWriMo this year. So I will prolly be reading less for a bit. Currently looking at Writing Down the Bones, which has an interesting Zen feel to it. At bedtime I'm reading Louise's War, by local writer Sarah Shaber.

>NaNoWriMo is a kick. I did it a few years ago. Natalie Goldberg's book comes highly recommended, too. Hope you have fun--and either lots of discretionary time or a great support system or both.

I do nanowrimo every year. It's a lot of fun.

>191 Meredy: >192 majkia: well, to start with, I've got encouraging buds on LT... and my wife is excited about my doing it, and willing to be a NaNoWidow for a month. Time is the biggest challenge, as I am still a wage slave, plus I'm not going to give up my volunteer project on Monday nights or bridge on Thursdays. But that leaves me three nights a week, plus weekends, minus whatever time I decide to spend with this delightful woman who lives in my house.

I finished Writing Down the Bones and took a lot of notes. Glad I read it because I like the different emphasis. I think it will be helpful for nano and beyond.

I finished Louise's War, which did a nice job of re-creating Washington, DC as the Americans debated and prepared for WWII. Louise is an interesting character; I'll probably look for the next one at some point.

Since I wasn't reading Goldman at bedtime, I borrowed a copy of 84 Charing Cross Road and polished it off over two evenings. I found it cute, maybe even charming, and enjoyable, but I wasn't transported as some seem to have been. I've never seen the movie and am not sure how one films an epistolary novel. Could be fun. I will admit that I wasn't picturing Mrs. Robinson as I read.

I've been reading Katy Munger's Cast of Killers at work for a long time. Finally finished it yesterday. This is the second of her series of cozies set in Hell's Kitchen. Not fabulous, and a bit bloated, but it had some very nice touches. I might have enjoyed it more in bigger chunks. The third one is on my list for after November.

Interesting bit of synchronicity, or maybe just coincidence, recently: I read an article about Erik Spoelstra, the coach of the NBA's Miami Heat, who I think is one of the most interesting thinkers in the game. He talked a lot about this book called Mindset. I was telling my wife (a child development specialist) about it but couldn't remember the name of the book, and she said, "Oh, that sounds like Carol Dweck." She had heard about it through her professional connections. So I bought a copy to share but haven't started it yet.

Started Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind today. Very dense in strong ideas; I'll have to read it in small chunks and possibly do a good bit of re-reading. Might decide I need my own copy.

I found it that way as well. But very worthwhile!

Yep, after 20 pages I have no doubt of its worthwhilitude. However, I'm going to have to put it, as well as my bedtime read, Scribe (which brings up The Tempest and all sorts of other choices, but not Bob Ryan), aside for a bit, in order to read my newly arrived ER book, The Happiest People in the World, which I want to read in the days remaining before nanowrimo starts.

Finished and reviewed The Happiest People in the World. Somewhat entertaining but nothing special. I guess there is a certain appeal to his style of tragicomic absurdity, but nobody will mistake him for Beckett or Vonnegut.

Been plugging along in The Tao of Physics in the car, in line at the DMV, and other brief opportunities. I finished the section where he gives brief overviews of the eastern religions, and am about to get into the part where he ties them together with the findings of modern physics. Will also get back to the book i had just started before my ER book arrived. But first, a visit from younger son and the kickoff party for nanowrimo.

I've knocked off a couple more of Deborah Crombie's Kincaid-James mysteries at bedtime. They don't provide the depth that you get with Penny or JS-F, but the characters do have something to them and they're very easy reading. Over 5100 words in the first two days of NaNo.

>200 Jim53: Over 5100 words in the first two days of NaNo.

Good for you! I made myself an OCDish little chart of the 30 days, showing what my word count had to be by the end of each day in order to make the goal. Getting ahead felt great. I remember my sense of triumph when, on day 26, I typed the 50,000th word (it was "said")—and then kept on going.

But how are you finding so much time for reading?

