kidzdoc achieves TBR domination in 2014, part 9

My photograph of the unfinished La Sagrada Familia by Antoni Gaudí, taken from a Barcelona Bus Turístic yesterday afternoon, 19 July 2014




Currently reading:

    

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu
Paul Robeson: A Watched Man by Jordan Goodman
Nevirapine and the Quest to End Pediatric AIDS by Rebecca J. Anderson

Completed books:

January:
1. Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín (review)
2. 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz (review)
3. How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones (review) (TBR)
4. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
5. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordechai Richler

February:
6. Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Secret Past by Giles Tremlett (TBR)
7. Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation
by Burton Blatt & Fred Kaplan
8. Down's Syndrome: The History of a Disability by David Wright
9. Lizard Tails by Juan Marsé (TBR) (review)
10. The Comedians by Graham Greene (TBR) (review)
11. No Name in the Street by James Baldwin (TBR)
12. The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop by Guthrie Ramsey
13. An Unexpected Twist by Andy Borowitz (TBR)

March:
14. The Enormity of the Tragedy by Quim Monzó (TBR)
15. Between Friends by Amos Oz
16. Chewing Gum Dreams by Michaela Coel
17. The Weir by Conor McPherson
18. Wounded: A New History of the Western Front in World War I by Emily Mayhew
19. The Husbands by Sharmila Chauhan
20. We Are Proud To Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury
21. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks
22. 1984 (play script) by George Orwell

April:
23. Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise
24. Ruin Lust: Artists' Fascination with Ruins, from Turner to the Present Day by Brian Dillon
25. Secret Barcelona by Veronica Ramirez Muro and Rocio Sierra Carbonell
26. Barcelona by Robert Hughes
27. Everyman Mapguide Barcelona
28. Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (TBR)
29. The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer
30. Notes for a Spanish Odyssey by Calvin Baker
31. Kicking the Sky by Anthony De Sa
32. I Am a Japanese Writer by Dany Laferrière (TBR)
33. Gone by Colum McCann

May:
34. The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (TBR)
35. Gasoline by Quim Monzó (TBR)
36. Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje (TBR)
37. Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut
38. Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
39. Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov

June:
40. The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal
41. Quietly by Owen McCafferty
42. Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life by Alex Bellos
43. Shanghai Nights by Juan Marsé (TBR)
44. This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood by Alan Johnson
45. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes
46. Rochester Castle by Jeremy Ashbee
47. The Sant Pau Modernista Precinct by Richard Rees
48. Lost Luggage by Jordi Puntí
49. Baedeker Barcelona by Baedeker Guides
50. Gaudí: Introduction to His Architecture by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot

July:
51. Barcelona Scams by Jonathan Stone
52. Gaudí: A Biography by Gijs van Hensbergen

Purchased and acquired books (purchased books in bold):

January:
1. 1914: A Novel by Jean Echenoz (1 Jan, Strand Book Store)
2. The Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1 Jan, Book Culture)
3. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild (1 Jan, Book Culture)
4. U.S.A. by John Dos Passos (1 Jan, Book Culture)
5. Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities by Mark Anthony Neal (1 Jan, Book Culture)
6. Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (1 Jan, Book Culture)
7. Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat (1 Jan, Book Culture)
8. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon (1 Jan, Book Culture)
9. My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit (1 Jan, Book Culture)
10. Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize by Sean B. Carroll (1 Jan, Book Culture)
11. The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally (8 Jan, Amazon Kindle e-book)
12. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark (18 Jan, History Book Club)
13. The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger (18 Jan, Michael C. Carlos Museum Bookshop)
14. The Odyssey: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer's Epic by Simon Armitage (18 Jan, Michael C. Carlos Museum Bookshop)
15. Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey by Robert O'Meally (18 Jan, Michael C. Carlos Museum Bookshop)
16. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis (19 Jan, Kindle e-book)
17. The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto (25 Jan, Kindle e-book (reimbursement))
18. The New Spaniards by John Hooper (25 Jan, Kindle e-book (reimbursement))
19. Barcelona by John Hughes (25 Jan, Kindle e-book (reimbursement))
20. Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends by John Leguizamo (26 Jan, Kindle e-book)
21. Just Kids by Patti Smith (26 Jan, Kindle e-book)
22. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (26 Jan, Kindle e-book)
23. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge (26 Jan, Kindle e-book)

February:
25. Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (6 Feb, Kindle e-book)
26. Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation by Burton Blatt, Fred Kaplan (9 Feb, PDF download)
27. Spain in Mind by Alice Leccese Powers (16 Feb, gift book)
28. The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (21 Feb, Kindle e-book)
29. Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues by Martin J. Blaser, MD (LT Early Reviewers book)
30. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
31. Wounded: From Battlefield to Blighty by Emily Mayhew (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
32. Creation: The Origin of Life by Adam Rutherford (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
33. Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
34. Far From the Tree: A Dozen Kinds of Love by Andrew Solomon (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
35. Inconvenient People by Sarah Wise (25 Feb, Kindle e-book)
36. An Unexpected Twist (Kindle Single) by Andy Borowitz (27 Feb, Kindle e-book)

March:
37. Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker: 200 Recipes for Healthy and Hearty One-Pot Meals That Are Ready When You Are by Robin Robertson (3 Mar, gift from Karen W.)
38. Thrombosis & Bleeding: An Era of Discovery by Cecil Hougie (5 Mar, Kindle e-book)
39. On the Rez by Ian Frazier (9 Mar, Kindle e-book)
40. We'll Always Have Paris by John Baxter (10 Mar, Kindle e-book)
41. The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino (20 Mar, Kindle e-book)
42. The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino (20 Mar, Kindle e-book)
43. Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino (20 Mar, Kindle e-book)
44. Chewing Gum Dreams by Michaela Coel (20 Mar, Kindle e-book)
45. 1984 by George Orwell (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
46. The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
47. The Weir by Conor McPherson (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
48. A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
49. Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
50. Sol Campbell by Simon Astaire (22 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
51. Nomad's Hotel: Travels in Time and Space by Cees Nooteboom (22 Mar, Stanfords Bookshop)
52. The Husbands by Sharmila Chauhan (23 Mar, Soho Theatre)
53. The Hill Station by J.G. Farrell (24 Mar, London Review Bookshop)
54. Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian (24 Mar, London Review Bookshop)
55. Falling Out of Time by David Grossman (24 Mar, London Review Bookshop)
56. Plague and Cholera by Patrick Deville (24 Mar, London Review Bookshop)
57. The Making of Mr Hai's Daughter by Yasmin Hai (26 Mar, Foyles Bookshop)
58. We Are Proud To Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury (26 Mar, Bush Theatre)
59. The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times by Barbara Taylor (27 Mar, Daunt Books)
60. Gaudí: A Biography by Gijs van Hensbergen (27 Mar, Daunt Books)
61. Ruin Lust by Brian Dillon (27 Mar, National Theatre Bookshop)
62. King Lear by William Shakespeare (27 Mar, National Theatre Bookshop)
63. 1984 (script) by George Orwell, adapted by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan (29 Mar, Almeida Theatre)

Purchased and acquired books (purchased books in bold):

April:
64. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (11 Apr, Kindle e-book)
65. Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (14 Apr, Kindle e-book)
66. An Introduction to the Catalan and Valencian Languages by David S. Luton (14 Apr, Kindle e-book)
67. Kicking the Sky by Anthony De Sa (15 Apr, LT Early Reviewers book)
68. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Callahan (19 Apr, Kindle e-book)
69. Notes for a Spanish Odyssey by Calvin Baker (20 Apr, Kindle e-book)
70. Gone (Kindle Single) by Colum McCann (20 Apr, Kindle e-book)
71. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (30 Apr, Kindle e-book)

May:
72. Lost Luggage by Jordi Puntí (6 May, Kindle e-book)
73. The Dolls' Room by Llorenç Villalonga (7 May, Kindle e-book)
74. All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu (10 May, Barnes & Noble)
75. Living Language Spanish, Complete Edition (10 May, Barnes & Noble)
76. The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla (10 May, Barnes & Noble)
77. The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke (16 May, Kindle e-book)
78. Pocket Rough Guide Madrid by Simon Baskett (19 May, Idlewild Books)
79. Barcelona Baedeker Guide (19 May, Idlewild Books)
80. Madrid: A Cultural History (19 May, Idlewild Books)
81. Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life (19 May, Idlewild Books)
82. Morphine by Mikhail Bulgakov (19 May, Book Culture)
83. Spilt Milk by Chico Buarque (19 May, Book Culture)
84. Family Life by Akhil Sharma (19 May, Book Culture)
85. Book of Hours by Kevin Young (19 May, Book Culture)
86. Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture by Hisham Aidi (19 May, Book Culture)
87. Stokely: A Life by Peniel E. Joseph (19 May, Book Culture)
88. Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur (19 May, Book Culture)
89. The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra by Pedro Mairal (21 May, St Mark's Bookshop)
90. Glyph: A Novel by Percival Everett (21 May, St Mark's Bookshop)
91. Sleet: Selected Stories by Stig Dagerman (21 May, St Mark's Bookshop)
92. Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (21 May, St Mark's Bookshop)
93. Paul Robeson: A Watched Man by Jordan Goodman (21 May, St Mark's Bookshop)
94. A French Book by John Christy (24 May, Kindle e-book)
95. Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende (25 May, Kindle e-book)

June:
96. The Londonist Book Of London Pub Crawls by Matt Brown (1 Jun, Kindle e-book)
97. River Gardens by Lynda Kiss (2 Jun, Kindle e-book)
98. Lancelot by Walker Percy (3 Jun, Kindle e-book)
99. The Physician by Noah Gordon (3 Jun, Kindle e-book)
100. Quietly by Owen McCafferty (3 Jun, Soho Theatre)
101. In the Approaches by Nicola Barker (5 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
102. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez (5 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
103. I Am China by Xiaolu Guo (5 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
104. The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration by David Goodhart (5 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
105. Lost for Words by Edward St Aubyn (6 Jun, Brick Lane Bookshop)
106. This Boy: A Memoir of Childhood by Alan Johnson (6 Jun, Brick Lane Bookshop)
107. The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin (8 Jun, Baggins Book Bazaar)
108. Fima by Amos Oz (8 Jun, Baggins Book Bazaar)
109. Don't Call it Night by Amos Oz (8 Jun, Baggins Books Bazaar)
110. Our Street: East End Life in the Second World War by Gilda O'Neill (8 Jun, Baggins Book Bazaar)
111. Rochester Castle by Jeremy Ashbee (8 Jun, Rochester Castle gift shop)
112. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (12 Jun, gift book from Bianca Buchholz)
113. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque (12 Jun, gift book from Bianca Buchholz)
114. The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell by Carlos Rojas (13 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
115. The Iraqi Christ by Hassan Blasim (13 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
116. Outlaws by Javier Cercas (13 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
117. Mr Loverman by Bernadine Evaristo (13 Jun, Oxfam Bloomsbury Bookshop)
118. Vlad by Carlos Fuentes (13 Jun, Waterstone's Gower Street
119. Portobello Road: Lives of a Neighbourhood by Julian Mash (13 Jun, Waterstone's Gower Street
120. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (13 Jun, Foyles Bookshop)
121. A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie (13 Jun, Foyles Bookshop)
122. Gaudi: Introduction to his Architecture by Juan-Eduardo Cirlot (17 Jun, Divers Newsagent, Estació Sants)
123. The Sant Pau Modernista Precinct (20 Jun, Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau gift shop)
124. The Arch and the Butterfly by Mohammed Achaari (23 Jun, Come In Llibreria Anglesa)
125. Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid by Sid Lowe (23 Jun, Come In Llibreria Anglesa)
126. The History of Catalonia by F. Xavier Hernàndez (23 Jun, Come In Llibreria Anglesa)
127. A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn (29 Jun, Kindle e-book)

July:
128. The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy by David Halberstam (1 Jul, Kindle e-book)
129. Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens (1 Jul, Kindle e-book)
130. Nevirapine and the Quest to End Pediatric AIDS by Rebecca J. Anderson (2 Jul, LTER book)

This is a list of the TBR books I'd like to read the most. I hope to complete 10-15 or more tomes (500 pages or longer), and 30-35 shorter works. This is a first draft, so the books that are listed here will almost certainly change as the year progresses.

TBR Books to Read in 2014

Tomes (500 pages or more):
      Nicole Barker, Darkmans
      Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins
      Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
      Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
      Ralph Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting...
      Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
      David Grossman, To the End of the Land
      Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name
      George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
      A.J. Liebling, Just Enough Liebling
      David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography
      Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
      Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
      Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
      Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul
      Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
      William Trevor, Selected Stories
      Patrick White, The Vivisector

Non-tomes (less than 500 pages):
      Stuart Altman and David Shactman, Power, Politics and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle
      Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
      Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
      Amiri Baraka, Tales of the Out & the Gone
      Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
      Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
      Randy Christensen MD, Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them
      Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel
      Jean Echenoz, I'm Off and One Year
      Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell
      Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
      Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
      Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake
      Juan Eslava Galan, The Mule
      Jerry Gentry, Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital
      Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
      Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
      Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
      Graham Greene, The Comedians
      Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
      Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine
      Hettie Jones, How I Became Hettie Jones
      James Kelman, Kieron Smith, boy
      Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
      Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One
      Eric Lax, The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
      Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
      Juan Marsé, Lizard Tails
      Juan Marsé, Shanghai Nights
      David A. Mendel, Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and their Doctors
      Simon Mawer, Mendel's Dwarf
      Claire McCarthy, Everyone's Children: A Pediatrician's Story of an Inner City Practice
      Ian McEwan, Atonement
      Andrew Miller, Pure
      Quim Monzó, The Enormity of the Tragedy
      Quim Monzó, Gasoline
      Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
      Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
      Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
      Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
      Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost
      Laura Katz Olson, The Politics of Medicaid: Stakeholders and Welfare Medicine
      Brian Orr, MD, A Pediatrician's Journal: Caring for Children in a Broken Medical System
      Orhan Pamuk, Snow
      Roy Porter, Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Lunatics
      Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
      Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir
      Giles Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Secret Past
      Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House
      Richard Wright, Black Boy

Recommended reads for the CanLit 2014 Challenge (by Canadian LTers) (books in bold are ones that I'm most interested in reading):

   Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (Joyce, Nancy, Cait and Cyrel)
   Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (Cait and Joyce)
   Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Tui)
   Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (Joyce and Nancy)
   Anita Rau Badami, Tamarind Mem (Tui)
   Anita Rau Badami, Tell it to the Trees (Cait)
   John Bemrose, The Island Walkers (Lori)
   Marie-Claire Blais, The Day Is Dark and Three Travelers (Suz)
   Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road (Suz and Cyrel)
   Joseph Boyden, Black Spruce (Suz and Cyrel)
   Wayson Choy, The Jade Peony (Nancy)
   Michael Crummey, Galore (Sassy)
   Robertson Davies, The Deptford Trilogy (Suz, Cait, Tui and Zoë)
   Suzanne Desrochers, Bride of New France (Zoë)
   Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (Nancy)
   Kim Echlin, The Disappeared (Cait)
   Timothy Findley, The Last of the Crazy People (Lori)
   Timothy Findley, The Piano Man's Daughter (Tui)
   Timothy Findley, The Wars (Suz and Joyce)
   Kenneth J. Harvey, Blackstrap Hawco (Sassy)
   Tomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen (Joyce and Tui)
   Helen Humphreys, Coventry (Tui)
   Helen Humphreys, The Frozen Thames (Tui)
   Helen Humphreys, The Lost Garden (Tui)
   Wayne Johnston, Baltimore's Mansion (Tui)
   Wayne Johnston, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (Cyrel)
   Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water (Joyce)
   W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe (Tui)
   Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel (Tui)
   Mary Lawson, Crow Lake (Lori)
   Linden MacIntyre, The Bishop's Man (Suz)
   Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief (Cait and Nancy)
   Beatrice MacNeil, Where White Horses Gallop (Nancy)
   Rabindranath Maharaj, The Amazing Absorbing Boy (Cyrel)
   Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters (Tui)
   Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (Tui)
   W.O. Mitchell, Who Has Seen the Wind (Tui)
   Lisa Moore, February (Cait)
   Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Suz)
   Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness (Cyrel)
   Alice Munro, The View from Castle Rock (Cyrel)
   Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost (Joyce)
   Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (Cait)
   Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
   Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table (Suz)
   Jacques Poulin, Mister Blue (Suz)
   Mordechai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Cyrel)
   Timothy Taylor, Stanley Park (Joyce)
   Kim Thúy, Ru (Suz)
   Michel Tremblay, The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant (Lori)
   Jane Urquhart, Away (Tui)
   Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers (Tui)
   Ronald Wright, What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order (nonfiction) (Tui)

A photo of Felipe VI, the newly crowned King of Spain, along with his wife Letizia and their lovely daughters Leonor, who is next in line to the crown, and Sofía, taken from yesterday's coronation in Madrid:

Hola!

>1 kidzdoc: WOW!

>7 katiekrug: ¡Hola amiga! ¿Cómo estás?

