kidzdoc Reads (and Cooks) Globally in 2015: Part 13

Independence Hall, Philadelphia




Currently reading:

    

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in One of America's Toughest Communities by Jorja Leap
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts

Completed books: (TBR = book acquired prior to 1/1/14)

January:
1. Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers (TBR) (review)
2. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (TBR) (review)
3. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (TBR)
4. A Distant Father by Antonio Skármeta
5. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
6. The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh (TBR)

February:
7. In the City By the Sea by Kamila Shamsie (TBR)
8. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore
9. I Called Him Necktie by Milena Michiko Flašar
10 Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy by Darryl Pinckney

March:
11. Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry (TBR)
12. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

April:
13. Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (TBR)
14. March: Book One by John Lewis
15. Nada by Carmen Laforet (TBR)
16. Outlaws by Javier Cercas
17. Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal
18. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich (TBR)
19. Blank Gaze by José Luis Peixoto (TBR)
20. The Education of the Stoic by Fernando Pessoa (TBR)
21. Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi
22. Navidad & Matanza by Carlos Labbé

May:
23. The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time by Jonathan Kozol
24. Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid by Sid Lowe
25. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
26. The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics by Barron H. Lerner
27. Barcelona Travel Guide: A Weekend in Barcelona by Gerry Kerkhof
28. Guide to Troubled Birds by The Mincing Mockingbird

June:
29. The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda
30. Edinburgh: A Cultural History by Donald Campbell
31. Rick Steves' Pocket Amsterdam by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw
32. No Word from Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza
33. Panther in the Basement by Amos Oz
34. Youth by J.M. Coetzee
35. The Motherfucker with the Hat by Stephen Adly Guirgis
36. Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano
37. Cologne Marco Polo Guide
38. Everyman by Carol Anne Duffy
39. The Trial (Oberon Modern Plays) by Nick Gill
40. Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

July:
41. When Doctors Become Patients by Robert Klitzman
42. Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City by Geert Mak
43. A Childhood by Jona Oberski
44. The Outsider by Albert Camus
45. The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
46. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
47. In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan
48. Dearest Father by Franz Kafka
49. Rab and His Friends by John Brown
50. Grey Souls by Philippe Claudel

August:

Books purchased or received in 2015: (Bold = book purchased this year)

January:
1. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
2. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin (2 Jan, Kindle e-book)
3. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks (11 Jan, Kindle e-book)
4. A Useless Man: Selected Stories by Sait Faik Abasiyanik (12 Jan, Archipelago Books subscription)
5. The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters by Wes Moore (20 Jan, LT Early Reviewers book)
6. DownBeat: The Great Jazz Interviews, edited and compiled by Frank Alkyer and Ed Enright (20 Jan, free book as part of 2015 DownBeat subscription)

February:
7. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, (1 Feb, Kindle e-book)
8. Bedlam: London and Its Mad by Catharine Arnold (4 Feb, Kindle e-book)

March:
9. Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care by H. Gilbert Welch (2 Mar, LT Early Reviewers book)
10. Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi (2 Mar, Archipelago Books subscription)
11. The Sellout by Paul Beatty (3 Mar, Kindle e-book)
12. A Man of His Word by Imma Monsó (29 Mar, Kindle e-book)

April:
13. Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal (1 Apr, Kindle e-book)
14. March: Book One by John Lewis (2 Apr, Kindle e-book)
15. The Bees by Laline Paul (2 Apr, Kindle e-book)
16. Selected Poems of Corsino Fortes by Corsino Fortes (3 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
17. The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips (3 Apr, Barnes & Noble)
18. Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson (5 Apr, gift from Karen W.)
19. Paris by Marcos Giralt Torrente (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
20. Things Look Different in the Light & Other Stories by Medardo Fraile (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
21. Tristana by Benito Perez Galdos (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
22. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by David J. Garrow (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
23. I Never Had It Made by Jackie Robinson (8 Apr, Kindle e-book)
24. The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (10 Apr, Barnes & Noble)
25. My Struggle: Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgaard (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
26. Life Embitters by Josep Pla (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
27. This Life by Karel Schoeman (22 Apr, Archipelago Books subscription)
28. Amsterdam: A Brief History of the City by Geert Mak (24 Apr, Kindle e-book)
29. The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugrešić (24 Apr, Kindle e-book)
30. The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time by Jonathan Kozol (25 Apr, LT Early Reviewers book)

May:
31. An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action for the Twenty-First Century by James Orbinski (1 May, Kindle e-book)
32. The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda (3 May, B&N)
33. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (3 May, B&N)
34. Baedeker's Portugal (3 May, B&N)
35. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham (4 May, Kindle e-book)
36. Lonely Planet Pocket Edinburgh by Neil Wilson (9 May, Kindle e-book)
37. Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon (9 May, Kindle e-book)
38. The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics by Barron H. Lerner (14 May, LT Early Reviewers book)
39. Edinburgh Local Love: Travel Guide with Top 125 Spots in Edinburgh, Scotland by Cristiano Nogueira (8 May,Kindle e-book)
40. Letter to Jimmy by Alain Mabanckou (14 May, Kindle e-book)
41. The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Alain Mabanckou (14 May, Kindle e-book)
42. A Season with Verona by Tim Parks (14 May, Kindle e-book)
43. Baedeker's Spain (15 May, B&N)
44. Rick Steves' Pocket Amsterdam by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw (15 May, B&N)
45. Barcelona Travel Guide: A Weekend in Barcelona by Gerry Kerkhof (19 May, Kindle e-book)
46. Guide to Troubled Birds by The Mincing Mockingbird (22 May, Kindle e-book)
47. Rick Steves Barcelona by Rick Steves (22 May, Kindle e-book)
48. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh (25 May, Kindle e-book)
49. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (29 May, Kindle e-book)

June:
50. Joy of Kosher: Fast, Fresh Family Recipes by Jamie Geller (2 Jun, Kindle e-book)
51. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (2 Jun, gift from Bianca)
52. The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (2 Jun, gift from Bianca)
53. Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels (2 Jun, gift from Bianca)
54. The London Cookbook by Jenny Linford (2 Jun, gift from Bianca)
55. Quiet London by Siobhan Wall (2 Jun, gift from Bianca)
56. Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in One of America's Toughest Communities by Jorja Leap (5 Jun, LT Early Reviewers book)
57. The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud (8 Jun, Kindle e-book)
58. Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (8 Jun, Kindle e-book)
59. Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
60. No Word from Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
61. Rituals by Cees Nooteboom (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
62. Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
63. Scars by Juan José Saer (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
64. A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
65. Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (11 Jun, London Review Bookshop)
66. Rough Guides Snapshot Scotland: Edinburgh (13 Jun, Kindle e-book)
67. Youth by J.M. Coetzee (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
68. The Trial by Franz Kafka (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
69. Dearest Father by Franz Kafka (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
70. The Panther in the Basement by Amos Oz (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
71. The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
72. The English: A Portrait of a People by Jeremy Paxman (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
73. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel (13 Jun, Joseph's Bookshop)
74. The Iceberg by Marion Coutts (13 Jun, Blackwell's at Welcome Collection)
75. Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss (13 Jun, Blackwell's at Welcome Collection)
76. The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us by Alice Roberts (13 Jun, Blackwell's at Welcome Collection)
77. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (16 Jun, Word Power Bookshop)
78. And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson (16 Jun, Word Power Bookshop)
79. Scottish History Without the Boring Bits by Ian Crofton (16 Jun, Word Power Bookshop)
80. The Motherf**ker with the Hat (Oberon Modern Plays) by Stephen Adly Guirgis (21 Jun, National Theatre Bookshop)
81. Everyman by Carol Ann Duffy (21 Jun, National Theatre Bookshop)
82. The Accordionist's Son by Bernardo Atxaga (22 Jun, Oxfam Winchester)
83. Cologne Marco Polo Guide (23 Jun, Daunt Books)
84. Quiet Amsterdam by Siobhan Wall (23 Jun, Daunt Books)
85. A Childhood by Jona Oberski (23 Jun, Daunt Books)
86. Grey Souls by Phillippe Claudel (23 Jun, Daunt Books)
87.The Trial (Oberon Modern Plays) by Nick Gill (23 Jun, The Young Vic Theatre)
88. Pocket Rough Guide Amsterdam by Martin Dunford (25 Jun, Athanaeum Boekhandel)
89. A Short History of Amsterdam by Dr. Richter Roegholt (25 Jun, Athanaeum Boekhandel)
90. In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan (26 Jun, Kindle e-book)

July:
91. This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City by John Rogers (1 Jul, Kindle e-book)
92. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (8 Jul, Kindle e-book)

2015 Reading Globally Themes and possible reads from my TBR collection:

First quarter: Indian subcontinent



Aravind Adiga, Between the Assassinations
Tariq Ali, Night of the Golden Butterfly
Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age
Vikram Chandra, Red Earth and Pouring Rain
Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games
G.V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr
Roopa Farooki, Bitter Sweets
Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide
Intizar Husain, Basti
Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey
Uday Prakash, The Girl with the Golden Parasol
Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Kamila Shamsie, In the City By the Sea

Second quarter: Iberian peninsula



António Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned
António Lobo Antunes, Fado Alexandrino
António Lobo Antunes, The Land at the End of the World
Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
Juan Goytisolo, Landscapes of War: From Sarajevo to Chechnya
Juan Goytisolo, The Marx Family Saga
Almudena Grandes, The Frozen Heart
Carmen Laforet, Nada
José Luis Peixoto, Blank Gaze
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa, The Education of the Stoic
Mercè Rodoreda, Death in Spring
Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda
José Saramago, Baltasar and Blimunda
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
José Saramago, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
Llorenç Villalonga, The Dolls' Room
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game

Third quarter: Nobel Prize winners writing not in English

  

Knut Hamsun (1920), Hunger
Thomas Mann (1929), Death in Venice
Halldór Laxness (1955), Independent People
Albert Camus (1957), The First Man; Exile and the Kingdom
Ivo Andrić (1961), The Bridge on the Drina
Jean-Paul Sartre (1964), Nausea
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1967), The President
Yasunari Kawabata (1968), Beauty and Sadness
Pablo Neruda (1971), The Essential Neruda; Canto General
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978), Collected Stories, Volume 1
Gabriel García Márquez (1982), One Hundred Years of Solitude; Of Love and Other Demons; The Autumn of the Patriarch
Claude Simon (1985), The Trolley
Naguib Mahfouz (1988), Midaq Alley; Rhadopis of Nubia
Octavio Paz (1990), The Labyrinth of Solitude; In Light of India
Kenzaburō Ōe (1994), The Changeling
José Saramago (1998), Raised from the Ground; Baltasar and Blimunda; The History of the Siege of Lisbon; Manual of Painting and Calligraphy; Journey to Portugal
Günter Grass (1999), The Tin Drum
Gao Xingjian (2000), One Man's Bible; Soul Mountain
Orhan Pamuk (2006), Snow; My Name Is Red; The Museum of Innocence; Other Colors
J.M.G. Le Clézio (2008), Terra Amata; The Giants; War; Fever; The Book of Flights; The Flood
Herta Müller (2009), The Land of Green Plums
Mario Vargas Llosa (2010), Captain Pantoja and the Special Service; The Green House; The Way to Paradise; The Bad Girl; The Dream of the Celt
Mo Yan (2012), Life and Death are Wearing Me Out; The Garlic Ballads; The Republic of Wine

Fourth quarter: Women writing not in English

  

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins; She Came to Stay
Assia Djebar, Algerian White; Children of the New World; The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry
Diamela Eltit, E. Luminata
Annie Ernaux, Cleaned Out
Sylvie Germain, The Song of False Lovers
Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat
Miral al-Tahawy, Brooklyn Heights
Delphine de Vigan, No and Me

TBR Books to Read in 2015:



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
      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
      Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America
      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
      Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
      Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine
      Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
      Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One
      Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
      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
      Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
      Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
      Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
      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
      Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House
      Richard Wright, Black Boy

Books about Medicine:



1. Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital by Jerry Gentry
2. The Theft of Memory: Losing My Father, One Day at a Time by Jonathan Kozol
3. The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son, and the Evolution of Medical Ethics by Barron H. Lerner
4. When Doctors Become Patients by Robert Klitzman

Literature from the African diaspora:
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
March: Book One by John Lewis

Nonfiction from the African diaspora:
Wes Moore, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters
Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped
Darryl Pinckney, Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy

Planned reads for July:

Aeschylus, Oresteia
Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins - completed
Albert Camus, The Outsider - completed
Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation - completed
Amitav Ghosh, Flood of Fire
Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Franz Kafka, Dearest Father - reading
Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients - completed
J.M.G. Le Clézio, Terra Amata
Jorja Leap, Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in One of America's Toughest Communities
Geert Mak, Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City - completed
Lona Oberski, A Childhood - completed
Orhan Pamuk, Snow
José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon
Ali Smith, How to Be Both
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Discreet Hero

From the previous thread: I've just created a August Philadelphia LT meet up? thread in the LibraryThing Gatherings and Meetups group, to see if we can get a group together in Center City. If a meet up takes place I promise to eat scrapple before the watchful eyes of LTers who have been harping on me to try it for the past couple of years.

Happy New Thread, Darryl! Love the Philly topper!

How is A God in Ruins coming? And The Meursault Investigation sounds really interesting.

I have been hearing some amazing buzz about Between the World and Me. I just requested it from the library. It definitely seems like your cuppa.

>9 msf59: Thanks, Mark! I actually haven't started A God in Ruins yet, but I'll do so no later than this weekend. The Meursault Investigation continues to be very good; I hope to finish it by Friday.

Between the World and Me is at the very top of my wish list. I plan to purchase it from City Lights Books when I travel to San Francisco next month.

I am currently immersed in Missoula. Along, with Ghettoside these are American Must Reads!! Nothing beats narrative nonfiction, my friend.

>11 msf59: Nice. Both of those books are on my radar screen, but I'll probably hold off buying them for now, since I don't know if I'll get to either of them this year. The Booker Prize longlist will be announced two weeks from today, so my main focus will shift to those 12-13 books from then until the winner is announced in October. My other main focus will be the Reading Globally theme on books by Nobel Prize laureates whose primary language was one other than English. After that, I would like to make a dent in my TBR pile, especially those books I've been wanting to read for years but haven't gotten around to, such as A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel and Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

These are, I think, the last of my vacation photos from last month, when I visited St Giles' Cathedral, the historic City Church of Edinburgh and one of the iconic buildings in the city. A parish church was originally built on this site in the middle of the 9th century, and the current building dates back to the late 14th century, after the second church was destroyed in a fire in 1385. The cathedral is named after the patron saint of Edinburgh, who is also the patron saint of cripples and lepers. It is located on the Royal Mile in Old Town, adjacent to Parliament House and directly across from the City Chambers building on the other side of High Street.

The exterior of the church, as seen from its front entrance:



Some of the striking stained glass windows:







A statue of John Knox, the 16th century Protestant reformer:

'

A memorial to Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll (1607-1661), the de facto head of the Scottish government during the Wars of Three Kingdoms, who was convicted of high treason against King Charles II and beheaded. His body was buried at Kilmun Parish Church and Argyll Mausoleum, and this memorial was built in 1895.



Other photos of the interior of the cathedral:

The colors in that stained glass..!

