RidgewayGirl Reads in Munich, Part Two

Time for a new thread. Munich has been, so far, an interesting and entertaining place to live. I'm enjoying the chance to live in a big city (usually I'm in a very small city in SC), with the museums, people, events and sights that go along with that.

I plan to read ten books in ten categories, hoping to keep my categories proportional.

Currently Reading



About to Begin



Recently Acquired

Category One.

Short Stories



So this is a pretty picture of the Munich Altstadt with the Frauenkirche in the middle with the red roof and matching domed towers.

Look at that collection of beautiful buildings. So, short stories. Not a stretch at all!

1. Toronto Noir edited by Janine Armin
2. Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
3. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders
4. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Category two.



Books set in Europe

The Justizpalast is just off of Karlsplatz and makes me happy every time I see it, it's just so very European looking.

1.

Category three.



This is the Neue Justizpalast, which is right behind the old one.

MysteryCAT and Other Crime Novels

The MysteryCAT is a good way to focus my crime novel reading, but there'll be plenty of other mysteries read.

1. The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party by Alexander McCall Smith -- January -- Detective fiction
2. The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith -- February -- Mystery Series
3. Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman -- May -- Classic and Golden Age
4. Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

Category four.



Germany

This is Konigsplatz. Although it was built during the first half of the nineteenth century, it's pretty much an architectural fantasy for Nazis and they loved this place. It is beautiful, although not particularly warm or quirky.

I brought almost every book I had tagged "Germany" with me and most of them are about Nazis. I need to work on reading in German and this is the ideal place -- with plenty to choose from readily available. It seems that Germans share my love for crime novels and I saw several that looked interesting last time I was in a bookstore. I'm also interested in post-war German fiction, so this is my general Germany/German category.

1. Schneewittchen Muss Sterben by Nele Neuhaus (English title: Snow White Must Die)
2. The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh
3. Das Muschelessen by Birgit Vanderbeke (English title: The Mussel Feast)
4. Die schönsten Jahre: Vom Glück und Unglück der Liebe by Elke Heidenreich

Category five.



Books of the Moment

Not very far into September everyone starts wearing Trachten; traditional clothes like lederhosen and dirndls and talking about Oktoberfest. It's three weeks of fun and difficulty getting on the train home, if one's U-Bahn line happens to swing by the Theresienwiese, as mine just happens to do. And, just as suddenly, it's over and life returns to normal.

So this is my category for those "books of the moment". You know, the ones everyone is suddenly talking about, whether as a possible candidate for this award or that, or a bunch of people on LT are talking about. Those books.

1. Dare Me by Megan Abbott
2. The Cuckoo's Calling by J.K. Rowling Robert Galbraith
3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
4. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
6. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Category six.



RandomCAT

The Lenbachhaus is my favorite museum in Munich. One of the paintings is Tiger by Franz Marc.

Since I've rearranged my categories to allow for more from the CATs, I'm going to give this one to the RandomCAT. It will be fun to go through my shelves for books that might fit each month and there is always the possibility of a trip to one of the English language bookstores if I don't have anything on hand.

1. Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (February -- Children's books)
2. Gillespie & I by Jane Harris (March -- Birds of spring)
3. Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins (April -- Poetry)

Category seven.



Non-Fiction

The Deutsches Museum is a mammoth building occupying its own little island in the Isar river. My favorite part is where they have all the old aircraft and boats and trains. It's something to see them close up and life size.

1. Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink
2. July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin
3. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
4. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder
5. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Category eight.



Books that catch my eye

This is the Residenz. It's pretty spiffy and the gardens 'round back are also not bad.

1. Sorry by Gail Jones
2. The Passage by Justin Cronin
3. Never Go Back by Lee Child
4. The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell
5. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
6. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

Category nine.



Books that have been on my shelves for at least a year

This is the Alte Pinakothek, where Munich keeps all of its oldest paintings. The Neue Pinakothek and the Pinakothek der Moderne complete the set.

1. Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (since before joining LT)
2. In the Forest by Edna O'Brien (acquired May, 2010)
3. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen (purchased June, 2010)
4. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (Santathing 2012)
5. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (reread)
6. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
7. The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Category ten.



GeoCAT

Munich's Hauptbahnhof is a uniquely ugly building. I refuse to post a picture of the exterior, unless I get mad at Munich and want to make it feel self-conscious.

This will be my GeoCAT category. I'm not sure I'll manage to participate every month, given how unreliable I am in general, but this is the CAT that will most stretch my reading and I'm excited about it. It will also be used for book read for the quarterly Reading Globally topics.

1. The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler (January GeoCAT)
2. A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto (Reading Globally First Quarter Theme)
3. The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken (March GeoCAT)

Possibilities:
Jan: Triangle by Katharine Weber
Oonagh by Mary Tilberg
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
Canada by Richard Ford
Harbor by Lorraine Adams
Feb: A Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees
Ten Thousand Lovers by Edeet Ravel
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
March: A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul
Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken
April: The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia
The Bronze Horseman by Paulina Simons
The Haunted Land by Tina Rosenberg
Prague: A Novel by Arthur Phillips
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler and many more…
May: No Way Down by Graham Bowley
Sept: Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari
Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
Dispatches by Michael Herr
Oct: The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
Nov: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Dec: The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto

So February was not a productive reading month, in part because of a week of no school and a trip to Innsbruck, Vienna and small Alpine town called Weising. But mostly I can blame Sherlock, which forced me to watch all three of its seasons (okay, short seasons of three episodes each) this month and some episodes more than once. Fortunately, there will be a few years before the next season.

Of the books read in February, there was one stand-out, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, which was excellent. She's signing books here in a few weeks, so I'll get my copy signed. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders' first short story collection, was also interesting.

Happy new thread! And yay Sherlock :)

I totally understand how Sherlock can be a distraction from reading. I'm already impatiently waiting for the next season.

RP, I blame you.

Carrie, two years!

The kids had a week off of school, so we went to Austria, going first to stay with friends in a small town outside Innsbruck, the Innsbruck itself and then over to Vienna. Durning the drive, I read Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse aloud to my SO.

The Wooster and Jeeves books all follow a predictable, but none the less delightful path. Some item offends Jeeves and there is a coolness between Man and Valet. One of Bertie's aunts is involved, either Agatha, a fearsome creature who Does Not Approve of Bertie, or his more easy going aunt Dahlia, whose years riding to the hounds have left her red of face, loud of voice and possessing a vocabulary that would startle a sailor. There are romantical entanglements, often involving Wooster's near escape from an unfortunate engagement, scrapes aplenty, wild misunderstandings and in the end Jeeves and his prodigious brain puts all to right.

In this installment, the offending article is neither an article of clothing, nor a banjolele, but a book held by Jeeves's club, the Junior Ganymedes. Bertie is menaced by the threat of engagement to not only Florence Craye, the beautiful but bossy juggernaut, but also Madeline Basset, who believes that every time a fairy blows its nose a baby is born. There is an election in Market Snodsbury to help an old pal win, a misunderstanding involving a silver porringer and hijinks galore. So much the usual.

These books are always fun, insubstantial and silly, but also clever and funny.

Happy new thread! I'm with you on Sherlock!

I love when new thread start up. I get to sit back and enjoy all the category pictures - like yours! - all over again without having to scroll up to do so. I feel like I have just taken a mini vacation to Munich today. ;-)

I'm a big fan of seeing all the pictures again too. I am off to look up where you have been on google maps, Innsbruck and Vienna.

ETA: Looks absolutely gorgeous from what I see on google images. Will there be a new pic or two perhaps?

This is a view across the river into the old town, which was as close as we got to it. The thing about Innsbruck is that the mountains are right there. We stayed with friends who grew up in villages near Innsbruck and Gabi told me that even after 20 years living in Munich, she still longs for the mountains.

So my Thingaversary was last month and I ordered my books ahead of time, anticipating opening them on the day. Then we were gone and today was the first moment where I had a quiet hour to fondle the new books and add them to my LT library. I'm a little concerned over how much I enjoy that. Anyway, I had planned to get seven books, but exceeded that slightly, for reasons unknown to me. Please note that I must have been in the mood for Noir at the moment I placed the order.

I Was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond
The Guilty Plea by Robert Rotenberg
The Carrier by Sophie Hannah
1977 by David Peace
The Girl on the Stairs by Louise Welsh
Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives edited by Sarah Weinman
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke by Per Wahloo and Maj Sjowall
Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Good haul! I wanted to get Hyperbole and a Half with my Christmas gift card but completely forgot, and now I've spent the gift card. Darn! Will just have to go back to the bookstore... I will also be interested to hear what you think of 1977.

Beautiful photo of Interlaken! I'm ready to hop on the next plane!

The Ukraine book is timely. Your list also reminds me that I want to try the Martin Beck series. If I don't get to it next month, maybe I can work one into the police procedural MysteryCAT.

