RidgewayGirl Reads in 2016 -- Part One

Another year of Club Read - what a good thing that is! I'm looking forward to following the various threads, which will heavily influence my reading - and always for the better.

Still, I do have a few reading goals. Last year, I worked on reading more books by women, and would like to continue that. It's been rewarding.

And I'd like to broaden my reading into the wider world. I'd like to restrict my British and American titles to an adequate 60%, with the rest taking a look at authors from the rest of the world. Last year, 77% of my reading came from those two countries, so a small decrease should not be difficult. And as for my American and British reading, I'd like that to include a greater diversity of voices. Fewer comfortable white men (don't worry! They will still be generously represented!) and more authors writing from different viewpoints. There are some good books being published and I don't want to miss them.

Last year, I posted sexist advertisements. I was trying to come up with a new idea, but it seems that Madison Avenue is willing to continue to supply me with pictures, so who am I to disagree?



This was from the same company that tried to sell us lady pens, which leads to the question as to whether I can develop the man-brain if I'm using a delicate writing instrument.

I generally also write about my art museum excursions. I'd like to be a little more consequent about writing my impressions down. Feel free to skip these, but there are pictures.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

First Quarter Reading

January
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith
How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz

February
The Whites by Richard Price
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Pedantic Lists

Books Read By Year of Publication

2011 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
2013 A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
2014 The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
2015 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard
Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones
How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
The Whites by Richard White
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith

Books Read, Arranged by Nationality of Author

Afghanistan
Qais Akbar Omar (A Fort of Nine Towers)

Australia
Gail Jones (A Guide to Berlin)

Britain
Michel Faber (The Book of Strange New Things)
Alexander McCall Smith (The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine)

Canada
Alison Matthews David (Fashion Victims)

Germany
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop (originally titled: Das Lavendelzimmer))

Ireland
Marian Keyes (The Woman Who Stole My Life)

Jamaica
Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings)

Japan
Marie Kondo (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up)

Norway
Åsne Seierstad (One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway)

United States
Paul Beatty (The Sellout)
Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me)
Angela Flournoy (The Turner House)
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
Lisa Lutz (How to Start a Fire)
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer)
Richard Price (The Whites)
Jim Shepard (The Book of Aron)
Karin Slaughter (Pretty Girls)

Who Doesn't Love a Map?

Nationalities of Authors



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

This is just a visual to encourage me to choose authors of diverse nationalities. Also, it is a map.

Another Pedantic List

Where the Books Are Set
Thanks to Joyce (Nickelini), I have finally found another list to compile. As she pointed out, the author's nationality is not necessarily where they have set their novel. For now, I'm omitting or including books set in multiple locations as I see fit.

Afghanistan
A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar

Botswana
The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith

Britain
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

France
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Germany
A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones

Ireland
The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes

Jamaica
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

Norway
One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad

Poland
The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

USA
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz
Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter (Georgia)
The Sellout by Paul Beatty (California)
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (California)
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy (Michigan)
The Whites by Richard Price (New York)

Vietnam
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

I love your lists, Kay. I think it was from you that I stole the idea of noting the year of original publication. It gave me some new insight into what I enjoy. I look forward to following your reading. I also tried to increase the percentage of books by women. I went from 51% in 2014 to 56% in 2015, so I did succeed with that goal. :).

I see several books that also sit on my shelf waiting for me to get to them. I'm especially interested in the Seierstad. I'll be interested in seeing what you make of it.

Here's to a good reading year.

Thanks, Colleen. 2015 was the first year I tracked the year of publication. I discovered how very much I like my books read while they are still fresh. There's something about reading a book while the conversation is still going on. Of course, waiting a while can weed out those books that don't have staying power.

Teresa, the Seierstad is really interesting so far. I enjoy her writing and she seems to be giving this the same perceptive eye she's given her other subjects. Difficult subject, though.

Loving the pedantic lists, especially the space for a yet to be determined pedantic list.
Year of publication is an interesting one, I wonder about going and filling in some gaps. I'm afraid I'm one of those bad people who use the "publication date" field to log date first published, rather than edition publication.

Of your recently acquired, I loved (mild understatement) Cloud Atlas. It went straight onto my desert island book list.

What, no outrageous ads on top? But they worked like caffeine! :)

I know! I'm trying to think of something (un)suitable.

Dropping my star - looking forward to your reads this year.

Looking forward to your reviews. Happy New Year!

Looking forward to your reading and your ads (no pressure).

Also looking forward to seeing your reviews again!

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George reminded me of exactly why I don't like books that are self-consciously charming and heart-warming. Had I not felt obligated to read this book for a book club meeting, I would have happily abandoned it somewhere in the middle of the first chapter.

"I've got about thirty thousand stories in my head, which isn't very many, you know, given that there are over a million titles available in France alone. I've got the most useful eight thousand works here, as a first-aid kit, but I also compile courses of treatment. I prepare a medicine made of letters: a cookbook with recipes that read like a wonderful family Sunday. A novel whose hero resembles the reader; poetry to make tears flow that would otherwise be poisonous if swallowed. I listen with..."

Perdu pointed to his solar plexus.

"And I listen to this too." He rubbed the back of his head.

"And to this." Now he pointed to the soft spot above his upper lip. "If it tingles here..."

The aptly named Monsieur Perdu (and if you think the reader will not be bludgeoned over the head, repeatedly, with the aptness of this name, you've got another thing coming) owns a longboat docked near the Place de la Concorde in Paris. It's called "The Literary Apothecary" and he, with his ability to see instantly which book a customer should read, is the bookseller. He lives in a charming building based on the one in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, with it's eccentric inhabitants and irascible concierge. As he walks between his apartment and his longboat, neighbors lean from their windows and request books, and he passes along perfect advice to the grocer as he walks by. Surprisingly, no one bursts into song, but maybe this is being saved for the movie version. But despite his Hollywood sound stage surroundings, Monsieur Perdu is harboring a deep and terrible grief. His lover left him, leaving nothing but a letter behind. He can't bear to be touched. Everyday is an effort. He is bereft. When she first left, he walled up her favorite room in his apartment (luckily, she was not fond of the bathroom or kitchen), and the unopened letter he put in a drawer, along with the corkscrew she had stolen for him (so poignant!) and painted the drawer shut. Then he smashed up most of his possessions, as one does. She left twenty years ago, and his pain is just as deep and, well, painful as it was the day after she left. Because Monsieur is a man of Very Deep Feels.

When a beautiful woman, with a tragic history (but of course) moves into the building, he gives her the table, along with a stack of the books he could tell she needed to read, although they only spoke briefly through a closed door. Such are the powers of Monsieur Perdu, they were exactly the right books! She finds the letter, and invites him to dinner, and he reads the letter at long last, only to find that it wasn't of the Dear John variety. Overcome with many new feels, Monsieur Perdu undertakes an impetuous journey, joined along the way by colorful characters as well as a pair of extra adorable cats. The Little Paris Bookshop is the story of that charming and poignant journey, and of the emotional journey Monsieur Perdu must take to find himself and heal his heart. Also, there are some recipes.

I cannot fully express how much I disliked this book. Not without employing offensive language and smashing up a room of my own.

I was going to say that "charming" and "heart-warming" are probably my two least favorite descriptions of a book, but then I got to "Also, there are some recipes." I am curious, though, about how the book club meeting is going to go.

>20 RidgewayGirl: I think you should be given some sort of award for getting past that first paragraph you quoted. I could barely bring myself to read your review, so ghastly was the plot. Truly you deserve a good read now (and perhaps a different book club?)

Sounds like something my book club would like! (have to keep it away from them!)
I share your pain at reading bad books for book club meetings.

I'm curious, too, ursula. A vocal minority wants us to read books like this, but the other time they chose a book like this, I simply avoided the book and then skipped that meeting. This time, the library had the ebook and my turn to read it sadly came before the scheduled meeting. The library hold list for this book is long.

Oandthegang, after the first meeting I decided that I would regard the book club as a nice lunch/dinner with interesting women, in which a book would briefly be mentioned. It has saved me a lot of frustration to regard it as such.

Cyril, I guess it's good to read outside of what one ordinarily would? It certainly has made me grateful for this place. Another annoying thing is the unoriginality of the books Monsieur Perdu recommends. They were all pretty much bestsellers of one sort or another.

I laughed and nodded the whole time I was reading your review. Like you, I enjoy getting together for dinner with the women in my book group, but sometimes wish the price wasn't the hours spent reading a book I don't like and would never have opened on my own. (Not that they're all clunkers.)

I think this is why I never joined a book club.

>20 RidgewayGirl: Oh dear, what a way to start the reading year! How handy that while smashing up his possessions he left the table alone...

Jane, I thought it would be a good idea, having moved to a new place. And it has been - I've gotten to know a few interesting women and it's made school events a lot friendlier. But I'll be avoiding them in the future, unless they plan to read books that have more substance to them.

