Spot the Orange Penguin? Charl08 (Charlotte) reads in 2016 #7

It's the time of year when I start thinking I'd rather be on the beach.

I've got my book


And my chair...


Come join me - I'd hate to be

Reading this month



Total read 130
April 26

Girl at War (US, F)
Mr Dixon Disappears (UK, M )
Signed, Picpus (Belgium, M )
Sweetland (Canada, M)
My American Duchess (US, F)
A Manual for Cleaning Women (US, F)
The Beauty of the husband (Canada, F)
Missing Out : in praise of the unlived life (UK, M)
Griffin and Sabine (Canada, M)
The Portable Veblen (US, F)

A God in Ruins (UK, F)
At Hawthorn Time (UK, F)
Hunger Makes me a Modern Girl (US, F)
The Anatomist’s Dream (UK? F)
Ruby (US, F )
A Cruel Necessity ( UK, M)
The Other Side of Silence (UK, M)
My Name is Lucy Barton (US, M)
The Dark Angel (France, F)
Whispers Through a Megaphone (UK, F )

Memory of Water (Finland, F)
Divorce Turkish Style (Turkey, F)
Inspector Cadaver (Belgium, M)
Proust and the Squid (US, F)
The Hidden Light of Objects (Kuwait, F)
The Paper House (Argentina, M)

April Stats
US & Canada 12 Europe 11 (UK 7), Asia 1, Middle East , Latin America 1
F 19 M 7
Fiction 22 Poetry 1 Non-Fiction 3
Library 19 Random 2nd hand purchase to be recycled straight back 1 Digital 6

Reading last month

March Stats
Australia 1, US & Canada 10, China 1, Europe 14 (UK 9), Brazil 1, Zimbabwe 1, Mexico 1
F 18 M 11
Fiction 21 Non-fiction 8
Library 18 own 5 Digital 5 someone else's 1


March 29
Rush, Oh! (Australia, F)
The Blessing Way (US, M)
Coventry (Canada, F)
Frog (China, M)
Exposure (UK, F)
Reading Chekhov (US, F)
In Praise of Lies (Brazil, F)
The Prison Book Club (Canada, F)
The First Person and Other Stories (UK, F)
The Drowned Detective (Ireland, M)

The Book of Memory (Zimbabwe, F)
Phantoms on the Bookshelves (France, M)
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding (UK, F)
White Mughals (UK, M)
The Lady with the Black Umbrella ( Canada, F)
Love Notes for Freddie (UK, F)
Inconvenient People: lunacy, liberty and the mad-doctors (UK, F)
Westmorland Alone (UK, M)
A Burnable Book (US, M)
Cecile is dead (Belgium, M)

The Hero's Walk (Canada, F)
The Ballroom (UK, F)
Gorsky (Serbia, F)
The Hanged Man of St Pholien (Belgium, M)
NeuroTribes ( US, M )
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes (US, F)
A Long way to a Small angry planet (US, F)
Songlines (UK, M)
The Story of My Teeth (Mexico, F)

Reading earlier this year

Feb Stats
US & Canada 13, Europe 16 (UK 7), Japan 1, Latin America 3, India 1, Australia 1
M 21* F 15 (1 anthology multiple authors not included.)
Fiction 25, Non-fiction 11
Digital 3, Library 31, ER 1, Random 1

JAN STATS
Regions: US & Canada 19, Latin America 1, Europe 20 (UK 18)*, Africa 2
Gender: F 21 M 25*
Fiction: 31 Non-fiction 8 (Memoir, Biography, history, travel, politics)
Library: 31 TBR 3 Digital 3 Random 2

*5 books with two or three authors

January 39

Reckless: My life ( US, F)
The Diary of Helena Morley (Brazil, F)
Ms Marvel: No Normal (US, M & M)
Dotter of her Father's Eyes (UK, F & M)
Leaving Berlin (US, M)
Pascali's Island (UK, M) BAC
Jonah's Gourd Vine (US, F)
Crusoe’s Daughter (UK, F)
Southland (US, F)
Electric Michelangelo (UK, F)

Tangled (Canada, F)
Strange Meeting (UK, F)
The Poet's Tale : Chaucer and the Year that made the Canterbury Tales (US, M)
Killing and Dying (US, M)
Roger Casement (UK, M)
Black Sky Black Sea (Turkey, M)
Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (UK, M)
The Tin Can Tree (US, F)
A Commonplace Killing (UK, F)
Ru (Canada, F)

Voices from the Asylum (UK, M)
Fifty-Two Pick up ( US, M)
Thirteen Ways of Looking (Ireland, M)
Ms Marvel: Generation Why (US, M) x3
Grey Souls (France, M)
The Whispering City) (France/ Germany, Fx2)
Haweswater (UK, F)
Sally Heathcote Suffragette (UK, Fx2 M)
The Sign of Fear (UK, M )
What's bred in the Bone (Canada, M)

Under the Tripoli Sky (Libya/France, M)
The People on Privilege Hill (UK, F)
Gull (UK, M )
In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys (UK, F)
The St Fiacre Affair (France, M)
Five days at Memorial (US, F)
Sea Lovers (US, F )
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (US, M)
Confession of the Lioness (Mozambique, M )

Feb 36
White Sky Black Ice (US, M)
City of Lies: love sex, death and the search for truth in Tehran (UK (Iran?!), F)
Zoli (Ireland, M )
Tokyo Decadence (Japan, M)
The Old Ways (UK, M )
True Story: the life and death of my brother (Canada, F )
Noir: a collection of crime comics ( Too many authors to be useful info
Love Me Back (US, F)
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End (Sweden, M)
Kamchatka (Argentina, M)

Books acquired (mostly to keep an eye on the books bought)

Total acquired: 16 Total read:3 (oh dear!)

Ru gift - read
How to create the perfect wife gift
Reading Chekhov gift - read

FEB
Middlemarch Voucher plus purchase.
The Carhullan Army
The Man Who Invented History
The Township Plays
Death and the King's Horsemen
Day (All Oxfam)
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears
Sunday at the pool in Kigali
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Coventry Online purchase Read
Shylock Is My name Gift from Beth!
The Prison Book Club Birthday haul - Read
The Canterbury Tales currently reading

March
From Ashes into Light ER book
Afterimage gift from Lori
The Handmaid's Tale
A Month in the Country read already - loved the edition

Swimming the Thames (from the comfort of my local swimming pool)

American / British /Canadian challenges books read

January
AAC Anne Tyler The Tin Can Tree
BAC Barry Unsworth Pascali's Island.
Susan Hill Strange Meeting
CAC Kim Thúy Ru
Robertson Davies What's bred in the Bone

February
AAC Richard Russo On Helwig Street (Read)
BAC Agatha Christie biography and White Mughals William Dalrymple read
CAC The Collected Stephen Leacock Read a couple of articles, decided it wasn't for me.
True story the life and death of my brother by Helen Humphreys (Read)

March
AAC Jane Smiley didn't fit this in - will have to try harder.
BAC Ali Smith The Firstperson and other stories Read
CAC Farley Mowat My Father's Son and Anita Rau Badami The Hero's Walk (Read)

April
AAC
BAC Middlemarch
CAC The Handmaid's Tale and Sweetland Read

May

AAC
BAC
CAC

I'm reading the women's fiction longlist

Updated women's fiction prize longlist

Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins in the TBR pile

Shirley Barrett: Rush Oh!

Cynthia Bond: Ruby currently reading

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord

Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Jackie Copleton: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

Rachel Elliott: Whispers Through a Megaphone on order at the library

Anne Enright: The Green Road

Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory

Vesna Goldsworthy: Gorsky

Clio Gray: The Anatomist’s Dream

Melissa Harrison: At Hawthorn Time

Attica Locke: Pleasantville

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Sara Nović: Girl at War

Julia Rochester: The House at the Edge of the World

Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love

Elizabeth Strout: My Name is Lucy Barton ordered at the library

Hanya Yanagihara A Little Life

My pick for the shortlisting hasn't changed - I liked Veblen and Girl at War but not enough.

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord
I thought she imagined biblical David's life convincingly.
Anne Enright: The Green Road
I loved the story of a family spreading out around the world.
Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory
Not perfect, but lots of good stuff as a woman looks back at her life from her Zimbabwean prison cell.
Shirley Barrett Rush Oh!
Striking historical account of whaling community in Australia, but it's the humour that made me admire the book.

Still nothing that has dramatically won me over yet from thinking that The Green Road should probably win...

*Peeps around the door to see if construction has finished...*

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

Oh yes, together on the beach sounds brilliant.

Happy New Thread, Charlotte!

Wow! Am I second :) Happy new thread, Charlotte. Finally managed to cobble a few sentences together re The Book of Memory. * wipes sweat off brow*. Hmm - I have The Green Road in my library pile, but it is one day overdue, and now I recall that I read about 120 pages into it and did not like it. Okay - we are at odds now, Charlotte! :) To bed for me.

>9 susanj67: Not sure how I managed to double post my first message, but it's fixed now. Happy Friday Susan!

>10 DianaNL: Anytime suits me Diana! Don't forget to bring your book...

>11 vancouverdeb: Oh no - not a disagreement! I will come check out your comments on The Book of Memory. I see you've already convinced the warbler.

So what's your pick for the shortlist Deborah? Any you think ought to go forward?

Mathematics

BY JANE HIRSHFIELD
I have envied those
who make something
useful, sturdy—
a chair, a pair of boots.

Even a soup,
rich with potatoes and cream.

Or those who fix, perhaps,
a leaking window:
strip out the old cracked putty,
lay down cleanly the line of the new.

You could learn,
the mirror tells me, late at night,
but lacks conviction.
One reflected eyebrow quivers a little.

Full poem here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176485
From Given Sugar Given Salt

I'm here with my umbrella and beach towel! And my book. Paper, 'cause I don't want to get sand in my iPad.

>14 cbl_tn: All formats are welcome here!

Hope you've packed your sunblock...

Happy Friday, Charlotte! Happy New Thread! I am definitely up for reading on the beach. Our cold, dreary weather is really getting old. Boo!

Bean update

This is one of the two still in the house - the lot behind these have been put in the plastic greenhouse outside as ran outof shelf space...

>16 msf59: And the same to you Mark. Glad I'm not the only one thinking of sun, sand and sea at this time of year.

^A guy can dream, can't he?

Happy new one, Charlotte!!

Happy New Beach Thread, Charlotte!
Those beans are developping greatly! Thank you for enriching our April days with poetry. I so often tried to read it on my own, but never got far. I should take it up again.

Congrats on the new thread, Charlotte! Love those Penguin beach chairs up there.

Happy new thread, Charlotte! I'll happily join you on the beach - I've brought my Kindle because I like the non-glare and also I don't have to decide which book to bring. LOL!

Hooray for the beans!

I'm in!

>15 charl08: Sunscreen almost goes without saying for me! I'm hoping the umbrella I brought will give me some additional protection. My skin is very fair and I burn easily. :-(

>17 charl08: Bean is growing fast, Charlotte, the third row of leaves is nearly there!
When do you plant them outside?

>19 msf59: We can all dream Mark...

>20 scaifea: Thanks Amber.

>21 Deern: I love poetry, but quite often forget Nathalie and can go long periods without reading it. I signed up for a poem by email last year - it was fun.

>22 jnwelch: Thanks Joe! I plan on getting those deckchairs out at least once again before December...

>23 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. I moved one of the beans this afternoon and there was a huge root out the bottom. So probably have to repot - again!

>24 katiekrug: Glad to hear it Katie. The sun loungers are out....

>25 cbl_tn: I'm covered in suncream, under the shade, wearing a big hat and long sleeves.

>26 FAMeulstee: The beans are destined for my dad's allotment (patch of land) but unfortunately we've had so much water the land is currently too soggy. Hoping it dries out by the end of the month so I that we can plant out.

I don't think I 've read enough of the Long List to say with any certainty what should go forward. I've read Lucy Barton, The House At the Edge of the World and The Book of Memory. I ditched The Green Road after 120 pages, and I've got A God in Ruins waiting patiently in a TBR pile and others waiting for me at the library.

Of those I've read, I see The Book of Memory going to the short list and perhaps Lucy Barton. So much depends on what the judges are looking for.

>30 vancouverdeb: I refuse to admit that having read all the longlist is a requirement for an opinion Deborah! I think Lucy Barton has had a lot of good press - I would be surprised if it isn't picked (but I have been surprised before).