>12 kidzdoc: ooh, the Booker long list. Exciting!

And I love the stained glass. When I was little I cut out a photograph of a stained glass window from a French Catherdral that was in my parents' National Geographic magazine, they were not that happy about it but I just loved having it on my wall and seeing it every day. It is so beautiful seeing light do such amazing things with colour!

Happy new thread, Darryl!

>14 laytonwoman3rd: I particularly enjoyed the stained glass work too, Linda. I focused more on the glass than I did on the building itself.

>15 LovingLit: Right, Megan. I'm very eager to see which books are chosen for this year's Booker longlist, particularly because this year's judges are more diverse and seem to have a strong literary background. I wish that I culd be in London when the longlist is announced, so that I could get all of the available books immediately.

Oh...in case any of my London area friends missed my comment in my previous thread, I will arrive there next on September 10th, and stay until the 26th.



Well done on claiming that stained glass photo for yourself, Megan! I took four more photos of stained glass works at St Giles' Cathedral, so I'll post them below.

>16 scaifea: Thanks, Amber!

More stained glass from St Giles' Cathedral:

Happy new thread Darryl! Lovely to see the photos of St Giles' Cathedral and to hear about your London plans for September :-)

It's not often that we're reading the same books but I've also just started A God in Ruins and am really enjoying it.

Happy new thread, Darryl. Thanks for sharing the photos. Lovely. I'll be anxious to hear what you think of A God in Ruins. You have planned an ambitious July. Good luck.

>17 kidzdoc: will look forward to catching up with you again on your next visit. Will you be going back to Amsterdam then too?

I'm not sure if you have been to The Old Operating Theatre at Guys Hospital, London, but my bro said it was worth a visit:

http://www.thegarret.org.uk/guys.htm

Happy new thread, Darryl! I love the photos!!!

Happy new thread!

Happy New Thread, Darryl.

Sigh, you're making me want to return to Scotland. I mean, I already wanted to return, but you're giving it that delicious anticipatory edge. Maybe in 2017, after we do Alaska next year.

Woo hoo! The weekend is here!



I'm off until Wednesday, so I hope to get a good amount of reading done. It will be blisteringly hot for the foreseeable future, with high temperatures in the mid to high 90s (34-37 C) for at least the next week, so I'll mainly stay indoors for the next four days.

>19 souloftherose: Thanks, Heather! I'm eagerly looking forward to returning to London in September, and I'll start looking to see what's on there and outside of the capital this weekend.

I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying A God in Ruins. I'll probably start reading it tomorrow, after I finish The Meursault Investigation.

>20 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. I have eight more days off from work the rest of this month, so I hope to get to most if not all of the books on my Planned Reads list.

>21 Caroline_McElwee: I look forward to seeing you in September as well, Caroline. I'll likely stay in the UK during this upcoming trip, although day trips to Brussels and/or a short trip to Paris would be a distinct possibility, depending on what plans I make with you and other LTers and what's on in and outside of London.

Thanks for the reminder about the Old Operating Theatre at Guy's Hospital. I do want to go there, so I'll add a visit there to my to do list.

>22 tymfos:, >23 banjo123:, >24 Ameise1: Thanks Terri, Rhonda and Barbara!

>25 EBT1002: That sounds great, Ellen; I hope that you and P. do return to Scotland in 2017. I definitely want to return to Edinburgh, and visit other regions in Scotland if I can.

Love the 'it's the weekend' dance.

>26 kidzdoc: Yay!!!! Calvin and Hobbes!!!

Another fan of Calvin and Hobbes. :-)

It's hot up here in Asheville, too, Darryl. Thank goodness my sister has A/C. I'm getting a bit of reading done but also spending a lot of time chatting and such. Spending time with her is the point of the trip, after all. I flew into Atlanta, by the way, and rented a car and drove north. I'll be returning along the same route on Tuesday. It will be hurried and such, with no goal but getting to the airport and through security so I can relax with whichever book I'm reading by then. Otherwise, I would see if we could arrange a meet up. That will just have to happen another time.

Enjoy your days off.

>27 Caroline_McElwee:, >28 avidmom:, >29 EBT1002: I'm a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes, too!

>29 EBT1002: Have a nice visit with your sister, Ellen. A/C is an absolute necessity at this time of year. The forecast in Atlanta is basically the same for the next five days, with high temperatures of 94-96 degrees and a 20-30% chance of rain every day. I would ideally like to take a book and a lawn chair to Piedmont Park and read, but this week it's been hot and muggy at 6:30 am, the time I leave for work.

We'll definitely have to arrange a meet up in the future, even if it's only for coffee at ATL. I do want to get out to Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, although I'm not sure when that will be.

Enjoy your days off. Sad to say, my summer leisure is coming to an end. Time to start serious syllabus planning for the fall. :(

Love the Calvin and Hobbes dance, Darryl. Have a great time on your days off.

Happy new thread, Darryl! Very impressive shots of the stain glass windows. The windows make are wonderful works of art.

Enjoy your time off!

Happy Sunday, Darryl! I hope you are enjoying your few days off. I see that you started A God in Ruins. I hope it works for you.

Yesterday was mostly a lazy day, with lots of sleeping and some reading mixed in. I did finish The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, the new novel told from the viewpoint of the brother of the murdered Arab in The Stranger, which was both interesting and thought provoking. I'll review it later today or tomorrow. I've also started A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, which I'm loving so far.

As usual I've gone to Publix as soon as it opened to buy groceries (including some lovely looking sockeye salmon fillets that I'll have to figure out what to do with...maybe a spinach salmon salad?), and bought a bagel breakfast sandwich at Einstein Bros. I'll read the Sunday NYT, then get started cooking in a couple of hours. I'll make another batch of Crunchy Chinese Chicken Salad, more jambalaya (I haven't had any in over a month!), and possibly some more Chinese Tofu Scramble.

>31 BLBera: Wow, already Beth? I hope that you enjoy the remainder of your summer.

>32 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I'll work a more concentrated schedule starting Wednesday (6 on, 4 off, 6 on, including two work weekends in a row), but I have a long stretch of time off after that.

>33 lkernagh: Thanks, Lori! I'm glad that you enjoyed the stained glass in St Giles' Cathedral.

>34 msf59: Thanks, Mark! I'm sure that you'll enjoy your day off after yesterday's scorcher in Chicagoland. I'm only a little over 30 pages into A God in Ruins, but I'll get back to it in earnest later today. I also loved Life After Life, so I have high expectations for this book, and I hope that it is chosen for this year's Booker Prize longlist, which will be announced on July 29th, the Wednesday after next.

On that note, I have updated the Booker Prize group header to reflect the key dates for this year's prize. There is already a Man Booker Prize 2015 speculation thread (http://www.librarything.com/topic/192369) up to discuss books which we think might be chosen for the longlist. Please feel free to watch or join the group if you have an interest in this prize!

Ooh, this recipe from Budget Bytes looks good:

Ginger Salmon

That recipe sounds wonderful. I think I have some salmon in the freezer.

Great new thread, I'm not sure what I'm more keen to find out: whether the ginger salmon works or if life after life makes it onto the Booker list. I think I'm rooting for the latest Ali Smith (assuming that it's eligible), but mostly I'm hoping to find lots of new books that I hadn't heard about.

Look forward to your comments on the The Mersault Investigation .

A mango black bean salad would go well with that salmon and would be easy to make and cool to eat.

One of these days I will be over in Atlanta and you and I can have a meet-up. I need to go to Patak's for sausage again so sometime this fall I will be over.

The Crispy Chinese Chicken Salad is done. I used the other half of the Napa cabbage from last Sunday, along with 2-1/2 lb of chicken breasts (which I cooked in the oven as I usually do, coated with olive oil, salt and lots of pepper at 450 F, 10 minutes on each side), a package of carrot matchsticks (I hate grating carrots), 1/2 cup of almonds, and twice the amount of marinade. I'll have it for lunch shortly. The chicken and Andouille sausage Creole jambalaya is going in the oven now, and I'll cook the salmon fillets in about 5-6 hours.

>37 ffortsa: These are the (four) sockeye salmon fillets I bought at Publix this morning. So pretty...



I think I'll use two or three of them to make ginger salmon (I'll let you and everyone else know how it turns out), and the remainder I'll cook tomorrow, using this Spinach Salad with Salmon recipe from Martha Stewart I found online, which includes baby spinach, goat's cheese, grape tomatoes and pecans.

>38 charl08: Ha! I hope that A God in Ruins makes it to this year's Booker Prize longlist, and I expect that the Budget Bytes recipe for ginger salmon will be fabulous, since I've loved all but one of Beth's recipes I've tried so far (that was the parsley salad, which was a dud IMO).

How to Be Both made last year's Booker Prize shortlist.

It will probably be tomorrow before I review The Meursault Investigation, as I won't be as busy with chores (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes) tomorrow, and I'll be off from work.

>39 benitastrnad: Hmm...maybe I'll make mango bean salad tomorrow, Benita. Actually, I'll probably wait until next week, as I wanted to try a salad recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook Plenty on Tuesday that one of my co-workers (a nurse practitioner on the Psychiatry service) loves. Tomorrow I'll make Caroline's Irish lamb stew and the spinach salmon with salad, and Tuesday I'll probably make the recipe that Erin recommends, along with the Chinese Tofu Scramble (unless I make that tomorrow).

I'll cook some corn on the cob and edamame beans to have with the salmon.

A fall meet up in Atlanta and a trip to Patak's sound good! I'll be in touch after I get my October schedule.

ETA: I think I've asked you before, but do you shop at Publix as well? I assume that there is at least one Publix supermarket in Tuscaloosa. From the e-mail I recevied these sockeye salmon will only be available for a limited time, so I'll probably buy another couple of packages tomorrow and store them in my freezer.

>35 kidzdoc: I'll have to tell my son about The Meursault Investigation. He was the reason I read The Stranger in the first place.

That salmon recipe looks delicious! My dad has just been visiting us for the last few days, and he brought with him some salmon that he had caught and smoked himself, as well as some trout that was the same! I am looking forward to sharing it this weekend with friends as we are off away to celebrate a 40th. I do sometimes silently curse my father for changing my tastes to the fancy things....I couldn't have cared less about scallops and smoked salmon before he introduced me to them :)

I hope you enjoyed your ginger salmon!

>35 kidzdoc: "...another batch of Crunchy Chinese Chicken Salad..." Yum.
Enjoy your salmon!

I read something about The Meursault Investigation and thought it sounded quite interesting. I'll look forward to your comments.

Checking out the Booker Prize speculation thread. :-)

The ginger salmon is ready!



This was an incredibly easy recipe to make, and in typical Budget Bytes fashion, it tasted great.

>42 avidmom: I'll post my review of The Meursault Investigation tomorrow. My Club Read thread has become moribund, so I'll create a new one tomorrow and catch up there by Tuesday.

>43 LovingLit: Mmm! Scallops and smoked fish, especially pastrami salmon from Russ and Daughters in NYC, are foods from heaven. I am certain that your father and I would get along very well.

>44 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen! The salad and the salmon were both very tasty.

I am certain that your father and I would get along very well.
Books alone could have you talking til the cows came home ;)

Books + seafood + good company? It doesn't get much better than that!

Gotta love a man who can cook ;-) My husband just made me phad prik king with chicken for dinner.

Your salmon looks delicious. I am slowly bringing The Wayne around to seafood but salmon is still too "fishy" for him so I only get it when we eat out...

Oh, think I'll give that a try with my next bit of salmon. Just did a lazy curry with the current bit, but made my own naan! (turned out, it was surprisingly easy).

>41 kidzdoc: I guess I have no idea when the publishing year starts for the Booker then, so will wait to see the list.

>48 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I don't think the ginger salmon counts as cooking, though; the vast majority of sixth graders could have made that dish as well.

I hadn't heard of phad prik king before; it looks good!

An old grade school classmate of mine would agree with The Wayne about salmon, based on his comments on my Facebook post last night.

>49 charl08: I cooked the salmon for 20 minutes, and although it tasted great I think it would have been even better if I cooked it for 15-17 minutes instead.

Well done on making naan! Did you use a particular recipe? I buy mine premade from Publix, but they don't taste as good as the ones I get in my favorite Indian restaurants. (Hmm...I think I'll go to Bombay Café tomorrow after I get my new lenses for my glasses, as it's a stone's throw away from LensCrafters.)

The Booker Prize is traditionally for books published between October 1st of the previous year and September 30th of the current year. The longlist is announced in late July, the shortlist in mid September, and the prize itself in mid October.

Book #45: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud



My rating:

Who was Musa? He was my brother.

The last day of a man's life doesn't exist. Outside of storybooks there's no hope, nothing but soap bubbles bursting. That's the best proof of our absurd existence, my dear friend: Nobody's granted a final day, just an accidental interruption in his life.

A French graduate student whose main interest is Albert Camus's novel The Stranger and its characters travels to the Algerian port city of Oran, to learn more about what happened to the unnamed Arab that the protagonist, Meursault, shot to death on a beach in Algiers 70 years ago. In a seedy pub he meets Harun, the younger brother of the victim, an irascible old man who still seethes with resentment over the events of that fateful day and its aftermath. Through Harun we learn that his brother's name was Musa, and that his corpse was never found, which prevented his mother from achieving a sense of closure, and led her and her son on an futile and endless quest to find him and to gain both revenge and peace.

As the student, who like Musa in The Stranger is also unnamed and voiceless, listens, Harun shares the story of his own absurd life, which mirrors that of Meursault's in many respects. Although Harun is fiercely critical of Meursault and Camus, who chose to ignore his brother, thus dehumanizing him and, therefore, all Arabs, he knows The Stranger by heart and respects what its author has accomplished in writing it. Through him a portrait of Algeria from an Arab viewpoint emerges, from the colonial days when they were often brutally suppressed by the pied noirs, to the War for Independence, and especially the current state of the troubled country, where the possibility of a restricted society run by Islamic fundamentalists is juxtaposed against the similar restrictions of life under the current government run by the military.

The Meursault Investigation is a superb novel, which both mirrors and expounds upon The Stranger to portray the life of Meursault's victim, critique the actions of Meursault and the limited viewpoint of Camus, and explore the near parallel life of the victim's brother and the absurdity of post-independence Algerian society. I would strongly advise you to read The Stranger before starting this book, as it assumes that the reader is familiar with Camus's novel. You will get much more out of this book if you do so.

>51 kidzdoc: That sounds really interesting (and unique). I really liked The Stranger. My son read it for his AP summer reading last year. He picked it because it was the shortest option on the list (and he was pressed for time, having registered at that school last minute). He liked it well enough to pass it on to me - which says a lot.

The recipe is from a book linked to a BBC series on easy Indian cooking by Anjum Anand. Super easy - she says for her taste the naan we buy in shops is too soft and bread like. It was lovely fresh out the oven! I'd recommend her book for the coconut fish dishes alone. Wonderful cooking with fresh spices. Although the easy doesn't tend to mean quick!