>8 avidmom: I don't think any photos can do justice to the Sagrada Familia, avidmom, and certainly not that one. There were hundreds of people in line waiting to go on a tour of the building when I saw it from a tour bus yesterday afternoon. It remains under construction over 75 years after Gaudí's death in 1926, and it is expected to be finished by 2030. And you ladies thought your husbands took forever to finish a home project...

I posted 100 photos that I took yesterday in a Facebook album last night. It's nearly 1:30 am here, so I'll try to post a few selected photos here before I fall asleep.

>9 kidzdoc: - Muoy bien. And that exhausts all my Spanish :)

The exterior of the Pavellons de la Finca Güell, one of Antoni Gaudí's early projects, which he built for his friend and benefactor Eusebi Güell on his family's estate in Pedralbes. It consisted of a porter's house, several horse stables and other structures. It was closed to visitors at the time of my visit, but hopefully I can go on a tour this weekend.



The dragon gateway:



One of the sculptures representing an orange tree:

Typical examples of the architecture of the residential buildings in L'Eixample, the neighborhood built in the latter half of the 19th century after the city's fortified walls were demolished:









A hurried shot of Gaudí's Casa Battlo, taken while the tour bus had tempoarily stopped:

More photos of La Sagrada Familia:

Glad that you are having a good time and seeing great architecture!

Thank you so much for the photos. I've wanted to see Gaudi's buildings in person ever since I took an Arch history course in college. Are you planning to see the Miro museum?

Oh, BTW, I just picked up a copy of Lost Luggage today at the local library.

The old Customs Building at the Port of Barcelona:



Montjüic, as seen from Barceloneta:



Finally, some impressive buildings and sculptures that I haven't learned the names of yet:









These photographs barely scratch the surface of the fabulous architecture of Barcelona, and I wasn't able to get any shots of the spectacular views of the city from Montjüic. However, now that I have a basic overview of the city I will go back to specific sites, see the museums and other sites of interest in detail, and take much better photos over the next week.

>10 katiekrug: Huh. I thought all Texans spoke Spanish fluently, Katie. ;^)

>14 torontoc: Thanks, Cyrel! Barcelona is an architectural and cultural feast, and my friends who told me that I would love Barcelona are spot on so far.

>15 catarina1: You're welcome, catarina. I love Miró's work, and I began to appreciate it much more after I saw an exhibition dedicated to him at the Tate Modern a couple of years ago. I didn't post it above, but the Red Line of the Barcelona Bus Turístic did pass by the Fundació Joan Miró on Montjüic:



I definitely plan to go to this museum, and spend a day on Montjüic, possibly this weekend if the Fundació Joan Miró is open.

There is so much that I want to do and see here that I will skip my tentative plan to go to Madrid early next week. I'll definitely want to return to Spain in the near future (in 2015, or 2016 at the latest), so I'll visit Madrid and other Iberian cities then.

Wow. It's almost 2:30 am, so I really should go to bed.

>17 kidzdoc: - I'M NOT A TEXAN!!! This Northeasterner had 8 years of French :-P

How fun that you were in Spain for the installation of the King. Europe sure is busy getting the next generation in place -- Netherlands, Belgium, now Spain. Wonder who will be next.

Darryl I loved the Miró museum. I hope you get to go. I'm typing from my phone. I'll pop in tomorrow and really look at your posts. Did you go to the old part of the city?

Awesome photos! Keep them coming. You have a good eye for architectural detail. And how cool to be there for the coronation!

I also loved the Miro Museum, make sure you get up to the roof terrace. The tour bus sounds like a great way to first view Barcelona. It's a city that will keep you busy, there is so much to see and experience. Make sure you try some pintxos (tapas Basque style). We hardly ate in restaurants, prefered to eat tapas a couple of times a day.

I still think it's a pity you'll miss the chance of a day or two in Madrid, but...

I think Felipe was just "installed"; the coronation has to be planned and is still pending. (Just as it would have been had Juan Carlos dropped dead.) I suspect Spain's remaining monarchists hope that he'll manage to revive support for the restored Bourbons; in the last several years, Juan Carlos and his daughters have really squandered the goodwill that the king earned in the aftermath of Franco's death, when he did an amazing job fending off a right wing coup. Dunno what happened after that.

Great pics from the bus tour! And yes, Kerry's tapas tip is perfect -- grazing and a great way to sample the widest array of yummy stuff.

So Darryl, are you having any fun?

*YAWN* I didn't finally go to sleep until 4 am, so I'm running a bit behind this morning (it's 9:15 am here). I think I'll have breakfast at the very nice Starbucks España on La Plaça de Francesc Macià that I ate at yesterday, and visit Gaudí's Casa Vicens and Domènech's Hospital de Sant Pau. There is a concert tonight that I'm interested in seeing, so I might go to that as well.

>18 katiekrug: *snickers quietly* Oh, I know that you're originally from upstate New York, Katie. I made that comment as payback for your effort in Wednesday's double team against me on Facebook. My work here is done; now I have to figure out how to bait Laura...

Whenever anyone asks where I'm from I say "Atlanta", but quickly add that I'm originally from the Northeast. Sometimes I'll just say that I've from the NYC or Philadelphia area, and not mention Atlanta at all.

>19 RebaRelishesReading: Good question, Reba. Which other European countries have monarchies?

>20 luvamystery65: I'll definitely go to la Fundació de Joan Miró, probably on Sunday morning if I decide to spend the day visiting Montjüic. I usually like to stay away from the most tourist infested areas on weekends including Fridays, so I'll probably postpone going to Barri Gòtic until Monday or Tuesday, now that I've decided to stay in Barcelona for the remainder of my vacation. I'll visit the more popular neighborhoods in the early morning hours (7-8 am), in order to avoid the crowds (and the pickpockets that operate amongst them).

>21 Berly: Thanks, Kim! I didn't watch the installment of King Felipe VI live, since I was touring Barcelona, and I only saw snippets of it on La Uno, the primary television station of Spain. I'll read about it in today's issue of El País, though.

>22 avatiakh: Thanks for mentioning the roof terrace at the Fundació Joan Miró, Kerry; I'll definitely check it out.

One of my colleagues at work and a friend of mine from medical school both highly recommended taking the Barcelona Bus Turístic on my first full day out in Barcelona. They were absolutely right.

I still haven't had tapas yet, so I'll try to get some today, depending on where I go. A small restaurant across the street from my hotel serves them, so I could try them there at least.

>23 Chatterbox: As Kerry said, there is so much to do and see in Barcelona that I'd much rather stay here and see the city in a relaxed fashion, rather than spend a couple of days in Madrid and feel rushed because there are places I didn't get to go to. I'll certainly return to Spain as I mentioned in a previous post, so I'll visit Madrid properly the next time I come here (assuming that I decide to leave Barcelona, which at this point is far from certain).

>24 EBT1002: No ma'am, I'm not enjoying myself at all. I'll probably cut my trip short, as I can't wait to return to Atlanta. :p

Love the photos Darryl! How about a selfie?

>25 kidzdoc: now I have to figure out how to bait Laura...
I am on full alert, your highness :)

Happy New Thread, Darryl! More gorgeous photos, of course. I could boast that I've been to Brazil (a small town in Indiana) this past week, but it's not really as impressive as it sounds...

Happy new thread, Darryl! It looks like you're pretty busy dicovering Barcelona. Enjoy it.

After breakfast I traveled by bus and line 5 of the Barcelona Metro to the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul), and arrived just in time to go on the 13:00 English language tour. As it turned out I was the only one on that tour, which meant that I had The Lovely Julia, a beautiful, enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide, to myself. She gave me a superb introduction to the history of the complex, the details of the buildings, and the importance of the hospital to Barcelona in a 50 minute period, and afterward I stayed for another hour or so to take photographs (unfortunately I didn't think to get one of Julia).

The original Hospital de Santa Creu was begun in 1401, and it represented a merger of six hospitals that existed outside the walls of the old city of Barcelona. It was the city's main hospital for over 500 years, but once the walls of the old city were torn down in the 1850s health officials in Barcelona recognized that the hospital was obsolete and needed to be replaced. Pau Gil, who was born in Barcelona and moved to Paris to run his family's bank at the age of 17, donated his considerable wealth to the creation of the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau, and the Modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner was commissioned to build it. He originally envisioned a campus with 48 buildings, but due to a lack of funds roughly half that number was ultimately built. The first stone was laid in 1901, and the hospital was completed in 1930, seven years after Domènech's death. The hospital served Barcelonians until 2009, when the new Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau was completed. It is now one of the prime examples of Modernist architecture, both within and outside of Barcelona, and it has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The buildings are being renovated, and the completed ones are being rented out, primarily for long term use by global health organizations, and also for short one or two day ceremonies by local groups.

This first photo is the only one I didn't take, which is an aerial view of the campus except for the Administration Pavilion:



The next photos show the entrance to the campus, and the centrally located Administration Pavilion:

Several buildings flank the three central ones, and this is a typical example of one of them. The tallest structure to the right is a water tower, which contains a well that provides fresh water to patients and staff. In front of the building is one of the numerous orange trees that are in the gardens on campus:

Finally, some photos of the surgical building:



The names seen in this photo are those of the most important surgeons in the history of Barcelona:



A mosaic of St Cosmas, one of the patron saints of medicine along with his brother, St Damian:



I posted over 70 photos of the hospital on Facebook, but I forgot to capture the spectacular detail within the ground and upper floors of the Administration Pavilion, and in its basement, which is where the tunnels that connect the buildings to each other begin. The Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau is easily the most impressive medical campus I've ever seen, and it is well worth a visit for anyone who enjoys modern architecture.

After I left the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau I hopped back on the Metro, and proceeded to the Fontana station, where I walked a short distance to see La Casa Vicens, Antoni Gaudí's first major work. It was built between 1883 and 1888 for the manufacturer Manuel Vicens Montaner:







The photos I've seen of the interior are at least as striking as its exterior. However, la Casa Vicens is a private (and guarded) residence, and it is only open to the public on very rare occasions.

Pictures are amazing Darryl. I love Gaudi's buildings.

>27 brenpike: I could take a selfie, maybe this weekend, or I could wait until I meet Catherine, my classmate from residency, comes here this weekend. I think that she, her boyfriend and other friends of his will spend the weekend on the beach, but we will probably meet up during the week before I leave Barcelona next Friday.

>29 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! I will likely post photos every day for the next week, as there are so many more things I plan to do and see here. I may take a train ride to Figueres to see el Teatro-Museo Dalí, but other than that I plan to stay in Barcelona for the next week.

Brazil, IN sounds like California, PA or, better yet, Indiana, PA. Those Pennsylvania cities are home to two medium sized universities, Callifornia U of PA and Indiana U of PA.

>30 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara! I know that you're following my posts and photo albums on Facebook, and I'm glad that you're enjoying them.

>35 SandDune: Same here, Rhian. I'm now becoming a fan of Lluís Domènech, so I'll look for an English language book about him and visit some of his other creations, particularly the Palau de la Música Catalana.

>36 kidzdoc: Callifornia U of PA and Indiana U of PA
I've always thought those were very confusing university names!

Glad you are enjoying your travels, Darryl.

>28 lauralkeet: I didn't mean to skip over you there, Laura! I'll now have to resort to plan B.

>37 lauralkeet: There are several oddly named towns in PA like those two, right? I think there is an Egypt, PA. Checking...yep, Egypt is in Lehigh County.

I'm definitely enjoying this trip to Europe, especially my first visit to the continent, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the next one.

Great photos! Thanks for posting.

Wonderful photos, Darryl. I'm glad you climbed Montjüic -- that was one of our favorite things. The view is fabulous. Thanks for sharing.

I'm awestruck by your photos, Darryl! It looks like your having a fascinating trip.

>34 kidzdoc: Love that -- it's like Andalucian style runs headlong into modernism, the two collide and spring apart, and this was built out a random assortment of the constituent parts!

Makes me think of Cordoba, and bits of the Alhambra. Fun/whimsical.

Thank you so much for the wonderful photos. This last set make me want to travel to Barcelona even more. And you have been fortunate to have such nice weather there so far. The sun and the cheerful buildings! It all makes me smile.

Love the photos! I MUST get back to Barcelona.

>25 kidzdoc: U. K., Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg (a duchy not a kingdom), Monaco, Lichtenstein (a principality) -- I think that's it. Of that group, I would think Denmark most likely to have an abdication with Norway second. The Crown Princess of Sweden is recently married and has a small daughter so I think the king would likely want to give her a bit more time but the families of the heirs in Sweden and Denmark are a bit further along with their families.

Wow! Such colourful, intricate, gorgeous architecture. Impressive! Funny, it never occurred to me that oranges would grow in Spain. Don't know why; it just didn't.

Valencia was the first place I ever saw an orange on a tree -- I was 11. I didn't see why they would grow in Florida! :-)

Awesome pictures , does make me want to visit their myself, maybe on a future trip .......

>39 banjo123: You're welcome, Roni!

>40 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. Actually I didn't climb Montjuïc, I only saw it from the Bus Turístic. I was planning to go there tomorrow, but actually I think I'll go today, and visit the Fundació Joan Miró, the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), and the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys (Olympic Stadium), and go the Teatro Museo Dalí in Figueres tomorrow. My Baedeker Barcelona guide book includes a walking tour of Montjuïc, so I'll use it to explore the hill.

>41 tymfos: Thanks, Terri. This has been a great trip so far, although its end is now in sight. I still have six full days in Barcelona before I fly back to Atlanta on Friday, though.

>42 Chatterbox: I loved the combination of styles that Gaudí used in constructing la Casa Vicens. A color guide book I bought at Sants Estació showed its interior, and I would love to see it one day.

>43 catarina1: You're welcome, catarina. The weather has been superb, with the only rain coming on the evening I arrived here, which didn't impact my plans at all. According to the 7 day forecast the weather will hardly change at all from now through Friday, with temperatures of 25-26 C (77-80 F) and partly or mostly sunny skies.

>44 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks, Reba. I'll definitely get some more great photos when I go to Montjuïc shortly.

Thanks for the information about the European monarchies!

>45 lit_chick: I love the architecture here, Nancy; it's truly a feast for the eyes. I think I gasped aloud when I saw the orange trees yesterday, as I'm pretty sure I've never seen live ones before. They were a surprise to me, but considering that Barcelona is on the Mediterranean coast I guess it shouldn't have been.

>46 Chatterbox: I've been brainwashed by years of watching commercials about Florida oranges, so I immediately associate them from that state and nowhere else. I've never been to Florida, though, so yesterday was the first time I saw one.

I was tickled to see several oranges collected by a maintenance worker roll downhill on the hospital campus, as two visitors ran after them like small children.

Barcelona is definitely worth a visit, Alex, especially if you visit the UK and have a few days to spare. The flight from London Gatwick to Barcelona El Prat only takes two hours, and it only takes about 20 minutes to reach central Barcelona from the airport via the Rodalies de Catalunya, the commuter rail service.

>38 kidzdoc: There are several oddly named towns in PA like those two, right?
While we're on the topic of odd names (which we weren't but bear with me), let's not forget Bird in Hand, Paradise, or ... erm ... Intercourse.

>50 lauralkeet: I dropped in at just the right moment. Aren't there any odd names in YOUR county?

>51 qebo: LOL! I'll have to think about that ...

I spent the bulk of yesterday on Montjuïc ("Mountain of the Jews" in Catalan), the hill in the southwestern portion of Barcelona that was so named because it was the site of a Jewish settlement and cemetery during the Middle Ages, until they were expelled by the Spanish crown in 1492. Montjuïc reaches a maximum height of just over 600 feet above sea level, and it provides spectacular views of the skyline of metropolitan Barcelona, its harbor and the Mediterranean Sea just to the south, and the Serra de Collserola mountains to the north and west. The first major construction on Montjuïc (after the creation of the 17th century Castell de Montjuïc (Montjuïc Castle)) began after Barcelona was chosen as the site for the 1929 International Exposition. The stadium that later served as the main site of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games was built, along with the Palau Nacional (National Palace), now the home of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), the Pavelló de Mies van der Rohe, and the fountains of the Font Màgica. Montjuïc is also the site of the Fundació Joan Miró, the museum which is dedicated to the work of Miró and other contemporary artists.

Despite its height Montjuïc is easily accessible by public transportation, via city bus (route 150 from la Plaça d'Espanya), the Funicular that connects the Paral.lel Metro station to the Parc de Montjuïc, the Telefèric de Montjuïc, the cable car system that provides breath taking views of the city, or the Barcelona Bus Turístic, which I rode on Wednesday.

After breakfast I took the Metro and Funicular to Parc de Montjuïc and visited the Fundació Joan Miró. I had seen the superb Miró exhibition at the Tate Modern museum in 2011, but the works displayed here were a bit more comprehensive, and art by others who were influenced by Miró was also included in the regular exhibition.

The museum did not allow photos to be taken within its interior, but several sculptures were located on its rooftop terrace, where photography was permitted:

After a pleasant 2-1/2 hours of viewing Miró's work I had a very nice lunch in the restaurant within the Fundació. I walked along the Avinguda de L'Estadi to the Estadi Olímpic, which was built for the 1929 International Exposition and renovated to serve as the main stadium for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. The stadium is open for free viewing by the public:





The Olympic Ring, including the Olympic Torch to the right:



The Palau Sant Jordi, the indoor arena used for basketball, gymnastics and other events:

I then took the route 150 bus, which ends at the Castell de Montjuïc, which sits atop its highest point. It was first constructed from 1640-1641, demolished in 1751, and rebuilt from 1779-1799. It was captured without a shot by the French during the Napoleonic Wars, and returned to Spanish after the 1815 treaty that ended the combat. It currently serves as a municipal center and a site for concerts and viewing by the general public.

