Ridgeway Girl Reads in Different Places, Part Two

My reading goals for the year are to continue to read more books written by women (which was last year's goal) and add to it an increased proportion of books written outside of the US and the UK. Last year, 76% of my reading was set in those two countries! I'd like to see it reduced to 60%, with the remaining 40% scattered across the rest of the world. And as for my reading by US and UK authors, I'd like a little more of that to come from the voices we hear less from.

I'll be living in Munich for the first half of the year, and then moving back to South Carolina. I usually have no problem reading a hundred books, but the move might slow me down.

So far this year, my reading has been fantastic. I'm finding that my goal to read more books written by women is conflicting with my desire to read as many of the contestants in The Morning News Tournament of Books. Clearly, the best solution is for them to choose more books written by women!

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

Category One



Termagant Titles
Books written by women

1. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz
2. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones
3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Category Two



Texts in Translation
Books originally written in a language other than English

1. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (German)
2. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad (Norwegian)
3. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Japanese)
4. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Spanish)
5. Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski (Polish)

Category Three



New in the Neighborhood
Books written by immigrants or expats

1. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

Category Four



New and Shiny Books
Books published within the last three years

1. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
2. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
3. A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah

Category Five



Aged Pages
Books off of my tbr

1. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
2. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
4. The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies

Category Six



Temporary Titles
Borrowed or library books

1. The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith
2. The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer
3. The Passenger by Lisa Lutz
4. The Bastard of Fort Stikine by Debra Komar

Category Seven



Noteworthy Novels
Longlisted, Shortlisted or award-winning books

1. The Whites by Richard Price (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
2. The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
3. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
4. The New World: A Novel by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
5. Capital by John Lanchester (International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist (2014))

Category Eight



International Editions
Books set outside of the US and the UK or written by authors living outside of the US or UK

1. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes (Ireland)
2. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar (Afghanistan)

Category Nine



Various Volumes
Books by authors of color

1. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
2. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
3. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. Oreo by Fran Ross
6. Negroland by Margo Jefferson

Category Ten



A Compendium of CATs
Books that fulfill a CAT, a group read or book club book

1. Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David (RandomCAT January: Embrace your Uniqueness)
2. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (RandomCAT February: It Takes Two)
3. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (RandomCAT February: It Takes Two)
4. Girl at War by Sara Novic (GeoCAT March: Eastern Europe and Russia)

Woman BingoPUP



3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
7. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
9. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz (author usually writes mysteries)
11. Negroland by Margo Jefferson
12. Girl at War by Sara Novic
13. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
15. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck (set in Paraguay)
18. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones (set in Europe, Australian author)

BingoDOG



1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
3. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
5. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
10. The Whites by Richard Price
16. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
18. Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
19. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
20. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
22. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls

Nationalities of Authors Read:



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Where the Books are Set:



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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.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread!

Yay, new thread! Looks like a lovely pile of recent acquisitions. I'm very happy that my library ordered Fashion Victims and I was able to act on your recommendation. It sounds great.

Thanks, everyone!

rp, if you like it half as much as I did, you're in for a treat.

Happy New Thread! Looking forward to your comments on a couple of the ones you listed as "Currently Reading."

Happy new thread. Looking forward to even more book bullets!

Happy new thread! Love reviewing what you've read so far.

Happy new thread! I like the maps in >15 RidgewayGirl:!

Happy new thread!

Thanks, guys. And now off to bed with a book.

Nice new thread. >16 RidgewayGirl: Sounds fascinating - sounds like a real survival story.

The map are a great idea. Watching with interest.

Happy new thread! :)

Congrats on your new thread! Very pretty!

Charlotte, Omar's family endured decades of uncertainty and war and yet still lived as though there would be a future.

Pam, I do love a map. I'd add a few more to this thread, but it would get unwieldy.

Thanks, Chrischi and mamzel!

Tomorrow I leave for a weekend in Berlin. My husband is already there with the kids - they have this week off of school and I don't. There's a giant store that sells everything from books to stationary to music and they have a good sized English bookstore inside, along with a cafe that is located against a wall that is open for four floors and is covered in plants and a waterfall. I'm looking forward to showing the kids (and buying a few books).

>31 RidgewayGirl: Have a great trip! That place sounds terrific!

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.

>33 RidgewayGirl: You know I have a penchant for WWII books. I will have to take a look at The Book of Aron.

>33 RidgewayGirl: - Kay - I'm going to take a BB on this one. I read The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman a few years ago which was also set in the Warsaw Ghetto and told how the zookeepers tried to get people out of the Ghetto and found it very interesting. I may not get to it before the end of the TOB, but that's ok.

Have fun in Berlin! It's such an exiting city. Which bookstore is the one you mentioned? No clue when I'll be in Berlin again, but it might be good to know anyway. ;)

>33 RidgewayGirl: I was really impressed by this book, thought it was very well constructed and carefully based in history.

Charlotte, Shepard clearly did his research, but the book doesn't feel like it was researched, if that makes sense.

Victoria, you might like it, but keep in mind our record of liking the same books!

Betty, The Zookeeper's Wife is on my list of books to get to at some point. And the ToB is also great for getting excited about some books, and deciding that others never need to be read. A mere 18 days until the tournament begins!

Chrischi, it's called Dussmann's, and it calls itself a Kulturhaus. So much browsing to do there...

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 for Berlin and I'm leaving my laptop behind.

Well, I'll be leaving for the train station as soon as the cat decides to come home. If he's much later, I'll have to stop by his second home and either retrieve him or ask them to keep him for a few days.

>40 RidgewayGirl: Have a great trip! I'm sure the neighbors will take good care of Tarzan. He inspires loyalty.

>39 RidgewayGirl: Love that quote. Will look out for this one. Friend did her language exchange in Russia and came back with impressive stories of the compulsory nature of vodka drinking.

Victoria, I ended up knocking on the door to ask for his return. The neighbors began with the suggestion that it would be easier to leave the cat in Germany when we moved back (no!) and then they said they'd keep him while we were in Berlin. And Tarzan does know how to get people to love him. He's a master manipulator.

Charlotte, I've heard the same thing. I don't think I would do very well in that environment, unless people are fine with me taking a wee nap after the third shot.

I'm enjoying your ToB reviews. I've got The Book of Aron up next and I'm hoping to get to The Sympathizer before the tournament starts (or at least before it's over). I can understand your feelings about Holocaust stories written by people who'd never experienced it. I sometimes feel that way about authors writing about other cultures. Ultimately, if the book is well researched and the author gives a realistic and balanced portrayal, then I'm OK with it.

Paulina, I'm enjoying the race to read as many ToB books as possible, except I have encountered too many that are far outside of my enjoyment zone in a row. The Sellout by Paul Beatty reminds me of Infinite Jest - a book I was determined to read, but gave up on 600 pages in, and Avenue of Mysteries is, so far, largely about an old guy thinking about his blood pressure medicine and how much Viagra he should take just in case the decades younger women who helped him out when he was confused suddenly knock on his hotel room door.