RP, Hyperbole and a Half was at the very top of my list. And I expect to lay on the floor in despair after reading Nineteen Seventy-Seven, if Nineteen Seventy-Four was any indication of how this one will go. And yet I bought it anyway.

Carrie, Innsbruck is lovely. I recommend it. My daughter decided that Austrian baked goods are better than German ones.

I'm enjoying the chance to live in a big city (usually I'm in a very small city in SC)

I love it, too. I'm not from a small city but I'm from the suburbs (of Chicago), "only" around 100k people in my former city (with surrounding cities of similar sizes, until you go about 45 mins north and it starts getting more spread out, farmland coming up, etc). I'd never want to live in a big city in the US, too chaotic and busy and industrial-ish kind of feeling, too much steel and giant buildings and cold feelings. But in Europe? The big cities are the best! They're not like that at all. They're crowded, sure, but they don't feel over-crowded or claustrophobic, and they have tons of old buildings with homey feelings, and walking places is great and the transit is amazing and clean and efficient and everyone from children to businessmen in suits use it. I absolutely love living in a big European city, and visiting others! :D

Nice new threads. It's always fun to revisit the original categories instead of just jumping to the bottom.

I agree with everything you said, PM!

Just stopping by the new thread. I love your Munich photos. Our family will be going to Germany this summer, to join up with our older daughter who will be finishing up her gap year there. Unfortunately, we won't get a chance to go to Munich, so I'll have to save that for another trip. My husband has been there a number of times and says it's a great city to visit.

I know what you mean about lying on the floor in despair as I read Nineteen Seventy-Four last year and was rather taken aback by it, but I am going to give Nineteen Seventy-Seven a try, hopefully later this year.

You picked up some very interesting books for your Thingaversary.

Have fun in Germany, Paulina! It's fine to bring your children to a Biergarten -- they can enjoy a delicious Apfelschorle.

Judy,we had the same reaction to Nineteen Seventy-Four and now it seems we both intend to repeat the experience. Great minds, etc...

This book. In A Blade of Grass, Lewis DeSoto took a place and a time, a complicated, beautiful place at a complicated, horrible time and threw it repeatedly in the reader's face. And for all of that (and there is a lot of that), it is primarily a story of a tenuous friendship between two women who should have never become friends, except that they were both lonely and alone.

Tembi grew up in the place her people had always lived, until the man came and told them they would all have to go somewhere else. And when they had been moved, they found the land they had been moved to, a land they had no connection to, could not support them. And so they left; first the men, to work in the mines and then the women, to work as domestic servants. Tembi goes with her mother to live on a farm, where her mother takes care of the house. Tembi, now a young woman, works in the dairy and while she doesn't feel a part of the life of the Kral, she is happy to be with her mother. And then her mother is killed. Tembi is asked to work in the house, but she's not sure she can work for the woman there.

Marit has married an Englishman who wants to be a farmer. They find a farm on good land that they can afford because it is near the border and there has been some unrest, but Ben is both optimistic and determined and he is willing to work hard. Marit's a bit unmoored in this strange place inhabited by stolid Boers and the silent Blacks working for them, but she is willing to support her husband with his dream; it's what she's been raised to do. And then her husband is killed and she is adrift, with only the housekeeper to speak to.

There is an immediacy and a force to DeSoto's writing. The reader is never given a specific time or place to hang the story on, but his descriptions are vivid and kept close by the use of the present tense throughout. This has the effect of making the events in the story carry far more weight as there is no sense of an "afterwards". Both Tembi and Marit were complex characters, which was important in this book of great wrongs and disasters.

I inherited a copy of A Blade of Grass and because of who it came from (and who she got it from), I've never been motivated to read it. I held on to it though because it was nominated for the Booker. Sounds like I should change my attitude and try this one! Thanks for your comments.

I was trying to figure out in which country A Blade of Grass was set, but I clicked through to the book and figured it out. I don't think I'm in a hurry to read it, but it does sound like one I might want to try some day (as long as there are no snakes in it as there were in the last South African book I read).

Unbroken tells the remarkable story of Louie Zamperini, a man who ran in the 1936 Olympics, who was a bombardier on a warplane fighting over the small islands and atolls of the Pacific, who survived shipwreck and being lost at sea, who survived in Japanese POW camps and who had to find a way to be an ordinary civilian again after the war.

Author Laura Hillenbrand does a workmanlike job of telling the story. She certainly did her research and her writing does not get in the way of Zamperini's story. But nor does she make this remarkable story sing. The reader is told about amazing feats of survival, without ever feeling as though they were there. It's as though the very eventfulness of Zamperini's life reduces the force of any one of them. This is a page-turner of a book, but only because of the facts; the story-telling, while thorough, never brings any of the facts to life. Maybe it doesn't need to, maybe in the hands of a story-teller this book would be too intense to make for comfortable reading and maybe the sheer amount of things that happened to Zamperini meant that there was simply no room for amplification, but I the lack did leave a hole in the heart of what is an amazing story about the human spirit.

I've been undecided about whether I want to read Unbroken and I'm leaning toward not reading it. There are too many other books I'm more interested in reading.

Carrie, Zamperini's story is amazing. Really amazing. And it has a really high rating as a result. I'm going to keep it in mind for when I need to give a book to someone who doesn't read that much. My mom's having surgery in a few weeks and I may pick up a copy to read to her as she recovers.

That's an interesting point about the book's appeal to people who aren't normally readers. I wonder if it's a book I might like better as an audiobook, maybe on a long drive.

ETA: I hope your mom's surgery goes well. I spent a lot of time reading to my mom when she was sick. She had a lot of nausea and reading to her worked better than medication.

I bet it would be great as an audiobook on a long drive.

And thanks about the surgery well wishes. It's open heart and a lengthy procedure, but my parents trust the surgeon and the cardiologist who recommended him. I'm only flying over a few days after the operation -- my Dad wants me there to help out at home, but I'd rather be in the waiting room! So the compromise is probably the worst one -- I'll arrive after the surgery but by the time she's released I'll probably be leaving in a few days. My Mom is the calmest of us all. My act of faith is to have rented a week in a beach house in mid-July. She should be up for sitting out in the screen porch by then.

It's especially hard being so far away when a loved one has a health crisis, and you know you can't just hop in a car and be there in just a few minutes or hours. I'll be praying that all goes well with the surgery and recovery.

Really loved Unbroken - am interested to see how the movie version turns out.

The Passage is a very different vampire tale. Set in the near future, Justin Cronin begins the story with the discovery of a virus in the South American rainforest and the subsequent research done by the American military. The virus kills most people, but those who survive become altered. Inhumanly strong, fast and agile, they exist only to feed on the warm-blooded. Light causes them discomfort and the only thing that will kill them is a direct blow (gunshot or blade) to the chest. Of course, the men infected with the virus escape and the world is altered forever.

Almost a hundred years later, in an isolated colony in the California desert, a technician manning the light system, which protects them from night attack, realizes that the aging power system will not last much longer and a mysterious girl arrives at the colony's gates; she isn't a viral, but neither is she entirely normal.

The Passage is the first book in a planned trilogy and so it uses a fair amount of its pages in setting up this altered world, as well as in setting up the parameters for what will come in the future installments of the series. Cronin is good at making the world-building interesting; using a compelling character for a few chapters to show how the world is changing. And there are the usual elements with a protagonist discovering his own strengths and the camaraderie of a small group setting out to fix things. This was an intelligent escapist novel, and while the female characters were somewhat idealized, that's an improvement on objectification any day.

There's a lot of novel here, but only a little bloat. I suspect some of the seemingly unimportant or extraneous passages were setting things up for events later in the series, as that happened often enough in this first volume. Since things are left partially unresolved at the end, this isn't really a novel that can be read on its own, but as the first was such a fun diversion, most readers will want to continue.

In some respects, The Passage reminded me of the classic post-apocalyptic novel, Earth Abides, with its depiction of people surviving on what technology and supplies are left, rather than producing their own.

I think I'll avoid the vampire story.

The Passage is a vampire story.... really?! How on earth did I miss that? I guess I will be reading a vampire story at some point since I have purchased a copy and you have convinced me though your review - and Judy through her review - that this is something I will enjoy reading. ;-)

Edna O'Brien's novel, In the Forest, is based on a triple murder in the west of Ireland in 1994 that received extensive media attention and horrified the entire country. Upon publication, she was accused of using the events for her own profit. She defended her book, saying, "Is someone going to say Picasso should not have painted Guernica? I have written a book to commemorate and perpetuate the story of this almost Greek tragedy which took place in a forest I happened to know."

O'Brien's writing has the feel of poetry about it. She's not interested in the blood and gore, so much as the inner lives of the people involved, beginning with the Kinderschreck himself, Michen O'Kane, who grew up lost and rebellious after the death of his mother. His acting out sends him, as a young child, into reformatory schools, where priests punish and other children either bully Michen or train him in the ways of crime. Then there's the free-spirited Eily, who moves to a remote house with her young son and tries to make a life for herself, teaching at a kindergarten, painting and joining in the artistic community of the area. As their paths converge, Michen imagines a life with her, while Eily is unaware of her stalker.