The castle wasn't as impressive as the Rochester Castle, which I visited with Bryony and Claire two weeks ago, but the views from the top more than made up for it.

The Port of Barcelona, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea:



The city and surrounding towns, with the Serra de Collserola mountains in the background:





You can see la Sagrada Familia in the center of this photo:



Finally, after two young American tourists with impeccable Spanish accents asked me to take a photo of them they took a photo of me. We didn't realize that we were all from the US until one of the girls slipped and said something in English.

I took the route 150 bus back to la Plaça d'Espanya, and took a few more photos.

The Telefèric de Montjuïc:



The Palau Nacional, now home of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya:



The Arenas de Barcelona, a former bullfighting ring which is now used as a shopping center:

I think they still held bullfights there when I was there...

Does anyone know whether there was fighting in/around Barcelona in the latter stages of the Peninsular Wars, i.e. as Wellington was pushing the French back up and across the border into Spain? I can't remember what route the retreating troops took... I really should find an accessible history of that campaign (read: not too militarily technical, and not just Cornwell's "Sharpe" books, however entertaining the television series was!)

Happy Sunday, Darryl.

Such lovely photos! I love that you're sharing your trip with us - many thanks, again, friend, for letting us tag along with you!

Thank you for the wonderful photos. It looks like another gorgeous day in Barcelona.

Great photos, once again. Love the story about the American tourists! Thanks for the mini history lessons as well.

I continue to enjoy your wonderful travel posts, Darryl.

>53 kidzdoc: - I love the use of primary colours only in art displayed on the rooftop terrace.

>55 kidzdoc: - What a view from the tops of Castell de Monjuic!

Love the story about discovering your common roots with the two American girls. Also the sculpture -- totally made me smile.

>58 Chatterbox: From what I read the last bullfight occurred at las Arenas de Barcelona on 9 June 1977. It was converted into a shopping center in 2011.

>59 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara! I hope that you enjoyed your Sunday as well. And thanks again for another lovely image!

>60 scaifea: You're welcome, Amber! I think I'll have to strike a balance on posting photos, so that this thread doesn't take a month of Sundays to load.

>61 catarina1: You're welcome, catarina. The weather here has been superb, with high temperatures in the mid to high 70s F (23-27 C), and mostly sunny skies, although it was cloudier and a bit more humid yesterday. Apparently Tuesday is the day for rain here; there were evening thunderstorms here last Tuesday night, the day I arrived, and there are supposed to be more storms tomorrow night; otherwise the rest of the week will be mostly sunny, with highs of 25 C (77 F) each day.

>62 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom. I met another American yesterday morning when I had breakfast in the Starbucks España on la Plaça Francesc Macià, the closest one to my hotel, who sat in the upper level of the cafés along with his three children. He lives there, and we chatted for a few minutes as I was leaving. There are a good number of tourists with obvious American or English accents, but I suspect that there are many more from the US who speak Spanish well enough to pass, like those two young women I met on Saturday, who can blend in with the locals. There are very few people of African or Caribbean descent here, so I stand out much more here than I would in London.

>63 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori. The photos from Montjuïc don't do justice to the actual views, unfortunately.

>64 RebaRelishesReading: The girls and I had a nice laugh when one of them slipped and said something in English, with an obvious (though not obnoxious) American accent. They said that they were trying to speak exclusively in Spanish, and I complimented them on their ability to speak the language properly. Many Americans who try to speak Spanish give themselves away by their inability to pronounce the letters well, as they separate the words instead of blending them together, especially when one word ends in a vowel and the subsequent one begins with one, or the first letter in that word is silent. For example, many Americans pronounce "Yo hablo ingles" ("I speak English") badly; the "yo" sounds like something Rocky or someone from Philadelphia would say, and "hablo" is often spoken with a hard "h", making the sentence sound like nails on a chalkboard. The "h" is silent in Spanish, and the "y" in "yo" is pronounced more softly, so "yo hablo ingles" should sound like "yoabloingles", as one blended "word".

I took advantage of a great bargain on Saturday when I visited the Fundació Joan Miró, and purchased an ArTicket BCN; for €30 this ticket allows you entry to six of the city's leading museums, namely the Fundació Joan Miró, the Museo Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Museu Picasso, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). The card is good for three months, and the card pays for itself after you go to three museums. I had wanted to visit all of them except for the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, as I'm not familiar with this sculptor.

I had originally thought about taking the train to Figueres to see the Teatro Museo Dalí (Dalí Theatre and Museum), but after I read that it would likely be insanely crowded on a warm summer Sunday I decided to visit the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) instead, particularly after it was highly recommended by Claire (@Sakerfalcon). It has one of the great collections of Romanesque art in the world, with fabulous church frescos and altar frontals, along with excellent examples of art from the Gothic and Renaissance Eras. My only disappointment was that the Modern Art section was closed for renovation, and only a portion of the collection was viewable in a temporary space.

I took over 80 photos while I was in the museum. However, instead of posting some of them here I made my photo album on Facebook a public one, and anyone who is interested can see them here:

Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya

Today I'll go to the Barrí Gotic, the oldest neighborhood in Barcelona, and visit La Catedral, the 13th century church within the Barrí Gotic, and visit L'Eixample, the expansion built after the walls of the city were taken down in the mid 19th century.

Glad you enjoyed the MNAC! The Romanesque galleries really are spectacular.

When you were at the Miro museum did you see the mercury fountain? I found it beautiful and hypnotic and very slightly scary.

We've been wanting to get to Barcelona some day, Darryl, and you're making that more imperative with your stories and photos. Glad you're having such a good and rewarding time.

I've removed roughly half of the photos I posted here, as this thread was taking quite a lot time to load. I'll limit the number of additional photos that I'll post, and provide links to the Facebook albums where the rest of them can be seen.

I visited the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), the city's oldest neighborhood, for the first time on foot yesterday. I arrived there in the late morning, and the narrow streets were already crowded with thousands of tourists, particularly around La Catedral, the oldest and most famous church in the city. I walked past the Basílica Santa Maria del Pi, a 14th century church that is a few years younger than La Catedral, which was far less crowded, so I decided to visit it instead. There were no more than 25 people in the church at any one time during my visit, so I was able to appreciate the building's architecture and its impressive art work more fully:











The rest of the photos can be seen here:

Basílica Santa Maria del Pi

oooo, that's beautiful :)

La Catedral (you may be able to see the crowds waiting to enter along the bottom edge of the photo, which is why I decided to skip going there):





A typical street in the Barri Gòtic:



A portion of the old city wall, constructed by the Romans in the 4th century AD:



More photos here: Barri Gòtic

The area around La Catedral was becoming increasingly crowded, so I decided to leave the Barri Gòtic and go to the Grácia neighborhood instead. Within a short walk of the Diagonal Metro station there is a bookshop that sells primarily English language books, named Come In Llibreria Anglesa. It was small but well stocked, and the staff was very friendly and helpful. I came away with two books from my wish list, and a book on the history of Catalonia:

The Arch and the Butterfly by Mohammed Achaari: The winner of the 2011 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, in which a middle aged man living near Marrakech receives a surprising letter that informs him that his son, who he thought was studying engineering in Paris, was killed while fighting with the Islamist resistance in Afghanistan. This shocking news and other subsequent disturbing events leads the man to question everything, including his identity and values.

Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid by Sid Lowe: This book examines one of the most intense and bitter rivalries in football, between La Liga's two traditional powerhouses FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, in the context of the history of Spain and Catalonia.

The History of Catalonia by F. Xavier Hernàndez: A short guide to the region's history, written by a professor at the University of Barcelona.

There were several appealing restaurants nearby, so I asked the woman who helped me at Llibreria Anglesa which ones she recommended. She mentioned the one directly next to the bookshop, Balmes/Rosselló, as she said that their tapas were very good. She was spot on; I had anxoves amb xapata, tomàquet i olivada (anchovies, tomatoes and olives on ciabatta), musculos al vapor (mussels) and calamars a l'Andalusa (calamari), along with half a bottle of Ramón Bilbao Crianza red wine. The calamari and mussels were the best I have ever tasted, and the wine (which I still have) was fabulous.

Last night was the Nit de Sant Joan (Night of Saint John), during which Barcelonians celebrate the summer solistice with parties and fireworks that last until the early morning hours. I couldn't see any fireworks, but I heard them throughout the night, so I didn't sleep well. As it turns out today is a holiday, as most museums, stores and government offices are closed, probably to allow the city's residents to sleep off last night's celebrations. Barcelona is also supposed to have thunderstorms lasting from mid morning to late afternoon, so I'll do some reading and catch up on sleep after I go out for breakfast, and I may go out tonight if the rain has stopped.

>67 Sakerfalcon: Thanks for recommending the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Claire! You were right, the Romanesque galleries were fabulous.

I did see the mercury fountain at Fundació Joan Miró! I was fascinated by it, and I gazed at it for several minutes before I moved on.

I think I'll go to the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona tomorrow, as they are next to each other in El Raval, and visit the original Hospital de Santa Creu which is also nearby. On Thursday I'll go to the Barri Gòtic and L'Eixample early in the morning, and visit the Museu Picasso soon after it opens. If I have time I'll go back to the gift shop at the Fundació Joan Miró to buy gifts for myself and my family.

>68 jnwelch: I would highly recommend a visit to Barcelona, Joe. I'll definitely be coming back here soon, as I won't get to do and see everything I'd like to.

>70 The_Hibernator: I'm glad that you liked those photos, Rachel!

Well, I shouldn't be jealous as I spent 3 months in Spain recently and had 3 glorious weeks in Catalonia, but still these photos are making me wish I had one of those magic doors in my house that opened onto a Barcalona street. Sounds like a great meal.

>74 avatiakh: Right on, Kerry! After I return to Atlanta on Friday I'm sure that I'll go into severe cultural withdrawal, and I'll wish for the same thing. That was a great meal, and although I haven't made eating out one of my top priorities I have enjoyed everything I've had so far.

Today (Thursday) is my last full day in Barcelona, and my last day of this 3-1/2 trip to Europe. I had a leisurely breakfast with a classmate from residency yesterday, who I haven't seen in at least a dozen years. She is an avid reader and a friend on Goodreads, and last week she noticed that I had been reading several books about Barcelona. She asked me about it, and we realized our trips overlapped by several days. We had a great time catching up, and realizing how similar our tastes in books are.

I went the El Raval neighborhood, avoiding the thousands of tourists on La Rambla as best I could. I visited the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, the early 15th century hospital that was replaced by the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau, the site I visited last week. I spent the bulk of the day in two museums, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB); the admission fees for both museums were included in the ArTicket BCN that I bought on Saturday. I'll go to the Museu Picasso tomorrow morning, the fifth of the six museums I can see with the ArTicket, and probably visit Antoni Gaudí's Casa Battló and the opulent Palau de la Música Catalana, designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. If I have time I'll also go to Gaudí's Parc Güell.

It may be my relatively slow hotel (albeit free) Internet connection, but this thread is taking a long time to load, so I'll refrain from posting any more photos for now, and provide links to my albums on Photobucket or elsewhere after I return to Atlanta on Friday.

One of the reasons we visit Spain in the winter/spring is to avoid the masses of tourists that descend in summer, though many others have the same idea. I can't believe that your stay in Barcelona is almost over, I must visit your FB albums.

Sounds like a wonderful meetup with your classmate.

>77 avatiakh: Good point, Kerry! I usually have one extended break from work in the winter that I choose to stay in Atlanta, which would be a great time of year to visit Spain.

Catherine and I had a splendid time catching up yesterday, and I'll bet that it won't be another dozen years before we see each other again.

Photos are great, so happy that you managed to visit the Picasso Museum today. I went many many years ago on my first visit to Spain. This trip we finally got to the Picasso Museum in Malaga and also saw some of his artworks at the Museum of Joaquin Peinado in Ronda.
Have a hassle free trip home.

>79 avatiakh: Thanks, Kerry. I enjoyed the Museu Picasso, as I was far less familiar with Picasso's early works than his later ones. I was impressed on how productive and talented he was in his teens!

I walked through El Born yesterday, stopping by (but not in) the Santa Maria del Mar, another 14th century church, the Mercat del Born, a 19th century market which was the largest one in Barcelona but now has been converted into a center for medieval Catalan culture, the Estació de França, one of the older railway terminals with excellent architecture, and the Plaça Comercial, where I had a superb lunch of tapas, paella and red wine. I walked through the medieval streets for a bit, then return back to the hotel for an afternoon siesta (as it was warmer yesterday than the previous two days) and pack.

I'll definitely return here as soon as I can, hopefully by next year at the latest, as there was so much that I didn't do and see.

I'm at the airport now, and my flight will arrive just before 4 pm EST.

Glad that you had a great time in Barcelona- it is definitely a place to visit a number of times- there is so much to see that the visitor has to pick and choose what to see.

Sounds like a fantabulous holiday, Darryl. So glad you enjoyed Barcelona! Safe, happy flying.

My review of The Iraqi Christ, a short story collection that won the 2014 Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction, is on my Short Stories thread.

Best foreign fiction? This?!

Darryl - great to see that you had such a good time in Barcelona. Sorry we didn't get to meet up when you were in London - next time!

I almost always have uneventful trips on my domestic and international flights; yesterday's trip wasn't one of them, though. The departure of the flight from Barcelona-El Prat International Airport (BCN) to ATL was delayed by four hours, due to the effects of a large bird that was sucked into one of the main engines of the Airbus 330 that arrived at BCN from ATL or JFK on Thursday. The strike didn't affect the operation of the aircraft, and the pilot didn't notice anything, so the maintenance crew wasn't aware of what had happened until yesterday morning's pre-flight safety check. A thorough inspection was performed on the engine, and fortunately no significant damage was found; if there had been the flight would have been called, as apparently were are no extra planes available at Delta's two major European hubs in Paris and Amsterdam (although an extra day or two in Barcelona wouldn't have been a tragedy). The gate agents and flight attendants, to their credit, did a fantastic job of keeping the disgruntled passengers as content as possible, and the pilot put the plane into fifth gear on the ride, so once we took off it was a very smooth and pleasant flight (although I couldn't sleep well, mainly because of the heavy traffic near the lavatories and the presence of too many noisy teenagers that sat a few rows behind me). We arrived only three hours late, and the passengers applauded the pilot and crew for their outstanding efforts once the plane touched down.

After I took the metro from the Airport station to one close to where I live, I found that my car had been vandalized, despite it being in a secure garage with a 24 hour gate sentry and frequent patrols by the transit police. Three of my wheel caps (with the BMW log) were pried off, and my right front tire had been flattened (fortunately it wasn't damaged, as I was able to fill it with air and it remained full this morning, as I went to the supermarket and had breakfast a couple of hours ago).

Despite those minor inconveniences this was easily the best vacation I've ever had, due to its length (23 full days) and all that I was able to do on it. Although I was able to see a lot of Barcelona there were so many things I didn't do, and I didn't make it to Figueres, Tarragona or Girona, the other major cities in Catalonia. I'll definitely return there in the near future, hopefully in the next year or two.

>81 torontoc: Right you are, Cyrel! I also want to visit other major cities in Iberia, including Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza in Spain, and Lisbon and Porto in Portugal. Although I had a relatively easy time using Spanish there I also realize that I have a far way to go before I'm as fluent as I would like to be, so I'm now inspired to learn more, in preparation for my next trip. I'm also far less interested in visiting Paris now or wasting time in learning French, since it would only be useful if I went to France or another Francophone country, or if I wanted to learn the phrases that appear in the books I read.

>82 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy; it was a great holiday.

>83 richardderus: I'll have to look at your review of The Iraqi Christ, Richard. I bought it in London a couple of weeks ago, and brought it with me to Barcelona, but I haven't read it yet.

>84 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian. There is a very good chance that I'll return to London in the first half of September; hopefully we can get together then.

If you are planning to visit Seville on future travels , i would suggest adding Cordoba for a day or two and Granada and the Alhambra.

>86 torontoc: Good ideas, Cyrel!

Sorry, to hear about your car. Darryl, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Oh, I'm sorry about your car Darryl, but so glad that you had such a wonderful trip!

Good to hear you have enjoyed your travels, Darryl. Sorry about the car!

Sorry about your car! But I'm glad your vacation went well.

Sounds like a wonderful trip! It's great that you were able to roll with any inconveniences (strikes, fireworks..) and enjoy yourself.

Bummer about the car, however!

Glad you're back home safely. Sorry about the airplane drama.

Feel your pain about your car, though. We woke up one morning a few years ago (the Monday morning after Adele won all those well-deserved Grammies!) to find all four of our tires completely gone (completely!). Our car was up on bricks and landscaping rocks.

Insurance paid for the damage.
The landscape rocks are in the backyard.
We've even put the bricks to good use.

