Ridgeway Girl Reads in Different Places, Part Four

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.

In the middle of a big move, currently living in a hotel, with our furniture (and books!) not reaching us until sometime in August, my reading pace is s l o w.

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
7. Blood Salt Water by Denise Mina
8. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
9. Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman

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)
7. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Italian)

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
5. The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta
6. The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

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
7. Revival by Stephen King
8. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

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
8. Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee

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
8. End of Watch by Stephen King
9. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

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)
8. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Canada Reads (Winner, 2014))

Category Eight



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

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

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
7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

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)
6. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (RandomCAT August: Camping)
7. Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek (DeweyCAT August)

Woman BingoPUP



2. Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek
3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
5. Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman
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
9. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
10. The Whites by Richard Price
12. Revival by Stephen King
14. Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
15. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
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
25. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

Nationalities of Authors Read:



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

Where the Books are Set:



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

With The Toast shutting down, I took the opportunity to revisit Mallory Ortberg's literary texts in Texts from Jane Eyre. Ortberg has fun creating messages from mythical and literary characters from Medea and Achilles, to Hamlet and Jane Eyre, to Sweet Valley High's Wakefield twins and Harry Potter. Ortberg has a light hand and a humorous outlook and each segment was a great deal of fun to read.

Here's Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

what if the moon was haunted
by women who had sex with demons

what

what if kubla khan made a whole dome
just for pleasure
and put an ocean underneath the ground
with no sun in it

wow
i don't know

and rivers flung boulders up out of the earth at people
ha ha
flung 'em right up at people's stupid faces

i guess that would be really something

you're damn right it'd be something
caves of ice
and ancestral war voices prophesying about damsels
and sacred rivers screaming beware
and your hair would float
and
ugh hang on
two seconds
there's a guy here

ok

be right back

Happy new thread!!
Happy Fourth!
Hope you move to permanent digs soon and can liberate your boxed friends.

Happy New Thread! When you said you all were in the hotel with your books, it made me wonder if the rest of your family shares your passion for reading?

>16 RidgewayGirl: I've had my eye on that one!

Happy new thread! I hope things go smoothly with your move from here on out. If you have maintenance problems at home, at least you'll be in control!

Thank you, all. I am looking forward to living in a house with everything put away in its place. August sometime.

Happy new thread! Hope you and the furniture and the books all have safe and uneventful trips home.

Happy New Thread. You've had some interesting reads this year so far.

Happy new thread and safe travels home!

>16 RidgewayGirl: That looks like fun.

Hope the moving goes OK. Or as ok as moving can go...

Happy New Thread!! Hope you had a great birthday!! See you soon!

Thanks, everyone. My reading is finally picking up again. I read the excellent Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta, which got me back in the rhythm and now I'm enjoying End of Watch, the final book in Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy.

The hardest part of the move is over. Packing up is the worst. Unpacking is an almost enjoyable activity - I do like putting everything away and turning the house into our home. And I'm looking forward to putting my books on their shelves. Somewhat tempted to arrange by spine color again. Someone remind me of how badly that turned out last time!

Thanks, Victoria. We went to the big Star Wars Identities exhibit and everyone enjoyed it. And then to my favorite biergarten for dinner.

I/we are going to be repainting the bedroom later this summer/fall and I was thinking of putting my books by spine color when I put them back on the shelves. I'll probably do an inventory anyway so I could just add a tag as to what color they are so I could find them later.

Betty, they look so nice that way. And then you want to find the book with the red cover. Except it has a black spine and you have to go through all your books to find it. Adding a comment with spine color would be a good solution, though.

>28 RidgewayGirl: I have done the spine color thing. Never again. Had to completely un-shelf every book looking for a single one that wasn't the color I remembered it being.

I did the colour with cds. Looked fab but I couldn't find a thing!

I picked up American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales because I have a teenage daughter. The book looks at how teenage girls use and are used by social media. Most of the book is comprised of conversations that Sales had with teenage girls, or conversations between teenage girls that she listened in on. Based on an article that Sales wrote for Vanity Fair, there's quite a bit of padding and wheel-spinning before Sales begins to draw conclusions from her research. Much of the information Sales presents should be familiar to anyone paying attention to the news cycle or who is raising a daughter, however, a few of her conclusions are worth considering; the most thought-provoking is her asking whether girls are able to have full agency over their own behaviors in the society they are raised in.

Here are her comments on agency:

There's so much emphasis on acknowledging the need for this, and in honoring girls' and women's capacity for this, that there's never much questioning of whether they actually have it. Agency isn't something that's always necessarily present in someone's decision-making. In fact, ti's the nature of a sexist society to rob a woman of her agency long before she becomes a woman, when she's still a girl. Women's identities crystalize in cultures that are in many ways dead set against their interests. Girls are exposed to expected norms of behavior long before they're able to decide whether these norms are what they choose to inhabit.

While American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers is twice as long as it needs to be, it does raise issues that we should be discussing as a society, from how to raise independent girls acting in their own best interests, to what responsibility social media sites like Yik Yak and Snapchat should have towards their young users.

Happy to hear that the hard part of the move is over. I'm sure you'll be quite ready to be in your new home soon though.

Happy new thread, and happy new(ish) home!

>3 RidgewayGirl: I've always loved that picture because she is putting up a fight. I can't help but hope she got a good swing at someone.

My two cents as to arranging by spine color- I did it about a year ago and it's worked out fine. ' Course the consideration of spine color came last, after "fiction or non-fiction" "nationality" and "genre", because sorting just by color would make finding a book very frustrating.

Right now I have tags like "shelf 2" or "bag 6" so color wouldn't be that much different. or maybe shelf and color. I also double stack my shelves so only the front ones would be by color.

Thanks, Stacy. The time will go by quickly enough.

She is a termagant, Jennifer! And I may try the spine color thing. It'll depend on my mood when I put my books away.

Betty, you are tempting me! I did have all the books I put in storage in boxes with their box number listed on LT, so it is doable to do the same by shelf.

