Ridgeway Girl Reads in Different Places, Part Three

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

As I organize things for the move from Germany to South Carolina, my reading is slowing down.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

Category One



Termagant Titles
Books written by women

1. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz
2. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones
3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
5. The Widow by Fiona Barton
6. Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen

Category Two



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

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

Category Three



New in the Neighborhood
Books written by immigrants or expats

1. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
3. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
4. Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

Category Four



New and Shiny Books
Books published within the last three years

1. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
2. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
3. A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah
4. A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold
5. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
6. The Followers by Rebecca Wait

Category Five



Aged Pages
Books off of my tbr

1. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
2. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
3. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
4. The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties by Robertson Davies
5. Truth by Peter Temple
6. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey
7. Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon

Category Six



Temporary Titles
Borrowed or library books

1. The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith
2. The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer
3. The Passenger by Lisa Lutz
4. The Bastard of Fort Stikine by Debra Komar
5. Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma
6. American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales
7. Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg

Category Seven



Noteworthy Novels
Longlisted, Shortlisted or award-winning books

1. The Whites by Richard Price (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
2. The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
3. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
4. The New World: A Novel by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
5. Capital by John Lanchester (International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist (2014))
6. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild (Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2016)
7. The Outcast by Sadie Jones (Costa First Novel Award)

Category Eight



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

1. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes (Ireland)
2. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar (Afghanistan)
3. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys (Lithuania and Russia)

Category Nine



Various Volumes
Books by authors of color

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

Category Ten



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

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

Woman BingoPUP



3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
7. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
9. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz (author usually writes mysteries)
11. Negroland by Margo Jefferson
12. Girl at War by Sara Novic
13. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
14. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
15. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck (set in Paraguay)
16. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini (Zimbabwean author)
18. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones (set in Europe, Australian author)
20. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey (author born in 1953)
23. Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon

BingoDOG



1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
3. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
5. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
8. A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold
10. The Whites by Richard Price
14. Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
16. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
17. The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies
18. Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
19. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
20. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
21. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
22. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
23. Giant Days: Volume Two by John Allison

Nationalities of Authors Read:



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Where the Books are Set:



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Yea! Happy New Thread!

Nice! Look at all this room.....

Ooh new thread. Your geographical range looks good. Which was the African book?

I love the vintage photos.

You're reading Peter Temple's Truth? Trust me. Melbourne isn't like that! Temple is from South Africa.

Then again, I doubt that the actual murder rate in Stockholm is anywhere near the fictional one. And it's probably quite safe to spend a weekend in an English country house!

Fixed the touchstone. It led to The Kite Runner.

Happy new thread! I hope the organizing and the move go well.

Happy new thread!

When the residents of Pepys Road in London begin receiving postcards that say only, "We want what you have" they're either bemused or dismiss the cards as junk mail. Pepys Road is filled with houses initially sold as starter homes for the aspirational white collar workers of a century ago, but London is not what it once was and those houses are now worth millions. From the elderly lady who has lived all her life in number 42 and whose kitchen was last renovated in 1958, to the banking executive and his resentful wife, the denizens of Pepys Road are a diverse lot. But as 2008 grinds on, the economic landscape is changing.

John Lanchester has the ability to make each of his characters, from the sympathetic to the venal, compelling. Capital has a large cast of characters, but all of them read as real people, complex and interesting. There's Quentina, an asylum-seeker from Zimbabwe who is illegally working as a traffic warden, determined to keep moving forward even as she longs to be able to return to the country she loves. There's Smitty, a Banksy-style artist who loves his nan, even if he doesn't visit very often, and Petunia, who had a difficult and controlling husband and who had expected to live a more expansive life after his death, but who instead is simply continuing in the same restricted routine she has always kept. And there's Zbigniew, the Polish builder who prides himself on the quality of his work and who dreams of returning to Poland with his savings, to give his father the retirement he deserves. There are so many characters, but Lanchester keeps them all moving forward, making the reader care about all of them.

Capital is a superlatively well-written book. It's a joy to read a substantial novel with both heart and plot.

>23 RidgewayGirl: I really need to get round to reading Capital! I've read Whoops! which is very readable non-fiction, and I used to live a few streets away from the real Pepys Road, so I picture it in my head with every review I read.

>24 Jackie_K: and I used to live a few streets away from the real Pepys Road, so I picture it in my head with every review I read.

That's cool! For some reason, I thought the actual road was fictional (although the area obviously not). Maybe I'll have to make a trip there next time I'm in London (that's the sort of thing I like to do).

>23 RidgewayGirl: Happy new thread! I have not read Capital, but The Debt to Pleasure is one of my absolutely favorite books of all time. (Ha ha, the touchstone for Capital is coming up with The Hunger Games. Touchstones have been amusingly odd lately.)

Jackie, I'll have to try his non-fiction. And it never occurred to me that Pepys Road is a real place. That's so interesting.

Joyce, I'd go by there, too, were I going to London anytime soon. Alas, I am not.

Shannon, I loved The Debt to Pleasure. I was given a copy when it first came out and I loved it so much. I'd like to reread it now, but after I've read his other books. Lanchester can really write and I'm surprised he hasn't received more acclaim.

>27 RidgewayGirl: Me too. I've read all of his novels but Capital.

Shannon, I'm pleased to see that I have two more to read.

>25 Nickelini: >27 RidgewayGirl: It's in SE14 (New Cross), the Telegraph Hill end of New Cross. Telegraph Hill is a nice little park with some great views towards central London. Other than that though it's mainly a residential area so there's not masses to see. I wonder if Pepys Road is starting to see an increase in literary tourists!

>23 RidgewayGirl: With such a great review, how can I not WL it?

Happy new thread! How's the weather?? I'm heading off to Sweden next Friday and I'm quite excited that I may get to see some snow or hail (but only a little, please, I am not in the mood for crazy springtime storms!). :)

Jackie, it's weird to visit places like that. I was reading a book about Berlin and Vladimir Nabokov and was considering going to the apartment building that he lived in for six years, but decided not to because of time constraints and the news that it was a dull and ordinary neighborhood. Maybe if I lived there? I have walked by the place where the Woolworth's building that was in Bastard Out of Carolina and made note of it, but I'm not sure it would be worth a trip in and of itself (although downtown Greenville, SC is worth seeing).

I think you'd like it, Jennifer.

Eva, it's warming up now. No snow yesterday. But it was weird on Wednesday, when I ran an errand and just brought a cardigan along in case it got chilly, followed by a miserable walk in snow and wind where I regretted not having hat, gloves and scarf and arrived home soaking wet, and then shortly after arriving home, the sun was shining and the sky was blue.

And my adventures in German class are over. Now just to wait for the test results. And we saw this 10 minute long film in class. It's set in mid-1980s Berlin and the small amount of dialog is fairly simple, and I've linked to a version with English sub-titles. I liked it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFQXcv1k9OM

Sorry, I'm late wishing you more happy reading in your new thread. I was waiting till I had a minute to look at all the books you've read this year. Fingers crossed that your test results are good.

Thanks, Betty. At this point, I no longer care how I did. My mind has moved on to getting things organized for the move. I only have so much room in my brain and it is filled with getting together with everyone before we leave, organizing of the things, planning around pets and school schedules, etc...

On the bright side, we have our plane tickets. Even the cats. And there's wine. We were going to bring a few cases back with us, but the customs and paperwork are too involved to make it worthwhile, so we'll drink it instead. Would anyone like a glass?

>35 RidgewayGirl: So excited that you are making preparations to come back!!! Wine or not.

But chocolate is fine, Victoria, although it will have to be in our luggage, given that a metal container on the deck of a boat crossing the Atlantic in the summer might get warm inside. And I'm packing the books myself, given that the last movers managed to damage a good dozen hardcovers.

>37 RidgewayGirl: You always bring the most divine chocolate home! I hope those books were not irreplaceable. I have $20 in mad money and am seriously considering stopping by the FOL sale tomorrow. Though it won't be the same without you.

I think you should stop by the FOL booksale. Just to have a small look. I'm looking forward to going to a FOL sale or the Really Big sale in August with you.

I believe I would have to reserve one suitcase just for chocolate! Good luck with the packing!

I hope your move goes smoothly and quickly. And a suitcase of chocolate sounds like the most divine way to travel.