>45 RidgewayGirl: Both The Sellout and Avenue of Mysteries were already on my "not likely" list, and those descriptions don't make them sound any more appealing!

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.

What a perfect companion for your trip! Sounds intriguing.

I love reading books set in places that I have just visited or am about to visit. Makes both the trip and the book more memorable.

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!

Oh boy - The Sellout is one that I have coming up next and it doesn't really sound like my kind of thing. I had tried starting it and got distracted by other books. Oh well, I'll give it a try and see what happens.

Stacey, I liked it more once I realized that the author was setting out to use every racial stereo-type in existence, but that the emotions and discomfort this causes is a side-effect (an intentional one) of his joyous wordplay. I'd be interested in finding out what you think about it, though. It was utterly outside of what I'd choose to read on my own, so well done Tournament of Books.

I loved The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber. Peter and Bea are a Christian couple. Peter is the pastor of a small church and Bea is a nurse. When the opportunity arises, Peter takes a job on another planet ministering to the native population for six months. They plan to use the generous salary to pay off their mortgage and make some improvements to the church. They're confident that while they will miss each other, this opportunity is worthwhile.

And for Peter it is. His encounters with the aliens go better than he could have anticipated. A significant number of the aliens are eager to hear more from the Bible, which they call The Book of Strange New Things and Peter is challenged and buoyed up to learn as much as he can about the Oasans, so that he can help them. But back on earth things are going badly wrong and Bea isn't coping well with the breakdown in society.

This is a fascinating story about a missionary encountering an alien race. The world building is imaginative and well thought out, from the types of people who might deal well with living on another planet to the flora and fauna of the planet itself. This is a look at how the breakdown of a country affects its citizens and how a woman deals with the loss of all of her certainties. But The Book of Strange New Things is mostly about faith, and what that means to different people. How relevant can Jesus be to a world so removed from first century Judea? How can parables and psalms be explained in a world without sheep or green pastures or even male and female? And how does even a strong relationship survive when one person is energized and excited about his life and the other is watching everything she cares for be torn down?

I will be very disappointed if Michel Faber follows through on his intentions to quit writing. His novels are so inventive, beautifully written and substantive that we would all lose out.

>53 RidgewayGirl: Kay, I read that last year and also loved it. I'm glad you did too. It was my first novel by Faber, and I was very disappointed to learn afterward that he plans to not write any more novels.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of Eileen, which recently caught my eye.

If ever a book had a claim to being Book of the Year, that book would be Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me. Written as a letter to his son about his experiences, this is a powerful examination about what it means to be an African American in the United States. This is a book that elicits strong reactions from everyone who reads it, from David Brooks' "Why should I care?" to the emphatic nodding of those who share Coates' bleak but determined evaluation.

I'm not comfortable evaluating this book. It often made me uncomfortable, and always made me think. It's a short book, so if you're at all curious, the easiest thing to do would be to read it yourself and draw your own conclusions.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I need to get to this. I read his book about his relationship with his father, which was fascinating.

Charlotte, I have The Beautiful Struggle on my wishlist. But what brought Ta-Nehisi Coates to my attention initially were his excellent articles on reparations and discrimination in the housing market that he wrote for The Atlantic. He's not afraid of controversy and I find his articles to be thoughtful and well-reasoned.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361...

Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf is a bittersweet tale, simply told. Addie, a retired widow, visits her neighbor Louis, a widower, to ask him to visit at night, to lie down together in her big bed so that they don't have to sleep alone and to talk a bit. A friendship forms, and then a gentle relationship, building slowly and honestly in a very touching way. And then her son hears about the relationship and is outraged.

I enjoyed Our Souls at Night. It's a slight and not terribly deep story, but the simplicity of the writing suited the subject. I was honestly surprised at the ending, since I can't imagine a world in which two people, both unattached, forming a relationship could be found transgressive, but Holt, Colorado and the people in it seem to be from an earlier time. The characters are one-dimensional, but given the brevity of the novel, this could not be avoided. It is a pleasant book, and in the midst of all the harsher, more ethically complex books I've been reading, it was a nice intermission.

>33 RidgewayGirl: I feel the same qualms about people writing books about the holocaust, and wars in general. It's as though they are borrowing importance for their books. I don't believe that imagination alone could reveal the reality of what people lived through. However, The Book of Aron does sound as though it's worth a read.

Also adding Between the World and Me to the wishlist.

Pam, I think that The Book of Aron was a book that didn't want to use the Holocaust as an easy route to generating emotion in the reader, but that had substantial things to say. I'm still thinking about it.

Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel, Eileen, is classic noir. Harsh and unflattering, Eileen tells the story of a few days at the end of 1964, and the dramatic change those few days made in her life. At the start of the book, twenty-four year old Eileen has a terrible job as a secretary in a bleak detention center for boys and a terrible, filthy home with her brutal, alcoholic father. She dreams of escape, and has been saving for the day when she can leave the coastal Massachusetts town she's grown up in, plain, dull and over-looked, for a more passionate, vital life elsewhere. And, because this is noir, in walks the femme fatale.

This isn't a pleasant novel. Eileen isn't likable. As the book is narrated from inside of her head, there's no way to avoid discomfort. When she isn't having naive, yet off-putting fantasies about one of the guards at the boys' home, she's busy feeling heartily sorry for herself. That is, until her life changes and she sees a way forward. It's not that Eileen becomes a more pleasant person to spend time with, but she does become more interesting.

I do like noir and Eileen is a fantastically well-done entry into the genre. If there's a category of literary noir, this would fit right it. It sounds creepy to say this, but this book delighted me. If you are at all squeamish, you might want to pass on this though, which is not to say that it's overly graphic; it's just that uncomfortable scenes are described with such skill as to make them very real.

Well that's an intriguing review that needs to go on the list. I've never heard of the author, so thanks!

>61 RidgewayGirl: Kay, how would you rank it with Megan Abbott? Or on the squeamish side, Chelsea Cain?

Jennifer, it's her first novel. She's very young. They've been marketing Eileen as the next Gone Girl, because of course, but it really isn't.

Victoria, it's darker than Abbott, but there are parallels. And Cain's so joyfully explicit with her gore that you really get the impression that fun is being had. Moshfegh's is much less violent, but more about what a hangover is like, or not showering. She really makes the reader experience that - which made for queasier reading than Cain's jellied eyeballs, oddly enough. There's a scene involving frozen vomit which I will never forget.

Of course you do realize that you have now whipped me into a frenzy to get my hands on Eileen!

Judy, I think you'd like it.

And I have a flu. Or a cold. Fever and my whole body hurts. Also, I'm coughing up ectoplasm. But I do get a brief moment of not-complete-wretchedness for a short stretch after I take my ibuprofen. So here goes a review. If it's incoherent, please blame the cold flu. On the other hand, my son just texted me to ask if I'd like a cup of tea. I have no voice, just a sort of low gargle, so texting is a practical way to communicate.