I didn't go grocery shopping again today, so instead of making spinach salmon salad I used the remaining two salmon fillets to make another batch of ginger salmon, with two changes. I was out of ginger (I probably accidentally discarded it, since I just bought some last weekend), so I used 1 tsp of ginger powder. The fish was very gingery, which was fine for me but I'd probably use half or 2/3 that amount if I was making it for someone else. I thought the fish was a little dry yesterday, so I cooked the fillets for 15 minutes, instead of 20 minutes as I did yesterday (Beth recommended 20-25 minutes of cooking time). They were perfect this time, fully cooked but much more moist and tender.

I'll go back to Publix tomorrow, and buy at least two more packages of sockeye salmon if they are still available.

>52 avidmom: If you liked The Stranger I think you'll enjoy The Meursault Investigation, avidmom.

>53 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I'll look for that recipe for naan online, and check out her cookbook when I return to London in September.

>54 kidzdoc: I much prefer my salmon on the rare side, and ginger powder is more likely in my kitchen than a grater, so I'll keep your adjustments in mind for my trial.

I'm afraid work has been so pressing and my reflexes are so out of practice that I am not yet cooking much. As in - at all. The veggies that look so yummy in the greenmarket are often tossed after too long a stay in the fridge. But the ginger salmon is enticing me to give the kitchen another try - before I give up entirely and turn it into the library annex.

>55 ffortsa: I almost never cook dinner on work days, other than make something very easy like grilled fish. The ginger salmon could be made from scratch in 20-25 minutes, so I could easily see myself making that and microwaving or heating up some vegetables to go with it.

Sundays are my big cooking days during regular M-F work weeks, as my goal is to prepare enough food so that I have plenty for the upcoming work week (lunch and dinner), provided that I also keep my freezer partially stocked with meals from previous weeks. After I saw what I had in my refrigerator yesterday I decided not to cook today, since I already have plenty of Crunchy Chinese Chicken Salad and a couple of containers of Zuppa Toscana and Moroccan lentil and vegetable stew that will go to waste if I don't have them this week. I have at least a dozen containers of food in my freezer as well. I'll make Chinese Tofu Scramble tomorrow, but I probably won't cook again until the middle of next week.

Phad prik king is one of my favorite things. Just sayin'.

It's been ages since I read The Stranger so I'm adding it to my wish list, with The Meursault Investigation close on its heels.

>57 EBT1002: Huh. I love Thai food, but I've never heard of phad prik king! There is a good Thai restaurant a short walk from where I live, so I'll have to give this dish a try soon.

I look forward to your thoughts on The Stranger and The Meursault Investigation.

A God in Ruins continues to be excellent. I hope to finish it this evening.

Oh, I almost forgot: the Philadelphia LT meet up will take place on Saturday August 15th, barring any surprise change in plans. So far I, Bill (@weird_O), Laura (@lauralkeet), Mike (@CurrerBell), Katherine (@qebo), Deborah (@Cariola) and possibly Sharon (@snash) are planning to attend. The meet up thread is here, if anyone else is interested in joining us:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/193378

Hi Darryl! Have a happy Week!

And another meet up for you! Nice.

>60 connie53: Thanks, Connie! Congratulations on finishing your school year, and I hope that your upcoming vacation is as enjoyable as it sounds.

I've attended far more LT meet ups in Europe than I have in the US the past couple of years, so it will be nice to see familiar faces, and at least one new one, in August.

I've been buying the fresh grated ginger that comes in a tube refrigerated in the produce section. It lasts for several week after opening and I haaaaaaate grating ginger. I like it well enough that I bought lemongrass that is prepared in the same way to try.

>62 streamsong: That's a great idea, Janet. I haven't seen ginger-in-a-tube, so I'll look for it when I go to Publix this afternoon.

I wish I could join you in Philly, Darryl, that sounds like a fun meet up. Looking forward to seeing you, Joe and Debbie in September though.

I have a favour to ask of you and of your Cambridge (UK) area friends. I'm going to be there for a day meeting up with a friend from the US and I need recommendations for somewhere to have lunch. It needs to be a place with good food for both meat eaters and veggies, not too expensive. My friend also says he'd love to get to "that Rupert Brooks place" if possible - does anyone know where he means?!

Thanks in advance for any help.

Ha! Granchester. (Oh to hear the branches stir... etc) http://www.bartleby.com/232/701.html

If you get a nice day (and have the time) you can hire a punt (and optional punting guy or gal) from the centre of town...

>64 Sakerfalcon: Hi, Claire! It would have been great if you happened to be in Philadelphia for our meet up. Hopefully we can plan a similar one in the future.

I'll be in touch with you and the others about September later this week. Debbi and I were in touch last night about what she and Joe are planning to see and do.

I think I found the place your friend was talking about, The Rupert Brooke, which is located in Grantchester, just west of central Cambridge.

I can send a Facebook message to Fliss and Rachael (who both live in Cambridge) to ask them for lunch recommendations. I've had dinner at several pubs with them, along with one restaurant (Afghani, maybe Turkish?) that was very good. I can't remember the name of it, and it doesn't appear in my Places section in Facebook. I'll let you know what they say.

>65 charl08: I agree with Charlotte about punting on the Cam. I went with Rachael, her three children and Jenny in 2011, and we had a great day out.

I had to look up Rupert Brooke's Wikipedia page to remind myself, but he (or a fictionalization of him) appeared as a main character in two of my favorite books of recent years, The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt, and The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst.

This was Fliss's reply to Claire's question and my answer:

"Not far out with The Rupert Brooke pub, but I'm pretty sure the place she means is The Orchard Tea Garden (http://www.orchard-grantchester.com/), also in Grantchester (a nice through meadow (with cows) walk/cycle from the centre)."

The English poet Rupert Brooke lived in Orchard House from 1909 to the onset of the Great War in 1914. This interesting bit of information about Brooke comes from the Tea Garden's web site:

The Orchard, first planted in 1868, became a Tea Garden purely by chance. A group of Cambridge students asked Mrs Stevenson of Orchard House if she would serve them tea beneath the blossoming fruit trees rather than, as was usual, on the front lawn of the House. They were unaware that, on that spring morning in 1897, they had started a great Cambridge tradition.

The students enjoyed their rural tea, and word spread around the colleges. The Orchard soon became a popular ‘up-river resort’ which was well known to Varsity men. The Stevensons’ advertising card also proudly announced that the Orchard was not connected to any Public House. With few exceptions, very little has changed in the Orchard since then.

In order to supplement their income, the Stevensons took in lodgers at Orchard House, and, in 1909, a young graduate of King’s College took up residence. His name was Rupert Brooke. He had moved out of Cambridge, hoping to escape his hectic social life there, but in vain. The charismatic young Brooke drew a constant stream of visitors, and eventually became the centre of a circle of friends, later dubbed by Virginia Woolf the ‘Neo-Pagans’. Brooke had fallen in love with his idyllic life in Grantchester, and, while in a homesick mood on a trip to Berlin, wrote one of his best-known poems, ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’: the famous final lines immortalising afternoon tea in the Orchard:

Stands the church clock at ten-to-three
And is there honey still for tea?

There has since been much debate over whether or not the church clock had actually stopped at that time, but one certainly senses that Time has stood still in the Orchard. On his return to Grantchester, finding his rooms had been let, he moved next door to ‘The Old Vicarage’, where he continued to live his bohemian lifestyle.

On leaving Cambridge, Brooke travelled extensively in North America and the South Seas. He returned to England in 1914, and at the outbreak of the First World War joined the military, coming under heavy bombardment during the retreat from Antwerp.

In March 1915, he embarked on a troop-ship bound for Gallipoli. Tragically, he was never to return. He became very ill on board, and on 23rd April 1915, aged 27, he died from blood poisoning. That same evening he was buried in an olive grove on the Greek island of Skyros, where a monument has since been built over his grave. Just a few months earlier he had written ‘The Soldier’, containing the prescient lines:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England

Brooke became posthumously famous. His poetry was widely recognised, and he became a symbol of the innocence of youth - a ‘Young Apollo’. He caught the imagination of the nation, and his cult status has been steadily increasing ever since.

The Turkish restaurant in Cambridge I was thinking of is was Anatolia (http://www.anatoliacambridge.co.uk). Unfortunately it has closed its doors, which explains why I couldn't find a pin for it on my Facebook page. However, Fliss and Rachael did tell me then that Efes (http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Efes-King-Street-Cambridge-restaurant-review/story-24833084-detail/story.html) is the best Turkish restaurant in the city, and it remains in operation.

>62 streamsong: I'm definitely going to look for that ginger in a tube stuff. I love fresh ginger, and I hate peeling & grating it!

The NYT announced a few minutes ago that E.L. Doctorow died earlier today.

E.L. Doctorow, Author of Historical Fiction, Dies at 84

>13 kidzdoc: There are no words to describe the awesome beauty of this!

>70 lauralkeet: I didn't go to Publix this afternoon, but I'll probably stop there tomorrow night after work, and I'll look for ginger-in-a-tube then.

>72 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda!

>71 kidzdoc: - I wasn't planning on reading a book for the December AAC, but I think I will now. Thanks for posting the news, Darryl.

>74 lkernagh: You're welcome, Lori. I own a copy of The March, and I'll try to read it in December.

Ha! I have it in writing now! "I do want to get out to Seattle, Portland and Vancouver...." Please make it sooner rather than later, Darryl. Just saying. : ) The Meursault Investigation sounds awesome, and, yes, I would totally have to re-read The Stranger before tackling it. It has been a while since I read Camus.

>76 Berly: I'm not sure when I'll make my first trip to the Pacific Northwest, Kim. It almost certainly won't be this year, but possibly in 2016 when I have a week or two off from work and don't have other plans.

The Meursault Investigation is a short novel, like The Stranger, and most readers could easily finish both books in a weekend.

I didn't finish A God in Ruins, but it continues to be excellent. Unless it goes badly off the rails in the last 1/3 I expect to see it on next week's Booker Prize longlist.

"I didn't finish A God in Ruins, but it continues to be excellent." Well, that answers my question. Beams...

Good luck getting back to work, my friend.

>77 kidzdoc: A God in Ruins ... on next week's Booker Prize longlist.
Oh yeah, that would be fabulous and so well-deserved.

ETA: I really wish the touchstones could read my mind. I'm tired of correcting it on this one.

>66 kidzdoc:, >69 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl, for your help with my queries. My knowledge of Cambridge is rather poor - although I prefer it to Oxford somehow I seem to visit Oxford more often and know it a lot better. Not sure I'm up for punting - I can row and kayak but punting seems far more likely to land you in the water! I must, however, take The children's book off my tbr shelf and read it though, following your mention of its link with Brooke.

I'm going to have to remember about the "ginger in a tube" the next time I need some ginger. I don't mind the grating so much as the peeling with the ginger! Of course, I sometimes just finely chop it as a friend of mine from India taught me to do years ago for curry.

We (and by "we" I mostly mean my husband) use those tubes. Haven't seen ginger, but the garlic and basil are mainstays in our house. I actually make a decent lazy-man's pesto...

It's a lot easier (and less wasteful) to peel ginger with the side of a perfectly normal teaspoon than with a vegetable peeler. And since I started doing that, peeling ginger has gone from horrible to merely a task (I make my own candied ginger, so I peel a lot of ginger).

Homemade candied ginger? WOW! How cool is that?

>83 jjmcgaffey: - Oh, I need to try that!

It's amazingly easy...well. Maybe I shouldn't say that. It's amazingly easy when it works, and when it doesn't you get ginger in puddles of syrup (which is great for on top of ice cream, not so good for eating straight).

Peel the ginger (about a pound), cut it into pieces - thinnish coins or quarter- to half-inch dice, as you please. If you like really hot ginger, go straight to syrup, but I put them into cold water and bring it to a boil once, let sit 5 minutes, then drain (save the water, it's ginger tea, good for sore throats and upset stomachs). You can do the boil-and-drain up to three times and still have good flavor - completely depends on your personal preferences, and the strength of the ginger you have.

Make simple syrup - a cup of sugar for every cup of water, and about 2 cups of water for every (unpeeled) pound of ginger. Put in a saucepan and stir and simmer until sugar (mostly) dissolves. Dump in the ginger (it will float), bring to a boil then cook on low simmer until the ginger goes slightly translucent around the edges. This has taken anything from half an hour to three hours, no idea why. The syrup will reduce as it cooks. Drain the ginger (save the syrup) and dump it into granulated sugar in a shallow pan/bowl; toss lightly and leave to dry about 30 minutes. Some recipes say to cool it on a rack before you put it in the sugar, but when I tried that was when I got puddles (which makes no sense, but there you are).

The ginger syrup - depending on how long it simmered, it may solidify into ginger candy (like maple candy - grainy. Put it in oiled molds for neat candies), or stay syrup which is fantastic for sweetening tea, or can be used instead of molasses or corn syrup in ginger cookies, or... And the leftover sugar from the last step can also be used in cookies or tea, or can simply be reused (with a bit added) for your next batch of candied ginger.

The fun part is that all the process bits are good themselves!

BTW, I use ultra-fine sugar for the final sugaring bit - it's sold as Baker's Sugar, but the easy way to get it is to whiz standard granulated (white) sugar in a blender for about a minute (at most, otherwise you get powdered sugar and it goes _everywhere_).

I've had two long and hectic days at work, so I haven't finished A God in Ruins yet. Hopefully I'll be able to do so tonight.

>78 msf59: Two work days down, four more to go!

>79 lauralkeet: It's long past time for the touchstone problem to be fixed, IMO.

>80 Sakerfalcon: You're welcome, Claire. I still haven't been to Oxford, although I've visited Rachael and Fliss in Cambridge several times.

Punting with Rachael in command was, um, interesting. She had a worrisome tendency to steer the punt sideways from one side of the river to the next, running into other punts and the stone banks of the river and making ducks flee for their lives. The photo above doesn't capture the sheer horror that her four passengers experienced throughout the perilous journey.

I loved The Children's Book, and I hope to read it again soon.

>81 thornton37814:, >82 katiekrug: I still haven't made it to Publix to look for ginger-in-a-tube. I'll probably go there Saturday or Sunday after work.

>83 jjmcgaffey: Ooh, great idea, Jennifer! I'll have to try that.

>84 benitastrnad:, >85 lkernagh:, >86 jjmcgaffey: Sounds great!

One foot in front of the other, my friend. Keep pluggin' away!

I must look for ginger in a tube....I don't know how I managed before I discovered tomato paste in a tube.

I've just finished A God in Ruins, which I thought was superb; I gave it 4-1/2 stars. I have to get ready for work soon (I'm on from 10 am to 10 pm today), so I'll review it next week after my current work stretch ends.

>88 msf59: Righto, Mark. After today's shift the rest of the work week (Wed-Mon) will be downhill, although I have to work next weekend as well.

>89 laytonwoman3rd: Tomato paste in a tube? I've never heard of or seen that!

I used to have to buy it in a specialty food shop, Darryl, but it's in all the supermarkets now. Usually with the other tomato products, but sometimes in the Italian part of the "ethnic foods" section.

>86 jjmcgaffey: and >87 kidzdoc: - I tried out the spoon peeling ginger idea Thursday night when making dinner and WOW does that work a treat!

>89 laytonwoman3rd: >90 kidzdoc: we call it tomato purée here. Remember it all my life, so not a recent addition here.