I've started A God in Ruins and At Hawthorn Time and The Anatomist’s Dream. The last one is set in mid 19c Austria Hungary and although I've only read the kindle sample I'm gripped. Will try and get through them all before the shortlist is announced (unlikely).

Happy new thread! A tad bit chilly yet for the beach here ...

Picked up Girl at War from the library today. It looks interesting. I did not read your spoilers! ;) I think Monday the 11th is the day the short list comes out? I've also got Ruby out from the library. Ready for nearly anything, when the short list comes out ( sort of ) .

Happy new thread! >1 charl08: is so very clever. :)

Here's a beach for you - Toko Mouth (Catlins, NZ) - I'd go back here in a heartbeat...

>32 michigantrumpet: I like the beaxh umbrella. It's still raining outside and the central heating is on inside, but beach dreams continue...

>33 vancouverdeb: Looking forward to the announcement. I'll try and be ready for anything.

>34 nittnut: Gorgeous picture. One day I will make it back to the southern hemisphere!

February 11th 1990

BY WANDA COLEMAN
—for Dennis Brutus

This year the leaves turn red green black
freedom colors each leaf
each stitch of grass. I am amazed
at my sweet harvest. The prison door has opened
and a nation’s heart is released. I am full
having spent my greediness in a ritual of joy.

From Hand Dance

I love the way this poem manages to mark a significant event in world politics in such a short series of lines, whilst reminding (me, at least) of the the simple pleasures of Langston Hughes' plums in the fridge.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238672

"Writing in Black American Literature Forum, Tony Magistrale summarized, "Coleman frequently writes to illuminate the lives of the underclass and the disenfranchised, the invisible men and women who populate America's downtown streets after dark, the asylums and waystations, the inner city hospitals and clinics. . . . Wanda Coleman, like Gwendolyn Brooks before her, has much to tell us about what it is like to be a poor black woman in America."

Guardian Reviews Fiction


Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates reviewed by Isaac Butler (first issue of planned series of 12)
"In some writers’ hands, T’Challa is arrogant – wouldn’t you be if you ruled a techno-futurist Utopia? – but he is always, at heart, a good man. T’Challa is, no matter what, a beloved, merciful, and just ruler, possessed of a personal sense of restraint and duty.

The Black Panther’s rule of Wakanda hasn’t been seriously interrogated by the various writers who have told his story. It is this aspect that feels most fresh about Coates’s take on the character. "


The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund reviewedby Mark Lawson
"...similarities to previous hits were presumably what encouraged the buying spree that has seen rights to The Crow Girl signed up by publishers in 38 countries so far. Certainly, it is difficult to see how the interest could have been fuelled by originality, especially in subject matter. Readers rapidly encounter familiar motives and enemies, including historical secrets, eastern European gangsters and the molestation and murder of children."


The Bricks that Built the Houses by Kate Tempest reviewed by Alex Clark
"When Tempest’s angst-ridden lyricism is let off the leash, the effect is thrilling, unspoiled even by its melodrama and occasional mawkishness. Her lonely protagonists, weaving their way in and out of unloved cityscapes in search of they know not what, come to seem both painfully particular and impressively archetypal."


The Death of an Owl by Paul Torday with Piers Torday reviewed by Chris Bryant
"...a delightful gothic fantasy..."


The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh reviewedby Sarah Ditum
"It’s not just that the characterisation is unconvincing. It’s a dereliction of everything that made Begbie such a nightmare and thrill ride."


All That Man Is by David Szalay reviewed by William Skidelsky
"So extensive is the Channel-hopping, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for thinking that Szalay was advancing an argument on behalf of the Remain campaign, about the interconnectedness of Britain and Europe."

All reviews via www.guardian.co.uk/books

Guardian Reviews non-fiction


The Bitter Taste of Victory. by Lara Feigel reviewed by Anthony Quinn
The Holocaust,the "central, unfathomable crime of the Nazis haunts those whose experiences Feigel has corralled here; some in fact regarded the entire German nation as complicitous in the crime. Repugnance took on physical symptoms. The photographer Lee Miller, recalling her visit to Dachau, found herself “grinding her teeth and snarling, filled with hate and despair”."


The Secret Poisoner by Linda Stratmann reviewed by Kathryn Hughes
"...here is what any potential victim of a Victorian poisoner should be watching out for:
1. Be careful if you have a doctor in the family or, failing that, a pharmacist – or if you live next door to a farmer who is particularly partial to sheep dip..."


Better Living Through Criticism by AO Scott reviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu
"To deny or seek to downgrade the importance of interpretation and individual responses has, he believes, serious aesthetic and political implications. It “lulls us into passivity”. It “encourages us toward either the defensive group identity of fanhood or a shallow, half-ironic eclecticism”. The dangers of the latter, and it’s hard not to imagine he has one eye on the ongoing freakshow of American politics, is that “we are conscripted into a polarised climate of ideological belligerence in which bluster too often substitutes for argument. "


The Abundance by Annie Dillard reviewed by Gavin Francis
"...she has a mystic’s appreciation of the glory and plurality of the world, and a gift for communicating astonishment. This collection of essays has tremendous range: amoebae to the Andromeda galaxy; specks of dust to planetary motion; redemption to the brute facts of suffering."


Pape Satàn Aleppe by Umberto Eco reviewed by Tim Parks
"It is honestly hard to think of anything Eco did not write about."

Hmm, I wonder what it says about me that I'm somewhat intrigued by The Bricks that Built the Houses?

And on the subject of the Baileys Prize books -- I agree that The Green Road is especially worthy. But I'm sad that you didn't love The Portable Veblen as much as I did, which would have been difficult as it ended up being one of those books that I have an unreasoning love for.

>36 charl08: I like the Coleman poem!

Happy Saturday, Charlotte! Interesting Guardian reviews. I usually steer clear of the super hero comics but Black Panther, will have to be looked at, especially with Ta-Nehisi Coates at the helm.

The Dillard collection sounds good too. She will be featured on the AAC, in November. Just sayin'...

Hi Charlotte - I took note of The Bricks that Built the Houses at my local bookshop as I thought the cover was striking and looked up the reviews when I got home. The Death of an Owl sounds good.

For once I already own a book the Guardian reviews - the Eco is on my shelf. Not sure if they did it justice though. It's a collection of pieces he wrote in a weekly newspaper column over 30 or so years, not meant to be read in bulk. Of course that type of writing is witty and smart if taken in small doses, but feels condescending when you read 10 or more at once. Planning to read it very slowly, maybe one a day.

Edit: just noticed I'm wearing the book title's color combination. It's yoga clothes, so I wouldn't be seen on the street like that. :)

Congrats on your shiny new thread, Charlotte and happy weekend.

>39 RidgewayGirl: Given the credibility of the author in spoken word circles I suspect it says that you're up with the new trends... I still haven't written anything about Veblen. Hard to summarise.

>40 msf59: I will wait for the book which no doubt will follow. I'm intrigued by the African back story.

>41 avatiakh: It's a gorgeous cover, although it does rEmin me of a bpoke about the tube.

I wasn't a fan of the author's book Salmon Fishing in the Yemen so despite the owl cover I'm likely to resist that one.

>42 Deern: I tend to avoid column collections for that reason - just not designed to be read as a book.

>43 Ameise1: Lovely flowers Barbara. Thank you. Still only bedding plants and bulbs up so far here...

Happy new thread!

Did you finish Ruby? What did you think?

>46 banjo123: Thanks Rhonda!

>47 katiekrug: er, I'm not sure where I put it down.... it's here somewhere. I started it, but got distracted.

I'm about half way through A God in Ruins. I really dislike the Viola character. Two horrible mothers in a row are not sitting well with me.

Hi, Charlotte.

Can't wait to hear what you think of A God in Ruins, as I expect I'll read it soon.

Ta-nehisi Coates doing the Black Panther? I'll have to check that one out.

>1 charl08: I don't usually get to say it because of my native climate but for the last two days and the next two days I can legitimately say that I am reading (and checking LT) on the beach. Lovely experience. We should all get the chance from time to time.

>48 charl08: I loved A God in Ruins, although I agree wholeheartedly with your hidden comment.

Ohh - so many spoilers to resist, Charlotte! You make it challenging for me! :) I found The House at the Edge of World really difficult to summarize, so I understand your challenge with The Portable Veblen I ended up making a few comments and linking up an online review! :) Best that I could do.

>49 jnwelch: Well I'm nearly there now Joe - just have to think of something to say.

>50 Oberon: Sounds good Erik. I hope you're getting plenty of reading in.

>51 kidzdoc: In retrospect, reading The Portable Veblen and A God in Ruins back to back was a Mistake...

>52 vancouverdeb: Thanks for understanding Deborah. I'm off to a gallery today so stI'll no sign of that review...

Happy Sunday, Charlotte! I hope the "bad" mothers do not turn you off of A God in Ruins. It is such a terrific read. I ended up liking it, even more than Life After Life.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte!

Happy New thread, Charlotte, belated though it may be. Hope you're enjoying a lovely weekend.

>54 msf59: Mark, tricky to say without more spoilers!

>55 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie

>56 Carmenere: Cheers for that. I am enjoying a sunny day (although not quite beach weather yet).

This post is spoilertastic. Avoid if you haven't read the latest Atkinson.

I read The Portable Veblen last week and finished the last few chapters of a God in Ruins this morning. Both were innovative, Veblen in a squirrelly way difficult to define, and GiR in an about face that turned the whole book on its head and made me wonder about the whole project. Veblen really excelled in unlikeable characters, depicting a man seduced by military and big pharma $$ and a young woman without ambition and apparently losing her grip on reality (thinking that the squirrels are giving her relationship advice).

What I really struggled with in both books was an unremittingly (at least for most of both books) awful mother, self-centred and destructive. I don't know anyone like this, and I found it tricky to see these characters as anything other than blackly comic exaggeration - and so undermining the other stories told in the books. I don't think that I have to like every character I read about - but I do feel that they have to be truthful, believable as human beings in having complex feelings and motivations.

I'm reading the women's fiction longlist

Updated women's fiction prize longlist

Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins

Shirley Barrett: Rush Oh!

Cynthia Bond: Ruby currently reading

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord

Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Jackie Copleton: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

Rachel Elliott: Whispers Through a Megaphone on order at the library

Anne Enright: The Green Road

Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory

Vesna Goldsworthy: Gorsky

Clio Gray: The Anatomist’s Dream currently reading

Melissa Harrison: At Hawthorn Time currently reading

Attica Locke: Pleasantville

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Sara Nović: Girl at War

Julia Rochester: The House at the Edge of the World

Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love

Elizabeth Strout: My Name is Lucy Barton ordered at the library

Hanya Yanagihara A Little Life

My pick for the shortlisting hasn't changed - I liked Veblen and Girl at War but not enough.

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord
I thought she imagined biblical David's life convincingly.
Anne Enright: The Green Road
I loved the story of a family spreading out around the world.
Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory
Not perfect, but lots of good stuff as a woman looks back at her life from her Zimbabwean prison cell.
Shirley Barrett Rush Oh!
Striking historical account of whaling community in Australia, but it's the humour that made me admire the book.
A God in Ruins I have reservations but can see it's really well done.

Still nothing that has dramatically won me over yet from thinking that The Green Road should probably win...

Went to see a Pre-Raphaelite exhibit in Liverpool. We weren't allowed to take pictures in the temporary exhibition so here's one from the permanent collection instead!

Hi Charlotte - I loved God in Ruins a lot more than you did, but I really enjoyed your comments on it. I can't believe how quickly you are getting through the list.

One book that you haven't mentioned that's gotten a lot of acclaim is A Little Life. My sister read it and after discussing it with her and reading reviews, I don't think I want to spend the time to get through it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes the short list.

I'll make my way through several of these, but it will take me a while.

Struggling here in Sao Tome with poor internet and a dodgy keyboard but I had to stop by and wish you a happy new thread.

Guardian Reviews are a pretty enticing selection this week too.

>58 charl08: ...awful mother, self-centred and destructive.
I am glad you haven't met any of those... but believe me, there ARE very awful and destructive mothers... :-(
The books sound good, might read them someday....

>60 charl08: I hope you enjoyed the exhibit!

>61 BLBera: I did lose myself in the Teddy at war chapters. The bomber crew bits were well done I thought. One of my dad's friends' dads was a gunner in one of those planes, such a lovely kind man. I can't imagine what he went through.