>201 Meredy: The NaNoRDU folks must have seen your chart--they handed out bookmarks with the list of "par" word counts for each day. I'm not really very far ahead; I'm not giving up my Monday-night volunteer commitment, so I'm not planning to write on Mondays--anything I do manage will be a bonus.

On reading: those are since 10/24 or so. I decided I can't sacrifice decent sleep habits for NaNo, at least not till later in the month, so it's off with the laptop by 10:00, and I generally get in a half hour of reading before going to sleep. I also took it with me on Friday evening, when I went out for a long dinner and some shopping to avoid the literally hundreds of trick-or-treaters who descend on our neighborhood from all over the area. My wife was off getting a grandma fix so I was on my own and didn't want to get home before 9:00. I know I won't keep up much regular reading as the month goes on; I'm even skipping my meetup group's discussion of Crossing to Safety in favor of a write-in next week. I would have loved to do a leisurely re-read, but the timing is wrong.

I admire your perseverance in working to make it through Nanowrimo and look forward to your posting of word counts as milestones!

Good luck with NaNoWriMo! My wife is doing that this month for the first time.

>203 jillmwo: and >204 Karlstar: Thanks! 7101 after today.

Jim, good luck to your wife! It's my first time too.

Passed 17K words yesterday: a third of the way there.

Have been reading The Whitefire Crossing in dribs and drabs at bedtime, based on seeing some positive comments on various threads. Almost halfway done, so I might even finish it before the end of the month. It hasn't really grabbed me very hard yet, but there are a couple of aspects that are just intriguing enough to keep me from giving up.

Now that I'm doing nano, and have almost no time to read, I'm suddenly acquiring books that demand to sit on the precarious summit of Mount Tooby. My recent ER win, The Boardwalk, just arrived; a friend who writes a mystery column sent me a copy of Once Upon a Lie, which my wife liked and is anxious for me to read so we can compare notes; and after last night's write-in at my local library, Judi Dench's And Furthermore just leaped off the sale rack and pleaded with me for a new home. How could I say no to a book by Eleanor Lavish? So some nice acquisitions to look forward to reading after I finish spewing out all these words.

Spew away! December is almost here and you can make that December readmo.

Still rooting for you from the sidelines! (I've never been brave enough to try NaNoWriMo.)

Thanks, Jill, I appreciate it. I haven't written much since Tuesday. First work, then bridge, then preparations for a party, then the party itself... now we'll see if i can write over 30K words in the second half of the month. Ah well. Other than the nights that I lost to work, everything else was more important than NaNo. We had a truly wonderful reunion/celebration last night of my wife's ten-year journey on the AT, with folks who had hiked with her in different years coming together. Tons of fun. Now I've let some ideas percolate and can get back to spewing out words.

I've finished a couple of books in the mean time, reading almost entirely at bedtime. I tried The Whitefire Crossing after seeing some positive reviews. It ended better than it started, but didn't do all that much for me. I'll look for another candidate to revisit the world of F&SF. I knocked off my ER book, The Boardwalk, very quickly--it was under 20K words. I didn't realize until I went to write my review that it's a Rapid Read, intended for ESLers and other adults who are learning to read. I've made a request in the ER group that such items be marked clearly--I certainly wouldn't have asked for it had I known. For what it is, I'd say it isn't bad, although I have next to no background with that sort of thing. There were several other books in that batch that I'd have loved to receive instead. Oh well. If that's the worst thing that happens this month, it will have been a great month!

One of my earliest musical favorites was R&B singer Jimmy Ruffin, who died yesterday.

On a lighter note, this looks entertaining: http://www.laweekly.com/publicspectacle/2014/11/18/12-princess-bride-secrets-spi...

NanoUpdate: I passed 36K words today, so I'm spewing out lots of words, but I'll still need a big finish. Last write-in tomorrow night (assuming I stop coughing enough to feel I can go), then five days without work. We'll be going out rather than cooking a big dinner on Thursday, and I'm not a football fan or a black Friday shopper, so I think this can still be done!