The discussion of shelving by color amazes me! I have my books separated by fiction and nonfiction and then by author. Guess what, sometimes I STILL end up having to search for a misplaced book!

Happy new thread, Kay. However you decide to shelve your books, I bet you will be happy once you have them on display.

clue, that's how I usually shelve my books, too, with the reference and craft books upstairs, and with the hardcovers and paperbacks in different bookcases. But I do like a good book rearranging.

Judy, I will be so happy to have all the books shelved. That will mean the entire move is done with.

New thread, new (old) home, new shelving system! Enjoy it all.

Happy new thread!

I did enjoy the Castle comments in the last thread. It was neat to hear the cbl_tn(Carrie's)'s favorite episode was The Rear Window one - that was a good one! I very much enjoyed all the Firefly links, including many of the characters appearing on the show at one time or another.

It reminded me when I went to Angola for the first time 2 years ago - I had to wait for hours in the Luanda hotel lobby to check into my room. The TV in the lobby was playing older episodes of Castle back-to-back. I thought that was interesting.

Thanks, Vivienne and Lisa.

Lisa, having actors from Firefly turn up in Castle was always a big thrill. And Angola! How wonderful!

Happy new thread! I hope you can enjoy your last days in Germany, now with the landlord issues being solved.

Chrischi, we had dinner at our favorite Biergarten tonight and we fly home tomorrow. And the security deposit was returned in full a few days after we turned the keys over, so we're all done there.

Happy new thread! And congrats on leaving your old landlady behind... :)

Thanks, Eva. We're back and finally have internet again. Still rental furniture and fixing things up, but we're living in our house. It's a good feeling.

She returns! Welcome back.

Hurray! I'm glad you're back home.

Thanks, guys. Boy, I've got quite a few threads to catch up on! Not to mention reviews to write.

Glad to hear it! Hope you have some fun reunions in your future.

You're farther away from me than before, but: Welome home! :)

Welcome back!

Yay, welcome home! Enjoy settling back in.

I bet it's great to be back in your own home after all those rental problems you've suffered through.

I'm glad to hear you're back. Looking forward to the reviews!

Thank you, everyone! While I will miss Munich (probably a lot), right now it feels good to be home.



Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta was a delight to read. Telling the story of a girl during Nigeria's Biafra War, whose father is killed and whose mother sends her to live as a housemaid in order for her to be safe and fed. I expected a grim tale, and while Okparanta doesn't gloss over the conditions Ijeoma faces, her protagonist's spirit shines through. There's an added layer of complexity here; Ijeoma develops a relationship with another girl and when this is discovered, the people around her react with shock and horror. She's not only trying to start her life in an uncertain environment, but men and women like her are beaten and even killed. Ijeoma's path is anything but clear, and the decisions she makes (or fails to make) will affect more than just herself.

Chinelo Okparanta sets a high bar for her novel; to not only describe life in a specific time and place that we know far too little about, but to also explain what life is like for someone discovering that who they fundamentally are is not compatible with the society they are living in. For the most part, she succeeds. The novel does lose some of its intensity as it moves from the story of a girl surviving war, to a young woman trying to forge her own path to a woman living with the decisions she made, but it remains a fascinating portrayal of a woman's life.

Welcome home!

Thanks, Shannon. Now to get off of LT (where I am so behind on reading people's threads, I may never catch up) and back to replacing shelf paper. Our container is arriving ten days early. Chaos ensues.

End of Watch was a satisfying end to the Bill Hodges trilogy. I spent the first book, Mr. Mercedes, wary of Stephen King veering off into horror and the supernatural, but he played the first two books straight, demonstrating an understanding an love of the private eye genre. In this final book, he deviates from this, but he does it well, keeping his characters consistent and not creating an unstoppable bad guy, just one who appears that way.

Bill Hodges visited Brady Hartsfield regularly in his hospital room for years, but he's moved on and the staff of the hospital where he laid in a coma changed. Then a series of apparent suicides hit the area, but the victims are all attendees of either Hartfield's first rampage, or his second attempt at mass murder. What could the connection be? Hodges former partner calls him in to take a look.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I have her short stories our from the library - this is a kick in the rear to get on with reading that!

(And good luck with the container)

>59 charl08: I'll be interested in seeing what you think of Okparantha's short stories.

In moving news, the container arrives tomorrow morning, ten days early! It wasn't washed overboard by a rogue wave. Customs officials did not decide to painstakingly search through our possessions (and therefore die of boredom). It will be a busy few days, as we leave for the beach on Saturday and all the things that go in the downstairs living area will have to live in the garage as the floors are being refinished while we aren't there. It's thrown us into a frenzy of preparing, and we will go to the beach utterly unprepared for it (there was a quick run to buy extra swimsuits yesterday, as well as sunscreen) but I suspect we will enjoy ourselves just as much as in the years where I had things excessively organized. What do you need beyond a few swimsuits, sunscreen and a stack of books?

>60 RidgewayGirl: Fortunately, the beach is always very relaxed and you don't need much, as you say. Enjoy your vacation!

>60 RidgewayGirl: Have a great vacation!

>58 RidgewayGirl: Great review. Glad to hear King stayed away from horror in Finders Keepers and End of Watch. I have them on the tbr shelf but I'm trying to spread them out a bit.

Welcome back to North America and enjoy your beach trip, I suspect you need some time relaxing in the sun with a stack of books beside you. I am also trying to catch up on LT after being away for a week and a half.

Welcome back and enjoy your vacation! I'm trying to convince my boss that my 5 weeks at home recovering from surgery doesn't count as a vacation. Sounds like everything is moving along with getting all your possessions in order, when do your kids go back to school?

>60 RidgewayGirl: Hurray for the container arriving early! And indeed, you don't need much for the beach. May the reading be good and the weather be fine.

Welcome back! Hope you had a lovely and relaxing vacation.

