Avaland & Dukedom_Enough's Literary Adventures, Part I

By way of introduction: Semi-retired couple who read. He the science PhD, she the English/Humanities major. He brought more books (initially) to the relationship, she brought the kids (who were already teens at that time). Now this reading couple live on 4+ wooded acres in New Hampshire in a color-full house with lots of books, music, fabrics, garden paraphernalia, and the requisite electronics needed to keep up with the world. They now have an ADORABLE grandson, who has had books foisted upon him since birth (actually, before birth).

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CURRENTLY READING:

MICHAEL:

Ongoing reading:
Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future edited by Ed Finn & Kathryn Cramer (2014)
Walt Whitman (poetry)
Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, edited by Bill Campbell & Edward Austin Hall (2013, anthology)
The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Catherynne M. Valente (2013)

LOIS:
Coffin Road by Peter May (novel, Scottish)
New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America by Wendy Warren (2016, history)
The Whispering Muse by Sjon (2014, Icelandic, fiction) Still haven't finished!

2016 BOOKS READ

MICHAEL:

The Making of Donald Trump by David K Johnson (2016, nonfiction)
Mash Up: Stories Inspired by Famous First Lines, edited by Gardner Dozois (2016, anthology)
The Rise of the Rocket Girls by Nathalia Holt (2016, nonfiction)
Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds (2015)
Three Days to Never by Tim Powers (2006)
Last Call by Tim Powers (1992)
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M Valente (2011)
Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astr, no touchstone yet?)
(1992)
Medusa's Web by Tim Powers (2016)
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (reread, 1953)
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear (SF, 2010)

LOIS:

Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski (crime novel, Polish)
The Golden Age by Joan London (fiction, Australian)
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Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet by Charlotte Gordon (2005, Biography)
Blackout by Ragnar Jonasson (2016, Iceland, crime novel)
The Making of Donald Trump by David K Johnson (2016, nonfiction)
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells (1885)
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (2014, nonfiction, essays)
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This Census-Taker by China Miéville (2016)
Entry Island by Peter May (2016)
Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2016)
A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees by Clare Dudman (2010)
Aging Well by George E. Vaillant, M.D. (2003)
Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine el Rashidi (2016)
Nightblind by Ragnar Jónasson (2015)
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien (2016)
Haunted Women :The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers by Alfred Bendixon (anthology, 1985)
The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States by Ira Berlin (2015, history)
Skidoo: A Journey Through the Ghost Towns of the American West by Alex Capus (2012, T 2013)
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Alanya to Alanya by L. Timmel Duchamp (2005, SF)
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunities by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2014, nonfiction, humanitarianism)
Snow Blind by Ragnar Jonasson (T 2015, Icelandic)
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (2006, T 2007, Swedish, dystopian/post apocalypse)
Even the Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin (2016)
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007, dystopian/post apocalypse)
Veracity by Laura Bynum (2014, US, dystopian/post apocalypse)
Famous Art Works and How They Got that Way by John Nici (2015, art history/popular culture)
Almost Like Spring by Alex Capus (2002, T 2013, Swiss/French)
The Devil in the Valley by Castle Freeman, Jr. (2015, US/Vermont)
Like Family by Paola Giordano (2015, Italian)
The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates (read late 2015, published 2016)
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Selections from:
American Gothic: An Anthology 1787-1916 edited by Charles L. Crow (2012)
Grandma Moses: American Modern, various contributors (2016, art, Shelburne Museum)

Attempted/Abandoned:
Mary Modern by Camille DeAngelis (2007)

Our Best Reads of 2015

MICHAEL:

Fiction in order of preference:
1. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (2015, SF, hard SF)
2. Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente (2015, steampunk)
3. The Female Man by Joanna Russ (1975, classic feminist SF)
4. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (2013, innovative space opera)

Nonfiction:
1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

LOIS:

Fiction in no particular order:

The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates (2016, US, science, memory, love...etc)
Happiness, Like Water: Stories by Chinelo Okparanta (2013, Nigerian/US, women's lives)
98 Reasons for Being by Clare Dudman (2005, UK, historical 19th century German setting, madness/mental illness)
A Slant of Light by Jeffrey Lent (2015, US, post civil war US setting, love/loss/war and "earthly pleasure")
Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott (2015, US, family/legacies/women)
A Price to Pay and A Matter of Time, both by Alex Capus (2009, 2013 respectively, Swiss/French)
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen (2015, Estonian, war/occupation/family)

Best crime novels:

The Unquiet Dead by Usma Zehanat Khan (2015, UK/Canadian, set in Canada)
The Black House by Peter May (2012, UK/Scottish, set in the Outer Hebrides)
The Hunting Dogs by Jorn Lier Holst (Norwegian, set in SW Norway)

Best SF/F:

Spirit; or the Princess of Bois Dormant by Gwyneth Jones (2008, UK, breath-takingly complex/fast-paced space opera)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson was also very good (2009, Canadian, a future enamored of the 19th century).

Nonfiction

Famous Works of Art and How They Got that Way by John Nici (2015, art history, popular culture) Not finished with this, but it will be on both 2015 and 2016's list!
The History of the Gothic: American Gothic by Charles L. Crow (2009, literary history)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison (1992, literary criticism)
Living the Secular Life by Phil Zuckerman (2014, nonfiction)

Wow, two holds and a spam! An auspicious start! ;)

You've not seen anything yet!

LOL! Auspicious, or suspicious?

Maybe it's a lucky sign, like seeing a chimney sweep on your wedding day?

You guys are too funny!

Time to do some leftover 2015 housekeeping. I'm trying to keep these short (crime novels are the easier to write, clearly):


Pleasantville by Attica Locke (2015, US author)

Set in the late 1990s, Locke’s latest novel harkens back to her first, Black Water Rising, as she continues the story of lawyer Jay Porter. I have not read Black Water Rising but enjoyed her 2nd book, The Cutting Season, for its story, mystery and history presented. Nevertheless, despite not being familiar with her earlier book. I did enjoy this story of Jay Porter reluctantly being drawn into an investigation (or lack thereof) surrounding the death of a young campaign worker in this literary thriller about power, politics, crime and family.


In the Dark Places by Peter Robinson (2015, crime novel, published elsewhere as "Abattoir Blues")

This is the 22nd in Robinson’s DCI Banks series, and I’ve probably read twenty of the twenty-two novels. Robinson writes reliably good police procedurals, with an interesting cast of characters (and Winsome gets more attention in this one). The set-up is this: someone has stolen a very expensive tractor from a local farm. Two young men seem to be missing. And while out walking his dog, a former soldier discovers a puddle of what seems to be blood in an old hangar after his dog slips through a fence on to the property.

I thought this installment a bit lighter than usual—not sure why I think that, though—but still very good. Perhaps my watching of the television adaptations has now affected how I read the books (?) In the TBR pile, is Robinson’s latest, a standalone mystery.


Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst (2010, T 2011)
Closed for Winter by Jorn Lier Horst (2011, T 2013)
The Hunting Dogs by Jorn Lier Horst (2012, T 2014)
The Caveman by Jorn Lier Horst (2013, T 2015)

These are four out of the 8 crime novels translated into English, written by Norwegian author Horst, who himself had become a “Head of Investigations” in the law enforcement field before deciding to write full-time.

Horst writes about William Wisting, Chief Inspector in the Criminal Investigations Department of the Larvik Police. The author also writes about Wisting’s daughter Line, an investigative reporter based in Oslo; and the two story lines reliably connect in each book. Wisting reminds me of Wallander without the melancholy.

Horst’s books are excellent police procedurals---thoughtful, intelligent, detailed cerebral stuff without being beefed up throughout with unnecessary gun-waving and thriller bits. Granted, at least two of these books end with a big action splash, which seems over the top in keeping with the rest of the book, but one can appreciate that the detectives solve it just before (and then it’s a race to get to the villain before he kills again). I would speculate that Horst’s own experience keeps his storytelling firmly planted in a more realistic realm. I'm looking forward to the next translation coming out sometime this year.

The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango (2014, translated from the German 2015)

Henry Hayden is a famous author, admired and liked by those around him. But it’s all a façade, a mask, for Henry Hayden is also a compulsive liar, sociopath, and an amazingly clever man. Only he and his wife know that that she is really the author of his best-selling novels. When his mistress becomes pregnant, Henry’s façade begins to crumble and he must take serious action to maintain it.

“The liars among us will know that every lie must contain a certain amount of truth if it’s to be convincing. A dash of truth is often enough, but it’s indispensable, like the olive in the martini....made up stories are soon forgotten; lies need remembering, which requires effort. Eventually every lie becomes an unexploded bomb lurking beneath the surface, rusting away, ready to detonate.”

The Truth and Other Lies is a clever and darkly funny tale, a kind of crime novel. It’s not a deep book, but compelling in its own way. For the reader, Hayden is a not terribly likable anti-hero, but one has to begrudgingly admire his cleverness, for it seems he is always several steps ahead of everyone else. Will he ever be caught? And is it true what the NY Times says, that there is “something about the zeitgeist (of the anti-hero) that makes us root for the people who can get away with things we wouldn’t try....”? I’m not sure.

And now for some wonderful nonfiction...



The History of the Gothic: American Gothic by Charles L. Crow. (2009, US author, book is part of a series on the Gothic, published by the Univ. of Wales press)

Part of a series on the Gothic published by the University of Wales Press, this short volume by noted academic Crow is an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the American Gothic..

“To understand American literature, and indeed America, one must understand the Gothic, which is, the imaginative expression of the fears and forbidden desires of Americans. The Gothic, has given voice to suppressed groups, and has provided an approach to taboo subjects such as miscegenation, incest and disease. The study of the Gothic offers a forum for discussing some of the key issues of American society, including gender and the nation’s continuing drama of race.”
(from the Introduction, page 1)

The introduction provides a quick overview and includes discussion of the definition and history of the Gothic, before teasingly leading us into the discussion of American Literature with a discussion of Hawthorne. Crow then begins with the earliest pre-Civil War literature, and moves chronologically through to the contemporary literature. All of our favorites are in there—Hawthorne, Alcott, Melville, Poe, London, Dickinson, Jewett, Freeman, Twain, Wharton, Gilman, Faulkner, Lovecraft, Welty, McCullers, Wright, Jackson, O’Neill, Morrison, Erdrich, Silko, Oates, McCarthy, King—as are many other lesser-known names. As he moves into the latter part of the 20th century the line between literary and popular literature blurs, intentionally. There are interesting discussions of specific works, novels or short stories, and in some cases, nonfiction (i.e. Cotton Matter, William Bradford), and other topics, such as, whether James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving are writing Gothic literature...or not.

Crow's volume is accessible to the non-academic, compulsively readable and enjoyable. He has read widely across American literature and packs a lot into this less-than-200-page volume, but it doesn’t come across as dense; instead, it’s a kind of narrative wave that carries the literary surfer deftly along through literary history, until they find themselves washed up on the beach that is the notes, list of works consulted, and the index. Readers familiar with American literature would enjoy this look at the dark side in our literary heritage, and those who would like to understand the literary tradition that contemporary authors like Cormac McCarthy, Joyce Carol Oates and Stephen King write from might also find something interesting in this book.

Happy New Year, Lois. I'm always curious to see what you are reading. The Horst series looks good. I'll have to check out the first one.

Whenever I see American Gothic, I think of the Lp by David Ackles back in the sixties.

Enjoyed your review of the Charles L Crow book. I suppose if you are going to write about American Gothic then Having a surname like Crow wouldn't go amiss.

The History of the Gothic: American Gothic looks fascinating. May have to check it out.