>212 Jim53: Hurray! Good going. You can make up the difference. Got a plot yet?

>213 Meredy: Thanks, Meredy. Oh yes. I have managed to create the first known fatal case of qwertyitis, and inflicted it onto a victim who is a melange of several unpleasant coworkers that I've had over the years. I know who did it, and why, and am currently focusing on red herrings. Eventually I'll have to get back to actually solving it, I suppose, but for now I'm more focused on spewing out scenes that occur to me, without stressing too much on whether they'll make the final cut. I've discovered some interesting things about some of my characters by just starting to type and seeing what comes out.

I also finished an actual book last night, reading one that is, the fourth of Deborah Crombie's Kincaid-James series, Mourn Not Your Dead. It had some interesting stuff, including some discomfort between her two lead characters, which is something I'm also doing. Like its predecessors, it's a comfortable bedtime read, with interesting characters and an adequate if not fabulous mystery. One thing I've noticed is that she has her characters go back and forth a lot between London and some rural locale, which reminded me that I could be showing my characters driving around the triangle and noticing (or not) the scenery. Interesting that Crombie, who lives in Texas, writes about Scotland Yard detectives.

Cheers and applause for the achievement of 36K! That's marvelous.

>215 jillmwo: Thanks, Jill! I love feeling supported. That's actually been one of the neat things about the Nano experience: all the other wrimos that I've met, along with our MLs (municipal liaisons--volunteer coordinators of activities for the region) have been wonderfully supportive of one another. Good reminder--I need to go spread a bit of encouragement in the NanoRDU forums before I retire.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope that you can spend time with people you care about, put aside at least some of your worldly cares, and feel some real love and gratitude! I am grateful for you!

Thanks to Jill, Jim, Jean, MrsLee, Meredy and others who offered moral support during November. Today I validated my 50,059-word novel. It's actually less than half a novel, I suspect, and that's even if I were to keep all of it, which definitely won't happen. But it was a very interesting and fun experience. It was great to see how I learned things about my characters in the course of writing about them. Also interesting to see how many opportunities there are to get caught up in finding just the right word. I think this was a great way to start, since the nano program encourages one to just get it down and turn down the voice of the inner editor for a while. Having this batch of material to start from is a great way to go. Now I have to remember the name of this wonderfully patient lady that lives here.

Oh, you made it! Hurray, hurray! Vicarious thrill here. Huge congratulations!



The process is like no other, and I feel sure it will change the way you read.

Congratulations!

>217 Jim53: Well done! That is something no one can take away from you now. Good luck with whatever you decide to do with the book from here on.

*waves of applause*

Seriously, good for you, @Jim5.

That is quite impressive!

Thank you all very much. There were a few days where it felt like work, but most of the time it was a lot of fun. I'm taking December off, to catch up on some reading and do a bunch of visiting, and then I'll have to decide on the pace at which I'll continue. Maybe a night a week or something like that. Having you guys saying encouraging things was definitely part of the fun.

Last night I finished Once Upon a Lie, a rather different sort of mystery. It's billed as a thriller but that seems like the wrong category. Has anyone else read it? I can't explain my serious misgivings without spoiling the book, but I'd be very interested to hear if others share them.

Started December with something a little different: Sights Unseen by local writer Kaye Gibbons. I haven't read her more popular books such as Ellen Foster, so I had no idea what to expect. I found this one a bit disappointing: she presents a girl's picture of her bipolar mother and the issues that her mother's intermittent mental illness cause in her family. There were moments of well drawn emotion, but I didn't get much sense of a story being told or a sequence of events. Maybe I missed it. Three stars.

>225 Jim53: For a strong portrayal of bipolar disorder, see He Wanted the Moon, a recent ER selection. Most of it is written by the patient himself, who happened to be a highly regarded physician. I gave it four stars (review).