Oh, I heard tell of some good wine over here! Good luck with all you packing and organizing, Kay.

*delurking*

I heard there was wine...?

Friday night over my way. Bring on the wine.

(and looking forward to hearing about your life over the next few months. Your time in Germany went so fast).

When you get back to South Carolina, we'll definitely have to have a LT meetup somewhere between Knoxville and Greenville.

Thanks Judy, Katie and Joyce for helping with our wine issue.

The three years has flown by and having only a few months left feels like no time at all. I'm packing the books myself, as the previous movers damaged quite a few hardcovers and i'm eager to prevent that happening again. Also, I'm going through drawers and getting rid of as many things as I can. Moving from a small house with no closets into a larger house with plenty of closets and built-in drawers and shelves, means once we've moved there will no longer be a reason to get rid of things.

Lori, we will have to do this! And I'm certain that it's time for Victoria and I to road trip it to your part of the world.

>20 pamelad: Pam, if we went by fiction, anglophone communities in Quebec would have disproportional crime rates, and New York and London would be awash in body parts. Has anyone been put off of visiting Australia because of Peter Temple. I do have an Australian friend who says that Adelaide is creepy because of the Beaumont children, though.

Charlotte, the book with an African setting was just an episode of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. I do have more substantial books on my tbr though.

Thanks! If my geography was a bit better I'd have worked out Botswana. Was wondering what I missed.

Happy new thread! And yet another BB flying my way, Capital sounds great. I hope everything goes well with the preparations for moving.

You missed nothing, Charlotte. I do hope to read Under the Udala Trees this month, though.

Thanks, Chrischi! It will all get moved. After all the experience I've had moving from country to country, I should be able to get things arranged so that the actual move is as unstressful as possible. But that does mean more work now. And it's not at all fun. The unpacking is fun, though. I'm looking forward to the great book arranging that I will get to do.

After reading David Cullen's excellent book about the Columbine school shooting in Colorado and having read a lengthy article by Andrew Solomon (who also writes the introduction here), I was interested enough to pick up A Mother's Reckoning. Sue Klebold is the mother of one of the two boys who shot so many of their fellow students and who shot themselves at the end of their rampage.

Klebold is honest and open. She's spent years thinking over what happened, wondering about her own culpability in missing the signs of her son's intentions. This isn't a traditional true crime story, but a look at how what Klebold calls brain illness can affect a person's thinking. She has become active in the suicide prevention community and much of the emphasis of this book is on how we might prevent such events by recognizing the signs of mental distress in teen-agers early enough.

She also effectively debunks the idea that children raised in loving and well-run homes will not run into serious problems, a comfort parents give themselves to avoid facing the fact that this can happen to anyone. The Klebolds were good parents, and the changes they noticed in Dylan's behavior were the kind of things common in most teen-agers.

While memoirs by survivors, the families of murder victims and even accounts about murderers abound, it's unusual for a parent of a murderer to speak up. Klebold's account is an invaluable resource to those seeking to find a solution to our violence problems. It's also a difficult book to read, as her grief is often palpable. I'm reminded that it's important to react to people, no matter who they are, with compassion rather than judgement.

After finishing Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond's study of what people living under the poverty level face in their struggle to keep a roof over the heads of their children, I've wanted to place a copy in the hands of everyone I know, and ask them earnestly to read it. It's an important book, on an issue that is largely hidden to those of us lucky enough to take secure housing for granted. It's also a tremendously readable book; while Desmond does present a great deal of research, the research is presented behind the stories of real people, over years, both tenants and landlords. And those stories provide the emotional wallop behind the dry statistics. When Desmond points out, for example, how difficult it is for an African American woman with a limited income to find any housing at all when she has children, it's not an abstract idea, but the life Arleen and her sons are living.

Arleen had given up hoping for housing assistance long ago. If she had a housing voucher or a key to a public housing unit, she would spend only 30 percent of her income on rent. It would mean the difference between stable poverty and grinding poverty, the difference between planting roots in a community and being batted from one place to another. It would mean she could give most of her check to her children instead of her landlord.

Desmond spent over a year as a fieldworker, living with the people he studied, living first in a trailer park that had been condemned by the city and then moving into a rooming house in the center of Milwaukee's north side. His words are informed not just by rigorous research, but by seeing for himself the effects of relentless poverty and the lack of a stable or even safe living environment. And once he'd taken the reader through the lived experiences of the people at the very bottom of our society, he provides the sobering numbers of how very many people are living under constant threat of eviction, and how it affects the families for years, especially the children.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Every American should be aware of what's happening within a few miles of their own home.

>51 RidgewayGirl: That would be a rough one to get through.

Jennifer, I read it slowly, partially because it was depicting something both terrible and real, but also to absorb the information. Desmond does have suggestions for how to solve the problem, so it's not a hopeless book. And people just keep trying, every day.

Getting caught up with threads and glad to see your daughter's surgery went well. Also happy to see yet another great review for the Strout book. That one is totally on my future reading list!

Great review of Death in Breslau! Strange is the first word that comes to my mind after having read that one last year. Weird is also a good descriptor for it. I am also taking a BB for The Bastard of Fort Stikine and for Capital.

Good luck with the packing for your return move stateside!

Thanks, Lori. And, yes, Death in Breslau was different!

Leaven of Malice is the middle book in Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy. This review may give mild spoilers to first book.

Gloster Ridley is the editor of The Clarion, Salterton's daily paper. Things are going well for him; he helped to design the curriculum for a new department of journalism at the university and he's expecting an honorary degree as a result. His paper is doing well and while there's an old journalist he'd like to put out to pasture, in general things are under control. Then a wedding announcement is printed in the paper on Hallowe'en announcing the nuptials of Pearl Vambrace and Solomon Bridgetower on November 31st in the cathedral, setting off a perfect storm of controversy and over-excitement.

Dean Knapp is the most reasonable of those affected, merely being annoyed that people expect to use the cathedral without bothering to tell him about it. He's busy dealing with the rowdy goings-on at the cathedral on Hallowe'en night to spare much time for anything else. Ridley is annoyed by the incompetence of the staff who not only allowed the announcement to be printed with the impossible date of November 31st, but who also allowed the paperwork to be filled out with an obviously false name. His annoyance has barely begun, however. Professor Vambrace, a man known for both the inflated sense of his own worth and his quick temper, has decided that this announcement can only be a personal attack on him and he is determined to seek redress with the paper which so maliciously printed the notice.

Left out of the equation entirely are the two people named in the announcement. Pearl and Solly know each other, but not well. He's in love with someone else and she's caught between her controlling parents. They don't even particularly like each other and that's not helped by the constant congratulations they're both being subjected to.

It might be said of Mr Higgin that he brought a great deal to the music he performed -- so much, indeed, that some composers would have had trouble in recognizing their works as he performed them. He had a surprisingly large voice for a small man, and he phrased with immense grandeur and feeling, beginning each musical statement loudly, and tailing off at the end of it as though ecstasy had robbed him of consciousness.

This was a highly satisfactory book. It was the writing that stood out. It's understated, with a great deal of humor. Here's an account of a music teacher showing his talents to a group of elderly society ladies. I see where the comparisons to Trollope come from.

His first song, which was Because by Guy d'Hardelot, he sang with his eyes opening and closing rapturously in the direction of Mrs Bridgetower, in acknowledgement of her ownership of the piano. But when he was bidden to sing again he directed his beams at Auntie Puss.

"I should like to sing a little thing of Roger Quilter's," said he, "some lines of Tennyson." And he launched into Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal. It is doubtful if, at any time in her life, anyone had sung directly at Miss Pottinger, and she was flustered in a region of her being from which she had had no messages for many years.

The Adventures In Moving continue; we had a leak that stained the ceiling in the guest bathroom that began shortly after we moved in, almost three years ago. We informed the landlord who promised action. When, a few months later, the stain had spread, we called again (I say "we" in that I asked my husband to call, as his German is better) and action was promised. And again when the damp spread to the wall on the staircase to the basement, and as it spread. We'd been calling every three or four months until we finally sent a letter, at which point, things began to happen.

A plumber was sent out and looked around and came to some conclusions. Another was sent out, who drilled holes and came to a different conclusion. Another was sent out, this one from the landlord's insurance company who drilled holes and came to a definitive conclusion different from the first two guys. He decided there was no leak and the space just needed to dry. So the landlord called and told me a workman would be by and would install a small fan in the children's bathroom and that a tile would be removed for this fan, but that the bathroom would be usable and the fan would stay a maximum of two weeks.