I'm so intrigued by The History of Gothic. I'll keep this mind...assuming it's not too hard to find. ($50 new on amazon)

(That touchstone isn't correct in your post, so you know.)

>11 NanaCC: Happy New Year, Colleen! I was able to get books 3 & 4 of the Horst through the bookstore as they are distributed by Dufour Editions here in the states, but had to get books 1 & 2 from The Book Depository. They are UK publications (Sandstone Press)

>12 baswood: Happy New Year, Barry! I see why at you mean by "Crow," but I think he'd have been better served with the last name of "Raven".... LOL

>13 janeajones: And Happy New Year to you, Jane, I never thought I'd enjoy a literary survey book this much (and such an easy read after tackling the Morrison). I have a few more literary criticism books on the Gothic I'd like to get, one is a very, very expensive compilation of essays on the top edited by the same author as above and perhaps meant to be a companion to the book above. The other a book on African American Gothic.

>14 dchaikin: Happy New Year, Dan. That's the hardcover price, Dan. $25 for the paperback, new. It won't have deep discounts as it's 1. a college press 2. an import (University of Wales being distributed here in the states by the University of Chicago Press). Fixed the touchstone, thanks.

>1 avaland: Happy New Year! Your 2015 thread was fascinating, and this year promises to be more so. Looking forward to it!

I recently read, or rather listened to, Pleasantville, and enjoyed it very much. My daughter recently moved to Houston, so I especially enjoyed reading about and being able to visualize various Houston locations.

I also read The Caveman last year, but haven't read any others in the series.

Ah ha, caught up with you Lois. I read the first Attica Locke novel and have the second in the pile ('the' being the misnomer there).

>9 avaland: haven't heard of this writer, but may add him to the list. Since the demise of Henning, I'm looking for a good crime series.

>2 avaland: and of course I'm looking forward to the JCO landing on my mat at the end of the month.

>16 reva8: Hi Reva, thanks for topping by. Fascinating, eh? I'll take your word for it.

>17 arubabookwoman: I bet being able to visualize the locations was really interesting. I've never been to Houston (or Texas, for that matter). I first read about The Caveman in Publishers Weekly.

>18 Caroline_McElwee: Hi Caro! It's rare to find a decent series written by a professional (now former professional) in the field. I think Ann Holt is the other author I can think of who was one. Both are Norwegians, come to think of it (very different styles though).

Happy to hear from everyone; looking forward to 2016.

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear



Bear's novel starts with a bang, as the protagonist is born - or, more properly, decanted - into the freezing corridors of a derelict spacecraft, without memory of who he is or what is going on. Menaced by threats environmental, human, and monstrous, he must stay continually on the run while figuring out his situation.

A common sort of story, competently done here. This is true science fiction - none of the characters are human in the same way as the reader, their distance from our condition being part of the interest.

The action is divided into major sections "The Flesh," "The Devil," and "The World," nodding to J. D. Bernal's 1929 speculative essay "The World, the Flesh & the Devil", much admired by Arthur C. Clarke.

Bear can be uneven - his Blood Music is a major work of the 1980s, but this story isn't in that class. Fun to read if you're a committed SF fan.

Three stars.

Good to read a review of a Greg Bear novel. I have not got to him yet.

>22 baswood: If you don't want to commit to a novel, the novella "Hardfought" is a good example of what he can do.

Here's an article that's a sort of ghost story, "A Brief History of Books That Do Not Exist". Author Samantha Hunt is fond of references to nonexistent books and authors, in her books and others' - the Borges/Calvino/Lem sort of imagined books. In Hunt's The Invention of Everything Else, she invented an imaginary author, "Wanda LaFontaine". Hunt later learned that real author Lucius Shepard also imagined a writer named "Wanda LaFontaine", unknown to her and published long before her novel. Apparently a truly independent invention, and both fake Wanda's write the same sort of trashy book.

Hunt later wrote to Shepard - to later learn that he had died just several weeks after her communication. A missed connection in real life, worthy of a ghost story. Shepard is a favourite of mine, which is why I'm fascinated by this story.

Crossposted to the Interesting Articles thread.

>24 dukedom_enough: So can we conclude that nothing is truly original anymore? :-)

Have some upcoming surgery and thinking of doing a loose theme read during recovery. I would also give me a chance to read some books that have been in the TBR for quite some time. Pulled from the shelf as possibilities:

Mary Modern by Camille DeAngelis (2008, US) recommended to me ages ago by bleuroses.
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (2006, T 2008 Swedish)
The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007, UK)
Alanya to Alanya by L. Timmel Duchamp (2005, US) the LTer I have the most books in common with after my husband, of course.

I'm not very good at giving myself assignments. In fact, the minute I do it, I want to break out of the box. I seem to do my best theme reading when it's organic (you know, one books leads to another, and that one leads to yet another....) I suppose this is a science fiction / speculative fiction theme. Coincidently, all the authors are women (or is it coincidence?) I also find it interesting that they are all roughly of the same publishing era.

My other option is to read from my two anthologies of American Gothic short stories, one edited by Charles L. Crow, the other by Joyce Carol Oates. There is a book of critical essays that is a companion to the Crow volume...very tempting.

Of course, depending on my state of mind I could actually write some reviews....

I'm terrible at reading assignments and pretty much do what you describe, with one book leading to the next. Great review of American Gothic. It would be interesting to read how others perceive writing history.

I hope all goes well with your surgery.

>27 theaelizabet: Thanks.

>26 avaland: yup, assignments have the same effect on me, even when I really want to read the books, which is just plain contrary.

A tome and some short stories sound a good option, then if concerntration is erratic you are catered for, but a tome for long, uninterrupted reading bouts could be good too.

I put this book on my 2015 "best of" list despite the fact that I was only part way through it. It will also be on my 2016 list. I first saw a starred review of this book in Publishers Weekly ahead of its publication and, well, I had to have it.



Famous Art Works and How They Got That Way by John B. Nici (2015)

What makes an artwork famous? In twenty chapters, each ten to twelve pages on a different artwork, John Nici attempts to answer that question… and succeeds beautifully, much to the delight of the reader. Most of the works discussed—but perhaps not all— will be familiar to many readers, but Nici’s essays reach beyond mere art history and pull together some of the most intriguing facts and entertaining tidbits relating to the art work being discussed in an infectious blend of the new and the old. Some of his chapter titles give hints; such as:

“The Birth of Venus: Nothing is Forever, Not Even Neglect”
“The Burial of Count Organ by El Greco: A Touch of Madness Goes a Long Way”
“The Scream by Edvard Munch: Scream, Indeed”.
“The Parthenon Sculptures: Lord Elgin and How Greece Lost Its Marbles”
“Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze: Or Perhaps, Washington Crossing the Rhine”

Does quality ensure fame? Are placement, timing, publicity, and price factors? How much does an artist have to do with the popularity of his or her work? How did the Mona Lisa get so famous? Why is there so much Starry, Starry Night kitsch in the stores? Is fame fickle?

Wonderfully readable, and both entertaining and informative, this book is an absolute delight to read. You could buy it as a gift for an art-loving friend, but then again, you could decide to treat yourself.

Catching up. I enjoyed all your reviews, but I've made particular note of Jorn Lier Horst - I'm,always on the lookout for good police procedurals, as they often work for me when nothing else does.

How's that gorgeous little boy doing?

>30 avaland: This sounds so interesting and I'm glad to see that my library has it. I was reading the PW review (added by our library) that mentioned how a better placement for Winged Victory changed its popularity. I well remember the first moment that I saw it at the top of of the staircase. It's hard to believe that until the move it had been barely noticed.

>30 avaland: Famous Works of Art and How They Got That Way sounds great, Lois--I'll have to look out for it for my daughter and me.

>30 avaland: Sounds wonderful and onto the wishlist it goes.

>31 rachbxl: Oliver is quite the little man, 9 months, crawling and pulling himself up...he's a real joy! And how is your not-so-little (anymore) one?



>32 theaelizabet: I've read a fair number of art history and coffee table art book texts (I have an Art history minor), but I've never read such an thoroughly entertaining one.

>33 cabegley: I think you'll like it, Chris. My only beef—and it's a small one—is that all the color plates are in the center of the book so I had to read with one hand in the middle of the book so I could flip back and forth.

>34 janemarieprice: You won't regret it!

>35 avaland: aah, what a little cutie. Edie will be two in a month's time! She loves her books, I'm pleased to say - current favourite is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

>35 avaland: My goodness, that went fast! He's adorable.

An absolute charmer.

I will have to find a copy of the art book. My Thingaversary is coming up soon...

And Oliver is an alert and intelligent looking boy! How fun to get to spend time with a little guy. Mine are old and tonight my son smelled like feet.

>39 RidgewayGirl: Well, there are worse things to smell like. I guess.

>36 rachbxl: OM gosh, two already! Bet she is gorgeous!

>37 cabegley:, >38 janeajones: Indeed!

>38 janeajones: ha! That's hilarious (and I remember those days. He's 31 now though)

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

An alien species, the Overlords, arrive from the stars just as Earth is on the verge of achieving spaceflight. Equipped with overwhelming technological superiority, they benignly colonize the planet, eliminating war and want, shepherding the human race into a golden age of peace, prosperity, and sanity - but also toward a shattering and horrifying transformation. Clarke's 1953 story is on many must-read lists of 20th century SF, and it's one of his better books, but still shows its age.

I read this short novel for the first time when I was very young. The paperback I just reread is from 1964, bought by me in that year, but I'm sure I read the book (first published in 1953) in a library copy before then. So this is a nostalgia reread - although Childhood's End is a much better book than many of the others I loved as a child.

Prediction is not the business of science fiction, but it's fun to note Clarke's performance anyway. He was dead on that the contraceptive pill, then a bit less than a decade away, would cause a revolution in "patterns of sexual mores". On the other hand, he represents a futuristic glut of entertainment by figuring that the world might someday broadcast 500 hours of radio and television per day. More like 100 hours per minute for Youtube alone, apparently. And ending racism in under 100 years? Lovely thought. Clarke does deserve credit for including an interracial marriage, in a story written at a time when that marriage would have been illegal in many parts of the US. He also writes an African-descended major character, very rare in US/British SF of the era. But I suspect even the very competent Overlords would have more trouble with building the post-racial society of the novel than Clarke shows here.

And all the actual agency in the story belongs to men; women exist as lovers, mothers, and conduits for alien influences.

The plot turns on the assumption that psychic/paranormal phenomena - telepathy, telekinesis, and the like - are real. This premise is an absolutely standard element of science fiction written from the 1920s through the mid-1970s or so. A genre of fiction concerned with science and its impact on society drew much of its imaginative juice from prescientific notions. What drove this tendency, and our more-recent turn away from it, is an interesting question, but outside the scope of this review. This aspect of the book is part of what dates it.

In the six decades since its publication, the sort of ideas Clarke plays with have become routine in SF, making this a bit of a historical relic, unfortunately. We get a tour of grand possibilities, then a flash into transcendence. Childhood's End may be one of the first books to use this trope; there have been many more, and the book is more interesting today for its historical importance than as a story.

Three and one-half stars.

Interesting bit about telepathy/telekinesis being a standard element of the era. I did not know that.

Interesting review Michael. Reading Clarkes name threw me back to my childhood and his programmes.

It's a frustration, when one of the advance party in any genre ceases to look so original down the line, when both recent work has benefited from inspiration of theirs, via five in between, or technology has overtaken.

I reread Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 a couple of years ago, an old favourite, and it still holds up, but we now have TVs the size of walls that can aneasthetise us from reality, and many people in the western world go round with 'shells' in their ears most of the time now.

>44 Caroline_McElwee: I share your thought about Bradbury. If you watch the Francois Truffaut movie version, the giant wall TV looks to be about 32 inches or so. Huge in 1966, rather small today.