Thank you, all. The beach is lovely and we are all becoming more and more relaxed. After a long day at the beach yesterday, the rest of the family is off crabbing, while I went to the small local bookstore and I'm now on the screen porch, reading and catching up on LT. There's a cupboard filled with battered mass market paperbacks, and I have taken the coverless copy of Lonesome Dove and will replace it with something else if I don't finish it this week. It's perfect vacation reading, as is Stephen King's Revival.

Vivienne, End of Watch does have a touch of the supernatural in it, but it is restrained and I found I didn't mind it.

Lisa, they start school in mid-August, on my son's birthday, poor guy. So a week after we get back from the beach. It will be a very busy week!

Here are the three books I picked up at the Edisto Bookstore:

It's amazing how easy it is to crab at Edisto. Enjoy! And don't forget our book-date on the 14th!

>69 VictoriaPL: There is no chance I would forget that! As if!

>68 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your beach vacation. I've not read Interpreter of Maladies yet, but I enjoyed both The Lowland and The Namesake by Lahiri.

Funny that you picked up Interpreter of Maladies, I remember really enjoying it. I'm reading The Namesake and I also have Unaccustomed Earth out from the library .

Oh I loved the Lahiri. Hope it works for you.

Your beach holiday sounds perfect. Were many crabs caught, or was it the catch and release kind?

Paulina and Lisa, I loved Unaccustomed Earth, so I'm pretty sure I'll like Interpreter of Maladies.

Charlotte, the crabs were of the catch and eat in the form of crab cakes kind.

My reading was slow in July and I'm behind on my reviews. While each of the books deserves a thoughtful review, in the interest of catching up, here are some brief comments.



The final book in Elena Ferrante's series deserves pages. If you liked the other books, you will read The Story of the Lost Child no matter what I say here. And if you haven't, well, they are worth reading. They immerse the reader in a time and place like few other books, and the story of the charged and uncertain friendship between Lena and Lina is compelling and fascinating. This is a story about and dominated by women, that is set in a world controlled by men. The result is complex, maddening and impossible to put down. I read The Story of the Lost Child as slowly as I could, but it was still finished far to soon.



The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley is an atmospheric gothic novel about a boy growing up in a staunch Catholic household, with an older brother who lives most of the year in an institution, but with whom he shares a close bond. Their family joins a half dozen others congregants on a retreat to an isolated house on the coast with the new priest, where local customs unsettle everyone.

Hurley does a good job of getting into the mind of a boy just becoming aware of the flawed nature of the people around him and of the connection he shares with his mentally challenged older brother, as well as of the claustrophobic nature of strong personalities together at a retreat where the isolated location brings all the conflicts to the forefront. This is a book more concerned with how situations and events affect people, than with action or plot.

Blood, Salt, Water is the latest installment in Denise Mina's crime series centered on a Glasgow police detective. Set in the middle of the Brexit campaign, Morrow is looking for a missing woman, a woman the department had been keeping an eye on as part of a larger money laundering case based in London. And then a body is found in Loch Lomond.

I'm not a good judge of Mina's books because I love them too much. She has a skill of humanizing even the characters doing very bad things, that a lesser author would be content to just make out as evil. Motivations and personal histories are complex and meaningful to Mina, so her books are always more than just crime novels. And Morrow's a wonderful character to follow. She's changed over time and as a woman who has a husband and young children, she may be cranky, but she's not the typical jaded loner the genre tends to produce.



Canadian author Dan Vyleta's novel, The Crooked Maid, begins in a train compartment a few years after the end of WWII. A schoolboy is traveling home to Vienna after spending the war in a Swiss boarding school. He shares the compartment with a woman returning to Vienna after receiving word that her estranged husband has been released from a Soviet POW camp.

Their lives intertwine, along with the people they meet along the way; family, friends, neighbors and acquaintances. There's a Dickensian feel to the novel, with a large cast of characters and reliance on coincidence, but it never feels forced or unwieldy. Centering on the trial of a former Gestapo officer who is accused of killing his own father, The Crooked Maid tells the story of Vienna in the aftermath of the war, as it begins to reimagine its history as one of occupation rather than collusion, and the Cold War takes precedence over the past.



You'd think that by now Stephen King would be coasting along, exerting less and less effort, secure in the knowledge that no matter how lazy his writing, his books will earn millions. And yet he recently tackled a new genre, the PI novel, with his Bill Hodges trilogy and did an excellent job. Revival is back in his preferred genre, but there's nothing tired or rehashed about it.

Jamie is a young boy playing with plastic army men in the dirt when he first meets the new pastor of the church his family attends, and Pastor Daniels will be a part of his life forever. King builds the story and the suspense slowly, first establishing the characters. The ending was properly creepy. King is one of the few authors who can write a scary story without having me either shrug or roll my eyes at the climactic moments.

Welcome back to the States! I hope the rest of your vacation (if you're still on it!) is smooth and relaxing and wonderful.

The Crooked Maid sounds wonderful. I've recently read The Gustav Sonata which liked at the way the Swiss dealt with the legacies of the war on an individual level - your review reminded me of it.

You've almost convinces me to give Denise Mina another go - such enthusiasm!

I picked up one of Denise Mina's books at a recent library sale, but I think it's later in the series so now it will languish on my shelf for a while.

Welcome back, an thanks for the BBs for The Crooked Maid and Revival!

Thanks, Laura. The vacation is a lovely intermission in the moving process. Next week will be busy, though, with the kids starting school on the 16th and all the unpacking to get done.

Charlotte, The Crooked Maid was excellent. I'm going to keep an eye out for more by Vyleta. And I'd suggest trying Mina's Garnethill trilogy, if you're okay with gritty noir. I met her at a book signing and she's wonderful - very funny and kind.

Which one, Betty? She's one of my favorite authors, so I hope you like her once you get around to it.

Hi, Lisa! I read both of those because of mentions on various LT threads. I read very little that hasn't been endorsed by someone here!