>90 kidzdoc: I'm so glad to hear you gave such high marks to A God In Ruins. I have a copy of Life After Life here for a planned re-read before I get to that one.

>93 Caroline_McElwee: >90 kidzdoc: there is a difference between the paste and puree, I use both for various dishes. The paste is much more concentrated and is available either in a small can or by tube.

I try to keep up with your thread Darryl, but you are going too fast ;-)
Loved the stained glass pictures!

After our meeting in Amsterdam we had a terrible heat wave... took some time to recuperate from it, now finally feel cool enough to participate a bit here.

Coming back after my TDF hiatus ......

Looking forward to see what the Booker long list brings this year - Hope to see The Buried Giant ... always forget the publication qualifying dates etc but be nice to see Speak a novel or The chimes

Woo! I'm definitely over the hump now. Yesterday's long call wasn't a bad one, and I'm on call for hospital admissions today only from 8-11 am, although I have to stay until 5 pm to help out my partner who is on long call. After a regular work day tomorrow I'll be off until Saturday.

>91 laytonwoman3rd: Interesting. I'll definitely look for tubed ginger and tomato paste when I go to Publix, possibly after work this afternoon.

>92 lkernagh: I mentioned the ginger peeling technique to a couple of the nurses at work earlier this week, and they plan to try that method soon. I'll make Chinese tofu scramble soon, possibly today, and I'll try it then.

>93 Caroline_McElwee: I think Publix and other US supermarkets sell tomato purée here. I'll look for that as well.

>94 avidmom: I thought about re-reading Life After Life, but I decided to go ahead with A God in Ruins. IMO a re-read of the first Todd book isn't necessary, in the way that I feel that a recent read of The Stranger is very helpful to appreciate The Meursault Investigation, but it certainly wouldn't hurt, and Life After Life is a great book anyway.

I fully expect to see A God in Ruins on the Booker Prize longlist, which will be announced on Wednesday. Although I haven't read them yet, I'd love to see A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh and Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín amongst the Booker Dozen.

>95 avatiakh: Ah, that makes sense. I didn't realize that I was out of tomato sauce last weekend, so I used tomato paste to make jambalaya on Sunday. It still came out good, but it has a considerably stronger tomato taste than it usually does.

>96 FAMeulstee: Hi, Anita! I'm glad to see you here. It was great to meet you and Frank in Amsterdam last month, and I look forward to seeing the two of you, and Connie, in the near future, whether later this year or in 2016.

Yesterday I talked with the mother of a hospitalized child that I cared for about Amsterdam. Her husband is a fan of European beers, so I printed out the web page for In de Wildeman and gave it to her to pass on to him. She and I vowed that our next meeting would take place there, and not in the hospital.

The day I left Amsterdam I saw on BBC One that the temperatures in western Europe were going to skyrocket to record levels. I left on a Tuesday, and it was either that day or the next that the heat wave hit the Netherlands. I'm glad that that's over with, especially since A/C isn't found in most homes in Europe, from what I understand.

>97 roundballnz: TDF = Tour de France?

I wouldn't mind seeing The Buried Giant make the longlist, although I haven't read it yet. I haven't heard of the other two books, though.

The traditional eligibility period is October 1 of the previous year to September 30 of the current year. Last week I looked at the FAQ section for the Booker Prize on its web site, but I couldn't find any information that mentioned the period of eligibility for this year, so I'm not completely certain that the same format is being followed.

Off to work...

>87 kidzdoc: I forgot to say I really liked The Children's Book too, although I felt the weight of her research in the final 100 pages, and wondered if she'd been told to cut the length so creamed it in, I've never found that in her work before. I have a re-read of Possession on the cards this year.

I substituted ground dried ginger for fresh grated in the curried okra I made for dinner last night. I Googled for a substitution ratio and found it's 1/8 tsp. for every Tbsp. I tried using fresh ground once and it took so long to peel that I vowed I'd never do it again. Life is too short! I might give it another try with the teaspoon peeling trick. But the tube sounds good, too.

OK, I'm going to have to move A God in Ruins up the WL, Darryl. Sounds great, and I loved Life After Life.

I have used the teaspoon peeling trick for years. I learned about it on Martha Stewart. It works. It even makes going around he knobs easy. Once peeled it isn't that hard to grate. I recently learned on Yann Can Cook that the Chinese don't bother with peeling ginger.

Today was one of the easiest work days I've had in a long time. I only had seven patients to see, all of whom I knew from Saturday. I sent four of them home, and I didn't get any new admissions during the three hours I was on call this morning or the subsequent six hours that I stayed to help out my partner who is on call today. Five days down, only one more to go, and with any luck I might get called off tomorrow, since the inpatient census is so low at the moment.

>100 Caroline_McElwee: Hmm. I read The Children's Book in 2009, and I can't remember anything about its last 100 pages, Caroline. Unless I lent it to one of my partners my copy should be in my overhead cabinet at work, and if it's there I'll look at it tomorrow.

I own a copy of Possession, but I haven't read it yet. I doubt that I'll get to it this year, though.

>101 cbl_tn: Thanks for telling me about that substitution ratio, Carrie! I'll make Xi Jong Shi Chao (Chinese tofu scramble) for dinner shortly, and I'll keep that ratio in mind when I use ginger powder in place of fresh ginger.

I didn't think it took too long to peel and mince ginger, but I'll take any shortcuts that I can. I think I'm done with grating carrots, and from now on I'll use matchstick carrots instead (unless food processors can adequately grate carrots).

>102 jnwelch: If you loved Life After Life, as I did, then I think you'll also love A God in Ruins, Joe.

>103 benitastrnad: I don't watch TV at home (as my set is currently unplugged), but my mother has to have the TV on at all times, and now that I've started to cook more we'll frequently watch cooking shows such as Yan Can Cook on public television. That's good to know that the Chinese don't bother peeling ginger. I'll have to ask three dear friends of mine, who are classmates from medical school and first generation Chinese (one from Shanghai, two from Taiwan), to see if they do the same thing when they cook.

>99 kidzdoc: sorry TDF= Tour De France or le Tour .... ever so slightly obsessed/passionate abt it ......

Buried Giant tis very good, one of those books that will nag away in layers of your mind, like the way he layers/weaves Memory theme & Arthurian legend into the story, to say more would be a spoiler

The chimes is still my favourite book of the year ..... I can but hope it gets more exposure

>104 kidzdoc: Great that your workload is light, that means lots of healthy children out and about in the world!
Looking forward to the Booker announcement as always, not sure that I've read enough to have a clue on which ones should be selected....possibly The Fishermen if it's eligible.

Unless there is a "game time decision" to call one of us off it looks as though I'll be working today. Right now I've only been assigned six patients, half the amount that I would normally see on a typical day, so it will be another easy day.

>105 roundballnz: I'll keep my eye out for The Buried Giant and The Chimes. However, once the Booker Dozen is announced on Wednesday my main focus for the next 2-1/2 months will be completing the longlist before the prize ceremony in mid October. I'll be off from work and on holiday for most of August and September, so this should be the year that I finally accomplish that goal.

Another second half goal of mine is to finish, by the end of the year, the six books shortlisted for this year's Wellcome Book Prize, the UK award for books that have a "central theme that engages with some aspect of medicine, health or illness." The Iceberg by Marion Coutts won this year's prize, and I'll read it and probably Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss next month.

>106 avatiakh: Right, Kerry! However, we all recognize that this is the calm before the storm. Usually the inpatient census drops to its lowest levels at this time of the year, the last couple of weeks of summer holidays for school kids in Georgia. Early August is often quiet as well, but once the young kids are in class for a week or two and start sharing their bugs with each other the number of sick kids skyrockets, and we start admitting them in bunches. Fortunately this year I'll watch the carnage from a safe distance, as I'll be at my parents' house in suburban Philadelphia for the second half of next month.

I don't think anyone other than the judges has a clue about this year's Booker Prize shortlist. The Fishermen is eligible, and at least two people have put it on their speculative longlists. I hope that it is chosen, but I'll almost certainly read it if it isn't.

Ah, the simple pleasures of life...

Hi Darryl, I'm still thinking about our meet up in Utrecht. I really had a good time.

To add to the ginger discussion: Ginger tea is also good for/against arthritis.

Woo hoo! Only one more day to go until this year's Booker Prize longlist is revealed. That normally happens by midday British Summer Time, so by 8 am or so Eastern Standard Time in the US we should know what books are chosen for the Booker Dozen. I may have mentioned that I'm off from work for most of August (my last work day for the month is August 6!) and September, so this should be the year that I read the Booker Dozen in its entirety before the prize announcement on October 15.

Today's issue of The Guardian includes a preview article, which lists books that should be strong candidates to make the longlist. They are, in order of mention:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
10:04 by Ben Lerner
Pleasantville by Attica Locke
The Shore by Sara Taylor
Neverhome by Laird Hunt
Purity by Jonathan Franzen (no!!!)
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (the article describes it as the "British frontrunner")
The Green Road by Anne Enright
The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
Acts of the Assassins by Richard Beard
The Offering by Grace McCleen
The Book of Memory by Pettina Gappah
Quicksand by Steve Toltz
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan
Amnesia by Peter Carey
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea

The author of the article also mentions "forthcoming titles from Salman Rushdie, John Banville, William Boyd, Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, Andrew Miller, Tessa Hadley and more", and tells us that the William Hill is offering 33/1 odds that Go Set a Watchman will win this year's prize.

>109 connie53: Hi, Connie! I also loved our meet up in Utrecht, and the photos along the Oudegracht are my favorite ones from last month:



I hope to return to the Netherlands later this year, but if I don't I'll certainly go there in the winter or spring.

I keep a stash of ginger tea at home, as it's also great for an upset stomach.

Ahh, that picture! It captures the complete feeling of Utrecht.

Let me know when you come to the Netherlands and we plan a meet up in another city!

>113 kidzdoc: Will do, Connie!

>110 kidzdoc: Some great books here. Did you see the same paper's 'not the Booker' list? Some favourites, and some that were completely new to me.

>110 kidzdoc: I've read four of that list:

Nora Webster Colm Tôibin - fine novel, worthy shortlist contender. Loved the tone, but not enough to want it to win.
The Book of Strange New Things Michel Faber - really enjoyed this novel, but it didn't have the depth I was expecting.
The Illuminations Andrew O'Hagan - loved this book, and wouldn't be unhappy if it won (the third or fourth of his books I've read, and he has never disappointed).
Lila Marilynne Robinson - the third in the Gilead trilogy, and like them, books to be re-read. Wonderful characterisation, tone and depth. My pick for winner.

Still in the pile:

10:04 Ben Learner
The Shore Sara Taylor
The Offering Grace McCleen

>114 charl08: I saw the link this morning, but I haven't read that article about the "Not the Booker Prize" longlist, Charlotte. I'll check it out shortly.

>115 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline! I own Nora Webster, but I haven't read it yet. From that list the only other book I own is A Brief History of Seven Killings. I hope that both books are chosen for the longlist.

I had the pleasure of dining with Richard Beard, and others, a couple of times last year. Nice man. He was the writer-in-residence when I was staying at The Gladstones Library; not read the book yet.

Nice! The reviews of Acts of the Assassins on Amazon UK make it sound interesting. I'll take a look at it even if it isn't chosen for the longlist.

Hi Darryl! Thanks for sharing the Booker long list. This is the first I have seen it. Fortunately I have read several already. I loved the Faber and Robinson and I am very pleased with the Shore making the cut. It is a terrific debut.

I have Nora Webster in the stacks. There are plenty of these, I want to read, but A Little Life is high on the list. Did you read her first book?

Darryl, I visited Anita's thread and saw that you and Tad had the opportunity to meet up with her. She looks so happy in the photo! And, rightfully so.

>119 msf59: That's not the actual Booker Prize longlist, Mark. It's a preview of the some of the books that the article's author thinks stand a good chance at being chosen. The actual longlist will be announced tomorrow at midday in London. I'll off from work tomorrow, so I'll post the longlist shortly after it is announced.

I didn't read Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel, The People in the Trees, and I don't yet own A Little Life.

>120 Whisper1: Ooh, I didn't realize that Anita had a thread. Thanks for mentioning that, Linda! We (Anita, her husband Frank, Tad, his wife Julie, their daughter and her friend, and I) all had a great time in Amsterdam. Likewise, Tad, Julie, their daughter's friend and I had a lovely day with Connie the following day in Utrecht. We took a train from Amsterdam Centraal to meet her there, which took less than half an hour. I loved Amsterdam and Utrecht, and I'll almost certainly return there either later this year or in the first half of 2016, God willing.

>51 kidzdoc: books about books! This one sounds great.

>110 kidzdoc: a 'no' next to Jonathan Franzen!? humph ;) *imagining what it would be like if he won*

The Booker Prize longlist has just been announced:

Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
The Green Road by Anne Enright
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan
Lila by Marilynne Robinson
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
The Chimes by Anna Smaill
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

At first glance, I love this longlist!

I have The Year of the Runaways out from the library, and am going to bump it up the reading list now. I'm hoping for an Anne Tyler win, I think.

Thanks, Daryl! I'm surprised that Lila is on there. It seems like I read that a long time ago...but I guess it's been less than a year. Am looking forward to reading The Green Road....I like Enright's writing, but don't always like her characters. And really?....Anne Tyler??

It does look like a great list! I have a number of the books on my wish list. I liked the Anne Tyler, but surprisingly didn't love it.

I am literally dancing with joy at this longlist! I was hoping that A History of Seven Killings and The Fishermen would make it, and I practically squealed with delight to see The Moor's Account there, as I didn't realize that it was eligible and was thinking of reading it this summer. Alex will be pleased as punch that The Chimes was chosen (see >105 roundballnz:), and I'm happy that I'll read his favorite book of the year. I read about The Year of the Runaways yesterday, and I was planning to read it even if it wasn't chosen for the longlist.

I own A Brief History of Seven Killings (hardback) and The Moor's Account (Kindle), and I'll find out which books are available and in which formats in the US and UK very shortly.

>122 LovingLit: Five US authors were chosen (six if you count Marlon James, who is from Jamaica but lives in Minneapolis), and not one of them was Jonathan Franzen! That in itself is reason to dance.

>124 charl08: As soon as I'm done here I'll check on the availability of The Year of the Runaways, as I'd like to read it ASAP. Hmm...slow down, mister, you can't read all of them at the same time (talking to myself).

Deep breath. I'll read A Brief History of Seven Killings and The Moor's Account first, since I already own them.

>125 tangledthread: I intensely disliked the characters in The Forgotten Waltz at the time I read it, but in retrospect I realize that Anne Enright did a fantastic job of portraying them. Based on comments and reviews I'm very much looking forward to reading The Green Road, and I suspect that I'll love it.

I haven't read anything by Anne Tyler and I'm completely unfamiliar with her. I also haven't read anything by Marilynne Robinson, and I'm also eager to finally get around to her. Can I read Lila on its own, or is it necessary to have at least some familiarity with the earlier works based on its characters?

Another laudable feature of this longlist: seven of the 13 authors chosen were women.

I've been following the Booker Prize closely since 2007, and on the surface this looks to be the strongest longlist since 2009, which featured Wolf Hall, The Children's Book, The Glass Room, Brooklyn, Love and Summer, Heliopolis and Summertime, which were all outstanding. Bravo, judges!