Like Family by Paolo Giordano (2015, T from the Italian)

This beautifully written short novel begins with the death of “Mrs. A,” a 60-something year old widow who had been hired by a young professional family to help out during the wife’s difficult pregnancy and stays on to be the baby’s nanny. It is perhaps only when faced with her death that the young family understands that Mrs. A. has become much, much more than hired help, she’s become “like family.” Narrated by the young father, this is an intimate domestic story, a quiet meditation that to the reader seems both uncomfortable in its intimacy yet mesmerizing in its honesty.

The Devil in the Valley by Castle Freeman, Jr. (2015, US)

Langdon Taft, now retired from everything and deep into the spell of Scotch whiskey, has made a Faustian bargain with the devil’s representative, Dangerfield (“a bit of ‘dude’), and may have whatever he likes for seven months before his contract is up and he goes to “the hot place.” He first asks for four new tires for his old truck so it will pass inspection. But, Taft may have a bit of life left in him yet and Dangerfield may have met his match .

Set in rural Vermont, this short tale is fast-paced and peppered with a witty, home-brewed dialogue. I blew through its 190 pages in more or less one sitting. Though certainly not as compelling as Freeman’s Go With Me or All That I Have, this novel was a bit o’ fun when I needed some.



Almost Like Spring by Alex Capus (2002, T 2013 from the German)

In Almost Like Spring, Capus tells the riveting story of a series of bank robberies in Switzerland in the mid-1930s. He begins the book like this:

This is the true story of Kurt Sandweg and Waldemar Velte, two bank robbers who set off for India from Wuppertal in the winter of 1933/34, intending to travel there by sea. They only got as far as Basel, where they fell in love with a shop assistant who sold gramophone records and bought a tango disc from her every day. My maternal grandmother went for a walk with the bank robbers on two occasions. A police squad almost shot my grandfather in open countryside because he vaguely resembled one of them.

This is the fourth novel I’ve read and enjoyed written by Capus who writes in a kind of oral storytelling tradition and with an irresistible “charm” (someone else’s word, not mine). He often writes about real people or events in history but when rendered in his style, the stories seem almost-but-not-quite legend or folktale-like, the effect lends us the space to see something…well…different. Reading his short novels, the four that are available in translation, has been pure pleasure and I look forward to reading more.

A new Castle Freeman, Jr.. That's good news.

>46 avaland: I like the sound of Like Family; I'll look out for this one.

>47 avaland: I've been meaning to give Alex Capus a try since you recommended him to me quite a while ago. Thanks for the reminder.

I'm reading JCO's The Falls at the moment. Have you read that one? I'm about 250 pages in and completely engrossed. When I tore myself away this morning, something had just happened that I didn't see coming at all, which pretty much sums up the whole novel - everything is slightly unexpected...yet, on reflection, seems quite natural. I don't know how she does it.

>46 avaland: >47 avaland: these sound interesting Lois.

>49 rachbxl: I really liked The Falls Rachel, though some years since I read it.

>46 avaland:&>47 avaland: Some interesting reading, as usual, Lois. I hope (I'm sure) you are enjoying that grandbaby.

>48 RidgewayGirl: Did you know his Go With Me has been made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins? The locale has been changed from Vermont to the Northwest. The reviews are rather tepid though I haven't yet seen it.

>49 rachbxl: Funny you should mention that book as I was just looking up at her works on the shelf the other day and that particular title caught my eye. Strangely, of the 35-40 books of hers I've read, I have not read The Falls, We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde, three of her most popular books (and Blonde is considered by some her masterpiece). I'll watch for your review. I mean to do a review of her latest very soon.

>50 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caro. They have to be for me to finish them :-)

>51 NanaCC: I saw a discussion of grandbabies over on Deborah's (arubabookwoman) thread. I'm just a beginner, LOL.

>42 dukedom_enough:. Great to see a modern review of Childhood's End. I still have not read it it, but hope to do so shortly.

>52 avaland: I haven't read The Falls, although I do have it on my shelf. I think I listened to We Were the Mulvaneys a long time ago, and I have very little memory of it. Blonde was wonderful, and I guess I'm surprised that you haven't read it, knowing your love for JCO.

>54 NanaCC: It's a bit of a surprise to me, too. I'd say it's the size of it, but then I've read nearly all of her American Gothics and those are tomes....

Medusa's Web by Tim Powers

Spiders. Not the crawly beasts in ‎class Arachnida. In Powers's latest novel, spiders are certain 8-branched images, usually ink on paper, which have the fantastic power to connect whoever views one with other viewers, throughout time and space, when and where those others are also viewing that image. The viewer may exchange consciousness with the counter-viewer, may be able to control that person'ls body, or may be a passenger only, for the duration of the vision-usually several minutes. The counter-viewer may be in the past or the future of the viewer. For many, the spider experience is addicting; for all, it is extremely stressful mentally and physically. People, including historical figures you've heard of, have been using spiders for centuries, forming a secret subculture of addicts and those who prey upon them.

So Powers is doing what he does so well, writing a historically-informed time-travel thriller. The matriarch of a spider-using clan commits suicide. Her act brings together four people in the family's decaying mansion in Hollywood, California, for several days of escalating conflict and danger. Powers depicts Hollywood, both contemporary and historical, well.

However, for whatever reason, I wasn't caught up in the story as I had hoped. If you're interested in Powers, I suggest trying his early The Anubis Gates instead of this one.

Three stars.

The Man Without a Shadow by Joyce Carol Oates (2016, read late 2015)

In this intriguing novel, Oates gives us the story of a young neuroscientist named Margo Sharpe who begins her career (under the guidance of the noted neuroscientist Milton Ferris) in the mid-1960s by working with Elihu Hoopes or “E. H.” as he is known, an amnesiac who suffered encephalitis at the age of 37 and can no longer create new memories, holding new information for no longer than 70 seconds. To be perhaps more accurate, the novel tells the story of the relationship between Sharpe and Hoopes over the decades.

I found this story riveting on so many levels. Simultaneously, we are exploring our two characters, who are interesting in and of themselves, but also we explore the fascinating science of memory, and then also the more abstract and difficult issues involving the human heart. It is no spoiler that Margo Sharpe eventually imagines herself to be “in love” with Hoopes, a man who cannot remember her name for more than a minute. Is that even possible? Intrigue and inquiry, speculation and theory, pathos and pleasure, risk and rationale—are all woven into this fabulous brain-busting book that I nearly read in one sitting.

I'm actually doing fairly well with my self "assignment" back in message #26. I added one more to the list, which I began with: Veracity by Laura Bynum. I think I'll save the reviews to present together.

It's been two weeks today since the knee replacement. Things are going well. I've moved from using a walker to a cane now (and can walk around the house unaided some of the time). Michael took me out for breakfast yesterday—first time out of the house since the surgery (not including walks outside on the driveway). I'm looking forward to a pain-free knee this spring!

>58 avaland: Your recovery sounds like it is progressing nicely. Enjoy the pain-free knee.

>58 avaland: Glad to hear you are progressing. I know several people who've had the knee replacement and a VERY happy now but were pretty grumpy during recovery. I hope it goes quickly!

Thanks for pointing out Famous Works of Art and How They Got That Way. So very much up my proverbial alley.

>59 NanaCC:, >60 janemarieprice:, Thanks for the well wishes.

>61 Nickelini: I think you'd like it, Joyce.

Good luck with your knee replacement. The lady next door to me had both knees re-placed (she is over 70 years young) and since then has made herself a new garden. A new lease of life!

I'm glad the recovery process is progressing. I know that the physical therapy and the healing process take time and hurt, but that the result is worth it.

Glad the new JCO is good. I've been eyeing it.

Oooh, the JCO sounds good. I'll look forward to that one.

>63 baswood:, >64 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, all is going well and progress is better than I expected. However, the exception the knee becomes a hideous discontented monster at night and prevents me from sleeping well.

>65 rachbxl: I like a book that really gives my brain a turn on the dance floor and this one did.

Even the Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin (2016).

Something big is going on in Edinburgh’s criminal underworld, and John Rebus is called in to “consult” with Siobhan and Malcolm Fox in this, yet another wonderfully complex crime novel by Rankin. Malcolm Fox gets quite a bit of attention in this book, perhaps as much as Rebus, and the continued development of his character is interesting, despite the fact that it detracts from the attention some of us might like to see go more to Siobhan. Still, it’s a smallish quibble. I had a little trouble keeping all the underworld characters straight for a while but that may have been the circumstances I was reading under rather than the narrative.



Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson (T 2015, Icelandic)

This is the first of six crime novels by Jonasson to be translated into English, a second is expected to be released this year.

Ari Thor Arason is twenty-four, fresh from the police academy and as the economic downturn has affected the job market in Reykjavik, he takes his first post with the police department in a quiet village in northern Iceland. (As readers of crime novels from any country, we know that “quiet villages” are never just that, are they?) Ari Thor struggles with being the “new guy” to the force, an outsider, his own inexperience and, when the snow starts coming down heavily, claustrophobia. It is not long in this community where Arason is told “nothing happens,” things begin to happen.

While I don’t agree with some of the over-the-top hype on the book’s cover, I thought this a very good first crime novel and will be chasing down the next installment. I was skeptical at first about using a young, rookie cop as the protagonist, but Jonasson made it work and nicely wove Ari Thor’s personal challenges into the investigative narrative. The less metropolitan setting is interesting and refreshing. The book, and likely the series, is a fine addition to other Icelandic crime novels available in translation such as those by Indridason and Sigurdardottir*.

*I should note that I no longer read Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s series.

I'm glad Even Dogs in the Wild is a good one. I had become a little tired of Rebus and his cynicism and willingness to take shortcuts, so I was pleased that Rankin introduced Fox, a man so different from Rebus, as his new protagonist, and then disappointed when he returned to Rebus. So hearing that Fox plays a prominent role in this book makes me happy.

I've also stopped reading Sigurdardottir's series, although I gave up most of the way through the first one. I mislaid it with just a few chapters to go, and then realized that I didn't care enough about the outcome to get another copy. I will look for Snowblind.

>68 RidgewayGirl: Fox stretches himself and comes into his own a bit more in this one. Rebus is still himself, useful in ways but very much a dinosaur.

I stopped reading Sigurdardottir because I thought they came across as too formulaic and were becoming more sensational. I did enjoy the cultural stuff she centered around but not enough to continue. So many other books! I stopped reading Asa Larsson's crime novels for very similar reasons (her lawyer protagonist seemed to have a near tragic experience in every book!) Many books like these are very popular, just not my thing.

Veracity by Laura Bynum (2012, US)

After half of the population of the United States is wiped out in an act of domestic terrorism in 2012, a new government arises and now in 2045 the population is controlled by any and all means necessary. On the one hand, there is placation with government-sanctioned drugs and sex, but on the other hand, there is a brutal police force and a mandatory implant that monitors every word a person speaks. Over the years certain words have become “red-listed” and to say them risks punishment (via the monitor, dubbed “the slate”) or death.

The story opens with the powerful, riveting, first person narrative of Harper Adams, a young mother and government employee, who is about to resist the government’s control by uttering a red-listed word with the hopes of surviving whatever the slate will do to her. From this first chapter the narrative moves to the backstory and then alternates between real time and the past.

It’s difficult to create a believable near future world in a moderately-sized novel, but Bynum has done a reasonably good job, well enough to serve as stage for Harper Adams’s compelling story of resistance. The most thought-provoking aspect of the novel is a general meditation on the power of words, for in Bynum’s near future world, language is a crime, and new words are added to the “red-list” fairly frequently. The weakness in the story is the unnecessary inclusion of a love interest which dilutes Harper’s personal power for the reader. Despite that weakness, Bynum delivers a fast-paced, enjoyable and thought-provoking story.