When Jane's husband, Jim, dies suddenly she barely has time to reach the hospital before she discovers that a cryogenics company has already taken his head. What follows is a back and forth between Jane and Jim's' experiences in the following weeks, as well as a look back at their relationship.

The New World: A Novel by Chris Adrian and Eli Gottlieb is a very short novel about the nature of our connectedness with the people who share our lives. Upon arriving in his new world, Jim is informed that in order to move forward, he will need to forget all the relationships and memories that make him who he is. And Jane engages in a desperate and seemingly futile battle to retrieve her husband's head.

This is an inventive novel, but less inventive than it might be, it's brevity requiring that none of the ideas presented be fully developed. Still, it was entertaining enough, even if the relationships that form the centre of the novel were somewhat shallowly drawn.

Hope you're feeling better soon!

Get better soon! My home remedy is to take a lemon, preferably a Meyer lemon, and squeeze all the juice into a mug. Add an equal amount of honey then fill the mug with hot water. Drink as hot as you can stand it and breath in the vapors between sips.

Thanks, Jennifer. I'm just sick enough to not be able to read. I even tried a Reacher novel. So I'm forced into watching movies. I tried to watch The Bridge, that Swedish crime series, but the German subtitles were too much for me. So it's romcoms. That's how ill I am.

mamzel, I make something similar, only I throw in a few slices of fresh ginger when the water is still boiling hot. My husband just brought me a cup of something herbal. Peppermint is in there.

I hope you are feeling better soon. Nothing as bad as being too ill to read.

Feel better soon, Kay.

That sounds like a horrendous flu! Get well soon!

Sounds grim. Hope the ginger is working - Is stuck some honey in there for your throat (or whisky - I blame my Scottish heritage). Get well soon. >66 RidgewayGirl: Sounds intriguing, will look out for it.

Do get well soon! Being too sick to read is not a good thing.

>69 RidgewayGirl:
Hope you feel better soon! Imagine not being able to watch The Bridge. :(

I hope you feel better soon, Kay. I had a hacking cough the whole time we were on vacation and then spent all day yesterday sleeping. Lots of tea and honey. And sometimes just vegging in front of the TV is all you can do.

Thanks, everyone, so much! You all make me feel well cared for.

Vivienne, being too ill to read is the worst. What's the point of being stuck in bed if you can't read? I ended up listening to podcasts, parts of which I heard.

Charlotte, my husband added whiskey to the hot honey, lemon and ginger drink he made me. I'd say it helped me sleep, but I have been doing little else.

Eva, I'll watch it soon. The parts I was conscious for were interesting.

Betty, a cough is the worst. Take care of yourself.

Thanks, Wolfy. I need a dog to snore on the bed. The cat's visits are random and he lacks sympathy.

The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer tells the story of Anna Buck, a woman devastated after the disappearance of her son, four months earlier. She's falling apart and she'll do anything to find him. She visits a psychic, and discovers that she may have some psychic abilities of her own, leading not to her son, but to another missing child. DCI Marvel is an unpleasant man; he doesn't like other people and he's less than collegiate to his co-workers. His boss asks him to find a lost dog and this leads him into contact with Anna. Despite himself, he's sure she sees something.

This was a troublesome book. Bauer is a fantastic crime writer, and I've enjoyed her books enormously. Here, she has her usual nuanced eye for the humanity in every character. Even Marvel has his brief moments of grace. The scene where he searches the Battersea Dogs' Home for the missing poodle is just perfectly written. But there's a problem at the heart of the novel, a bit of stereotyping that seemed both out of character for the writer and unnecessary for the plot, that made me like this book a lot less. Bauer is a solid writer, and I trust her instincts. I'll read her next novel eagerly. But if you haven't read Bauer yet, I'd suggest beginning with any of her other books, and if you're already a fan, I'd say to read The Shut Eye, but be aware that parts of it are problematic.

Sorry to see you have fallen ill. Hope you are feeling better soon!

Thanks, Lori. I am finally on the mend. Just a cough to get rid of now.

Definitely recommend The Drowned Detective - was fun to see what the author did with the genre, mixing in political upheaval (complete with pussy riot style balaclavas) and humour.

Originally published in 1974, Fran Ross's only novel, Oreo, is a frantic, funny and intelligent story about Christine, called Oreo, a unusual girl growing up in Philadelphia with her brother, who invents his own language, and her grandparents, while her mother travels for work. Her Jewish father left years earlier, and the plot of the book concerns her Theseus-like search for him in the labyrinth of New York, encountering everyone from a bad shoe salesman to a pimp and his entourage. By turns profane and erudite, this book never slows down for a moment.

I appreciated this book much more than I enjoyed it. I'm sure I missed many of the references, but it was fun to catch one now and again. Ross is a writer of fearsome intelligence and a cutting wit, and her character, Oreo, is nobody's fool, equally able to fight her way out of a jam as talk her way out, a sort of teenage Pam Grier with a fluency in Yiddish and a mind for the absurd.

That sounds really interesting, and the author is new to me. Got me with a BB!

>83 RidgewayGirl: This one has been on my wish list for awhile, and you make it sound way more appealing than it did when I first learned about it.

Just getting caught up here after some LT absence. I had to put Eileen aside, as I was in the wrong head space for it when my number came up at the library. But it was so intriguing and well written that I plan to get back to it.

Glad to hear you're feeling better... My husband seems to be coming down with man flu (a slight cold exaggerated to epic proportions ;-) ).

man flu snerk!

Jennifer and dieKatze, I'll be interested in hearing what you think of it.

Katie, it is an odd book, and Eileen is not a very sympathetic character. You have to be willing to spend time inside her head. I hope your poor man will live!

>83 RidgewayGirl: Added to the wishlist. I didn't realise the author had only written the one book. What happened?

Charlotte, Oreo didn't make any impression back in 1974. Ross then got a job in Los Angeles, writing for a weekly comedy show starring Richard Pryor, who then decided not to do it. She stayed in Los Angeles as she didn't have the money for a move back to NYC. She struggled to find work in Hollywood, which wasn't really prepared for a Jewish African American woman of Ross's intelligence and sharp wit.

It's snowing! And heavily! And it's sticking!

Which means that the cat came in, stood on me until his paws were warm and is now laying on his blanket (this is, naturally, a not inexpensive mohair throw that he has appropriated as his own) on the back of the sofa, watching the snow fall from the warm side of the window.

Snowing?! I guess I can be happy to live in the north. It's a bit grey here, but dry and not too cold. I really like snow, but by now I'm ready for spring.

>91 RidgewayGirl: We had a beautiful sunny day yesterday and then a freak hail storm. Golf ball sized. Go figure...

>90 RidgewayGirl: Thank you (and forgive my ignorance). I wish I had a magic wand for stories like that.