So a man came and installed an apparatus that resembled a shop vac in the guest bathroom with large hoses and metal rods that attached to a large piece of plastic that covered half the ceiling. A similar apparatus, hose and plastic installation was put in our entryway, but he did leave a narrow place for us to edge in and out of the house. He installed another thing in the basement. Then he turned them on. They were so loud.

After a few weeks, as water continued to accumulate, they decided to keep going. After six weeks, they decided that maybe there is a leak somewhere and the water did not magically appear. More men, more holes, more disruption. One leak was found and then discounted by the next guy as Not A Leak. He found a different solution. The landlord, at my insistence, had the various loud machines removed until after our move.

Yesterday, the men arrived who were supposed to fix the leak. They had no idea what they were doing. They decided to remove the ceiling in the guest bathroom and the wall along the staircase to the first floor. I refused to allow them to do so. They were angry with me, disappeared upstairs and detached the tub (using some sort of jackhammer if the noise and results are anything to go by, and detached the toilet, but balanced it back. The angry workman declared both usable, the toilet is hooked up and can be used as long as no one sits on it. The tub can be used as long as no water is involved. There are large holes. I asked when he was going to finish the job. He declared that it was finished and left, presumably so he could sit on a toilet and bathe with water.

So in a bit the landlord and some plumbing guy (I hope not the one angry I unreasonably refused him permission to remove walls and ceilings) are coming and we will all decide what to do. My minimum requirement is that someone properly reattach the toilet and either reattach the tub (I don't think they can do this - it's pretty trashed) or write an official letter allowing us to shower and not worry about all the water and soap that enter the wall area as a result. Am I being unreasonable? And no more work until we move out in six weeks.

How disappointing that your visit has to end on such an aggravating situation. Well - actually I guess it's been going on since you got there, but still. Toilet - no - not unreasonable, shower - maybe. No more work til you leave - defineitely not. He's had you waiting 3 years.

ETA: oh - I got that backwards. Your question was: Are you being unreasonable. I had to fix all my answers.

>58 RidgewayGirl: Not a leak? Must be condensation. *Tongue firmly planted in cheek.* Ugh! I'm sorry you have to endure this as your time there winds down. You have every right to expect reasonableness and competence in addressing this problem. I hope that both will prevail.

The landlord is very nice, but she's not cut out for landlording. She's inherited this place and she has no idea about it except she is very upset it is taking so much of her time. I've made a point to be accommodating, but at this point I'm tired of every conversation ending up being about how stressful she finds it all. She gets to go home to an intact bathroom, after all!

Carrie, it was fun that they decided that the leak was no longer there. I guess it's the plumbing equivalent of shutting down my laptop to see if it gets better after a rest.

The plumber is here. Thankfully not the angry guy, but the cute and friendly guy who seemed to be competent. He's upstairs with Dirk now looking at the pieces of the bathtub. Apparently, the angry guys were subcontractors.

>58 RidgewayGirl: Oh no! Kay, I'm so sorry to hear all of this.

Victoria, it's so frustrating when the simple request of a functional toilet and bathtub are seen as side issues. It looks like they'll have to do significant work, and they (including Dirk, who is caught up in the whole hunt-for-the-leak game) regard the basic living standard stuff as beside the point.

I'm just going to have to go against my inclinations (with my Canadian need to not cause a fuss and my southern inclination towards being polite) and be insistent on those two things.

>63 RidgewayGirl: Ha! Yes, you do have to fight against both your Canadian and Southern tendencies. Go get 'em!

So, the end result is that now the sinks in that bathroom are not functional. On the other hand, they will really probably all be in some sort of working order at the end of tomorrow. They all said so, although their voices lacked conviction and the landlord "had to leave" all of a sudden.

Sigh.

Sounds like a real Money Pit for the landlord. At least when you leave it won't be your problem any more!

mamzel, I suspect that it would have been a reasonable repair two years ago, when we first reported the problem. I am a huge proponent of the idea that there is no problem too large to hide from and hope it goes away, but even I know that with home repair it is never a bad idea to get it taken care of while the problem is still small and merely annoying.

But, yes, I'm glad not to own this house. It's a great house, but were it mine I would be taking care of it.

An expensive lesson for her!

Sorry you're having to live through that mess. Your landlord sounds like a typical landlord, trying to make you feel bad for her so you'll stop demanding a decent standard of living, like running water. Ha, you can tell I've dealt with a few! One landlord owned a whole string of duplexes on the street and he'd hang out in our front yard raking til my husband came home from work, because he would always guilt Mike into helping 'an old man with all this work to do'.

Wow, that sounds like a nightmare. I'm a landlady, but I'm always paranoid about stuff getting out of hand like that, so if the agency that manages my flat (it's in a different city so I can't do it myself - totally worth the money getting them to deal with it all) ever contacts me I just authorise whatever it is straight away. I can't be doing with false economy.

I'm sorry your last few weeks are caught up with this. I hope it makes coming home all the sweeter.

Your toilet and tub don't work, so let's break the sink so that everything in this bathroom will be equally unusable. I'm sure there's some universe where that makes sense, but not in this one!

So sorry that you are going through this and I hope that a workable solution is arrived at soon.

Jennifer, yes, I'm left with the feeling that keeping the house livable is an imposition. She has promised it will be fixed today. If they don't finish, she gets to babysit the workers on all subsequent days.

Jackie, we've done the same thing. Currently we have a property manager taking care of things until we get back and we authorize repairs quickly. Of course, we also take care of our house when we're living in it, since it's not a source of easy money; it's our home.

Carrie, the lights on the floor below that bathroom are beginning to flicker. I'm thinking that the repairs may be extensive. I'm wary of saying anything, though. I would like to have a week without scheduling around strange men who either leave early or stay hours later than planned.

Judy, thanks. Homeownership can be a pain, but at least it means I have some control over the process and can get repairs done before they involve the possibility of tearing out walls. The landlord was excited that the house will be empty before the end of the month, so she could have new tenants in on the first of July. I think she'll be lucky to have new tenants in before Fall.

Wow. Sounds like the house is going to need a lot of work. So sorry you've had to deal with this escalating at the end of your stay.

Thanks, Charlotte. The promise is that it will all be functional by the end of the day. It's almost 2 pm here and no one has shown up, but I'm sure it will all happen. And that it's not my house is a great comfort to me.

Also, I'm reading The Boy Next Door by Zimbabwean author Irene Sabatini and it's marvelous.

Hey! Two guys showed up! And they were holding boxes of replacement pipes and mysterious items. Should I bake cookies for them?

And that it's not my house is a great comfort to me.

Boy can I identify with that! Hope things get better, but, hey. You get to leave it soon!

>76 RidgewayGirl: It sounds like you need to bake cookies for you and the family, after all you've gone through!

>76 RidgewayGirl: Bake them and fill the house with nice aromas but hold on to them until they finish the job satisfactorily! Added incentive.

Sorry to hear about the house troubles! I hope the situation is better now.

>51 RidgewayGirl: I too found Cullen's Columbine an excellent work. A Mother's Reckoning seems like it's well worth reading, but it does sound like a heartbreaking story.

I enjoyed your thoughts on Leaven of Malice. I too love Davies's humour and quality of writing.

Work in the bathroom is *mostly* done. Big holes remain around the tub. And the landlord is having workmen call me to tell me they're coming by, but only to look for the source of the leak. I'm waiting for them now, but no work on the tub. I've texted the landlord that we start showering in that tub tomorrow whether or not it's fixed. I've called several times, but she doesn't pick up. I did have plans today, not the least of which was to enjoy being home and then to not be home. Bleh.

In Irene Sabatini's novel, The Boy Next Door, Lindiwe is a shy, bookish girl who is fascinated by the white boy who lived in the house next door in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He was arrested for his stepmother's murder, but released when his conviction was over-turned. Now that he's back, she's one of the few people who will talk to him, although only when her strict parents can't see. They form a tentative relationship that persists over the years. The story begins with Robert Mugabe's presidency, and the history of Zimbabwe along with its culture are as important as the story itself.

Ian grew up in a white Rhodesian household, with racism built into his language, while Lindiwe is wary of how white people have treated her. She is the only black girl at her high school and her family is the first to move into what was once a whites only neighborhood. Over time that changes, as do Ian and Lindiwe.