Always a silver lining. :)

Home!! Glad you had such a wonderful trip. 23 days is just a phenomenal break and you took FULL advantage of the time!! Sorry the return trip was less than stellar, but you survived and the car is fixable. So good job!

Welcome home -- glad the trip was so good and the homeward leg OK in spite of the hiccups. Do you get a bit to recover from jet lag before you're back on duty?

Okay, I don't want to alarm anybody, but I am reviewing and rating a playscript written by a poet. And with high praise. Go look for yourself.

>85 kidzdoc: I found that my car had been vandalized
Urgh. Returning from vacation to reality is typically jarring, but not this much.

Yeah, really. That's awful... :(

Woo...I think I'm close to being caught up on sleep, after putting in nearly 11 hours since midnight Saturday. I now have to get adjusted to US Eastern Daylight Time, as it's just after 2 am here but my internal clock says that it's 8 am (Central European Summer Time) and that I should get dressed and go out for breakfast. I'm off for four more days, though, so I'll have plenty of time to do this.

>88 Ameise1: Thanks for the lovely flowers, Barbara! I hope that you are enjoying your weekend as well.

Thanks for your kind comments Barbara, Amber, Connie, Rachel, Rhonda, Susie, Kim, Reba, Katherine and Jim! Although I was royally ticked off about my car on Friday night it's really a minor inconvenience, all things considered, and I've had far worse things happen to one of the cars I've owned, including this one. The wheel caps are cosmetic, so their removal isn't necessary to the car's function, and I may need new tires, but I can get that taken care of very easily this week. Two of my older cars were totaled by tailgating drivers, and this car was seriously damaged a couple of years ago when a driver ran into the front of it when she made a left turn without looking in front of me (fortunately the police officer gave her a citation for reckless driving, and I didn't have to pay a cent of the $6,000+ repair bill). Each of those times my car wasn't drivable. I've had one car stolen, others badly damaged by thieves, and on numerous instances my older rust buckets have been left disabled and undrivable by mechanical failures. So, given those experiences, this one, although disheartening and annoying, isn't so bad after all.

>92 banjo123: My biggest regret of this trip was not being able to meet up with Pat in Paris last week, due to the French railway strike. I haven't heard from her since I told her that I wasn't going to be able to make it; has anyone else? I know from a text message that she had a "horrible" trip from the airport to central Paris two Sundays ago due to the strike (the RER trains were running with extremely limited service from CDG into the city), and I hope that she wasn't affected by this week's French air traffic controller's strike. That would have been enough to put most people off from ever going back to Paris, and if I ever decide to go there I'll travel from London via Eurostar, to avoid having to deal with the French transit unions.

>93 avidmom: Good to hear that even that horrible situation had a silver lining, Susie. That was far worse than what I went through, so I have nothing to complain about in comparison.

>96 richardderus: I shall check out your review shortly, Richard. I only briefly glanced at your review of The Iraqi Christ, since I plan to read it later this summer.

>12 kidzdoc: I dream of my city having beautiful buildings like the top few you have in this post. I am sure that we will mainly end up with tilt-slab concrete though.

>85 kidzdoc: this was easily the best vacation I've ever had
Hooray!
That tells me it must have been off the chart then :) I'm really happy for you.

Sorry to hear about your car Darryl. It's never nice to come home to something like that.

In my experience the best way to avoid French transport problems is to avoid the summer or other peak holiday times. But I wouldn't let worry about transport problems put you off going to France: it really is a beautiful country and in general all the transport links work very smoothly. And I hate to say this, but Spanish air traffic controllers have an equal reputation to the French ones when it comes to going in strike.

>100 LovingLit: Unfortunately I think the days of apartment buildings with such fabulous architecture will never return.

Thanks, Megan! The London half of the trip would have been splendid in itself, with at least five separate meet ups with LTers in London and Rochester, five or six plays and the addition of roughly two dozen books, but that combined with 10 days in Barcelona, my new favorite city, easily puts in at the top of any vacation I've ever had. I had three lengthy conversations (in Spanish) with three of its residents, an older Catalonian man, a Moroccan ?illegal immigrant who was struggling and asked for money to call his family back home, and a barista at the Starbucks España I frequented whose family lives here in Atlanta but is originally from Barcelona (she playfully corrected me when I called her señora instead of señorita, and the conversation took off from there). Barcelona is a difficult city to live in, due to the high cost of living, lack of non-professional jobs that offer a decent income, and the horrible job prospects of new college graduates, due to the still depressed economy in Spain. The new king, Felipe VI, visited Catalonia just before I left, and acknowledged the difficulty facing young people, the limited support of the monarchy in that region as compared to other parts of Spain, and the increasing demand for independence among the Catalonian people. As I may have said earlier I definitely did not blend in there as I do in London, and I routinely received quizzical looks as people tried to figure out where I was from, I presume. That occurred more commonly when I walked the streets near my hotel, as it was a residential area with very few tourists. A large minority of people I encountered in cafés, restaurants, museums and shops correctly assumed that I was from the US, and would greet me in English, although I usually switched the conversation back to Spanish, to their apparent delight. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't want to live or work there, but I will gladly visit Barcelona as often as I can.

>101 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian; several of my non-LT friends who travel also made the same suggestion. Ideally I would like to continue to visit London at least once or twice a year, and visit the Iberian Peninsula during my one or two week breaks during the late fall to early spring, when I generally stay in Atlanta and don't go anywhere. The weather in Barcelona is still pleasant then, and it would be a better time to travel outside of the city to other parts of Catalonia, Spain and Portugal.

Offering late condolences for your car mishap.
And I second Rhian's comments about traveling to France. I hope you'll try again sometime.

>103 lauralkeet: Thanks, Laura. I'll probably visit Paris some time, but it was a low priority at the time I planned this trip, and it has dropped considerably since then. I think a day trip or a quick weekend stay during a trip to London will be my most likely first visit there, probably in the next year or two.

Welcome back! What a wonderful journey you (and all of us following virtually) have had. Any return from vacation can be jarring -- getting back into one's routine, catching up at work, etc. The car situation: gack!

>105 michigantrumpet: Thanks, Marianne. The vandalism of my car and the delayed flight will be soon forgotten, but the memories of this trip will last forever.

Today's New York Times breaks away from the suburban drama it generally focuses on and finally acknowledges the increased presence of African writers published in the US:

New Wave of African Writers With an Internationalist Bent

>107 kidzdoc: Dear old Times, on top of every decade-old trend.

>108 richardderus: Never fear, that one surprising article doesn't mean that the NYT won't continue to focus on fiction about whiny middle class Americans and their difficult lives. Today's issue includes a review of the novel Friendship by Emily Gould; here's an excerpt of it:

Amy once had a “great job” at a site “mocking New York City’s rich, powerful, corrupt, ridiculous elite,” but goes “from being a rising star to being an untouchable in a matter of days.” Amy is vulnerable and amusing at times, but she can also be narcissistic, entitled, self-dramatizing, snide, self-pitying and frequently petty, prideful and envious. She is cast as Lucy, with her best friend, Bev, assigned the less fashionable role of Ethel.

After quitting her latest job (at a small, struggling blog with a “modern Jewish angle,” located “not quite in Manhattan”), Amy finds herself worrying about being unemployed and homeless, though she does ask herself how “a destitute homeless person” could “be in possession of a Comme des Garçons wallet, a pair of Worishofer sandals, a fridge with Moroccan oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes in it”? Bev is worried about becoming a single mother after a disastrous one-night stand leaves her pregnant.

Thanks, NYT! I can't wait to get started on this one.

*shudder*

>110 richardderus: Yep. It's sure to hit the best seller list within one month, though.

My planned reads for July:

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
Jordan Goodman, Paul Robeson: A Watched Man
Gijs van Hensbergen, Gaudí: A Biography
F. Xavier Hernàndez, The History of Catalonia
James Kelman, Kieron Smith, boy
Eric Lax, The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief
Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
Dinaw Mengestu, All Our Names
Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House

Woot! The Blind Assassin and No Great Mischief in July! Can't wait to see what you think of these, Darryl.

>112 lit_chick: I'll definitely let you know how I like them, Nancy. I've fallen behind on my plan to read a dozen CanLit books this year (I've completed only four so far), so I'd like to read these two this month and a couple more in August and September, in order to meet that goal.



BTW I found out from Tui's Facebook post that today is Canada Day, so I think I'll read a bit of No Great Mischief today.

I've been asked by Rebecca, my parents, and friends who don't have Facebook accounts but want to see my holiday photos to post them in a format that they can view online. Earlier this morning I downloaded my Facebook photos to my Google+ account, and I just created an album of the pictures I took when I visited the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau the Friday before last. I've made it public, and posted a link to it below:

https://plus.google.com/photos/113880535123084583302/albums/6031089621412623089

Could I ask one or more of you to click on that link, and tell me if you can see the photos? Thank you in advance!

2014 halftime stats (and some book reviews!) coming up soon...

Darryl, I'm able to see the photos. I hope you have a good week or is your mind still in Europe? I wish you a lovely day.

>114 Ameise1: Fabulous! Thanks a bunch for your quick reply, Barbara. I'll create other photo albums, now that the pictures are in my Google+ account, and post links to them here.

I'm not sure where my mind is (or if I have one) at the moment! I still haven't adjusted to US Eastern Daylight Time, so I'm awake at all weird hours, although I did get a lot of reading done the past two days. Fortunately I'm off today and tomorrow, so hopefully by Thursday I'll be back on track.

Considering that the last five books I've finished have all been set in Barcelona, I'd say I'm still there in mind and spirit. :^)

Darryl, usually when friends came back to Europe they have jet leg and can't sleep and not the other way round. So you definitely must still be here in one way or the other ;-D

>116 Ameise1: I find it more difficult to adjust heading west to east (e.g., from San Francisco to Atlanta or from Atlanta to London) rather than the opposite direction. I suspect that I'm having more difficulty this time because of the length of time I spent in Europe. Mind you, I'm not complaining one iota!

There are several appealing e-books on sale today, for US customers. The ones that interest me the most are 1776 by David McCullough, which I already own, The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy by David Halberstam, which I just purchased, and Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens, which I also bought.

So much for my plan to cut down on my book purchases for the rest of the year.

Thank you for the Canada Day wishes, Darryl! Great day to start reading No Great Mischief!

Canada has one of the best National Anthems hands down.

Happy Canada Day.

I really liked reading 1776 by David Mccullough

I've been hit and I'm naming names over on my thread. Yes. I mean you.

Yup. Completed my first Murakami

Is there a link to that e-book sale, Darryl? I'm not seeing it in the usual "deals" section.

Separately -- I think your trip to Barcelona must have influenced me to request an ARC of Victus, a historical novel set at the beginning of the 18th century and revolving around Barcelona during the War of the Spanish Succession. By a Catalonian writer, Albert Sanchez Pinol. It's a chunkster -- 560 pages.

No Canadian content here today.

>124 Chatterbox: It's $3.28 for the Kindle edition, when I look - click the touchstone, go to the Amazon (direct) link, and choose the Kindle edition.

>109 kidzdoc: doesn't mean that the NYT won't continue to focus on fiction about whiny middle class Americans and their difficult lives
LOL
I love it.

Isn't it wonderful to be able to surprise the locals by, in my case, attempting, to speak their language! I tried my best when I was in Chile to do that. It was not a great success, but was appreciated I think.

My day yesterday was largely taken up by the incredibly thrilling, heart breaking, but ultimately inspiring performance of the USA men's football team, who lost 1-2 to Belgium in extra time, in the most exciting World Cup match I've ever watched. The American keeper Tim Howard set a World Cup record by making 16 saves in a match, most of which were acrobatic leaps or dives that left the announcers and the audience shocked and amazed. However, his incomparable effort in goal wasn't enough to completely counter a relentless Belgian assault, as they scored two goals in the first half of extra time, then had to fight valiantly to hold off a desperate and tenacious USA squad after the young Julian Green brought the Americans within one goal following his brilliant strike.



Although the USA's loss means that it is eliminated from the World Cup it can be argued that the team is a winner in the end. It was matched in its group against two of the world's best teams in Germany and Portugal, and it also had to face Ghana, the team which eliminated it from the previous two World Cups. Many, including myself, thought the USA had no chance to advance to the round of 16, but it beat Ghana, tied Portugal (which was unfortunate, because the Americans had the match in hand until a last minute goal allowed the Portuguese to escape with a draw), and lost to Germany to make it. Best of all, the team's inspiring and spirited play, led by their new head coach Jürgen Klinsmann, combined with the growing interest in football in this country, created a huge fan following, as millions of Americans, including the crowd of roughly 30,000 at Chicago's Soldier Field shown in yesterday's photo above, followed the team with great passion and energy in the US and Brasil. So, although the team lost yesterday, the sport of football in the US was a big winner at the end of the day.

>120 lit_chick: I didn't read No Great Mischief yesterday, or anything else for that matter, as I conversed with my parents and my best friend's wife yesterday before I fell asleep. I will start reading it this weekend or sometime next week, though.

>121 michigantrumpet: I agree, Marianne; I've always liked hearing the Canadian national anthem since I first heard it, probably when the Expos played the Mets in Montreal on WOR TV when I lived near NYC in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

>122 torontoc: I'm glad to hear that you liked 1776, Cyrel. I probably won't get to it this year, but I'll plan to add it to my TBR list for 2015.

>123 michigantrumpet: Mura-who? Never heard of him.

*quickly deletes the 17 books by Murakami in my LT library*

I did like After the Quake, especially the short story about the Super Frog that saved Tokyo. Berkeley Repertory Theater (Berkeley Rep) put on a play in 2007 based on Murakami's book, which had the same name and many of the same characters:



BTW Murakami's latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, will be published in the US next month. I'll definitely read it this summer!

>124 Chatterbox: I found out about those books from eReaderIQ. I receive their daily e-mails after I learned about them from Laura.

I saw Victus: Barcelona 1714 in its Spanish edition when I was there last week. I asked about it at Llibreria Anglesa, an English language bookshop in the Eixample neighborhood, and found out that it wouldn't be available in Europe until early September. That book is very timely, as September 11 is the National Day of Catalonia, which marks the day that the Catalonians, fighting under the Kingdom of Aragon, were defeated by the House of Bourbon, led by King Philip V, in 1714. I'll almost certainly be back in London on September 9th, when it comes out in the UK, so I'll plan to buy it then.

>125 jjmcgaffey: The other two books cost, I think, $2.51 and $1.99. Hopefully they are all still available today.

>126 LovingLit: Despite a diverse readership of well educated people who are interested in the world, and presumably, literature from outside of the borders, the NYT seems to focus heavily on books that would appeal to the average suburban housewife from middle America, who would be much more likely to read People magazine or USA Today. Last week I had a long breakfast with a former classmate of mine from residency, who is also an avid reader and, I found out, reads many of the same types of books that I do. She is originally from the New York area, lives in suburban Connecticut (close to NYC), and reads the NYT daily. We talked about the paper, and both of us agreed that it is no longer a reliable source for learning about new books, due to the inane books that they review and their seemingly perverse tendency to rip notable books by new writers, especially female authors, to shreds. A decade or more ago the first thing I would look at when I bought a copy of the NYT was the Arts section, to see which book was being reviewed; now it's often one of the last things I look at, and if the review is written by Janet Maslin I often won't read it at all.

I think I surprised at least one or two people a day when I was in Barcelona by my ability to speak Spanish, although no one there confused me as being from Spain or a Spanish speaking country, which happens at work on a routine basis. My vocabulary did increase by at least a dozen words, as I had to look up the definitions of several nouns or verbs that I haven't used in many years or never knew at all (e.g., plancha is a clothes iron, and lavandería is a laundry (I needed to use the hotel's laundry service, as there wasn't a laundromat nearby). I also picked up several words and phrases in Catalan, such as pollastre (chicken), viatge (trip), and bon dia (good morning).

I'm still having a hard time sleeping, as I continue to wake up at 3-4 am every morning. I think I'll go back to sleep now, as I need to get some tasks done today before it gets too hot (it's supposed to hit 95 F (35 C) today).

Welcome back. I have thoroughly enjoyed your travelogue. As an avid reader of the NYT daily, I unfortunately have to agree with your assessment of their book reviews. I have found the reviews here on LT much more interesting and reliable. If a book is reviewed in the Times, especially during the week rather than on Sunday, I am much less likely to be interested in it.

Aha, thanks for the info -- I thought there might be a special Kindle sale of Americana. I sought out the Hitchens on Jefferson book; the others I already have read or are less interested.

I tend to be less interested in reviews generally. I like NYRB because their reviews are more essays than they are reviews. That's not to say that if the NYT came knocking on my door and asked me to review for them, that I wouldn't agree! although they would probably saddle me with books like The Secret Club that Runs the World, and instructions to give it a good review because the NYT biz editors likes the author.