The Crooked Maid sounds interesting. And I will try Denise Mina one of these days. It sounds like her books have a very strong sense of place, and I love that in a crime novel.

oh - I lied - I actually picked up the first one in the series Still Midnight. Guess there's no reason for it to languish. I'll have to see what I have planned for the rest of the year in my "1st in a series" category.

I need to get back to reading Denise Mina! I recently realized that a friend of mine is friends with her - I saw a comment on his Facebook from a woman with that name and realized that it was her! Oops, good thing I didn't make a joke about her having the same name as the writer... :)

Carrie, I think you might really enjoy The Crooked Maid. And Glasgow is definitely a character in Mina's novels. The Paddy Meehan series is about a young woman trying to become a journalist in the 1980s.

Oh, good, Betty. You can dive right in. : )

Eva, I've met Mina and she is wonderful.

>85 RidgewayGirl:
It shouldn't matter, but it makes me feel happy that she is a nice person. :)

*need to read a book by Denise Mina* (note to myself)
Set in Glasgow, not much can go wrong!

I don't think anyone can go wrong reading Denise Mina, although her books do tend to be gritty -- she doesn't shy away from people living on the edges of society.

There is much unpacking to be done, but the stuff is here and ready to be put away.

Also, I have read Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and it was glorious. I had not expected to like a book about a cattle drive, let alone be sucked in for a week.

Late catching up, but I'm glad the move seems to have gone smoothly! And how nice to be able to re-group with a beach vacation... And yes! about Lonesome Dove - so much more than a western, and I wish people wouldn't dismiss it as such. It's a wonderful novel.

>89 katiekrug: It looks daunting, being so large. I read it because it had made my wishlist along the way, after a few good reviews on LT threads, so when I ran across a copy at the beach house I was staying in, it seemed a good reason to at least try a few chapters.

>90 RidgewayGirl: - I think it's size is the reason I've never tried to read it even though it gets such glowing reviews. Maybe someday...

Thanks for the review of Revival. It sounds like a good one and it's nice to hear that King is still putting out fresh and creepy stories. It's been a long time since I've read one of his but I have Full Dark, No Stars in my stack for Autumn.

It's been forever since I've read any King (I went through almost all of his pre-'90s novels when I was a teenager) and it would be fun to explore some of his horror again. Revival sounds like it would be a good one to pick up.

>91 dudes22: Betty, it did take me the greater part of a week to read, but it didn't feel long while I was reading it. Once I'd read the first hundred pages, I had a hard time putting the book down. And I was sorry to finish it.

Jennifer and Andrea, I generally just read his short stories. I think he's a much better and important author than he is given credit for, because of the genre that he writes, but his novels can be longer than they need to be. But Revival isn't bloated, and I really enjoyed it. There's definitely a Lovecraft influence in this one.

I'm slowly winning the battle of the boxes. Looking forward to the kids getting back to school next week so I can work without interruption! Hopefully, we'll be mostly moved in by the end of next week. Unpacking is a pain, but is so much more satisfying than the packing up.

And I went by the library to reopen my account. When I walked up to the desk, the librarian looked up and said, "I haven't seen you in a while." I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing.

Glad to hear you're getting settled in. I haven't moved in 13 years, and it's a hassle, but then every box you open is "oh, yeah, I've been looking for that..."

I agree about King. He's one of the top selling writers for the last few decades, and he's deceptively good.

>95 mstrust: It's fun finding things, but the interesting part is when I pull something out of a box and think, I didn't know we had that.

I successfully avoided reading Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize winning and best known novel until now, put off by both the size and the fact that it's about a cattle drive, a subject that interests me only in the most abstract way and certainly not 900 pages worth. But an accumulation of laudatory reviews from people here as well as the happy coincidence of coming across a copy just when I had a week of vacation gave me the push to try a few chapters. And then I had to read the whole thing.

Yes, it is about a cattle drive, led by Call, a former Texas Ranger who has been living near the Texas-Mexico border and running a livery stable of sorts with a fellow Ranger named Gus in the sleepy settlement of Lonesome Dove. When he hears that Montana is on the verge of being tamed, he decides to take a herd of cattle north and settle those grazing lands.

While there is quite a bit of adventure and the sort of activities one expects in a Western; gambling, saloon girls, horse thieves, pioneers, etc...this is more a story about people. McMurtry has a talent for quickly making the reader care about his various, and tremendously varied, characters. Even his heroes are flawed and his villains have real depth. I spent each page of the novel deeply invested in the fates of Newt, Clara and even Roscoe. McMurtry has written a book about a specific time and place, and given it depth and breadth. While I'm sure this book would appeal to those who like adventure and books set in the Old West, it's really much more than just a good historical novel. It certainly deserved to win the Pulitzer.

I don't have a book yet for my "adventure" square in the Bingo Dog. Maybe I too will finally succumb to the many voices saying how good this is.

Betty, I think you'd like it. It really is an extraordinary novel.

>97 RidgewayGirl: A few years ago Larry McMurtry wrote his autobiography in three small volumes. In one of those he discussed Lonesome Dove and says he still can't figure out why it's liked so much. If I remember right he called himself a "B" writer, certainly not an "A". He knows literature so well, it amazes me he doesn't see the fine job he did with Dove.

I do like historical books set in the West, had been reading McMurtry for years when Dove was published, and thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I learned he was publishing a "Western". If you haven't seen the TV mini-series you should, I don't think you would be disappointed.

>97 RidgewayGirl: Isn't it nice when a book lives up to its hype? It's one of my favorites. I love a book you can just fall into.

>97 RidgewayGirl:
Sounds like a great read. I have a sometimes fascination with the Wild West, so I'm going to have to eventually read this one.

>100 clue:
That's really interesting about how McMurty perceives his own writing, although I think it happens to quite a few writers — that feeling of not being able to understand why people like one story over another.

>100 clue: His writing is unassuming. There aren't any showy passages. But writing that is invisible takes talent and hard work. And the book has some very funny segments. I'll have to watch the mini-series.

Andrea, it is worth reading. I hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I did when you finally get to it.