Of the three of Gibbons' works that I have read, the one that left a trace in my memory personally was On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon which was something of a Civil War novel. The problem is that I can't really recall why. It might have been due to being in set in Charleston or it might have seemed more reasonable in its presentation of the southern views of the time.

Had a lovely trip to Maryland to help my sister celebrate a milestone birthday. Stopped by the Little Free Library of Twinbrook, run by our own SqueakyChu. Donated a few books and picked up a couple. Currently reading Mindset during the day and Dreaming of the Bones at bedtime.

Haven't been here much lately... too much going on in real life. Getting ready for a visit from both sons, one of whom is bringing his wife and daughter. Tons of fun choosing gifts for her this year. Also starting a new job, which is exciting and time-consuming.

I finished Dreaming of the Bones, which broke out of the template that had been used for the four prior Kincaid-James mysteries. This was mostly for the good, although I found myself wondering as I wandered through some scenes from various characters' viewpoints early on. But she pulled things together well and ended up taking a step forward IMHO.

Also completed my re-read of The Tao of Physics. Fascinating stuff; at some point I need to see how things have changed in the forty years since it was published. I've also dipped back into A Brief History of Time after we went with friends to see The Theory of Everything.

Still working my way through Mindset, and I was trying Moo, one of the two books that I picked up at SqueakyChu's little library, but my interest has waned. I've started The Word Exchange, by the daughter of some acquaintances of ours, and it's very promising.

We watched Love, Actually the other night, which is one of our Christmas rituals, but I have yet to re-read Gene Wolfe's shot story "La Befana," which I do every year.

Don't know how regularly I'll be on, so I'll take this opportunity to wish all of my visitors, as well as those dear to you, a peaceful and joyous season of whatever type you celebrate.

>229 Jim53: Merry holidays, Jim. I've missed your posts. Nice to know you've been having fun--a great reason to be elsewhere.

Happy holidays to you and yours! Always keeping an eye on your posts, >229 Jim53:

Happy end of year and see you in 2015!

>229 Jim53: The word exchange is on my TBR pile, so I hope you can give it a good report! Also interesting to hear that you have a connection to the author.

I hope 2015 gets off to a good start for you, and look forward to following your reading again next year.

Not much reading lately. I brought The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories along on our Christmas trip, in order to re-read "La Befana," and I ended up re-reading almost all of it. The title story is my favorite second-person story.

Still enjoying The Word Exchange. It has a really interesting play on short-term technological changes and how they affect us. I was slightly bummed when one chapter was an editorial about the dangers of various new things; it felt as if she didn't trust us to recognize this issue. Overall, though, it's a lot of fun. It would almost certainly crack my top ten list for this year if I were to finish it, which I suspect I won't.

2014 wasn't a stellar year for great reads; only one five-star read and three 4.5ers. But lots of quite good four-star books.

Two new acquisitions for my "bridge mystery" collection: I broke down and paid $12.00 for a copy of Anne Austin's Murder at Bridge, which I'd been hoping to find cheaper; and my daughter-in-law got me a copy of Merri Borkowski's The Bridge Murders. Those will go into the queue behind The Invention of Wings, which we're reading for our January book club meeting.

Also bought a late gift for my wife and myself: memberships to Malice Domestic in May and Bouchercon in October. This will be our first time at these. If you plan to attend either, let's set up an LT spot or something.

I enjoyed receiving cards from three LTers this year.

Best wishes to all for a happy new year!

The Word Exchange looks intriguing.

I agree. Intriguing, but also a bit dark...I will look forward to hearing more. BTW, so exciting to hear you and your wife are going to Malice!

>236 jillmwo: Thanks, Jill. Are you going too?

Here are some stats from 2014 that might be of interest only to me, but that's OK, because I'm one of my audiences ;-)

total 72 books

fiction 63
nonfiction 9

mysteries 39
F&SF 7
other fiction 17

female authors 35
male authors 37

book bullets 8

book clubs 10

ER 5