Could you post a video of your joy dance, please? I suspect I'm not the only one here who wants to see that...

Re Lila: it's a standalone book but you'll get more out of it if you read Gilead first.

I, too, would like to see that joy dance. And no, you can't get away with posting a Snoopy gif.

>127 kidzdoc: Do yourself a favor and read all three of the Robinson books, Darryl. They are wonderful. I always enjoy Anne Tyler's novels, but I'm surprised to find her in that company. I'm not familiar with any of the other authors on this list, but I certainly don't think she rises to Robinson's level.

>128 scaifea: Ouch! I got a little carried away...



>129 lauralkeet: Thanks, Laura. (Ouch.)

>130 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda; I'll do that if I like Lila, although I almost certainly won't read them beforehand.

Here's the current longlist availability in the US and UK:

Did You Ever Have a Family: Sep 8 (US), Sep 17 (UK)
The Green Road: currently available in the US and UK
A Brief History of Seven Killings: currently available in the US and UK
The Moor's Account: currently available in the US; Aug 27 (UK)
Satin Island: currently available in the US and UK
The Fishermen: currently available in the US and UK
The Illuminations: currently available in the US and UK
Lila: currently available in the US and UK
Sleeping on Jupiter: unavailable in the US (no publication date), currently available in the UK
The Year of the Runaways: Mar 1 (US), currently available in the UK
The Chimes: unavailable in the US (no publication date), currently available in the UK
A Spool of Blue Thread: available in the US, Aug 27 (UK)
A Little Life: currently available in the US and UK

>131 kidzdoc: Oh, you poor thing! Thank goodness you're a doctor!

Thanks for posting the list, Darryl. I read Lila and thought it was terrific; I'll be hoping it wins. (I agree with Laura that it would enhance it to read Gilead first). The Chimes didn't get to me as much as it did Alex, although I'm glad I read it. I'm surprised it's on the list, as it's science-fiction-y.

I'll look forward to hearing more about the others.

>132 scaifea: My being a doctor is not going to help with my broken jaw and teeth, unfortunately. Is there a dentist in the house? (And I don't want the microphallic lowlife from Minnesota who murdered Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe.)

>133 jnwelch: I'm glad to hear that you also liked Lila, Joe. What I'll probably do is read the 12 other longlisted books first, and if I have enough time (i.e., before October 15) I'll at least read Gilead and possibly Home before I get to Lila. If I'm running out of time I'll read a summary of the preceding books and then read Lila.

>123 kidzdoc: Such an interesting array of books. I've read two from the list - The Chimes and The Fishermen, of the two my favourite would be The Fishermen. I liked The Chimes, rather dystopian so not for everyone.

Will be looking out for The Moor's Account & A Brief History of Seven Killings, they both look great and checking out some of the others.

>134 kidzdoc: Oh, no kidding! That dentist guy = unbelievable. Gah.

I've finished updating the Booker Prize group for the moment, with a thread for the longlist and individual threads for the longlisted books. If anyone is interested in participating or following along, please feel to join us! Here's a link to the group:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/bookerprize2008

For those of you who participate in TIOLI I also created a challenge based on this year's longlist.

>135 avatiakh: I agree, Kerry. IMO this is the most interesting longlist since 2009, and I haven't seen a more diverse one. I'm glad that you liked The Fishermen and, like Alex, The Chimes. I purchased the Kindle versions of the seven US available books that I didn't already own, so I now have nine of the 13 Booker Dozen titles. I'll plan to read The Fishermen next month, along with A History of Seven Killings, The Moor's Account, The Green Road, The Illuminations and A Spool of Blue Thread.

>136 scaifea: This isn't the first time he's come into trouble for illegally killing a large animal. He also had to shell out over $100,000 to settle a sexual harassment suit filed by one of his former employees, who accused him of repeatedly groping her in the office. I'm normally opposed to public shaming, but this schmuck deserves to be publicly eviscerated, and I hope that he has to close his practice and that he has to face charges in Zimbabwe for his despicable act.

Yeah, I don't really know where I fall on the public shaming thing, but I do believe in accountability, and this guy has a steep bill.

I didn't know about the dentist's sexual harassment suit. Ugh, what a creep.

>138 scaifea: A very steep bill indeed, Amber. Unfortunately it's all but inevitable that some innocents, including the employees in the dental practice and his wife and children, will be adversely affected by his immoral and despicable actions.

>139 lauralkeet: Definitely, Laura. This incident has received such broad attention and widespread condemnation that I don't see how he could practice dentistry again.

Overly ambitious list of planned reads for August (subject to change, as always):

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Black Prophetic Fire by Cornel West (LT Early Reviewers book for July)
Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss (Wellcome Book Prize shortlist)
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (Booker Prize longlist)
The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Reading Globally)
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Booker Prize longlist)
The Green Road by Anne Enright (Booker Prize longlist)
The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago
Hunger by Knut Hamsun (Reading Globally)
The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller (Reading Globally)
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts (Wellcome Book Prize winner)
The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan (Booker Prize longlist)
Independent People by Halldór Laxness (Reading Globally)
The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami (Booker Prize longlist)
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Booker Prize longlist)

Wow. Good luck! I am tempted by almost all of these. Laxness arrived at the library so I must get on with that one.

Some of the Yelp! "reviews" of his dental practice are kind of hilarious.

"He is an awesome dentist and the interior design is really something...there are heads of previous girlfriends on the wall. He was telling me about how he tracked them and that it was "all good" because he didn't know it was illegal, and he used a bow and arrow like a real man.

My favorite is the stuffed puppy from the dog pound in the lobby."

>134 kidzdoc: lowlife
Well he didn’t know it was Cecil... Sadly, if it hadn’t been Cecil we might not be hearing about it.

>143 katiekrug: Yelp!
I’m not a fan of internet mobs, but jeez, hard to imagine anyone more deserving.

>142 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I may get to all of those books, as I'm only working for the first six days of August. It seems as though someone else, either here or in Club Read, was also planning to read Independent People this quarter, but I can't remember who that may have been offhand.

>143 katiekrug: I read some of those "reviews" yesterday. I hope that Yelp! decides to leave them up, instead of deleting them en masse.

>144 qebo: I've never owned or operated a gun, even a simple BB gun, and I've never hunted any animal, large or small. I still vividly remember seeing another boy at summer camp shoot and kill a small frog when I was still in grade school, and how repulsed I was when I saw the remains of the tiny frog. The thought of killing an animal solely for sport, especially a majestic one like Cecil, is sickening to me, and just thinking about it is making me a bit nauseous, especially after I saw the photo of the dentist and his friend smiling behind Cecil, whose face evokes the suffering he must have experienced during the last 40 hours of his life after he was initially wounded. Although I doubt I could ever do it I have no problem with people who hunt for food, but killing an animal for blood sport is absolutely wrong IMO.

While I think he's despicable, I feel that the wrath against all big game hunting is falling on only him.

Thanks for supplying the Booker Long-list, Darryl! I have only read Lila. Several of these sound good, though.

hullo, Darryl. i found you, thanks to Joe, and just wanted to pop in and say 'hey.'

Chiming in on the Booker Long list ( yes see what i did there ...)

Its one of the more interesting lists in a few years .... not just because one of my favourite reads of 2015 is on there The chimes .. already have Satin island funnily enough was going to read that this week - also had plans to acquire The Fishermen....

Have to say one thing about the The Chimes - I was so happy when I saw it made the list ! as it will get more exposure - now one can hope people stop ( don't) thinking its sci-fi/fantasy just because its a "dystopian/future" story .... we didn't say that about Station eleven did we ? give it a whirl dystopian can be literary & a great story experience as well.

as for big game hunters, I have nothing good to say about them, but this particular individual seems a creep even by their standards ....

Darryl - it's winter here so I'm making soup a few times each week and I just want to draw your attention to a new soup recipe that my family are enjoying, Russian Rassolnik soup, it has grated pickles in it so the flavour is fairly unique. We use rice instead of the barley as it cooks faster.

http://www.olgasflavorfactory.com/soups/rassolnik/

>149 roundballnz: Alex, I went back and read my comments about The Chimes and was reminded again of my admiration for her use of language. I read the book back in March so was getting a bit hazy on how I felt about the book.

>141 kidzdoc: Although I know I won't read all of them, 11 of the 13 sounded interesting enough that I would consider reading them. Two are just "not my type" of book. Three were already on my radar, and I have easy access to some of them. Those will probably have the highest priority for me.

>146 avatiakh: Good point, Kerry. He's far from the only big game hunter who has done something so egregious, and little mention has been made of the professional hunter and landowner that assisted the dentist in hunting and killing the lion. However, all these other people are faceless, which makes it easy to focus on Palmer, with his disgusting grin contrasted against the face of the tortured dead lion.

One of my partners, who is an African-American woman, and others have also made mention of the strong and universal condemnation over the killing of Cecil, contrasted to the far less vigorous outrage over two more deaths of unarmed African Americans, one of whom was arrested and died in police custody (Sandra Bland), while the other was shot in the head as he attempted to drive away after he was pulled over for a simple vehicular violation (Samuel DuBose).

That reminds me...I had meant to include Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates to my list of planned reads for August. I'll buy a copy of it at City Lights when I go to San Francisco next month.

I also forgot to mention that I bought a copy of the Kindle version of Secret Son by Laila Lalami late last night for $1.99. Her latest novel The Moor's Account is one of this year's Booker Dozen.

>147 msf59: You're welcome, Mark! Five American authors (Clegg, Lalami, Robinson, Tyler and Yanagihara) were chosen for the longlist, versus only three British authors (McCarthy, O'Hagan and Sahota), so hopefully the prize will gain more attention in the US than it normally does (although I'm sure that the judges didn't look at nationality when they made their selections). I'll get started on the longlist this weekend, starting with A History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, which I've been meaning to read since the beginning of the year.

>148 mirrordrum: Hi, Ellie! It's great to see you here, and on Facebook.

>149 roundballnz: Chiming in on the Booker Long list

Groan... ;-)

It's definitely an intriguing and inspiring longlist, Alex. I could use to have my boundaries expanded, and I'll certainly approach The Chimes and Satin Island eagerly and with an open mind. I'll admit that I was dead set against several of the unorthodox books that appeared on the 2011 Booker Prize longlist, particularly The Testament of Jessie Lamb and Snowdrops, as I didn't trust the judges' collective taste in books, especially Stella Rimington. This group of judges looked promising on paper, and from what I can tell so far they have delivered an outstanding longlist.

I just realized The Buried Giant didn't make the list. I thought most people considered that a shoe-in...?

Continuing on the above thought, the comments about the longlist on the Mookse and the Gripes Booker Prize forum thread are also very positive, especially in comparison to ones made by the members in years past, especially 2011 and 2014:

"I'm pretty pleased so far."

"I like that longlist a darned sight more than my own predicted list...The Moor's Account, The Fishermen and The Chimes look particularly appealing."

"First feelings about this list are quite good though!"

"I'm excited about this list."

"I am intrigued by the longlist."

>150 avatiakh: That soup sounds interesting, Kerry! Hmm...I'll eat soup even in the hottest summer weather (as I like to keep my place cool, 20-21 C is perfect for me), and since I had planned to make some vegetarian dishes tomorrow and Friday in advance of the upcoming work week I think I'll give this a try tomorrow. Thanks for mentioning it, and I'll certainly let you and others know how it turns out.

>151 avatiakh: The Chimes is now on my Kindle, along with seven other longlisted books, so I may decide to read it next month instead of waiting until September.

>152 thornton37814: Which longlisted books are you most likely to read, Lori, and which are the "not your type" books?

For some bizarre reason I decided that it was a good idea to make a mug of strong coffee and have dinner after 10:30 pm (Moroccan lentil and vegetable stew). I suppose I'll be up for most of the night, then. Fortunately I don't have to go back to work until Saturday, so I have a couple of days to adjust to a more normal sleeping pattern.

>154 katiekrug: The author of yesterday's article in The Guardian described The Buried Giant as the "British frontrunner". However, the members of the Mookse and the Gripes forum's Longlist Speculation thread and others who made longlist predictions on their blogs were mixed, at best. The one book that seemed to be on everyone's speculative longlist was Lila.

I am sure Amazon have made a mistake or its publisher trying to get more buzz ( than already ... there is plenty on this one) Skin ... if it looks your thing pop along to Amazon (think it will be $1.99 US)

Do we start taking about notable books missed that everyone thought would be there i.e. The buried giant or the fact that The Fishermen was on Guardian's "not the booker list" when I checked last night :)

Lat night coffee .... whoops you will pay for that one

>157 roundballnz: I just looked; Skin (by Ilka Tampke, right?) isn't currently available in the US in any format at the moment, but the hardcover edition will go on sale next week.

I think it's a perfect time to list notable books, and that's what the "Not the Booker Prize" was originally created for, to highlight books not chosen for the longlist that readers felt should have been. It seems odd that the NtBP longlist came out one day in advance of the Booker longlist, and it seems that books chosen for the MBP longlist should now be eliminated from the NtBP longlist.

After reading A God in Ruins I expected to see it on the longlist. However, I did have a very brief online exchange with Rachael (@FlossieT) about it a few days ago, and she was far less keen on it than I was. Oh, that reminds me that I need to write a review of it. Rachael's had one major criticism of it, which I completely agreed with, and that caused me to drop my rating of it down to 4½ stars. I'll have to get her take on the longlist, as we were talking about it when we met in London last month.

The books I thought would be on the longlist but weren't are A God in Ruins, Nora Webster, Flood of Fire, and The Book of Strange New Things. I've only read the Atkinson, though, so I have no strong feelings about the others, and I'm only mildly disappointed that A God in Ruins wasn't chosen.

>157 roundballnz: Fortunately I don't have to work tomorrow (and it's already almost tomorrow), so I can stay up as late as I'd like and sleep during the day if I want. I'm enjoying my current read, In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan, and hopefully I can finish it in the wee hours of the morning, or by the afternoon at the latest.

A correction to >155 kidzdoc: I don't have The Chimes on my Kindle! It's not available in the US yet. I'll buy a copy of it when I go to London next month.

>158 kidzdoc: Skin (by Ilka Tampke, right? yes that is the one) not being available via Kindle is weird ?? - as I use the U.S store ( there is no NZ version so my kindle is registered to US one) ..... Dam strange

Wow The Chimes came out in NZ earlier this year, am sure the official release was Feb ? must have thought there was not a US market ... will be know though which is a good thing :)

Heard the twist in A God in Ruins has become a bit of a marmite effect ... Have not read it myself though
While there was quite a bit of buzz on LT about The Book of Strange New Things not so much on Twitterverse around the Booker ...

One i did not mention above is Sleeping on Jupiter that looks brilliant .....though Roy is never for the faint hearted.

back to work tomorrow ... will go in early so can escape into the winter sun

I'd ordered The Year of Runaways from the library after the review in the Guardian raved about it. Just started, but good so far, not to mention topical given the migrants attempting to get on lorries in Calais at present.

>145 kidzdoc: only working the first 6 days of August? And why, pray tell, are you not taking this opportunity to travel abroad? ;)
(don't tell me, it's because you are reading the Booker long list!)