Just the Viola character that was awful (for me). Was the point to create an arc where she only "understood" herself and changed at the end, do you think? Was it supposed to seem quite a fairy tale resolution (the exotic yoga retreat, the pronouncements about how to live?) to their relationship problems?

I liked the Augustus bits - lovely comic note.

>62 PaulCranswick: I've been there (well, not Sao Tome but the dodgy computer!). Safe travels.

Charlotte, I wish I had read as many of the new Bailey's list as you! I had hoped to pick up the Atkinson and opted today for comedy instead (The Whisper of the River).
Anyway, I love the beach(es)! And I so resonate with the Hirshfield poem. Thanks!

>63 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, I missed your post. I hope it didn't sound like I think all famiIies work, or all mothers get it right. I guess one of the reasons I read fiction is that we get to see inside someone else's head, find out their reasons and motivations. This to me was a character that didn't 'make sense' - but to readers with different life experience it would? Maybe you will read it? I'd be keen to hear what you think.

>65 LizzieD: I'm beginning to think it would make FAR more sense just to wait for the shortlist! I do love a book that makes me laugh. Hope you're having fun with it.

Wow - so much to get caught up on.

Going back to your previous thread, I have made note of the Varoufakis book. He is a rare example of a Finance minister that really know finance, banking, etc and while he tends to rub some folks (i.e. the banking institution and the ones that determine whether he stays on in his position), he has done a heck of a lot when it comes to bringing the world financial situation to the awareness of the average citizen (so long as you follow the reports where he is cited). I love the denial everyone continues to live in...

Glad to see you loved Sweetland *wears my proud to be Canadian cap*

Love the continued updated on the plants - the bean seems to be doing just dandy!

I keep forgetting that day-light savings starts on a different day in Europe - kind of brings forward the question of why we make such random changes in time, but I tend to be anti day-light savings so feel free to ignore my grumblings.

Finally, I have made it to your new thread: Happy New Thread! Continue to love the penguin theme. At the zoo in Calgary, they do a daily "Penguin Walk" where zoo patrons can watch the penguins... well... walk. Crazy and yet so wonderful. They stop the walk in the warmer weather and I did not manage to experience the walk when I was there back in March. *sighs*

>38 charl08: - The Secret Poisoner looks wonderful! Yes, I like the idea of a poisoner in my reading material... stopping giving me that strange look. ;-)

>67 lkernagh: Thanks for visiting Lori. I have seen penguins walking at Edinburgh too - it's a fun tradition.

I was wondering how much Christie wad influenced by the poisoning cases of the 19c - a lot of the cases from the review sounded very similar to something Port might encounter...

I've been checking the Baileys site, but no sign of the announcement of the short list. Harumph.

ETA Not announced until 7.15 tonight....

And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So

BY WENDY XU
Today there has been so much talk of things exploding
into other things, so much that we all become curious, that we
all run outside into the hot streets
and hug. Romance is a grotto of eager stones
anticipating light, or a girl whose teeth
you can always see.

Full poem here : http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/247404

In a 2012 interview with John Hoppenthaler, Xu stated, “I think language is always waiting patiently on us to engage it, to play with it and arrange its parts, to build something weird out of it, but the hardest time to stop and think to do this is any space outside of poems. To ‘negotiate’ with a poem is right—it says things, you say something back, you say YES! or you say OH NO, but the two of you build the complete experience together...."

Ooh, I like the poem, Charlotte. Thanks for sharing. Have you read her before?

I hope to start my Oliver collection today.

Even more than the poem, I like the quote. Sorry you have to wait for the short list - torture!

>71 msf59: The poetry foundation website is a great thing Mark. I'd not read many of the poets I've quoted but would be tempted to order a few of their books now!

>72 Crazymamie: She sounds like she would be a good person to hear at a reading. Interesting with a sense of humour.

I read the interview of Cynthia Bond on the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction website early this morning, when I was checking to see what time the shortlist would be announced (19:15 BST as you said, or 14:15 EST in the US). I hadn't heard of Ruby before but it sounds interesting. I see that you're reading it, so I look forward to your comments about it, Charlotte.

Hi Darryl, nice to see you. I was a bit surprised they left it so late to be honest - last year they seemed to be much quicker off the mark. Did you see from the website that there will be a big event in London with readings from the shortlist?

Katie has read Ruby and raved about it, so I'm keen to read it.

I'm late, but I'll run in and wish you a happy new thread. I wish it was because I was at the beach, but no such luck. Work gets in the way of real life far too much...

>76 Helenliz: Just Erik on the beach in RL then...

Shortlist announcement

Cynthia Bond: Ruby
Anne Enright: The Green Road
Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies
Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen
Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love
Hanya Yanagihara: A Little Life
http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/2016/the-2016-shortlist-is-revealed

I guess this means I'm going to keep reading, as I've only read two!

Ruby! Ruby! Ruby!

(chanted in the fashion of "Rudy!" from the cheesy inspirational football (American) movie starring Sean Astin...)

I was thinking more like the song, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby! No idea who it's by...

The Kaiser Chiefs.

Hi Charlotte!

>77 charl08: If you say so Katie!

>78 katiekrug: Great minds think alike...

>79 Helenliz: Susan! Good pop.knowledge there...

A God in Ruins is a really enticing name for a book. The only book I've read by Atkinson is Life After Life which didn't really appeal to me.

A God in Ruins is about the same family - but not as tricksy as Life after Life. Worth a try I'd think as I've never read an Atkinson book that's the same as another one of hers. She always writes new, even when she was doing the Jackson Brodie books.

I'm bummed because Atkinson didn't make the list. So, I have some reading ahead. Did I call it with A Little Life? That's the only one I probably won't read.

Are you planning to read all of the shortlist, Charlotte?

>75 charl08: I did see that there will be a Shortlist Reading ceremony in London on June 7th, the day before the Women's Prize announcement. I'll be in Europe then, but probably in Amsterdam. I suspect that Rachael (@FlossieT) will go to it, so I'll ask her about it, assuming that I make it to London toward the end of the month and see her then.

I didn't know that Katie read Ruby. I just read (and thumbed) her review of it. Now that it made the shortlist I'll add it to my wish list, and look for it in NYC or Philadelphia next month when I visit my parents.

From the shortlist I've only read The Green Road, which I liked a lot. I have A Little Life on my Kindle, but I'm very reluctant to read it, as it sounds like 900 pages of unremitting misery.

(What is going on with the touchstones today???)

>85 kidzdoc: - I just read (and thumbed) her review of it.

Hey, thanks!

>84 BLBera: I was so taking that book for granted Beth it took me a while to notice she'd been missed off the list! You did call it with A Little Life. I am still torn whether to read it or not.

>85 kidzdoc: So near and yet so far Darryl! I guess a friend on the inside is almost as good though. Hope it's as good as it sounds. Mark's the only person I know who has actually read A little life - if people on LT are reluctant to read it, how many people are going to read it / have read it in the wider population?

>86 katiekrug: Hey Katie - I'm still singing the Kaiser Chiefs, sorry. Back in a bit...

I finally watched Mavis! as it was shown on the tv here. What a great documentary. For my taste, I wish there had been a bit more about the MLK years, as the cinefilm and concert footage they did show from that period was good stuff. The music was wonderful, of course. There's a trailer here -
https://vimeo.com/121779518

Oh I am disappointed in the short list, Charlotte! Argh! I started Girl at War from the long list last night and I am going to continue reading it. Sometimes the long listed books are among the best picks, I think, no matter what the judges say. I had to toss aside The Green Road and as Darryl says, who wants to read a long book about misery, like A Little Life. I'll see what I read from the shortlist, not sure right now. I do have Ruby out from the library , but whether I'll get it read in the next couple of weeks before it is due back, I'm not sure. I'll go read Katie's review.

Lol Deborah. Well I am disappointed my favourites didn't make it through (although I did like the Green Road).

I have the Kaiser Chiefs' Ruby song stuck in my head now.

Delurking to say Hi! I have A God In Ruins somewhere in the stack by my bed....

>90 charl08: Is that Ricky Wilson? He looks much more attractive now.

>91 Berly: Will it make it to the top of the stack?

>92 DianaNL: It's all about the music Diana, obvs. (Ha!)

Want by Katrina Roberts

A man walks into a
museum in Paris, the Museum
of Natural History, to saw

a tusk off an elephant-
skeleton centuries-older than
he’ll ever be, becoming

in those early morning hours
part of a derelict and
inglorious human history,

while swallows darn the air
in loops, their glinting wings
an origami of hushed folds

Full poem here:
https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/want-0

Most recent book Underdog (2011)

A God in Ruins just didn't work at all for me although the first one did.

>95 sibylline: Sorry to hear that! Have you read any of her other books? I loved Behind the scenes at the Museum.

>85 kidzdoc: "900 pages of unremitting misery. " Hmmmm...sounds familiar.

Tuesday waves to Charlottes!

>97 msf59: Would you recommend I read it Mark? So far the vote seeming to be going No...

At Hawthorn Time

Another from the Women's fiction longlist. Melissa Harrison is a British journalist and this is her second book. I really enjoyed this novel, which centres around a village now all but absorbed into a more recent town.

A couple have moved to the village from London, as the wife tries to paint and her husband tries to make sense of leaving the capital. A young man works in a processing industrial complex, works on his car, visits his grandfather who used to work the land before tractors replaced horses. And a wanderer, just released from prison, walks to find casual work: his beautiful pencil drawings begin each chapter. In amongst this, nature is a further character: birth, growth and death. Harrison's created something impressive here,a reflection on the changes in the rural landscape, but also the resilience of life carrying on around human beings.

The swallows that nested in the eaves of Manor Lodge bore the same genes as the ones who had built the first mud cups there nearly 150 years before; the swallows at the rectory went back even further. Every April they arrived in the village from Africa, lining up like musical notes on the telephone wires and swooping for beakfuls of mud from the banks of the dew pond on Culverkeys Farm to repair their nests.

You are speeding through the Women's Fiction list. Impressive. :)

>98 charl08: You know what, Charlotte, many people (not on LT, LOL) loved A Little Life, so if you have an itch to read it, go for it. You will probably know, in less than a 100 pages, if it will work for.

There was things I admired about it, but I did not understand the relentless suffering.

Just a speak so that you'll know I've been here.......... Hi, Charlotte!

>99 charl08: Nice review of At Hawthorn Time, Charlotte.

>101 msf59: I'm becoming progressively more tempted to give A Little Life a go (masochistic tendencies?). It's on my Kindle, so I might give it a shot in June.

At Hawthorn Time has had me interested for a while, Charlotte, so thanks for reading and nice review. So far it is not available at my library and I'm not sure if it available in Canada as yet. You are doing so well with the Bailey's prize.
As for A Little Life - whatever you think is best. It does not call to me, especially at 900 pages. I'm sure it is languishing on the shelf at my library.

I have At Hawthorn Time out from the library; thanks for the good review!

Just before I reply - more beanage (these are the two biggest)

Beautiful beanage!! Look how cheerful they are!

I am not sure about that short list. I am about half way through The Portable Veblen, and I think you nailed it when you said it is "oddly charming", but it's not screaming award winner at me.

>100 nittnut: Thanks Jenn. I think I'm going to read something not on the list now, though.

>101 msf59: Mmm. 'Relentless suffering' does not appeal. I've said to Beth I might read it if it wins. I'm committing g myself no further!

>102 LizzieD: Hi Peggy. Thanks for visiting.

>103 kidzdoc: Darryl, by all means do. Is June holiday time? It doesn't seem like it would be a relaxing read . The kindle sounds like a good way to deal with such a substantial book.

>104 vancouverdeb: Impressed you made it over here with all the Wills and Kate news going on!!! I really liked At Hawthorn Time - but it was already highlighted by the Costa prize, so there is that...

>105 katiekrug: Hope you like it as much as I did Katie.

>107 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. I will be requesting bean recipes later in the year if all goes well!

Veblen is memorable I guess? Maybe helpful when you have to read hundreds of novels and pick just a few...

Now reading Proust and the squid. Lots of interesting stuff about brains so far.

I looked through the SL yesterday and tbh I don't really want to read any of them, so I guess I'll put the women's prize candidate reading on hold for now. Must be careful not to read too much misery, it can drag me down for days.

Speaking of misery: A Little Life at least was a quick read despite its 900 pages. I read it in two days, and I think in the paper edition the font is quite big. If you read it, best be aware of the "fairy tale" approach the author mentions in an interview: the bad is as exaggerated as the good, and there is no concept of time - so it's somehow outside the real world. This helped me getting over it.
I felt very, very bad while reading it - desperate and half-suicidal. Some reviewers said it should come with trigger warnings.
But last year's Booker was more than the usual suffer-fest anyway and I read this book between two similarly sad ones.
Now, months later, I wouldn't rate it as highly anymore as I did then and I wouldn't award it a prize.