Meredith, my reading can only improve. The other books I'm currently reading are much better. It has felt odd, though, to be reading about a mass murderer's childhood as a welcome break. I'm not sure what that says about me. Probably makes everyone here happy they know me only in the virtual sense.

Yes, he carefully walled the table into the Forbidden Room of Poignant Memories before going on his rampage.

Oh, a much needed laugh! Thanks!

Books trying hard to be charming are destined to be just the opposite.

They might make good fodder for an anti-book book club. "The book club for people who want to jeer and sneer"! Oh, no...! That sounds... like a RECIPE for a CHARMING, WHIMSICAL story about a curmudgeon who undertook an INNER JOURNEY and GOT IN TOUCH with his/her BETTER NATURE.

I don't understand the trope of the unread letter, which I encountered more than once last year. Why would you not read the letter, except for Plot Reasons?

>30 cabegley:

Even worse--why would you then keep it?!

I'm picturing Monsieur Perdu as a headless chicken.

I can only echo >21 ursula:!

>20 RidgewayGirl: My goodness that sounds absolutely dreadful. Your review gave me a good laugh!

>20 RidgewayGirl: oh dear me! That's not a great start. At least you know your reading year will get better.
I run a book club, but I get to vet the titles. We select the books by random pick from a hat - and no-one gets to see what was suggested that does not make it into the hat...

>34 Helenliz: Sneaky! What a great way of ditching bad books without offending anyone!

Lola and Suzie, I'm glad I made you laugh. Much of my motivation for finishing the book (I'm pretty sure that I could make it through the book club meeting with a bit of sleight of hand) was the promise of writing a review.

Chris, you have just nudged the tip of the iceberg of the plot-devices-that-made-no-sense. This includes the deep need to leave right away for the south of France (The letter reveals that she had but a few months to live-twenty years ago- and so he must rush to her gravestone IMMEDIATELY) without even taking the time to pack a suitcase, and so he decides to travel by longboat, with many side trips. Or his falling in love FOREVER with a woman he had dinner with once who lives in his building and so having to go on a long trip without telling anyone, as one does. Really, the inexplicable actions of various characters are legion.

Rebecca, why is it that the inclusion of recipes makes a book all that less attractive?

Helen, our books are chosen by popular decision. When I brought a few for consideration, the woman who likes heart-warming books loudly declared them all too depressing-looking to consider. I didn't think they looked all that dire, but in comparison to The Little Paris Bookshop, she did have a point.

>20 RidgewayGirl: I haven't quite finished it and I have not felt the urge to smash anything as of yet ..... I do try and read it on an empty stomach, though. ;)

avidmom, you are clearly a kinder person than myself.

>36 RidgewayGirl: It was the "charming" and "heart-warming" parts that I was echoing. I once had a bad experience with a book that had recipes in it, in that I didn't like -- or even finish -- the book, but I don't think recipes would make or break a book for me.

>39 rebeccanyc: RE: books with recipes. Well, I don't usually care one way or another 'bout recipes in a book (unless it's a cookbook, of course) but I am very grateful to Fannie Flagg's for including "Neighbor Dorothy's Heavenly Caramel Cake" recipe in Can't Wait To Get To Heaven.

Of course, I liked the book too.

>20 RidgewayGirl: I felt much they same way about The Elegance of the Hedgehog

O.K.- this discussion leads me to remember probably one of the worst books that I ever read( forgot the name of the author )The main female character would hide her small cat in her bra and go out like that!! ( shudder to think about it)
Um - my book club's next read is The Children Act.-there might be hope for the group.

>20 RidgewayGirl: Sorry about that harrowing experience, but I'm glad you lived through it so that we could read your wonderful review!

At least I'm relieved that the author is not French, but why do all these heartwarming stories have to happen in Paris? I haven't read L'élégance du hérisson but I have my suspicions about it. I did read Ensemble, c'est tout which was probably not as bad as The Little Paris Bookshop (I did manage to finish it) but was rather too heartwarming for my taste.

Bas, the author of The Little Paris Bookshop was obviously highly influenced by The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but wanted more feelings.

Cyrel, that's a decent book group choice. Plenty to talk about, a bit of substance. Our next book is also not bad (the person who likes to dismiss books as being to similar to what she had to read for her GCSEs wasn't there) -- A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar.

Florence, it's not really Paris, but an imaginary version. I also thought that Hunting and Gathering was too twee for me. I liked The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but I can see how it plays into this idea of the imaginary Paris of accordion music, striped tunics and falling in love.

And I've decided to stick with the sexist ad theme of last year for my thread topper. It's clear that it's still be produced in adequate quantities.

>1 RidgewayGirl: I can't believe that is an ad from 2015. What were they thinking?

>41 baswood: I hated The Elegance of the Hedgehog so much I couldn't get past the first 25 or so pages!

Hello >1 RidgewayGirl:
I do like your review of your first book .... :)
It feels good to read some honesty and straightforward comments.

If you are in search for women authors, not from the UK or the US, you should look for books of Juli Zeh, more in particular In Free Fall (US title) / Dark Matter (UK title). Don't let the cover writing "psychological triller" put you off. It is an intriguing story on how a mind can be influenced.
Or you could try Decompression, her latest book.
Both are very good. Although she is white :)
My best wishes for 2016 and good luck with the reading.
Lunarreader

Chiming in to hope you get some better reading soon. Also that ad is truly sickening. I mean it's not like violence against women was a big ticket news item in 2015, huh?

Ouch. Great review, though. I see that The Little Paris Bookshop made the Best Seller List of The New York Times this summer, as I expected. I get the NYT, but I no longer look at those lists.

That Bloomingdale's ad is unbelievably inappropriate, especially in 2015.

Colleen, 2015! Betcha they'll be a few released this year, too.

Rebecca, if you didn't like The Elegance of the Hedgehog you will certainly not enjoy The Little Paris Bookshop.

Thank, Luna! I'll look for those. Actually, seeing "psychological thriller" written on the cover of a book would make me want to read it more.

And Jane, it was Bloomingdales. Not a shop that caters to the needs of the knuckle-dragging set.

Darryl, the bestseller lists are okay, but the books I'm interested in are the ones being reviewed. And the non-fiction lists can hold a few books worth reading, once you've eliminated the political tracts and the improve-your-life type books.

One would not necessarily think that a book with a skeleton on its front cover would be a lot of fun to read, especially when it's written by a professor and meant to accompany a museum exhibit that I did not see, but Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present is highly entertaining. Alison Matthews David looks at how articles of clothing have posed serious health risks to both the workers making the clothes and the wearers themselves. Focusing on Western Europe between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, this book looked at everything from disease to poison to flammability.

What made this book so fun was Matthews David's enthusiasm for everything related to the subject. So she not only discusses the health dangers in the mercury used in hat-making to the workers employed to make them, but she also goes into detail about what happens in mercury poisoning, giving detailed historical accounts of specific victims and she fully explains how hats were made, and why mercury was needed. And it's lavishly illustrated, with an odd combination of illustrations of the diseased victims, as well as gorgeous pictures of the deadly clothing.



My favorite chapter was the one on how arsenic was used to make a brilliant green pigment that was both cheap and lasting. It would have been a delight to find this brilliant shade in a world where clothing, especially for the working classes, was dull and tended to fade. Even reading about what it did to the wearers did not subdue my love for this shade. I would have been covered in boils, but looking fabulous, was the lesson I learned from this book.

As today, people who made the clothes were injured and died at a much higher rate than the more affluent people wearing the clothes. While hatters used their entire unprotected forearms to spread mercury over the felt, the wearers would be protected by the hat's lining, making the hat almost safe, until the wearer sweated or was caught in a downpour. The mercury-laden rabbit fur (which was used to make men's hats once beaver fur had grown too expensive due to over-hunting) would fly through the air of the workshops and would be carried home on workers' clothing. Arsenic used to dye clothing was used in large quantities, polluting well water for those living near workshops. As it was a pigment, and not a dye, it rubbed off of the fabric and was an especially hazard for the servants who cared for the clothing.



And as today, the female wearers of dangerous clothing were deemed as morally deficient, choosing to wear, for example, crinolines (hoop skirts) despite the fire hazard they created. The combination of layers of light fabrics with layers of air created a situation where a single spark could create a sizable fire in just a few seconds. But with every single other woman wearing a crinoline, there was simply no other option.

And new inventions that saved endangered animals were not without their own high cost. Celluloid was developed as elephant ivory and turtleshell was becoming difficult to find, and seemed the ideal solution. Beautiful combs, as well as collars that were easy to keep clean seemed to be without drawback, but those first early plastics were reactive to heat, burning quickly not only when exposed to flame, but when temperatures were as low as what could easily be found sitting near a fireplace. And the factories regularly and disastrously burned.

This book was a wonderful education in how clothing was once made. Fashion Victims combines lavish photography of truly beautiful items with the unvarnished truth about the true cost of those very items, to both the producers and the wearers.