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (2006, Swedish, translated 2008)

In this near future society, certain women over 50 and men over 60, who are deemed “unnecessary” by society, check in to the Second Reserve Bank Unit for Biological Material where they are promised a comfortable life in a state-of-the-art facility but will be expected to participate in medical and psychological testing, and eventually donate their organs to benefit others, those deemed necessary to society. People have accepted the ethos behind this practice and understand that they are making an important sacrifice.

Holmqvist presents the story of Dorrit Weger, single, childless and not employed in an essential field (and therefore deemed “unnecessary”), as she moves into her comfortable, new apartment within the unit. She quickly makes friends and seems to enjoy a pleasurable life. She being treated well, she tells an employee of the unit, “If you compare it with the way we’re treated out in the community. In here I can be myself, on every level, completely openly, without being rejected or mocked, without the risk of not being taken seriously. I am not regarded as odd or as some kind of alien or some troublesome fifth wheel that people don’t know what to do with. Here I’m like everybody else. I fit in. I count… I have a dignified life here. I am respected.”

This is a creepy and sobering look at the ethos of a near future society which seeks only results, and thus values only the essential. Dorit tells her own story, calmly and with an unnerving resignation, and the reader is lulled by it; that is, until something happens that will threaten her resignation and make her rethink her decision. Thought-provoking and absorbing, and with a somewhat surprising ending, The Unit provides an interesting mirror for us to peer into.

The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall (2007, UK; US title: Daughters of the North)

A series of disasters has deteriorated society to the point where the UK is under a repressive regime. People have moved into the cities where resources are and work is sometimes available, and the countryside is now derelict and overgrown. In a compelling first person narrative, we are given the story of a young woman, known only to the reader as “Sister,” who dangerously seeks freedom by leaving the city traveling to look for Carhullan, an enclave of rebel women tucked away in the Northern countryside.

The story is a penal system record, a transcript of a statement from a female prisoner, that we can assume is Sister. She will find Carhullan and join the group. Unlike some dystopias which serve as mirrors to our current society, The Carhullan Army, in a mere 200 pages, is perhaps both a meditation on freedom and what one might be willing to do to achieve it, but it is equally an intriguing and compelling portrait of a subculture of women militants, and their charismatic and fanatical leader.

------

Have a few more reviews to catch up with but these three are a good start.

>72 avaland: The Carhullan Army has been on my wish list for a while, Lois--thanks for pushing it up in the queue!

Some net resting reviews Lois. The Unit certainly sounds creepy, but also intriguing.

Always a little disquieting to read novels set on earth in the not too distant future. Could it happen here? one wonders.
Enjoyed your reviews.

>73 cabegley:, >74 Caroline_McElwee:, > 75 Thanks for popping in, Caro, Chris & Barry. Chris, I bought The Carhullan Army from the UK before it was published in the US and it's been sitting in the TBR for that many years! (and such a slim read) That's the trouble with too many choices, eh?!

>70 avaland:, >71 avaland:, >72 avaland:

Wonderful reviews. :) I have The Unit somewhere on my kindle and I had heard of Veracity (and it is on my queue to be ordered from the library in the near future) and your reviews make me think I need to get to them sooner. And the last one is one that goes on the list. :)

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

A fantasy novel with a tinge of horror, Wylding Hall looks back to the early 1970s, when folk-rock bands were bringing modern rock-music instrumentation and sensibilities to traditional English music. Such a band, as the book imagines, was Windhollow Faire, in the months following the moderate success of their first album. At the urging of their producer, they decided to seek a higher artistic level through an intensive period of songwriting and practice. Over the course of one golden summer, they isolated themselves in a remote old manor, the eponymous Wylding Hall - far out in the English countryside, thoroughly out of touch with the city in that pre-mobile, pre-internet era. They expected the musical work, the sex, and the drugs - but not the old, dark, inhuman forces that inhabited the manor, awaiting the arrival of anyone properly attuned. That summer brought Windhollow Faire the creation of their finest album, but also the mysterious loss of the otherworldly Julian Blake, their songwriter and lead guitarist.

The novel comprises a collage of interviews, of the band members, their producer, and a few others, collected today, decades after that eventful summer. The characters' vivid, contemporary voices, the voices of now-old people recalling the passions of their teenaged and early-twenties selves, stand in conversation with each other. The picture of events the interviews build is complicated by their frequent disagreements, driven by differences of class and temperament. Hand employs here one of her signature fictional moves: an extraordinary event recalled, or sometimes revisited, in a contemporary setting after an interval of decades.

In an interesting interview on the Coode Street Podcast, Hand discusses the novel. In imagining Windhollow Faire, she was thinking of The Watersons (not very rock&roll, this piece) and Fairport Convention. However, my favorite band in the genre is Steeleye Span (Youtube links may break, or begin with ads). She also notes that the audiobook employs a different actor for each character, cleverly mirroring the multivocal structure of the story.

At 146 pages, the book is the perfect length for the tale. PS Publishing has done a beautiful job of the book's design and production. Wylding Hall is an atmospheric, nostalgic, haunted-house story, rooted in music and its power in our lives.

Four stars.

>78 dukedom_enough: You've made me curious enough to want to check this one out. I like haunted house stories and the structure sounds interesting.

>79 valkyrdeath: It's nicely subtle - none of the gore so popular in some stories.

>78 dukedom_enough:

I need to get to that one. Wonderful review. And PS Publishing tend to do wonderful job with all their designs and books:)

The Unit and Veracity sound so intriguing. Sort of in the same vein as When she Woke

>72 avaland: Sounds interesting.

>80 dukedom_enough: That's how I like them! I always think subtlety is best. It's why I consider The Haunting to still be the best horror film ever made. It's been a while since I've read anything like that though.

>77 AnnieMod:, >72 avaland: I have one more SF review to do, but it's a complex one and I'm avoiding it.

>82 stretch: Interesting!

>81 AnnieMod: >84 valkyrdeath:

Hand isn't always subtle to this extent, but may have been moving in that direction.

Into the Black by Rowland White

White's new book is a nonfiction account of the first flight of the first fully-operative US space shuttle, Columbia, April 12-14, 1981, with looks backward and forward to examine many of the factors and events affecting or affected by that flight. Most prominent of these factors are the mutual influences between the NASA civilian program and the parallel, military programs for space-based surveillance of the Soviet Union.

White starts in the 1950s. As NASA human spaceflight progressed, the US Air Force recruited a separate cadre of astronauts meant to staff orbiting stations dedicated to reconnaissance. Automation outpaced human usefulness for this task, and the stations went unbuilt, with the now-unneeded flyers filtering into NASA, stuck with waits of many years until they might fly on the shuttle. Meanwhile, robot spacecraft photographed possible military sites and helped keep the peace.

Military influence also filtered into the design of the shuttle, which eventually grew larger - and more expensive - than initially planned. These modifications were needed for the shuttle to launch new generations of spy satellites. Without the support of the military, the shuttle might not have been built at all, but the shuttle program would be in many ways hampered by its added role, a role it never filled as hoped. In the end, the launch facility at California's Vandenburg Air Force Base, intended to send off those spy satellite missions, would be mothballed without ever being used.

Columbia's first launch from NASA's Kennedy Center went well, but when they reached orbit, astronauts John Young and Bob Crippen discovered that some of the heat-shielding tiles had fallen off the upper rear of the craft. As NASA engineers worked to estimate the danger those gaps might pose during atmospheric reentry, everyone knew that similar losses on the bottom of the orbiter would be even more dangerous. But the astronauts had no means to examine that part of the orbiter while in flight.

To carry out that examination, the secret reconnaissance program was asked to photograph the shuttle using one of its spy satellites - a tricky problem in coordinating two fast-moving spacecraft, one of which was so secret the USA barely acknowledged its existence. This photographic feat is White's principal story: NASA was able to reassure its astronauts that the problem was not as severe as initially feared, even though the photographs supporting that view could not be shown publicly.

Into the Black does well at describing the tremendous effort that went into designing, building, testing, and flying the shuttle. Technical details are explained for the nontechnical reader. If I have a complaint, it is that White tends to give the impression that most everything was done by the astronauts themselves. They appear to have been most of his sources, and, with some exceptions, the work of the vast number of NASA and contractor employees gets subsumed into tales of some astronaut or other taking a problem in hand.

White's looks forward from 1981 cover the losses of Challenger and Columbia in later years, and judges the orbiters themselves to have been successful servants of the US space program for three decades. True, but it's important to remember that the overall program fell far short of its goal as an inexpensive, high-launch frequency, space cargo system, even as it overcame formidable technical challenges.

Three and 1/2 stars.

>87 dukedom_enough: very interesting

>88 baswood: Well, not for everyone, of course!

Last Call by Tim Powers

Ah, now this is the Tim Powers novel I needed to read. Reputed to be one of his best, 1992's Last Call follows his usual practice of building intriguing secret histories by mixing bits of actual history with the fantastic. Here, history and fantasy meet in Las Vegas, that strange kingdom in the desert, built on hopes for the supernatural in the form of luck at gambling.

The most important bit of real history in the book is the story of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the gangster who began Las Vegas's journey to becoming a gambling paradise. History tells us that Siegel was gunned down in his girlfriend's house on June 20, 1947, by unknown persons. In Last Call, we learn that Siegel was the Fisher King, ruling over this arid land, and that his killer, one Georges Leon, went on to replace him as Vegas's secret master.

In the Fisher King story, the King has an injury which hinders his ability to rule, and which is reflected in a sickness in the land. The lurid towerscape of modern Las Vegas, gulping water unsustainably, drawing people who desperately game away their savings and the precious energies of their lives, provides Powers's main setting, and an emblem of its ruler's sickness, a sickness derived from Leon's selfish quest for a terrible immortality.

It seems that games of chance link our ordered, daylight world with the chaotic depths of the human subconscious. In those depths swim the great archetypes that rule our selves and our actions. Leon learns to use card games, played not with the standard 52-card deck but with the larger Tarot deck, to steal his opponents' bodies. He can replace their personalities with his own, possessing several at one time, switching his consciousness between them, acquiring younger ones as the current ones age. Only once in 20 years can he play the great game that enables this theft. There, several opponents become marked, slated to be dispossessed of their bodies after the subsequent game, 20 years in the future.

In 1948, Leon tries to short-circuit the process, to capture the body of his five year old son, Scotty. Leon's wife sacrifices her life to get Scotty away from his father, and the boy ends up with a caring, adoptive father, Ozzie, who teaches him to become a superb poker player. In 1969, Scotty defies Ozzie, plays in a game which turns out to be Leon's, and is marked for assimilation in two decades. In 1990, the heart-attack death of his wife, the need to earn more poker money, and increasing attention from Leon's agents bring Scotty Crane, as he's now known, back into his father's kingdom. He must find some way to escape his doom.

The story belongs almost as much to Ozzie's second adopted child, Diana, as to Scotty. Diana's mother was the hidden Queen of Las Vegas, murdered by Leon's agents, for this King will brook no Queen at his side. As the Queen's daughter, Diana is also a murder target, facing attacks against herself and her young sons. As Diana's mother was, in this world, Isis, so Diana's story adds the Osiris and Isis myth to the novel. Tarot lore is relevant throughout. Also hitting Vegas are various other characters who also understand the powers in play, seeking the King's or Queen's seats for themselves, serving as Leon's criminal henchmen, or looking for some sort of rescue or shelter. Chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set make appearances. And the gods and goddesses of the great archetypes are most intent on what may happen.