I was excited about seeing the list, but it's a shame to admit that I don't know many from it at all! (eta: I have just seen there is a NZer there, with The Chimes!!!)

And, just to keep you up to date....Lenny has not the heebie jeebies, but strep throat and scarlet fever. Apart from his rash and night time waking, you wouldn't even know. He's a funny lad.

>113 kidzdoc:
You have a fast paced thread going on, Darryl!
But please do contact me.

Hi Darryl! I haven't read any of the books on the longlist yet. The two with the strongest appeal for me are The Moor's Account and Lila. I loved Gilead. I don't think I'll get to any of the listed books in August. Maybe September.

I just finished In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan, which was very good, and better than I thought it would be. I'll review it later today.

>161 roundballnz: I checked Amazon US again just now. The hardcover edition Skin will be available to US customers starting on August 6, but it comes from Hodder & Stoughton, a British publishing house. So, I suspect that Amazon is selling it through third party sellers, such as The Book Depository, and I see no evidence that it has been published stateside. I'm in no rush to get it, as my reading plate is completely full for at least the upcoming two months, taken up with the Booker Prize longlist, the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist, and the Reading Globally third quarter theme (Nobel laureates writing in languages other than English). The Reading Globally theme alone would be enough to fill my plate, as I own roughly 50 books that fit it.

I'm now rarely surprised by the lack of attention that some books originally published abroad receive here. Having said that, I expect that the publication date for The Chimes will be moved up significantly, although from what I understand it isn't easy to just snap your fingers and decide that a book originally scheduled to be published in the future will now be published in a month or two.

I just checked The Book Depository; The Chimes is currently unavailable, but advance orders for the Sceptre paperback, which will be published on August 27, can be placed now. It costs $12.54, with free shipping, which is reasonable. I'll wait until I travel to London to buy it, as I now own nine of the 13 shortlisted books and wouldn't get to it before September anyway.

I had to look up the "Marmite effect", as we don't have that, um, foodstuff here. Several LTers have commented about the ending of A God in Ruins on LT. I thought it was an interesting aside, but only a slight one, and it didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book. That wasn't the criticism that Rachael leveled against it; her problem was with the exaggerated persona of Teddy's daughter, Viola, who is a key character in the book. It's a valid criticism, and after she mentioned it I have to agree with her.

I am completely unfamiliar with Anuradha Roy, so I can approach Sleeping on Jupiter with an open mind. For that matter I haven't yet looked to see what the book is about.

Excuse me: winter sun?! It's supposed to hit 96 F (36 C) in Atlanta today!

>162 charl08: The Year of the Runaways is the one longlisted book I don't own that I'm especially chomping at the bit to get to, so I'm pleased to hear that you like it so far. If I wasn't traveling to London in September I would order it from The Book Depository. It's currently available to US customers for $17.90 (£11.46) with free shipping, which is cheaper than the £14.99 list price. Wow...I am really tempted to buy it now and get to it this month, or before I leave for London. Be right back...

No. I shall wait until September (for the time being, anyway). I already have nine of the longlisted books, so I can wait on this one, right? *gazes longingly at The Book Depository tab*

I don't understand the Calais situation at all. Why is the French government allowing migrants to camp there illegally, and make dangerous attempts to board ferries and vehicles bound for the UK? How are they getting into France?

>163 LovingLit: Good question, Megan! I promised my parents I would spend two weeks of holiday with them in August. I'll leave for San Francisco on the 8th, fly from there back across the country to Philadelphia on the 13th, and return to Atlanta on the 28th (gotta build up those frequent flier miles). If I wasn't visiting them then you could have bet your last dollar that I would have been in Europe! I'll return there in September and hopefully October, though.

You're out of the loop with The Chimes, luv. ;-) Alex and Kerry were singing its praises before the longlist came out.

Aha! Lenny's mysterious illness has declared itself. Group A strep is easily treated with penicillin or amoxicillin, so he should be in good shape by the weekend.

I shall keep his awesome description in mind for future reference; if a child says that he has pain in "the roundabouts of my eyeballs and in between my skeletons" then I'll know to test him for strep throat or look for a scarlatiniform rash.

>164 connie53: Hi, Connie! This thread has picked up speed the past two days, for sure. I'll definitely let you and Anita know when I make my next trip to the Netherlands.

>165 cbl_tn: Hi, Carrie! I haven't read any of the Booker Dozen either, but I'll probably get started this weekend (I'm working, but I don't have any long calls or night calls in the upcoming six day stretch that begins on Saturday). My plan is to read 5-6 longlisted books in August and September, and finish the remaining books in the first half of October.

I'm glad that you liked Gilead. If I have time I'll read it before I get to Lila.

Morning, Darryl! I love how excited you are about the longlist up there. Lists of books are such a good thing, no? *grins*

Have you heard of Try the World? Apparently it's a subscription to different foods from various countries, sent to your door every month. I thought of you because of all of your amazing recipe-tryings. I'm thinking of trying it out...

Morning Darryl! I did not realize A Brief History of Seven Killings, was such a chunkster. Clocking in at almost 700 pages. Does not sound "brief" to me.

Regardless, I still want to read it.

I think A God in Ruins should have been included.

>168 scaifea: Good morning, Amber! Contemporary literary fiction is my bread and butter, especially meaty books of historical fiction such as the novels I've read by Hilary Mantel, Amitav Ghosh, Kate Atkinson, Rohinton Mistry and others. Those are all traditional "Booker books", which is why the Booker Prize and its longlist, when it's at its best, as it seems to be this year, is irresistible to me.

Good book lists are like Christmas presents, right?

I haven't heard of Try the World. I'll look into it, too. Let me know if you decide to give it a try.

Speaking of recipes, I'll go to Publix later today to buy ingredients for food for the upcoming week. I'd like to give Kerry's recipe a try, but I'll have to see if Publix has some good pickles in stock. If not I'll hold off, and either look for them at Whole Foods tomorrow, or wait until next month and try it at my parents' house next month (as I know I can get good pickles in Philadelphia or NYC). I've become addicted to Chinese Tofu Scramble, so I'll make that again, and I'll look at Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook Plenty and Budget Bytes for other ideas. I'd love to make another cold salad similar to Beth's Crispy Chinese Chicken Salad, and I may make it again if I don't find something that is equally appealing.

>169 msf59: Good morning, Mark! A Brief History of Seven Killings is deceiving, as the size of my hardcover copy (which is right next to me) looks closer to 400 pages than 700 pages. There isn't much chance that I'll finish it before I leave for San Francisco on the 8th of next month, so I'll probably read some other paper books first, to minimize the number of books I'll lug with me to SF and PHL, and start reading it that day.

At the moment I would agree with you about A God in Ruins. However, the Booker longlist looks so strong that I may feel differently in October. I intend to, and should have time to, read the entire longlist in the next 2-1/2 months, so I'll have a better idea by then.

Book #47: In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan



My rating:

After my recent trip to Amsterdam I became interested in the city and its massive (by American standards) number of bicycle riders, so when I saw that the Kindle version of this book was on sale I bought it immediately and started reading it shortly afterward.

Pete Jordan, a self described "bike nut", was born in San Francisco and spent a decade there and in Portland, Pittsburgh and other American cities before he decided to move to Amsterdam with his new wife to pursue a graduate degree in urban planning at the University of Amsterdam. The focus of his studies was an examination of the history of bicycling in the city, the often lawless mind set of its bicyclists and bike thieves, and how they impacted the development and culture of the Dutch capital.

This book starts at the end of the 19th century, when bicycles first became available and affordable to ordinary citizens, and continues through the present. Amsterdam's compact size and consequent lack of space for parking cars, its narrow streets, the high cost of automobiles and gasoline, and the more relaxed pace of life in the tiny country of the Netherlands compared to the massive and spread out United States were all factors that led to the proliferation of bicycles in and outside of the city. Amsterdammers then and now embrace their bicycles as extensions of their own bodies, and any laws or pleas to restrict their usage or their right of way on the roads were met with indifference and were often ignored, most notably during the Nazi occupation in World War II when German officials attempted repeatedly to impose order on the cyclists but failed miserably.

In relating the story of Amsterdam's cyclists Jordan provides an interesting history of the city itself, which, like its cyclists, cannot be separated from its bicycles. He intersperses his and his family's experiences as bicyclists, beginning with his first collision with a bicyclist upon his arrival to the city, and including his son's initiation as a stunt cyclist, his wife's training as a bicycle mechanic, and his own development as a bicycle historian.

In the City of Bikes is a well written and very interesting book, which gave me greater insight into and appreciation of the bicycling culture of my newest favorite city, and enhanced my knowledge of the history of the Dutch capital.

>171 kidzdoc: It sounds like you have just embraced the Dutch way of live, Darryl. Now we have to go and rent bikes the next time you visit our country *grin*

>123 kidzdoc: Thanks for posting this. I gave up on the books of Anne Tyler, thinking her most recent ones were boring. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant was her best...in my opinion. Now, I see her most recent book is listed on The Booker Prize longlist, and I'm going to be open minded and read it.

>172 connie53: I'd love to go bicycling with you in a Dutch town, Connie! Ursula from Club Read was asking me if I had hired a bike when I was in Amsterdam. I used to love bicycling, and I've decided to purchase a new bicycle after I return fro Philadelphia at the end of August. Atlanta's largest park is within two blocks of where I live, and there are several bike paths within and in close proximity to the park. So, I should have my bicycle legs ready when I return to Amsterdam.

>173 Whisper1: You're welcome, Linda. Kay from Club Read, whose opinions on books I highly value, recently gave 5 stars to A Spool of Blue Thread, which makes me want to read it that much more.

>173 Whisper1: and >174 kidzdoc: Anne Tyler is hit or miss. Of the 5 books of hers that I have read I have loved one, really liked one, completely forgot I read one until I found an entry for it in my book journal, and hated two of them. I would still like to read A Spool of Blue Thread and am glad it was nominated for the Booker prize.

>155 kidzdoc: I'll start with the ones that have no appeal for me at all--Satin Island and Sleeping on Jupiter.

Now for the ones I'm most likely to read: The Green Road, Lila, and A Spool of Blue Thread.

I have easy access to The Fishermen so it may also get read. Several of the others sound interesting enough that I'll probably get to them eventually.

> 174 Amsterdam is, of course, a very busy city to cycle! You saw what happened to us in Utrecht. We both had an almost collusion with a cyclist. Imagine us on bikes there. We would meet with disaster. But perhaps we could visit Den Bosch. Also very beautiful. We could get bikes there or get on a boat and have a tour of the town

Here is an impression of the Arts family in the boats





the blond girl is my daughter.

>167 kidzdoc: out of the loop. Me? Always. Although I prefer to say "under the radar", or "fringe", or "in a different dimension" perhaps :)
Of courses now I will have to read The Chimes... Like the rest of NZ. If I get on the list at the library now I might get it by the time the winner is announced!

>171 kidzdoc: sounds like a good one! I am fond of cycling, we haven't done much this past year as Lenny is in that stage between being on the back of mine, and riding his own bike.

Agree with lauralkeet on Lila....it can be read as stand alone, but Gilead will make it a richer experience. I don't think reading Home (the other book in the trilogy) will add a lot to reading Lila.

I was thinking about The Forgotten Waltz when I said that about Enright's characters. Was thinking about that book today (long ride in a car) and came to the conclusion that the "forgotten waltz" stood for social graces....something those characters surely lacked.

IMO, Anne Tyler has two, maybe three, basic themes that she recycles over and over again. I read a lot of her early works and have grown weary with the later works.

Interesting that the Guardian focused so much on the Bill Clegg book because of who he is. Guess I'll be a sucker and pick that up when it's released.

Ow...on that happy dance!

>175 Tara1Reads: Thanks, dieKatze. Which two Anne Tyler books did you like best?

>176 thornton37814: If I had to choose one book that is the least appealing to me, it would be Satin Island, based on my difficulty with Tom McCarthy's Booker longlisted novel C.

>177 connie53: Right, Connie! I doubt that I'd be ready to bicycle in central Amsterdam or Utrecht anytime soon. Den Bosch sounds much more doable, and those photos on the canal are definitely appealing. Let's do it!

>178 LovingLit: True, Megan. I think you're more 'cutting edge' than 'out of the loop'!

I imagine that there is a run on The Chimes now that it's made the Booker Prize longlist. BTW, do you have any idea what Eleanor Catton is up to these days?

In the City of Bikes was very good. I think it would appeal most to those who have spent time in Amsterdam, or at least have an interest in the city, but "bike nuts" would undoubtedly enjoy it as well.

>179 tangledthread: Thanks; I'll try to read Gilead before I start Lila, then.

As you said, the main characters in The Forgotten Waltz had no social graces and were intensely dislikable people.

Given your comments I suppose that I'm fortunate that I haven't read anything by Anne Tyler; A Spool of Blue Thread won't feel like a rehash of her previous books.

That was a bit odd that The Guardian highlighted Clegg's background so heavily. I'll be eager to read his book as well.

Ouch is right. That dancer accomplished one of the worst face plants I've ever seen. What on earth was he trying to do?

I haven't read much (any?) Ann Tyler, Darryl. I'm intrigued though because A Spool of Blue Thread was also shortlisted for the Baileys Prize this year. It's not often a book is nominated for both prizes.

Turn my back for a day and a half and there's 64 posts unread.

I agree with Laura, you'd benefit from reading Gilead before Lila I think Darryl. It's probably still my favourite of the trilogy, at a whisker.

It's a while since I read Anne Tyler, but I've enjoyed the books I read, especially the tone.

I can't remember if you saw Everyman at the National Theatre, but I saw it last night and it was superb. Sadly if you didn't see it last trip, it will have closed before your next.

>182 lauralkeet: I've fallen away from reading Orange Prize books recently (I dislike the new title!), and I had no idea that A Spool of Blue Thread was chosen for this year's shortlist. For that matter, I can't remember which book won this year; was it How to Be Both? (ETA: It was.)

>183 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. I'll keep my eye out for a copy of Gilead when I go book shopping next month, and plan to read it before I start Lila.

I'm glad to hear that you're an Anne Tyler fan as well.

I saw Everyman with Fliss at the NT last month, and we both enjoyed it, especially Chiwetel Ejiofor's performance in the lead role. We also saw The Motherf**ker with the Hat at the NT, and The Trial with Rory Kinnear at The Young Vic, which weren't nearly as good. Kinnear was great as Josef K, and Kate O'Flynn was excellent in a variety of roles, but Nick Gill's use of what Fliss called "pigeon English" in it was a bit strange. I'll write reviews of those plays and Oresteia sometime next month.

>180 kidzdoc: I loved Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and Digging to America was good as well.

>180 kidzdoc: Hmmm I think C put a lot of people off Tom McCarthy which is a pity as Remainder was brilliant, only hope Satin island is a return to that.

>166 kidzdoc: "I had to look up the "Marmite effect", as we don't have that, um, foodstuff here" Hahahaha

Yes Winter sun ... & Scotland ( can't remember where now) was forecasted to get snow - its supposed to be summer there ....

>185 Tara1Reads: Thanks, dieKatze. I'll keep those books in mind if I like A Spool of Blue Thread.

>186 roundballnz: I hope so too, Alex. Unless it makes the shortlist Satin Island will be one of the last Booker Dozen novels I'll read.