This is a well-written and fascinating book. Sabatini is telling the story of two very different people and that is where her focus remains, even as Zimbabwe itself becomes a primary force in their lives. And as it follows both Ian and Lindiwe through a significant portion of their lives, Sabatini also shows how they change as they mature and as events shape them.

This is an excellent novel and I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to know more about Zimbabwe or anyone who just likes a good story with characters who are complex and sympathetic.

If I were to make a list of things I liked in books, The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild would check off a good number of them. It's set in the London't art world. It has a plucky heroine. There's a forgotten masterpiece discovered in a junk shop. It's shortlisted for a prize. There's a love story. It goes a bit meta, in that the painting itself narrates portions of the novel. There are even Nazis and Holocaust survivors. It really does check off so many boxes for me.

And yet, I had to push myself to finish. While Rothschild clearly knows a great deal about art, she communicates as little of that knowledge as she can. This is a novel written as though the author is imagining the subsequent screenplay as she writes. I've read other books that give the impression that the author is picturing the story more as a movie than a book, and it can work, but here, with the large cast of characters and references to history and art, it does not. What happens instead is that the characters, of which there are simply too many, become cartoon-like. Rothschild needs each one to be memorable based not on their inner lives, but on physical quirks and exaggerations. Humorous novels are difficult to pull off, and Rothschild relies heavily on stereo-types to make her characters funny. So the gay man spends the book wearing more and more outrageous outfits. The male lead falls in love with our plucky and beautiful heroine at first sight and never deviates from his slavish devotion (which quickly made him more creepy than anything else, but tastes in stalkerish behavior vary). And the leading professional expert on Rococo art? Well, she's overweight. So every single scene that involves her, has her either eating while the other characters look on disdainfully, or mentions that her shirt is smeared with whatever she just finished eating off-stage. A second fat woman appears near the end of the novel, and here Rothschild simply has the other characters yell insults at her for being so unattractive. Her husband makes a comment about how she'd be lucky to get raped. This is a humorous moment.

And so, this book, that held so much potential, became an exercise in endurance, and I have no doubt that the dislike I felt for this book colored my impressions of it. I noticed every continuation error or factual mistake that, in a better book, I might have been willing to overlook. Rothschild clearly knows about the art she's writing about and she also knows about expensive items, but she failed to do even cursory research on the criminal side of things, leading her to point out that because one bad guy wore gloves, no DNA could be found on the scene, for example, and she failed to look up some of the more basic working of the British criminal justice system.

Many other readers have enjoyed this novel, and it has made the shortlist for this year's Baileys Prize, so if the premise of the novel appeals to you, don't be put off by me. But don't say I didn't warn you.

>83 RidgewayGirl: I've skimmed this as still haven't read it (need to)

>82 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I've not come across this one but will look our for it now. I could do without the cover having half a girl's face on it though - enough already...

Charlotte, I look forward to finding out what you think of it. As for the half-a-face, at least they didn't choose a blonde woman to represent the Zimbabwean protagonist! I count that as a win.

>83 RidgewayGirl: That sounds pretty awful! I've lost my patience with books that have to be endured rather than enjoyed.

>86 mstrust: Jennifer, I am learning how to abandon books, but when they're shortlisted for a prize I have to keep going, because someone thought there was something in there worthwhile. In this case, the author is a member of the Rothschild family, was married to a member of the British nobility and is the chairperson of the National Gallery. I'm not saying that who she is played a part in this book's being marketed as serious literature instead of sub-rate chick-lit, but, well, I guess I am saying that.

>87 RidgewayGirl: Ha! The plot does seem like chick-lit with a bit of art thrown in to make it "serious". I'm guessing that someone with that pedigree has plenty of connections in the publishing world and wasn't afraid to use them. ; )

I know the feeling of trying to plow through a book I really, really don't like. I made the effort of finding it, buying it and starting it, so there must be something in it. And so many of the books I buy are because I read a great review of it somewhere. What can you do, nothing is for everybody. I once had a boyfriend who called Marilyn Monroe ugly.

Truth is a gritty, noiresque police procedural by Peter Temple, who also wrote The Broken Shore. Set in a crime-ridden, decaying version of Melbourne, Australia, Truth follows Steve Villani, the head of the homicide squad as he works to keep his job and maybe solve a few homicides.

Villani's a detective in the classic style; he's alienated his family and is not entirely in control of what's left of his personal life. He's spent years dedicated to his job, and now that he's in charge, he's discovering that might not have been the best choice. His father is out in the bush, where a wildfire is raging, trying to save what he can. His wife left him, one of his daughters is on her way out and his remaining daughter is barely returning his (occasional) texts. But he's really more involved in the murders he's trying to solve. One is of an anonymous young woman, found murdered in an empty apartment in an exclusive building. There's pressure to do nothing, so as to not impact the value of the other apartments in the building, as well as the new casino. There's a gruesome torture-murder of the members of a criminal gang, but Villani and his crew aren't making much headway there, either. Each piece of information is leaked before it can be used. Everywhere, Villani faces corruption, not the least of it his own.

This is, I think, the book Richard White intended to write with The Whites. There's a vast quantity of corruption quietly going on, and as Villani rises in the ranks, the expectations of preferential treatment increase. But Villani is, at heart, someone who still believes that the law should stand for something, even as he misuses it.

The settings depicted, from Villani's rural childhood home, now threatened by a wildfire that can't be contained, to the valuable properties along the waterfront in Melbourne are vividly described. Australia may not be so dark and crime-ridden in fact, but this version of it is certainly colorful.

Melbourne is standing in for Peter Temple's native Johannesberg, or some other generic, crime-ridden metropolis. Vivid, but not the truth.

>58 RidgewayGirl: - OMG! Three years of no response from the landlord and now this? What a disaster. I agree. Go against your inclinations and do cause a fuss.... anything hygiene-related I consider crucial and kick a fuss about.

Pam, just like rural, anglophone villages in Quebec and English country houses don't really have an astonishing murder rate, and there are not hundreds of serial killers with strong work ethics in London and New York, despite the thousands of crime novels that say otherwise!

Lori, the bathroom is functional, even if it's mainly covered in holes and waterproof tape. I'm leaving it to my husband to negotiate how much of our rent is to be returned to us. The landlord keeps parading perspective tenants through in the hopes of renting it, but until the work is actually done, no one has wanted to rent it. She's just being silly at this point, since she can't even give them a move-in date. Since the last workmen decided that the floor and a wall would have to be torn out, I'm sure that the three or four days between the house being empty and the first of July will not be enough time to do all of the work as well as repaint the interior (this is a German legal thing - the landlord has to have a place freshly painted for new tenants).

>92 RidgewayGirl: I still have hopes of meeting Miss Marple at Brown's.
Your landlord bringing perspective tenants to your place is the perfect time for having discussing a refund, with the renters standing right there!

Yes, I suggested that to my husband. He's playing the long game. He's better at negotiation, and also German, so he's in charge of this one.

We had dinner last night with people who have kids the same age as mine and whose daughter went to school briefly with Charlotte in England - they arrived a few months before we left. The same thing happened in SC and now in Germany. Only they moved when their newest child was two weeks old and sold their house in SC and had one built here, so I told her that she won for Most Challenging Move. She agreed.

>94 RidgewayGirl: My sister-in-law made a heroic move too years ago. Her children are grown now but when she had her first child, she walked out of the hospital, got into the car and rode several hundred miles to the new "home". The home was a motel where they would stay until a house came up for sale several months later in their new small town!

clue, almost everyone can top my moving story. I'll be happy to put it into the category of "boring and routine" once it's all over.

I turned my iPad in to get the cracked screen replaced yesterday. I'm in withdrawal, with the three books I'm reading on it currently suddenly becoming much more attractive. I expect to survive. I'm glad I can't damage a paper book beyond readability without a concerted effort. It's a holiday weekend, beginning tomorrow, so if they don't have it finished today, I'll have to wait until Monday.

Enjoy the holiday! It's only for those living in the south, in the north we'll (have to) gladly go to work...

>96 RidgewayGirl: Since I've moved once in the last 26 years they all seem pretty rough to me!

*Mild spoilers for the previous two books in the trilogy.*

"You certainly do see life in terms of literature, Johnny."