Despite the many elements in play, Powers maintains a thriller's pace. The several crucial card games are suspenseful, vividly recounted, and easy to follow. The foundational stories of myth are well-integrated and brought up to date. For example, when Scotty's desperate mother, chased by Leon, must give her child to the world, she puts him in a boat, which sits on a car trailer, bound out into the desert - there being no reed baskets or streams available.

Powers takes time for humor, too. Here, Scotty is seeking a copy of Leon's preternaturally dire Lombardy Zeroth Tarot deck. He phones a specialist bookseller, who says none can be found:


"Bullshit," said Crane. "I've seen two different complete decks, one in 1948 and one in 1969. And I've talked to the man who painted one of them."

There was a long silence from the other end of the line. Finally the man said, quietly, "Was he all right?"

"Well, he was blind." Crane was silent now for a few seconds. "He, uh, cut out his eyes twenty years ago."

"Did he indeed. And you've seen the cards, a full deck. Are you all right."

(...)

"No"

"Trust me," said the voice on the telephone, "it won't help you to look at those things again. Absorb yourself with crossword puzzles and daytime soap operas. Actually, obtaining a lobotomy might be your wisest course."


There are sequels, but the book stands alone perfectly well, with a satisfying conclusion.

Four stars

I'm going to attempt—once again—to catch up:



The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States by Ira Berlin (2015)

Based on a series of lectures, this compact book is an excellent history of the “demise” of slavery as an institution in the US. It knits together all aspects: slave rebellion and resistance, the black and the white abolitionist movements, and the governmental actions (or lack thereof) over a hundred years before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. The author discusses the primal importance of the slaves’ own resistance and the how they claimed the American ideals of individual freedom for themselves.

Although it took me some time to get through this book, as I read it intermittently and slowly, I found it a fascinating study, full of new insights, a worthy read for anyone interested in the subject specifically or a more holistic American history.

Here is the synopsis from the publisher, and a a review in the NYTImes.

Skidoo: A Journey Through the Ghost Towns of the American West by Alex Capus (2014, T. from the German)

This was gift from a friend who knew I had recently read and enjoyed all of French-Swiss author Alex Capus’ novels that have been available in English translation (four, currently). This little travelogue in the author’s now-familiar-to-me storytelling style is a quick and fun read of interesting tales about some now defunct towns of the West.

-------



Alanya to Alanya by L. Timmel Duchamp (2006)

Aliens who have been on earth observing for decades decide to intervene in what they see is the self-destructive path of humankind and they begin by shutting the electronic grid down worldwide. Not only does this bring much to a screeching halt but it gets the world’s attention. Furthermore, the aliens—the Marq’ssan—demand that all governments send a delegation of three women (and only women) to negotiate. Enter US Chief of Security and uber-alpha male, Robert Sedgwick, and his former operative-now-academic Kay Zeldin.

This is a fast-paced, extremely thoughtful feminist science fiction tale set in a dystopian 2076. The idea of the story intrigued me, but there was early hesitation because the initial set-up of the main personalities—powerful, controlling alpha male and more-or-less hesitant and cowed female—brought back memories of feminist science fiction of the 70s and early 80s, Surely we have progressed since that time! But despite those initial reservations the story soon had me in its grip. As author Jeffrey Ford has put it the book “is both an exciting tale of extraterrestrials, espionage, and revolution, and an intriguing meditation on contemporary politics (sexual and global).” The book elicits some wonderfully conflicting reviews from readers (as one might expect), the kind of conflict that creates more interest than less—hard to resist for some of us. It’s complex, intelligent and thought-provoking, and the thriller bits juice it up and move it along—for me a terrific post-surgery read.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien (2016)

Already given stellar reviews by many notable reviewers, including Joyce Carol Oates in the NYTBR and Maureen Corrigan on NPR and who am I to add to what they had to say? Their reviews led me to this not-for-the-faint-of-heart, evil-comes-to-town novel that mixes its storyline of innocence and evil, with some veiled history, dream sequences and at least one harrowing rape scene. And while the story in the first half of the book seems to be this, the resulting story is a very powerful story of one woman’s suffering and rebirth—a story that stays with the reader long after the last page has been turned. It certainly did so with me.

Note: Just in case you haven’t read about this book elsewhere, it’s no secret that O’Brien’s character “Vlad” is modeled after Radovan Karadzic and the title of the book comes from “an event staged by a theater company in Sarajevo in 2012 to commemorate the siege of that city. The town center was filled with 11,541 chairs representing victims; more than 600 of those chairs were little ones in memory of children.” (Corrigan)

>93 avaland: I've had The Little Red Chairs on my list after reading some glowing reviews. You have pushed it up the list.

>94 NanaCC: Once you get started it's a fairly quick read, Colleen. It's one of those books that haunts you for days after you've finished.

Nightblind by Ragnar Jónasson (2015, T from the Icelandic 2016)

This is the second book in a new crime series available to English readers, that began with Snowblind that featured a rookie cop named Ari Thór Arason and was set in Siglufjórdur in northern Iceland. The story in Nightblind picks up five years later. Ari Thór is no longer a rookie and he has somewhat mastered his snow claustrophobia. When his new boss is found shot and eventually dies of his wounds, Ari Thór must work with his former boss to find the murderer.

This is a solid, relatively short (200 pages) crime novel and a nice follow up to the first, although the five year gap between the two seems unusual.* Ari Thór is an interesting character but very low key, so it is really the character of the northern town and landscape—a place where the sun disappears from November to mid-January—, and the puzzle of the crime presented that most interested me. The third book is due out in July and I already have pre-ordered it.

The author is a practicing lawyer and teaches at Reykjavik University Law School.

*If you are a reader of translated crime series you will know that there is a tendency to translate and publish the best book or books in a series first and perhaps later publish the other books after the series has “caught on” with readers. This seems to also be the case of Nightblind, and books 2-4 are promised to fill in the five year gap.

>96 avaland: You had put Snowblind on my wishlist, and I've yet to get to it. Thank you for the reminder, Lois. I have so many series going that it might pay to wait until more are translated in this one.

Notable adolescent visitor to our house the other morning. And before you say it...I had taken down the big sunflower feeders in early April. I hardly thought the bears would be interested in the niger seed for the finches, and I had just put the little open feeder back out with some dried mealworms when I saw some bluebirds.

He bent then broke off the pole, lazily pigged out on the mealworms, then picked up the finch feeder in its mouth and marched off into the woods for some privacy. We saw where he went and later went out to find the feeder and he somehow got the feeder open through the bottom (you have to press two buttons on each side to drop the bottom out for cleaning) without damaging the feeder!

The bears seem to be fairly intelligent. I've seen them stand patiently at the side of the road waiting for traffic to pass before they try to cross. (Unlike the deer that seem intent on getting themselves killed.) They even have figured out how to open the bear proof trash cans.

>99 NanaCC: Or, yet, the moose, who seem to just dare you to hit them!

>98 avaland: great story and picture

"The Litany of Earth", a novelette by Ruthanna Emrys.

Here's one of the shorter stories I said I'd be reviewing - though a little late, two years after its appearance.

I'm sure you know that recovery of the Other is a motif in current fiction - retelling the classic story from the viewpoint of the antagonist. Jane Eyre as seen by the madwoman in the attic, The Wizard of Oz told by the wicked witch. We know what stories a racist patriarchy tells, now a new angle is on the agenda.

"Litany", available free online, is related by one of the fish-people H. P. Lovecraft was so revolted to write about in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". No surprise, Lovecraft's notorious racism blinded him to the admirable qualities of beings having much the same spirit as the rest of us - if also a quite special biology. The US government has treated these people as badly as Lovecraft would wish, from the 1920s through World War II (the parallel to Americans of Japanese descent is explicitly made). Now Aphra, one of the survivors, is free and putting together a new life. Can she live among those who destroyed her family? What's the meaning of new attention from the government?

Aphra's quiet strength is reflected in the voice Emrys gives her. The story very satisfactorily upends Lovecraft for a modern reader, while it heralds a promising new writer.

Four and a half stars

>98 avaland: Wow! I'm amazed a bear would come so close to the house.

Haunted WomenThe Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers by Alfred Bendixon (1987)

This anthology was referenced several times in The History of the Gothic: American Gothic by Charles L. Crow, a book I very much enjoyed last year, so I chased the anthology down. Haunted Women contains thirteen stories, which date from the 19th through the early 20th century, by eleven different authors.

As the editor notes, "the treatment of the supernatural has been a liberating force in American literature…often enabling writers to explore subjects they could not have addressed any other way." And American women writers were among the "liberated." The Gothic provides the, "ideal framework for a complex exploration of moral and psychological issues."

With this in mind, I read twelve of the thirteen stories, skipping only Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," because of having studied it in the past. The stories include some conventional ghost stories, but also others that are more psychological hauntings, such as Kate Chopin’s "Her Letters," where the protagonist allows himself to be haunted by the letters of his dead wife. I particularly enjoyed the two stories by Edith Wharton (one written early in her career, one much later), the two stories by Mary Wilkens Freeman, and Gertrude Atherton’s 1905 "The Bell in the Fog," which I think is the most ambitious story in the collection. Atherton’s story is a Jamesian ghost story, with a character clearly based on Henry James. As the editor notes, what may have begun as a tribute ends as an "intense questioning of both James’s values and of a literary tradition dominated by men."

>90 dukedom_enough: I don't read a lot of fantasy, but this one intrigues me!

>93 avaland:, >94 NanaCC: Nana and I may have to go in on this one together. I like Edna O'Brien, and this sounds fascinating.

>103 rebeccanyc: Colleen had a bear climb up onto her back deck while she was sitting in the house. And she lives in a condo complex.

>105 cabegley: Powers' books are best when read quickly, allowing the thriller pace to be maintained.

>98 avaland: just came for another chuckle at the pole-dancing bear.

>104 avaland: It's been a while since I read any spooky stuff.

I've been meaning to get to the volume of Kate Chopin on the shelf, for a while. I've not read her before.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

Magic doesn't exist in our world. Worlds where it does are often reached via a Portal, serving to connect a fantastic realm to our mundane reality. Often, in stories, children who follow such portals return, after passage through adventure, discovery and peril. Think of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Now imagine that these children find that their regained, Earthly life pales compared to the wonderful, terrible lands beyond. Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children exists for these returned travelers.

Quiet, serious, adolescent Nancy has been back on Earth for a few months. Every moment she yearns to go back to the Halls of the Dead, where diamond-bright stars shone down from chill, unceasing dark, where she spent years wearing black, gray and white, eating pomegranates and learning stillness in service to the Lord of the Dead. Our world is far too fast, hot and colorful, but her way back has vanished.

Her first day at the Home, Nancy meets her fellow lost ones. Each went to a different world, perfectly suited to her - usually her. To their parents, who disbelieve the otherworldly stories, the school dangles the hope of getting back the children they knew before the odd disappearances. To her charges, Miss West can only promise to help bear their losses, and their longing to return forever - something that has happened, in rare cases. Miss West herself aches for her own lost, enchanted place.

In Nancy's first night at the Home, the first murder occurs.

In this short book, Seanan McGuire vividly sketches a number of very different young people, the eerie places that somehow suited them so well, and the school where they are thrown together. Their uncertainty, and the cruelty they are capable of in their self-centered quests, are palpable. Contemporary gender concerns are met; one protagonist is trans, another is asexual. Grisly doings are not dwelt on - the tone is more English Country Manor mystery than horror, although many of the portal worlds are horrific enough. The book has a YA feel to me, although it is not so labeled.

The return from the Portal reads very easily as a metaphor for the end of childhood. J. M. Barrie made that clear in Peter Pan. Every Heart a Doorway refuses that metaphor, insisting on the value of the heart's desire, different for everyone, needed equally by all. Maybe it's more a story about difference.