I should try Marmite before I openly condemn it. I'll consider looking for it when I return to London in September. I liked haggis, right?

Does Scotland ever have summer?

You either love marmite or loath it, no middle ground. I love it, but don't eat it a lot. That said, I enjoy marmite crisps. I also like toasted cheese and marmite sandwiches.

>187 kidzdoc: Personally I would advocate openly condemning marmite. Yeuch. Bovril with butter on toast on the other hand? Amazing. Makes a breakfast, imho.

Marmite. Uh huh. I had the same reaction to "marmite effect" that you did, Darryl. Go to the Google.

Is Marmite made from marmots? Or maybe baby marmots, which because of their small size are often called marmites.



Ok, ok. I made that last part up.

>188 Caroline_McElwee: I would be willing to try Marmite (and, if I'm willing to try haggis and scrapple clearly there aren't many things that I won't give a go), probably spread on crackers or good bread. I'll admit that toasted cheese and Marmite sandwiches don't sound the least bit appealing!

>189 charl08: Bovril is basically congealed beef extract, and Marmite is congealed yeast extract, right? I may have to buy small jars of each and do a side by side taste comparison in September. I'll find out where the closest A&E is to my hotel room before I do that, though.

I decided to read Grey Souls (US title: By a Slow River) by Philippe Claudel today, which I bought at Daunt Books in London last month, and I'm glad that I did. It's excellent so far, and I'll definitely finish it today. That will make 10 books for the month, and 50 for the year. I have a 12 year streak of reading 100 or more books each year (2003-2014), and if I average 10 books a month for the second half of the year I'll just make it.

>190 weird_O: Oh, that's it. I'm definitely not trying Marmite now. Why didn't you mention this to me, Caroline?

>190 weird_O: Oh, NO Darryl, now your taste for out-of the ordinary food is now embracing furry critters called Marmots? The bet is off. I will not eat Marmot...

>193 Whisper1: Me neither, Linda. Haggis (a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock) is doable, though. I had that on a roast pork sandwich with apple sauce in Edinburgh last month, and it tasted great!

Having tried Bovril as a lad and Marmite more recently, I'm pretty sure Bovril will come out on top for you. As far as I can tell, most people have to grow up eating Marmite to appreciate it.

You're not getting me anywhere near haggis.

>194 kidzdoc: HI Darryl. It is "doable" for you...I think I will graciously bow out of that experience. I wish I was as adventuresome as you are regarding culinary items.

I believe Bovril is what is used to make the "beef tea" always being served to invalids in British novels, no? I think I put both Bovril and Marmite in the same class with other semi-nasty things that are meant to be incredibly good for you, like cod liver oil and RyKrisp.

>180 kidzdoc: Den Bosch it is!

Hi Darryl, just checking in before you make a new thread. Big waves. :-)

oops I may have started something here ..... shall we add vegemite to the mix ?

walking away

I like Marmite on toast or on cream crackers. I think the key is to spread it very thinly. The flavor is intense so a little goes a long way. I suspect that a lot of us who've grown up in the US tend to treat it like peanut butter and jelly, where more is better.

>195 jnwelch: I suspect that you're right in saying that I'll probably like Bovril better than Marmite, Joe.

Weirdly enough I'll eat most forms of offal, so the young woman's description of haggis when I went to Oink in Edinburgh last month didn't put me off. She was very surprised that I was willing to try it, and equally pleased when I told her that I liked it.

>196 Whisper1: Linda! I am shocked, shocked that you aren't interested in trying haggis!

>197 laytonwoman3rd: Yep. I love fish, but cod liver oil is horrid; I still remember the taste and smell from childhood. I assume that RyKrisps are rye crackers or crisps. Rye bread is fine, but those don't sound appealing.

>198 connie53: That's a deal, Connie! I'm pretty sure that I saw signs at Amsterdam Centraal for trains that go there.

>199 Ameise1: Hi, Barbara! You're heading to Paris tomorrow, right? Have a great time there! I look forward to seeing more of your fabulous photos.

>200 roundballnz: Yes, Alex, you have started an international conflict. Shame on you.

I was wondering if there was any difference between Marmite and Vegemite.

>201 cbl_tn: Thanks for that tip, Carrie! I'll keep that in mind when I try Marmite and Bovril.

>202 kidzdoc: "I was wondering if there was any difference between Marmite and Vegemite" ummm there are warring parties between NZ Marmite & Vegemite down under .... ( NZ Marmite is different to Marmite you will find in UK)

for anyone who tries this & was not brought up on it - spread it very thinly

I was wondering if there was any difference between Marmite and Vegemite.

Yes there is. Vegemite is sung about in a totally awesome song from the 80's. Marmite (as far as I know) is not. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfR9iY5y94s

>204 roundballnz: Uh oh. I shall avoid comparing Marmite to Vegemite.

I'll start with a thin spread of it, as you mentioned. It is available through Amazon US (is anything not available through Amazon?), so I may buy a jar the next time I order something and give it a try.

Marmite is my spread of choice on toast when I do have it. The main trick as has been said above is to spread it very thinly... then scrape some off because we really do mean use only a little.
As Alex says marmite eaters rarely enjoy vegemite and vice versa, especially here in New Zealand. I still can't believe my brother went to the other side when he married into a vegemite family!


My son made bigos (Polish Country House Kitchen's Hunter's Stew ) this morning, it takes most of the day in the slow cooker. I don't eat this but all three of my sons love it. He uses a mix of pork, beef rump and leaves out the prunes. Another winter dish.

I have been reading, I finished my Reading Globally Nobel novella, In the heart of the seas which was quite the delight.

>205 avidmom: Ha! I haven't heard "Down Under" in donkey years, and I forgot about that reference to a Vegemite sandwich. Vegemite rules, then.

>207 avatiakh: Uh oh. This is reminiscent of the Hellman's Mayonnaise vs Miracle Whip debate in the US. You either like one or the other, but not both (Hellman's for me, please!).

Wow, that's some stew, a meat lover's delight! I assume that he didn't use venison in it.

I did buy lamb last week with the thought of making Caroline's Irish lamb stew, but I'm trying to cut back on my consumption of red meat to no more than twice a week, so the leg of lamb and beef marrow bones will sit in my freezer until the end of August, at the earliest.

I was going to make the pickle soup today, but due to the continued extremely hot weather here and the thought of going out in it and Friday afternoon rush hour (which starts just after noon in the summers in Atlanta) I lost my desire to do so, especially since I still have a good amount of prepared meals in my freezer. I go back to work tomorrow, so I'll stop at Publix after work to pick up ingredients for it either Saturday or Sunday.

I look forward to your comments about In the Heart of the Seas. I had hoped to find at least one book by S.Y. Agnon when I went with Paul (@Polaris) to Joseph's Bookstore in the largely Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green last month, but I couldn't find anything by him (I should have asked the staff, as they were very friendly and helpful).

I finished Grey Souls by Philippe Claudel, which was very good. I gave it 4 stars, but I may add another half star to that rating. I'll review it this weekend.

>180 kidzdoc: Eleanor Catton is probably touring the worlds' book festivals...she courted controversy last year (earlier this year?) by daring to criticise the mode of operation of our fair country. She was duly told to get back in her box, and that her writing scholarships were paid for by the politicians in power now and that she should pull her head it. *sigh* I thought what she said was spot on though :)

I was Marmite all the way until...duh duh duh.....the great Marmite shortage of 2012 when the earthquakes shut down the Marmite factory (can't you just imagine the *screams of horror*). It was then that I turned. To Vegemite. In desperation. Having always considered myself Marmite through and through (it pains me to admit all this).
Anyway. Now I can have either spread without fear of self-loathing. In fact, I have BOTH varieties in my cupboard right now! Oh how I have changed.....

I made a fruit soup today- honey dew melon and my immersion blender( I don't know what I did without it) plus ground almonds, white wine vinegar, olive oil and ginger.
very cooling in our present heat wave

>209 kidzdoc: I don't eat pork so the dish is off limits for me and I really can't get my head around mixing the two or three types of meat in one mix. We don't use venison as the cost of the dish would skyrocket, though last time we had some fresh venison salami from a boutique butcher so that went in. It sounds heavy though much of the dish is cabbage and sauerkraut, anyway they love it passionately and it's fairly simple to throw together and leave for the day.
That recipe I linked to comes from a cookbook by journalist Anne Applebaum.

I was lucky with Agnon as I managed to buy about 7 or 8 of his books as a single lot in a local online auction a few years back. They are all published by Victor Gollancz in the 1960s and have generic yellow covers.

>210 LovingLit: I read and heard a bit from LTers about her comments, and the seemingly paternalistic attempts from right wing NZ politicians to muzzle her (right wing and paternalistic are practically synonymous, right?). I hope that she continues to speak her mind, and I eagerly await her next book!

>211 torontoc: Ooh, that sounds good! Did you use a recipe or come up with that blend on your own, Cyrel?

>212 avatiakh: I thought Anne Applebaum's name was familiar, and it is: she's the author of two books I've heard about from LTers and am interested in reading, Gulag and Iron Curtain. I didn't know that she had written a cookbook as well.

I'll look for books by S.Y. Agnon on my travels this month (San Francisco, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston). Are there one or two that you would highly recommend? (And did I ask you this question before?)

Off to work...

I've only read two by Agnon, I really loved Only Yesterday but it is an ambitious read. I would have tackled his The Bridal Canopy for the theme read but I'm already bogged down reading The man who loved children by Christina Stead for the ANZAC theme read, I started back in May and am finding it heavy going, so went for an Agnon novella instead.
I'd suggest getting a short story collection like A book that was lost & other stories which might be my next pick as well.
eta: Toby Press have been publishing his work in new editions - http://korenpub.com/toby/intusd/s.y.-agnon/

>190 weird_O: I've, um, experienced marmite and I think it likely that it's akin to licking one of these guys. Yech.

Happy Saturday, Darryl! I hope it has cooled off for you. It has been warm here but without the nagging humidity. Whew!

Heading up to Milwaukee tomorrow, to watch the Cubs play the Brewers. Should be a blast. It's a great park.

Mark, Glad to hear you like our park up here. Should be a nice day for a game. Enjoy!

The recipe is from a cookbook by Claudia Roden -Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking: 150 Vegetarian and Seafood Recipes- I can give you the exact amounts
one melon peeled and liquified ( I have used both cantaloupe and honey dew now)
one inch piece of ginger- grated
1&1/2 or 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
6 tablespoons of ground almonds
and that's it- the recipe calls for some salt and pepper-I didn't use it and put it the fridge for about 4 hours-

>137 kidzdoc: The "big game hunter" dentist story made me think of a plot strand in Carl Hiaasen's Sick Puppy.

The ranking villain in the novel, a lobbyist named Palmer Stoat, regards himself as a fearless big-game hunter and has a large collection of trophy heads in his home office. But he's bagged each one at a private game reserve in Florida. The operator trolls the world's zoos for aging and/or ailing exotic animals he can buy, transport to his reserve, and kinda prop up for a fearless client to shoot at. The animal is no threat to the client, but his head can be tweaked by the taxidermist to look fearsome. The cash rewards to the "guide" are immense.

Of course, the lobbyist and his guide aren't sufficiently competent to pull off even this staged kind of hunt.

I love how the names converge: Palmer Stoat and Dr. Walter Palmer.

>202 kidzdoc: Den Bosch is on the route of the train you took to Utrecht, only 30 minutes more

After a conversation on Megan's thread earlier this week I've decided that I need to write down the best comments from kids I take care of in the hospital, so that I don't forget them. I didn't have to wait long for the first one, which I just posted on Facebook:

Cute Kid of the Day: I just saw a 2 year old girl who was readmitted to the hospital after I discharged her home two weeks ago. When I entered her room she looked at me, squealed "Doc Mc Stuffins' Dad!!!", and gave me the best hug I had all year.

Sydney showed me all of her stuffed animals, we played "Peek-A-Boo" and "Hide and Seek" for awhile, and I promised I would play with her again tomorrow. Toddlers are the best patients ever.

I'll catch up here after I finish work and drive home.

I liked Claudel's Grey Souls (which I read as By a Slow River, but I loved! his Brodeck's Report.

I'm liking all the recipe talk here, but I have to say I'm not a vegetarian type person, so I'm going to try Kerry's hunter stew recipe. After years of trying to eat low-fat, I've lately mostly been eating very low carb, and have lost 30 pounds. I almost never consider fat calories, or whether the fat is saturated or unsaturated, just the carb grams, particularly sugars. Then last fall, I had to have an angiogram (due to a "suspicious" stress test), and discovered that my cardiac arteries were "pristine." (The stress test was a false positive I guess). So now I no longer worry about eating red meat. I know this is not for everyone though.

My daughter had a paper on her autism research published in a pediatrics journal (I think something like Journal of Clinical Pediatrics). She's been looking into whether general pediatricians have been over-referring children to specialists. At one point, I believe Texas Children's had a 2-3 year waiting list. My younger daughter is giving a talk on her research in genetics at a conference in Italy in September. (I'm their mother--I guess I'm entitled to brag.)

ETA--we cross-posted. Cute comment above. Two-year olds are the best! We just had a week-long visit with Teddy (my favorite cute thing he did was when he doesn't like being his high chair he sticks his hands in the air and yells, "Stuck! Stuck!" In two weeks 2 year old Maddie and big brother Boden are coming for a week.

>214 avatiakh: Thanks for the Agnon recommendations, Kerry. I'll look for A Book That Was Lost & Other Stories at City Lights Bookshop next weekend, or in NYC if it doesn't have it in stock.

>215 scaifea: I guess that haggis wouldn't be up your alley either, Amber.

>216 msf59: Thanks, Mark. Have a great time at Miller Park! I haven't seen many MLB games in person since I left Pittsburgh in 1997 (only two at Turner Field in Atlanta, and one or two at AT&T Park in San Francisco). The ballpark I want to visit the most is PNC Park in Pittsburgh, which wasn't there when I lived in the 'Burgh (the Bucs played at Three Rivers Stadium along with the Steelers, as I'm sure you know). The Pirates are looking good so far this year, although they came down to earth after the All Star break a couple of weeks ago.

It's still hot here; the forecast high temperatures for the next five days range from 95-97 F (35-36 C). I'm looking forward to what should be much cooler temperatures in San Francisco next weekend.

>217 alphaorder: Miller Park looks like a nice place to watch a ball game.

Checking ESPN...Cubs win!

>218 torontoc: Thanks, Cyrel! That sounds very easy to make. I might give it a try when I visit my parents in a couple of weeks.

>219 weird_O: That's some coincidence, Bill. And Walter Palmer is certainly one sick puppy.

>220 connie53: Thanks, Connie. An hour's train ride is a piece of cake for me. I used to commute by train from my parents' house in suburban Philadelphia to NYC and back every day after I received my bachelor's degree and before I started medical school, and that trip was anywhere from 1 to 1-1/2 hours each way.

>221 kidzdoc: I was mildly shocked when I learned that one of my partners had no idea who Doc McStuffins was when I told her what Sydney said this afternoon. She is a well known cartoon character in the US; here's an image of her:



Sydney's favorite show is Doc McStuffins, and she decided when I saw her a couple of weeks ago that I was her father. I'm surprised that she remembered that, as I and her great grandmother had forgotten about the reference.