"Well -- just look at the fun I have! But now, you see, I'm bang in the middle of one of those terrific novels about Who Gets the Dibs; the next thing to be decided is -- are we in a Jane Austen situation, or a Trollope situation?"

"Does it have to be one or the other?"

"But you can't call it a modern situation?"

"Well, it's happening now, isn't it?"

The final book in Robertson Davies's Salterton Trilogy, A Mixture of Frailties, concerns what happens after Mrs Bridgetower dies, leaving behind what can only be seen as a revenge will. She'd hated that her son had married, and hated his wife, who tried to be accommodating, but there was no woman in the world Mrs Bridgetower would have liked to see supplant herself in her son's affections. And so she had a will written that guaranteed their financial situation would be dire until Veronica produced a son. The money is placed into a trust, to be administered by Solly, his mother's best friend, Auntie Puss, and the Dean of the Salterton cathedral. The trust is to provide a scholarship for an artistic young woman to study in Europe.

And so the narrative splits in two. One portion of the novel involves the petty maneuvering of the members of the trust along with the lawyer administering it. Auntie Puss keeps a eye on the house that now belongs to the trust, even as Solly and Veronica struggle to maintain it on the salary of an assistant professor, as well as under the pressure to conceive, and to conceive quickly. Auntie Puss also keeps an eye on the morals of the young women who apply for the trust, rejecting those insufficiently modest for her antiquarian tastes. But eventually a candidate is found.

The other portion of the narrative concerns Monica Gall, who is brought to the attention of the trustees by the fabulous Mr Cobbler. She sings on a radio show hosted by the pastor of an off-beat sect of protestantism called the Thirteeners. Raised in a religious working class household, Monica is not only sheltered but somewhat ignorant. Despite reservations, she accepts the scholarship and sets off to study in England. Her mother had predicted that the experience would change her, and so it does.

Davies is a compassionate writer who is able to write in a way that is both humorous and illuminating. Despite the book first being published in 1958, his attitudes toward the variety of human experience is modern and by setting a portion of this book in Europe, he's able to venture outside of the provincial world of Salterton. I enjoyed each subsequent book in the Salterton Trilogy more than the last and I'm looking forward to reading more by him.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy is Margot Livesey's reimagining of Jane Eyre in 1960s Scotland. Livesey's a good writer and she did a wonderful job of keeping most aspects of the novel, while changing the details to suit the new environment.

This was a case of the right book at the right time for me. I enjoyed wondering how Livesey was going to portray the familiar events of one of my favorite novels. For the most part, she remained true to the spirit of the novel, while keeping the story fresh.

Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are credited with having created the first series of police procedurals. Originally published in Sweden between 1965 and 1975, the series feels both like an artifact of that time and surprisingly modern. The Man on the Balcony is the third in the series, and is based on actual events.

Children had a great deal more freedom to roam fifty years ago, and during the long, sunlit summer evenings in Stockholm it wasn't unusual for a child to go out alone to a park after dinner. Until, that is, an elementary school girl is found murdered in a local park. Finding the murderer becomes an endurance test, with hundreds of leads being called in. The lead detective, Martin Beck, knows that solving the crime will require both skill and luck.

Reading a crime novel that takes place in the 1960s was an education. The detectives talk about the new computer system as cutting edge, and rely on newspapers and land-line telephones. And yet the emotions and basic skills are the same as in today's police procedurals; the officers are emotionally drained by the case and it's solution is based on the detectives' ability to remember details and dogged determination.

That sounds really interesting, so it goes on the list. I had no idea this genre was created by these authors.

Jennifer, in my edition there's a forward explaining just how ground-breaking these books were. I found it interesting, because as an American, I had no idea that the Swedes were the originators of the genre. It's a good series and I'm enjoying it.

We hear a lot about how Poe invented the detective story and Capote invented True Crime genre. I like old crime stories from before cell phones and computers and CCTV.

>101 RidgewayGirl: & >102 mstrust: It's a series that I've enjoyed dipping into also. I read the 4th book earlier this year.

I do too, Jennifer. These are more convincing than most as they were also written before those things were in use. And the emphasis is very much on the procedure, so the technology they did have is explained.

Dave, I'm enjoying the series. I've got a copy of The Laughing Policeman, so I'll probably read that next.

And now for two lackluster books. It's not entirely their fault. In the case of the first book, YA just isn't my genre. I get frustrated with the simplicity and lack of nuance. As for the second, I've just outgrown the formulaic mystery novel. Basically, I'm picky and jaded.



Between Shades of Gray illuminates an aspect of WWII that is not commonly known in the western world. It tells the story of a Lithuanian teen-ager who is sent to work in labor camps in Siberia with her mother and younger brother. Written for a YA audience, the book does an adequate job of describing how difficult it was to survive without being overly grim.

The author, Ruta Sepetys, has done her research and has managed to set the scene without it feeling like she's regurgitating what she'd read. It hasn't been long since the archives held in eastern Europe have been opened and I hope that the future will bring us many more books and articles, both non-fiction and fiction, that broaden our understanding of Europe in the twentieth century.



As Rhonda watches, a large rabbit in a VW Beetle calmly abducts a little girl sitting alone in another car. She's stunned into inaction and her lack of action spur her to join the volunteers helping with the search for the kidnapped girl as well as to do some investigating of her own. The main suspect is the older brother of her childhood best friend, a friend who also disappeared one morning on her way to school, although Lizzy was presumed to have been abducted by her father, who had left his family a few years earlier.

Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon is exactly the kind of book I used to devour with great enthusiasm. McMahon is a capable writer and the character of Rhonda is well realized. Unfortunately, the person eventually revealed to be the kidnapper and the reasons behind the crime don't hold together very well. And the author carefully made sure there were no loose ends at the end of the novel, making sure the reader has no need of an imagination or even much of a brain.

I read this book as it has been on my tbr for some time and the author has a new book out that looked interesting. There is something satisfying about crossing an author off of the list of authors to read; there are already too many books out there. Still, McMahon can write and if she attempts something less formulaic and tidy I would be tempted to give her another shot.

>107 RidgewayGirl: - Sorry your last two reads weren't the best, Kay. I was never much of a YA reader before I joined LT. Ok - I read Harry Potter - didn't almost everyone? But now I look at them as the sherbet you get between courses sometimes in a really nice restaurant. Just a little break from my normal reading, clears my mind before I press on to other stuff.

>100 RidgewayGirl: So glad to see that you enjoyed Gemma Hardy.

>107 RidgewayGirl: Oh no! Sepetys was not a winner for you, huh? I loved her.

Aw well, wishing you better reading this week! How is the packing going?

Victoria, you have to remember that the books we both love are outliers. Precious literary gems.

And most of the books are packed. I've left some on the shelves in the living room so the room still looks lived in. And the rest of the house has been tidied and organized for the movers. Thanks for asking. Are you missing having a dog as summer approaches?

>110 RidgewayGirl: I do miss the dogs, especially as they kept the tree-rats in check. The squirrels are so arrogant now.

The squirrels were never in the slightest danger with Meatloaf. Unless they fell out of a tree they were laughing so hard, that it.

>112 RidgewayGirl: They sure looked terrified when he bolted off on one of his runs. Now they are fat and slow and insolent. They have eaten all the buds off my daylilies. They've never done that before. So far the veggie garden seems to be unmolested.

Victoria, aren't daylilies poisonous? Maybe not to squirrels.

I spent the weekend in Dresden, looking at art. It was lovely. I was carrying a book around with me (you never know!) and I realized halfway through Sunday that maybe carrying The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft around an art museum might have been asking for it. Glad the guards were all German-speaking.

>114 RidgewayGirl: Too funny, I read that but never thought of it as a "how to".

>115 clue: When I worked in a bookstore, "the How To section" was what we called the True Crime shelf.

I've gotten my German test results back and I did well. It almost makes me want to take another German class, just for the affirmation of the grades. The official paperwork is taking its time, though.

>116 RidgewayGirl: Congratulations on your good results!

>117 sturlington: Thank you! I am officially proficient enough in German to be worthy of a permanent residence card.

In related news, we move back to the US in just a month.

Congrats on the test results. I guess you never know when you might want to live in Germany?!

Trying to think of other books not to read in different places. I would wonder how someone reading a book about ISIS on public transport these days wold be received. And various politicians' bios (but particularly Thatcher) that I would avoid rea ding on my local public transport.