The Story of My Teeth is an odd novel. Valeria Luiselli wrote it as a project done with a factory, having each section read aloud, and listening to the comments of the workers. Each section is quite different, and one, a sort of chronology, is written by her English translator. The sections are divided by pictures of hand-marbled paper, which would certainly have been more interesting in color, but as I read this as an ebook, the reproductions were in black and white. There are photographs in the final section, showing a few of the places mentioned in the book.

Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, known as Highway, is an auctioneer and a collector of odd items. Among those items are the teeth of famous people, including the full set of Marilyn Monroe's teeth, which he had implanted into his own mouth. He build a house and a warehouse next door to hold his vast collection, and he wants to catalog it before auctioning it off. Along the way, he holds an auction of teeth for the local church, finds an aspiring author to write his biography and his son takes revenge on him. Which are things that happen in this book, but I would hesitate to call these events part of a plot. This book exists as it is, a sort of entertaining experiment in just going with it.

>91 RidgewayGirl: Clever cat!

>91 RidgewayGirl: Reminds me of the water-hating, 100-lb. Golden Retriever we used to have. One hot summer day my son was splashing around in a kiddy pool under a tree. Satchmo went over and stood with his two front paws in the water. No amount of coaxing could get him to put all four paws in. Two paws only.

>91 RidgewayGirl: I agree with Vivienne! The cat knows where it's at.

>79 RidgewayGirl: - First of all, I'm sorry to hear that you were sick. Second, I'm actually commenting on a non-TOB read of all things. Have you read Rubbernecker by Bauer? My dad gave it to me for Christmas and I'm about 2/3 through. Quite unlike any mystery novel I've read before.

Stacy, yes! I liked it enormously. I did have a stretch where I was worried Bauer would head off in one direction, but she veered off somewhere unexpected instead. Really a good crime novel. Enjoy the ending!

Elizabeth McKenzie's novel, The Portable Veblen, was delightful. Witty, self-assured and charming; I enjoyed this book enormously. Set in Palo Alto, The Portable Veblen concerns Veblen, a free spirit living in an old cottage at the end of a cul de sac in Palo Alto. Working a pink collar job at the university, she meets Paul, an up-and-coming medical researcher. So up-and-coming that he is promptly poached by a large pharmaceutical firm that wants to market his invention - a kit that allows for brain injuries to be treated by Army medics at the scene of the injury. Paul and Veblen fall in love, but they have very different visions of their future. Paul is being wooed by a much more affluent lifestyle than he's ever experienced, and Veblen loves her tiny cottage and simple lifestyle.

The story of Veblen and Paul is not so simple as one wanting status that the other finds abhorrent. Both have families that they are still having trouble dealing with. Veblen's mother is a controlling hypochondriac, who nonetheless dearly loves Veblen, and her father is in a mental institution. Paul was raised by hippies who grew pot and made furniture out of found objects. They're both intent on shaping their lives partially in reaction to their upbringing. What's lovely about this book is that McKenzie never goes for the easy answer. All of her characters are understandable, and even likable in their own ways, even when their actions are harmful to others. Also, there is a squirrel.

After a stretch of reading serious books doing inventive things to the story-telling process, it was wonderful to read a more traditionally (mostly) constructed novel. McKenzie has written an excellent book about families, and how they affect us, even in how we choose to be different from them and she's done so in a manner that charmed me.

>101 RidgewayGirl: I like the sound of that one. Another BB, here we go!

>103 clue: Me too!

Jackie and clue, I liked this book so much. It's literary fiction, but with a great deal of heart and a bit of whimsy.

The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck is a historical novel about the very real person of Eliza Lynch, Irish courtesan, and how Franco Solano, the future dictator of Paraguay, met her in Paris and brought her back to Paraguay with him, along with all of the other items he'd purchased. Ella, stuck after her last relationship ends, is willing to become attached to this short, hairy South American, and to go back to his home country with him. He can't marry her, and she's viewed with distain by his family, but Ella nonetheless carves out a successful life for herself, raising Franco's children and being the center of Paraguayan social life. And then Franco declares war on pretty much everyone, leading to the disastrous Paraguayan War.

Tuck sticks to the historical record in this book, pulling excerpts from the letters and diaries of the many British and American professionals drawn to adventure and profit in Paraguay at that time. This lends it an authenticity, but means that there's less of a sense of who Ella was as a person instead of an historical figure. Ella Lynch led such an unusual life that just reciting the facts of her life make for fascinating reading, but I would have liked at least an imaginary attempt to get inside of her head.

Girl at War by Sara Novic is the story of a young Bosnian woman. Ana is ten when the break-up of Yugoslavia reaches her and her family in Zagreb. Life, which had been spartan, but full of the life of a child of ten, becomes harder and more dangerous. Time is spent in basement bomb shelters and the playground has shifted from the town square, now full of refugees, to the stacks of sandbags and getting to pedal the bicycle that powers the generator in the bomb shelter nearest Ana's school. Meanwhile, her little sister is getting sicker.

Years later, Ana, now a university student in New York City, is asked to speak to a group at the UN about her experiences in Bosnia. The event triggers her memories, and leads her to decide to return to Bosnia to find family friends.

This is an impossible book to rate. On the one hand, the subject matter is important and necessary. On the other, the writing just doesn't serve the story. It has the feel of an eyewitness account written, not by a writer, but by a survivor, with little care for style or pacing. Novic is an American of Bosnian descent. She's not writing from personal experience, but from her research and from conversations she had while visiting Bosnia. Maybe the writing style was a deliberate choice to make the book appear as though it was a first-hand account. But the wooden style distanced me from the main character and pulled its punches at the critical moments. I'm glad this book exists and that I read it, but I wish it had been a better book.

>105 RidgewayGirl: Eventually I hope to read a book set in each South American country. That might be a good option for Paraguay.

Lori, it would be an excellent choice for Paraguay.

>106 RidgewayGirl: Interesting comments about the style or this one. I'm reading Gorsky and struggling to get into it. I think almost for the opposite problem - the style is very mannered first person and I don't like it! Hoping some of the other nominees are more engaging for me.

Thanks, Jennifer. You can hear the rabbit saying, "Hey...."

Charlotte, the shortlist for the Orange has always felt like an odd mix of anything from highbrow to popular fiction to me. With Gorsky I feel like I first need to fill that obvious hole in my literary education and read The Great Gatsby! When I was a teenager, I worked in a bookstore with a bunch of university students studying English. One of them told me that one could either like Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but not both. Having just read A Farewell to Arms and loved it, I dismissed all of Fitzgerald from my mind. They were, in retrospect, a group of pretentious idiots. Now to remedy the damage.

>111 RidgewayGirl: lol. They were probably just parroting something they heard in a lecture or a book.

I would recommend Sarah Churchwell's Careless People a study of the background of Gatsby - I love history of this period, but she writes so beautifully it's a rare read.