Is In the Forest exploitive? It lacks the lurid details and unseemly avidness found in "true crime" paperbacks. It also lacks the structure of a crime novel; she is not solving a crime or even explaining motivation, rather she is presenting a picture of rural Ireland, through the story of the lives affected by the events.

In the Forest is an odd book. It has a lyrical, almost stream-of-consciousness tone which is at conflict with the subject matter, leaving the reader to peer through dusty glass and shifting dust motes at the story behind the words. I don't think the results were entirely successful, but I am interested in reading more by this author. Her voice is distinct and interesting.

>44 RidgewayGirl: I have that one on the shelf unread so far, having bought it simply because O'Brien wrote it. I agree that she is poetic, and has a way of drawing complex people in a way that seems almost gentle.
I can recommend her The Country Girls highly.

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives looks amazing! I love pulp covers.

Hi Kay, I'm glad that you enjoyed The Passage. I am looking forward to continuing on with the trilogy. Best wishes to you and your Mom regarding her surgery.

Thanks, Judy. I'm really looking forward to being with my parents soon. I'm going to have The Twelve along since it seems like it would be a good book to read on the plane.

Jennifer, I'm going to read more by O'Brien. She does have a gentleness to the way she describes people.

Edna O'Brien is one of the authors that I believe they study in the Irish lit class here. Sounds like the book is worthwhile reading. I'll have to remember to try one of her books sometime. I'll probably just stick to what we have available.

The Passage sounds good.

Hope your trip and the surgery go well.

I've been looking at The Passage for a long time, but never made a decision - I'm closer to a "yes" now. :)

Hope all goes well with your mom's surgery!

#41 The Passage will go onto my TBR list!

I missed my stop on the U-Bahn because of Gillespie and I and almost missed it a second time a few hours later. It's that kind of book; a meaty Victorian novel - Victorian in both setting and style - with an involving plot that runs the gamut from gently bred English spinsters and comfortable domestic life to kidnapping and sensational court cases. Set against the background of Glasgow in 1888, Jane Harris's second novel is about Harriet Baxter and how she became involved with the family of an up-and-coming Glaswegian artist Ned Gillespie. Decades later, she sits down to write about her friendship with the Gillespies and the scandal that shocked all of Scotland.

Harris is good with the historical detail, and really good at creating characters who breathe. But where she really excels is in telling a story from the point of view of a seemingly secondary character, someone who might not see the same things that the other characters do, or it might be that she is altering the tale to suit herself. If you dislike ambiguity in a novel, this one is not for you, but if you like the twist that looks like it's from out of nowhere, but that also fits the story in an organic way if you set the story upside down, then you'll enjoy this one.

I had to laugh when I read your review of The Passage. Why? Because I asked Victoria to read it with me last summer, I couldn't get into it at the time and didn't get very far at all. I think she forgave me lol.

I'm not sure why I was having trouble with it, I do know that I am a moody kind of reader, sometimes it takes me a while to settle on a book to read. At times ,I just want to fly through a book without paying attention to a lot of detail or a number of characters, and I think that's what happened.

Since then, you and Judy (DQ) have read it, so now I think I need to go back to it at some point.

By the way I loved The Goldfinch, I almost missed my train stop when reading it a couple of times:)

Gillespie and I is going on my list. Noting that the narrator is ambiguous and alters the tale to suit herself reminded me of Alias Grace, which was one of my 5 star reads.
This sounds like a really good one. Thanks for the review!

Lisa, I was glad to see that you loved The Goldfinch, but I'll go comment on your thread.

Jennifer, I think you'd like it. Well, I liked it, a lot, and we have been known to like some of the same books.

For all of you who expressed concern about my Mom -- they just finished and and are getting her out of the operating room now. I had an interesting day in which I had a lot to do and I got nothing done. A lot of McConnelling videos and wandering around picking stuff up and putting it down again.

Best wishes to you and your Mom! Please let us know how she's doing.

Thanks, Jennifer. She's in ICU and the surgeon was very pleased with the operation.

Kay: I missed the post above regarding your Mom. I am glad the procedure went well and I wish her a speedy recovery.

Sending good thoughts to your mom and hoping she recovers quickly!

I'm so glad that the surgery went well. I hope the recovery goes smoothly.

Good to hear that the operation went smoothly, I can well imagine that you were unable to settle on anything, obviously your thoughts were with your Mom. Hope her recovery continues to go well.

Sending good wishes to your Mom for a quick recovery.

Thank you all. After I went to bed last night I got a call from my brother telling me they'd taken my Mom back into surgery because they couldn't stop her bleeding. A few tense hours later they had figured out the problem and she is now in ICU and is stable. I'm flying out tomorrow morning and I'll be glad to get there. Despite hospital waiting rooms being one of Dante's levels of hell, being in another country waiting for phone calls or emails is worse.

Next up, is Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh, which I hope to review later today once I'm packed.

I'm sorry you had such a scare and I'm glad your mom is stable now. I'm sure everyone is looking forward to having you here. Wishing you a speedy and uneventful trip.

Have a good flight and may good news await your arrival.

Thanks, hailelib and Carrie. Good news, my Mom was able to walk this morning and eat eggs for breakfast. I've had colds where I was unable to do those things so I'm in awe of her general toughness.

That's good news! Have a good flight out there. She'll be happy to see you.

Good news, sounds like your Mom's condition is improving! You will both enjoy your visit.

Glad to hear good news about your Mom, Kay. I'll be keeping you and her in my thoughts.

So if you're familiar with Allie Brosh's blog there's really no reason to read any reviews for Hyperbole and a Half, her book with the same title as her blog. If you haven't read her blog, go take a look here./a>

Hey, I'm back in the US and even got to get together with VictoriaPL today. She's doing well, looking good and is too busy for LT, apparently. She claims to still like us, though.

And my kindle died. Luckily, I really have very few books I paid for on it (three). I'd like to get something different - the kindle was perfect, but having to rely so heavily on amazon irks me for no good reason, but it does. I'm thinking about an ipad mini, since the size is similar to my kindle, but I'm worried it would be a kid-magnet. Does anyone have an opinion?

I love my iPad Mini. It's easy to carry in a smallish purse. It's great for traveling when I don't want to lug a laptop. There are apps for different ebook vendors, including Amazon, so I don't feel limited in that regard.

I have the iPad Air which I love. It's larger, but my eyes appreciate that too! I still have my Kindle keyboard, but I'll probably be having most Kindle books delivered to my iPad from here on out. It's nice to be able to read from a variety of places on the same device. The download process is easy.

I do wish VictoriaPL had more time for us! If you see or talk to her again before you leave, tell her we miss her too!

I'll tell her, Lori. And I'll go to the apple store downtown when I get a chance and take a longer look.

>70 RidgewayGirl: YAY! I love Hyperbole and a Half. My favourite story of hers is "The Party", or maybe "The God of Cake".

I have an iPad Mini and really like it. I use it for BBC iPlayer, Twitter and magazines, as well as ebooks from the library. It's a decent size but not huge -- my mum has one of the older iPads and it's like a brick compared to the iPad Mini. I got the cheapest possible model with Wi-Fi only, which is fine because I use it mainly at home or on vacation in Wi-Fi areas. I bring it with me when I visit my parents so that I don't have to poach one of their computers when I want to use the Internet. It's a bit difficult typing big long reviews or LT posts on, though.

I really like my iPad even though it's an older one. I've got the Kindle app and some iBooks as well. I also use it for general Internet stuff although I do reviews, etc. on a laptop.

I love my iPad. It's a newer one, but the original size. I got extra memory as I want music on it as well as ebooks and audiobooks.

>71 RidgewayGirl: "I'm thinking about an ipad mini, since the size is similar to my kindle, but I'm worried it would be a kid-magnet. Does anyone have an opinion?

When my first generation nook dies, I am going to get a Kobo e-reader. After too much work time on computers even my phone screen seems too bright, so I love my e-ink device for reading. I like that Kobo is tied into independent bookstores and you can register it through a particular indy so 10% of the purchases go to that specific store.

I love Hyperbole and a Half, and adore her hot sauce story, especially as someone who likes hot sauce... but not nearly as much as everyone around me seems to think I do. :)

I have an iPad, and once I got it, I stopped using my (first generation, really slow, really clunky) Kindle altogether. If you do decide to get one, you might want to consider checking out the apple refurbished products. They're often a lot cheaper than the originals, and they've all been checked by Apple, have a new battery, and new casing. I bought my refurbished one two years ago, it looked brand new and shiny, and haven't had a single problem with it yet.

Just catching up here. I think The Passage will be going on my wish list... which is ever increasing. Your review has made it sound rather interesting!