When I went to Hay I saw lots of signs saying there was a kindle ban, and thought it was a joke, only for someone in a cafe to be quite grumpy with me. Not a joke, it turned out!

Charlotte, a ban on kindle reading? I'm a fan of paper books, and am grumpy when I can't see what someone is reading because they're using an ereader of some sort, but a ban?

And I got some very odd looks when I took this book with me to the YMCA to watch my daughter's basketball game.



I decided to bring a different book to her piano recital at Bob Jones University - it's a very, very conservative school, despite the frivolous name.

That's great news about your test, Kay. It seems like only yesterday you were gearing up for the move to Germany. How quick time goes.

Congratulations on your German test results.

I love those covers that harken back to a different era of crime novels but they can definitely get you some strange looks if you carry them around in public!

>120 RidgewayGirl: Those people were burning with envy because you were reading such a cool book. I'm surprised no one was reading over your shoulder.

Congrats on doing so well on your German test!

Betty, I was wondering today how the time passed so quickly. And the move is taking over, so time is speeding up even more.

Thanks, Judy. And I do love the covers of Megan Abbott's earlier books, but they do attract attention.

Oh, no, Jennifer, they were definitely not looks of envy.

I am so glad you will be back in the Upstate soon!!!

I should have explained better - Hay is full of second hand bookshops, so they see the kindle as a threat to supply as well as customers. It was an odd moment though.

Congratulations on passing your test!

The pulpiest-looking book I've taken on the bus has been The Case of the Vagabond Virgin. Title and cover raise a few eyebrows.

We'll all have to get together sometime after you get back to SC and settled!

Victoria, I'll be glad to be back there, too!

Charlotte, second-hand bookshops does explain that. It's a good thing that the sale of ebooks has tapered off. And it turns out that younger readers prefer paper, while older ones like ebooks. I blame our aging eyeballs.

rp, that is a wonderful cover. I like the pulpy covers a lot.

Lori, I'm counting on it.

>120 RidgewayGirl: I've got that book on my TBR. After reading Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, I was delighted to see that many of the contributors' pulpy novels were available for Kindle on Amazon. I've got my summer reading all lined up!

Shannon, you are going to love it! It plays around with gender expectations within the traditional noir so very well.

The Widow, a first novel by Fiona Barton, is the story of a newly widowed woman whose husband was suspected of having abducted a pre-school child. The story is narrated by the widow as well as by a journalist and the detective who had been in charge of the case. The author has a long career working in print journalism, so those segments are the most detailed and interesting. The plot itself is diverting enough although the end is weaker than it could have been.

Wow, just read your bathroom-saga. Ouch! Can't believe a landlord that doesn't jump when possible water damage is mentioned. Most other things can wait, but that one could be really damaging!

>118 RidgewayGirl:
Congrats on your German test!! If you leave the country, do you get to "keep" your test results or do you have to take the test over if you return and apply for the residency card?

Eva, I know! Had we owned the house, it would have been dealt with when it was first noticed and before finding the source involved removing everything in the bathroom (they're planning to remove the floor and a wall downstairs) and having to dry out soaked walls. But the landlord wants the house for income, she recently inherited it, and doesn't want to put any money into upkeep or repairs or to have to spend any time on it.

As for my German certificate, I don't know. At least if I ever move back to Germany, I can skip the class and just take the test itself since now I know it's pretty easy.

After a few months of not buying books, I ended up adding four this week. Between the Man Booker International Prize, the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction and Jo Baker coming out with a new book, well, it wasn't like I had any choice in the matter.

The Outcast is Sadie Jones's debut novel and I came to it after reading her other books and enjoying them enormously. Set in the stifling world of an English village in the 1950s, the story follows Lewis Aldridge from when he first encounters his father after the war and his troubled life after the death of his mother. Being motherless and then having a young stepmother unprepared to deal with a grieving boy, sets him apart from the rest of his peers and his increasingly destructive behavior get him sent to prison for a few years, but it's his unwelcome return that sets in motion events that change the accepted order of the village.

Jones knows what she's doing, and even her first novel feels self-assured. Her characters are fully developed and the story is well-plotted. It's a melodramatic tale, full of the intense and immediate feelings of adolescence and young adulthood.

A year after her husband's death, Kate wakes up to find that her mother-in-law has taken over her life, selling Kate's house so that Kate and Kate's daughter Devin can move in with her and moving Devin to a private school. Kate takes Devin and they set off to pay a visit to her aunt, who owns a decaying lake resort near the coast in Georgia. Kate's aunt Eby has just decided to sell the property to a developer and so she, Kate and Devin spend a last summer together along with a few regular visitors.

After so many excellent books, Sarah Addison Allen has finally written a lackluster novel. It's not lacking in atmosphere or in whimsical characters, it's more that there are far too many of them. With the backstories of eight characters, as well their current lives to be told, there isn't enough of any one character to be invested in the outcome. The main story, of Kate and her childhood friend, Wes, is barely outlined, while the stories of others are abruptly finished in the final few pages. Lost Lake has enough characters to fill at least three other novels, and would have benefitted by reducing the cast down to just a few main characters, with a few in supporting roles.

>134 RidgewayGirl: Nice haul! I'm hoping A Country Road, A Tree comes at the library soon for me. Loved The Glorious Heresies, so pleased she won.

>136 RidgewayGirl: Sorry this one wasn't so great. I've not read any of hers: would you recommend one to start me off?

>135 RidgewayGirl: Adding the Sadie Jones to my wishlist. Sounds good!

Charlotte, I was so excited to see A Country Road, A Tree as I hadn't even heard that Jo Baker had written a new novel. And the reviews make me excited to read it. I had to pick up a copy of The Glorious Heresies once Darryl mentioned it wouldn't be available in the US until August - we move back this July.

As for Sarah Addison Allen, my favorite is The Sugar Queen, although a lot of people love Garden Spells best. Her books are excellent for when you just want something light, well-written and whimsical.

Joyce, Sadie Jones has quickly become one of my favorite authors. I'd like her to write more quickly, especially now that I've read everything she's written.

> I bought the Jo Baker this weekend too and can't wait to get into it. I've been in a reading slump the last week or so and I think this just may pull me out of it. I so loved Longbourn.

Just catching up with threads. Congratulations on your German test!

clue, I loved Longbourn, too and not much beats Nazis, the French Resistance and stoical Irish poets in making a book look like I have to read it.

>142 MissWatson: Thanks, this means that I can speak German at you and you should not be too offended. Also, I've been fearlessly writing tons of emails (moving requires telling people and arranging things) and while I'm sure that they have to read them a few times to get the general meaning, I do have the formal structure down.

>136 RidgewayGirl: Wow. We agreed on Lost Lake!

Every now and then, Victoria! I've set aside my copy of Between Shades of Gray for you.

>145 RidgewayGirl: Awesome! @christina_reads and I are planning to tandem read Between Shades of Gray in July.

I'll make sure to stick it in my suitcase then, Victoria. The container of furniture and stuff isn't scheduled to arrive until August fifth. Most of my books, I've already packed. And I've finally bought new dishes, which given that the ones we've been using were a hodgepodge of different sets, often with chips, it was past time. Anyway, they're Polish and very festive. Like this, although there are a wide variety of patterns in mine, and they're all blue and white, with lots of stripes and polka dots.

>147 RidgewayGirl: Thanks Kay!
New dishes are always exciting!

Love the dishes!

Love those. I used to go to a Polish cafe that had similar cups (which I coveted!).

>147 RidgewayGirl: Nice! I wish some of my dishes would break so I could buy new ones.

Betty and Charlotte, I've had a pitcher I bought in Poland twenty years ago and I love it. I'd been shopping for new dishes for over a year (because I have a hard time making a commitment on something I'll be using for the next few decades) and had decided on plain white dishes. Then I saw these and a mere three months later had actually gone into the store and bought them. Granted, the upcoming move did speed me up.

Bring them to my house, rp, and your problem will be solved. I'd like to blame the kids, and for the dings and chips they are to blame, but I'm the queen of outright breakage.

You can always find nice white dishes, and they're great. But these are really special. You'll never be sorry. Good purchase.

>147 RidgewayGirl: Very cool dishes- enjoy them in your new home!

Catching up on your thread - I'm so behind on threads! Good luck with the move - what a horror story with the leak that's not a leak! And ausgezeichnet results on your German test (two years of high school German...love that word).