And I got to go to a big booksale with VictoriaPL! I found these books



but the real fun was just hanging out with Victoria.

Yay book sales with friends! The best kind :)

>103 RidgewayGirl: I almost picked up that copy of Time and Again!
Aw, I really enjoyed our time this afternoon. And I got to meet Tarzan - who could fail to be impressed?!?

Sounds like you are settling in nicely. Great book haul and I agree with everything you say about Lonesome Dove, one of my top five books of all time. :)

Hi Kay: I'm glad to see all the Lonesome Dove love here I remember my father buying it when it came out and loving it which was no surprise, but then my mother read it which left me gobsmacked as we were reading Judith Kranz and Danielle Steel at the time. I picked it up many years later and loved it. As Judy mentioned it would always be in my top five of all time.

I'm off to Victoria's thread.

>103 RidgewayGirl: Nice haul! I loved The Library at Night and In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.

rp, I agree! The best kind of book sale. Especially when you don't like the same books.

Tarzan is a people cat. He likes visitors. They never fail to appreciate how beautiful he is.

Judy, I've passed the book on to my husband.

Carrie, I wasn't sure about In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. It wasn't on my (admittedly far too enormous) wish list, but I knew that I'd heard of it and I do like short stories. Glad to know I picked a good one.

I'm going to be very interested in what you think of Time and Again. I read it years ago when it first came out and absolutely loved it. Every now and then I think I'll reread it but shy away because I'm afraid I won't like it now.

My bet is you love Let The Great World Spin. It was the first McCann I read and oh my, now he's one of my special guys! I ran across one of his first books in a used bookstore in Texas where he lived at the time, and after it was on the shelf awhile I realized he had written a note inside and signed it! My little treasure!

Epitaph has been lounging with my other TBRs for awhile. I need to get to it and Doc soon.

clue, like you, I read Time and Again back when in first came out and I loved it. I couldn't resist picking up a copy at the sale so I could see if it is as good as I remember it. You're so lucky to have a signed note from McCann. I loved TransAtlantic. I loved Doc and I'd been planning to buy a copy of Epitaph, so I was very pleased to find a copy at a book sale.

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner is the story of how Judy Melinek became a medical examiner and her experiences working in the OCME (office of the chief medical examiner) in Manhattan. Along with the usual stories of bizarre cases, Melinek talks about dealing with the families of the deceased and the frustrations of trying to get overworked detectives in the NYPD to pursue the cases she called homicides.

This would be just an enjoyable book about an interesting profession had Melinek not been partway through her training on September 11, 2001. Located in lower Manhattan, the building she worked in became the central area for the processing of all the remains found in the wreckage of the twin towers. Her account of that experience made this book more substantial and much more difficult to read.

Mary Brody is in a rut. She's committed to living her life in the routine it's grown accustomed to. She also struggles with her weight (which she calls the obeast, an issue affecting her daily life, her confidence and her relationship with her husband. When he leaves her on the eve of their 25th wedding anniversary, Mary is forced to take action and she decides to go and find her husband.

What elevates The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens is the fairy tale tone of the story, with ordinary events and suburban locations described in a way that feels like a fable. Lansens simultaneously allows for a sense of the fantastic (conjoined twins in cornfields, a fairy godmother in the form of an Israeli limousine driver) while keeping the story grounded in reality. The transformation of Mary Brody depends not on a man (present or missing), weight loss or supernatural influences, but on her own intrinsic good nature. Here, a willingness to help out by cleaning a kitchen or babysitting a trio of pre-schoolers is what is rewarded, rather than her beauty or especial goodness. She stumbles with that willingness to help, too, with clumsy but heart-felt attempts to do the right thing. It's impossible not to root for Mary as she negotiates situations she's avoided her whole life.

The Wife's Tale has been on my tbr for a while. Thanks, Nickelini, for pushing this off of the shelf and into my hands. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Since I know you're a fan, I thought I'd let you know Megan Abbott's newest novel, You WIll Know Me is on sale for $2.99 for Kindle....

Ha, Katie, you've underestimated my degree of love for Abbott. I have a hardcover copy already. She's one of a half dozen authors who I'll buy their books in hardcover immediately upon release.

LOL - my bad!

I'd be thrilled with that news if I didn't have the pathological need to have all her books in a neat row on my bookshelf (jammed behind other books, because I do have too many books (for the shelves I have), but there).

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series in which current authors retell Shakespeare's plays. The Taming of the Shrew is a difficult story to adapt to modern day, and Tyler manages by making Petruccio into Pyotr, a Russian immigrant who works with her father in his lab and whose visa is about to expire. Tyler's focus remains on Kate for the duration of this brief novel. Kate is stuck -- caring for her father, who relies on her more than he should, and her younger sister Bunny, a teenager the rest of the family dismisses as being flighty, but who is the most level-headed and socially adjusted of the family. It's just that she's fallen for Edward, who is a bit odd. Kate is stranded in her own life; not entirely happy as an assistant teacher at a pre-school, but lacking the impetus to move herself out of that rut.

Vinegar Girl was a fun book to read; although it was much less substantial than Tyler's usual writing, it was still set in an old fashioned version of Baltimore. It was also a decent adaptation of the source material, although far from the best, which remains the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You.

I'll have to keep an eye out for The Wife's tale. It sounds interesting!

I thouught Vinegar Girl wa fun, too. I have anARC of Hag-Seed that I need to read in the next couple of weeks. I read The Gap of Time last year.

>118 RidgewayGirl: I LOVE Ten Things I Hate About You! Watched it recently and was overcome with nostalgia.

Carrie, I just requested an ARC of Hag-Seed from Penguin's First to Read program. I have my fingers crossed.

Me, too, rp. I love that movie so much.

>118 RidgewayGirl: I was going to pick that one up to read earlier this month during the 2 weeks between summer school and the return of the faculty to campus. Unfortunately it was checked out at the time so I didn't get it. Hopefully it will be available when I get through a few ARCs.