I have an iPad and the only thing about reading on it when I go on vacation is that it is hard to read in the sun.

81. You can reverse the colours on it (white text on black background instead of black on white). That should make reading much easier.

I have a Kindle Touch and an iPad. i just finished reading a book on the iPad (because of the maps) and found I felt eye strain more than with my Kindle. As far as having a problem buying from Amazon, would you have any less of a problem buying from Apple?

Thanks for all the recommendations. I've ordered a refurbished ipad mini.

Mamzel, yes, I think so. And I can get ebooks from other sources, which is what I plan to use it for, although I mostly just read library books and out of copyright titles as ebooks.

There's noir, crime novels with a gritty edge, with characters on the edge of society, and a sense that things may well not work out in the end, and then there is noir. The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken is of this second, harsher kind. In Ciudad Juarez, women have been disappearing for years, hundreds gone without knowing what happened to them. Kelly is a washed-up boxer, an ex-heroin addict and sometime drug dealer. He's trying to get back in shape and he loves his boss and best friend's sister, who works for a group of mothers of disappeared women. He is sometimes visited by Sevilla, an old school narco detective, back from the days before police drove armored cars and wore body armor. He's trying to cultivate Kelly as an informer, but so far he hasn't had any luck.

In tone, The Dead Women of Juarez is similar to David Peace's Red Riding Quartet. But this suits the world in which Hawken has set his novel, the city of Juarez, Mexico. A sprawling border city where women living in dirt-floored shanties travel hours each day to earn a dollar or two an hour in factories run by multi-national corporations, a city where American tourists venture only for a bit of illicit fun and cheap prescription medicines. A place where money buys you whatever you want and if you have any you travel with bodyguards in cars with darkened windows. It's a place where a person can disappear if they want, or someone wants them to, and often without a trace.

Kelly is an interesting character to follow. He loves Paloma and he wants to be better, but he's not someone you'd ever want to cross paths with. Paloma is tough and street-wise and more than a match for Kelly, but a woman in Juarez is always vulnerable and the activities of her brother and her boyfriend don't make her any safer. The detective, Sevilla, is a has-been, still coming in to work despite being superfluous. He may not be corrupt, but that may not matter since he has no real authority.

The Dead Women of Juarez is a harsh read, but that suits its setting in a harsh, unforgiving place, where women disappear and those who remain may never have answers.

I read another book, The Desert Murders that was based on the disappearance of both Mexican and American women from the Juarez area. I remember it as being quite graphic and distrubing, all the more so as it was based on the fact that so many women from the area, including El Paso, Texas have actually disappeared. It appears that the cheapness of life in these border communities is in direct relationship to what strange appetities demand for their tourist money.

Judy, the official estimate has around 500 missing women, with unofficial estimates going as high as 5,000. It's really shocking.

Just catching up on your thread and wishing your mom a speedy recovery.
:)

Hope you enjoy your iPad mini when it arrives.

This is an excellent book to be trapped on a plane with. And whether it was due to exhaustion, the dry airplane air or its own virtues, The Girl Who Chased the Moon is as good as Sarah Addison Allen's best (by which I mean The Sugar Queen). My only quibble is that by the end of the book every single thing is resolved, where a tiny bit of ambiguity might have made a better ending. Still, I was charmed and I don't charm easily.

Yay, I'm glad you liked The Girl Who Chased the Moon! Sarah Addison Allen is so good, especially when you're in the mood for some small-town charm. (And The Sugar Queen is my favorite of hers too!)

I've not read any of her books yet, but I've been advised to try The Sugar Queen - looks like that advice is still good. :)

I need some comfort reads this upcoming weekend (getting my first cataract procedure on Monday) and luckily I have Sarah Addison Allen's Lost Lake on hand. That plus some Miss Read and maybe a Gerald Durrell should do the trick.

Hope everything goes well Judy!

Good luck, Judy. Think of how great it will be to see more clearly! And I can attest to the value of comfort reads. While my mother is doing very well -- better than before surgery -- it was still a stressful week and I'm not up to anything more demanding than the new Jack Reacher novel.

Louise Welsh had me with The Cutting Room, in which I discovered that a female author could write a crime novel as dark and relentless as any man out there. While none of her other novels have attained that level of gritty hopelessness, I have enjoyed them. The Girl on the Stairs is more psychological suspense than noir, telling the story of Jane, who has moved to Berlin in the final months of her pregnancy to be with her partner, Petra. Their apartment is in an old, but modernized building, with a derelict building behind it. Jane is alone most of the day and isolated by her lack of German and of friends in the city. In the apartment next door live a thirteen year old girl and her father, and Jane becomes convinced that he is abusing his daughter.

I think I've read one by Sarah Addison Allen which I liked much to my surprise. I haven't gotten around to reading others, but I do plan to do so eventually.

Lori, I was surprised to find myself liking Sarah Addison Allen's books, too. She writes the kind of book that usually makes me grind my teeth and trip old ladies, but she adds charm (really, I usually don't do charm) and it just all comes across as so joyful that she's turned into one of those authors whose books I wait for. All the others feature dismemberments or alienation.

So my Mom made it through and is doing very well. Certainly miles better than before surgery. And it turned out that what was thought to be dementia or Alzheimer's turned out to be too little oxygen in the blood reaching her brain. We are all so happy to have her back mentally and she was already trying to get a specific date when she could start playing golf again while she was still in the hospital. It was also good to have been useful to my parents for the time I was there -- I was a sullen and untidy teen-ager, so I feel like I owe them a bit of make-up work. And I got to see friends, including VictoriaPL (whom some of you might remember), eat Mexican food and pick up those items that are easier to find in the US. Jolly Ranchers specifically. Apparently these are currently the "in" thing at the kids' school and they are not available in Europe. Also, Peeps, which are an integral part of all Easter baskets, and these silly Nike sports socks that my son is in love with. (His other loves are Axe products (which are in great abundance here) and guacamole)

My reading has necessarily been on the escapist side of the scale. There is a great deal to be said for a book that can drag you away from life, when life is being turbulent and worrisome. I've heard Georgette Heyer is good for that, and I will have to read something by her soon. I read the Sarah Addison Allen reviewed above and the newest Reacher novel. Incidentally, I also read an interview with Emma Donoghue in which she revealed that she reads Reacher novels as well. I'm in good company.



Reacher is back! In the last installment, Reacher was replaced with a chatty, judgmental jerk, but in Never Go Back Lee Child returns to the taciturn and pedantic character we all love. In this installment, Reacher goes back to his old unit to meet the commanding officer he has only spoken to on the phone only to find that she has been arrested for taking a bribe. What's more, he is also being prosecuted for killing a guy sixteen years ago and is told to run away or else. If you've ever read a book about Jack Reacher, you can probably guess how he reacted.

What follows is the usual fun romp in which Reacher is always a half step ahead of the bad guys. Really, the series is fantastic, especially when you want something purely escapist to take your mind off of things. They do follow a formula, but it's a fun one. This time it has Reacher endlessly calculating his odds of success and, in a fun twist, encountering a teenage girl who is eerily similar to himself. Thank you, Mr Child, for getting rid of that cranky, pontificating clone and returning the real deal to the series.

I'm so glad to hear the good news about your mother! It's good that you were able to see the improvement first hand before having to leave again. And you got to stock up on those little comforts. When I lived in England, I filled my suitcase with Peter Pan peanut butter, Reese's peanut butter cups, French's mustard, grits, and cake mixes. None of these were easy to find in England at that time.

Carrie, it's a constantly changing list! Last time it was maple syrup, cilantro (we bought seeds) and salsa. Now it's salsa, but as maple syrup is available everywhere and Asian markets have cilantro, it's candy the kids are familiar with (I also picked up Hot Tamales, Bottle Caps and Junior Mints). I'm sure that when we get back the kids will miss a lot of the European treats they are now enjoying.

She writes the kind of book that usually makes me grind my teeth and trip old ladies,

Oh my, what did old ladies ever do to you? But they've been warned! (you're too funny).

Joyce, old ladies are really easy to trip -- it's instant gratification as opposed to the real challenge of tripping toddlers. Some of those guys are pretty agile.

Good that your mom is better.

Also good that you had a chance to stock up on some treats for the kids. I still remember how great it was when my mother shipped me some peanut butter as a Christmas present all the way from Tennessee to the Persian Gulf. It was a really great present!

"she was already trying to get a specific date when she could start playing golf again"
Ah, this is excellent news!!!

Joyce, old ladies are really easy to trip -- it's instant gratification as opposed to the real challenge of tripping toddlers. Some of those guys are pretty agile.

Good point! Besides, toddlers just fall down on their own anyway, so you never really know if you were successful or not.

That is great about your mother! It's kind of scary that our mental faculties can be so effected just by lack of oxygen. But at least the oxygen is something that can be fixed.