>111 RidgewayGirl: I love The Great Gatsby! I didn't have to read it in high school, but fortunately my brother did. I read his copy. I didn't like A Farewell to Arms and I haven't been tempted to pick up another Hemingway.

Happy Easter to you too, Kay!

I'll make note of it, Charlotte. I'll try to read Gatsby as soon as I clear this current stack of books.

Carrie, you're making me nervous about Gatsby! I'm also currently fed up with reading about rich, beautiful people in NY with problems.

Thanks, Betty!

Whenever I hear Edith Piaf sing 'Non, je ne regrette rien' -- which is more often than I'd like, now that I'm at university -- I can't help thinking 'what the hell is she talking about?' I regret pretty much everything. I'm aware that the transition into adulthood is a difficult and sometimes painful one. I'm familiar with the conventions of the rites of passage, I know what the literary term bildungsroman means, I realize that it's inevitable that I'll look back at things that happened in my youth and give a wry, knowing smile. But surely there's no reason why I should be embarrassed and ashamed about things that happened thirty seconds ago? No reason why life just should be this endless rolling panorama of bodged friendships, fumbled opportunities, fatuous conversations, wasted days, idiotic remarks and ill-judged, unfunny jokes that just lie on the floor in front of me, flipping about like dying fish?

Brian leaves his working class past for a new start at the University of Bristol. He's ready to remake himself as an intellectual, going so far as to tryout for The University Challenge quiz show. But nothing goes smoothly for Brian, who often finds that the witty remark he's come up with sounded much better inside his head than it does spoken aloud, and the friends and family he left in Southend cannot be so easily discarded as he might secretly hope. Still, he manages to interact with other students and even fall in love with the beautiful, privileged Alice, even if she doesn't quite return the sentiment.

Starter for Ten by David Nicholls was just a lot of fun. Brian is a wonderful character who managed to keep me rooting for him no matter what cringe-worthy words came out of his mouth, or how many mistakes he made. Nicholls makes clear that Brian's heart is good, despite his uncanny ability to say the wrong thing. The other characters are also a lot of fun, from his old friends trying (or not) to find a place for themselves in the adult world, to his new friends at university. The bits revolving around his participation in The University Challenge are especially funny, but Nicholls fills the novel heart as well as humor.

Thanks to rabbitprincess for mentioning this book!

>116 RidgewayGirl: Excellent review! And I'm glad you liked the book. I sometimes pick it up and flip through "just to read a couple of pages" and end up getting through several dozen. The movie is great, too. Excellent cast. And the scene at the end where he gets busted for cheating on University Challenge is SO embarrassing for Brian and SO awful for everyone that I have to leave the room until it's over. But very well done.

rp, I was cringing throughout that entire episode. I just really needed a light, engrossing book and this fit the bill exactly. I've got the movie downloaded and plan to watch it tomorrow. I'm wondering if James McAvoy isn't too good-looking to play Brian?

Happy Easter, everyone!

>118 RidgewayGirl: I think James is a great cast because he looks like such a nice boy -- it really helps you get on side with him despite all the cringey things he does. And Benedict is perfect as Patrick Watts. I would love to see him do more comedy. He's so good at it.

>120 rabbitprincess: Yes! I am so looking forward to the altercation between Patrick and Spencer!

So tomorrow my daughter and I check into the clinic where she will have the fifth and final operation on the femur she broke almost four years ago. It's a simple procedure - just removing the screws and metal plate that have held everything together now that it has all healed. I was fine until today, which I have spent feeling stressed, which has caused me to pack far too many books for 1) staying only one week and 2) when I also have my iPad with five library books on it. I plan to have a glass of wine with dinner and in a mellowed, calm state of mind, sensibly remove half of the books currently in my suitcase.

>119 RidgewayGirl: Yikes. Think I'll stick to a chocolate bunny.

>121 RidgewayGirl: Hope it all goes well (and the decisions about the book is not too tricky).

>120 rabbitprincess: Have you listened to Benedict C in the radio comedy Cabin Pressure? It's a favourite of mine.

Good luck with the operation! I hope it is over quickly!

Kay I hope all goes well for your daughter. Why is it we feel as though we can never take enough books with us?

Happy Easter !

Happy Easter, Kay. Books are our security and you should take as many as you feel you need.

>122 charl08: Yes! Haven't listened to the very last episode, though, and am due for a re-listen of the whole series. My favourite episode is probably "Qikiqtarjuaq." :)

I hope your daughter has an easy time of it, Kay. I say - better too many books than not enough. You never know what mood will strike. And maybe something you could read together?

>121 RidgewayGirl: I hope all goes well with Charlotte's procedure.
>111 RidgewayGirl: You're finally going to read The Great Gatsby? I'm shocked! I remember with fondness our discussion of Hemingway and Fitzgerald over Thai and look forward to doing that again.

Thanks, everyone. I did remove two books from my bag. My husband then promised to bring books over right away if I run out. I don't think he fully understands what goes on in my iPad, book-quantity-wise.

We're checked in and have seen the doctors and I feel much, much calmer. Charlotte is fine. She gets unlimited laptop time here and is busy taking advantage of that.

I know, Victoria!

It is good to know you have an emergency book supplier if you need one (even if you don't need one). Hope all goes well!

>33 RidgewayGirl: I am reading The Book of Aron now.

Victoria, I'm eager to find out what you think of it. On the one hand, we have a long and illustrious history of hating the books the other person loves, on the other hand, you do like WWII fiction and on the third hand, we have agreed a few times! Sarah Addison Allen and The Firefly Brothers are not nothing.

Thanks, rp. My daughter made it through the surgery and is now napping. And also very cranky. Which isn't surprising, given that she just had six screws removed from her femur. No new scars, however, as they used the old scar from when they added all the hardware. By Friday, she'll want to go home, especially as the wi-fi here is slow.

I'm getting a lot of reading done.

>132 RidgewayGirl: Kay, SAA has lost some of her luster. I'm hoping she can return to the charm she had in the first few books.

Victoria, I didn't love First Frost, but I didn't love Garden Spells either. I did love The Girl Who Chased the Moon a lot. But I haven't read Lost Lake yet.

>132 RidgewayGirl: Hi, Kay. I hope your daughter recovers quickly and you all don't go stir crazy in the hospital!

>134 RidgewayGirl: Lost Lake was lost on me, Ha! You know I love Garden Spells and I am quite fond of The Sugar Queen. Did you read that one?

Glad to hear your daughter is doing well, if cranky. I guess I would be too!

I'm another SAA fan, though people seem less enthusiastic about her most recent two and that has put me off reading them. The Sugar Queen was the first of hers that I read and it may be my favorite but I love all four that I've read.

To brighten her room-

>132 RidgewayGirl: Glad things are going well in the hospital room. Well, except for the slow WiFi.