Took a bunch of book bullets - Capital, The Boy Next Door and the Martin Beck original police procedurals. Also - your review of Robertson Davies' Leaven of Malice has got me considering reading him (don't know why, but no other comments or reviews really enticed me).

And on YA - I enjoyed the discussion relating to Between Shades of Grey over on the RandomCAT thread (I think that's where we had it). I did really like Shades of Grey and based on the YA description I thought there was more there, so I didn't think it was YA. And while I enjoyed The Hunger Games books, I can clearly see that they were YA. And then that got me thinking about Harry Potter - while I thought the first one or two books might have met the YA definition, I thought the whole series got more mature. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.

Thanks, Joyce and Jennifer. I love them soooooo much.

Lisa, the conversation about what makes YA YA on the RandomCAT thread was fantastic. It's such a difficult to define genre, especially now that there is so much more YA out there, and it's more complex. There's even a new designation - Early Adult - for books written about more mature topics, but not focused at adults. Adam by Ariel Schrag is the only one of those that I've read.

Regarding Between Shades of Gray specifically; discarding the publisher having marketed this to a YA, I think it solidly fits the bill. There's a lot of careful and unambiguous historical education in the book, and the focus of the novel are the things that a teenager would pay more attention to. An adult novel, even with a child protagonist, would not put so much emphasis on the relationship and her changing feelings about the boy. Which isn't a value judgement at all. Does that make sense?

And there's no question that the Harry Potter books start young (the first book could easily be read by a 10 year old) and the reading level raises with the ages of the characters. It's a clever approach and it certainly worked for her. But teenagers love complex situations as well as mature themes like death and suffering. The new big trend in YA lit is WWII.

******

And a big, gigantic AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH! So we've arranged to be out of the house a week early (we still pay rent for that week) so the landlord can feasibly do all the repairs in time for new tenants in August (my opinion is that this is wildly unrealistic). I've allowed her to bring in various people to get estimates and measure things. The last time she showed the house (many more times than the twice we'd agreed on) I told her ok to the appointment but that I wouldn't be there. So I get a call a half hour after she was supposed to be done asking me why I wasn't there to show the prospective tenants around. And she made a big deal about having to do it herself. (really, if she had a brain she would not want us to speak to anyone she thought might want to rent this place!).

She asked me about letting a workman to measure the bathroom this morning. I replied that I would not be home, but if she were there with them, it would be fine. So I get a call 20 minutes after this appointment was scheduled to take place and it's her, wondering why I haven't let the guy in. Then she proceeds to tell me she hadn't read all of my SMS giving permission (which, since it reads (translated) "I have a dentist appointment and so I won't be home. As long as it's a short appointment, and you are there to let him in, it's fine..." she would have had to skip the beginning). So then she wanted me to hurry home to let the guy in, and then announced several appointments next week. I said no, and that we'd be fine with late Thursday if she was there and didn't disrupt the movers, but that was it. So then she yelled at me. And told me she's already made several appointments for next week.

Then I got home to find a note saying that our key is next door -- she'd called our neighbor (who has a key) to let him in and so a stranger got to wander around our house without any supervision whatsoever. I am irate. Dirk's contacting our relocation people to see what can be done. I'm no longer minded to rush around to be out a week early to be helpful. Argh.

>156 RidgewayGirl: Oh my God, she is a landlord from hell. I'm sorry you have such a terrible memory of Munich to take away with you!

What a nightmare! It's almost a smack yourself in the forehead and see if you're dreaming moment. Not the way you want to end your stay.

Thank goodness you're not staying any longer!

>156 RidgewayGirl: I'm so sorry, Kay.

I'm still irate. She called my husband and apologized to him, but not to me. Not sure what to do with that.

I'm going to go take out my anger in clearing out and cleaning the fridge. Bah.

So sorry to hear this!

Lisa, it's unpleasant to be yelled at for someone else's failure, especially when the person who was an idiot is the one yelling at you. But my husband and I split a bottle of wine at dinner and discussed the situation. It turns out that we'll get our full deposit back, with her owing us money. And we'll have moved into a hotel within the week. So all is endurable. But, man, a bad landlord is the worst. No wonder we all want to own rather than rent. Looking forward to getting back into my own house. I discussed with the kids about painting their rooms as our summer project. It will be fun to teach them how to do this and they are all over various YouTube videos figuring out what they want. And I plan to paint much of the rest of the house, with the parts with high ceilings being painted by our house painter, an intermittently reliable guy who tells a good story and does a good job (eventually).

Just catching up on threads (as usual).

So sorry to hear about your landlord/home repair issues. What a pity that your wonderful experience of living in Munich has to end on such a sorry note. Congratulations on your German language results.

We have different opinions of Between Shades of Gray that I thought very grim. It must be a couple of years since I read it yet I still can't get it out of my mind.

According to the description in the library catalogue for The Vegetarian by Han Kang, vegetarianism in South Korea is regarded as a "subversive activity". Looks like it is a worthwhile read!

>163 RidgewayGirl: It's good that you can look forward to your homecoming and your plans instead of letting your landlord drive you crazy. Sorry you have to deal with all this. A move, any move, is stressful enough...

I'm finally catching up with your thread. Congratulations on your test results, and sorry to hear about your landlord woes! I've enjoyed your Salterton trilogy reviews. They are encouraging me to reread that trilogy, though I have a couple of other Davies books on my shelves that I ought to read first.

Kristopher Jansma's novel, Why We Came to the City, concerns four close college friends who move to New York, where they remain best friends. Sara's organized (she's the least developed of the five main characters) and she loves George, a schlumpy astronomer with a drinking problem. Jacob is fun when he's in the mood, with a cutting wit and he's mysterious and unpredictable. Irene is the free-spirited, brilliant artist who never discusses her past; a manic pixie dream girl that they all love so much. And then there's William, who was never worthy of being included into their group when they were in college, but begins a relationship with Irene when they meet up again at a holiday party.

I'm not going to be very nice to this book. The quality of the writing is good; Jansma knows how to write a sentence that stays out of the way of what he's trying to say, and there's some interesting writing segments at the beginning and end of the novel that bring Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End to mind. The heart of the novel is fine, if done to death already; four friends graduate and discover adulthood is complex and not as easy as they thought. It was in the execution that this book fell flat for me. It's predictable and not different enough from all the other novels by MFA holders living in Brooklyn to stand out.

The first segment of the novel is the tragic tale of the untimely illness and death of one of the characters. Nothing new is said, although the parts about chemotherapy felt educational. The second segment involves a character with the same name as a character in the first segment, although this character is a very different person. This segment is the story of a guy who grows up a bit and finds purpose in trying to help out one of the patients at the psychiatric institute where he works. The final segment is about two other characters who have to get over their deep feelings of grief and move on with their lives.

There are female characters in this book, but Jansma leaves them as ciphers and objects of some variation of affection rather than fully rounded characters. He's kind to them, though, and may well move beyond this in later novels. Jansma shows promise and it would be interesting to see what he does when he isn't writing about stock situations and characters and allows his imagination to do more.

Yeah I could do without another book about relatively affluent people in New York. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm so sorry about your horrible landlord, but now you're getting away from her and she'll still be stuck with a house that sounds like it will be trouble for her for years to come. Yea!

>169 mstrust: - Good point.

A bottle of wine and an understanding husband go a long way to smoothing difficulties! Glad you are looking on the positives and I hope you can enjoy this last bit of time in Germany.

The landlord is already becoming a funny story. It turns out her panic is because the house is rented again as of July 1st, giving her less than a week to remove a wall and a floor, dry it all (the moisture is soaked into the walls), rebuild, plaster, paint and completely rebuild a bathroom. I thought the first of August was highly unrealistic. The guy in charge told me months ago that the drying process would take two weeks at best, but probably three, and only if the leak is found and fixed. So the chances of it all being done in the time allowed are zero. I'd feel bad for her, but she has talked to all the same workmen I have.

But the movers arrive on Wednesday, and we'll be entirely out of the house less than a week from now.

With Reader I Married Him, Tracy Chevalier has compiled an excellent selection of short stories, all based on Jane Eyre's final line. The authors represented include Audrey Niffenegger, Francine Prose, Emma Donoghue, Lionel Shriver and Susan Hill, resulting in an anthology that is varied and imaginative. Some of the stories take place in the same time, or share a character with the famous novel, while others are looser interpretations. The variety keeps each story feeling fresh and surprising.