I blow hot and cold about the world of fashion. I love the beauty that it can sometimes conjure up; how boring it would be without it and yet the industry itself strikes me as rampant consumerism with all the faults that that entails.

Great review of Fashion victims: The Dangers of Dress past and Present

>36 RidgewayGirl: For my part, the comment about the recipes really just has to do with feeling like it's the ultimate in pandering - it couldn't be more clearly marketed at a certain type of woman if it included jewelry.

>51 RidgewayGirl: Fashion Victims sounds like a really interesting book. And I love both the dress and the shoes.

Bas, I'm not a big fashion fan. I'd rather buy books. But I went to a retrospective of Jean Paul Gaultier's work in the fall and the amount of craftsmanship and beauty of the final objects was remarkable. It was worthy of being set in an art gallery, as it is art. The historical clothing one finds in museums is similar - impressive creations beautifully executed. I could spend hours looking at it - while wearing my jeans and t-shirt, of course.

Exactly, ursula. Who doesn't like a new recipe? But included in fiction it feels like manipulation.

Wonderful review of Fashion Victims. I think Louisa May Alcott turned me off fashion when in Eight Cousins Rose's uncle refused to let her wear a corset because it would hinder her breathing.

It's rare that I get hit with a book bullet that makes me want to own a book, as well as read it, but Fashion Victims got me. Great review.

>54 RidgewayGirl: " I could spend hours looking at it - while wearing my jeans and t-shirt, of course." You've captured my feelings about fashion perfectly!

It doesn't help with that Bloomingdales ad that every time it catches my eye I think it's a still from Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" video.

Fashion Victims sounds great.
The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto had an exhibit ( last year?) that was on the same topic.

>51 RidgewayGirl:

Fascinating stuff. Great review :)

>20 RidgewayGirl: This is just so awesome. Sometimes it's worth it to read a crap book when you know you can have fun trashing it in a review.

"Charming" is a good thing in my book world, but "trying to be charming" is not!

>51 RidgewayGirl: - I read a long article on this last year, and printed it out and saved it to my files because it's so interesting. I wonder if it was written by the same person. I'm adding this to my wishlist.

>48 janemarieprice: >49 kidzdoc: Not only is the ad "sickening" and "unbelievably inappropriate," but it's ungrammatical too!

Bas pretty much sums up my thoughts on the fashion world. I do understand that some approach is as an art form, though. Great review of Fashion Victims.

>62 rebeccanyc: I wondered if the "they're" was intentional to take the edge off of saying that this guy is spiking his female friend's drink or if it was just ignorance!

Great review of Fashion Victims, Kay. I'd be interested in seeing that exhibition, from a medical more than a fashion standpoint.

>62 rebeccanyc:, >64 japaul22: -- I didn't read this as a grammatical error, exactly (although as presented it is). I read it as "this guy does this to several of his female friends, but only one at a time." So the meaning is plural, but the picture just captures one instance. Which makes it super-creepy to me.

ETA: just looked again -- they use "friend's," not "friends' " so yes, they've made an error. I still read it as him doing it whenever he thinks he can get away with it.

I read the "they're" in the ad as an attempt at inclusivity - using it because they wouldn't want any LGBT sexual predators to feel left out.

Darryl, the medical stuff was fascinating. The first people to notice the widespread effects of various chemicals were the doctors who worked in working class neighborhoods, or in the area hospitals. They did their best to get certain practices stopped, but when the health of the underclass came up against profits, you can guess which won. And the workers knew! But they had to feed their families for as long as they could. A few even committed suicide using their working materials. They knew how painful and debilitating their death would be.

Incidentally, the corresponding museum exhibition in Toronto will be open until June.

http://www.batashoemuseum.ca/fashion-victims/

For me "they" meant that the story could go both ways: he spikes her drink or she spikes his drink. Although the photo is rather less ambiguous I must say.

Yes, I think the verbal message is meant to be read as universal (inviting anyone to do it to anyone else), only they chose, predictably one might say, to illustrate it with a man doing it to a woman.

But what an ad for friendship! With friends like that...

Yes, I thought the 'they' was an awkward attempt to avoid saying either 'his' or 'her'. It seems curious to be concerned about being universal whilst overlooking the moral issue of spiking someone's drink.

>51 RidgewayGirl: Fashion Victims sounds really interesting. Perhaps a reward for myself if I'm disciplined with this year's reading. I liked the slightly Charles Addams sounding " ... this book looked at everything from disease to poison to flammability. What made this book so fun was .. "

But it's still wrong (speaking as an editor)!

>71 rebeccanyc: Indeed

Hello, I hope you'll have a rich and happy reading year!
I love the map. I'll try it : I think I read too many American and English books!

>71 rebeccanyc:, >72 Nickelini:

Do you mean the disagreement between "your friend" and "they"? I thought it's becoming increasingly acceptable in English, as part of the move toward a more gender-neutral general expression. ("If your date arrives before you do, they will find the second keys...")

In German and Slavic languages it's always been common, albeit usually as the polite or subservient address.

It's five days into the new year, and your thread is up, running and so beautifully organised! I'm looking forward to your thoughts on Ferrante especially: everyone seems to have the Ferrante fever this year.

>74 LolaWalser:

"Spike your friend's eggnog when they're not looking."

Yes, singular-plural agreement. Huge faux pas in written English, but pretty much everyone speaks it, all the time. One of these days soon it the grammar mavens will be forced to crumble to popular usage. But for now, we expect a corporation such as Bloomingdales to observe correct written English. But really, the main point is the appalling message.

Personally, I'm actually read to throw in the towel on this particular one, but my professional life won't accept it yet.

"They" is accepted as a gender-neutral singular, for being inclusive and when gender is unknown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Acceptability_and_prescriptive_guida...

I wish we had something like that in French. A gender neutral pronoun I mean.

Well, it may be getting more acceptable, but it grates on me. Long ago, I was taught to use "he or she" -- of course, that wouldn't work well in an ad.

Banality of Book #1 counterbalanced by the fun of Fashion Victims. Enthusiasm for the topic is huge in non-fiction, innit. Sounds fascinating.

Re the former--does the person just sit down and say, oh I'm going to write a really really cute book set in Paris? Let me see, books, houseboat, recipes . . . ugh.

My daughter is a "they." Binary is how they refer to themselves, and it isn't about orientation but how one wishes to be regarded-- not gender bound. In other words they are making a separation between sexual preference and beinghood--your gender not mattering then your preference won't either-- or however one can express that. I think they are on the right track --but I find the plurality implied in 'they' unsettling. Being an "I" and a "they" is . . . jarring to my sensibilities. I find myself wondering if they wouldn't do better appropriating the now disused thee, thou etc. and making that a neutral singular pronoun. I haven't dared say a thing yet. They are kind to me as they are 19 and I am 61, they know that to some degree I am a hopeless case. Many parents get enraged about it, my excuse is merely that I can't remember to use it! (Keeping to myself my unsettled piece, for now.)

Back to add - I like it that you post these terrible ads and bring my attention to them. And I also love your pedantic lists. And I read far too much Anglo-origin language work. Last year might have been the worst ever since I usually read one or two novels en francais to keep that alive since I never get over there anymore. I think it's the concentration on sf and fantasy that has exacerbated a tendency that was already there. On the other hand I am gender-balanced, skewed a little even towards women, but that is on purpose, again, in the f and sf reading.

Blatant grammatical errors usually bother me, but here I think I was more taken with the theme of the ad. And I am so used to blogs and websites where the gender of the commenter is unknown and so "they" is used as a clumsy way of not assigning gender.

Thanks, Oandthegang. "Charles Addams sounding" is much kinder than pointing out how creepy my interests are!

Thanks, h-mb! I'm hoping it will remind me to at least look at books written by authors from different places.

Hi, sibyx. Yes to everything you said about assigning gender in communication. Since I'm not one of the people affected by how gender is used in communication, I just try to keep up and to listen to what those who are affected would like to be addressed. My name (Kay) is a masculine one in German, so I'm familiar with the annoyance of having to correct people's use of the masculine gender when referring to me. I've had to explain that, no, I was not attempting to use my husband's credit card, for example. Of course, the kids got a kick out of having gay parents - for a long stretch all correspondence from their school was addressed to "Mr and Mr Hardtmann."

And as for the pedantic lists - I kept track of the authors' nationalities for the first time last year and it became evident very quickly how I automatically choose British and American authors without even thinking about it.

>77 .Monkey.:

Yep, that's what I thought. I use it all the time but then it probably sounds less odd to me.