Axe!!! Oh my! That is abundant in my life! At least the kid that was wearing so much Axe I was sneezing around him has finally figured it out. I think some cute girl broke it to him that his cologne was too strong.

Jolly Ranchers? That surprises me, more that it isn't available than that it is missed.

& you hit me with a book bullet with The Girl on the Stairs.

On the other hand, you have no shortage of gummy bears in Germany.

Hurray for you and your mom! What great news!

And have you tried the Blue Raspberry Peeps? I expected a pretty phony flavor, but to me they taste like raspberry jam. I tried the Party Cake ones too and now just need to get the lemonade flavor, because I'm a connoisseur.

Jenn, you are not just broadening my horizons, but making my SO laugh as well. Have you tried Peeps jousting? you stick a toothpick into two Peeps and position them appropriately in a microwave. It's more fun than you think it would be.

Carrie, the kids are getting spoiled here without realizing it. They are learning that different countries have fun things to do and eat. I will have tiny snobs before you know it! They do like the variety of Gummy Bears, and who wouldn't?

Katie, Axe is a thing among the pre-pubescent set. My brother had great fun instructing my son on how to properly layer his Axe products and while he is often very scented it is better than the smelly alternative. They are learning. Jolly Ranchers are awesome! Also, I think you would like The Girl on the Stairs. Louise Welsh is under appreciated. I had a ticket to her book signing but as it fell on the night I returned and I was exhausted, I didn't make it. I will regret that until I do meet her.

So glad your mom is on the mend Kay! I shudder to think what my life would be like without access to Tastykake and soft pretzels for a long time:)

Did I read that there was a Victoria sighting while you were home?

All the Peep discussion is making me remember my dad, they were one of his favorite things in the Easter basket, we wouldn't touch them, we just liked to bite the ears off of our bunnies.

>109 RidgewayGirl: I have never heard of Peeps jousting, so I've got a new hobby. Oooh, raspberry and lemonade melted together...

I'm glad to hear the good news about your mom!

I've got to check out Louise Welsh. She sounds like an author I would like.

Glad to hear that your mom is doing well and that you had some good reading on your trip too :)

LOL! Properly layered Axe! The school hallways have gotten better, but I used to be pretty good at estimating the size of the Axe cloud before I entered it. So, do they have gummy worms and gummy rats and gummy everything in Germany? I'm assuming so, since they're the one that started them. I first ran into them in high school because the German club sold them as a fund raiser. And I still pronounce it gooooomi as in goo like a baby.

Lisa, Germany has excellent pretzels. And Victoria is doing very well. Work is busy and they are thinking of moving to a larger house. Her 15 year old dachshund is showing his age, poor guy.

Jen, do Peeps really have flavors? I thought the flavor was "sweet."

Paulina, you would like Louise Welsh. Try The Cutting Room -- it's her best. It's not for the squeamish, however.

Thanks, RP. I did get itchy when I was down to my last book!

Katie, how Axe is loved by pre-adolescent boys. Have you noticed they've come out with a "mature" scent? They may be aiming for boys old enough to get their learner's permits! And, yes, gummi candy is huge here. The kids are developing preferences.

A couple of years ago when my brother and SIL first lived in Germany, they went to a candy store in town that had lots of varieties of the gummi candy. Either they were in a hurry or the store was about to close because they grabbed something quickly and left, only to discover later that the shape they had chosen wasn't exactly family friendly...

Glad to hear your mom is doing well, Kay. I'm going to have to check around for those raspberry Peeps.

I'm hoping one of my friends goes to England soon and brings me back some of those Thornton's chocolates. They've become a favorite of mine. That's usually what I get, not because it's what I ask for them to bring me, but because they think I'll be amazed that there's a chocolate with my name on it. When I open the gift, I just say, "Oh, my favorites!"

>115 RidgewayGirl: The regular Peeps are just a mildly vanilla marshmallow, which I like to open up and let them dry out for about two days before chomping them down. Like aging fine beef.

I have been hopelessly behind on your thread! I am so glad your mom came through her surgery and is feeling better. What great news that it immediately helped her!

I love dark and gritty. I will have to read The Cutting Room. I hope you get to go to her book signing next time.

Carrie, the Germans are much more relaxed about body parts than we are. It was a bit startling for the kids when we walked through the Englischer Garten on a summer day. Introducing children to new cultures requires a lot of explaining.

Betty, report back on what you think of raspberry Peeps!

Lori, I'm making a note of the chocolates. We may yet get to Britain and there are plenty of stores selling British foods -- much more so than American food, which tends to be represented by Campbell's tomato soup, Mac & Cheese, marshmallows and BBQ sauce.

Jen, I used to do that to Circus Peanuts. I may have been the only child on earth who actually liked stale Circus Peanuts -- some elderly neighbor had a bowl of them and I developed a taste for them.

Thanks, Roberta. Munich has a Crime novel festival every spring and next year I will plan to attend lots of signings and talks. I'm glad Germans like British and American crime novels! I discovered that there is a whole festival accidentally -- I had just been following the events offered by one bookstore, which conveniently didn't mention everything else going on. May try to get a ticket to a talk given by Karin Slaughter -- I don't like her books very much, buy VictoriaPL assures me that she's hilarious in person.

Thorntons is my happy place. :)

In The Maid's Version, Daniel Woodrell stays with his usual Ozark setting, this time in the small town of West Table, Missouri, but goes back ninety years to a fire in a dance hall that killed 42 people. Revolving around a teenage boy named Alek who goes to visit his grandmother in 1965, the book shifts in time and between points of view, but constantly returns to Alma, and what she knew. Alma, a near illiterate maid working in the house of the bank president at the time of the fire, is willing to share her memories and suspicions with her grandson.

Woodrell doesn't believe in padding. Each of his novels is pared to the bone, with much left unsaid. The Maid's Version is no different in this regard, although there is a wider focus, giving less the story of a person or event than a picture of a small town in the Ozarks between the Great War and the Great Depression. West Table may be a fine place for many, but for those struggling to get by, it's as harsh an environment as any. Alma and her sister Ruby, raised by a hardworking mother who is unable to cope when her useless and abusive husband dies, are left to fend for themselves before they were teenagers. Alma finds work as a maid, but Ruby discovers that there are easier ways to earn a living.

The Maid's Version is a terrific book, with a host of wonderfully complex characters realized in as few words as possible.

Oooh, I want that one! Hit me with a BB!

^ What >124 mstrust: said!

^ >124 mstrust: & >125 lkernagh: make it 3

I've had such fun catching up here. Before I get to tripping old ladies and knocking down toddlers, let me just say that it's great to hear of your Mom's successful recovery.

I was surprised as well that I have such a fondness for Sarah Addison Allen, usually I save my fan raves for books by Stuart MacBride or the lastest zombie release! She obviously does "charming" just right.

I haven't read anything by Louise Welsh yet, but she is definitely in my future, and Daniel Woodrell is one of my favorites so The Maid's Version is being added to the list.

And, who knew there was so much etiquette to the consumption of Peeps? From which flavor choices are best, to jousting, to letting them sit out to acquire the right consistency. I now feel educated.

Finally, I am going to buy some Axe for my grandson (14) for Easter. His mother is beside herself over his smelly ways, maybe this will encourage some personal hygiene.

Well - I can't find raspberry Peeps yet. I did find some called "Party Cake" flavored, but decided to pass on that flavor. I've got a couple more places to check out tomorrow while I'm out doing errands.

I like Sophie Hannah's series of crime novels set in the fictitious Culver Valley in England. They do follow a pattern, which doesn't inhibit my enjoyment of them. Sometimes a solidly written and plotted escapist novel is no bad thing. That said, in this installment, the puzzling occurrence that sets the book in motion is so convoluted that instead of intriguing me, it made me roll my eyes. Hannah stills pulls off a convincing explanation, but it took her longer to suck me into the story because of the beginning.

Kind of Cruel centers around a prickly, opinionated woman named Amber, who is suffering from extreme insomnia. She becomes tied into a murder investigation that had stalled out through her recognition of a phrase that had been found on a scrap of paper at the murder site. As the police try to find the connection between Amber and the dead woman, Amber is desperate to find answers of her own to a family secret and another murder.

Despite the rocky start, I enjoyed this book. Despite the focus of each book being largely on the mystery, it is a series that is probably best read in order, with the relationships between the continuing characters being utterly incomprehensible otherwise.

It was time for some Margaret Atwood in my life, so I picked up The Year of the Flood, the second in her MaddAddam trilogy. Set in a dystopian future, where we have destroyed the environment and everything is owned by giant corporations, The Year of the Flood centers around a small group of religious environmentalists. Which should make for a boring, worthy book because who wants to read about smelly people wearing hemp and raising their own mushrooms while singing hymns to the insects, am I right? But, of course, this is Atwood we're dealing with and she is up for the task. The story is centered on two women; Ren, who grew up in the Gardener sect and Toby, who was rescued by them and who remained although she always planned to leave. The world the Gardeners live in is a lawless urban landscape, where the security forces are as much to be feared as the violent gangs. But they are able to carve out a small, functional utopia of a sort, at least until the waterless flood comes.