If I have a complaint, it's that the book is a bit short. We need to live with these displaced wanderers for longer to empathize fully. But I'm sure there are numerous readers who will love it.

three and a half stars

Sounds intriguing Michael. Though I'm not big on YA novels, especially those that pretend they are not. I found that with The Book Thief. Elements I liked, but mostly I thought it was holding back punches, until later I found it was intended as a YA novel, which explained that.

>109 Caroline_McElwee: My YA-reading years were before YA crystallized as a marketing category, though I certainly read plenty of books aimed at people my age. Author Seanan McGuire was born in 1978, and would have been a YA reader, probably. I wonder whether adults who read such books when young may want certain qualities in the books they read now. Maybe the YA character I perceive here is some sort of post-YA, adult form that didn't exist when I was in my 20s and 30s.

Or maybe I'm less used to fantasy conventions than science-fiction ones.

Jo Walton has a much shorter take on McGuire's idea, "Relentlessly Mundane". It's an early short story, clunkier than her current work, but worth reading.

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers

Tim Powers has a formula. Start with actual history, and focus on parts of it where what we know trails off into mystery. Fill in the unknown with elements of the fantastic. Connect it all to the lives of his characters via a fast-paced story.

But that formula doesn't constrain any of the inventive, exciting stories Powers writes with it. In Three Days to Never, the principal historical mystery concerns Lieserl Marić, first child of Albert Einstein and his first wife Mileva Marić. Lieserl was born in 1902, before Einstein and Marić married. That she had ever existed was unknown to the world before the 1980s, and history does not record her true name or what became of her. The linked Wikipedia article states that most observers think she died in infancy.

Powers imagines a much longer, eventful life for her, ending in California in her old age, in 1987. We learn a lot about that life, but much remains unknown, as she appears only as her descendants knew her.

Frank Marrity knew Lieserl as his grandmother Lisa. He and his daughter Daphne find their lives - and much more - endangered by agents of secret organizations, who want the magical artifacts Lieserl guarded.

Powers mixes time travel, Jewish mysticism, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, family dysfunction, the Six-Day War, relativity, paranormal powers, the Holy Grail, the Cold War, and California's architecture and landscape into his fast-moving story.

I'm bothered a bit by Powers using one of the most significant scientists of the twentieth century as a sort of arch-mage. But, given how badly Einstein treated Mileva Marić, maybe that's only fair, somehow.

Four stars

It's true that this thread is always dangerous, and I haven't dropped in for a while, but I didn't expect to come away with QUITE so many additions to my wishlist: Ragnar Jonasson, The Carhullan Army, Alanya to Alanya, Veracity, The Unit, Little Red Chairs (I've been meaning to read more Edna O'Brien for a while, since I read a couple of her short stories). And Alex Capus, whom you've already recommended to me.

Abandon all hope of a positive bank balance, ye who enter here...

>113 rachbxl: Awww, that's sweet, Rachel.

>112 dukedom_enough: must look into Tim Powers! Your first paragraph about his formula reminds me of the book I am reading (and enjoying) now, Louis Bayard's The Black Tower - the actual historical mystery in this case is what happened to the Dauphin during the French Revolution.

>116 wandering_star: I suggest Last Call as your best bet for a first Tim Powers novel.

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

One stereotype of the early years of space exploration is that those years belonged to men. Nathalia Holt's book explores one sense in which that stereotype is false, as she traces the careers of a number of remarkable women who worked at NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) from its founding in the late 1930s.

Today, the word "computer" means a machine of some sort but, prior to the late 1940s, computers were humans, employed to carry out complex numerical computations for scientific and military purposes. For Holt's subjects, the computer job served as a rare opportunity to enter a technical field where they could not have been hired as engineers, because only men could get those jobs. This restriction applied even though these women often had science and engineering degees fully the equal of the men's - and always had mathematical skills that met or exceeded anything the men offered. The women supported engineering design, analyzed flight and experimental data, and navigated spacecraft through the solar system. Over the years, they took on increasing responsibilities. As machines that we would call "computers" made their appearance at JPL, the women became their first programmers. The women's work was integral to the great reconnaissance of the solar system carried out in large part by JPL spacecraft in the 1960s and after; for one example, the software that planned the Voyager probes' Grand Tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune was written by Sylvia Lundy (later Miller).

Ms. Lundy's name change reminds us that these women lived through, not just JPL's first years, but the changing American society of the era. Work/life issues arose repeatedly, with long work hours bringing more than one marriage to an end. The JPL history is guideposted by references to larger historical events, such as the Kennedy assassination.

Some of the expected problems faced by women in a male-dominated workplace are only obliquely touched on. In the late 1940s, Barbara Lewis Paulson was reluctant to travel to the launch range at White Sands, because there, the "men roamed unfettered." At the 1958 JPL Christmas party: "As the drinks flowed, Barbara reminded the single girls to be on the alert...JPL's parties could be loose and a little wild. Even in the midst of their revelry, the girls liked to look out for one another." The word "harassment" does not appear in the index, and the relevant law was far in the future. I think Holt says little more than her interviewees would, and they belong to a generation reticent about personal stories.

In describing these women's work, the book also provides a pocket history of early US rocketry and space exploration. Holt is much briefer than I would prefer about details. I would have liked at least one 10-20 page chapter going into technical detail on a particular project. If that's inappropriate for this sort of group profile, couldn't there have been a website? My complaint is partly answered by Holt's end notes, which provide plenty of references for further reading.

What technical details Holt does supply are written in figurative prose that often is misleading or even wrong. At one point, "...she needed to plot a path close enough to Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings to use their gravity while still staying in the proper alignment to fling the spacecraft out to Uranus and Neptune." The planets' gravity is what matters, not that of the moons and rings. Just a proofreading error? Elsewhere, a re-entering spacecraft is said to encounter the "flammable gases of the atmosphere." The heat of re-entry stems from the kinetic energy of the spacecraft; the air isn't flammable. Cape Kennedy's nearness to the equator is good because "...rockets got a boost from the rotational speed of Earth, which is more powerful at the equator than anywhere else." The right phrase would be "faster" not "more powerful." It seems that grace could have been combined with accuracy, while still keeping the book readable.

I like to read about the impact of science fiction on science and engineering, so I was pleased to find a shout-out to 1951's Moon Ahead by Leslie Greener, which one of the women enjoyed.

This isn't a reader's best, first book to learn about JPL or the early days of rocketry and space exploration, but it's a valuable glimpse of the experiences of women in the field.

Three and a half stars

Enjoyed your review of Rise of the Rocket girls - Oh those heady days before sexual harassment was invented.

>119 baswood: It does amaze, how different the era was.

Slow Bullets by Alastair Reynolds

I ought to like Alastair Reynolds, given his reputation for hard SF and space opera. He's highly regarded by numerous other, excellent writers. Well, I've liked some of his short fiction. But I find he often fails to write as well as his far-ranging ideas would require.

Here, a short novel. In the aftermath of an interstellar war, people are awaking from hibernation on a derelict spacecraft. Some are accused war criminals from each side, some, refugees. How did they get here? How long have they been on the ship? Who are criminals, and who are innocent? These are the elements of a fine story, but Reynolds doesn't give this reader, at least, much cause to care. Not a bad book, but there are much better ones.

Two stars.

The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston

As I write, Donald J. Trump is one of two major-party nominees for President of the United States and, therefore, has a non-negligible chance of winning the election. This, despite his being perhaps the most unsuitable candidate in American history for the office. The major theme of David Cay Johnston's book is demonstrating just how unsuitable Trump is, by exploring the man's career and character.

Johnston is a Pulitzer-winning reporter, whose beat is how the rich and powerful employ the fine details of law and regulation to maintain their positions and to exploit the poor, weak, and unsophisticated. He has covered Trump for decades, and has benefited from the coverage of others; the sources are in the book's extensive end notes. He supplies a long list of problems with Trump and how the man does business. He writes about sweetheart relationships with gangsters, broken obligations to business partners and customers, deception, and apparently-sociopathic dealings in every part of Trump's life, both in business and personally.

If many of these issues were already known to people who follow Trump's candidacy, it's often because Johnston broke those stories. That Trump won the nomination anyway illustrates Johnston's secondary theme, the irresponsibility of the institutions of society that allowed the man's career to proceed, despite his flaws. Trump was a major player in the Atlantic City, New Jersey gambling industry despite underworld associations that should have cost him his casino license; the feckless New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement is certainly one of the institutions that did not do its job. More generally the news media have been vulnerable to Trump's ability to influence what is written about him. Johnston notes that Trump is skilled at "...exploiting the fact that most reporters accurately quote what people say without understanding legal rules or regulatory practice." Easily fooled, ignorant of important issues - of bankruptcy, among other matters. Decades of failure along these lines, not only in Trump's case but with respect to the US right wing generally, have brought us to this point.

Of the numerous episodes that I was not previously aware of, the most shocking concerned Trump's great-nephew Wiliam Trump. Born in 1999 to Fred Trump III, who was the son of Donald's deceased older brother Fred Trump Jr., William had severe neurological problems from birth. These conditions were expensive to treat, but were covered by the Trump family medical plan. The Trump paterfamilias, Fred Senior, died in 1999, and William's branch of the family was left out of Fred's will. They sued - and Donald tried to cancel William's medical benefits.

If you would be unable possibly to condemn an infant to death to retaliate against his parents, I'm afraid you're just not in Donald's league. And good for you.

Much of what we've learned about Trump is not covered here: the Russian connections, the appeals to the most racist groups in the electorate. Johnston concentrates on the parts of the story he can tell best. But what Johnston tells, tells us enough.

Five stars.

Michael, I don't know how you managed to read a whole book about Trump, you have my sympathies for any delayed symptoms of illness that may follow. He's a scary man, but then anyone who votes for him is pretty scary too.

>123 Caroline_McElwee: I agree -- couldn't possibly read that. But it sounds fascinating.

>123 Caroline_McElwee: >124 Nickelini: It's more that I'm a bit of a David Cay Johnston fan (could you tell?) than that I want to know more about Trump.

>122 dukedom_enough: I've been hearing a lot about Hillbilly Elegy, which is supposed to explain well Trump's political appeal.

>123 Caroline_McElwee: but then anyone who votes for him is pretty scary too. Careful Caroline we might find that the majority of Americans are scary.

Only the majority of voting Americans Barry! Off to check on the average voting turn-out in the US (that said, more people turned out to vote in the EU Referendum than ever in a national election I think) ....

I recently read something (in the New York Times, I think) that said many of the people at Trump's rallies, when asked, said that they were not registered to vote, and had no plans to do so. I hope that isn't just a pipe dream. Scary people all the way around.

This morning I finished The Making of Donald Trump, a book I never intended to read. My husband bought it (see his review above) and it was hanging about the house, and you know what they say about curiosity. It's an amazingly succinct book—200 pages*—that I found...er...riveting, and beyond the obvious subject matter, this might be why: In the acknowledgements, Johnston says, while writing this book, he kept in mind two "critical lessons" for writers generally, and a third for investigative reporters specifically: one, brevity; two, action is character (a lesson, he says, from F. Scott Fitzgerald) and three, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out. Then cross-check and cross-check again and again until you have facts bolted in their proper place within the universe of the verifiable."

Johnston begins briefly with the grandfather, followed by the father, before tackling Trump himself. Just as Johnston intended, we come to know Donald Trump by his actions. One story leads the open-mouthed, slightly dazed reader into the next, and then the next. From any other writer, one might think each story incredible, but Johnston has been covering Trump for decades, and has his "facts bolted in their proper place." It's difficult to summarize any of the stories in a sentence or two, so I won't attempt it. Donald Trump is right, he is fascinating, but not in the way he thinks. In The Making of Donald Trump, he's fascinating because of his oversized ego, his agility at "doing what he wants and getting away with it," and for his lack of scruples, honor and empathy.