LOVE and admire the beanage! :)

I'm proud to be the only person happy about The Portable Veblen's inclusion in the short list!

It's awful though to read two books in a row with the same problematic thing happening. I know I've had trouble giving books set in NYC and featuring beautiful wealthy people a fair reading ever since I read To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. It certainly colored my responses to Fates and Furies and A Little Life.

On the subject of A Little Life; I hated it, but I'm also glad I read it as the discussions about this book are both important and interesting. And for the people for whom this novel worked, it really worked and they passionately loved it. And while 750 pages is a lot, Yanigihara does write well and the pages do flow quickly by. But do note that I hated this book.

>112 RidgewayGirl: I wonder what fans of A Little Life saw in it? What resonated? Unless, you were a sadomasochist. LOL. I did not "hate" the book and I still found some qualities but talk about over-kill. I definitely liked Fates & Furies more but it fell short of "Must Read" status.

Oh, hi, Charlotte! Happy Wednesday!

>111 Deern: Three sad books in a row would be hard work. I'd have to pick up something frothy just to keep my sanity after two I think! Thanks for the bean admiration. I have heard that talking to plants is good for them - maybe online praise works too?!

>112 RidgewayGirl: Oh, surely not the only one - it's you, the author and the publisher at least :-)

Thanks for weighing in on A Little life - it's good to get this discussion going I think.

>113 msf59: Happy Wednesday Mark - and thanks to you too for chiming in. I'm still no further on re decision!

I set myself the swimming challenge to swim the length of the Thames in the pool - the goal was in a year but I think it's going to be more like two as back issues have interfered with swimming as far as I'd like (at least, that's my story). Anyhow, I've swum 46 km and now have 300 to go to reach 'the source of the Thames'. Fun swim in an enormous pool today, although I had to restrain myself from pointing out to the lifeguards that with such a diverse clientele, maybe a few signs in more than one language might help the lanes run more smoothly! We'll gloss over the fact that even as a native speaker, I couldn't find the changing rooms...

Edited to fix my assertion that talking to 'pants' is good for them. Really bad in British English. I apologise to anyone who was offended, as they say on the news...

>113 msf59: Mark, Yanigihara is good at quickly making Jude an enormously sympathetic character. The readers who loved the book were able to sustain that affection and were deeply affected by his pain. It was also resonant for people who have undergone or are undergoing some kind of depression, or who had been abused. If you're interested in hearing a variety of opinions about A Little Life, take a look at the Tournament of Books when it was competing. I recommend reading the comments, as they are made by a number of intelligent readers who have strong opinions. Here's the first round:

http://www.themorningnews.org/tob/2016/a-little-life-v-the-new-world.php

>115 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for posting this - Enjoyed the main article a lot -

"The only point here is… love is fleeting? Don’t waste your life berating yourself? You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone? What is the point of this world!

Maybe it’s that suffering is not worthwhile? But if that’s the case, then just you put that book down right now honey! Go walk a lonely dog.

No one ever figured this book out, and isn’t that actually amazing?"

Has anyone read Snow flower and the secret fan? It's mentioned in Proust and the squid, based on a secret women only language in China. Sounds intriguing...

Sorry about your back not cooperating fully. But your swimming the length of the Thames sounds fun--good luck! I think I will pass on A Little Life for now. I definitely need cheerier reads right now, and a break from tombs. : ) Nice beans.

>117 charl08: I have read it, Charlotte. I liked it, but I didn't love it. The writing is very good.

>119 Crazymamie: I will ditto this.

>119 Crazymamie: and >120 ursula: - Yep.

I'm like you, Charlotte. A dark book or two and I need something lighter, or I might go over the deep end. :) Great beanage going on! Indeed, it is hard to keep up the Kate and Will's !

>118 Berly: It's a bit annoying. I met up with a friend today who was trying to help me think of other jobs I could do. I explained how much I enjoy the gardening and she suggested giving something completely different a go and working in a plant nursery or doing gardening. I'm not sure whether my back would be up to it though. Maybe Pilates would be a solution?

>119 Crazymamie: >120 ursula: >121 katiekrug: Gosh, a chorus. I'll see if the library has it.

>122 vancouverdeb: I caught a report where W and K were drawing with street kids. They were both very sweet I thought (even if I'd rather the lot of them were pensioned off).

LOL! I suppose I might feel differently if we had a King and Queen in Canada. I'm not sure how I'd feel. I'm accustomed to our Commonwealth position in the world, where the Queen is on our bills and we have the British Parliamentary System, but don't actually pay for the Royal's, unless they visit us. Of course the Governor General is the Queen's representative, but he is really just a figurehead. But that is the case in Britain too , is it not?

By the way, I'm enjoying A Girl at War, so despite the short list, lots of good books to be found , Long List, Short list or whatever.

>115 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Alison! I appreciate your input on A Little Life. I can understand readers, who have experienced this kind of pain and misery, identifying with the book but that has to be a very small amount of it's readership. LOL. Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

>117 charl08: I have read Snow Flower, Charlotte. It's a good read but the graphic descriptions of foot-binding is not a pleasant experience.

By the way, I've also read Secret Fan and Snow Flower a few years ago. I do remember that the foot binding was kind of gross , but in fact a very interesting insight into the practice of foot-binding. I gave it 4. 5 stars, so I do remember enjoying it. I was a really unique look into historical Chinese society. I think You will enjoy it.

What is going on with Will and Kate?

>123 charl08: Charlotte, sorry to hear your back is still troubling you. Pilates would be worth a shot - some people swear by it. I mostly swore *at* it, but then my pain is higher up. Is there something you could look for part-time or volunteering just to give it a try? A community garden sort of thing?

The roomie disapproves of all of Kate's Indian outfits on the basis that they are too frumpy. "We are not like that in India," she said firmly. I said I thought that "frumpy" would soon pass into history, whereas "We Saw Kate's Pants" never would, and that was probably the reason for the long skirts. I love that she played in the cricket match in her favourite wedge shoes - a newspaper columnist said that the Duchess's nude wedges were now one of the traditional signs of a British spring (like daffodils and whatever bird appears in spring).

>124 vancouverdeb: Charles seems to be quite keen to poke his noseinto things Deborah which is quite annoying. Or at least for me it is, and presumably for the civil servants who get his letters.

>125 msf59: I thought the argument on Tob that the book completely divides readers and has no solution was the strongest one. Thanks for comment re the footbinding I know I've read something about this before - maybe one of the Geisha books. Not pretty.

>126 vancouverdeb: Gosh that's a high ranking. I wonder what those women would make of breast enlargement and bottom implants!

>127 DianaNL: Only a royal jolly. Nothing particularly revelatory!

>128 susanj67: I presumed the dress code was to avoid offending those who think women's bodies should be covered up. Avoiding embarrassing paparazzi shots makes sense too. Long skirts are apparently in here too though. I saw a couple of kids wandering around yesterday in some truly spectacularly unattractive old jumper and long skirt combos. The joy of fashion.

I like your ideas about the gardening. I certainly need to do something different.

Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl


I picked up this memoir because I read a review that talked about how well written it was - and I am interested in how women experience the still pretty masculine world of music.

She describes her fandom, discovery of a particular music scene and her integration within a peculiar small town music ethic. There's a lot about the unglamorous life if musicians, sleeping on friends' floors, in the van, missing home. Brownstein is well aware of the sexism the band faced - she quotes some of the articles written about the band, complete with the journalists' comments on the band's choice of clothes and stereotypes about women with guitars. I appreciated her willingness to acknowledge she wasn't perfect (a childish truculence during a meeting with a potential new label) and her openess about her panic attacks was admirable. At one point she had terrible allergies and her comparison between the glamour of the stereotypical musician's troubles with heroin vs her terrible hives were darkly funny. She now writes for tv but hopefully she'll keep writing the books too.

On U.S.tours I would read novels about the states through which we were passing, trying to populate the vastness - the long stretches of green and brown and grays - with characters I could grow to know and love. Willa Cather kept me company in Nebraska and the upper Midwest. I read Joseph Mitchell essays about the Bowery and tales from James Baldwin's Harlem before arriving in New York. Capote's Other voices, other rooms accompanied me through the South. For the West Coast I brought along Joan Didion essays and the writing of Wallace Stegner. Books grounded me, helped me to feel less alone. Technically I was around people all the time on tour, but I often felt estranged from my band mates, unknown.

Good review, Charlotte. I find Carrie Brownstein so interesting. I believe she also acts on "Portlandia" and "Transparent", right? Cool, and not surprising, to see she's a serious reader. This book sounds tempting.

Thanks Joe - I haven't seen it, but yes - here she is on a poster.

I don't watch Portlandia, but we do watch Transparent (a niece is on it), and CB's excellent in that. Seems like a Renaissance woman with all these different interests and skill sets.

>134 jnwelch: There's a bit in the book where she talks about what she did when the band had a hiatus for maternity leave. Take a holiday maybe? Nope. Taught at a school, interned as a production assistant and acted in films for Miranda July! Mad.

A Strip of Woods at the Back of the Mind

BY ALEXANDRIA PEARY
Glued-on trees alternating with
strips of bricks and little pieces of song
taped up everywhere as green and pink diamonds

in a woods in a box when the room of the mind
has an easy chair and 3 large trees.
A 3-sided woods with a divan at the back,

an argyle of bird song on top
of a syncopation of stapled trees

Full poem here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/248642

>135 charl08: !!!

Life from Elsewhere: journeys through world literature has turned out to be a book I've cherry picked bits from, rather than read all. It's translated writings from international authors: for me the stories, rather than the political pieces, were what I was looking for. The story 'Lily' by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, describes an author listening to his work read in translation: Lily keeps appearing, but she was not in his book! Hanna Krall has two beautiful stories included. One describes seminar for those who had discovered late in life they were Jewish after being adopted into Polish families. It ends with a quote from Wole Soyinka :
On the hour of sleep, tell these walls
The human heart may hold
Only so much despair

>131 charl08: I enjoyed your thoughts on Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl. I NEED to add it to my audio rotation soon. Sounds great.

Have you been listening to any Sleator-Kinney?

My sister LOVES Portlandia. I just watch small outakes off and on. I'll have to see if my sister has read Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl.

>139 msf59: I listened to a bit here and there Mark, enjoyed it. It's a bit different from what I mostly listen to though!

>140 vancouverdeb: Maybe something she might enjoy - although Brownstein only talks about her time in the band, and not what happened after that.

....ending by telling Corti of a carillon of cats he’d seen at the Cloth Fair and later at Magendie’s, that went by the name of a Felisophone – cats in cages, nails on sticks, sticks attached to buttons that the Felisophonist played to produce a weird chorus of wails and shrieks and hisses. Everyone’s head seems to be like that, he wrote, or mine at least – a cat-filled cage waiting to be prodded and poked into action, a ramshackle orchestra from which I try to extract some kind of order, and maybe even a durable tune or two...

Another from the Women's fiction longlist, The Anatomist’s Dream is dark and fantastic, the story of a young boy with a tumour on his head (it's called a toque but it sounds like a tumour to me) who joins the fair when it comes to town. The array of entertainers provides a warm space for a little boy who previously was out of place. The different fair people are a kind of touring 'freak show', but a varied human community using tricks and techniques to make a living when the punters go home.

Philbert's head is considered not dramatic enough for the fairgoers so works behind the scenes. Travelling through Austria Hungary and Germany in 1847 the fair people are aware of political tensions, as communities react against mechanisation, unemployment and poverty. A man who claims he can see the future takes Philby to have his head examined by a group of experimental scientists. The state has other ideas about what the scientists are discussing and planning.

I liked this book a lot but got increasingly frustrated at the way the author chose to end chapters predicting Philbert's future significance. Rather than light foreshadowing, this took the form of ominous pronouncements which rather than adding to the tension just made me wish she'd get on with it. I really admired how she showed a peripheral community moving through difficult political times, and I don't think I've ever read anything set in this period before, so plenty to celebrate. I think if you enjoy the big 19c novels or Sarah Waters' Victorian books this might well be of interest.

I'm still reading the women's fiction longlist

Updated women's fiction prize longlist

Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins

Shirley Barrett: Rush Oh!