>118 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I love that movie!
Underwear. Swimwear. Underwear. Swimwear. See the difference?
So fun.
Oddly, it remains the only movie I really enjoy Julia in.
I haven't watched it recently because it makes me sad about Heath.

Love 10 Things I Hate About You — such a great adaptation.

Vinegar Girl sounds like a it would be a fun read. :)

Victoria, I would like to finish this blasted unpacking so that I can watch that again. Max went paint balling with his friends for his birthday. It was not at all like that scene in the movie.

Andrea, I enjoyed it, but I was in the mood for both slight and well-written.

>118 RidgewayGirl: The Hogarth Shakespeare series sounds intriguing. The lineup of authors looks great so far.

Paulina, it is an excellent selection of authors! I do think, though, that they copied the Austen remakes in that they chose prominent authors over authors who had something unique to say, although Shakespeare allows for quite a bit more leeway than Jane Austen when it comes to reimaginings.

We have a new dog! She arrived today and we are in love. She is very interested in the cats and rabbit, but moves away at once when we say no. Rabbit is fine with it. Cats are upstairs plotting to thwart the occupation.



Her name is Ivy and she is beautiful.

Yes she is beautiful! Congratulations to both you and Ivy!

Ivy is gorgeous, her eyes just about make me melt! Hope all the animals can learn to get along with each other.

Ivy is a lovely girl! I'm glad you found each other.

Intrigued to hear what the cats have plotted. Ivy is lovely.

A lovely addition to your family!

A very pretty dog. Any particular breed/mix? And nice that she is short-haired.

Thank you all. Ivy did well during our first night together. She paced a bit, but didn't destroy anything in the night. She whimpered when my husband left, but was happy to see me. I miss the cat sleeping on the bed, but he's still an upstairs cat. Curiosity will eventually bring them down and they'll learn to live together, but it does take time.

Awww so cute!

>135 RidgewayGirl: Ivy and Tarzan will look so glamorous together. A.J. will feel left out! I'm glad she's adjusting well.

rp, not only is she beautiful, she's also intelligent. No offense to our previous dogs, but they were not Rhodes scholars. I'm looking forward to teaching her things.

Victoria, I think they'll eventually get along just fine. I can see them hanging out together and solving mysteries.

>138 RidgewayGirl:

hanging out together and solving mysteries

Or more likely, based on the behavior in my house, creating them!

>128 RidgewayGirl: Gorgeous! Love her coat. Her face reminds me of the first dog I had as an adult. Still miss her all the time.

What a beautiful dog, and what a happy addition to your family. :)

clue, that is also a possibility.

Shannon, I'm going to have my son take her to obedience classes. I think that he's old enough and I remember how I bonded with the first family dog I got to be the one to be in charge of. She really wants to do whatever we want, so it will be fun for both of them to learn to communicate.

Thanks, Andrea. The first few months are a lot of work. Hoping that the cats will eventually forgive me.

Megan Abbott is one of my favorite authors and You Will Know Me does not disappoint. Told from the point of view of the mother of a gymnastics champion, the novel is both a crime novel and an unsettling story of family life, asking how well we know the people we live with. Katie's daughter Devon is a prodigy, an athlete with a shot of making the Olympic team, as long as she doesn't lose focus or make any mistakes along the way. The whole Knox family is dedicated to Devon's progress, as are the trainers and boosters of the gym she trains at. Katie and her husband Eric drive thousands of miles between getting her to the gym and to the various meets. Her younger brother has grown up in the bleachers and back rooms waiting for his sister. Then a senseless, random tragedy occurs; the boyfriend of one of the trainers, the niece of the gym owner, is killed in a hit and run accident. The timing is terrible; Devon is just six weeks away from qualifiers that would place her well on the way to her dream. As Katie struggles to keep everything going, she begins to see the cracks in the whole edifice.

There's a lot in here about how hard the gymnasts train, the pressure it places on them as well as on their families and how, for these girls, puberty is regarded with terror; the development of hips and breasts can bring a budding career to a quick end. Reading descriptions of what serious gymnastics training entails makes me watch the sport with a different attitude (and, yes, I did spend time watching gymnastics on YouTube after finishing this book). But the sport is only a path into the mind and life of a young athlete who, having already sacrificed so much to reach a certain point, is no longer able to make decisions based solely on her own desires, but has to weigh the sacrifices and expectations of those around her. Katie finds her daughter to be self-contained and difficult to read, a skill Devon has had to learn for self-protection. And Katie is also faced with how giving so much attention and time to their prodigy, has left their younger son short-changed, and how her relationship with her husband is largely based on their shared goal.

Unsettling and fascinating, You Will Know Me is a fantastic novel.

>143 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I started reading it thinking that I didn't want to read a sports book and finished it thinking that I probably do!

Charlotte, I am so pleased that Abbott's writing is getting better and better. I can't wait to read her next novel -- which is the problem with reading You Will Know Me right away -- so long to wait for the next novel.

And Ivy continues to do really well. She slept through the night, asking to go out early in the morning. And our brave cat, Tarzan, has decided to reclaim the downstairs and she is behaving very well with him. Some sniffing, but mainly she is giving him all the space he wants. We are all in love with her.



If a rescue group tells you they have a dog who will suit -- listen to them!

In this pic you can really see her Shepard. I'm so glad things are working out well.

Ivy has joined you just in time for National Dog Day! Please give her my regards for the day when the cats are out of earshot. (Although don't cats think every day is Cat Day?)

She really is a nice looking dog. And smart apparently.

Victoria, she's so sweet, but it's weird having an intelligent dog!

Carrie, she received a chew toy for National Dog Day. Was Adrian properly celebrated?

Thanks, Betty.

Big Little Lies was suggested by someone in my old book group. It wasn't chosen, but when I ran across a copy, it seemed a good idea to try this author out. In the end, it kept my interest enough to keep reading, especially towards the end, and mainly because I was interested in seeing how Liane Moriarty could wrap all the disparate threads together in time for the happy ending she was clearly heading for.