Seriously, Atwood can make any book riveting. I dislike preachiness is novels, even when I agree with it and The Year of the Flood prefaces each chapter with a prayer/sermon followed by a hymn. And I couldn't put it down despite the sometimes overly clear message. Both Toby and Ren are fascinating characters and it's especially interesting in the differences between how they see themselves and how they see each other. I look forward to continuing the story in MaddAddam, but first I'd like to go back and reread Oryx and Crake while this book is still fresh in my mind.

I just re-read Oryx and Crake and will re-read Year of the Flood next. I can't wait to finally finish the trilogy. I agree, she can write just about anything and make it fascinating.

OK, I give up, can you tell me what peeps are?

Danielle, I see a potential endless cycle!

Ro, Peeps are a marshmallow candy originally shaped like a chick and covered in colored sugar.



Now they also come in bunny shapes and many other shapes and colors. And flavors, apparently, although I haven't seen that myself. Here's a more complete run-down:

That is a very thorough explanation. I think somebody said something earlier about putting two different flavours in the microwave together to create a new combination, that sounds messy but interesting. I guess they would make a good Easter gift too.

That is a very thorough explanation. I think somebody said something earlier about putting two different flavours in the microwave together to create a new combination, that sounds messy but interesting. I guess they would make a good Easter gift too. I bet kids love them.

I picked up some for my kids for their Easter baskets -- because it wouldn't be Easter without Peeps.

>136 RidgewayGirl: Do they have those in Germany, or did you have to get them in the U.S.?

Lori, I picked them up in SC when I was there with my parents. They aren't available here as far as I can tell. We do have an ample supply of excellent chocolate molded into seasonal shapes and Easter-themed gummy candy. And it's asparagus season here, which is the most delicious season of all.

I do love asparagus. I usually get a plant with smaller stems for Easter. As far as Peeps go, I'm pretty sure I've seen a recipe floating around Pinterest where you can make your own.

Peeps also make good action figures and for demonstrating good library practices.

We are awash in Peeps here in Canada :)

Lori, I utterly lack the patience for such an endeavor.

mamzel, the library one is especially brilliant.

>141 Yells: Maybe not in western Canada. I don't recall ever seeing Peeps before.

#143 - I see them here in the Vancouver area. Never pay any attention to them though.

I'm happy to hear you liked Year of the Flood and look forward to seeing your thoughts on MaddAddam, which I thought was a very satisfying conclusion to the series. I too thought the message in Year of the Flood was somewhat preachy, but Atwood does deliver it in her own unique way.

Set just after the end of WWI, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr is Tom Birkin's memories of a summer he spent in the northern village of Oxgodby and how it helped him to recover from the war. Birkin came to restore a painting on the wall of the local church, sleeping in the belfry and trying to make his small payment last as long as he can make it. The painting he uncovers enthralls him; it's more than just another quick decoration for the medieval artist who painted it and Birkin is drawn in to its complexity. Working in the churchyard below is another veteran, Moon, who has been hired to find the grave of his benefactor's ancestor. Through his friendship with Moon, the reticent but sincere relationships he forms with people in the village and especially the visits of the rector's wife, Birkin is brought back into living fully.

Which makes this book sound kind of slow and boring, doesn't it? There's a real charm to A Month in the Country, not in a chocolate box illustration sweetness, but in the way the harsh northerners and a shell-shocked Londoner find contentment in knowing each other. And in the understated friendship he forms with Moon, who has his own war-related demons to fight. Carr writes beautifully in an understated way that perfectly suits the story he's written. This is a book that, for an hour or two (it's a very slender book), immerses the reader in slowly clearing whitewash off of an old wall painting, revealing inch by inch the saints and sinners hidden for centuries, eating Sunday dinner with the station master's family, smoking Woodbines while leaning on tombstones while Moon talks about what lays underneath the meadow and hoping that the vicar's wife will stop by for a visit soon. This is a book that reads like a summer afternoon.

>146 RidgewayGirl: That one has been on my wishlist for a long time, and you have me even more eager to read it now.

>146 RidgewayGirl: Lovely review! I have A Month in the Country...must move it up the TBR pile now!

That sounds wonderful, so one the list is goes. From the title I actually thought it was the same story as that Vanessa Redgrave/Edward Fox movie from some years ago.

Carrie and Christina, it really is a wonderful book.

Jennifer, no, but there is a film adaptation starring very young versions of Colin Firth and Kenneth Brannaugh.

Sounds like a good book.

>146 RidgewayGirl: That one is on my wish list/TBR list. I don't remember off the top of my head if it's one our library had or not, but your review makes the book more enticing. I probably won't get to it this month though.

I laughed out loud at the link to the Peeps visiting the library! Especially the one library staffer who kept trying to eat them :P Cadbury Mini Eggs are my favourite Easter candy, although I'll eat them anytime if I see them at the grocery store.

So glad the Peeps made you laugh!

I'm glad to hear that life in Germany is going well for you and your family, and that your Mom is doing so well too! You're reading so many good books lately, that if I didn't already have so many of them on my TBR List, I'd have been in deep BB trouble! Well, I did get hit by A Month in the Country, so there is that. ;) I buy Peeps every year, and I'm always slightly disappointed by them. It's strange, I used to be really psyched to get them, and now... meh. I think Reese's peanut butter eggs have replaced Peeps as my favorite spring candy.

I'm back from a week in the Netherlands, up at the top on the North Sea. Due to the mild winter, tulip season came early and so coincided with our trip. Fields of tulips in bloom are amazing.



(not my picture. Will try to put up a few of the ones I took later.)

The rest of the trip was good, too, with an impromptu stop at a windmill leading to a guided tour in which we climbed all over it, a fine day in Amsterdam with a visit to the Anne Frank House and watching the dog discover sand and sea. No wifi, which was interesting, but we did have fun watching Hawaii-5-0 in German one evening.

I had an overnight layover in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. It was just long enough to see the Anne Frank house, an experience I'll never forget. I'd love to see the tulips some day.

Carrie, the tulips are amazing and nothing a photo can properly convey. The Anne Frank House was good for the kids -- the concentration camp at Dachau is too much for Max, who is ten, and so much that my daughter was able to see it very abstractly. Anne Frank was thirteen when she entered the secret annex, and the things she talked about were accessible to my two -- not being able to go outside, having to give up her bike, having to be quiet and share her room with an adult -- and they were very interested in it all. They wanted me to read Diary of a Young Girl to them on the drive home, however my SO was listening to a Neal Stephenson audiobook, which took the entire drive there and back, with plenty more to go.

The photo looks amazing. It must be stunning to see it for real. I'll be in the Netherlands for a few days this July and I'll be sure to visit the Anne Frank House with my family.

Dachau was almost too much for me as a college student. I remember the oppressive feeling I had the day I was there with a group of students. The timing didn't work out for us to see the English version of the historical film they were showing, so we watched it in German. It was bad enough when we couldn't understand the narration. I remember that every single museum display photograph of Hitler had been defaced.

Less than a month after visiting Dachau, I was back in the college classroom. I had a visiting professor for one of my history courses, and he mentioned in the first day of class that he had been a chaplain in WWII and was with the group that liberated Dachau. I had to tell him after class that I had just visited Dachau to explain my tears.

Carrie, I've been to Dachau several times now as it's one of the places visitors usually want to see. Unlike some other destinations, like Neuschwanstein, I find it's always worth experiencing and I learn something new each time. I just finished Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, in which the author, Timothy Snyder, makes the point that none of the extermination camps were ever seen by Western troops -- they were all liberated by the Red Army. In the east, things were much, much worse.

I went to Dachau on a school trip when I was 18 and it was really overwhleming. I got choked up in the visitors before even entering the grounds.

Number of books about Bridget Jones read 3, rank of this one from highest to lowest 3, characters who are deeply missed 1, cringe-worthy moments in book 15, relatable moments 6, times I expect to reread this book 0.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is the third installment in Helen Fielding's series of chick-lit novels about Bridget Jones, the hapless, over-eager, but well meaning woman who is perpetually concerned with finding a good man, or at least a good shag. Back in the mid-nineties, before the entire chick-lit genre was a thing, Fielding wrote the first book about Bridget, lampooning women's magazines and loosely basing the plot on Pride and Prejudice. It's hard to see now, when we've been inundated with dozens of variations of Austen's novels and thousands and thousands of chick-lit novels, but Bridget Jones' Diary was fresh and surprising when it was first published.

This third installment begins long after Bridget rode off into the sunset with her man, Mark Darcy, the sexy but repressed human rights lawyer. They were happily married and have two small children, but the book begins four years after Mark's death, an event that Bridget is still dealing with along with the challenges of raising children on her own.