>76 Nickelini:, >79 rebeccanyc:

So sorry! ;)

>78 FlorenceArt:

The Swedes seem to have succeeded in introducing a neologistic neutral-gender pronoun (first proposed already in 1966--go Sweden!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)

>80 sibylline: Entertained by the idea of re-introducing 'thee-ing' and 'thou-ing', though its adoption as a modern third person reference would cause considerable confusion when reading or listening to the words being used in their original second person form* (I'm not a grammarian, so apologies in advance if I've made some frightful gaff here). I like the custom, which seems to be dying out in English but was common until recently, of referring to young children in the neuter. I know that 'child' is neuter in German. Also helps a bit to reduce the gender loading. Suggesting that your best friend's drink be spiked when it's not looking, however, would be very confusing (as well as inappropriate).

*Have just discovered that 'thee' is also an intransitive verb, "long obsolete exc. Scot." meaning 'thrive, prosper, grow, increase'. I shall now go off and boil my head.

>77 .Monkey.: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2007)'s take on it:

"NOTE: use of they... as a singular pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified sex has been recorded since LME but became more common in L20 as the traditional use of he to refer to a person of either sex came to be regarded as sexist. It is now generally accepted in contexts where it follows an indefinite pronoun such as anyone, no one, someone, or a person, but less widely accepted after a singular noun."

>82 RidgewayGirl: Love the German confusion!

This has been such an interesting thread.

That's all.

>67 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay. I would love to see that exhibition, but the chance of me going to Toronto between now and June is nearly zero. I'll keep an eye out for the book, though.

>84 Oandthegang: Glee! Really enjoyed this comment! Yes, I agree, really, that 2nd sing. archaic won't really work. Especially hard if anyone out there still uses it. My mother's family was old Quaker and there was much thee-ing and thou-ing in the previous generation. Our parents did not use it with us, just with the older folks.

When my grandmother was mad at my mother she would say, "Thee little YOU, thee!" Ah, the Quaker insult, how it smarts!

This book was well-written and deeply researched, but it was also a difficult book to read. Åsne Seierstad is known for her journalism in places like Chechnya and Afghanistan. In One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, she returns home to cover an event that has scarred Norway. On July 22, 2011, Breivik parked a van containing a bomb in the government district of Oslo, Norway. After detonating the bomb, which killed eight people, he then went to Utøya, a small island near Oslo where a group of teenagers in the youth wing of the Norwegian labor party were camping. He gained access to the island by posing as a policeman. Once there, he murdered 69 more people, mostly teenagers, and injured several more before he surrendered to the police.

Seierstad works her way chronologically through the story, so that the massacre occurs in a long, almost unreadable chapter in the center of the book. This chapter is unreadable because although Seierstad relays the events of the day in a dispassionate, journalistic fashion, she has also spent the first half of the book telling the reader not just about Anders Breivik's childhood and bizarre motivations, but also the childhood and aspirations of several of the teenagers camping on the Utøya. There was Simon Sæbø, a popular, warm-hearted boy who drew people to him. He had two close friends and they all went to the camp together. There was Bano Rashid, who had fled Iraq with her family and found asylum in Norway when she was seven. She'd saved her money to buy a Norwegian folk costume, which Norwegians wear on holidays or to weddings and similar events. She took her younger sister, Lara, with her to the camp and was over-joyed when Gro Harlem Brundtland, the ex-prime minister, borrowed her rain boots.

Breivik is depicted as an odd character. He's both narcissistic and insecure, grandiose and ingratiating. He moved from activity to activity, working hard at first, and then discarding it when he didn't reach the upper echelons of whatever he was doing quickly enough. He had a series of photographs of himself taken shortly before his murders so as to have flattering pictures to give the media. He was petulant when the trial and events surrounding his arrest didn't follow as he wanted, and he seems to have had a fantasy about his life after his arrest and conviction in which he would be viewed as a respected hero by the right-wing groups he was seeking to impress. He wrote a 1,500 page manifesto, but couldn't find a publisher. Seierstad explains that she wanted to interview Breivik, but he made her including an abridged version of his manifesto into her finished book as a requirement, so she has made do with his own writings, diary entries and interviews with people who knew him instead.

This is an important book and I'm glad I read it. But what turned Breivik from just another loudmouth on the internet into a terrorist is still unclear to me. What is clear is the impact of his actions on Norway and on the survivors of his rampage. It is to that country's credit that they have reacted not with fear or hate, but with a renewed determination that democracy, inclusion and equality are worthy national aspirations.

>88 RidgewayGirl: wow Kay. Fantastic review. I have no idea why this book has some draw but I have been wondering about ever since I saw you were reading it.

Great review of One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway but not something I will be reading.

A really, really thoughtful review. I hope that I get to this book later this year. It reminds me a some of Columbine, which I read year before last, except with that book you were left with a fairly thorough understanding of why things happened the way they did.

Excellent review of One of Us, Kay.

Interesting review, though I won't read the book. This week was the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and I've been avoiding documentaries on the subject all week. I wish I could say France's reaction was as admirable as Norway's, unfortunately I'm not so sure.

Daniel, it was a cataclysmic event for Norway and, to a lesser extent, Europe as a whole. We're so used to homegrown terrorists and guys shooting up places that we're becoming hardened to the whole thing.

Thanks, Bas and Darryl.

Thea, it did remind me of Columbine, with the depth of the reportage and how Seierstad wrote about the people most affected.

Sorry, Florence. Has it already been an entire year? It feels as though there is no longer any time to draw one's breath before the next horrific event occurs.

Fine review. Somewhere, probably The New Yorker, Knausgaard wrote a piece in which he puts out the idea that it is possible, nowadays, to live in your head entirely--make up a story as one might for a role playing game in which you are the sole heroic figure--in such a way that there is no corrective, nothing that would interrupt this fantasy. And with our modern means and access to transport, weapons, information, a single person lost in a fantasy (is it the same thing as madness or a new twist on grandiosity?) can wreak havoc. A very intriguing idea.

That's very interesting, sibyx. Breivik certainly filtered all his experiences in order for them to fit his political worldview, resulting in significant differences between what others remembered and what he did, although some of that seemed to be a need to always view his actions and experiences in the best possible light.

Fascinating review. Thanks.

>88 RidgewayGirl:

Thanks. I'd want to read that. I'm not sure there's always (or ever?) a complete answer to how such things happen if we wish to follow the chain of events all the way into someone's head. Especially if (I thought this was known?) it's the head of someone mentally disturbed, or, as they say nowadays, not "neurotypical".

My first Bowie album was Let's Dance. He'll be missed.



Caitlin Moran

Yes. Was stunned when I turned on BBC Radio 4 this morning to hear a compilation of his music, which, in the way of news programmes, could only mean one thing. They finished the programme with Bowie singing 'Heroes'.

>88 RidgewayGirl: This is an excellent review, but like baswood, I don't think I'll be reading this one.

>100 Oandthegang: I know, what you mean. I tuned in slightly after the headlines, so took me a while to catch up with reality.

>99 RidgewayGirl: So sad. What a shocker! We have his "Glass Spider Tour" concert on DVD. Looks like we'll be plugging that in soon. It occurred to me today that I have been listening to Bowie's music all my life!

So, so sad. I'm avoiding the news today.

Great review on the Norwegian massacre. Not sure I could read it, but enjoyed reading your summary.

Reva and Alison, I would not blame anyone for deciding not to read this book. Were I not so in awe of Åsne Seierstad, I would also have skipped this one. That said, I'm glad I did read it.

I do love that song, Oandthegang. He sang it during his famous concert near the Berlin Wall and the German media kept bringing it up yesterday.

Helen, avid, Alison, the first reports I saw were on twitter, wondering if it was all a hoax. Sadly, it was not the case. I spent some time yesterday thinking about how his music had formed such an important background to my teenage years.

The first half of Karin Slaughter's Pretty Girls was a tightly plotted crime novel up until halfway through, when something utterly implausible happened and switched the novel over to a thriller. So, while the first half had me reading about plausible characters - the carefully manicured, tennis-playing wife of a wealthy architect and her estranged sister, the second half had the feel of being tailor-made for a Hollywood blockbuster. I'm not complaining; this was a fun book to read, but what it gained in excitement, it lost in reliability.

Clare is the polished stay-at-home wife of a successful businessman. She busies herself with tennis and charity work until a moment of uncontrolled anger leads her to a stint of house-arrest. While celebrating her release, she and her husband are robbed, and in the ensuing melee, her husband is stabbed. Lydia is Clare's older sister. They lost contact as Lydia fell into drug addiction. She's pulled herself back together, has a teenage daughter, a moderately successful dog-grooming business and a fellow recovering addict as a boyfriend. When Clare's world falls apart, she calls Lydia, and together they negotiate the discovery that Clare's husband was someone very different than she'd thought he was.

Pretty Girls was a fun book and Karin Slaughter is good at creating vivid and believable characters. This was successful as a solid escapist read. The first half of the novel led me to expect there would be more substance to it, but it was still a reasonably enjoyable book.

>99 RidgewayGirl: love that Caitlin Moran snippet about Bowie. She's one clever writer.

And now Alan Rickman's gone, too.