The novel tells the stories of three women who meet and become friends when their children attend the same kindergarten. Jane is a single mother who spontaneously moves to the charming seaside town with visions of her son playing in the surf after school. Madeline has older children and an ex-husband she has not forgiven for leaving her with a newborn fifteen years earlier. That he now lives nearby with his new family does not help things, especially since their teenage daughter prefers to spend her time with her father's family. And Celeste is beautiful and married to a charming and wealthy husband who happily gives her everything she wants. As the cracks in their lives are revealed, it turns out that no one's life is without problems, but they are also not without resources.

This was a fairly routine novel with the twist that it provides a picture of domestic abuse that is nuanced and vivid. By avoiding the popular trap of making the abuser into an obvious monster, Moriarty tells a more realistic story of that relationship than is common, and for that reason I would recommend this book.

Moriarty writes with a light, breezy style that is very easy to read; although I grew annoyed with it over time, it's certainly makes for an immediately engaging story, and the colorful characters are easy to tell apart. Basically, this is a well-done escapist read, with the added virtues of being well-researched and charmingly set by the Australian seashore.

Thank you, I've taken a BB with Megan Abbott.

And a big welcome to Ivy. She is beautiful and her intelligence is obvious. Bravo to Tarzan for reclaiming territory!

>149 RidgewayGirl: Every day is Dog Day chez Adrian! I didn't get out during the week to get him a special treat, though. We missed an opportunity to go to the University of Tennessee soccer game Thursday evening. The Humane Society took several dogs and I was invited to bring Adrian. I couldn't get away from work in time to go, though.

>150 RidgewayGirl: I listened to an audio version of Big Little Lies read by Carolyn Lee and her voice totally drew me into the story and brought the characters to life. I thought the story was good but the listening experience elevated the book to another level.

Welcome to Ivy, beautiful dog.

I took a BB too, as I have yet to read Megan Abbott. So why not try You Will Know Me? Big Little Lies is already on my "to read" list, so no BB here.

Vivienne, I hope you enjoy Megan Abbott when you give her a try.

Carrie, Ivy sends Adrian her regards. She is currently laying on the sofa between my daughter and I and does not look unhappy.

Judy, I liked Big Little Lies. There was a stretch there where I couldn't wait to get back to it. Is the audiobook narrator Australian?

Thanks, Chrischi. Ivy is settling in so well!

Yes, the narrator is Australian which I think really helped bring to book to life. I do admit that at first the broad Australian accent really threw me, but I was able to quickly get used to it and I made sure my next Liane Moriarty book has the same narrator.

He would turn his moony, moody eye on a sketch and see things I had never imagined -- sunlit pools, fragrant winding gardens, gathering parties, cascading staircases. He would see people living out their lives. He would see life on earth. I would emerge from these sessions with him wanting desperately to run and run to catch up with his idea of what I might do, and in this way he created within me an ambition that would long outlast our association.

Bobcat and Other Stories is a collection of seven short stories by Rebecca Lee. Mostly set in the world of academia, the stories are varied in topic; in Bobcat a New York dinner party attended by a few writers and their editor becomes an observation of one marriage, while also foreshadowing another's demise, while The Banks of the Vistula involves a college freshman dealing with the repercussions of an act of plagiarism.

She smiled at me and then walked off. And I turned to walk back to my room, slightly horrified at myself. Go ahead, I repeated to myself. Oh, hey, go ahead. This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.

What differentiates this from any other short story collection is the quality of the writing. Lee writes beautifully, with well-crafted sentences that create an atmosphere in each story. At their best, short stories contain all the depth and color of a novel, distilled down into a perfect few pages, and Lee's short stories are very good at this. She's a short story writer for fans of that medium and I look forward to reading her next collection.

If you looked carefully, he was a wonderful man. He played the harmonica, he had a beard, he was ten years older than me, he was a settled man, and smart and humble, you could trust him never to have an affair or even leave the house too much.

>157 RidgewayGirl: Great review. Wishlisted!

Thanks, Charlotte. I like short stories so much, you'd think I'd read more of them.

Ivy update: I took her to the vet and have discovered her flaw. Ivy does not like other dogs. So she'll be doing group obedience training in the hopes of rectifying that. She would stop barking for a millisecond when I told her no, but then she started right back up again.

>159 RidgewayGirl: Oh my! Good luck with the training.

>159 RidgewayGirl: She's a people dog! My dog (whom Ivy reminds me of) was like that too. We called her the fun police because whenever she saw other dogs wrestling and having fun together, she had to break it up, stat!

>128 RidgewayGirl:
Congrats on the new family-member! She's so beautiful!

>145 RidgewayGirl:
Great photo. She looks very harmonious. I'm dealing with a 12-week-old right now and it's harmonious part of the time (when he's crashed out asleep), but the other part, it's a bit rowdy. :)

My dog was ok with other dogs except when she was on a leash. Then she'd become very aggressive, barking and trying to get to the other dog.

Thanks, Victoria. I'm hoping group training will help and that we won't be kicked out on the first day.

Shannon, we called our greyhound the fun police! He disapproved of wrestling and since our other dog, Emmie, loved to wrestle, visits to the dog park could be interesting. But mainly he used his time to pee where any other dog had peed since our last visit, so he was usually too occupied to ruin her fun.

Eva, have fun with your puppy! The thing about adopting an adult dog is that while they have their own quirks, they are calmer. Ivy chews exclusively on the antler Max bought her and isn't over-full of energy (although she gets very happy when the leash comes out).

Betty, I'd like to get this taken care of since we'd like to be able to take her with us when we go places. The leash thing is normal, though, as is the barking at people when they're on the other side of the door or fence.