Fielding has kept the same format of the other books, and while Bridget is slightly more mature than she was, her friends are in exactly the same place Fielding left them over a decade ago, making the book more static and less solid than it could have been. This is a slight and inconsequential book, which was disappointing. While the first two books were fluffy, they were also doing something new, while this one is merely a retreading of old ground, and ground that thousands have now trod. A large part of Bridget Jones' appeal was that she was a new and different protagonist in a new and different genre. While I enjoyed revisiting her, I think it might have been better to have left the story at the end of the second book.

Hi! I've been following along your thread for awhile- I love your pictures and living in Europe vicariously through you! I had to comment on your Bridget Jones review even though I didn't read the book. I just can't bring myself to read it- I heard spoilers on TV and I refuse to acknowledge what happened (even though I teased a friend endlessly when she refused to acknowledge the ending of Dawson's Creek) :-) Bridget Jone's Diary is one of my all-time favorites, and your review gives me more reason to create my own imaginary ending! Thanks!

Hi, jennyifer24, and welcome! I'm just going to stick with Bridget's original happy end, too. I couldn't resist reading it when I saw it as available as a library ebook. It was fun, but not good and it was written as though Bridget had had no contact with modern life while married to Mark. I dislike the way authors often have their characters stuck in limbo between books -- in real life we lose track of friends, or become less close and acquaintances become friends and we make new friends. It would be sad if we made no new friends or picked up new interests in a decade!

In the bringing in and unpacking, the book I was reading and my ipad were lost. They must be in the house, which is baffling as it is not really a place things can get lost, at least with any great success. I did not accidentally shelve them, they aren't in the one stack of mail and other random papers, and there isn't anywhere else, outside of kitchen cabinets for them to hide. I may have to search the kids' rooms as they may have grabbed them along with their own stuff and their rooms are, in the interest of their individuality and my sanity, not held to regular human standards of tidiness.

Now I'm singing Tiptoe Through the Tulips.

In Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Timothy Snyder looks at those lands that were occupied by both the Nazis and the Soviets, and how it impacted those places. He also, more importantly, seeks to both show how mass murder occurred and to make those horrifyingly large numbers represent real people. From the Baltic states, through eastern Poland, Belarus, the western edge of Russia and especially Ukraine, Snyder shows how these lands contained the vast majority of civilian deaths in the twelve years between 1933 to 1945.

Beginning with Stalin's Great Famine in the Ukraine, in which 3.3 people died, and continuing through final acts of ethnic cleansing that turned diverse and vibrant populations homogeneous, Snyder seeks to humanize the statistics, to explain the motivations of the perpetrators and to return to the dead the stories of their lives. He is too successful for this book to be easy reading.

People were perhaps alike in dying and in death, but each of them was different until that final moment, each had different preoccupations and presentiments until all was clear and all was black.

Snyder looks at why both Stalin and Hitler found it necessary to slaughter so many civilians, most who posed no political threat, many of whom were children. He's interested in the motivations of the guards, the policemen holding the guns, the soldiers obeying orders. He's also interested in the lives of those who died and the reasons for those deaths.

Only there in the ditch were these people reduced to nothing, or to their number, which was 33,761.

I took copious notes while reading this book, to absorb more of what I was learning, but also as a buffer against that relentless stream of information. Snyder writes well, has clearly done extensive research and has a passion for his subject. He wants the reader to be informed of the events of the past, the motivations and reasons, but most of all, he wants the reader to see each death as an individual story cut short.

That sounds like a very disturbing book. I applaud you for taking it on.

So behind on threads & trying to catch up. I am glad to hear your mum is better and that you had a good break (always wanted to see the tulips!), can't wait to see the photo's.

Finally picked up a Daniel Woodrell book (obviously Winter's Bone) so can't wait to see if this is a new author I will like, that I will pop back and gets some recs where to go next (he seems to be hard to get in the UK though)

I really hope you read your book (oh and the ipad). I hate mislaying my current book...

>163 RidgewayGirl:
I wanted to read that one too, but when I saw the premise, I decided not to - glad to hear it was the right choice!

What an odd spring we're having. The winter was exceptionally mild and then it got warm suddenly, with the weird result that everything is blooming at once. The big planters downtown are crammed because the daffodils and tulips are blooming together and here in my yard the rose bush is already festooned. It's undeniably beautiful, but it looks wrong -- these flowers should not be blooming simultaneously.



I read Oryx and Crake, the first in Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, back in 2010, which is just long enough ago to make me want to reread it after reading The Year of the Flood. It was a different experience the second time, the world building was less fascinating once I was already familiar with the world, but it was fun to see the references to the future books woven into Oryx and Crake.

Revolutionary Road is the story of a marriage. Starting with all the optimism and eagerness that should begin every marriage, April and Frank see their relationship slowly eroded by the disappointments and responsibilities that accompany a family in the 1950s and when April finds a solution to fix their deteriorating marriage, it seems as though they might be able to rebuild.

Richard Yates has created a world that feels much like a Cheever short story (or much like Mad Men, for that matter). There's a sense that far from being a master of the universe, Frank, with his college education and quick wit, is every bit as trapped as his wife by the social expectations of the community they live in, and their own expectations about what their life is supposed to look like. Everyone in this book is trapped, finding small pleasures in convincing themselves that they are better than the neighbors, but always returning to a deep sense of dissatisfaction.

Another BB for me! I added Bloodlands to my library wish list. I'll pass on Bridget Jones #3.

Last month we went to Amsterdam and visited the Anne Frank House. It's well worth visiting and, for my children, an accessible introduction to the holocaust. While the usual memorials and museums are overwhelming and the sheer numbers involved work to distance the events from the visitor, the Anne Frank House, being about a small number of people, and especially one thirteen year old girl who chafes at being stuck inside, makes it very real.

I first read The Diary of a Young Girl when I was myself a teenager. What is clear in the rereading is that the author is very clearly a young teenager and that had she lived, she would have been an author of some significance. Despite being written sixty years ago, the diary remains fresh and undated, being concerned with conflict with her mother, the difficulty of being the youngest person in the annex, of sharing a very small bedroom with a frightened and selfish middle-aged man and with falling in love. She's as refreshingly self-involved and convinced of the unique depth of her feelings as any teenager.

If any single book can stand as a symbol for all that was lost, we could not do much better than this.

>174 RidgewayGirl: I've re-read that one myself. I'm sure I'll read it again. With what appears to be going on in the Ukraine, I may have to bump up that re-read.

After three days of steady, inconsolable rain,
I walk through the rooms of the house
wondering which would be best to die in.

I read very little poetry. Laughably little, embarrassingly little. But Billy Collins reminds me here, as he always does, that poetry is not sentimental or schlocky or dull. Nine Horses: Poems was just like the other books of his that I've read, slowly, a poem or two a day. There are poems about yearning and love and also poems about the weather or what he sees from the window of a train to Albany and sometimes they are all present in the same poem. I'm sorry to be finished with this slender volume.

Before it was over
I took out a pencil and a notepad
and figured out roughly what was left --
a small box of Octobers, a handful of Aprils,

little time to waste reading a large novel
on the couch every evening,
a few candles flaming in the corners of the room.
a fishbowl of Mondays, a row of Fridays --

yet I cannot come up with anything
better than to strike a match,
settle in under a light blanket,
and open to the first sentence of Clarissa.

>173 luvamystery65: You'll do well to skip the third Bridget Jones. I couldn't resist, but if Fielding writes another, I'll probably be able to ignore it.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is well worth reading. I never mark up the books I read (a legacy of being a library user from a young age), but for this I ended up with a book full of underlining and post-it notes sticking out at random angles. I feel like I understand a bit about what's going on now in Ukraine by finding out what has happened there in the past.

>175 thornton37814: Lori, it seems that I read a new edition -- the one that I read back sometime in the eighties was shorter. Otto Frank, Anne's father, had kept some parts out, especially parts dealing with her troubled relationship with her mother and her thoughts on sex. She had rewritten her diary with an intention to make it public after the war, and the one we're familiar with was taken from both sources. This new edition contains more entries.

I'm finally catching up with your thread and am sorry to see that the third Bridget Jones didn't live up to the hype. I really liked the first book and thought the second was OK, but now I feel I can pass on the third with no regrets.

I'm embarrassed to say I've never read The Diary of a Young Girl but I will be sure to do so before visiting the Anne Frank house this summer.

Paulina, be prepared for a very long line. It's worth the wait, though.

>174 RidgewayGirl: Kay: I remember reading The Diary of a Young Girl in 8th grade and I remember how it affected me at the time. It was the wake up call my preteen brain needed that there was more to life than my daily drama!

I think a reread is in order.

Lisa, it's interesting to read it as an adult. Anne Frank was so very much a young teenager that I can easily picture her hanging out with my daughter and her friends. It seems to me more shocking that they were willing to murder a frivolous, self-involved girl who put pictures of movie stars up on her walls than anything else.