In terms of what is chosen, it's the market, plain and simple. Middlebrow sells more -- always has and probably always will. And a review that may appeal to some of us in terms of depth and erudition is going to be interpreted by a sizeable number of readers -- and not just suburban housewives, but hedge fund managers, financial advisors, business owners, etc. -- the folks I talk to and who routinely tell about the stuff they're reading and the reviews that guide them -- as overly sophisticated. The NYT isn't trying to appeal to readers like you, Darryl, when it comes to delivering book reviews, because the kind of book that you gravitate to tends to command a much smaller and more sophisticated audience of readers. I'm not sure that putting NYRB-style reviews in the NYT would alter that, either, sadly. As one very intelligent friend of mine says, when I get home from work, I want to relax and read and not have to think to hard.

Re Canadian content: this was making the rounds yesterday. I was astonished at how many authors on the list I'm still unfamiliar with, and slightly dismayed to find absent from the list such iconic figures as Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant (and in their place, genre writers like Linwood Barclay and Giles Blunt...) But a friend of mine, whose stepfather in law still serves on literary prize juries in Canada, tells me that most of these names/books are pretty solid additions to the canon. So I have my work cut out for me, clearly!

http://www.cbc.ca/books/books100.html

Apropos of Canadian content: (Was told this story while interning in the Ontario Provincial Parliament) Remember the McKenzie Brothers? Apparently, radio and television broadcasters must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada. SCTV was told they had to up the content. Purely as a spoof and to meet the requirement, "Great White North' was born, with plaid-clad "eh"-spewing outdoorsmen, drinking Molson and frying up some back bacon. They had little expectation for a segment which amazingly became an instant hit.

I always think of that story whenever I read about "Canadian content."

Hi Darryl! Welcome home! Are you still acclimating yourself, after such a long luxurious holiday? I am sure the recovery, is going to take a little time.
Sounds like you had a wonderful time.

>124 Chatterbox: Victus: Barcelona 1714 sounds like an interesting read, thanks for tracking it down.

Darryl - I really enjoyed revisiting Barcelona through your thread and on FB. I must get my photos sorted, I took so many that I'm not sure that they all downloaded from my two cameras.
Sorry about the US losing to Belgium, but it sounded like a great game. I hardly watch football/soccer games as I've sat through too many 0-0 scores in the past, but have several avid followers in the house so know immediately there's been a goal or near miss.

>3 kidzdoc: I'm very curious what you think about Howard Zinn's book when you've read it. It as a real eye opener for me when I read it a long time ago.

As always, I love your photos of your travels.

>132 michigantrumpet: great story, Marianne! What a hoot.

Hi Darryl. I am up at 4 in the morning for a different reason. Noisy girls having a sleepover directly under my bedroom. LOL! My daughter turned 18 yesterday.

Great summary of the US game. I am so sad they are out.

Glad to see you are home safe and sound, even if that means I will now go thorough withdrawals of your amazing travelogue.

>99 kidzdoc: - Wow, you have had quite the experience with vandals and bad drivers damaging your cars. I must admit the girl driver that just wasn't paying attention gets a huge head shake from me. There are some really scary drivers out there.

Welcome home!

Happy 4th of July Darryl! Hope you're doing something fun! I'm hanging out in the text center answering crisis texts. It's reasonably quiet, though.

I love the photos you've shared from your trip to Barcelona. But I'm wondering .. where are the food pics? Did you find an opportunity to try pressed pig's head while you were there?

Darryl, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Hoping you are enjoying your weekend. Your name came up during the Boston Meet Up yesterday. Some discussion you might be heading up to the Northeast soon?

Catching back up here -- glad to see you are able to have such a healthy attitude about your car. Hope you're over jet lag now and ready to go back to work.

>132 michigantrumpet: Yes, that's the origin of that phrase in my brain, too. "CanCon", we called it. It's such a big issue because the vast majority of the Canadian population lives within 90 miles of the US border (about 75%), and so get US television signals as readily as Canadian television signals; ditto with radio. For all intents and purposes, too, the rest of the entertainment industry -- publishing, music, etc. -- views North America as a single large market. Except for Quebec, we all speak English, we have a similar enough culture (aside from differences in political culture) and share many common values. But there's that key issue: political culture. Canadian history has spawned a set of values that are VERY different from those in the US, as you can see from the way people respond instinctively to questions (especially) about key social issues, or even about what kind of role their country should take in the world, or the role of government in society. So, the government has decided it doesn't want the preferences of a country of 319 million shaping what 34 million Canadians end up consuming on their airwaves.

So, there are Can con rules governing broadcasting of all kinds. Some of the big winners have been GREAT current affairs shows on TV and radio (the wondrous Peter Gzowski, for instance, and David Suzuki, or the late Barbara Frum), but there have been good TV dramas as well. I remember watch "Street Legal" in the 80s/early 90s, and "Da Vinci's Inquest" was good, too. I think "The Tudors" technically qualified as Can con because it was an international co-production. But the goal, basically, is to ensure that the airwaves don't end up "Walmartized" with content coming from another country. It's bad enough if that's coming from within your own political context, but imagine if ALL you ever saw in the UK were US programs, simply because that was what was beamed across the border?

There aren't Can con rules in literature, and one of the sad things in recent years has been the demise of a number of venerable independent Canadian publishing firms. Lester & Orpen Dennys was swallowed by Key Porter, which then became part of Knopf (itself part of Random House). Then, McClelland & Stewart, while it still remains an independent imprint, was 100% acquired by Random House. Douglas & MacIntyre, which published the 2012 Giller Prize winner, went bankrupt. There are still a few out there, mind you. One of the more interesting, in terms of the works being published, is House of Anansi. (Amusingly, it was co-founded by Dennis Lee, uncle of friends of mine, brother of my mother's ex-bf, and childhood friend of "Peggy" Atwood. Canada is a very, very, very small country...)

No Can con in movies, either.

There is a lot of government support for both publishing and movies, although under the Harper government that has been scaled back (surprise, surprise...)

A July ER book meant for you:
Dr. Mütter's Marvels
Description: A mesmerizing biography of the brilliant and eccentric medical innovator who revolutionized American surgery and founded the country's most famous museum of medical oddities.

>145 qebo: oh yeah, that's perfect for Darryl!

Woo...another busy work week is in the books. The first three days (July 3-5) weren't bad, but from Sunday afternoon on it has been extremely busy, as we nearly tripled our inpatient census over the next three days. Fortunately I'm off until Monday, so I'll have five days off to unwind, read, and catch up on sleep.

Catching up...

>130 catarina1: Thanks, catarina. The Monday to Saturday reviews in the NYT are almost always useless to me, and even the Sunday NYT Book Review section, which I used to pour over voraciously, holds little interest for me anymore.

Let's see what's on the menu for today. Dwight Garner reviewed William T. Vollmann's latest book, Last Stories and Other Stories:

Mr. Vollmann’s new book, “Last Stories and Other Stories,” is his first volume of fiction since “Europe Central” (2005), which won a National Book Award. Not that he’s been idle. In the meantime, he’s published several dense slabs of nonfiction, including books about poverty, train-hopping and Japanese Noh theater, and a somewhat less slablike book about Copernicus.

“Last Stories and Other Stories” is harrowing in the boredom it delivers, except for the bits, mostly toward the end, in which his male characters have slushy sex with rotting female corpses, some of them ghosts or vampires or supernatural beings of some other sort. (There’s the occasional delectable male carcass as well.)

The book becomes a necrophiliac dreamscape: weedy crotches, wormy mouth cavities, sour nipples that pop off in a lover’s mouth. A more descriptive title for this book, to borrow the name of the White Stripes album, would have been “Icky Thump.”

Uhh...no thanks. I'm sure that someone would be interested in reading this (although I'd rather not know who), but you can count me out.

>131 Chatterbox: I also like the NYRB, and the LRB, both of which I've subscribed to for several years, but I've had less time to read them recently. I'll have to get back to them soon, though. And, lately, even the Guardian, particularly its Saturday edition, hasn't featured as many books that are of interest to me, especially now that Maya Jaggi submits reviews less often. On the other hand, it isn't as if I don't have enough books to read already!

That's a nice list of Canadian novels. By my count I've read 10 of them, and own seven others. I think that claiming Eleanor Catton is a bit of a stretch, though.

>132 michigantrumpet: I remember hearing about the MacKenzie Brothers show, but I don't think I ever watched it (was it ever on television in the US?).

>133 msf59: Thanks, Mark. I think I'm finally acclimated to Eastern Daylight Time after a hideously busy Sunday day on call; I had 11 hospital admissions in less than four hours, and left the hospital at 11:30 pm, 3½ hours after my shift ended. It was a fabulous trip, both meeting LT friends and seeing plays in London, and making my first visit to Barcelona, which is an amazing city, and one I look forward to returning to ASAP.

>134 avatiakh: Thanks, Kerry. I'm still in the process of organizing my Barcelona photos in Google+ albums, although I've downloaded all of them to my account there. I should have that accomplished by the weekend, and I'll post links to those albums here once I've finished.

The USA-Belgium match was a thriller, and although I'm disappointed in the result I don't think anyone can say that the better team lost. However, that result has been overshadowed by yesterday's historic and completely unbelievable evisceration of Brasil by Germany in the World Cup semifinals in Belo Horizonte, Brasil. In case anyone missed it, Germany scored five goals in a 20 minute stretch in the first half, followed by two more goals in the second half. Only a stoppage time goal by Brasil averted a shutout, but its 7-1 loss is its worst ever, and it may supersede its previously most humiliating loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup. Germany will play the winner of today's Argentina-Holland match in the final on Sunday.

The loss was so devastating that several of Brasil's players were openly crying at the end of the first half and after the match ended.



The Brasilian fans in the stadium were in agony and tears as well:

  

>135 Whisper1: Will do, Linda. I've wanted to read A People's History of the United States for a long time, and I thought that I already owned it before I bought the Kindle version of it last week.

>137 Berly: I hope that the girls have gone to sleep by now, Kim!

The USA football team performed better than I expected that they would, so my initial disappointment at their elimination has been overshadowed by pride in their accomplishments during this year's World Cup. We still have a long way to go before we can compete with the world's best squads, though.

A couple of weeks ago I predicted that the World Cup final would match Argentina against Germany, and that Argentina would win 3-2, with Lionel Messi scoring the winning goal. That prediction is still in play, but if Germany play like they did yesterday I don't think anyone can beat them.

>138 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori. I'm experiencing tapas withdrawal, so a friend of mine and I will go to Barcelona on Monday. Unfortunately it's a restaurant in Atlanta and not the city, but the food there is supposed to be very good and authentic.

I'll stay in Atlanta this month, but I will resume my travels in August, September and October.

The drivers in Atlanta are absolutely frightening. I was nearly rear ended by a young woman driving an SUV and talking on her cell phone yesterday, as I was driving home. She was tailgating me, and nearly hit me as I was making a right turn, even though I put on my turn signal in advance to be sure that she noticed. Using cell phones are illegal in Georgia, so she would have paid dearly if she hadn't stopped in time. Fortunately most days I can take the metro to and from work and avoid the horrible drivers here.

>139 The_Hibernator: I hope that you enjoyed your Independence Day, Rachel. I had to work, and by the time I left there wasn't much left to enjoy. Considering that I spent 3½ weeks in London and Barcelona I have nothing to complain about!

>147 kidzdoc: Agree that considering Catton to be Canadian is a bit of a stretch. However, she appears quite prepared to consider herself a Canadian -- witness her willingness to be considered for the Governor General's Award and her acceptance of it for The Luminaries. It's pretty easy to say "nope, I'm not a Canadian". You really have to make a very, very active effort to sustain your Canadian citizenship, which I assume she is doing. Not that it lapses, but non-residents who leave as small children are rarely claimed as citizens in this way! Especially since there is nothing really Canadian about her work.

Vollman = slab-like work -- LOL. That description, however, has left me slightly nauseous.

You're back! I feared that you had absconded to "parts unknown" but was sure you would have provided us with a wonderful travelogue if you had. Sorry that you have spent so many hours at work. Enjoy the next few days.

I saw that book review this AM and passed on it. Even more glad that I did so after reading your synopsis. I do read the entire NYT each day - the first sections read on Sunday are always the book review and the travel section but both have held less interest for me recently. What was more interesting today was the small article on the discovery of small pox vials hidden away at NIH and which now are apparently in Atlanta.

I have found that I rely more and more on LT for book suggestions. At the library yesterday I picked up a copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane along with the book on Gaudi by Cirlot that you had recommended.

>140 cameling: There are some food pictures, Caroline! I didn't eat out as much as I had intended to, mainly because 10 pm is too late for me to eat dinner. However, I did have two particularly memorable meals, at Balmes/Rosselló, which is on the corner of Carrer de Balmes and Carrer de Provença in L'Eixample, close to the LLibreria Anglesa bookshop, and El Rosal Paellas on the Plaça Comercial close to the Mercat del Born.

First, from Balmes/Rosselló:

anxoves amb xapata, tomàquet i olivada (anchovies, tomatoes and olives on ciabatta):



musculos al vapor (mussels):



calamars a l'Andalusa (calamari):



Ramón Bilbao Crianza red wine (with my copy of Fear and Loathing in La Liga alongside it):



From El Rosal Paellas:

papas y pop con mojo (potatoes and octopus in a spicy salsa):



paella de butifarra y setas (paella with sausage and mushrooms):



Almirez Toro wine:



Is pressed pig's head made with the meat of the head or the brain, or both? The meat I would readily try, but not the brain! My favorite hole in the wall taquería in San Francisco sells cabeza (cow's brain) burritos and quesadillas, but I can't get myself to try it. I do like their lengua (beef tongue), though.

>141 Ameise1: I hope that you had a good weekend, Barbara. I can't say that I enjoyed mine, but as I said earlier, I have nothing to complain about.

>142 michigantrumpet: Right, Marianne. I'm off from work for almost three weeks in August (8/9 through 8/28), and I plan to spend most of that time with my parents in Philadelphia; I may go to San Francisco for a couple of days beforehand, and fly directly from SFO to PHL. I'll certainly visit NYC, which is an easy commute from where they live, and a trip to Boston via Amtrak would be interesting and doable. I'll finalize my plans in the next day or two.

>143 RebaRelishesReading: I'm in full work mode now, after my six day stretch that ended yesterday. I'll work a heavier than usual schedule this month, as two of my partners will be off for the entire month and several others will be out on vacation. However, my August schedule will be particularly nice, and I still have two weeks of vacation left to take, since I didn't use any vacation days during my month off in June.

>145 qebo: Thanks, Katherine! I did request that book this morning after I saw your post about it.

>146 lauralkeet: Definitely so, Laura. I'll buy it if I don't win it.

>149 Chatterbox: If Eleanor Catton actively claims her Canadian citizenship then it's perfectly acceptable for The Luminaries to be included on that list.

That description of Last Stories and Other Stories was nauseating, but it was also an effective deterrent to keep me from giving that book a chance. *shudder*

>150 catarina1: Thanks, catarina. July is normally a quiet month at work, and I had hoped to get a lot of reading done despite my busier than usual work schedule. However, it doesn't seem as though that will happen, given our extraordinarily high inpatient census. So, I'll definitely spend the bulk of this week reading; I should be able to finish Gaudí: A Biography today, and hopefully I can get at least two or three more books read by Sunday night. I'm on the teaching service next week (Mon-Fri) with a brand new crew of interns and medical students, so it's likely to be a long and painful week.

I have been a daily NYT subscriber since 2000, and I've read the Sunday NYT since at least the early 1970s (my uncle, who also lived in Jersey City close to us, subscribed to it, and since we almost always spent our Sundays with them I would read it after church when we visited them or vice versa). I normally read the weekday edition on the metro to and from work, or at work if I'm there on weekends, if I have time. I haven't read today's paper yet, other than the first few paragraphs of the front page article about the disastrous performance by Brasil in the World Cup semifinal yesterday, but I'll definitely read the article about the vials of smallpox that were found recently. The CDC's campus is adjacent to Emory University's campus, less than five miles from where I live.

I'm glad that you were about to find Cirlot's book on Gaudí, as I suspected that it wouldn't be available in the US.

>151 kidzdoc: If you're thinking of something like "tete pressee", the Franco-Belgian dish that is basically a terrine (that you can find in a charcuterie, served cold?) it is simply pork meat. The pork head (usually half a head) is boiled for about five or six hours, and then the meat is scraped out and set in a terrine. I suppose you'd describe it as brawn? It's very tasty, anyway, and I wish it was easy to find somewhere here! I'd make it myself, except I can't face the chore of boiling a pig's head.

>152 kidzdoc: I do think Catton's Canadian status may be perfectly legal in one sense, but is a wee bit tenuous when it comes to applying for grants, prizes and other benefits of this kind. She hasn't lived in Canada since the age of six and has no ongoing connections to the country; her primary publisher is in New Zealand. I can think of other Canadian writers who make their primary residence outside the country but mostly they grew up in Canada and are published there and have ties there (eg Mavis Gallant). I think it's a bit of a marriage of convenience: Canada tends to like to hang on to citizens to who make a big splash beyond its borders (as is not surprising when you live cheek by jowl with a behemoth country that is a popular culture superpower); and if you're a young writer who can take advantage of grants, etc. from two different countries, why not do it? But if I were a Canadian novelist -- or a novelist like David Bezmozgis, who immigrated to Canada at the age of six -- I might kind of wonder at this or even feel annoyed. In any event, it's the GG committee's issue, primarily. And not for me to be irked about, in any event.