Cynthia Bond: Ruby currently reading

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord

Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Jackie Copleton: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

Rachel Elliott: Whispers Through a Megaphone just arrived at the library

Anne Enright: The Green Road

Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory

Vesna Goldsworthy: Gorsky

Clio Gray: The Anatomist’s Dream

Melissa Harrison: At Hawthorn Time

Attica Locke: Pleasantville

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Sara Nović: Girl at War

Julia Rochester: The House at the Edge of the World

Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love

Elizabeth Strout: My Name is Lucy Barton ordered at the library

Hanya Yanagihara A Little Life

Here's Sleator-Kinney jamming in the woods, to "Entertain". They put out a lot of sound for 3 members:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sleator-+kinney+videos&&view=detail&...

ETA: Brownstein kicks butt here! LOL!

Thanks Mark. I hope the audio uses their music - it would make so much more sense of her memories in places!

Keeping Orchids by Jackie Kay

The orchids my mother gave me when we first met
are still alive, twelve days later. Although

some of the buds remain closed as secrets.
Twice since I carried them back, like a baby in a shawl,

from her train station to mine, then home. Twice
since then the whole glass carafe has crashed

falling over, unprovoked, soaking my chest of drawers.
All the broken waters. I have rearranged

the upset orchids with troubled hands. Even after
that the closed ones did not open out. The skin

shut like an eye in the dark; the closed lid.
Twelve days later, my mother’s hands are all I have....

Full poem here
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/keeping-orchids

I finally overcame the Kaiser Chiefs playing on in my head each time I looked at this book, and read Ruby.


A gripping story of abuse in a small town, it manages to leaven the horror with humour and knowing remarks about those who consider themselves righteous to lighten the reader's load. Recommended.

Thanks for that, Charlotte. I'll put Ruby on my TBR list. I currently have it out from the library, but I'm not sure if I will get to it before it is due at the library. Quite enjoying Among the Mad .

I didn't want to say too much Deborah as I read almost nothing about it before hand and thought that was a good way to read it. Glad you're enjoying your latest Maisie!

Guardian non-fiction reviews


In Gratitude by Jenny Diski reviewed by Blake Morrison
"Her cancer diary began as a monthly column in the London Review of Books, where it found many admirers, myself included. But it doesn’t read like a series of columns. And it isn’t just, or even predominantly, a “cancer diary”. When the Onc Doc tells her the worst – and it’s not just lung cancer she has but pulmonary fibrosis: a double death sentence – the future flashes before her eyes “in all its preordained banality”. But the past, or a particular phase of it, also looms up – the experience of being taken in by Doris Lessing as a teenager"


A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold reviewed by Meghan O'Rourke
"...recounts one of the most horrible experiences a parent can endure: the death of a child, compounded by the shocking realisation that you failed to know him. Klebold’s son became a murderer before he became a victim of suicide."


Respectable by Lynsey Hanley reviewed by Colin Grant
"Her wit is nonetheless sharpest when confounding prejudice and putting to the sword stereotypes perpetuated by lazy journalists. On the question of racist attitudes, she looks to her home constituency: when Chelmsley Wood’s sole BNP councillor was replaced in 2011 by a member of the Green party, there was “remarkably little commentary on the tendency of the downtrodden white working class to be driven into the arms of environmentalists”."


This Orient Isle by Jerry Brotton reviewed by David Shariatmadari
"...extensive and complex England’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim world once was, and tentatively connects the threads of that engagement to our own times."


Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson reviewed by Robin Mckie
"...a biological crisis that now hangs over the Earth, a global endgame that threatens to eradicate virtually all our wild animals and plants. Among the many other victims outlined in this deeply disturbing work are the yellow-blossom mussel, the plateau chub, the mammoth, the passenger pigeon, the stirrup shell, the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, the ivory-billed woodpecker and the baiji dolphin. "


The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind by AC Grayling reviewed by Julia Baggini
"focuses on the 17th century, which he argues marked a radical turning point in human history. At the start of this century, the ways in which even the best educated and intelligent thought “was still fundamentally continuous with that of their own antique and medieval predecessors”. By its end, they had become recognisably modern. This followed a suspiciously neat linear progression from “thought’s obeisance to the demands of religious orthodoxy” through “a period of inflated hopes for mystical or magical shortcuts to the universe’s secrets” to “the triumph of the more accurate methods of mathematics and empirical inquiry”."

All reviews from http://www.theguardian.com/books

Fiction to come a bit later on!

Happy Saturday, Charlotte! I have had Ruby on the T.R. list, forever. Glad you liked it.

Have a great weekend, Charlotte - You've almost made it through the entire Women's Prize longlist! Amazing. I'm reading The Improbability of Love right now, very promising start.

I hope the back is feeling better.

The brain stuff fascinates me; I've had my eye on Proust and the Squid for a while.

The Age Of Genius caught my eye in the NF list. And am I the only one who thinks of Kenny Rogers' song Ruby whenever I hear that name? I don't know the Kaiser Chiefs.

>152 msf59: It's really very good Mark. I was gripped while hoping for characters, always a good sign. I'd love to know how the audio goes too - or perhaps you have a herd copy?

>153 BLBera: Thanks Beth. There have been some cracking books on the list.

I'm not sure that I understand all the brain stuff but enough seems to be going in to be interesting!

The back is still creaky and I'm wondering whether to risk some planting and digging. Tomato plants in particular are in need of much more space!

>154 cbl_tn: I'd definitely read the full review - the book is criticised a lot.

I don't know the Rogers track but have almost got enough Ruby suggestions for a playlist!

I'll add Ruby to my wish list.

Several of the nonfiction books in this week's Guardian Review look good, particularly The Age of Genius. I did bristle at the comment about Dylan Klebold, one of the masterminds of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, being described as a "victim of suicide", though.

I hope you like Ruby as much as I did. Katie was bang on the money in recommending it so highly.

I think the reviewer didn't like The Age of Genius much but then Grayling is a pretty divisive figure I gather.

I think the 'victim' is a generic Guardian style choice rather than a comment on Klebold's involvement in the shootings at Columbine. According to the review his mother attributes his involvement to depression and the bad luck to come under the influence of a psychopath. The reviewer was less than convinced.

A Cruel Necessity
In this historical crime novel, would be cryptographer John returns to his home village from Cambridge and goes on a bit of a bender. He wakes to find a murder victim (he knows a bit about violent death as his father was an army surgeon in the English Civil war). The victim also has a code key on his person: was he a spy?



No one seems wiling to cooperate with his investigation: the local Roundhead magistrate just wants it all covered up, his suspiciously Royalist secretary wants to implicate and ideally humiliate his love rival (our hero, John) and Aminta, daughter of the former squire, has very different ideas about whodunnit.

I really enjoyed this novel which whilst poking fun at the hapless narrator (and the residents of neighbouring Suffolk) had as a setting the interesting period after the civil war when everyone had to go back home and get on with each other again. It also wasn't as long as some of the other historical crime I've read, which was a refreshing change.

Continuing the crime spree with the new Bernie Gunther, The Other Side of Silence. Bernie's on the French Riviera, feeling depressed...

A Cruel Necessity sounds good, Charlotte. I like historical mysteries.

By the way, The Improbability of Love is excellent -- unless it really takes a bad turn. I'm about halfway.

>131 charl08: My RL book club just read Carrie Brownstein's Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl, but by and large we did not enjoy it quite as much as you did. We thought she was an intelligent writer, but all of us would have preferred a book that dealt more with her Portlandia experience and none of us were that familiar with her band. I did listen to some of the music as I read and it did help me understand what she was describing.

>158 charl08: BB! Historical mystery is my favorite genre.

>160 BLBera: Good to hear about The Improbability of Love. One I've not managed to get from the library yet!

>161 Berly: Sorry to hear that Kim - makes sense though. I don't know her series (here it seems only available via digital streaming tv) so I didn't have that interest. I think she benefitted a lot by comparison to some musicians I've read who seemed to think the autobiography was a competition to list everyone famous they'd ever so much as said hello to, and an opportunity to deny criticism. Instead her book was I thought smart and intelligent. Maybe she'll write another about the TV years?

>162 cbl_tn: It was a fun one - and for once, I've read the first book in a series first!

Guardian fiction reviews


The Cauliflower by Nicola Barker reviewed by Stuart Kelly
"...a kind of mild mugging of a whole form of literature.... concerned with Sri Ramakrishna, a 19th-century Indian mystic, the kind of guru who hates being called a guru."
Ha, no...


Not working by Lisa Owens reviewed by Justine Jordan
"...what marks the book out is its delicately understated portrait of everyday uncertainty."
Maybe!


Quiet flows the Una by Faruk Šehić reviewed by Kapka Kassabova
"...a major and complex contribution to war literature."
I'll ask the library.


Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave reviewed by Helen Dunmore
"While it lacks the hallucinatory power of Bowen's The Demon Lover or the power and complexity of Waters' The Night Watch, it is an absorbing, sharply paced novel."
Think I'll stick to Waters.


Hotels of North America by Rick Moody reviewed by Charlotte Jones
"What emerges from the chaos is a vivid impression of modern life."
For some reason doesn't appeal.

I'll also be picking up Dodgers (which I know some LTers have also recommended), Sunset City and The House of Fame, all mentioned in the 'Crime Roundup'.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte.

The Cauliflower sounds intriguing. I may look for it in June, as it won't be published in the US until August.

>150 charl08: I've just reserved This Orient Isle (one copy in the whole of London, and I'm fifth, so that really doesn't count, does it?). I would have reserved Respectable, but only Estates: An Intimate History is showing in the library catalogue and I've already read it :-( Half-Earth also looks good. A dangerous week for me!

>165 Ameise1: Lovely picture. There are lots of little birds in the garden picking up bits and pieces for their nests. Not sure that one would fit in though!

>166 kidzdoc: I saw you'd added it already Darryl, on the book page, so I guess that makes you an 'early adopter'?

>167 susanj67: I thought she sounded familiar - knew that I hadn't read her before though. It did sound from the review like some of it retrod familiar ground from the previous book.

>166 kidzdoc: I did? No, at least not intentionally!

I won't visit the UK during my trip to Europe in June, but I assume that I can find English language bookshops in Amsterdam, and I know of at least one (Llibreria Anglesa) in Barcelona.

Sorry - my bad (eyesight) I went back and checked and it's someone who has the same initial as your username. I think it's time for me to get some new glasses...

>171 charl08: No problem. I'd be more concerned if you thought that @ksnider and I looked alike...

Catching up here!

In answer to yr question which is miles above -- I have read all of Atkinson and I have either very much admired or really loved all of it -- A God in Ruins is the first of her novels I haven't cared for at all - it felt like something she couldn't let go of and didn't have perspective about or something like that, at least to me. The writing is, as ever, so strong that it carries one along anyway.

Great fan of Carrie Brownstein - will have to seek out her book. Living in Vermont, which has a great deal in common with parts of Oregon, it is sometimes (usually?) howlingly painfully pointedly funny. The contradictions inside of which we blindly live are excruciating and wonderful material.

>172 kidzdoc: That would be even more embarrassing.

>173 sibylline: I liked the book in lots of ways but can see what you mean! Hope you enjoy the Brownstein. I know so little about the subtleties of different parts of the US, and she does touch a little on Seattle and Portland (if not the tv show).

The cos lettuces have been planted out in a grow bag in the (plastic) greenhouse in the hope that it is now warm enough for them there. Anyone eating here in about six weeks can expect to be served lettuce...

Also been bimbling about moving plants about (seem to be awash with selfseeded foxgloves at the moment). Lots of seedlings coming up have reminded me that I really must do better at labelling what I plant... pepper plants continue to turn up in unexpected places.

Tomato plants (bought as small plants) also seem to have survived their move to a grow bag yesterday. The seedlings that I planted are big enough to go out too - but have run out of space!

Charlotte, how's the back? I'm sure that there are aqua-exercises to strengthen it, but I have no idea what they are.... I envy your devotion to gardening - love browsing seed catalogues or wandering through somebody else's plot: loath the work itself.
I didn't ask for The Cauliflower from this month's ER offerings because I want Seveneves even more, but I have it on my list. (And good luck to me with the Stephenson!)
bimbling? I understand from context, but where does the word come from!!???

>176 LizzieD: The back is really not appreciating the gardening - but thanks for asking! I don't know much about gardening so it's mostly regular watering, liquid fertiliser and the willingness to use slug pellets with abandon seems to deal with most things (and if they don't, I decide to 'try something new'!!). It never grows the way I expect.