>176 RidgewayGirl: I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't heard of Billy Collins before I chanced on Aimless Love for April's Random CAT. I am looking forward to more. What else would you recommend by him?

Alicia, I have read three of his collections and thoroughly enjoyed each one. I would recommend whichever one you find first. And as a big fan of The Good Wife, I love your name.

Glad to know I can't go wrong with any Billy Collins : )

I didn't realize I shared a name with Julianna Margulies! I need to check out The Good Wife. With a cast like they have I don't know why I've never watched it.

The reviews for Claire Messud's novel about a lonely woman who befriends a family, The Woman Upstairs, has received mixed reviews. I went into reading it with low expectations and ended up liking it quite a bit. It turned the usual expectations on their head in a way I enjoyed and I liked the prickly, cynical, yet hopeful Nora quite a bit.

Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Nora teaches elementary school, the story begins when a new boy enters her classroom. Reza's english isn't very good, but his charm wins over his classmates and Nora herself. Then she meets Reza's mother, Sirena, who is an artist poised at the edge of fame, successful in her art as Nora is not. They rent a studio together and form a friendship, which soon includes Skandar, Reza's father, with whom she enjoys long conversations that make her feel both intelligent and taken seriously.

While this is a much quieter and understated book than The Dinner or Gone Girl, it has the same sense that something isn't right, and while the final revealed betrayal isn't murder or violence, it's as meaningful in its own way.

I roared through The Magicians, Lev Grossman's novel, in just a few days. It's that kind of book. Quentin was always in those gifted and talented programs at school. Raised by older parents who seemed to forget about him for long stretches, he had a lonely childhood, where he spent much of his time fantasizing about the world depicted in a series of children's fantasy novels, one which looks a lot like Narnia. Coming home one November afternoon, he stumbles into what he thinks is another world, but which turns out to be a college of sorts for magicians.

The Magicians has been compared to the Harry Potter series, but despite the school setting in the first parts of the book, there is less reference to Hogwarts than there is to Narnia. Here, the central characters graduate and move into New York City as adults and then enter into the meat of the novel relatively late.

This is a quick, action-packed read. While Grossman examines what being able to work magic means for young adults sent out into a mundane world, and emphasizes that the world does not generally throw together interesting and safe challenges for those who are floundering, he doesn't let this affect the speed of events. A lot happens, quickly. This is a fun, imaginative novel.

Now for the nit-picking. Grossman doesn't write women well. He does try, but he's not good at it. The two female characters who spend significant time together never interact and dislike each other in a catty way. Girls are either saintlike or looking to make trouble. The guys are complex and capable of having both good and bad traits. And the breasts. There are a lot of them mentioned with reference to shape and size. One character has "heavy breasts". Her breasts are mentioned a lot, and always with the descriptor "heavy", which eventually made me wonder how she could get around so quickly, being weighed down as she was. That said, I enjoyed the book and will eventually read the sequel, hoping that Grossman will, in the meantime, have met some three-dimensional women, gotten to know them beyond their breasts, and been able to add that nuance to his female characters.

Kay - I read The Magicians for one of the award cats last year but didn't like it as much as you did. I found it a bit too much like Harry Potter. But it was on the short list for a Kitchie award so it's probably just me. When I saw over on the Roots thread that you were reading it, I was waiting to see what you thought of it.

Betty, there's no doubt that The Magicians had problems, but I liked the imaginativeness of the story, that the author thought about what being able to work magic would do to someone and how the being able to jump to other worlds was seen as less fun and more deadly than is usual in fantasy novels. One likes to think that the result would be an awesome and empowering adventure, but doesn't it sound more likely that one would be dead in a few hours? Imagine jumping into Westeros, for example, and then having your first encounter be with the Wildings or the Beast. It wouldn't last long, that adventure.

I started to think I'd put that one on the list, but I know I'd be super annoyed by your description of the female characters. I think it's strange when writers stumble over characters of the opposite sex, and it's usually male writers who can't write females, as if, like you point out, they haven't met one before. I know there's got to be a female writer who is bad at male characters and I just haven't come across her yet.

>186 RidgewayGirl: Just stopping by to say that "heavy breasts" cracked me up!

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense is a collection of stories edited by Sarah Weinman and written by the first female mystery authors writing for the pulp magazines from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s. Usually anthologies are a mixed bag, where a successful collection holds a few memorable gems and not to many lackluster entries. Here, every story has been carefully chosen and is the best of a very good author's output. Some of the authors included are Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Vera Caspary and Dorothy B. Hughes. But Weinman also included authors who have been forgotten and the quality of these stories is also excellent. There's no question that even back in the heyday of Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald these women authors could more than hold their own. I enjoyed finding new authors to hunt down and being reminded of old favorites. If you like noir, I highly recommend this collection.

>191 RidgewayGirl: Bam! Right between the eyes with this book bullet. The cover is fantastic.

Isn't it, Roberta?

Ooh, definitely going to have to add that one to the TBR!

>191 RidgewayGirl: I agree that the cover, and title, are great, but I'm also happy to hear that it has some really great authors. You had me at Shirley Jackson.

That is one powerful book bullet as it got me as well!

Ooh, I want Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories , you had me at Shirley Jackson also! The cover is great too!

Guys, It's an excellent collection. I've got to read some Dorothy B. Hughes soon.

In this slender novel by German author Birgit Vanderbeke, a son, daughter and their mother wait for the man of the house to return from a business trip. For this reunion dinner, the mother has prepared mussels. As they prepare The Mussel Feast and then wait for his arrival, they begin to talk to each other. Narrated by the daughter, the book begins by giving a picture of a household that relaxes a bit when the father is out of town, with informal mealtimes and an easier routine, but there are soon ominous hints that life with this man is maybe harsher than is usual. As they wait at the table around the bowl of mussels, the three unhappy family members finally begin to speak honestly with one another and as the hour grows later and later, and it becomes evident that something has happened, the mood grows more convivial as what life is like for them with their father and husband is slowly revealed to be worse and worse.

The Mussel Feast reminds me of Herman Koch's The Dinner in its slowly rising level of unpleasantness. It's not over-blown, however, and the narrator is all too reliable. The story is told in one, breathless segment, with few paragraph breaks and enormous run-on sentences. This is a masterful work, with the sense of growing dread perfectly controlled right through the book's final sentences.

The Mussel Feast was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the winner of which will be announced later this month.

Great review! The Mussel Feast is definitely a book I will watch for.

Vivienne, it was really good. But not at all cheerful. I did think that it was insightful in how she portrayed how the father controlled the interactions between the other family members.

Thanks for the heads-up on that, I'll keep it for a day when I can handle a touch of misery.

I picked up Die schönsten Jahre: Vom Glück und Unglück der Liebe by Elke Heidenreich at random from a table at the Hugendubel (the German equivalent of Barnes and Noble) based on the cover illustration and slender size. Usually, when I pick a book without knowing anything about it beforehand, it invariably ends up being terrible, but this book was the pleasant exception to that rule.

Nina and her mother have never gotten along. Now that her own children are grown and her mother elderly, Nina dutifully visits in order to help out, but always stays in the local hotel and the visits are always difficult for both of them. And then, when she visits to celebrate her mother's eightieth birthday on her way to meet her lover in Milan, her mother decides to go with her for a few days, having never been to Italy.

This is an oddly heartwarming story of two prickly people who have never shown affection for each other and how they move beyond their fraught past to come to an understanding of each other for a few days.

Die schönsten Jahre: Vom Glück und Unglück der Liebe has not been translated into English.

And look at me, reading two German books in a single month! We will not dwell on how both were very short, but instead on this monumental accomplishment. Cake will be served.

German chocolate cake, right?

Your choice! This is the Rischart bakery, which has amazing cakes and bread. The second one from the bottom is called Fidelio and includes raspberries, sponge cake, marzipan, cream and more raspberries. It's my favorite.

2 books in German in one month, is quite the feat and you deserve two pieces of Fidelio! (which looks delicious)

>205 RidgewayGirl: Point me towards the one with the most chocolate. They all look like they're worth the calories.
And congrats on being an international reader!

That looks so yummy and I love raspberries! I agree you should have 2 pieces.

Thank you, Betty and Judy.

Jennifer, I picked up a small cake from the bakery for a birthday, which my children declared was "too chocolatey." It involved chocolate cake, a chocolate mousse and chocolate shavings. I did not feel it exceeded it's chocolate limit as I don't believe such a thing exists. Try that.

That cake sounds perfect and I'm glad you enjoyed it. The Germans really excel at amazing desserts. I remember liking everything I had there, but especially the sweets.

That chocolate cake sounds absolutely amazing to me, definitely something that I would enjoy too. I thought there was no such thing as too chocolatey. Last weekend I made a trifle that was super chocolatey and really delicious. Here is a link to the recipe if you would like to check it out.

Mmmmmm that sounds like a delicious chocolate cake, and the trifle too.