>151 kidzdoc: Luckily, I had a wonderful BBQ tonight otherwise I would get pretty hungry over those fantastic food photos.

Hi Darryl. It looks like you had an absolutely wonderful vacation; not sure how you'll top that. Thanks for sharing your terrific pictures.

>153 Chatterbox: I suppose we'll have to wait for Caroline's description, but what I saw online is suggestive of a mixture of meat and brain, which looked thoroughly unappealing to me.

I have no vested interest in which countries Eleanor Catton claims as her own. Can the US claim her as well?

>154 Ameise1: Right, Barbara. Seeing those photos brings back memories of the meals, and of watching the passersby, particularly on the Plaça Comercial. It hasn't been two weeks since I left Barcelona, but I'm ready to go back now.

>155 brenzi: You're welcome, Bonnie. That was definitely the best vacation I've had, but hopefully I'll be able to take another month long holiday next year, if my group decides to do the same thing this autumn.

I finished Gaudí: A Biography this morning, which was good, and I've started reading Paul Robeson: A Watched Man, which is even better so far.

>157 Ameise1: I guess you'll be there soon ;-). I hope you have a lovely day.

>157 Ameise1: Ha! You may be right on that one, Barbara. If all goes well I'll return to London in early September, and I wouldn't rule out a quick trip to Barcelona (probably by air) while I'm in Europe.

I'm off until Monday, with little to do but read, so by definition it's a lovely day. :)

Ha, I knew thst you must be homesick to good old Europe and will return soon. Enjoy your days off.

>156 kidzdoc: Nah, I don't think the US can claim her. the UK can probably stake a claim, as she's technically a citizen of two Commonwealth countries and went to school for a year in Yorkshire, I think. That's probably enough, no?

Don't know about a Spanish version of this, but the French variant doesn't have any brain. You're seeing pieces of meat, some gelatin, and herbs.

>159 Ameise1: Thanks, Barbara. The more I go there, the more convinced I am that I was meant to live in Europe.

Congratulations on your upcoming summer holiday!

>160 Chatterbox: I was kidding about claiming Eleanor Catton as a citizen of the US! We need all the good writers we can get in this country.

That looks better than the Spanish version, although it doesn't exactly set my salivary glands into overdrive. If it doesn't have any pig brain then I'd be willing to try it.

Thanks Darryl, and it will be three weeks in the UK.

Nice! What plans have you made there so far?

>164 kidzdoc: We start in Penzance than Plymouth, Torquay, Exeter, Bournemouth, Portsmouth and London.

>165 Ameise1: I haven't been to any of those cities, with one obvious exception. I look forward to your reports!

A Throwback Thursday photo, from the summer of 1961:

Today's NYT includes a nice Op-Ed article about the differences between the book buying markets in France and the US:

The French Do Buy Books. Real Books.

Yes, that's by my friend Pam! I've been posting it everywhere today to make sure it goes viral... We were at the WSJ together in NY and have stayed friends all these decades; she now hangs her hat in the Marais with her Dutch partner & their three kids. Haven't seen her since I managed to squeeze in dinner with her the last time I was in Paris -- I schlepped Grape Nuts all the way over there!

She has done some very good pieces for the NYT of late; might be worth following her via Twitter or something.

>166 kidzdoc: OMG how cute!!!!

Ooh! I just noticed that The Millions' Great Second-Half Book Preview is out. These are the books that interest me the most:

Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique (July): 'Tiphanie Yanique follows her much lauded story collection, How to Escape From a Leper Colony, with “an epic multigenerational tale set in the U.S. Virgin Islands that traces the ambivalent history of its inhabitants during the course of the 20th century.”'

Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya (July): 'Yelena Akhtiorskaya is one of New York’s best young writers — funny and inventive and stylistically daring, yes, but also clear-eyed and honest. Born in Odessa and raised in Brighton Beach, she’s been publishing essays and fiction in smart-set venues for a few years. Now she delivers her first novel, about two decades in the life of a Ukrainian family resettled in Russian-speaking Brooklyn.'

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (August): 'A concise, focused story about a 37-year-old man still trying to come terms with a personal trauma that took place seventeen years earlier — when he was unceremoniously cut out of a tight knit group of friends. The novel has less magical strangeness than most Murakami books, and may be his most straightforward tale since Norwegian Wood.' I loved Norwegian Wood, and I'm a solid Murakami fan, so I will be elbowing toddlers and frail grandmothers out of the way on the day this book is released.

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (August): 'Thomas spreads his canvas wide in this 640-page doorstop of a novel, which follows three generations of an Irish American family from Queens, but at heart the book is an intimate tale of a family’s struggle to make its peace with a catastrophic illness that strikes one of its members at precisely the wrong moment.'

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell (September): 'David Mitchell has evidently returned to his genre-, time-, and location-bending best with a novel that weaves the Iraq War with punk rock with immortal beings with the End Times.'

The Children Act by Ian McEwan (September): 'McEwan’s thirteenth novel treads some familiar ground — a tense moral question sits at the heart of the narrative: whether it is right for parents to refuse medical treatment for their children on religious grounds.'

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel (September): '“Where her last two novels explore how modern England was forged, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher shows us the country we have become. These stories are Mantel at her observant best.”'

The Dog by Joseph O’Neill (September): 'In his first novel since his 2008 PEN/Faulkner-winning Netherland, O’Neill tells another fish-out-of-water tale, this time about a New Yorker who takes a job as a “family officer” for a wealthy family in Dubai. Surrounded by corruption and overwhelmed by daily life in the desert metropolis, the narrator becomes obsessed with the disappearance of another American in what Publishers Weekly calls “a beautifully crafted narrative about a man undone by a soulless society.”'

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (October): This book 'depicts the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley, “spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters — assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts.”'

Hiding in Plain Sight by Nuruddin Farah (October): 'Farah is back with another trilogy after his acclaimed Blood in the Sun series. Once again, he explores identity, obligation, family ties, and how politics can interrupt it all. After Bella’s brother is killed by Somali extremists, she has to give up her life as a famous fashion photographer and raise his children as if they were her own. Yet when the children’s mother returns, Bella must decide what matters more — her family or herself.' I own several books by Farah but haven't read any of them yet, so I may hold off on this one for awhile.

A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin (November): 'Beneath the quiet poetry of Ha Jin’s sentences is a searing novelistic ambition; in A Map of Betrayal, the story of a double-agent in the CIA, he explores a half-century of entanglements between China and the U.S., and the divided loyalties that result.'

The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck (November): Erpenbeck follows up the celebrated novel Visitation with a heady conceit located somewhere between Cloud Atlas and Groundhog Day. The End of Days follows a single character, born early in the 20th Century, to five different deaths: the first as an infant, the second as a teenager, and so on. In each case, her life illuminates the broader history of Europe, which remains ever in the background, dying its own deaths.' Hmm, Life After Life redux? I did like Visitation though, so I'll probably give this a try.

Skylight by José Saramago (December): 'This is Saramago’s so-called “lost work,” which was written in the 1950s, but rediscovered after the Nobel laureate’s death in 2010. The novel features the interconnected stories of the residents of an apartment building in Lisbon in the 1940s.'

The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (March 2015): '“The story follows two parallel tales: an elite Lima businessman who decides to punish his undeserving heirs, and a self-made man in Vargas Llosa’s adopted hometown, Piura, who resists an extortionist demand.”'

The entire list can be found via the hyperlink in the first paragraph of this post. Happy reading!

>168 Chatterbox: That was a great article, so I'll definitely keep an eye out for her articles.

>169 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks, Reba! It helps to have a fetching mother.

I'll have to check out the whole list, but the Joseph O'Neill is especially interesting to me. I really liked Netherland and am both fascinated and repelled by Dubai.

>172 katiekrug: I enjoyed Netherland, and I'm definitely interested to get his take on Dubai, Katie.

I've read 11 novels on the Canadian list. I suspect that Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant aren't there because their best known work is in the short story form.

Darryl, this is one of Pam's that particularly moved me:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/opinion/sunday/druckerman-my-grandfathers-last...

That's an interesting book list! I'm lucky to have scooped up some of these at BookExpo: the Tana French book (although that will have to wait until I have caught up in the series); the new novels by Marilynne Robinson, Ben Lerner, David Bezmozgis, as well as ARCs of On Immunity and Neverhome. I've got a NetGalley edition of Twilight of the Eastern Gods that I'm eager to get to soon.

Of the others... Well, the Ian MacEwan is a logical read, I'll want to read Louise Gluck's poems and Meghan Daum's essays. The Ha Jin novel is only a possible, as I was lukewarm about the Nanjing massacre book. It worked as polemic, but not as a narrative, for me: the characterizations were stilted.

Like Katie, I'm very very intrigued by the sound of the Joseph O'Neill novel, and will be keeping an eye out for that! That's probably the top on my "wow, might actually go out on a limb and buy it" list. I'll read the Mantel stories, but probably from the library. But I'll probably also look for the Miriam Toews novel and the Limonov bio -- he's an interesting figure.

I don't know why, but when I see phrases like "she's been publishing ... in smart-set venues", I want to run in the opposite direction. Very far; very rapidly. It feels very Lena Dunham-esque.

The Matthew Thomas book has been VERY heavily promoted; I can pick up an ARC from Amazon if I want. There's not much in the early reviews to encourage me to do that, though.

>166 kidzdoc: What a cutie-patootie, Darryl! And your mother is so pretty, and has a smile that makes me want to be friends with her...

I've had a productive (i.e., Amberesque) morning so far. I took my car in for servicing, bought over $200 worth of groceries at Publix, prepared a batch of white chicken chili for the slow cooker, which will be ready in time for dinner, and put on lunch (admittedly an already made Portobello mushroom and crab cake burger that only need to be heated in the oven). Hopefully my afternoon can be equally as productive.

Breaking news for all (two) of you NBA fans: LeBron James will return to the Cleveland Cavaliers. He is from nearby Akron, Ohio, so this is a second homecoming for him after he lead the Miami Heat to two NBA championships in 2012 and 2013, and a loss in the NBA Finals to the San Antonio Spurs this year.

>174 elkiedee: That makes sense, Luci.

>175 Chatterbox: Thanks for the link to that article by Pamela Druckerman, Suz. I'll create a NYT alert using her name, so that I get an e-mail reminder whenever she has written an Op-Ed or other article.

I realized earlier today that, of the 14 books I listed from The Millions' list, all of them were written by writers born outside of the United States, including those who live here (e.g., Ha Jin, Joseph O'Neill, Marlon James and Yelena Akhtiorskaya).

Not all of these books are definite purchases or library borrows, such as the one by Akhtiorskaya. And, several others that I didn't list are on my radar screen, particularly the new novel by Miriam Toews. I am fond of immigrant stories, so the novel by Akhtiorskaya piqued my interest. I agree, though, that the comment about her publishing in "smart-set venues" is definitely an off putting one.

I'll definitely get the books by Murakami, McEwan, O'Neill, James, Mantel, Saramago and Vargas Llosa.

The new and ?improved Man Booker Prize longlist will be released in less than two weeks, on July 23rd, so much of my summer reading will be dictated by the books that are chosen. With any luck several of the books chosen for The Millions' Most Anticipated Books list will appear on that one as well, especially since authors from the US are now eligible for this year's Booker Prize. Hmm...I'll comment about this in the Booker Prize group this weekend, and ask if anyone has books they have read that they would choose for this year's Booker Dozen.

>176 scaifea: Thanks, Amber! My mother hasn't lost her striking looks, despite having to put up with her two sons and husband, and especially her two sisters (who, thankfully, are both still alive*) over the past 50+ years. If I can brag, I would say that everyone loves my mother, as she is easy to talk to and very personable, and I think you would like her as well.

*All of my father's siblings (two older brothers and an older sister) died at least 10 years ago, and although he didn't always get along with them as well as my mother does with her sometimes troublesome sisters, he misses them terribly.

>177 kidzdoc: - Don't get me started on LeBron. I have an unexplained, visceral dislike for him, and if I were a Cavs fan, I would be furious.

?improved is right.

I'm dubious about this. There are plenty of US fiction awards. I like the idea of having an English language award that is non US.

>178 katiekrug: A good friend of mine, who is a pretty rabid Cleveland sports fan, is from Massilon, Ohio, which is close to Akron (where he attended undergraduate and law school) and Cleveland. I'll send him an e-mail shortly, to get his take on LBJ's return to the Cavaliers.

I was a huge NBA fan growing up, as my father used to take me to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks play in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when we lived just across the Hudson River in Jersey City, a subway ride away from MSG. That was during the Knicks' glory years, when they won championships in 1970 and 1973. They played great team basketball back then, featuring good passing to the open man, solid defense, and great teamwork on both ends of the court. Sadly, the NBA has disintegrated into a league of overpriced and overrated stars, who look to pad their stats (and their wallets) at the expense of team play.

Who ya got for the World Cup final on Sunday? Will Brasil bother to show up for tomorrow's third place match against Holland? I'm sticking with my prediction from two weeks ago: Argentina 3-2 Germany, with Lionel Messi scoring the winning goal late in the second half or during extra time.

>179 Chatterbox: I agree. I was opposed to the inclusion of US writers on the Booker Prize longlist, and, although this may sound snobby and Eurocentric, I fear that the award will be diluted by the inclusion of books written by American authors. I continue to follow the discussion in the 2014 Speculation thread, which is far less active this year due largely to the inclusion of US authors. I'll be very curious to see which books are chosen for the longlist, but I have a feeling (and hope) that only one or two books by American authors will be included.

>180 kidzdoc: - The way you describe the Knicks in their glory days sounds a lot like the San Antonio Spurs of today. I am not a huge basketball fan, despite having played it through high school, but I love watching the Spurs. I'll be interested in hearing what your friend thinks.

Re: the World Cup, I'm rooting for Germany but won't dare make a prediction because I think it will be a pretty even and a very close match. In other sporting circumstances, I would say Brazil will definitely show up for the third place match, but they are such a messed up team right now, I'm not sure. Either way, I'm rooting for the Dutch because I've never been a Brazil fan, mostly due to an awful, awful Brazilian woman I work with...

And I'll add my two cents to the Booker discussion: the inclusion of American works should not, in theory, make a lick of difference. The best books, regardless, should make the list, move forward to the SL, and the best of the best should come out on top. If an American book is better than something from a smaller country, well that's too bad. The point of a prize is to recognize excellence within a certain set of parameters. If the Booker winner is supposed to be the best English language novel published that year, then, to me, it's disingenuous to exclude US titles. If the point is to bring attention to what might be lesser known works, that's a lovely goal and one I encourage, but then change your criteria or don't try to achieve the goal in the form of a "prize" - something that is supposed to be "best." I would argue that if American books are seen to dominate the list because of better publicity or promotion or whatever, then the problem is with the prize and the process itself. It's bizarre to me to have a prize for the best English language novel but exclude one of the largest English-speaking countries from being considered.

ETA: And now I'll await the crushof disagreement and anger to rain down upon me :)

While I await your discussion of the BL picks ....

>167 kidzdoc: >168 Chatterbox: David Lebovitz expat and author living in Paris and writer of a food blog was warbling about that article yesterday. Read it on the commuter rail going home last night. Pretty good. Interesting author. Like Darryl, I'll be keeping an eye out for more.

>181 kidzdoc: Well, I think that I agree with Katie on the inclusion of US works in the Booker prize -- i.e., I don't see why not. However, maybe I don't know enough about the history of the Booker award to have an opinion.

>166 kidzdoc: So cute!

>182 katiekrug: I haven't watched any NBA games for several years, and I haven't gone to any Atlanta Hawks games, even though Philips Arena is no more than 15 minutes away from where I live in Midtown. I understand that the Spurs play great team basketball, but I haven't seen them play, in person or on television, in at least two or three years.

I think the Argentina-Germany match will be a close one, but I expect (or at least hope) that both teams won't resort to the defensive slogfest that made the Argentina-Holland match one of the most boring ones of this year's World Cup. I would feel a bit more comfortable about my pick if Ángel di María, Lionel Messi's right hand man, was able to play for Argentina, but I seriously doubt that we'll see a repeat of Tuesday's Brasil-Germany bloodbath.

I think that Brasil will show up tomorrow, and will do their best to prove that Tuesday's result was a tragic fluke and not an indication of the quality of the team. However, if Holland gains an early lead I think it's possible that Brasil may collapse upon itself like a poorly cooked soufflé.