*A few pages for introduction & acknowledgments, 200 pages on Trump, and about 50 pages of notes/source listings.

--------------------

I will get back in here and write a few lines on the books I've been reading, I promise. I mustn't leave you long with the taste of Trump in your literary mouths....

See, I said I'd come back....



Entry Island by Peter May (2016)

A departure from May’s series of crime novels set on the Hebrides Islands, Entry Island is set in the Madeline islands in the gulf of the St. Lawrence river. May weaves a decent crime story with an equally decent historical story about Scottish immigrants to Canada. The two stories come together through the characters of the detective and the prime suspect. I think I wanted the book to be one thing or the other, and perhaps that was why I was a bit impatient with it at times, but in the end I had had a decent read, and learned bit about the “emptying of the crofts” back in Scotland.



Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (2016)

I read several of Divakaruni’s early novels and one collection of short stories. I considered them both entertaining and enlightening, but with so many choices of books to read, I soon drifted away to other literary shores. This book was a reader’s copy I picked up at the store.

Before We Visit the Goddess is a 200-page, multigenerational story of three women which explores the sometimes tumultuous relationships between mothers and daughters. This exploration takes us from Bengal, India to the United States. I’m not sure what Divakaruni attempts here, actually works well, I found the movement back and forth between the generations cumbersome. Divakaruni’s strengths have always been a gift for seemingly uncomplicated storytelling, compelling female characters and her exceptional ability to introduce India to us through both those gifts. I found the story of the grandmother riveting, the more contemporary story less so, but there was certainly enough there for me to read through to the end.

While I usually tend to develop an interest in any book favorably reviewed here, I'm not sure I want to read a book about Trump. The news articles I can't avoid are hard enough to stomach.

I'm taking as much comfort as I can in Nate Silver and the 538 polling stats. But that there are enough people to fill his arenas (at least close to the stage) is worrisome.

Chronicle of a Last Summer: A Novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi (2016)

The world is an immense place, isn’t it? So much to explore, so little time. Thank goodness we have nonfiction and fiction that can enlighten us in a way the television media does not (can not). I have not read many Egyptian authors, but I have read some. Several works by Naguib Mahfouz, even more by Nawal el-Saadawi. I’ve also read several by Alaa Al Aswany and one by each of Anne-Marie Drosso, Amina Zaydan, and Andrée Chedid. It is because of this reading that Egyptian author Rashidi’s short novel drew my attention.

Chronicle of a Last Summer actually chronicles three different summers (1984, 1998 and 2014) in the life of a young girl in Cairo. It’s a coming-of-age novel, both in the conventional sense but also in the political sense. Perhaps it’s semi-autobiographical. This is a thoughtful book, an internal story set against an external backdrop of constant, tumultuous change.

"Time changes perspectives, she {Mama} used to say. Things become darker like paint. I also think of Uncle, warning Dido and me that in life we have to access things and always take a position. It’s all relative, he told us. I wonder if my position is too often ambiguous. A position of trying to weigh things and assess and be objective is sometimes a clear position, and sometimes no position at all. I think a lot about what it means to be a witness, the responsibility of it. I wonder about my writing, if fiction is a political statement or simply no position. Is the silence of objectivity and being an observer, witness, the same as complicity?"

This is an engrossing and enlightening novel, a worthy addition to any reader's exploration of Egypt through literature.

Thanks for reading the Trump book so we don't have to. The whole thing is extremely troubling. And I'm putting the Peter May book on my wishlist.

>134 Nickelini: LOL. You're welcome, Joyce.

>131 avaland: I was disappointed in the last two books by Divakaruni that I read, Queen of Dreams and One Amazing Thing.

>133 avaland: that does sound interesting Lois.

>131 avaland: Amazing what you learn on LT. I spent a week camping on a beach on the Madeleines one summer and I had no idea it was other than completely francophone, but you have driven me to wikipedia and now I know differently. That sounds like a good book for my upcoming holiday.

>130 avaland: This looks like it needs a trip to the library. I've been following the CBC's Poll Tracker, also used to track last year's federal election campaign here in Canada. Today it posits electoral college votes from safe Democratic states down to 253, below the magic 270 mark, but at projected 347 with likely and leaning added in. It's an almost daily update here http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/uspolltracker/ for anyone interested.
Love your quote from Johnston.

>126 Cariola: Haven't read the book, but my understanding is that it advances the idea that Trump supporters are white people who have seen their economic, social, and security statuses decline. Some recent analyses have taken issue with this formulation, pointing out that Trump supporters are generally better off than that. Rather, Trump's people seem to be the neighbors of those who are hurting. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a summary. The key paragraph:

You don't need to hate non-whites to be attached to the dominant position whites have historically had in American life. But if you identify with your whiteness, simple majorities mean security. Losing that dominance, if you don't feel able or ready or willing to relinquish it almost inevitably generates hatred and a desire for revenge.

>129 NanaCC: We may hope.

Mash Up edited by Gardner Dozois

The theme of this science fiction and fantasy anthology sounds a bit silly; each story begins with the first line of an existing, usually famous work, chosen by the story's author. Allen M. Steele's "The Big Whale" starts out "Call me Ishmael," for example. The better stories generally don't follow from their initial lines in any straightforward way, thus rising above the gimmick.

The first is Robert Charles Wilson's "Fireborn." The story draws inspiration from Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories to tell a leisurely tale of a future divided between the high-tech fireborn, humans who live for centuries before being (apparently) uploaded, and the relatively poor, who live at about a 19th century level. Two young mortals fall in with a troup of fireborn who project mile-high images of themselves while flying above the countryside, competing in artistic "skydances." The young people discover that the distance between human kinds is not so great as they had thought. Wilson's skill at setting believably human characters in futuristic settings makes this the best of the stories here, I think.

"No Decent Patrimony" by Elizabeth Bear ("My father is deceased," from Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe) channels millennial-generation frustration with old people. What happens to society when the very rich can live indefinitely long lives? What opportunities arise when one of these plutocrats dies?

"Begone," by Daryl Gregory ("Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," Dickens, David Copperfield, but you knew that) gives us a protagonist who, eerily, is truly not the hero of his own life.

"The Lady Astronaut of Mars," by Mary Robinette Kowal ("Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife," The Wizard of Oz) won the 2014 Hugo Award for best novelette. Having made tough life choices throughout her spacefaring career, the first woman to fly to Mars must make yet another, as a last mission beckons. Seems to me the protagonist's work/life conflict might have been more sharply felt than this story manages, fine though it is.

"Declaration..." by James Patrick Kelly starts with the first words of the US Declaration of Independence. If one needs the virtual world badly enough, might declaring independence from the real world be a good idea?

Most of the remaining stories are worth reading, as the Dozois name implies. A solid, but not exceptional anthology.

Three and a half stars

>139 dukedom_enough: I might have to agree with that opposing point of view. Today I drove through one of the nicer neighborhoods around here, and I saw at least three Trump signs on the well-groomed lawns. I haven't seen ANY Clinton lawn signs or bumper stickers. My theory is that they are afraid (as I am) that Trump supporters will do damage. In the last two elections, I had an Obama/Biden magnet on my car, but this time I don't want to risk slashed tires, broken windows, or key scratches.

>141 Cariola: I feel the same way, Deborah. This election has become so full of hatred that I am afraid of what could happen after election results are announced.

>141 Cariola: / >142 NanaCC: Have you seen the article about a house who the first two Clinton signs they put up were stolen almost immediately, and after the third one their car was vandalized so thoroughly that the garage said they couldn't fix it, and their poor dog suddenly started acting weird and then died not long after, almost surely poisoned somehow. It's all disgusting what's going on. :|

>141 Cariola: >142 NanaCC: >143 .Monkey.: I do worry that more than one person will be murdered after Trump loses.

During the primary, in our town, someone set fire to a large Trump sign a homeowner had at the end of his driveway. So it's not all on one side - but minor vandalism is much less significant than murder.

>143 .Monkey.:, >144 dukedom_enough: This is definitely the scariest campaign I've lived through, in more ways than one.

The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells (1885)

I thought I might finally read this American classic as it had been on our shelves for decades—or so I thought. Turns out, I had read it after all.

Through a bit of backstory the reader learns how the Vermonter Silas Lapham became wealthy selling his mineral paint. When the present tense takes over, we find Silas living in Boston, building a spiffy new house on the back bay, and trying to break into Boston Brahmin society. There is a romantic element that involves Lapham's daughters. This should be more appropriately titled, "the rise and fall of Silas Lapham" as the story does track his financial downfall, also.

This is a tale of the "self-made man," a favorite hero figure in American culture, and Lapham is indeed a likeable and sympathetic character, perhaps even noble. It also espouses an American pastoralism (ah, the idyllic countryside!) But, the book is also a tale of class, old & new money...etc. It was interesting to hear both what the Laphams thought, and what the "old rich" Coreys thought about each other. While I had some trouble following what seemed like a lot of chatter in places, I enjoyed this story (again), keeping in mind as I read other works in the period, like Wharton's The House of Mirth and perhaps a bit of Twain or James (the Howells is lighter than Wharton & James).

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (essays, 2014)

The title refers to the first essay, first published in 2008, and what is now referred to as "mansplaining." As I started reading this small book of essays, and this first essay, I thought there might not be much "new" in it for me. But I soon learned differently. The first essay, for example, starts out comically, but ends seriously discussing the ways in which women are silenced. Solnit has a gift, a way of telling that takes the reader into thoughtful new places, much like poets do. I enjoyed all the essays here, but particularly I enjoyed her essay on "Virginia Woolf's Darkness." Here she discusses Woolf's 1915 diary entry, "the future is dark, which is the best thing I think the future can be, I think." She discusses Sontag's take on it, and follows that with some really thought-provoking stuff. Solnit says, "Despair is a form of uncertainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it, despair is a confident memory of the future...hope can be the knowledge that we don't have that memory and reality doesn't necessarily match our plans...." Think about that for a while. This a book that lingers long after the last page has been turned.

Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development by George Vaillant, MD.

Although this book can get bogged down with the various study results—and I admit to skimming some of those paragraphs; it has much thoughtful, sometimes fascinating content about healthy and successful aging (gleaned from all those studies). And who knew that adult development didn't end with adolescence! There's some interesting discussion on adult life tasks/stages. It's a bit too geeky to be considered a self-help kind of book, but it discusses some intriguing topics (do people change, does religion/spirituality deepen with age, does wisdom really increase with age...etc) and others like the importance of intellectual curiosity, creativity, family and friends and social networks. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking ahead and thinking about how they might wish to spend the last third of their life, what they might need going ahead, and what they might not.

A few more reviews and I'll be caught up....

Clare Dudman's third heavily researched novel tells the story of the 19th century Welsh colonists in the desert of Patagonia, it was, she says, "Great Britain's last successful colony." They were promised a land of milk and honey, a place of meadows and tall trees, by their obsessive leader, Edwin Lloyd, but arrived to find a harsh desert land already occupied by indigenous people. The colony succeeds but only by great sacrifice.

Dudman has a way with history, place and character. I very much enjoyed both her previous books (One Day the Ice will Reveal All Its Dead and 99 Reasons for Being, and had to seek out this third as it has not been published here in the states. This book brings to life the Welsh in Patagonia, much as Nathananiel Philbrick's Mayflower did for the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees is a harrowing, heroic and moving story, perhaps a bit too deeply emotional at times (she wants us there... and feeling what they are feeling), but Dudman again succeeds in both educating and entertaining, and does so succinctly (269 pgs).