Recent amusing (at least to me) errors have included buying the same plant twice by accident and the mysterious reappearance of a pepper seedling in a bean plant.

I have no idea re the official etymology of bimbling. A friend used it in the context of walking (to describe the slow walkers taking the short path on a group walk in an enjoyable fashion) and it gradually expanded.

The Other Side of Silence, the latest Bernie Gunther (these ones, I read in order!) I enjoyed a lot. Since the first three I've found them a bit erratic, but this was cleverly plotted, with a focus on a British spies and the fear of a Russsian mole around 1956 at the time of the Suez crisis. Kerr takes the opportunity to get some digs in about the British from Bernie's perspective as a world weary Berlin gumshoe . My favourite was the line about the bravery of the British - fighting to the last American in two world wars. Ha!

If you haven't found this series yet - treat yourself to the March violets trilogy in a lovely penguin edition. Top quality historical crime.

I'm so glad you enjoyed (for lack of a better word) Ruby. I hope more people will read it.

From The Guardian reviews: The Cleave sounds interesting (I looked it up on Amazon) but I've never read him and I know some people think he's overrated. I have the Moody out from the library on the recommendation of a friend, but his taste and mine differ wildly, and it hasn't called out to me yet (and I've had it out for several weeks already!). I also have Sunset City and Dodgers on my library WL....

Oh dear, Charlotte - I am quite keen on Everyone Brave is Forgiven and I have it wishlisted on amazon ca. But I'm not if I've read any reviews - it just sounded good and yes, I am so shallow as to like the cover of the book! ;)

Berlin Noir sounds interesting. Will have to look into that one and yes, I plan to read Ruby eventually , and maybe The Improbability of Love

I guess my picks would be:

Non-Fiction ; Jenny Diski
Fiction ; Nicola Barker.

The Bernie Gunther books are a favourite series of mine too.

I am glad to be back and pleased to see that little changes over here - still reading the occasional book or ten weekly!

>178 katiekrug: That's a lot of books to read Katie! I hope lots of people find Ruby too - there have been several requests for it on the computer system since I got my copy put from the library, I was pleased to see.

I've not read any Cleave - the review of this latest one just didn't tempt me.

>179 vancouverdeb: I think they've gone for a cover that will remind potential readers of the other good novels set in a similar period. Nothing wrong with liking a good cover!

I'd recommend Bernie to anyone (and have). Especially good of you like Chandler (but with a slightly less dubious attitude to women).

>180 PaulCranswick: Good to hear of another Bernie fan. I was pleased that this one was so strong.

I think the Diski will be good - I've read an article she wrote on living with Lessing, and it was fascinating.

I have been meaning to get back into the Bernie Gunther series forever! I even reread March Violets, for a kickstart and failed miserably. Someday?

Keeping up with series fiction has always been a trial for me...

Happy Pre-Tuesday, Charlotte! I am big Bernie Gunther fan - loved March Violets and I have The Other Side of Silence sitting right here on my desk. Hoping to be able to get to it soonish.

Please give the beans my love.

>182 msf59: Well, you've read one of the best imho, Mark! Prussian Blue is due out next year!

>183 Crazymamie: Hope you like it as much as I did Mamie. The beans are happily growing on - I'll take some more pictures when I lettuces look a bit better!

My Name is Lucy Barton was as wonderful as everyone said. Beautifully written, in a lovely edition borrowed from the library that I now covet.


Told in short episodic chapters Lucy is in hospital for most of the book, desperately missing her young children. Her mother arrives, and this proves the catalyst for her memories about her difficult childhood in rural poverty. It was tempting to see this as autobiographical, as Lucy is a writer, and the process of writing and workshopping Lucy's memories is included in the narrative. I was reminded of Colm Toibin's sparse prose and of Outline too.

He asked what we ate when I was growing up. I did not say, "Mostly molasses on bread." I did say, "We had baked beans a lot." And he said, "What did you do after that, all hang around and fart?" Then I understood I would never marry him. It's funny how one thing can make you realise something like that. One can be ready to give up the children one always wanted, one can be ready to withstand remarks about one's past or one's clothes, but then - a tiny remark and the soul deflates and says: Oh.

Keeping track of the women's fiction longlist read

Updated women's fiction prize longlist

Kate Atkinson: A God in Ruins

Shirley Barrett: Rush Oh!

Cynthia Bond: Ruby

Geraldine Brooks: The Secret Chord

Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Jackie Copleton: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding

Rachel Elliott: Whispers Through a Megaphone in the TBR pile

Anne Enright: The Green Road

Petina Gappah: The Book of Memory

Vesna Goldsworthy: Gorsky

Clio Gray: The Anatomist’s Dream

Melissa Harrison: At Hawthorn Time

Attica Locke: Pleasantville

Lisa McInerney: The Glorious Heresies

Elizabeth McKenzie: The Portable Veblen

Sara Nović: Girl at War

Julia Rochester: The House at the Edge of the World in the TBR

Hannah Rothschild: The Improbability of Love

Elizabeth Strout: My Name is Lucy Barton

Hanya Yanagihara A Little Life

I hope you enjoy Dodgers. I thought it was an excellent crime novel.

So has My Name is Lucy Barton nudged The Green Road off your top spot for the prize?

I have had that Berlin Noir edition on my shelves for years. I must get to it one of these days!

>186 charl08: There is not much left on this list. Go Charlotte go.

>187 EBT1002: I'll see if the library has it yet Ellen. I've just picked up four books so I should really get on with them though...

I'm not sure about the best one. It's been a while since I read The Green Road and I think I should reread it. I remember what I liked about it but I'm not sure how to even begin to compare it to Strout's book. Both would have made worthy winners I think.

>188 Ameise1: Enough remaining to keep me busy Barbara! I do think they make up an interesting selection. Have no idea which will win. I've gone for something completely different next - a French crime novel The Dark Angel. Good so far...

>189 charl08: Sounds like a good new series, Charlotte.

Happy Monday, Charlotte. So many good books...

>190 Ameise1: And even better, I'm reading it in order!

>191 BLBera: It's been an ok day - bar the back, which refuses to cooperate. Fingers crossed it gets the message tomorrow.

I am so pleased that you enjoyed Lucy Barton as I did . I don't think I've read a Phillip Kerr, but I really enjoyed David Downing. Are they very different from one another? I've got Ruby out from the library and I think The Portable Veblen will be in the library for me either later today or tomorrow. If you had to chose, would you say Ruby or the Portable Veblen?

I've not read any Chris Cleave either. Just liked the sounds of it and liked the cover -so shallow! ;)

Nice review of My Name Is Lucy Barton, Charlotte.

Is it safe to assume that A Little Life will be the last Women's Prize book you read, if you read it at all?

Good luck with the back, Charlotte. I had a wonky back a couple of weeks ago and was miserable.

Yes, is A Little Life coming up soon? ;)

Hi Charlotte - at last! Lovely to catch up on your thread and read about the gardening. I hope your back is getting better.

I have the Berlin Noir trilogy here. I just checked and it's 6 years since I bought it and read the first 2! I have been picking up the others in the series when I see them, so there are a few sitting around now that all our books are out of storage at last.

#193 Deb - I would say the Phillip Kerr novels are a good bet if you like David Downing, but they are a bit more violent.

>193 vancouverdeb: I'd definitely go Ruby rather than Veblen Deborah - but Ruby is definitely darker.

Cushla's right I think (although I've only read one Downing I think). Bernie gets into an awful lot of trouble with some very nasty Nazis. It's kind of a German PI in Berlin instead of Marlowe in LA. Plenty seedy.

>194 kidzdoc: That would be very astute of you Darryl. In my defence, I read her previous book. I want points for that.

>195 BLBera: Hi Beth. Thanks for the back wishes.

As for the other: Tra la la what can you mean?

>196 cushlareads: Cushla! Hope you're enjoying your break. It's funny how many people have said the same. I vote pull them down...

The Dark Angel is a Paris set crime novel with a mismatched private detective duo: Lola, former police conmissaire and Ingrid, an American masseuse. Both agree to work together as they believe their friend Maxime is to be accused and framed for murder. Lola and Ingrid were both larger than life characters with strengths and vulnerabilities. I enjoyed the tongue in cheek commentary on Paris lives and interesting to see a seedier side of such a touristy city. Will happily pick up volume two.

Hi, Charlotte! I also liked Lucy Barton. I hope to get to another Strout this year.

So, you are reading Dodgers? I am still thinking about that one...it lingers.

#38 - Interesting Guardian-review of Annie Dillard's The Abundance. I've wanted to read "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" - but this one also sounds like a good read. amoebae to the Andromeda galaxy; specks of dust to planetary motion; redemption to the brute facts of suffering.

Fun to follow the reading of the bailey prize list - I must be the only one who didn't like "Lucy Barton" - I mean both the novel and the character. I think I'll be the observer for a while before I decide if I should read more from the list. Is "The Green Road" still your favorite?

>199 msf59: Disappointingly the library don't have it, so I'll have to wait a bit longer to read it Mark.

>200 ctpress: Carsten I missed your comments on LB, so I'm not sure what you disliked. It didn't do much in the way of plot, but I liked the musing on writing memory and family relationships. I must reread the Enright. It's a very different book to LB, although both deal with adult relationships with a dysfunctional mother.

Hard to pinpoint exactly why I didn't like it - I can understand it's loved for it's literary qualities but there was just a coldness in the character and in the book as a whole that I found so off-putting. Or maybe I just picked it up at the wrong time.

Fair enough. I can see what you mean although I think I read the coldness as an attempt by the narrator to distance herself from painful things.

(It occurs to me maybe you could read the Enright on your Irish walking tour...)

I'm reading Lit a memoir by Mary Karr

Touching that triangle of yellow paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by with all the wholesome prosperity they represent. And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message Mom1/2, written in laundry pen, since no one in our family ever stood on ceremony.
It was sometime on that ride that Mother asked me what I was reading. So lucid is the memory that I feel the power of resurrection. I can hear her voice made harsh by cigarettes asking, What's in your book?
This was a hairpin turn in our life together - the pivotal instant when I'd start furnishing her with reading instead of the other way round.

Interesting. I might save that one for the trip. I have sometimes chosen a book to take with me from the country I travel too - makes for a more interesting read.

Just FYI, Charlotte, Phillip Kerr is interviewed about his reading likes and dislikes in the April 17 NY Times Book Review. He has some interesting answers; I was glad to hear that he has Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth at his bedside.

OH! I love that quote from Lit - awaiting your final thoughts to see if I need to add it to the list. But you did get me with The Dark Angel - sounds good!

Happy Tuesday, Charlotte!!

I read Mary Karr's first memoir, The Liar's Club and liked it very much but never read the other two. Hmmmm.......

>206 jnwelch: Thanks Joe. I'll have a look. He managed to squeak in a couple of comments about writers working for free into the novel, which made me smirk a bit. Not the subtlest thing ever.

>207 Crazymamie: I do like translated crime, and having two women protagonists was pretty great.

>208 katiekrug: I suspect there's a bit of overlap, as she talks about childhood here too (to compare to college life). I'm enjoying it a lot.

More gardening


Newly transplanted tomatoes (from seed)


Peppers

Happy Tuesday, Charlotte. Your garden project looks gorgeous.

Thanks Barbara. I hope it's going to have tasty results!

That quote from Lit is breathtaking, Charlotte! I will be adding that to my wishlist.
And the cover (as portrayed on LT) of The Dark Angel is very appealing. Good read?

I'm cracking up at your approach-avoidance of A Little Life. I know Mark ended up praising it but it was (if I remember correctly) a bit of a slog.

Touchstones are pretty random today, also cracking me up.

Nice looking plants, Charlotte!

>204 charl08: Oooh. Love that quote.

>213 EBT1002: Hey Ellen I've only begun Lit but think it's a worthwhile read so far. I enjoyed The Dark Angel. Nothing earth shaking but two fun characters in an unusual setting (at least to me).

I am totally avoiding a little life. If it wins this strategy may not work though.

>214 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl.

>215 nittnut: Jenn - it's one of those books that has lots of quotable good bits. She writes really well.

(Still) reading Proust and the Squid about how our brains read. Fascinating stuff about how Socrates argued against writing instead of learning things by rote (and what this meant in terms of knowledge). Now moving on to consider how children’s brains put together the building blocks that enable them to learn to read. One of the illustrations is of two Chinese characters, asking the reader to do a kind of spot the difference activity from memory. Surprisingly challenging, and a reminder of the complex task asked of small children.