On one hand it would be nice if there was a literary prize that honored the best book written primarily in the English language, regardless of the author's country of origin. However, the new Folio Prize, which arose in the wake of the 2011 Booker Prize fiasco, already stakes that claim, and Tenth of December by the US author George Saunders did win the inaugural prize earlier this year. That book received more hype on this side of the pond than any book since Freedom, Jonathan Franzen's overrated and mediocre tale of Midwest suburban drama. So, I see no reason why the Booker Prize has to follow suit. The Booker Prize has a long (40+ year) tradition of highlighting the best book written by a Commonwealth author, and since US literary awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award are not open to Commonwealth authors I don't see why the Booker should necessarily include authors from this country. Although in theory the inclusion of US authors shouldn't make a difference, I believe that books from heavyweight publishing houses like Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Macmillian can devote more resources and put more pressure on the judges to have their books included in the list of ones that are reviewed compared to smaller and independent publishers, and authors who aren't widely known or as well connected. If I remember correctly, I read somewhere that several big name authors have contracts which ensure that their books will be promoted by their publishers for literary awards such as the Booker Prize. Since only a limited number of books can be promoted by each publisher, this would mean that a promising work by a new or little known author might not be promoted by that publisher, and a book that is worthy of consideration might fall by the wayside unless one or more of the judges decided to call it in for review. The new rules also give greater weight to publishers who have had more writers chosen for Booker shortlists in previous years, which would favor larger publishers like Bloomsbury and Penguin (the Manchester United and Chelsea of UK publishers), which has a lineup of top notch authors, and put smaller houses like And Other Stories at a relative disadvantage, IMO. I'd much rather see a variety of books from different Commonwealth countries, particularly the smaller ones in Africa and Asia, rather than a list of the most highly touted books from heavyweight publishers in the UK and US, which would dilute and compromise the Booker Prize.

The proof of the pudding will (or may) come the Wednesday after next, when the longlist is published. Hopefully the judges can resist the pressure from the major publishers, and come up with a quality longlist that will please the reading public.

>183 michigantrumpet: That Op-Ed article was one of the best and most informative ones I've read in the NYT recently, so I'll be looking out for more of her work.

>184 banjo123: If the Folio Prize, another UK award albeit one that lacks the history of the Booker Prize, didn't already focus on the best book written in English by any author from any country, I might reluctantly agree with the inclusion of authors from the US for consideration for the Booker Prize. However, I see no reason why there needs to be two prizes with the same mission. Authors from the US receive enough hype as it is, both within and outside of our borders, and I'd much rather see writers from Commonwealth countries outside of the US and UK, particularly those from Asia and Africa, receive the attention they deserve, especially since there are relatively few notable international awards that include novels from those two continents. The Man Asian Literary Prize is no longer being awarded, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize has devolved from an award for the best novel to one given to the best short story. Admittedly I find most contemporary American literature to be uninteresting and trivial, so I'd much rather learn about quality novels from the Second and Third World instead of overhyped books by US authors such as Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers and others.

I'm glad that you like that photo, Rhonda!

Darryl
I agree with you about the Booker Prize. I think there are plenty of awards out there for US writers and I would like to see the Booker Prize continue as it has.

>185 kidzdoc: - Aha! I somehow forgot (if I ever knew) that the Booker had been limited to Commonwealth countries. That makes sense and seems stupid for them to have changed that particular criterion. Essentially there were two criteria: English-language and from a Commonwealth country. That makes sense. My issue was thinking it was open to any English-language novel regardless of country, except the US.

Anyway, what the whole thing seems to prove to me as an individual reader is that the prizes are pretty pointless as far as determining what I want to read. Yes, they may make me aware of something I wouldn't have otherwise have heard of but which sounds like my kind of thing, but they sure don't guarantee a good read or the "best of the best."

>177 kidzdoc: Two Things:
1) "Amberesque"? I'm sure this Lady of Leisure has no idea what you're talking about.

2) And now I want to meet your mother even more!

>187 catarina1: Right, catarina. US authors receive enough hype here and abroad as it is, and they have at least three major literary awards to compete for (Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award (although this one is open to writers from other countries, unlike the other two)). Isn't that enough?

I think there will be an uproar in the UK if this year's Booker Prize longlist includes more than a couple of books by authors from the US, especially if they are written by highly touted but mediocre authors.

>188 katiekrug: Exactly, Katie. The Booker Prize administrators changed the rules of the prize shortly after the Folio Prize announced that it would include authors from all countries whose primarily language is English. Why change the rules of what is arguably the most prestigious prize for a single book in the world because of an upstart, one which received very little attention in the UK and essentially none outside of it?

I certainly agree that no prize is a guarantee of the best books in any category or from any country. However, from reading books chosen as finalists for certain prizes I have been introduced to numerous books that I probably wouldn't have read (such as The Luminaries, Life After Life and The Glass Room), and authors who have now become favorites of mine (e.g., Hilary Mantel, Aminatta Forna, Kamila Shamsie). Yes, I have read several duds, especially the books chosen for the 2011 Booker Prize longlist, but I can live with the occasional off year or a book that I find mediocre or execrable (Me Cheeta, Child 44, The Testament of Jessie Lamb).

>189 scaifea: Lady of Leisure indeed! Does a true Lady of Leisure have this on her daily agenda? "Grocery shopping this morning, laundry, maybe some bread baking, hopefully some sewing, definitely some reading." A true Lady of Leisure (a.k.a. a Southern princess) would have fainted by 10 am with that schedule! If your agenda included having a midmorning breakfast with friends at the country club, a biweekly manicure and pedicure, lunch at the Junior League and late afternoon shopping at the mall, while the nanny watched the kids, prepared their breakfast and lunch, and made dinner for the family while you took an late afternoon nap or a swim back at the country club, then you can claim to be a Lady of Leisure!

>190 kidzdoc: I want to be a Lady of Leisure! I want to be a Lady of Leisure! (Only with LOTS more reading ...)

>191 michigantrumpet: Hmph. Slacker...

I would like to be Darryl's kind of Lady of Leisure..... not withstanding his apparent disdain for them! And minus the kids, nanny or no ;-)

>193 katiekrug: Right. No kids or Nanny. But someone to do all the hard stuff...

>194 michigantrumpet: - Oh, for sure. Though to be honest, I don't do much hard stuff now :-P

>193 katiekrug:, >194 michigantrumpet:. Nah. I bet that you two hard working women would shriek maniacally and wish to return to your regular lives and duties before one week was over.

>195 katiekrug: On the other hand, I have noticed quite a number of extracurricular activities during the work week on your Facebook posts. You're almost as bad as Caroline.

You may be right. Willing to take the concept out for a test spin, though...

>198 michigantrumpet: I can relate to that. Although I thoroughly enjoyed my month off (actually five weeks, from late May through early July), by the time last week came I was ready to go back to work, as I was eager to take care of patients, see my physician and nurse colleagues and friends, and return to being a useful human being. However, by the end of the six day stretch I was more than ready to return to my second life as a Man of Leisure.

>189 scaifea: That sounds pretty horrid, honestly. I'm much happier goofing off with Charlie at home than I would be at a country club or whatever a Junior League is, and definitely more than at a mall. *shudders*

Also, the bread didn't get baked today - last minute Mario Tennis Tournament with The Charld put baking on hold until a later date...

>200 scaifea: Sadly I know several physicians who are (unhappily) married to such Ladies of Leisure. A couple of them, including the wife of one of my former partners, harass them if they come home later than expected because they are caring for patients in the hospital, instead of being available to take their wife out to dinner as scheduled. Quite a few others are divorced or separated, and, I suspect, are paying handsomely to keep their ex-wives in their previous states of comfort.

More than once I've heard nurses or other women who work at Children's make comments something along the lines of "I need a man to take care of me." One nurse I was quite close to several years ago was surprised and mildly horrified because I told her that, if I was going to marry, I would prefer a professional woman with a career that she wished to maintain; she also wanted to be married to a well-to-do man who would provide her with a comfortable life. I'm certainly not opposed to and see nothing wrong with a woman who focuses on her family after marriage, but many Southern women want, and expect to be, pampered and kept happy, which I disagree with and find utterly distasteful.

>196 kidzdoc: - You are probably right, but like Marianne, I wouldn't mind a taste of it now and then ;-)

>197 kidzdoc: - Hmm, not sure what those extracurricular activities are...?

>202 katiekrug: Just kidding! I was thinking about your afternoon(s) off to watch World Cup matches.

Oh, of course! I'll miss those afternoons.... *sigh*

I'm going to go into World Cup withdrawal after Sunday. My favorite baseball teams (Phillies, Mets, Pirates) are all having down years, although the Bucs are starting to get hot, so it promises to be a long summer until (American) pro and college football gets going at the end of next month.

BTW, the addition of LBJ could make the Cavaliers a serious contender for the NBA Finals in a couple of years. Kevin Love is now thinking of joining the team, and they have some good young talent returning next season.

>205 kidzdoc: - Me, too. And my Yanks are having a middling season (but better than the Red Sox, so yay!). Definitely looking forward to football....

I'm so far out of the basketball loop that I do not know who Kevin Love is!

>201 kidzdoc: Those sorts of women aren't doing the feminist movement any favors, are they? Ha!

>201 kidzdoc: Nothing wrong with pampering! I think it's the EXPECTATION of non-stop pampering that is the problem... at least, in my eyes. Also, shouldn't pampering be bilateral? At least, insofar as random acts of unsolicited kindness, etc. etc. go?

I do think it's tough for some women who have married affluent men and stayed home to raise families. What do they do when their kids are teenagers or off to college? If they had careers in their 20s, by their late 40s it's pretty much too late to go back to that. So there's a lot of displacement activity going on. And (devil's advocate here...) I wonder how many of these guys would really like if they had a wife who had a demanding career? They may not like being married to Ladies of Leisure, but to some extent, they played a role in making them that. They want wives who are there when they need them -- to be there at work social events, to look after the kids and the house, etc. etc. They want their wives to look attractive and as young as possible and thus to reflect well on them (and generate envy in their peers) and as the years go by, that takes time and work. The women all realize that if they don't invest in their appearance, etc., they risk finding themselves suddenly divorced, as their husband finds a new, younger wife who he finds more interesting (presumably because she isn't asking what time he's coming home for dinner and whether he'll make it to junior's ball game) as well as more alluring. And that -- believe me, every woman over 40, even those of us who aren't married -- know all too well, is potential disaster. You haven't worked professionally in 10/15 years; the alimony laws are increasingly less favorable to women (regardless of what your colleagues complain about; they probably are paying child support rather than alimony) and the odds of ending up in financial trouble soar. Perhaps this resonates because I've seen it in my own family, where if my brother and I weren't supporting her, my mother would be homeless and starving, entitled only to $300 a month from the government.

And trust me -- I've seen FAR more guys who are uncomfortable (viscerally, deeply so) with women who are ambitious and driven at work. One friend of mine's husband left her after she began to do better than he was doing in the financial world, although she was younger -- she earned bigger bonuses. Her next two boyfriends put her through hell for the same reason. She's finally happily remarried -- to someone she knew in high school, before she was a Powerful Successful person. I think the message is VERY mixed: be self supporting (because we don't want to have to support you) but don't show us up as being smarter than we are or out-earning us. I'm not talking about you, Darryl, but this is something that I see very, very, very often. And I'd be interested to see how your unhappily married colleagues would feel about being married to a peer -- a successful surgeon with an equally unpredictable schedule, who wasn't there when they DID get home and wanted to see her. The saving grace, when you're dating, is that most men who feel this way will eventually come out and say so, or betray this attitude in some way.

I don't understand the "I need a man to take care of me" mentality, not one little bit, and I'd be bored being a lady of leisure. But I've seen a lot of very successful professional guys and their wives in EXACTLY the kind of marriages you describe -- indeed, I've had a lot of the husbands hit on me over the years, explaining to me earnestly just how they're taken for granted by the wives they support in luxury. And I've come to realize that there are two sides to it. If the husband married a spoiled brat from the get-go, well, that's clearly a problem. But shouldn't we all be able to figure out that our prospective spouses aren't spoiled brats before marrying??

>170 kidzdoc: Nice list there, am especially looking forward to Murakami & David Mitchell

What a beautiful photo of you and your mother, Darryl!

>147 kidzdoc: those weeping photos remind me of when NZ lost (ie, got 2nd or 3rd) in the rugby world cup. I was overseas at the time and it just had never occurred to me that the All Blacks would lose (even though I cant say i am a follower of rugby...) anyway, there was talk of nationwide counselling services being offered to console the NZ population. I t was crazy. NZ men aren't known for their emotional outpouring though, so, maybe the Brazilians will fare better in their psychological recovery.

>166 kidzdoc: oh boy, you are so cute! And your mother looks so youthful and vivacious (makes me think you must have been a good sleeper!!)

>208 Chatterbox: If the husband married a spoiled brat from the get-go, well, that's clearly a problem.
So many marriages like that (from my limited experience with all this) seem to be a status thing. The man marries some eye candy and the woman marries a good status symbol for her. When that is the case it is destined for failure unless the boundaries are set out early (as in being honest about what the attraction was). Just imo....

Darryl, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Wow! The whole Lady of Leisure thing suddenly got serious! I just yearn for more time to read and take care of myself, but I have few complaints about my life. My professional life is rewarding and challenging. I have a supportive husband who is not at all threatened by my career. He's all for whatever I bring into the family coffers. Given what Suz wrote, I'm a lucky gal!

Even so, a month without cares and responsibilities to read, play and refresh does sound heavenly.

>70 The_Hibernator: Some intriguing books on that list Darryl. I'm especially interested in the new David Mitchell novel and Hilary Mantel short story collection (although I have a number of their older books that I still haven't read...)

>206 katiekrug: Yep, Katie; I think a 46-46 record can be properly described as "middling". However, the Orioles and Blue Jays are only three and five games ahead of the Yankees, respectively, so the Yankees have plenty of time to catch both of them and make the postseason - provided that they don't lose any more starting pitchers.

The Phloundering Phillies are mired in last place, although their current five game winning streak has them only eight games out of first place. However, they will probably follow that up with a six game losing streak and fall into oblivion by this time next week. If the Phillies' front office has any common sense, they will take advantage of the Yankees' pitching woes and offer them Cole Hamels and (if they need relief help) Jonathan Papelbon for a steep price, and use the new acquisitions to return to contention next year.

The Pirates are playing better, and they are definitely in the playoff hunt, and the Mets are in fourth place, one game ahead of the Phillies. I'm only a fair weather fan of those teams, though, so I follow them with only a passing interest.

I'll definitely watch today's and tomorrow's World Cup matches this afternoon. I'm very interested to see how Brasil performs in the third place match after Tuesday's annihilation by Germany, and of course I can't wait for tomorrow's final. I'll rapidly go into soccer football withdrawal after that, so I'll probably pay more attention to MLS until the English Premier League season opens in mid-August.

>207 scaifea: Not at all, Amber. However, as you know, the South remains quite conservative and regressive, and even in a field like pediatrics that has a majority of women my female partners frequently face sexism from some parents and especially grandparents (including women!), who apparently aren't comfortable with the idea of women as physicians.

I, on the other hand, experience essentially no racism at work, and many of the families I'm most fond of, including my favorite family from last week, could be called or describe themselves as "hillbillies" or "rednecks", who come from central or South Georgia or the north Georgia mountains, as this family did (the mother did teasingly call her and her husband "hillbillies" last weekend, as she told me how they got lost after they went outside to smoke cigarettes and couldn't figure out how to get back in).

Sadly, and very oddly, my three other African American partners and I agree that the group that comprises our most troublesome families are from lower class urban or rural African American backgrounds, some of whom treat us like crap and on rare occasions have asked to see a white physician instead of one of us! We'll occasionally joke that we should let our white partners see AfrAm patients, and we'll see the white ones instead.

>208 Chatterbox: I had trouble relating and formulating a reply to your message, Suz, until it dawned on me this morning that most of the people you describe are probably Important Business People, who must keep up appearances, have trophy wives and glamorous homes, and are quick to dump their older wives for young hotties that enhance their egos and reputations. Thankfully I don't have to deal with that testosterone laden nonsense, as no one I know well, including my current and former partners, my former classmates from medical school and residency, and the subspecialists I work with (and, again, know well) aren't like that. That's not to say that there aren't some that are, though, particularly the high powered administrators and the surgical specialists, who make several fold more and travel in different circles than we do.

I think that most of my close physician colleagues are regular middle class people, with stable families, nice but not extravagant homes in the city or nearby suburbs, and drivers of minivans or SUVs rather than luxury sports cars. I do know of one physician, not in my group, who left a spouse to marry a younger hottie, but that physician is a woman!

Since my group is largely comprised of women from their late 20s to their early 40s, most are married to men who work, and out of necessity they share home and child care responsibilities. Several are married to fellow physicians, most of whom they met during medical school or residency, or guys they were dating or married to before they entered medical school. Of my two dozen or so partners I can only think of one who is divorced, and several of us remain single. It's much harder for physicians to find a mate after residency due to our busy schedules and time constraints, although my group's work schedule is much more conducive to having an active social life than most of my other physician friends.

I'd say that about half of the wives of my male physician friends work outside the home, most of whom are also physicians. I haven't heard any of them complain about having a wife with a busy career, and essentially all of them are proud and supportive of their spouses. So, I'd say that we travel in different circles, and the people you encounter are very different from the ones I do.

>209 roundballnz: Same here, Alex. The Murakami is a definite purchase, and the Mitchell will be too, unless it gets multiple horrible reviews and doesn't make the Booker Prize longlist.

>210 lit_chick: Thanks, Nancy!

>211 LovingLit: I suspect that the Brasilian collective shock and despair over the team's spectacular loss on Tuesday will be replaced with Elizabeth Kübler-Ross-like stages of recovery. with the possible exception of the bargaining phase. Most are probably somewhere between anger and depression now, which may last due to the poor performance of the team, the corruption in Brasilian football in particular and society in general, and the great racial and socioeconomic inequities that still exist there. I haven't reviewed it yet, but I found Alex Bellos' book Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, to be a very informative and eye opening look at that country, using football as a means to examine it closely.