>222 arubabookwoman: I own Brodeck's Report and The Investigation by Philippe Claudel, which I haven't read yet, along with Monsieur Linh and His Child, which I greatly enjoyed. Hopefully I can get to those books later this year.

I like good vegetarian meals, but I seriously doubt that I could ever become a true vegetarian. I love chicken, pork and fish, but I'm not a huge fan of beef. Good bread is my natural weakness, and I'm not that fond of sweets. Restricting my CHO (carbohydrate) intake would be my surest way of losing weight, combined with a regular exercise regimen. I did lose a good amount of weight when I worked in NYC, as we had ready access to great Indian vegetarian food from places that were close to NYU Medical Center or would deliver to University Hospital, where the lab I worked in was located. I can't leave the hospital when I'm at work, so I'm limited to hospital food from our crapeteria, bringing in food from work (the new norm), or placing a delivery order from a local restaurant (which is usually not a good idea).

Hurray for your "pristine" CTA! From what I understand it's a more sensitive and specific test to evaluate significant coronary artery plaques and other lesions than a stress test is. Unfortunately most insurance companies won't pay for it, including Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which is what I have. I had to shell out $500 up front to have that test done, but it was worth it IMO.

Congratulations to your daughters! You are, of course, allowed (and expected) to brag about their accomplishments. I'd love to read the Journal of Clinical Pediatrics article. I don't subscribe to it, but I should be able to get it, either online or from the medical library in the hospital I work at. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could tell me what issue of J Clin Peds that her article is in.

Toddlers are just adorable! I admitted an almost two year old with croup this morning, and even though today was my first time meeting him he was nearly as cute and lovable as Sydney.

Wow, it's nearly midnight. Off to bed...

Awww. Sydney sounds sweet! So glad you have time to be a friend as well as a doc to your patients.

>224 kidzdoc: I can see the resemblance ;-))

How cool she did remember! That's really very good for a 2 year old.

I *love* the McStuffins story! So, so sweet.

"Cubs win!' Yah! 4 in a row. Looking to sweep today!

Enjoy your Sunday, my friend.

222, Yes, I would be bragging as well. That seems like quite a major accomplishment, well deserving of acolades.

Happy Sunday to you Darryl.

The McStuffins story is adorable. Thanks for sharing the pic; I wasn't familiar with the character. My kids are adults now, is she a new character or did I just miss it? Anyway experiences like that must be one of the best parts of your job.

>225 cammykitty: Thanks, Katie. I saw Sydney again today; it was 11 am, but she, her mother, and her great grandmother were all asleep. I woke up her mother, then Sydney woke up. She initially fussed for a few seconds, but when she looked at me, smiled, and crawled onto her mother (who was lying in bed next to her) so that I could check her out. She then got out of bed, walked to where I was standing, and held her arms out towards me, as she wanted to be picked up. I did so, and talked to her mother as she rested her head on my shoulder for a couple of minutes. We played Peek-a-Boo again for a few minutes after I examined her, then she went over to wake up her great grandmother so that they could all order breakfast. I'm going to keep her in hospital for another day, so I'll get to see her tomorrow as well.

Interestingly, one of the new patients I inherited today is also named Sydney. She is 12 months of age, but she was equally adorable, with big brown eyes and a ready smile. Her mother says that she loves men. I told her father that he needed to work on this, now, as she shouldn't be flirting with men at such a young age. I told him that IMO she shouldn't be allowed to date until she's 40.

I'm having lunch now, and I should be out of here (the hospital) by 5 pm or so. Hopefully I can get a few hours of reading done, and make another batch of Crunchy Chinese Chicken Salad for dinner (I stopped at Publix on my way home last night).

>226 connie53: Definitely! Here's an image of the McStuffins family:



That was certainly one of the most memorable and adorable encounters I've had all year. I had completely forgotten that Sydney had called me "Doc McStuffins' Dad" last month when I first saw her, so I'll have to do a better job of keeping track of stories like that one. I remember that a couple of toddlers had me and their parents in fits of laughter, but I can't recall who they were and what made us laugh like that.

It was utterly amazing that Sydney remembered that at her young age! I think that the nurses and I were more impressed with that than her family was.

>227 scaifea: Thanks, Amber. The nurses I work with who are Facebook friends of mine loved that story too, and several of them commented about her and I today. The consultant seeing her with me told me that Mum wants me to be Sydney's new pediatrician; unfortunately I don't do primary care pediatrics, so that isn't possible. :-(

>228 msf59: The Cubs are looking good so far, with a 3-1 lead over the Brew Crew in the 4th inning. Now that the Phillies have tanked I've temporarily switched my loyalty to the Pirates, as my classmates and I frequently attended games at Three Rivers Stadium when we were medical students at Pitt. The Bucs lost a tough one yesterday, but they are cruising today, with a 3-0 lead over the Reds heading into the 9th inning.

>229 Whisper1: Happy Sunday, Linda!

>230 lauralkeet: You're welcome, Laura. Doc McStuffins first appeared on the Disney Channel in 2012, and it quickly became one of the most popular shows for young children in the US.

experiences like that must be one of the best parts of your job

Absolutely. Yesterday was an exceptionally busy day, as the inpatient census is unusually high and I had to admit three new patients to the hospital in two hours along with a high work load. Lunch, as I mentioned on Facebook, was Sun Chips and water at 4 pm, and by late afternoon I was dragging, as I was trying to see the kids as quickly as I could. I saw Sydney late, and that interaction lifted my spirits and make a day that up to that point was not very enjoyable a pleasant and memorable one. Yesterday was also my 15th anniversary working for Children's, so it was great to mark the day with that unforgettable interaction with Sydney.

Congrats on the 15 years, Darryl! I'm glad the day ended with a smile.

Adding my congratulations Darryl. Great little patient you have.

Thanks, Connie and Caroline!

That's so sweet!!!

Congrats on your 15 year anniversary. Sweet story about Sydney.

The stories about Sydney are so sweet.

Other than that, I'm skimming through, trying to catch up. Looking forward to your reactions to the Booker prize nominees.

>187 kidzdoc: I was in Scotland in the summer of 2010 and there was summer. I remember being on the ferry to Islay and it felt like a Mediterranean cruise. I am planning a trip back there this September and hope that the weather will be as dry and sunny as when I last visited (it is hard to think of anything other than heat and sun here on the West Coast in the now dry rain forest.)

Congrats on your 15 years and great that Sydney made it memorable in a good way!

The Iceberg has been on my shelf for a while, I picked it up last night and couldn't put it down. As sad as it is, the writing (for a first book) is extraordinary, and Marion's writing of her experience so clearly will give anyone else in a similar position, a companion on their difficult journey.

I read her husband Tom Lubbock's fine book Until Further Notice, I am Alive last year. An extraordinary couple.

His essays on art are inspiring too. Great Works: 50 paintings Explored.

Here's a small world or small country thing, Darryl. My dear old friend's brand-new granddaughter is in your hospital in neonatal ICU (although they are expecting to step her down soon!) following heart surgery. DOFriend is greatly impressed with the level of care and caring that Hazel is receiving. I say thanks to the team that have looked after her from the bottom of my heart.

Lovely to read stories of kids being well cared for. I volunteered very briefly at Great Ormond St many years ago and was amazed at the dedication and skill of the staff working with sick children. I could never do it - I'm reduced to a useless jelly mess in the face of little ones in pain - so particularly glad there are others who can. Congrats on the 15 years service.

On a completely different note - I finished The Year of the Runaways. Wow, what a book! I'll look forward to your comments when you get to it. On this evidence, I'm not at all sure which is going to win (even of my heart belongs to Tyler).

Every sick child should have a doctor as caring as you are, Darryl. And I agree...two-year-olds are amazing. But I'm thrilled I don't have to deal with one on a regular basis anymore! I spent much of Sunday in company of my niece's adorable Two (one Two-year-old, and a 7-month old). The energy! Lily picked every clover blossom in half an acre...one at a time, and delivered each one to me or her grandmother...one at a time, with the invariable announcement "Daisy!"

I saw a "Doc McStuffins" coloring book in the checkout line at Walgreens yesterday and thought of you!

Two more work days to go this week, and this month! I can do this.

>235 cammykitty: Thanks, Katie. I sent Sydney home on Monday. Unfortunately she was sleeping when I saw her that morning, and by the time I saw the rest of my patients and swung back around she and her family had left the hospital. I'll probably never see her again, unless she is readmitted to hospital (and I certainly hope that doesn't happen).

>236 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom.

>237 EBT1002: Thanks, Ellen. I haven't had time to read (or sleep much) since Saturday, but I'll get started on the Booker longlist this coming Saturday.

>238 Familyhistorian: I look forward to hearing about your upcoming trip to Scotland, Meg! I hope that you have good weather while you're there.

Speaking of hot and sunny, the weather in Atlanta was brutal yesterday. It was 99 degrees when I drove from the hospital to our office park for a committee meeting during the 5 o'clock hour, but I don't know if the high temperature hit the century mark or not. Hopefully it will be closer to 90 than 100 degrees today.

>239 Caroline_McElwee: I've only read a few pages of The Iceberg but I agree with you, Caroline. Her writing so far is magnificent, and I'm eager to get back to it, probably on Friday when I'll be off from work and preparing to leave town the next day. (I'll start a new thread on Friday as well.)

I saw the cover of Until Further Notice, I Am Alive on Marion Coutts's web site, and it caught my interest. I'll keep an eye out for it when I return to London next month.

>240 LizzieD: I'm glad to hear that your friend's granddaughter is receiving good inpatient care, Peggy. I suspect that she is not in "my" hospital, though! Children's has three hospitals, the one I work at (Scottish Rite), the one on Emory University's campus (Egleston), and the one downtown (Hughes Spalding). All of the heart surgeries take place at Egleston, so Hazel is probably there, unless she was transferred from Scottish Rite to Egleston to have the surgery and then sent back to Scottish Rite.

I hope that Hazel continues to do well, and gets to go home soon.

>241 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte. I'm occasionally told that it takes a special person to work in a children's hospital, particularly by adult nurses whose children are hospitalized under my service, but after 15 years at Children's and a three year pediatrics residency at Emory it seems normal to me. I think I could work with adults, especially the elderly, but it wouldn't be half as enjoyable as caring for kids (and essentially everyone I work with would say the same thing).

>242 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks, Linda. Toddlers are exhausting in large doses! I loved visiting my friends in Madison when their kids were small, but I needed a day or two to recuperate after I saw them.

>243 thornton37814: Ha! I'll have to see if I can find a stuffed version of Marcus McStuffins, Doc's father. Several of the nurses in the hospital have started calling me "Doc McStuffins", as they loved that story, too.

Hey Darryl, I did find Doc Mcstuffins in the Disney store, but it is a statue and not a stuffed one.

Woo hoo! My work week is done, and I'm off from work for the next four weeks. I'll return to work on September 4th, work five days, then leave for London on September 9th.

It's time to dance again.



>246 connie53: Nice! One of my patients, an adorable 3 year old girl, had a super sized puzzle of Doc McStuffins that she had put together on the floor of her room. She asked me what my name was shortly after I entered her room this morning, and when I replied "Doc McStuffins", she looked at me quizzically, took my hand, and walked me over to the puzzle and said "No! That's Doc McStuffins!" As I was talking to her mother she held my hand again, spun around like an out of control top, said that she was dizzy, then kept spinning around until she lost her balance and tumbled gently to the ground. Needless to say her mother and I felt she was ready to be discharged home.

Happy dancing Darryl.

Happy Vacation, Doc McStuffins!

Have a wonderful time on your vacation, Darryl! I look forward to hearing about all your adventures (especially the scrapple tasting ...)

That Calvin dancing gif is lovely. Have a good break.

I finished The Iceberg which is a very fine book about the life of a family facing terminal illness in its midst. Heartbreaking with moments of joy. The gift of being closer to Tom Lubbock who was an extraordinary man, and the gift of the perspective of the one who will be left behind. It is a hard situation to be in, but it did dawn on me that it would probably be harder for people not in the middle classes, despite financial issues, this family had some resources to help them. And of course both being creatives meant that things were different. I gave it 4 1/2*'s because for me, Tom Lubbock's book was slightly better. I'd have given that 6*'s if I could.

Wow - now that's a schedule to celebrate!

There is lot of Doc McStuffins on eBay - I think any Mc stuff you can think of, you can find there.

Holy cow, a month off, then London. I need to be you. :)

^ What Jim said.

That month off sure does sound great, Darryl, although I know you have to work your tail off when on-schedule. Relax and enjoy - I know you will!

>248 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. I'll leave the dancing to Calvin and Hobbes for the time being. I've been having back spasms this week, most likely due to a partially herniated intervertebral disk in my lumbar spine that I've had for about 10 years. Fortunately it's gotten better as the week has progressed, and it shouldn't affect my trip at all.

>249 banjo123: Ha! Thanks, Rhonda!

>250 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire! I'll fly to San Francisco tomorrow morning, and stay there for five full days. I have tickets for two SFJAZZ performances on Saturday night (Edward Simon Trio) and Sunday afternoon (John Santos & Friends). I'll probably go to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park on Tuesday to see the J.M.W. Turner: Painting Set Free exhibition, and the Museum of the African Diaspora on Wednesday to see the Portraits and Other Likenesses exhibition (it's from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's collection, but the new SFMOMA building is under construction and won't open until 2016). The San Francisco Giants are playing a day baseball game against the Houston Astros on Wednesday; I love AT&T Park, the home of the Giants, and both teams are playing well, so I may go to that game. I'll probably also visit the Asian Art Museum, probably on Sunday before the jazz performance. I'll hit City Lights on Monday, as the museums are closed that day, and probably spend the bulk of the day in North Beach and Chinatown.

>251 charl08: Thanks, Charlotte!

>252 Caroline_McElwee: I'm glad to hear that you thought so highly of The Iceberg, Caroline. I'll definitely bring my copy with me tomorrow, along with A History of Seven Killings by Marlon James from the Booker Prize longlist. I have eight of the other longlisted books on my Kindle, so I won't bring any other books with me, as I'm sure that I'll buy plenty of books when I go to City Lights on Monday.

Based on your comments I've added Until further notice, I am alive by to my wish list.

>253 streamsong: Right, Janet! Up until this month I hadn't taken any vacation this year, as my month off in June consisted of my usual days off plus the extra days I worked from November through February. I took two weeks of vacation in August and September, and requested another two weeks off in October.

>254 drneutron:, >255 katiekrug: I was shocked when I saw that I was going to be off from August 7 to September 3. We did hire two more physicians last month, in anticipation of three of my partners going on maternity leave in the fall. All three are still working, so we're overstaffed for the next two months, which is probably why I'll have so much time off.

My 28 day break isn't the longest one, though. One of my partners is off for 51 days in a row!

>256 jnwelch: Thanks, Joe. I'll have plenty of time to relax and to dive into the Booker Prize longlist starting tomorrow. I'll spend most of the two weeks with my parents at home with them, along with day trips to NYC and Philadelphia and a weekend trip to visit Caroline and Edd toward the end of the month.

It's time for a new thread...