Usually, in a collection of short stories and especially a collection of short stories commissioned around a common theme, there are a few excellent stories, a few that aren't bad and a slew of quickly and carelessly written stories that are not worth the time it takes to read them. This collection avoids that beautifully, having only one story I didn't find to be at least very good, and several that I loved. The variety of authors (and these authors are very different from each other) leads to a refreshing lack of sameness.

This is a book I will be happy to read again in a few years.

>172 RidgewayGirl: Glad you're getting out this week. There's no way the house will be put back together in time for the new tenants, which tells you that she will be treating them badly too, and that's really sad.

>173 RidgewayGirl: Jane Eyre plus Francine Prose? BB!

Jennifer, it's so good! I liked every single one of the stories. Ok, one was kinda weak, but that's still a great proportion.

And, yeah, I'm curious to see how it will all play out. The next door neighbors are keeping the cat for us until the flight, so I'll see if they were able to move in on time.

Wow. How on earth is she going to get away with that? You're a very nice person not to be calling the German housing standards people.

>173 RidgewayGirl: Looking forward to this one, glad to hear you liked it.

>173 RidgewayGirl: I took a BB for that one too!

I hope your last few weeks in Munich, away from the hellish landlady, leave you with only good memories!

Holy moly. What can I say, except congratulations on getting to leave behind one of the world's worst landlords. I sincerely hopes she comes to her senses and sells to someone who knows how to take care of tenants!

ETA: I adore your dishes (>147 RidgewayGirl:)

Charlotte, it's really good. There were some complaints in the reviews about how the stories are not set back in the 1800s, or that the connection to Jane Eyre are not direct enough, but I loved the variety.

Jackie, it's so busy, between getting ready for the movers to start packing things up on Wednesday and wanting to spend time with everyone before we leave. We were out Friday, Saturday and last night, which left me longing for an evening spent with a book.

Eva, she's a treat. But with everyone else being so lovely, I can hardly complain. And I love my dishes, too. The kitchen in our house in SC is painted in indigo and white, with glass-fronted cupboards. I'm eager to see how the dishes look in their permanent home.

And now to figure out which books will keep me company when we move to a hotel.

Reader I Married Him and The Flight of Gemma Hardy... are there any other Jane Eyre-themed reads in your plan for this year?

No, Victoria, and it was coincidental that I read those two books in proximity to each other. I do love when that happens, though.

Charlotte and I were just talking today about you and Meatloaf. She's doing work experience at a vet's office and brought home a bunch of discontinued items. The best ones were stuffed representations of insects and bacteria that can harm dogs. You wouldn't think a plush dust mite would be cute, but it is.

>181 RidgewayGirl: LOL. How did her project go with the felt animals?

>147 RidgewayGirl: I love those dishes. Sorry to read about all the landlord difficulties, but really glad you'll be back in the States soon!

>182 VictoriaPL: Really well, Victoria. She expanded it to make felt cat beds and houses, and they turned out really nicely. Her cat likes the bed, but not the house. We're currently living in a hotel, and her cat is currently sleeping against my knee.

>183 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori. I love them, too. I hope they all make it intact back to the US! I'm looking forward to unpacking after three hectic and exhausting days getting everything packed up and loaded into the container, which will now undertake a long sea voyage. It's due to arrive on the 5th of August.

So we took the kids to ComicCon Germany this weekend and they had a blast. Charlotte put a lot of effort into her outfit - a steampunk version of Harley Quinn - for which she received tons of attention. Turns out she loves being interviewed, photographed and filmed. I enjoyed watching the Castle panels, as that's a show we've been watching as a family (thanks, Victoria!) and just watching all the costumes - people are really creative and everyone seemed to be having fun.

Not much reading being done, but this week should be quieter.

>184 RidgewayGirl: That sounds awesome Kay! I have not gone to a really big Con. My last small con was over a decade ago. Where are you at in your Castle-watching?

>184 RidgewayGirl:, >185 VictoriaPL: Can I ask which Castle show this is?

>186 LisaMorr:
NYPD Procedural starring Nathan Fillion & Stana Katic.

Victoria, the kids love the series and so we are done. We've seen the series finale.

Charlotte loves Ryan (I prefer Esposito) and so she had her picture taken with him and spent much of the drive back to Munich sighing over the fact that Seamus Dever touched her. The picture's great, but sadly her hammer (which was by far the best Harley Quinn hammer) was not in the picture.

>188 RidgewayGirl: I must admit I love Ryan myself. When you get back here we'll have to chat about that finale!

Stephanie is a single mother, a waitress barely getting by and when the charismatic Nathaniel begins paying attention to her, she's more than willing to move with her daughter Judith to his remote compound and learn to adapt to the religious strictures of his small sect of Christian believers. Judith, on the other hand, longs to return to her friends and is deeply skeptical of the sect's teachings. Small and isolated, Nathaniel's followers are thrown off-kilter by the two new members and things rapidly become unbalanced and then dangerous.

I picked up Rebecca Wait's novel, The Followers, on a whim and for once it worked out for me. Wait has written a book in which the dynamics of a religious cult feel real and plausible. The reader knows from the outset that things go badly wrong, and the finding out of how and why that happens makes for compelling reading. Judith is a wonderful character; as a child she is simultaneously opinionated and uncertain, she just knows that she doesn't want to stay up on the moors. As an adult, she's stuck with what her past has done to her, and with her conflicted feelings. The look at both what draws a person into a religious group like this one, as well as the dynamics of a small, close-knit community are fascinating.

>187 VictoriaPL: Loved that show, my husband and I watched every episode. Sad it's over. I guess I thought it might be something else, because it was surprising to hear that it was at ComicCon in Germany.

>190 RidgewayGirl: Book bullet, if I can find a copy.

>191 LisaMorr: It surprised me, too, Lisa. I didn't even know it was being shown here. Lots of Firefly and Castle costumes, though, including one couple in bullet-proof vests reading POLICE and WRITER. It was the first ComicCon in Germany, so they may have just been eager to get anyone willing to come. Still, I liked knowing who a few of the actors were!

Shannon, it's excellent and it's just been optioned for a movie.

>192 sturlington: It's available at the Book Depository. In Canada, Chapters-Indigo has it, but it's only available in German, not English.

>194 Nickelini: Thanks!

>194 Nickelini: That's weird about it only being available in German. I did find it in the English section of a large German bookstore.

A finale to the landlord saga; when we turned over the keys and did an inspection of the house, it was me, the landlord and a representative from the relocation agency. And the landlord was all about what great and understanding tenants we'd been and then she was perfectly fine with all the dents and scratches produced while we were there, going so far as to say that she thought an iffy spot on the floor of my daughter's room had been there before we moved in. And our security deposit was returned in full within a few days. Huh.

My reading stalled out for ten days, there. I did finish one non-fiction book, but that was just habit. I started Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta, which is about a girl who grew up during Nigeria's Biafra War, and have been so into it.

>197 mamzel: So glad to hear your exit was smooth after all you went through. Hope your next home is less problematic.

mamzel, since we're moving back to the home we own, it will at least have less landlord drama. And small problems will be fixed while they are still small. Also, closets.

Hope your travels home are smooth. Must be so nice to be going home - do you have lots of family events planned? I'd guess less reading time for a whlie...

Charlotte, my mother is getting frail. It'll be good to be able to help take care of her. But I'm sure that getting together with friends will take up some time, as well as getting settled again. I'd just like to all be unpacked and living in a house again. Every move, I decide that that was enough, thank you very much, but after a few years, the urge to see new things reappears.

Looking forward to meeting up with you and Victoria sometime!

So looking forward to that, Lori!

Me, too! I hated that I had to miss the last one when I was having so many health problems.

I'm glad to hear that your landlord at least gave you a full refund on your deposit. She owed you more than that after all you've had to put up with.

Oh, and I love all the Castle talk. I got hooked on the series while I was recovering from my tonsillectomy 3 years ago. I think the Rear Window episode is my favorite, although there are several others that I love almost as much.

Safe travels!

Carrie, I think it's Victoria and my turn to travel westward to see you and Lori. It will be good to get to see you!

We can work out details after you get back and feel you can leave.

>205 thornton37814: Looking forward to it!