I've had a naughty book binge over the last month or two, the result of catching up with about a dozen issues of Publishers Weekly. Here are the highlightst (which I know will tempt a few of you who also enjoy translations):

Everything I Don't Remember by Swedish author Jonas Hassen Khemiri, winner of Sweden's prestigious August Prize http://www.publishersweekly.com

Compartment No 6 by Rosa Liksom. The Finnish author writes about the events on a long train journey through Russia.

War and Turpentine a novel by Belgian author Stefan Hertmans, a promising mix of biography and fiction (that includes WWI) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/02/war-and-turpentine-by-stefan-hertm...

A Meal in Winter by French author Hubert Mingarelli. German soldiers and a moral dilemma in the Polish countryside http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-62097-173-4

The Lamentations of Zeno by German author Ilija Trojanow. A scientist working as a tour guide for the rich to Antarctica becomes desperate... https://www.versobooks.com/books/2099-the-lamentations-of-zeno

Entanglement, One of three crime novels by Polish author Zygmunt Miloszewski. I've not read a crime novel from Poland...

Cry Wolf, A mafia crime novel/thriller by Italian author Michael Gregorio

Wolf Lake a crime novel set in the Adirondacks of New York state by John Verdon (it's rare these days that I read crime novels from the US)

It's a bad habit, isnt it. And nevermind that I also have an arc of the new Margaret Atwood and a new collection by Joyce Carol Oates.

Nice review of Men Explain Things to Me. I have it on my Kindle, so I may start reading it soon.

>147 avaland: as you know, I enjoyed this volume Lois.

>148 avaland: sounds like something that might fall into my basket.

>149 avaland: I have Dudman on my list from an earlier review of yours I think, Lois.

>150 avaland: War and Turpentine is near the top of one of the tbr piles. Nice haul, I'll look forward to the reviews.

>147 avaland: "The first essay, for example, starts out comically, but ends seriously discussing the ways in which women are silenced...."

Thank you for your review. I have seen this book around a lot and thought it was just another cute, funny collections of stories, essays. I've added it to my library wishlist.

>151 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl.

>152 Caroline_McElwee: No pressure there!

>153 ELiz_M: Yes, I thought it might just be another collection of general feminist discussions, but it was NOT! She does cover some familiar ground, but the way she writes about it makes it new.

I finished Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet during a few solo days up north. To be honest, 9th great grandmother or not, I was glad to get out of the Puritan mindset. Yikes.



This is a highly readable biography that never gets bogged down in dry history and facts. The author immerses the reader in the political/religious atmosphere in England during the early 1600s, the thinking that led to the "Great Migration," and life in the new colony. One gets a sense of Anne Bradstreet as an educated and introspective daughter, wife, mother and poet. There is a sense of some stretching with the presentation of Anne's thoughts; surely speculative at times when it slips beyond research and Anne's own writing. But then, Charlotte Gordon has probably spent more time with Anne Bradstreet than most, and is thus as qualified as anyone to speak for her. There is much to learn here about the poet, the woman, and the times she lived in.

Yesterday was my 10 year Thingaversary, and Michael's is on the 16th, I believe. I know we are supposed to go out and buy 11 books, but, speaking only for myself, I've had a bit of a splurg over the two or three months (22 books, I think), and I'm not reading as much as I used to, so I need calm down. Michael's appetite is more controlled than mine.

Splurge or no, congratulations on so many years contributing to LT.

Congrats Lois/avaland and, early, to Michael.

I've been catching up and you will lead me to that Trump book, which my library has on audio, but there's a wait list. I'm glad to know it's well done. Popular election year books are usually not for me.

A ton of interesting reviews and books here. That Solnit review especially caught my attention.

I can't believe many of us are hitting ten years with LT. I remember when a friend sent me the link saying 'this one's for you', and spending a summer logging my books.

>158 dchaikin: Thanks.

Johnston has been appearing on cable TV news a lot, as the Trump finance expert. Smart, maybe a bit self-congratulatory, but he's earned it.

>157 SassyLassy:, >158 dchaikin:, >159 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, all. There are a lot of really great people here on LT. Besides literary acquaintances and various degrees of book chums, I've also found some lasting friends here. How cool is that.

Regarding the election. From Twitter:

Joyce Carol Oates
‏@JoyceCarolOates

"Just for a while, no one will ask gothic writers "why is your writing so dark?" Thank you."

8:33 AM - 9 Nov 2016

As it happens, I am reading the forthcoming JCO novel, A Book of American Martyrs. Pretty angsty.

155> I recently read a biography of Anne Hutchison, American Jezebel. Your review of Mistress Bradstreet sounds like it would be a good companion. Though I sympathize with your relief of getting out of the Puritan mindset!

>162 avaland: Right after the way the vote was going became obvious, I was posting that I feel like I am living in The Handmaid's Tale.

so scary!

>163 janeajones: I may look that Hutchinson book up, Jane. Not sure I'm anxious to return to the Puritans but it might be interesting for a future read.

>164 Cariola: Or any number of other dystopias.

>165 Nickelini: Yup.

Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski (crime novel, Polish)

In the aftermath of a "family constellation" group therapy retreat, one of the participants is found dead with a skewer through his eye. Public prosecutor Tedor Szacki is called to investigate. If you like to see how law enforcement and investigation works in other countries, as I do, on this point Miloszewski's novel doesn't disappoint, for in Poland, according to this book, it is the prosecutor who investigates (with the police doing the grunt work, it seems). The investigation and exploration of the constellation group therapy approach is intriguing, as is the digging into Poland's past history under Communist rule. The book is more in line with the style of a police procedural than that of a thriller.

On the negative side, besides my personal difficulties keeping the Polish names straight (not the book's fault), and some discussions of other in progress cases that I found distracting, I found Tedor Szacki a less likeable, or not very sympathetic character. Perhaps he would have been more sympathetic if every encounter with a woman had not been one of thorough objectification (enough for me to notice, and be both uncomfortable and annoyed by it). Maybe Poland is a bit regressive, or maybe I shouldn't have read this particular book during the last months the 2016 US election season.

I have the next two books in this series and am debating whether to continue. The fact that there is a debate in my mind means there is something worthy in this volume....

>56 dukedom_enough:; >117 dukedom_enough: Just came back to thank you for the suggestion of The Anubis Gates which I have just read and really enjoyed! Last Call is on the wishlist now.

How are you coming along with A Book of American Martyrs?

>168 wandering_star: Glad you liked it. The book really is not quite like anything else.

>169 RidgewayGirl: I still have not picked it up since putting it down in November!

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

Anders' fantasy investigates the possibility of a war between science and magic, and finds that the question is not simple. What science, what magic?

As a young child, Patricia goes into the woods and learns she can speak and understand the language of birds. She is led to a great, magical tree where the Parliament of Birds meets, and given an important riddle. Laurence has parallel adventures in science; he invents a time machine that can jump him two seconds into the future, builds an AI in his bedroom closet, and runs off to meet some rocket scientists.

These two become friends later, in middle school, supporting one another against those cruel and uncomprehending toward difference: Bullies, impossible parents, secret assassins. Each eventually goes off to a secondary school suitable for their talent. As young adults they meet again. But can their relationship survive the conflict between magic and science over what to do about climatic and ecological crisis?

Laurence and his fellow scientists are building a wormhole generator that will allow some Earthlings to escape to a new planet - leaving most of us behind. Complete destruction of Earth may turn out to be the actual result. Patricia and her comrade magicians detest this plan, but their own solution promises to be even more terrible and inhuman. Like many a contemporary book, All the Birds in the Sky takes Earth's climate crisis as given, a background that informs everything, and Patricia and Laurence cannot escape it any more than we readers can. For sure, actual science can offer many more responses than Anders' science-fictional one; I don't know about magic.

As I write, this novel is on the 2017 Hugo Awards shortlist. While it's an engaging tale, I'm not sure I understand the level of enthusiasm readers have for it. Patricia and Laurence are characterized no better than most SFF book characters, and need to be better drawn to embody the conflict between their chosen affinities. Anders does do a good job of bringing moral complexity to the conflict between science and magic. There are lots of interesting koans/quips: "You know...no matter what you do, people are going to expect you to be someone you're not. But if you're clever and lucky and work your butt off, then you get to be surrounded by people who expect you to be the person you wish you were." Or: "We need people to have more empathy. The reason the Uncanny Valley exists is because humans created it to put other people into. It's how we justify killing each other." These go toward making the book and its characters comfortable to be with.

The novel has an open ending; maybe the story is finished, and maybe not.

Three and a half stars

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft

I read this H. P. Lovecraft novella to prepare to read The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, one of this year's Hugo Award-nominated novellas. The new book is a sequel of sorts to the old story.

Lovecraft's "dreamlands" can be reached by sufficiently strong dreamers, and are populated by humans, and all manner of monsters and gods. A dreamer can awaken back into our world - but the dreamlands are nonetheless a real place, where a dreamer can die. The protagonist wishes to enter a city he has discovered there:

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

The gods learn of his interest and forbid future ventures to this wondrous place. Carter decides to journey in dream to the great moutain Kadath, to plead with the gods dwelling there to allow him to enter the city.

This is the first Lovecraft story I've read that showcases him as a writer of weird fiction, not just horror. The quest leads though endless horrors, but where the narrator of, say, At the Mountains of Madness would curl into a whimpering ball, Carter is equal for the most part to what he encounters. We get a travelogue of eerie, fearsome, and strange places.

A travelogue written in vivid, baroque prose. Reading this story is like eating a meal made up entirely of rich desserts; the experience cloys quickly, and the story felt much longer than its 43,000 words. And the imagery is often much less convincing than the opening passage quoted above. For example:

The gugs, hairy and gigantic, once reared stone circles in that wood and made strange sacrifices to the Other Gods and the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, until one night an abomination of theirs reached the ears of earth’s gods and they were banished to caverns below. Only a great trap-door of stone with an iron ring connects the abyss of the earth-ghouls with the enchanted wood, and this the gugs are afraid to open because of a curse. That a mortal dreamer could traverse their cavern realm and leave by that door is inconceivable; for mortal dreamers were their former food, and they have legends of the toothsomeness of such dreamers even though banishment has restricted their diet to the ghasts, those repulsive beings which die in the light, and which live in the vaults of Zin and leap on long hind legs like kangaroos.

I started giggling at "the vaults of Zin," but can certainly see laughing right at the beginning of the paragraph. The ear is paramount for this sort of prose.

Lovecraft's stories are foundational for modern weird fiction, but foundations are often best kept out of sight.

The story can be read free online.

Three stars

Lovecraft's stories are foundational for modern weird fiction, but foundations are often best kept out of sight.

ha! Great observation. True for so many things...

>172 dukedom_enough: - I read this when it was on the Tournament of Books short-list for this year. I was less than impressed for a book on an award list. I enjoyed the first part when they were misfits at school, but l lost interest when they became adults. I notice that she usually writes short stories and novellas, so maybe it's just those first novel woes.

>174 LolaWalser:

We're advised to read outside our comfort zones, but not all directions out from those zones are equal. Scholars of SFF should read Lovecraft, but I see no reason for a casual or new reader to bother. Lovecraft's innovations have been assimilated by the field and are available elsewhere.

I think that's a supporting point for your "would you give this book to a child?" thread. Why give these books to kids when there're better, more relevant ones at hand?

>175 dudes22:

Interesting. I had the opposite switch - liked the adult segments better. I want to explore this further - the book just won the Nebula, and I think I must be missing something.

>176 dukedom_enough:

That's just the thing I was hoping that thread would help illuminate--how much of that stuff stopped being an automatic easy "give" and became more of a museum piece, lumbered with need of context, commentary etc.