So impressed with your gardening! If those plants were mine they'd all be dead already. Too much water, not enough water, not the right amount of sunlight, lice... I might participate in a gardening project at the refugee home soon - I hope I'll learn from them and not kill their future vegetables instead. :/

>217 charl08: That sounds fascinating!

>218 Deern: I'd recommend good compost for your seeds. I've just been lucky with everything else.

>219 EBT1002: It is, although some of the brain science is beyond me!

Whispers Through a Megaphone

Another book longlisted for the women's fiction prize. I really liked this very British novel, full of people drinking tea and references to tv programmes and celebrities. In the first chapters I sighed as there was yet another bad mother, but Elliott managed to make the book about so much more. Interweaving the stories of Miriam (who had the awful mum) Sadie who is obsessed with social media and her husband psychotherapist Ralph. Sadie is not convinced by Ralph and Ralph is unsure of everything. There's a puff piece on the back of my copy by Liz Jensen, and I think there is a similarity - slightly odd ball characters dealing with life in unusual ways....

Hi Charlotte - you got me with Lit and The Dark Angel and Whispers through a Megaphone - darn you.

Nice plants.

How's the back?

Proust and the Squid also sounds fascinating...

Hi Charlotte! I did not like The Liar's Club; but that quote makes me think I should give Karr another chance.

>222 BLBera: Three? Is that a record?(!)
I swam yesterday and have walked today so am trying to ignore it...

>223 banjo123: I am not sure how much of an overlap there is with her earlier books. I do love the discussion of her poetry classes, and a wonderful teacher who supported her when her college jobs were too much.

Curtis Sittenfeld was talking about her new book Eligible on the radio tonight, which was a good reminder to me to reserve it. She was good listening, discussing why she wanted to set the book in her home town of Cincinnati, and the similarities between eligible 18c men and neurosurgeons. I know some LTers have read this already and not made much of it - I am hoping I'm the exception who likes it.

Reading Ruby by Cynthia Bond. What a dark book so far.

>226 vancouverdeb: Hopefully 'dark but good' Deborah?

I think I have Eligible waiting for me at the library. We'll see...

I don't know whether it's a record. Stop reading good books. Aren't you due for a slump? ;)

A record for me at least. Ha! I'm going to try and catch up with some non-fiction books for a bit, so reading more of Proust and the Squid. I love reading stories and quotes about reading and this book peppers the scientific and social research with them.

And here's some Elizabeth Bishop

Sandpiper
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.



Full poem here:
http://m.poemhunter.com/poem/sandpiper/

Hi, Charlotte! I like the Sandpiper poem. Reminds me of Oliver. She loves focusing on birds.

>231 msf59: This is one of my favourite poems, discovered when I read a Toibin book on Elizabeth Bishop this year. I love most seabirds, especially waders.

Memory of Water

Finnish writer Itäranta imagines a world post climate change and terrible war, when water is rationed by the military and most technology lost. Her father is a Tea master, and teaching her to inherit his skills. He has a secret, and soon this secret is bringing military investigators to their door: all water belongs to the military, and water criminals are isolated and then shot. Young Noria must decide whether to share the secret when she is the last member of her family left to share the tea ceremony.

Oh dear. Ursula Le Guin is not pro Eligible either. The signs don't look good.

"We are in a period of copycatting, coat-tail-riding, updating and mashup; rip-off is chic, character theft from famous predecessors is as common as identity theft via credit cards, and everybody from Achilles to Tom Joad is likely to end up solving crimes, in bed with a vampire, or battling zombie hordes. This wholesale appropriation is now so widespread that it is clearly more than a fad or a cheap PR gimmick, though it is both of those. I have done it myself: I stole Virgil’s Lavinia, and his Aeneas, and Virgil himself along with them. I am not ashamed. I did it for love."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/21/eligible-curtist-sittenfeld-review-...

Reading The Pinecone: the story of Sarah Losh. I love the sound of the early 19c drawing room discussions - 'naturalists mixed with poets, clerics with scientists and doctors...'

That is a beautiful poem excerpt. I have a book of Elizabeth Bishop's poems on my bedside table. I will start reading them this weekend.
I started Toibin's little book about Bishop earlier this year and couldn't get into it. Maybe it works better if you've already become familiar with her work. That would make sense.

>234 charl08: What a great short review! I have no desire to read Eligible and the review cemented that for me. I had not heard of the "Austen Project" but I do wonder what the point is. Somehow the Hogarth Shakespeare project seems less... crude. Or silly. But maybe because I'm assuming that the authors working in the Hogarth project are being a bit more subtle? Or maybe there is some other insidious hidden assumption that I'm making.

>234 charl08: Ah, yes, but you see, this "wholesale appropriation" is nothing new, either, really, and her example of stealing Vergil's characters is in fact a point in fact: Vergil didn't create those characters, Homer didn't even create those characters. The Greek playwrights borrowed their stuff from their mythological and literary past and, Euripides especially, did things with those characters that shocked their own audiences (I'm convinced that Euripides would LOVE the zombification of Austen); heck, Shakespeare pulled his stuff from the Greeks and Romans and did the same thing. Why is it now so terrible? It's what writers have always done. And for the reasons she reveals at the end: they do it for love.

>185 charl08: Great remarks for My name is Lucy Barton! May purchase that one for next years neighborhood book swap.
Have a lovely weekend!!

>236 EBT1002: I found myself searching for the poems he discussed so that I could read them for myself and then link them to what he says about them. I really like his discussion of how she lived on the coast all her life (I would love to live by the sea) and how this shaped her poetry, and the hidden figure (her Brazilian partner) in many of the poems. I liked the idea that despite her attempts to meet society’s prejudices, her happiness in the companionship seeped through.

>237 EBT1002: There is more of it. I will still read the book I think!

>238 scaifea: Interesting stuff Amber. Proust and the Squid talks about that period when the oral poetry was being written down for the first time. Amazing to think how many generations had been quietly adding and adding to the great stories. I think many Austen readers have such a relationship with her characters that this kind of updating is difficult for them. I loved Longbourn but think I read some hostility at the idea Jane and her sisters were oblivious to the life going on in the kitchen.

>239 Carmenere: I liked it a lot, was so glad it finally came from the library. Clearly other readers in the county were keen too - there was a big queue ahead of me!

Divorce Turkish Style

I'd tried to read this series, about a German woman living in Istanbul who solves crime on the side, before and got nowhere. I liked this one though. A young woman is found dead in her home, but there's nonclear cause of death. Her wealthy husband is mixed up in all kinds of dubious contracts, her mother in law claimed to dislike the marriage, and before her death she had been lobbying for a clean up of industrial pollution much to the disapproval of big business...

Aykol mixed in plenty of humour about life in Turkey, including the mysterious number of stomach complaints preventing fasting during Ramadan and elite admiration for the plastic surgeon, that I can overlook several unsolved red herrings.

Now you've made me interested to get On Elizabeth Bishop back from the library and to read it alongside the poetry collection I have. It's her pretty complete collection, I think, just called Poems.

What Ellen says - Austen project? I'm quite tired of authors' or directors' (modern) takes on Austen, did it really need an official project?
Read the Eligible review in the NYT last week and now interview and review in the Guardian and can say "not for me".

I quite enjoyed LeGuin's Lavinia which I read in a mini-GR here in my early LT years. But that was before I got also tired of the often used "sad and distanced old woman's voice" in historical fiction. Yes, I know. I'm a difficult reader. :)

Liked the snippet of Elizabeth Bishop - I want to fit in another american poet or two before the month end and may look what I have of hers on the shelves.

See that you have almost done the Women's Prize Longlist and am suitably impressed. The shortlist of course doesn't include My Name is Lucy Barton which is a wee surprise I would guess. I make it you've read three of the six shortlisted so far and make Enright (who has been a difficult writer for me to enjoy previously) top of those three?

I bought the Lisa McInerney today and have now got four of em on the shelves with none of them read (typical me really) so I would be interested how you would rate them in order.

Have a lovely weekend, Charlotte.

>242 EBT1002: I was embarrassed to find when I started reading Toibon's book that I don't seem to own a book of her poems. I think I came to her through a couple of anthologies of poetry, one lovely small hardback which included The Art of Losing (one of the best poems I've read about that horrendous depressed emotion that everything you touch goes wrong).

>243 Deern: I like your comment about the senior narrator. I quite like them myself (having not touched the Le Guin though). Did you not like the Ishiguro for this reason, or do elderly male narrators not appear so often?

I have found that tributes and skits to the classics generally send me back to the originals eventually. I read P&P for the first time after seeing Colin Firth (I blame Hardy, who turned me off all classics at a young age) and I don't think it did me any harm. I do like that we can as a group be so passionate about our admired books!

(Is it bad that I am now wondering what a novel version of P&P as told by Lizzie B in her later years would be like? )

>244 PaulCranswick: I love Bishop, she is one of my favourite poets. Please choose her!

You've figured out the stats correctly. I do think the Enright the best of the three shortlisted books I have read - although having read Ruby I could see that winning. I didn't like The Gathering but I did like this one. For me the idea of an Irish family spread across the world (as well as some members who barely leave home) was well told.

The G review of the McInerney did not sell it to me, but I'm hoping to get a copy from the library system soon. I am still avoiding A Little Life though.

>246 PaulCranswick: I have Ruby, The Green Road, A Little Life and The Glorious Heresies on the shelves. I like the look of Ruby and, like you, didn't get along with The Gathering so I now have better expectations of her latest given our shared view of her Booker winner. A Little Life seems to represent something of a major commitment doesn't it?

I went and scoured my poetry shelves and found Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop and will start it this weekend.

Hope you enjoy your Bishop read Paul. And of course I'll be keen to see which way you vote. (And of course, everyone else - any more votes for Enright, or am I on a hiding to nothing with that one?!)

I seem to be in a very pick and mix state with books at the moment. Just looking at Questions of Travel and The Hidden Light of Objects. I think the latter is the first book I've read by a Kuwaiti author, a little fact I am pleased with.

From Proust and the Squid

"One of the most powerful moments in the reading life, potentially as transformative as Socrates' dialogues, occurs as fluent comprehending readers learn to enter into the lives of imagined heroes and heroines, along the Mississippi or through a wardrobe portal."

I love that cover! Happy Saturday, Charlotte!

Guardian nonfiction reviews (from the paper version this week)

Guilty thing: a life of Thomas de Quincey by Frances Wilson reviewed by Phil Baker
"De Quincey was hardly the first person to take opium - everybody took it in his day, and, more than that, they took it for granted....But he was the first person to frame it so exotically..."


Girl Up by Laura Bates reviewed by Helen Lewis
"It's part handbook to teenage life, part introduction to patriarchy-smashing."


You Could Look it up by Jack Lynch reviewed by Steven Poole
"...provides potted biographies of 50 great reference works, from the very first extant legal codes ... to the great dictionaries and encyclopedias."


Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence by Lee Siegel reviewed by Karl Whitney
"Groucho's comedy, Siegel insists, is actually radical, nihilistic truth-telling that masks the great comedian's insecurity."


Lemmy: the definitive biography by Mick Wall reviewed by Fiona Sturges
"Lemmy-isms form the best bits of what is an intermittently entertaining book that has clearly been rushed outin the wake of the singer's death."


Figures of Catastrophe: the condition of culture novel by Francis Mulhern
"Apparently there can be no change: novels either imagine individual escapism, or doomed struggle."


Sounds and sweet airs: the forgotten women of classical music by Anna Beer reviewed by Charlotte Higgins
"...female composers have had to negotiate notions of what has constituted a "suitable" activity for a woman. This is not a story of direct progress..."

www.guardian.co.uk/books

>249 Crazymamie: It's a lovely one (and I think US only?)

I am always fascinated by which countries get which covers.

I'm not usually a fan of orange, but this one is the exception.

Oh, I love orange. It's right up there with red.

Have a red Orwell cover on me!

Guardian fiction reviews


The Chosen Ones by Steve Sem-Sandberg reviewed by Sebastian Barry
"You don't so much read Sem-Sandberg as stand in the fiery wind of his prose. He makes his reader strangely complicit in his terrible subjects."


The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild reviewed by Suzi Feay
"...its sweep is almost Dickensian, taking us from high to low in society.."


Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories After Cervantes and Shakespeare" edited by Daniel Hahn and Margarita Valencia reviewed by Miranda France
"...much more than a celebration of contemporary and legendary writers: it's about the global reach of the English and Spanish languages. It's about the wonders of translation...It's about collaboration.... There's a lot to cheer about here."