>132 RidgewayGirl:
Happy it all went as planned. Cranky in my family usually means we're on the mend - hope the same is true for yours! :)

Thank you, everyone. After a rough day of surgery (she lost a quantity of blood during the surgery, and was pale and tired both yesterday and this morning) she has recovered with astonishing speed. We even took a stroll outside this evening. The day was clear and warm, and the Alps are right there. It makes me feel as though I'm visiting Thomas Mann in some Swiss sanitarium.

She'll be released tomorrow after another round of physical therapy. She wants to go swimming next week, but I think we'll need permission for that. I'm dubious that they'll ok a chlorine and germ-filled pool before her incision heals.

Victoria, like every single other person, The Sugar Queen is my favorite Addison Allen (although The Girl Who Chased the Moon is a close second).

>141 RidgewayGirl: Aw. bless her. I'm sure the Alps are just stunning!

My Name is Lucy Barton is a slim and exquisitely written novel by Elizabeth Strout. Lucy is in the hospital for several weeks. This is in NYC in the mid-1980s and she's alone; her husband is juggling their two young children and his job and can rarely visit. Then her mother arrives and spends several days sitting with her. That's the plot.

The beauty of this book lies in how much Strout can pack into a single paragraph. As Lucy lies in her hospital bed, she remembers her childhood living in the midwest in family so poor they lived some years in a relative's garage, crammed up against fiberglass insulation. It was an abusive and non-nurturing environment, and Lucy contemplates how her childhood affects how she sees the world, and her relationships. Written when she's older, looking back on that time she spent ill and alone, she also sees how this was also the time when the AIDS crisis was just beginning and how fearfully it's victims were treated.

I wish I'd been able to read this book in a single sitting, and been able to give it my full attention. It deserved that. I'll have to return to it in a few years and read it when I can properly appreciate it. Despite reading it in a piecemeal and distracted fashion, I can clearly see that it is something exceptional.

>142 VictoriaPL: Both my children, after a winter spending Saturdays skiing (Charlotte was allowed to go cross country skiing, Max learned to snowboard) in the Alps, they are jaded and can barely grunt when I point out a particularly scenic view.

>116 RidgewayGirl: Really behind with threads. I've added Starter for Ten to my wishlist! I might not get to it for a while since I just finished Q & A (aka Slumdog Millionaire).

>119 RidgewayGirl: Love that Easter Bunny!

>141 RidgewayGirl: Glad all went well for your daughter. Even if she is not able to go swimming for a while, she will be so glad that it is all over. Four years is a long time!

Just playing catchup -- I'm glad your daughter's surgery went well.

Glad your daughter made out so well, Kay. Your story of the Alps reminds me of when we had guests here from Indiana and they were amazed at the ocean, which we kind of take for granted since it's always there.

>143 RidgewayGirl: I hope to get around to that one sooner or later.

Vivienne, I think you'll like Starter for Ten.

Betty, that's it, exactly. My brother kind of gave me the side-eye about the kids skiing in the Alps until I reminded him that we'd skied in the Canadian Rockies and camped in the Canadian wilderness - because that's where we lived.

Thank you all for the good wishes. We should be released today. Charlotte has packed and dressed in preparation, but the ways of hospitals move slowly.

Charlotte's roommate is a Kurd from Turkey, which has meant some very interesting conversations with her father, all in German, despite it being no one's first language.

Happy to hear that your daughter's surgery went well and that the two of you are on your way back home.

Glad to hear your daughter is due to be released.

I was amused by your comments on Girl at War - talk about a different perspective.

Thanks, Judy. We are happy to be home.

Charlotte, it's always so interesting when a book that one person loved, another felt was not that good, really. If everyone agreed on each and every book, how bored we would all be!

Set in what is now Wroclaw, Poland, Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski takes place in 1934, when it was a German city near the border. Two women, a member of German nobility and her companion, are found on a train, eviscerated, scorpions found on and around the bodies. A conductor is found killed by three scorpion stings. Inspector Mock is sent to find the murderer. He quickly finds the obvious suspect, a Jewish epileptic pet store owner. Before he can bring the man in for questioning, the man is taken and tortured to death by the Gestapo, a group Mock has no control over. Still, the case is closed, until it becomes obvious that the pet store owner was not the murderer. Since Mock is now tainted by the incident, a police officer from Berlin, Herbert Anwaldt is sent to lead a new investigation.

Death in Breslau is one weird story. The odd murder weapons (scorpions) are the most straightforward part of this convoluted tale involving everything from the Crusades, to brothels, to the constant need to maneuver around the Gestapo and their allies. Mock may be a rotund, middle-aged man with a love of German cuisine, but he's far from simple, and his continuing survival in his position is largely due to how he manages to out-think and out-manipulate those around him. Anwaldt is an interesting character as well; an alcoholic being given one last chance to prove himself in the provinces, he's constantly haunted by his past as a fatherless boy making his way through orphanages and harsh Catholic schools. No one is entirely good, but there are plenty of people who are entirely evil. All in all, this was an odd, but rewarding book.

Sophie Hannah writes intense, convoluted novels centered around a woman who is involved in a crime (as a witness or participant or victim) but from an odd angle that make her seem delusional. Her main characters are often unpleasant or frantic, often doing things to make it hard for anyone to believe them. In A Game for All the Family, Hannah sticks to this blueprint, but she has done away with her usual counterpoint of the point of view of the detectives investigating the case.

Justine has left her fast-paced career and moved her family to rural Devon, hoping to do nothing but putter around the beautiful estate they've purchased, Speedwell House, while her husband travels and her daughter attends school. But even on the way to their new home, Justine is struck by an affinity for an unattractive house along a busy road. Soon after arriving, her daughter becomes distressed by the expulsion of another pupil and Justine begins receiving threatening phone calls from a woman who thinks Justine is called "Sandie."

A Game for All the Family is certainly as complex and odd as any of Hannah's other books. Justine is an unlikeable character, being arrogant and high-handed in her dealings with others. She's also prone to not doing basic things that most people would do in her circumstances, while reacting strongly to much smaller events. It's a stand-alone novel, with out the usual detectives to do the work of solving the crimes and puzzles, and this is a weakness. Since the only view the reader has is from the inside of a biased and erratic narrator, there's no way to ground the story in any sort of objectivity. And Justine is consumed with her own opinions and personal bugbears that I'm still not entirely certain what happened. And some of the reactions of the people around the main character make very little sense.

Still, this is a rare misfire by an author who has so far been reliable in her crime novels. I look forward to reading the next one, which I am relieved to see is once again balanced by the usual detectives.

I'm glad to hear that you're home! I hope you didn't run out of reading material during your stay. I had to lend my e-reader to my brother once when we were in the ER with my father. He hadn't taken anything to occupy his time when we left the house. On the other hand, I had my "bag of things to do" with books, magazines, and puzzle books. I could spare the e-reader!

>153 RidgewayGirl: That one sounds intriguing. It's not one I'll go out of my way to look for, but I'll probably pick it up if I happen across it.