Alison, she is clever. I gave my daughter a copy of How to Build a Girl, which my daughter accepted with some skepticism, and then two days later she'd finished it.

I know, O. My favorite movie of his is Truly, Madly, Deeply. Despite a mustache, he reaches peak Rickman in this movie. Also, it has Juliet Stevenson in it.

What a bad week for losing wonderful people. I adored Rickman. I'm always going on about it, but he read The Return of the Native and it is just sublime. I finished and just started all over again. I wish he had done more audiobooks, but he was a busy man.

>110 sibylline: I didn't know he'd done any books. I'll have to look out for that.

>110 sibylline:

That's the only audiobook I ever listened to (for my purposes that sort of thing just can't count as "read"), and I am not ashamed to admit I got it only because of THAT VOICE.

There was a man with a red face in it. No, green. Maybe blue. Anyway.

Marian Keyes is my go-to author for a solidly satisfying escapist read. And with The Woman Who Stole My Life, she did not disappoint. I spent one cold, rainy and windy day curled up on the sofa, entirely content to get nothing done. Keyes writes well, with a breezy style and an ear for dialogue. Her books are more substantive than the typical chick-lit novel, but her real talent is for creating engaging characters, from the protagonist to the most tertiary of characters.

The Woman Who Stole My Life was both fun and satisfying. Stella Sweeny has always done what's expected of her, content to let her self-absorbed husband and driven, outgoing sister hog the spotlight. She works hard, cares for her family and keeps the household running, content to allow those around her dictate the shape of her life. And then things come crashing down around her and she's forced to make decisions for herself.

This isn't great literature, or even award-nominated literature. Instead, it's that rarer thing - a novel to read for the pure pleasure of it, without being annoyed by an unlikely plot, cardboard characters or poor writing. I was neither challenged nor educated, but I was entertained.

>113 RidgewayGirl: I've seen Marian Keyes on various TV shows over the years, and she's very funny in person too - slightly nuts.

Alison, years ago, I heard her on a BBC Radio 4 show that had four authors read each others books and discuss them. She was on an episode with three men who had each written an important non-fiction book. And she more than held her own, and the show that had begun with a somewhat self-consciously erudite discussion about Important Things was, by the end, a lively chat about how much each man had loved her book, although a few complained about feeling too self-conscious about the cover to read it in public. She certainly disarms people.

>115 RidgewayGirl: That BBC show sounds like fun! I've only read one book by Keyes, Watermelon, and enjoyed it. I've been wondering if I should try another. She is certainly in my list of authors to consider for comfort reading.

In a few months, I'll be packing up (or watching strangers pack up) my household and shipping it back to the US. In the spirit of my mother's favorite saying, "three moves are as good as a fire," I got rid of a lot of stuff before we traded our large, closet-rich house for a smaller, closet-free house for three years. Now that the return is in sight, I thought it would be worthwhile to see if there are any further objects that can be gotten rid of, reasoning that once they are put away in those closets, I won't get around to it. To that end, I picked up a copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, hoping for inspiration and a few practical tips to speed up the process.

I didn't hate this book. By the end of the first chapter, I was pretty sure I would. Kondo is selling a complete transformation, and she promises that not only will you never have to tidy up again (she contradicts this later on), but that you will also probably lose weight. She insists that her program be followed through in its entirety and she praises minimalism to a degree I do not share. She writes with the sort of familiar, hectoring tone that felt very much like a fourteen year old girl writing a blog. Her focus is largely on adults living with their parents and young people in their first apartments.

She divides up possessions into five groups; clothing, papers, books, mementos, and everything else. Which makes her method - that of putting every single item you own in a single category in one big pile on the floor and discarding and putting things away from there - a bit unwieldy for that enormous, jumbled miscellaneous pile. I spent some time imagining what this enormous pile of kitchen items, toiletries, sports equipment, art supplies, tools and every other thing that isn't clothing, book, paper or souvenir would look like. I imagined my family negotiating this mountain of stuff for days (Kondo says the tidying process should take about six months), occasionally reaching in for shampoo or a plate. I decided not to subject any of us to that. I have enough trouble getting my son to use soap as it is.

I did like her method of folding, however, and her method of organizing clothing in a drawer. I did my dresser (although skipping socks and underwear, because that was never going to happen) and found that I have a lot more space, despite only purging a handful of items. It looks very tidy. Here's her folding method:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIjGlMD0Nz8

So I'm happy to have a new way to organize my t-shirts and sweaters. That's something. I'm not going to thank them for their service, however. Not even silently, which Kondo says is acceptable if one is too shy to speak to one's clothing aloud.

As for her comments about book ownership, I am just going to draw a discreet veil over that portion of the book and agree to disagree with her. Not everyone has to like owning a book. Or two.

I've heard a lot about this book and found most of what I heard annoying. I'm also not a hoarder though (except for books) so our house it fairly minimal for an American house anyway.

I use that folding method for my suitcase when we go on our month long tour for work (different hotel every night for 30 days!) but I never thought of applying it to my dressers. Maybe I will. But probably not.

>117 RidgewayGirl: I know that I need to 'let go' of a lot of my things, but this method sounds crazy. I like the shirt folding. I usually hang mine though. But, I'll need to remember for my suitcase.

Jennifer, I spent the first half of the book highly annoyed. It's written in the same paternalistic tone as What to Expect When You're Expecting, with the same odd combination of lack of reasons combined with micromanaging. Once I got over the tone, and the expectation that I will breathlessly follow every edict, I managed to pull out a few tips.

Colleen, I'm not going to do any more than fold my shirts differently. I could have pulled that off of YouTube, really.

>120 RidgewayGirl: ugh, hated What to Expect When You're Expecting!!

>121 japaul22: Me, too. So very much.

>117 RidgewayGirl: I'm not going to thank them for their service, however. Not even silently, which Kondo says is acceptable if one is too shy to speak to one's clothing aloud.

I hug the columns in my house while telling my house I love it; but then, I also pat my car's dashboard and tell it "you are a good car. i looove you." Sometimes, I thank my house and car, too. Huh. Who knew I was already following one of her strategies!

I'm known for being very well organized and tidy so I'm interested to see if Kondo can give me any useful advice. As I'm 15th in line at the library it will be a while before I find out.

I looked at the youtube video- sigh! I might try the system with my socks- I am envious of people who can take the time to fold everything!

That's not one I'm going to look out for. I always hated tidying my room, that's not really changed now I'm an adult with a house.

>117 RidgewayGirl: I'm an organization freak but this sounds like too much even for me. Besides this is obviously the best folding technique. (Though I do use something similar to hers for luggage and have a large armoire rather than dressers so vertical isn't really helping me.)

If Douglas Adams had lived a little later, I'm sure the declutterers would have been up there with the account executives and the telephone sanitisers on the passenger list of the "B" Ark...

lesmel, I'm very charmed by the image I now have in my mind, of you hugging the columns of your house when you get home.

Vivienne, it's not a book with lots of detail, with the exception of the folding.

Cyrel, I am not going to try that with my socks. But I won't deny that the other drawers all look very nice.

But, Helen, the promise is that if you follow her method you will never have to tidy ever again.

Jane, it had never occurred to me that there were a variety of folding techniques for t-shirts.

Mark, I wonder if there's a way to bring him back for just one last short story?

And I have finished A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. This was an immersive and terrifying book. It deserves every single award it has won, but I don't think that I will ever read it again. I will read James's other novels, but not soon.

Ah, I was hooked! Refolded all my t-shirts last night!
I have the Marlon James on my TBR pile

>129 RidgewayGirl: But, Helen, the promise is that if you follow her method you will never have to tidy ever again.
Sorry, my cynic circuits are kicking in.

There's something horribly addictive about watching her fold stuff. (and then there are all those other people demonstrating how to fold stuff). I have my doubts about the ability of the folded stuff to withstand morning ransacking. Someone gave me the book, but I didn't get very far with it. As you say, her tone is annoying and I found her obsessiveness disturbing. Throwing out her family's belongings? The shoeboxes?? The shoebox lids???

>132 Oandthegang: I think (haven't read the book yet) that's part of the point of the system. You fold and sort clothing in such a way that you don't need to ransack.

Hey, Kay, I see you are reading The Turner House and I'll be interested to hear what you have to say about it. I started it last year, but was having difficulty following it due to all the other things I was reading, so I set it aside. I mean to pick it up again, of course.

Diggory Venn is a reddleman; he travels the country supplying farmers with a red mineral called "reddle", a dialect term for red ochre, that farmers use to mark their sheep. Although his trade has stained him red from head to foot, underneath his devilish colouring he is a handsome, shrewd, well-meaning young man.

From the Return of the Native -

Hugely enjoying the folding, sorting, packing convo. I'm an average sort of person when it comes to stuff, do my best to NOT acquire things in the first place, but I live with someone who would, without me, possibly get himself in trouble. The "Re-Use" zone has helped him hugely, that he isn't just throwing things into landfills, as well as Craig's List and out local cyber "Front Porch Forum" where you can give notice of things to give away or sell very cheaply.