Thanks for your kind compliment! I think I lost my essential cuteness after I turned ?three or four, which probably had a lot to do with my near fatal decision to ride my tricycle down the metal stairs that led from our third floor apartment to the midway point between the third and second floors. I was knocked unconscious for quite awhile and had a nasty head bruise as a result (fortunately I didn't go flying out of the window that was at the bottom of the stairs). It happened during a work day, so my father and uncles were working and my mother and her sisters didn't have a car to use. I didn't respond until she carried me to a bus stop on the way to the Emergency Room at Jersey City Medical Center; according to her I heard the bus pull up, immediately woke up and shouted "Bus!!! Bus!!!" I don't remember anything after that, probably because she hit me in the head and knocked me unconscious again.

I'll have to ask her if I was a good sleeper or not. Except for the Tricycle Incident I was generally a good kid, as I liked to play with my cousins and friends but also enjoyed sitting in a rocking chair with a stack of books (which I'm sure all of you find surprising). My parents quickly learned that sending me to my room, where my books were located, wasn't exactly much of a punishment.

I do agree that many of the marriages I see in Atlanta are based on looks (for the men) or status (for the women). The Real Housewives of Atlanta may be a reality TV show (and, therefore, not reflective of reality), but I suspect that there is far more of that nonsense going on than people here would like to believe. Most of the men I know well, though, are married to regular women and not the high maintenance, overly made up and dressed hot chicks that seem to be ever present here (just to be clear, I find those women intensely repulsive, as most of them look like prostitutes to me).

>212 Ameise1: Thanks for that lovely photo and weekend wishes, Barbara! And congratulations on this being the first day of your five week long holiday!

>213 michigantrumpet: Marianne, your description of your life is much more in tune with the women I know best, whether they are ones I work with or spouses of my male friends and colleagues. As I told my nurse friend several years ago, it isn't that I expect my wife to work, but the woman I would wish to marry would be well educated and would likely want to maintain an active career and life, even if she had to cut back to part time or give up working altogether for several years to raise children. (At that time I was in my early 40s, and marrying someone who was of childbearing age was much more realistic then than it is now, a dozen years later.)

Point definitely taken about having a month off to travel, relax and read!

>214 souloftherose: I will definitely buy the new Mantel when it comes out, and almost certainly the Mitchell as well. BTW, since when did having unread books by an author preclude anyone from buying new ones by them? ;-)

ETA: I went back to Publix to buy more ingredients for the oxtail stew that I'll make today, and the Irish lamb stew that I'll make tomorrow. Now that I've had breakfast I think I'll get started cooking; I'll check back in later.

>216 kidzdoc: Aha, I was just reacting to the comments about the Ladies of Leisure, and to the comments about unhappy marriages, the women's expectations, etc. Perhaps I conflated them to to great a degree?

Wow, your tricycle incident was FAR worse than mine. I just decided one day that mine was a two wheeler and rode it while standing on the pedals. Hit a bump, and over I went. Split my chin open, and went home streaming blood. Seven stitches, and I still have the scar! :-)

Actually, though, you still have the same expression that you have on your face in that photo.

>218 kidzdoc: thanks Darryl, I got up much earlier than on a working day because Marina left for her concert tour.

Delurking to say Hi! As usual, love all the food talk and I have especially been enjoying the discussion on the Booker Prize. I say leave it to the Commonwealth! Cute photo too. ; )

>219 Chatterbox: Fortunately I don't encounter these Ladies of Leisure or Important Business People very often, and I intend to keep it that way.

I didn't require stitches or hospitalization following the Tricycle Incident, so perhaps your fall was worse than mine.

Ha ha! Only God knows what I was focused on in that photo. I suspect that my interest was piqued by tasty food or something equally as appealing. My brother astutely noticed the way that my mother was holding me made it look as though she was operating a hand puppet who resembled Sidney Poitier.

>220 Ameise1: Have an enjoyable day today, Barbara! Can I assume that you'll watch the World Cup final later today?

>221 Berly: Hi, Kim! I did make oxtail stew with parmesan egg noodles yesterday, using the online recipe from The Food Network program Down Home with the Neelys. It was quite labor intensive compared to the batch I made earlier this year, but it turned out very good. I made white chicken chili again on Friday, and I'll put on Caroline's Irish lamb stew later this morning.

I hope that the upcoming Booker Prize longlist isn't dominated by middlebrow authors from the US, or writers solely from the major publishing houses. I'll keep an eye out for it, as usual, and post the longlist that day. I'm working on the 23rd, so I'm sure that someone will put up the Booker Dozen before I do.

I definitely will watch it. You too, I suppose?

I just got some news from Marina. They had a fantastic concert at Erfurt. This morning they were in Nürnberg's historic centre guided by a historian. It must have been very interesting.

>223 Ameise1: I'll definitely be watching the final, Barbara!

I'm glad to hear that Marina's concert went well. Erfurt is in Germany, right? And I assume than Nürnberg is what we call Nuremberg in the US. (I had to search Google to learn about both cities.)

Happy Sunday, Darryl! Sorry, to hear about the death of Charlie Haden. RIP. I should yank something out of my collection, in his honor. What is your favorite?

>166 kidzdoc: Great photo!

>170 kidzdoc: Great upcoming list! I am especially looking forward to the Mitchell and Murakami.

>225 msf59: Happy Sunday to you too, Mark! Yes, I was also saddened to hear about Charlie Haden's death. Oh...I forgot to check to see if WKCR, Columbia University's station, is hosting a memorial broadcast in honor of his passing. Checking...yes, it starts at 2 pm ET; you can listen to it online via this link: http://ow.ly/z59NT. That's an hour before the World Cup final starts, so I'll listen from 2-3 pm, and again after the World Cup ends.

My favorite works by Charlie Haden are the ones from his appearances on Ornette Coleman's early albums The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) and This Is Our Music (1960), particularly the classic Lonely Woman from the first of those albums. Haden doesn't get a solo, but you can hear his contribution throughout. This was the song that got me interested in free jazz, and The Shape of Jazz to Come is still my favorite free jazz album.

  

Lonely Woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sq9PE-2JVA

I'll have to become more familiar with his music, and today's WKCR broadcast should be a good way to do that, although I wish that his death wasn't the reason that I'm paying more attention to him.

I'm looking forward to the Mitchell and the Murakami novels very highly, along with the new books by Mantel, McEwan, Saramago and MVL. So much for my plans to cut down my book purchases for the rest of the year...

>224 kidzdoc: Sorry Darryl, that I spell the name in German. Yes, both places are in Germany. Now they are on the way to Prague. There they'll give other concerts as well as more historical seesighting.

>227 Ameise1: That sounds like a great trip! Please keep us posted about it.

>151 kidzdoc: There you go again Darryl...eating that crazy stuff.... (I'm smiling)

>229 Whisper1: Ha ha! Not so crazy I'd say, compared to Caroline! At least I didn't have pressed pig's head when I was in Barcelona.

The oxtail stew I made in my slow cooker turned out quite nicely yesterday. Care for a bowl? ;^)

Darryl, close your eyes and remember my facial expression way down the table when you were suggesting one of your incredible delicacies.

>231 Whisper1: LOL! I can easily remember your facial expressions and shudder when we ate at the Chinese restaurant in Center City last spring. One of my favorite nurses is very similar to you, in that she eats basic foods and has a similar reaction, including the shudder, if I bring in or mention foods like this. I mentioned the batch of oxtail stew I had made this spring to several nurses; one of them all but begged me to bring some in, but Carol looked as if she was going to gag.

ETA: I'd be willing to bet that you and Carol would like this stew if I told you that it was beef stew with noodles (which is essentially the truth, as it's made with beef tails). I wouldn't trick either one of you, though. :^)

I'm happy to eat tongue, but for some reason oxtail does nothing for me... (yes, I've tried a version of this)

Well, you passed out in your trike accident. I didn't; I just had stitches. So, simply different kinds of woe. Mine involved gore; yours, the prospect of some kind of brain damage. Both involved panicked mothers. Clearly, both of us should steer clear of trikes in future. Should be easy enough, right?

>233 Chatterbox: I love oxtail stew, especially the Jamaican version that you can get in NYC, Jersey City and elsewhere. This version and the previous one I tried are similar Southern recipes, which both use Parmesan egg noodles. I'm only mildly fond of beef tongue in sandwiches, but I enjoy it chopped up and served in a burrito, as my favorite SF taquería makes it.

(Come back, Linda!)

It could easily be argued that I did suffer a traumatic brain injury after the Tricycle Incident, given how I act sometimes...

Darryl - I'm so far behind here but a very interesting discussion on ladies of leisure. As we live within easy commuting distance of the City of London there at certainly a fair few men around locally who could easily support a wife in a very nice lifestyle once they were married, but it is virtually unheard of for a woman to stop working just because she is married. I know of only one woman who did that who is a similar age to me, and to be honest it was considered pretty strange. Of course, women do give up work when they have children, but it's pretty common to carry on working at least part time. I read somewhere recently that differing marriage habits is leading to more concentration of money in fewer hands here: forty years ago male doctors and lawyers and accountants might frequently have married their female receptionists and secretaries; nowadays they marry female doctors and lawyers and accountants

Congratulations to Germany, who defeated Argentina 1-0 to capture the 2014 FIFA World Cup, its first title since 1990. The substitute Mario Götze (seen on the left in the above photo) scored the match's only goal late in extra time to break a scoreless draw and prevent the final from going to penalty kicks. The Germans were the best team in the tournament IMO, and they deserved to win after playing brilliantly and shutting down Argentina's star striker Lionel Messi in this match.

>235 SandDune: Everything you describe would be what I would consider to be normal, Rhian. Some professional women do curtail or temporarily give up their careers to focus on their families, but the majority of them maintain some ties to their past lives. I think it would be viewed as odd (and possibly a bit disturbing) if I or one of my male physician colleagues married an administrative assistant, receptionist or another woman who didn't have a college degree and a past career, unless she was a childhood sweetheart. And, as I mentioned, many future physicians ultimate date and marry fellow medical students or residents if they are single during medical school, which was common at my medical school as well.

Casting way back to the list of Canadian novels...I would like to have seen one of Howard Norman's on there (I'd replace Carol Shields with him, myself, as I did not see the greatness in The Stone Diaries). I've saved the pdf version of that list, though, as there look to be some good ones on there that I hadn't heard of before.

>160 Chatterbox: This looks and sounds like what I know as head cheese, or souse.

>235 SandDune: Fascinating point re wealth concentration/demographic changes!

>237 laytonwoman3rd: and yup, that's exactly what it is -- head cheese. I had forgotten that there was an English phrase for it!

>226 kidzdoc: Hi Darryl! Thanks for your Haden recs! Fortunately I have The Shape of Jazz to Come in my collection. I heard a couple of his solo albums but it has been far to long, to remember any details.
Hope the week is going well.

237> Hmmm. What I know as souse - from England theoretically in books, and from Guyana because it was served to me - is pig trotters - feet, not head. I suppose it might be just pig parts...

I'm off from clinical service for the rest of the week, although I do have some administrative tasks to do and a meeting to attend tomorrow. I haven't read much this month, so hopefully I can get at least a couple of books read between now and Sunday night.

>237 laytonwoman3rd: I was unfamiliar with Howard Norman, so I looked at his Wikipedia page. Apparently he was born in Ohio, spent 16 years in Canada after high school, and then returned to the US. Several of his novels are set in Canada, so I suppose that those books would count for my CanLit challenge.

>238 Chatterbox: Head cheese? No, thank you.

>239 msf59: The Shape of Jazz to Come deserves a spot in every jazzhead's library, IMO. I'm glad that you have it in yours, Mark.

This week was a busy one, because of the number of patients but also because I was on the teaching service, with brand new interns and medical students. As you probably know, July is the beginning of the academic year for medical school and residency training, so the interns are barely out of medical school, and the third year medical students are on their first clinical rotation this month, which means that attending physicians like me have to be extra diligent to correct the inevitable mistakes that the newbies make. That's why you want to avoid being admitted to a teaching hospital in July, if at all possible.

>240 jjmcgaffey: I can do pigs' feet, which is a common ingredient in collard greens in Southern and African American cuisine (my father usually uses smoked ham hocks instead of pigs' feet whenever he makes greens). I haven't had pigs' brains at home or, to my knowledge, anywhere else, though.

Scrapple is a delicacy (using the term loosely) served mainly in the Delaware Valley, which I believe also includes pigs' brains. IMO it looks like a congealed blob of portions of the pig that should not be consumed by humans, so I've never tried it.

Head cheese is just a name, Darryl... :-) It's pork MEAT from the heat (like pork cheeks), gelatin, and sometimes some herbs or other seasonings.

It's funny, scrapple sounds as if it should be delicious.

>241 kidzdoc: I met Howard Norman several years ago, Darryl. He is adamant that he is Canadian. (He holds dual citizenship.) I noted this on his author page in the "short biography" field.

I've eaten a lot of scrapple in my time. I'm fairly confident there were no brains in any of it. As served in this part of Pennsylvania, it is mostly corn meal, with bits of pork (and it doesn't pay to inquire too closely as to which bits) and plenty of seasoning such as would be in breakfast sausage. There are different schools of thought as to how it should be eaten. Some prefer it sliced quite thick, lightly fried and served with syrup. (Mush, with meat.) My choice is to slice it as thinly a possible, fry it totally crisp and crunchy, like a strip of bacon, and n'mind the syrup. In any case, I think it IS delicious.

>243 laytonwoman3rd: spoken like a true native. I've never even been tempted...

>242 Chatterbox: Thanks for that clarification, Suz. I love pork cheeks, so as long as head cheese doesn't have any brains in it I'm sure I'd like it.

>243 laytonwoman3rd: I've seen uncooked scrapple, and without getting too descriptive I'll just say that it doesn't look appealing to me. If I was going to try it I'd want to have it the way you prefer it, Linda. Hmm...I'll be in the Philadelphia area for roughly two weeks in mid-August (my plans aren't finalized yet, but I'll probably be there from around August 14-28). Maybe we can organize a meet up in the city and go to the Reading Terminal Market, as I would assume that one of the Amish eateries would offer it there.

>244 lauralkeet: Laura, I'll try scrapple if you will!

I will add that I have never enjoyed scrapple outside of my own kitchen, or my mother-in-law's, which is where I had it for the first time. It was one of those things my Dad had had more than enough of as a child, and never let it appear on our table when I was at home. It's Pennsylvania "soul food", I think, and you either love it forever, or want to put it behind you, depending on your associations as much as on its taste and composition.

>245 kidzdoc: Head cheese is just the English name for tete presse, which is the photo I posted previously. It's all in the name, isn't it... :-)

>243 laytonwoman3rd: Howard Norman took a little bit of flak in the Canadian media a few years back when he referred to the Canadian holiday of Thanksgiving -- the second Monday in October -- as Canadian Thanksgiving in one of his books. Canadians don't call it that. It's just Thanksgiving. For lots of cultural purists north of the border, it was a sign that he had been gone too long and was no longer (if he had ever been) a "real" Canadian, or not Canadian enough. (It's true, to some extent, it's like getting baseball jargon wrong or something.) That said, I'd note that the same people would consider me to be no longer Canadian enough, too.

>245 kidzdoc: Philadelphia ... meet up in the city
I'd be interested.

Speaking from scrapple central here... I've never tried it. Veggie since high school.

>241 kidzdoc: That's why you want to avoid being admitted to a teaching hospital in July
I had emergency surgery (i.e. I wasn’t in a position to reschedule) in July at HUP (Hospital of University of Pennsylvania) a dozen years ago. One early morning I semi-woke to voices, found myself surrounded by a group of students and a doctor who was using me as a teaching example, asking me questions and wondering why my answers were so incoherent (um, I'm asleep?). On the plus side, one new resident was so excited to participate in her first surgery, mine, that she told me all about it, probably far more than she should have. :-)

I'll have to pass on the Scrapple Tasting / Meetup. The second half of August is "empty nest" time as we are moving both children into their college residences.

Catching up before the meeting gets started...

>246 laytonwoman3rd: Although I have cringed at the sight of uncooked scrapple, it's been many years since I've seen it, so I think I could approach it with an open mind now.

>247 Chatterbox: I've heard of head cheese (but, needless to say, I'm unfamiliar with it), but I've not heard of tete presse.

>248 qebo: Sounds good, Katherine. I should get confirmation of the dates I'll be in Philadelphia by this weekend, and from there we can decide on a good day to meet up. I assume that weekends are better than weekdays for you, right? Which weekend day is better, Sunday or Saturday?

So, it's safe to assume that you aren't interested in tasting scrapple, right?

Yep. Sometimes you can't avoid going to the hospital in July. I've had to be hospitalized twice, for appendicitis in 1997 and atrial fibrillation in 2008, and each time I went to a local non-teaching hospital that has a very good reputation, in part because I didn't want to deal with medical students and residents.

>249 lauralkeet: Hmph. You just don't want to try scrapple, that's what I think.