Carrie, it's good to be home! Charlotte had a rough day on Wednesday, when she had the surgery, so I was astonished by the doctor saying that she could go home Friday. But by Thursday she was well enough to want to take a walk outside and by Friday she was just impatient to go home, where she doesn't share a room with anyone other than a cat and the wifi is better.

And I had far too many books with me. I read four of them.

>153 RidgewayGirl: I have this one on the list and think I should move it up a bit... Glad to hear the surgery went well and your daughter has recovered quickly. :) And oooh the Alps! Generally I prefer the ocean, but I'm really looking forward to a week's holiday in the German Alps this summer.

Margo Jefferson's memoir of growing up affluent and African American, Negroland, was a fascinating and illuminating look at a world that is both similar and very different to my own. Jefferson's father was a respected pediatrician and she and her sister grew up in private schools and clubs, wearing expensive clothes, but constantly reminded of their otherness in a world (Chicago in the middle of the last century) that would allow a limited and select number of African Americans into their white, liberal enclaves, but with a certain amount of discomfort. Jefferson grew up with the idea of needing to respectable, to behave so perfectly as to overcome the ideas white people had of black people. Then, as a teenager and adult, Jefferson experiences the changes wrought by the sixties, from the Civil Rights Act to feminism as she forges a career as a journalist.

Negroland discusses the black experience and the effects of racism from a world where it was more subtle. The mothers who are overly formal with her mother, the homes where she isn't invited for playdates, the attention paid to skin tones and hair textures and the constant need to prove themselves worthy of living in a white world by being better by orders of magnitude than her peers. Jefferson has the same experiences every other girl has; self-consciousness about wearing glasses, crushes on cute boys, having a best friend. She writes with great honesty about her failings and the dreams she had.

Jefferson writes with an admirable clarity and complexity about the world she grew up in and about her adult life. That this book was so easy to read in no way dilutes the story she tells.

>158 RidgewayGirl: That sounds so interesting! Thanks for the BB. :)

>158 RidgewayGirl: I really want to read this. Could do without another headless woman cover though!

Very happy to hear your daughter is now back home and recovering.

Starter for Ten sounds like a lot of fun. I was introduced to Nicholls recently when one of my book clubs did One Day.

When Tanya finds her husband dead at the foot of the stairs, she reacts not by calling 911, but by packing a bag and going on the run. This isn't the first time she's run from a dead body and so she has some experience in disappearing.

Lisa Lutz's new novel, The Passenger is a lot of fun. The plot is complex, but reasonably believable, the characters are fully rounded and the atmosphere is tense. This is one of the best thrillers I've read in some time.

Ok - BB for me. Love a good thriller.

>162 RidgewayGirl: BB for me too!

The Passenger really is excellent. I hope you both read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

Glad everything went well with your daughter's surgery. Reading your posts about books to bring had me smiling. I'm going in for knee replacement in less than a month and thinking about how many books to bring and I'm sure I'll bring too many. The hospital offered a free class on how to prepare and what to expect, and it was interesting to hear that they highly recommend bringing books and other activities that stimulate the brain, as it will keep our minds off the pain!

I've read a few by Lisa Lutz and enjoyed them all, so I'll put The Passenger on the list. And I also took book bullets for Eileen, Death in Breslau and Negroland. Yours is always a dangerous thread!

Thanks, Lisa. Good luck with the knee replacement - there's hard work ahead, but both my parents have had joints replaced and now that they've fully healed, they are much more able to do the things they like to do. I did bring too many books (four books too many) but how can you know what kind of book will appeal at the time?

I am so far behind that there's no way I can do a proper catch up, so I'm dropping a comment here to get back on track. Hope you're loving life. :)

Hi, Andrea! Sometimes I look at the number of threads I've fallen behind on and despair. Right now I am avoiding preparing for a German test on Friday. It's no fun at all but passing this and then the citizenship class would make my residence and work permits permanent, which seems like a useful thing to have done. Otherwise, life is very fine.

It does seem useful. Best of skill and luck!

Hope it goes well - how great to be able to say you are officially qualified in another language.

I've been late to discover the charms of Rainbow Rowell's novels, but I do like them. Rowel has a talent for dialogue and an ability to write likable, flawed characters.

In Attachments, Lincoln is an underemployed IT worker hired to monitor employee emails at a newspaper. He frequently reads the conversation between two co-workers and friends and falls for one of them, which leads to him taking steps to move on with his life. Meanwhile, Beth is intrigued by occasional sightings of a guy she thinks is hunky, as her own long-term relationship hits a rough patch.

The story is charming, but predictable. It was interesting how two people used what were essentially idle fantasies about the other to spur personal change, but you can probably guess how it all ends. This was, for me, the least successful of Rowell's novels. She's grown as an author since.

Thanks, Andrea and Charlotte. I'll let you know how it goes. My daughter was aghast when I told her that it was five hours long.

I hope your test goes well for you, Kay. Fingers crossed.

Ugh, Betty. I just want it to be done. I don't even care how I do at this point. (I would have to utterly mess up the one segment I'm not good at - formal written German - to not score highly enough to pass. Since I primarily have learned German by just living in Germany, I'm good at speaking and comprehending written and spoken German, as well as knowing what should go where by how it sounds, although I can't say why a particular word is the correct one, or what tense or form it is in.)

So, when we moved into this house almost three years ago, there was a water leak in one wall. We called the landlord several times over the years and nothing happened. So I had my husband write a letter. So now they're constantly trying to figure out what's going wrong. They can't find the leak, and so they've decided that it's fixed and the inside of the wall just needs to dry out. They said they'd just need to put a small fan in the upstairs bathroom for a few days. And a giant series of shop-vac kind of things has just been installed in the entryway and guest bathroom, rendering those places unusable (we have to kind of climb over tubing to get in and out of the house) and it's so loud and will apparently be there for two weeks. Ugh. So much for having friends over. And there's tons of plastic sheeting taped up and a hole in the bathroom ceiling. I've sent the landlord pictures of what's been installed, but she's suspiciously not replying to my text.

I haven't read Rainbow Rowell yet, but I keep promising my daughter I will.

Joyce, I'd recommend Fangirl or Eleanor and Park.

I think Fangirl first -- Charlotte has that one for sure.

Awww, sorry about the house trouble and I hope it gets fixed quickly. And that your landlord starts communicating.
Two weeks after we bought our house, we found mold in the laundry room cupboard. The room had to be ripped apart and treated. What a pain.

Thanks, Jennifer. There's a sort of installation-type thing on the stairs to the basement, too. It's fine. It's only a few weeks and if we close the door to the living area and play music, you can almost not hear it. Also, my husband just got back from a long business trip and he brought me a large jar of salsa and a small stack of magazines about the Franklin expedition (his ship, The Erebus was discovered a few years ago) that a friend had sent to my parents' house for me.