Marlon James's novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, was the book I kept running into last year. First it did well, and received accolades during The Morning News Tournament of Books, then it won the Man Booker Prize. In between those two events, it was the topic of many discussions and the receiver of many glowing reviews. It really didn't interest me, being described as being the complex story of an attempted assassination attempt on the Jamaican Reggae singer, Bob Marley, with the book being narrated by an uncountable number of characters and much of it in impenetrable dialect. It sounded like a book that was more appreciated than loved, and one that was fueled mostly by testosterone.

All of those things that made me not want to read A Brief History of Seven Killings are true, except that, after the first few chapters, the dialect was not so impenetrable as I'd feared. There are a lot of characters narrating a chaotic and wide-reaching plot, but they are each different from one another, and the cacophony of voices serves to create a clearer picture, rather than to confuse. It is a story set in a deeply misogynistic time and place, both in Jamaica in the 1970s and New York in the subsequent decades, but James has put as the novel's most well-rounded and empathetic character, a woman as counterpoint. The presence of Nina Burgess in the novel does not completely counter the sheer quantity of rape, abuse and dismissal perpetuated on any woman unfortunate enough to exist in this novel, but it does remind the reader that women existed as people even when the men running things didn't see them as such.

The novel follows a number of characters, as they negotiate life in West Kingston, and mostly in the slum called Copenhagen City. Marley, who is simply called the singer, is someone who can bridge the divide between the warring factions of the city, the two political parties whose conflict roams bloodily through the slums. He's a constant presence off-stage, as the various characters revolve around his presence, or absence. He's the never clearly seen center of the novel, giving it a structure and plot, so that what looks from the outside like chaos is really a carefully planned and executed look at Jamaican life during a tumultuous point in its past.

For me, this novel worked best when I finally stopped wanting to understand what every word meant and how each character fit into the story. Once I just let myself just read, it fell into place around me. I still don't know what "bombocloth" means. This is a brilliantly written book that deserves the accolades which it has received; it's a book which pulls none of its punches and smooths none of its rough edges for ease of consumption.

>136 RidgewayGirl: Nice review, Kay. I have been unsure about this book, but you have alleviated some of my concerns.

Cyrel, I am surprised to find out that I enjoy folding things.

Helen, I am equally cynical.

Oandthegang, I rolled my eyes quite a bit during this book, but lesmel is right, I can see everything at in the drawer at a glance, and pull it out without disturbing the other items.

Lois, I am enjoying The Turner House enormously.

>136 RidgewayGirl: I reacted the same to this book. Liked it a lot as well, although I didn't get all of it. I did miss some clues!

Great review of A Brief History of Seven Killings

Barbara, it worked for me once I'd stopped trying to understand every word and just allowed the story to flow. I'm sure I missed a lot of nuance as well.

Thanks, Bas.

>136 RidgewayGirl: on the wishlist!

I'll be very interested in finding out what you think of it, Colleen.

And I've put a new ad up. This one was displayed in honor of Woman's Day, which is a thing, apparently. The ad was taken down and apologies issued, but someone did think this was a good idea.

Someday, I hope to have a manbrain. Maybe if I stop using the special feminine pens that Bic sells.

Oogh, I'd say it seems a sure thing a manbrain came up with that ad, but internalized misogyny is a such a force. I'll have to imagine a woman in the ad dept did it as a sarcastic mock up after Lady Pens-gate that some higher up then took seriously.

>144 mabith:
It seems self-defeating: if you're acting like a boss, what would you need their product for? You'd have underlings to dictate your letters to, surely...

>136 RidgewayGirl:
Nice review of A brief history of seven killings! - it might be interesting to post something about it in the Reading Globally Caribbean thread as well, if you have the chance.

>143 RidgewayGirl:

March 8 is international Women's Day but I understand it's not popular--or known really--in the USA because of its damn commie origin and thrust for emancipation. American women have "Mother's day" and what else is needed? Surely not to honour non-mothers and other sluts. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day

>144 mabith:

I still first get the twinge of "is this for real, or satirical?" every time I see these things but so far, most are deadly serious.

I think the ad is real, but someone tweeted it sarcastically with that hashtag. At least that's what I prefer to think...

Meredith, I'd say that it would be fun to be a fly on the wall for that meeting, but it would just be really frustrating instead. Although it might be interesting to find out what it sounds like when a fly screams in rage.

Thanks, Mark, I will, although it's not quite up to the usual standards of the reviews posted over there.

Lola, according to the BBC article, this was an ad designed specifically to celebrate Woman's Day. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33893386

*dead now*

"Happy women's day--better think like a man!"

Once again Real Life 1, Satire 0.

Honestly, wtf was someone thinking.
I'm not sure I "get" woman's day. I find myself thinking what's the point. But then I don't really see the point of days. Today is Bubble wrap appreciation day.

Great review of A History of Seven Killings, Kay!

That Bic ad is an embarassment, especially since it's supposed to be for "Women's Day"(?!). Whoever approved it should be kicked out to the curb.

The Turner House, Angela Flournoy's debut novel, shares its bones with another competitor in this year's Tournament of Books. Like Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread, it's the story of adult children coming together to determine the fate of the family home. Francis and Viola Turner came to Detroit from Arkansas and worked hard to provide for their family, eventually managing to buy a house in a solid neighborhood, despite housing restrictions placed on African American buyers. They raised their thirteen children in that house, from the oldest son, Cha-Cha, who now has Viola living with him and his wife, to Lelah, the youngest, who sees her life derailed by her gambling.

This isn't a loud book, but it is a vivid one. This is a book about Detroit, about what it was like to be the son of an Arkansan sharecropper newly arrived and looking to find work, about living in a Detroit neighborhood when it was slowly sinking, and what it's like to have a home surrounded by vacant lots and uninhabited houses. Some of the Turner children left Detroit for easier places to make a life, but others stayed, moving to the suburbs or stuck where they were. Flournoy writes like a much more experienced author, and her characters are all complex and fascinating. She has the talent to give even the tertiary characters a real presence. I enjoyed my time with the Turner family enormously and I look forward with anticipation to Flournoy's next novel.

Just catching here on your truly excellent reviews. I've been considering the Marlon James for a bit and you've helped "seal the deal." Good luck with your upcoming move.

Nice review of The Turner House, Kay. I'll add this to my wish list.

>151 RidgewayGirl: The Turner House sounds excellent, Kay. I'll try to get to it soon.

That ad is ridiculous. I would like to know who they think it appeals to.

>149 Helenliz: And apparently today is Spouse's Day, although I thought that was called "anniversary."

>151 RidgewayGirl: Sounds interesting. Might keep an eye out for this.

I think that Alexander McCall Smith is getting a little tired of writing The Number One Ladies Detective Agency books, because The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine felt both tired and stale. In this installation, Mma Ramotswe takes a vacation, forced into it unwillingly by Mma Makutsi and Mr. JLB Maketoni. The mystery is so slight, it doesn't show up until halfway through, and could have been solved by a simple conversation between two characters who frequently discuss things. I will not give away whether or not Mma Ramotswe was able to get to the bottom of it.

The thing that made this series such pleasant reading for me has to do with the basic good nature and empathetic dispositions of all of the characters, especially Mma Ramotswe. This book largely follows her thinking things to herself, most of which is recycled from previous books. A few of her less sympathetic musings seem more in keeping with the author's experiences than Mma Ramotswe, and in this book the references to her traditional build felt less good natured than usual. I disapprove of this new tendency for her to subdue bad characters by sitting on them.

I hope this installation is merely a hiccup in what has been a fine and enjoyable series of light mystery novels.

Also adding The Turner House to my wish list. Enjoying your reviews as always!

How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz just hit me in the sweet spot. I enjoyed every minute spent with this fantastic novel. It is, at its essence, a character study of three women and their friendship. Kate and Anna meet when they are assigned to share a dorm room. Despite their differences, or maybe because of them, they become best friends. Anna's a daredevil, constantly pushing the envelope and coming up with new ways to have fun. Kate lives inside her own head. One night, leaving a party, they find another student passed out on the lawn, and drag her back to the dorm with them. George is an athletic outdoors person with horrible taste in boyfriends (and later husbands).

For the first several chapters, the book reads as though Lutz had thrown all of the pages into the air and reassembled the book at random, but as the story continues, the novel comes into focus like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. I appreciated how Lutz crafted this story - the three women don't always get along, but they never cease being supportive of one another.

Had to wl the Turner book!

I haven't read the two most recent No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books, and I guess haven't felt much need to. Perhaps Smith just stopped being able to think of mysteries/crimes. I wonder how the second or third book in the series compares to the more recent ones in that sense.

How to Start a Fire sounds like one for the to-read list.