Eligible : a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Curtis Sittenfeld reviewed by Ursula Le Guin
"...even this pointless trivialisation of Austen's novel arose in part at least from love and admiration."


Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris reviewed by Melissa Harrison
"...looks well beyond the literary intelligentsia's world, describing with great humanity five ordinary lives..."


The Sunlight Pilgrims
"...a vivid and tender coming-of-age story set at the end of the world."
and The Dead Queen of Bohemia both by Jenni Fagan reviewed by Kirsty Logan
"The poems describe a world of five bars and old cinemas, roll-ups and homemade cherry wine, hangovers and tenements, moons and caravan parks."

www.guardian.co.uk/books

I want to read the review of The Improbability of Love - I loved it! Lunatics, Lovers and Poets also looks interesting.

I want all the Fiction. And am still dithering over most of the nonfiction. Except for the Lemmy bio, which I am quite happy for other people to read instead.

Eventually I would like to get to The Improbability of Love. I've seen it at the library many times, but have yet to pick it up. As Mamie says, it is interesting what country gets what cover. I wonder how they decide? ( Whoever " they" area ).

And yes, I've been loving the photos of little George and the Royal family! And my peek into Apt 1A ( or whatever it is ) at Kensington Palace. I do wonder - does conversation flow freely between Harry, William , Kate and Michelle and Barack? Or do think it is stilted and everyone needs quite a few drinks? It is hard to picture it all. Glad I'm not a notable person who has to do a lot entertaining!

I suspect that the job makes you good at small talk Deborah. I'd rather have the Obamas over than our PM, anyhow. They just seem more friendly to me, politics aside.



I have lots of library books to read bit instead I went for another Maigret, Inspector Cadaver. Maigret is asked to investigate in a rural community in the Vendee as a favour to a friend. A young man is dead and rumours have started about the squire's daughter... Again as with the books set in Paris I like the way Simenon constructs a vivid community, from the inn manager who would rather ignore the policeman than serve him, to the widow who is keeping her secrets to herself.

The Improbability of Love was a delightful read. Eligible is one of those homage novels to Austen that probably should never have been written; it turns into a hot mess.

>248 charl08: How did you like Proust and the Squid? I read it last year and thought it was wonderful. I believe that Wolf figured out lots about reading disabilty and was able to develop some early indicators for identifing kids so they can get the help they need before they experience failure.

I definitely want to read The Improbability of Love. And I know that I never want to read Eligible.

Oh! And I got my very vintage copy of the first Maigret so I will read that soon.

>261 Chatterbox: Another fan of the Improbability of Love. Cool beans. So far the lady on radio 4 is the only person who had nice things to say about Eligible (and maybe she was just being polite as the author was in the studio?).

Thanks for visiting Suzanne. I have been hoping you were ok.

>262 mdoris: I haven't quite made it all the way through (the science stuff takes me a couple of rereads). I do like the way she credits the research of other people in her book.

>263 EBT1002: Look forward to hearing what you think about the Improbability book Ellen.

>255 charl08: YES!

Thanks for the Guardian reviews - I want The Improbability of Love and The Dead Queen of Bohemia. And you have read another Maigret!! I am wanting to get back to that series. I just finished book two in the Nathan Active series, and I liked it very much.

Nathan Active? I have not read any of these. Will investigate. Do they need to be read in order?!

ETA Oh dear. Another " senior moment". Someone pass the superfruits and the soduku...

Proust and the Squid

This took me a while! Fascinating look at how humans developed reading, and how children learn (or don't learn) to read.



The range of research she discusses is impressive. Drawing on images of the reading brain Wolf is able to discuss how most of us automate the system of identifying words, and what might be happening when those labeled dyslexics have problems. I hadn't realised there were so many different ways to have difficulties in reading, or that these difficulties are noticeably different across different languages. For me, the international stuff was amongst the most interesting bits, e.g. how Chinese uses different sections of the brain (more characters based on images) and how they found this our (clue: Oliver Sacks would have enjoyed this story).

>267 charl08: Proust and the Squid sounds really interesting, Charlotte. My recall of how I learned to read is by " osmosis" - just kind of wanted to read and it happened. Same with my two kids - I read to them a lot, played games with them, even used flash cards and they were reading by the time they were 4-5 years old and quite fluently. And yet as a parent I went into the school's as a volunteer and young children practiced reading to me and vice versa and I realized there was a quite a range of reading abilities. My dad had a very close friend who was dyslexic and I don't think when he was in school, dyslexia was even recognized.

The Hidden Light of Objects

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories set across the Middle East but in most cases with a thread linking them to Kuwait the author's home country. Difficult to choose a favourite, but I think the most powerful one for me was the young Palestinian suicide bomber. Told from some unexplained afterlife, he's looked around for the promised hours, but they're nowhere to be found. His story is carefully told, his hopes to be a professor, as he acknowledges he is no fighter. His Tristan and Iseult style romance through a hole in the wall with the girl next door, and finally, ominously the threats of playground bullies with links to bombmakers. Other stories are occupied with the familiar: the midlife crisis, the cancer scare, the fertility problems. Al-Nakib laces these with political histories: Kuwaiti hostages, Lebanese kidnappings, the rise of Islamism. Recommended.

>268 vancouverdeb: I hadn't realised how much reading was linked to the words you hear as well as the ones you have read to you - so the amount of attention you get effectively. One of the shocking things she says is how important it can be if a kid has perpetual ear infections, as having poor hearing that comes and goes means you don't consistently hear the word parts to be able to work out language consistently.

I must admit a lot of the neuroscience went over my head.in terms of dyslexia, but I took away from it that like Autism, it exists in many different forms and affects people in different ways. I did think it was a great book for anyone interested in how our brains read.

You Could Look It Up from the NF list sounds like it's right up my alley. Onto the WL it goes!

I also want You Could Look It Up! Thanks for the reviews, Charlotte. I've also just wishlisted Proust and the Squid, as it looks great.

>271 cbl_tn: >272 susanj67: I like the sound of that one too Carrie and Susan. Hope the library here gets a copy.

>273 charl08: I've just checked my library catalogue and Bromley and Enfield have three copies ordered between them. So tempting. And no reservations! But I've wishlisted it for the time being instead.

Happy Monday, Charlotte! The Improbability of Love is already on my radar. Thanks for reminding me of Proust and the Squid I believe I've wanted to read that for quite some time. I've only now added it to my wishlist.

Signs of flowerbuds on the biggie plant. Got to eat some lettuce tiddlers as I thinned them out over the weekend. First crop of 2016 to reach the table :-)

>274 susanj67: So restrained! I'm in awe.

>275 Carmenere: There have been some great reviews on LT for the Improbability of Love. I still haven't read it yet.

Moorhen nesting from a recent walk

I don't think this is out in the UK yet. it is according to Amazon.
------
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer took home the Pulitzer prize for fiction this week. This will make him an author newly in demand. But in an interview, the artist tells the Guardian he is under no illusions about how books get sold.

“The literary industry and the entire social and cultural system of the United States work to tempt writers of color into writing for white people,” says Nguyen. “‘If I had written the book for a white audience, I would have sold it for a lot more money and many more publishers would have been bidding for it.”

The Sympathizer tells the story of an unnamed half-Vietnamese, half-French communist spy who lives a double life in Los Angeles.

Pulitzer winner Viet Thanh Nguyen: 'My book has something to offend everyone'
http://gu.com/p/4thf9?

Hooray for the Biggie Plant! I want to read The Sympathizer!

Good day!

Thanks Mark - hurrah indeed. I'm hoping for beans before June...

I downloaded the sample for The Sympathizer - I'm tempted.

I definitely want to read The Sympathizer---especially now that I know it is offensive to all.

I loved the LeGuin review of Eligible,. I do hope you read the book and give your opinion, as well.

>241 charl08: dang, another author Aykol I should read.

Good morning, Charlotte.

>279 charl08: I've put The Sympathizer on hold at my library. I love Viet Thanh Nguyen's cynicism . I am cynic at heart myself. Not sure whether the book is to my taste but I'll give it a look see.

You got my with Lucy Barton and Proust and the Squid. I wish I had been able to read this one years ago when my daughter was little. She has such a had time with reading, but it a big audio listener and loves GNs! Loving your gardening and hope your back is cooperating. ; )

>277 charl08: Charlotte, it lasted until I saw the Wellcome Prize winner being discussed in a newspaper article. And now I see the Pulitzers have been announced! I will reluctantly add the NF winner to my list, as it's a book about ISIS. Maybe I could swap it for the history winner this year, which is more or less within my rules.

ETA: There's one copy of the ISIS book on order, and it's in Tower Hamlets. Of course it is. I'd better join the queue before it disappears to Syria.

>282 banjo123: I'm going to read it, but it might well be a while - it's on order at the library and I'm only number ten... I like books about spies so The Sympathizer appeals, although I will be a bit disappointed if I am not offended now.

>283 Ameise1: Morning! I've not read much set in Istanbul, but I liked this.

>284 vancouverdeb: A cynic? I don't believe you... Hope that you like The Sympathizer. I downloaded the sample - disappointingly short.

>285 Berly: I liked the emphasis on how much work kids have to do to learn how to read. Made me pledge to be a lot more sympathetic with early readers. Not that I wasn't before, just *more* so. I also loved the way that she talked about the positives of an alternatively wired brain too.

Thanks for the good wishes. I need to remember how many people deal with this kind of pain and obstacle all the time. It sucks!

>286 susanj67: Ha! Is it wrong to be pleased that you cracked and reserved some?!

I like the idea of a library book travelling out for a critical read. Maybe a bookgroup will bring down ISIS in Syria? I guess there's no wine in that group though, so maybe more of a study session...

.....
Listening to Bruce Springsteen cover Purple Rain. Beautifully fine.

>288 charl08: Charlotte, I was a little bit excited to see six things on my reserve list, even if one of them isn't out till June, two are just "Ordered" and I'm fifth in the queue for another one. I do want to carry on with Mount TBR, but there's something enticing about shiny new things I've only just heard of.

Ah, the power of the shiny new things. On a completely unrelated note, I just started Evicted because someone else recalled it. (For 11th May) (Ha!)

>290 charl08: That one hasn't made it to my library catalogue yet, but I've seen lots of positive comments on LT. One to watch for!

"I just started Evicted"...Nice! Look forward to your thoughts.

Happy Tuesday, Charlotte! This made me laugh: "I like books about spies so The Sympathizer appeals, although I will be a bit disappointed if I am not offended now." I want to read that one, too.

Oh, I'm glad you're reading Evicted, Charlotte. I'll look forward to your thoughts as well.

>291 susanj67: I'm wondering how much misery I can cope with - might try and just read a chapter a day. Pretty grim so far.

>292 msf59: >294 jnwelch: Well, you guys can take some credit for this one (I've thumbed the reviews on the book page btw).

>293 Crazymamie: And to you Mamie. I get a bit cheesed off with all the hype sometimes...

Read The House of Paper today which was a tiny little book with sweet illustrations featuring books.

Supposedly a novel it was more like a series of reflections on books with a guiding thread. That thread was the death of a literature scholar holding a copy of Emily Dickinson - following receipt of a book with strange concrete residue. Her successor investigates via libraries and booksellers. A lovely thing that I think most of us in this group would appreciate.

To build up a library is to create a life. It's never just a random collection of books.... at the end of a certain length of time we find ourselves defining worlds...

Went on a bit of an expedition today to check out a different library. Skem is notoriously (if not necessarily accurately) a failed 'new town' (it's even a joke at the end of the musical 'Blood Brothers'). The library was showing some images from when the town was first built (and I got to pick up two of the books from the Women's Prize longlist I hadn't been able to track down).

The fashions are spectacular, and the buildings look like they were dropped from space...



http://picturenewtown.org/

Right that's it - new thread time!

I'm so pleased for Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Sympathizer is quite a book. It has its flaws, but it also has the end of the Vietnam War told from the point of view of people in Vietnam, not Americans, which was refreshing. And the parts about integrating into a new culture and feeling like you're a part of neither were absolutely spot on. And Nguyen comes across very well in interviews. He seems very grounded.

>260 charl08: That made me laugh. Would anything be less comfortable than having the Camerons over? Maybe Boris Johnson, because he'd also break something given to you by your grandmother. Maybe we should just invite the Trudeaus over instead. They seem like they'd be a lot of fun and would offer to help with the washing up. And mean it because they are Canadian.