>180 RidgewayGirl: If we had know D was going to be in the Upstate, we would have taken him to dinner. I hope he had a good trip! Sorry for the house woes....

Wow. That leak sounds frustrating! It would drive me nuts. Here's hoping it really is fixed.

I know, Victoria, but his schedule was jam-packed. He did keep his weekends free for my parents, helping them do household projects and playing golf with my dad. But we are all glad to have him home, although the cat pointedly slept on my side of the bed last night.

Andrea, I am going nuts. It's loud and the house now smells of chemicals and mildew. That the landlord decided to do this now instead of in July (when we've moved out) is frustrating. I'm going to insist that it all be out and the holes repaired by the end of the month, because I foresee her deciding to wait to renovate and paint until after we've moved, and we can't have anyone over until it's repaired. Sigh. More emails to practice my German skills on, I guess.

Just catching up here, and I'm sorry to hear about the troubles with the house. So annoying! Viel Erfolg für die Sprachprüfung morgen! :)

I grew up in western Canada and so my imagination was full of stories of the voyageurs, the Métis and the freedom of a canoe and the wilderness. Fort Edmonton was a favorite weekend outing, and I vastly preferred the actual fort to the turn of the century town set up nearby. Now that I'm an adult, I'm pretty sure that the romance of guiding a canoe down the North Saskatchewan river was in reality a smelly, dangerous and mosquito-ridden endeavor, so The Bastard of Fort Stikine by Debra Komar was the perfect book to remind my inner child that those times were not so great.

The Bastard of Fort Stikine concerns the murder of John McLoughlin, Jr., the manager of a Hudson's Bay Company fort near the Pacific coast on land then owned by Russia (now Wrangell, Alaska), in 1842. Kumar, a forensic anthropologist, looks at the history of "the honorable Company," under the control of the despotic George Simpson, as well as the background of McLoughlin, the son of a doctor and HBC bigwig and a First Nations mother. Simpson disliked McLoughlin, and essentially blamed the victim for his own murder. Despite his father's increasingly desperate efforts, this became the narrative. Komar reveals the actual events through examining the eyewitness statements, some of which were clearly fictitious, or self-serving, but many not only agreed, but remained constant over the years.

Ew, the mosquitoes. And the blackflies! Those are even worse. I think I'd be a better polar explorer, because at least then there would be no bugs.

Good luck with your test today!

>186 rabbitprincess: rp, but it's so much better than being an explorer in, say, Central America or Florida. So many more bugs, often poisonous, not to mention all the venomous snakes.

>187 MissWatson: Thanks! Leaving now.

>188 RidgewayGirl: If it had been up to me, Central America and Florida would still be unexplored. I would have headed for home at first sight of a venomous snake!

>188 RidgewayGirl: I have no doubt your testing will go well!

So - how'd it go?

>189 cbl_tn: And they did in those Spanish armored outfits. It's a wonder they weren't rusting as they walked.

Thanks, Victoria and Betty. Yes, it went fine, except that when I'm nervous, I talk more and faster. My poor dialog partner did about 10% of the talking. And speaking quickly does not coincide with speaking well-constructed, grammatical sentences. So we shall see. Civics class starts next week. I've been informed by the people who already took the class that the first few lessons are all Hitler all the time. Fun.

>192 RidgewayGirl: Glad it's over!
I have a similar problem, in that when I get nervous I ramble and get off the subject and just. keep. talking.

Jennifer, it isn't a good tendency. Especially when speaking quickly means mangling my German. It's like I need to fill all the empty spaces with words.

As long as the words you made were German, I'm sure you did fine. "My hairbrush eats my dog" is still a sentence. ; )

195 - I got a good chuckle from that - a couple of times.

"all Hitler all the time"
I know how much of that we get in Sweden, so I can only imagine the huge dose you must get in Germany. Good luck with everything!

But, Jennifer, one is marked down when one says, "The hairbrush, it done eated my dog."

Eva, today was my first day. We learned all the Grundrechte (basic rights) guaranteed in the German constitution. And, yes, they all boil down to Because Hitler.

The stories in Helen Oyeyemi's new collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, have a fairy tale feel to them, full of magic and mystery. Oyeyemi's writing style is well suited to this atmospheric approach, but not to the form of the short story. Her stories meander and characters that seem central to a story when it begins, wander off as Oyeyemi's focus turns to someone else. I'm now eager to read what she comes up with in the less restrictive parameters of a novel, but I'm not going to read another short story collection by this author.

That said, some stories were more successful than others. The shorter offerings were more focused. I enjoyed A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society, which only digressed for a few pages early in the tale. Telling the story of Day, a student at Cambridge University, who joins the eponymous society, which was formed in reaction to the Bettencourt Society, an especially vile boys' club that once created a list of the homeliest women students, only to discover that a classmate is a member of that club. The Wenches come up with a clever prank to play on the Bettancourt boys, which ends up having repercussions on both sides.

It's snowing outside. Again! Since Saturday, it's been snowing and this morning there was a good layer on the ground. It melts when it hits the ground during the day, though, but it looks odd coming down on tulips and trees in full bloom.

The best thing about this late snowfall is that it turns my not putting the winter gear away yet from "lazy" to "sensible." I haven't even gotten the snow tires taken off of the car. I'm that sensible!

>199 RidgewayGirl: Oyeyemi was the guest on this past week's episode of "Well-Read". She's very, very soft-spoken and so young.

>200 RidgewayGirl: I'd call that sensible, too! I've made an early start on my Christmas decorating once or twice in the past...

Jennifer, I'll have to listen to that. Is that a podcast?

Carrie, that does sound sensible. So this afternoon, I went to one appointment carrying a cardigan in case it got chilly. A few hours later I regretted leaving the house in the lighter of my winter coats and without gloves as I was hit with a heavy fall of wet snow and wind. And then I ran to the store under blue skies and sunshine an hour later.

>203 RidgewayGirl:
Reminds me of "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."

>203 RidgewayGirl: Yikes. I thought the hail here was impressive (after a lovely sunny day).

I have read a couple of Oyeyemi's books. I don't always find her books easy to read but reading your review I realise that I can remember them years later, which could be a good sign.

>203 RidgewayGirl: No, it's a PBS tv show. Each week features a live interview with an author who has a new book out, and they get some very big authors like Joyce Carol Oates. The interview last about 16 minutes, then there is a discussion of book recommendations, usually about the same subject, like good books about Pearl Harbor or whatever.
I've mentioned "Well Read" several times on my thread because I've been hooked for a couple of years now. Not only for the book discussions, but because the show is hosted by the two most outstandingly unpolished book geeks possible. I love to watch them. You can see clips of Oyeyemi on their site, and they have a book club.
http://www.wellread.org/

Charlotte, I'm eager to read a novel by Oyeyemi.

And, new thread. Come see me there!

http://www.librarything.com/topic/222549

>206 mstrust: Thanks, Jennifer. I'm off to take a look.