>151 RidgewayGirl: Terrific review! I'll have to get back to the book and finish it.

>156 RidgewayGirl: I just started that one today and it didn't me hook me the way the other ones have but I just blamed it on my at-the-moment very short attention span.

>158 RidgewayGirl: That sounds like a good one.

sibyx, The Turner House is excellent. Flournoy is a talented writer.

Meredith, the mysteries were never that important, but it was an after-thought this time around, and I thought the book suffered for not having that scaffolding to support it. Instead it's based on Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi not speaking to each other and resenting each other instead.

And I liked How to Start a Fire very much.

Lois, I would like to hear what you think about it when you do get back to it.

avidmom, I look forward to finding out what you think about it. You may love it and convince me that I'm just being more cranky than usual.

The Whites, which was written by Richard Price under the name of Harry Brandt (no reason that I could find, but it is odd, given that both names appear on the cover), is the story of a night watch detective who used to be part of a group of young uniformed officers who banded together and called themselves the Wild Geese. Time has since scattered them, but they remain connected, meeting for dinner now and again to discuss their White Whales - the ones that got away and that they'd still like to arrest. Each has one. Billy's is the man he's convinced shot three women to death. Now those Whites are being knocked off, one by one.

This is a solid, gritty crime novel. The cops are bad, but the bad guys are worse and Billy is just trying to do his job and take care of his family. He sees police break the rules or get a little rough all the time, and does so himself, but he tries to keep a lid on the worst of it. He sees himself as a good cop, but when it comes down to supporting his friends or doing the right thing, it's not so clear after all.

The Whites is a busy novel. Along with the question of who is killing the Whites, each of the former Wild Geese are involved in problems of their own. Billy is consumed with finding out who is threatening his family and in protecting them, as the threats, beginning with a red handprint on his son's jacket, escalate rapidly. The reader is also privy to the story from the point of view of the man making the threats.

All in all, The Whites was a decent crime novel. It stayed true to the usual format and packed in a lot of plot threads. It's not ground-breaking, but that's not the purpose of genre fiction. If you like your crime novels violent, gritty and full of moral ambiguity, you will probably enjoy The Whites.

Nice review of The Whites. Sounds like something I might want to read.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff tells the story of a marriage, first from Lotto's viewpoint, then from Mathilde's. Lotto is the golden boy; wealthy, charismatic, talented and alluring. He sees Mathilde at a college party and his previous life as a Lothario is over. He's smitten. Within two weeks, they're married. His mother cuts them off, but they are happy. He struggles to find success as an actor, but is a spectacular hit as a playwright. And all through his charmed life, his wife manages everything for him. He adores her, but he really knows very little about her. Lotto is taken in by his own charm, which leaves no room for anyone else in his life to be anything but a secondary character. Then the viewpoint shifts to Mathilde, and her story is finally told.

This is a very well done novel. The writing is elaborate, and in keeping with Lotto's expansive personality. Groff really does make him a believable character, but also a fantastic, almost mythical one. People are drawn to him, and he is open and focused on them as long as they stay in his field of view. He's interested in what interests him, which leads to him hurting people, not deliberately, but with shocking carelessness.

>166 RidgewayGirl: I'm still waiting for a library loan of this one. I'm looking forward to it.

Qais Akbar Omar's tale of growing up in Afghanistan isn't the best written memoir I've read, but it had me engrossed throughout. Omar grew up in Kabul under the Soviet occupation. His father was a physics teacher at a high school and a partner in an Afghan carpet company. His mother worked in the bank. He lived with his family in his grandfather's compound; a large courtyard encompassing an apple orchard surrounded by the houses of the members of his extended family. His companions were his twenty-five cousins. Their comfortable life was blown apart when the Soviets withdrew, leaving the Mujahedin who had defeated them to splinter into factions and begin fighting each other. Their home is in a neighborhood regularly hit by missiles and bullets, and they live pinned in place until a temporary cease-fire allows them to escape across town, to the home of his father's business partner, once known as A Fort of Nine Towers, although only one tower now remains.

But when the fighting targets their new refuge, Omar and his family flee to Mazar-e-Sharif, and when the war follows, they travel around Afghanistan, modern nomads looking for shelter. They spend a winter in the caves carved into the cliffs behind the Buddha statues of Bamyan, another season with the nomadic Kuchis, another with strangers who generously take them in, before they return to Kabul, only for the Taliban to arrive, ending the constant street battles, but bringing a new and insidious danger.

A Fort of Nine Towers is a story of hope and resilience. Despite the horrific things that happened around them, and to them, Omar's family kept going, living as though there would be a future, even when there was no sign that anything would get better. Because of their travels around Afghanistan, this book also takes a look at some of the different cultures living in Afghanistan. The book ends when the Americans begin their bombing raids, when Omar is seventeen.

>168 RidgewayGirl: Excellent review. Another one for the list and I see it is at my local library.

Vivienne, I haven't read much about Afghanistan, so this book was an eye-opener. I really liked how Omar's family was so much like any other family - it very much drove home how similar the people living in war-torn places are to us, and how lucky we are to live where we do.

If you want to read more about Afghanistan I highly recommend Tamim Ansary's books, West of Kabul, East of New York (his memoir of growing up in Afghanistan,his mother is from the US and father is Afghani), and Games Without Rules: the Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan.

Excellent review of A Fort of nine Towers

>168 RidgewayGirl: what a crazy life Omar has had. Enjoyed your review.

>168 RidgewayGirl: A Fort of Nine Towers sounds interesting--nice review!

>168 RidgewayGirl: I'm echoing everyone else, but I enjoyed your review of A Fort of Nine Towers

Meredith, I'll look out for a copy of West of Kabul, East of New York.

Thank you, all. There's something about a book that introduces me to a world I'm entirely ignorant of.

I have mixed feelings about fiction set during the Holocaust written by people who never experienced it. With fewer and fewer survivors still living it's inevitable that such a traumatic and world-changing event will be the subject of fiction, but it's rare for it to not feel exploitative in some way. The Book of Aron manages to avoid both sentimentality and exploitation, despite the story Jim Shepard tells being set in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Aron is a child, and not a particularly well-behaved one. He does poorly at school and has fallen in with an equally unruly friend by the time his neighborhood is annexed into the new Jewish quarters. This stands him in good stead, as a head for petty crime is more useful in surviving than being polite or well-read. The Book of Aron is told from his point of view, one that takes the conditions he's living in at face value, never looking into the future. This saves the book from being unreadable. Aron doesn't give dates and he doesn't see what is coming, and so the reader can, until the final chapters, focus on the details of Aron's daily life; his friends, avoiding the authorities and helping out his mother, without being roped into domestic chores.

Shepard has done his research, but managed to create well-rounded characters, with faults and weaknesses and moments of grace. Aron is wracked with guilt over a decision he makes with imperfect facts, taking responsibility for an outcome he could not have predicted. What responsibility do we have when we have no power and no foresight? Another character points out that it's necessary that a few survive, even if they have to take more than their share of meager resources to do so. For a slender book, The Book of Aron manages to ask weighty questions as well as tell the story of one Ghetto inhabitant who refused to not do the right thing.

If all fiction set during the Holocaust did what The Book of Aron does, I'd be able to set my reservations aside once and for all.

>177 RidgewayGirl: Nice review of The Book of Aron. Sounds like it's worth checking out.

Thanks, Chris. Yes, it is worth reading. This was the first book I've read by Jim Shepard and I do plan to look for more.

I would not have picked up The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut novel about an undercover Viet Cong operative working as an aide to a General when the Vietnam War ends, without it's inclusion in this year's Tournament of Books.

The narrator is writing his confession in an undisclosed location. He tells the story of how being Eurasian has led him to feel excluded from Vietnamese society, and later from American culture. He talks about his love for his two friends, and the toll being undercover has taken on him; being unable to be fully himself with anyone, including his Viet Cong handler, as he is simultaneously part of two different worlds. He talks about his life in Vietnam, and then his life in California among the Vietnamese refugees. He had gone to university in California, and so feels more acclimated to American life than his roommate, a friend who saw his wife and son killed in the chaos of the evacuation, and who is unable to make a life in this new place. But the narrator's facility with English and knowledge of the US just makes it clearer to him how much of an outsider he will always be.

I loved the parts of the novel having to do with the narrator's experiences as a refugee, and that of his fellow refugees. His inner conflict was fascinating. Nguyen has given his narrator a unique voice; that of someone whose English is better than many native speakers, yet who has not yet internalized the usual combinations of words. The narrator is a man who would have been happiest working as a college professor, reading books and talking philosophy, circumstances have decreed otherwise, making him a spy and a killer.

Vodka was one of the three things the Soviet Union made that were suitable for export, not counting political exiles; the other two were weapons and novels. Weapons I professionally admired, but vodka and novels I loved. A nineteenth-century Russian novel and vodka accompanied each other perfectly. Reading a novel while one sipped vodka legitimized the drink, while the drink made the novel seem much shorter than it truly was.

I was less interested in the machinations of the CIA in Indochina, or in watching various men talk, dream about and prepare for war. This is a novel largely about men and the violent acts they will commit with the excuse of fighting communism or American influence, but there is a heart underneath the tough, testosterone-fueled shells of these characters, and the novel says interesting things about integration and prejudice. I hope the sort of unconscious white paternalism shown here would be impossible today, but I suspect it still exists and it's just learned to keep a lower profile.

And now I'm off to Berlin for a few days. Off to the city that gave refuge to David Bowie and Vladimir Nabokov, Jonathan Franzen and Louise Welsh. I have a copy of Gail Jones's newest novel, A Guide to Berlin, for the train and as soon as the cat decides to come home, I can leave.

If the cat does not come home, I'll have to stop by his second home and either retrieve him off of their sofa or ask them to take care of him until Saturday.

Have a great weekend! Berlin is a perfect city for it. And good luck with the cat.

Great reviews of The Book of Aron and The Sympathizer, Kay.

Have a great time in Berlin! Darryl Pinckney's new novel, Black Deutschland, is set there, and I plan to read it later this year.

>180 RidgewayGirl: Have you read The Sorrow of War? It's by a (North) Vietnamese writer about the Vietnam War (which they call the American War).

Have fun in Berlin!

Interesting reviews of The Book of Aaron and The Sympathizer. I have been wondering how reading for the tournament was affecting you, whether you would end up reading books you didn't want to. The Sympathizer sounds like it was borderline.

I had a wonderful time in Berlin. I had to go next door to fetch the cat, only to be told to leave him be. He's now home again, and happy to see us. And the kids liked Berlin, and the best part was a walk along where the wall used to be. A stretch has been turned into a moving memorial to what that wall did to ordinary Germans.

Darryl, I plan to read Black Deutschland soon, too. I almost bought a copy in Berlin.

Rebecca, I haven't. I've read very little about the Vietnam War. I'll look for a copy.

Daniel, The Sympathizer was borderline for me. The parts about the experience of not fully belonging anywhere and the parts about what it was like to have to integrate into a new culture, and the sorrow of knowing that your country no longer exists as you remember it made it worthwhile. I'm not liking either Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving (which feels dated to me) and The Sellout by Paul Beatty (a third of the way in and I'm going to have to read a few reviews and interviews to help me figure out what exactly I'm reading, because right now I hate it). But part of reading is stretching myself to understand new things and glimpse new horizons, so while not fun, it is probably good for me.

Berlin! I liked it very much. Great reviews of your recent reads. The Afghan memoir and The Book of Aron are even tempting me. The Groff was already on my WL.

>186 RidgewayGirl: You have more stamina than I do, Kay. If I hate a book, I just can't finish it, even though I know I probably should.

Your trip to Berlin sounds very interesting.

Colleen, it isn't stamina, it's stubbornness.

sibyx, Berlin has recently become one of my favorite cities. There's so much going on, so much energy, and so much history, much of it just under the surface. I was reading A Guide to Berlin, Gail Jones's new novel, on the train there and during our stay and it was a perfect experience to read about some aspect of Berlin, only to run across it the next day, like the ghost U-Bahn stations - they sat unused while Berlin was a divided city and the one we used felt a little haunted.

>186 RidgewayGirl: a moving memorial to what that wall did to ordinary Germans

I had completely the wrong image in my mind when I first read that. :-)

Berlin's great. But it really makes you feel like a country cousin when you go there from a village like The Hague. Probably the same for Munich!
I don't get to go there very often, but when I do, I always come back with piles of books.

>190 thorold: Berlin does make Munich feel provincial. And I noticed that after I'd posted - the memorial was moving in the emotional sense. We had to use our own legs to walk along it.

Gail Jones's new novel concerns a small group of expats living in Berlin who share a fascination with Vladimir Nabokov. Cass is an Australian bookstore manager who has come to Berlin to see if she can make her way as a writer. When she goes to see Nabokov's apartment, she meets Marco, an Italian living nearby, who invites her to joint the group, which includes another Italian graduate student, a retired American and a Japanese couple. The group bonds by sharing their stories, or speak-memories, which are both intimate and conceal more than they reveal.

I read this book on a train on the way to Berlin. A Guide to Berlin takes place in midwinter, which matched the timing of my trip perfectly. In Berlin, I coincidentally ran across more than a few of the places mentioned in Jones's book. Cass is drawn to the public transportation systems, from the S-Bahn trains that are raised above the city, to the ghost stations; those stations abandoned during the forty years Berlin was a divided city.

It was an enthusiasm they shared: the circuit delight of a train map, its multi-coloured intersections, its neat calculus of routes and connections and oblong-symbol changeovers. Cass secretly loved the image of ring ones with their lace-patterned interiors; and the threads unravelling outwards, and the names of far-flung stations. London was like this, too; she carried the London Underground map in her head, and enjoyed the predictable sequence of names and the tranquilising effect of their reiteration.

There's a terrible incident at the heart of the story, although that felt beside the point to me. I was simply happy to inhabit the same space with a like-minded companion. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who has or wants to visit Berlin. I can't speak to it's resonance with anyone else, but it was the perfect book to take along with me this past weekend.

Great review of A Guide to Berlin, Kay. I'll keep it in mind if I go there in the near future.

Darryl, it was a better choice for me than all the other books I have that are set in Berlin. Reading about Nazis is not a good way to make any destination in Germany feel friendly. My husband picked up a crime novel about the Stasi and seemed to be having a fine time, however.

>194 RidgewayGirl: Reading about Nazis is not a good way to make any destination in Germany feel friendly.

Good point. I did visit Germany for the first time last year, as I traveled by train from Amsterdam to spend a day in Cologne in the company of my friend Bianca (@drachenbraut23), who is from Voerde but works in London. I enjoyed seeing that city, and I'm eager to spend more time in Germany this year or next.

>194 RidgewayGirl: A Guide to Berlin sounds fun: anyone who is obsessed with transport maps is obviously worth a look...
I've enjoyed Wladimir Kaminer's books about living in Berlin as a Russian exile, especially Mein Leben im Schrebergarten. Nothing very profound, but would probably fit very nicely if you need something light to read on a train journey.

Darryl, Germany is worth the time spent getting to know it. I've grown to love it.

Thanks, Mark! I am always looking for likely books to read in German. Sheer laziness means that I need a small selection of likely titles so that I'll actually read something when the impulse hits me. I plan to go by the big bookstore downtown on Friday or Saturday.

Warning: swear words

Bonbon lives in a small city in South Central Los Angeles. It was originally founded as a farming community, but was overtaken by the urban centre, yielding a community that is both inner city and agricultural in nature. When Dickens is removed from maps, Bonbon decides to take action. Raised by a psychology professor who experimented on him, and with a love of farming, Bonbon undertakes a wild series of plans that involve re-segregating Dickens with the help of an aging child star who played a minor role in Little Rascals and who now insists on calling himself Bonbon's slave, as a way of receiving free beatings.

The Sellout by Paul Beatty is characterized by a frantic erudition and a gleeful willingness to offend. Beatty unearths seemingly every single offensive stereo-type and racial slur along his stream-of-conscious way. I spent the first third of this book hating it, but by the end I appreciated Beatty's chutzpah and brilliance, although I never really fell in love (or even like). The Sellout reminds me of Infinite Jest (the 600 pages that I managed to read, that is) with tennis and drug addiction replaced with racism and African American culture.

You'd rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I'd rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain't that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I'm not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.

Beatty's prose is head-long and references everything from hip-hop to medieval scientists. He's also very funny. What kept me from loving The Sellout was that the quick intelligence of the writing style took such precedence over the plot and characterization; the people in this book exist only as foils for Beatty's wit. That wit, however, is impressive and I did like how his female characters were never less than his male characters, and the female love interest was one of the most complex and real characters, while also remaining within Beatty's exaggerated style. In the end, while I was impressed by The Sellout, I also think that I am not a part of the intended audience. As an African-American comedian yells at a white couple sitting in the front row of a black comedy club, Do I look like I'm fucking joking with you? This shit ain't for you. Understand? Now get the fuck out! This is our thing!

>198 RidgewayGirl: Very intriguing review. I wonder if this book would work for me. I managed to finish Infinite Jest but I'm neither American nor black, so maybe this isn't for me either.

Florence, you might like it. It's clever and has something to say. I think (and I hesitate to explain what I think Beatty intended) that the author was pointing out the tendency of white people to push themselves into the middle of events that aren't about them (he points out that the white couple would have been unnoticed except that they chose the most prominent table and they laughed loudly. It seems to me (again, not speaking for anyone) that there is a problem with members of the dominant group feeling comfortable speaking for the members of minority groups, when what we need to do is just listen and learn. And The Sellout did teach me quite a bit.

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