I've been busy reading two superlatively good books. I just finished The Orenda by Joseph Boyden, about French Jesuit missionaries and their encounter with a First Nations tribe. Not at all comfortable reading, but impossible to put down. I feel exhausted having finished it. And I'm almost finished The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, which examines the different forms of slavery and oppression from the point of view of an escaped slave. It's tremendously imaginative and heart-wrenchingly realistic at the same time. It's unusual to read two such books at the same time, and I'll admit that the last few boxes have remained unpacked, and will stay that way until I finish The Underground Railroad later today.

>164 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad to hear you liked the Colson Whitehead book, you're the first on LT I've seen mention it. I've got it and hope to get to it next month.

>164 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like you've been doing some heavy reading. I want to get to both The Underground railroad and The Orenda.

Good luck at the behaviour training.

clue, it's not an easy book, given the subject matter, but the sheer imagination and force of it made it a five star read for me.

Thanks, Charlotte. Ivy starts next weekend. She's such an easy, loving dog at home. And both The Underground Railroad and The Orenda are excellent. It was weird reading both at once, though, as both were intense and wrenching.

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden is a chronologically told historical novel set in the mid-seventeenth century. It tells the story of a tribe of Huron as they deal with the French and face increasing hostility from the Iroquois. If you've read Brian Moore's novel Black Robe, you'll be familiar with the broad outlines of this book. A Jesuit priest joins a village of Huron and remains with that village for years, despite hostility from some and the many hardships and dangers that were part of life for the Huron at that time. So far, this is the making of a solid historical novel. What pulls it into the extraordinary is that Boyden tells the story from three distinct points of view; Bird, a warrior and leader of that Huron tribe; Snow Falls, an Iroquois girl kept alive after an ambush by the Huron to become the adopted daughter of Bird; and Père Christophe, a missionary sent to convert the Huron, who is allowed to stay in the village because the Huron rely on trade with the French. Boyden allows each of his narrators to be fully rounded and sympathetic, even as their aims and viewpoints are in direct opposition to the other narrators.

This even-handedness is especially stark given the real repercussions their encounters with the French have for the Huron. In addition to unsettling the usual balance between the Iroquois and the Huron, each encounter brings fresh diseases to the village. Having the story carried primarily by non-western narrators gives the telling a different angle than what I've read before. Instead of being entirely the story of a white man encountering "savages" or even "noble savages," this is the story of a long-standing and complex culture's reaction to an interloper who wants to change how they do things. And adding Père Christophe's viewpoint makes clear how differently the two cultures saw the world and how they were mystified and upset by the behaviors of the others.

This isn't a comfortable book, or a particularly easy book to read. There's far too much detail about the realities of life in that place at that time, and Boyden is an adept writer who makes the reader experience things I would have preferred him to gloss politely over. But it is a brilliant book and one I think that we'll be reading for decades to come.

>168 RidgewayGirl: Great review of one of my top reads of 2016!

Judy, I gave it five stars, which I don't often do.

Thumb for the excellent review of The Orenda!

Also, I am using my iPad and may have accidentally hit the flag when trying to click the thumb. I hope not, but I am on a train right now and it is not the smoothest of rides.

Thanks, for the recommendation, rp. Between you, Judy and Carrie, I was given no choice but to read The Orenda.

>168 RidgewayGirl:, Yes, it looks like with all the good buzz, The Orenda is going on my list.

Great review of The Orenda. Recently a friend gave me his copy with a sky-high recommendation. I should get to it as soon as I can.

>172 RidgewayGirl: :-)

Victoria and Vivienne, it is excellent. But brace yourself going in.

I went to a book signing at a small, independent bookstore downtown that has opened while I was in Germany. It's a cute, little store that has a cafe, and I'll have to go back when I can browse. The store owner was fine with me bringing my own copy of Serena for Ron Rash to sign and I also got a copy of his new book, The Risen. He was very pleasant and funny in an understated way. He'd taught high school here, before becoming famous enough to teach at a university. He hated the movie made from his novel, but liked paying off his mortgage. So that was fun.

>176 RidgewayGirl: Kay, we'll have to go there sometime!

Cora is a slave on a Georgia plantation when she is offered the chance to escape by a recently arrived slave. She initially says no, but circumstances change her mind and they travel along the underground railroad, searching for safety and freedom.

There's been a ridiculous amount of hype surrounding Colson Whitehead's new novel, The Underground Railroad and, if anything, there has been less hype than this book deserves. It's impossible to characterize, combining as it does brutal realism, improbably fantasy and a structure - each state that Cora travels through represents a different facet of racism - that so easily might be heavy-handed and preachy. And yet Whitehead pulls it all off, so effortlessly that I had no trouble accepting every event, unlikely or all too probable.

If this novel doesn't appear on all the awards shortlists, I will be surprised. It's an accomplishment, an innovative tour de force and one that I couldn't stop reading and thinking about.

I've heard so many great things about Underground Railroad. I may have to jump it up my list.

It's extraordinary, Andrea. It's very readable and I've never read anything like it.

>176 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a nice little bookstore.

>178 RidgewayGirl: I think that is one of the books that should be arriving this week at the library. I was really surprised they didn't arrived yesterday. Even more surprised they weren't there today.

Lori, I picked up my copy from the new books shelf at my local branch of the library. The librarian and I were both surprised that it was there and available for check out. I did return it as soon as I'd finished so the next person could get it.

>182 RidgewayGirl: You were fortunate. If it wasn't on that shipment, it's on the one I will be placing in the morning but prepared last week. I was just trying to make sure there was a week between the shipments. We had to wait until tuition came in to renew the lease book program so it causes a hold-up on ordering August titles. I often just combine the August and September orders, but I decided to place them separately this time.

I was fortunate, Lori. I haunt the overdrive site so much that I often manage to put myself near the front of any queue for ebooks, but it was all chance that I happened to walk into the one branch that had happened to stick a copy on the shelf.

Hi Kay: I plan to get to The Underground Railroad soonish. Hmm haunting the overdrive site, I refer to it as stalking, but yeah me too, I usually am in the first ten or so for new releases, I haven't stepped into the actual library in over two years.

>184 RidgewayGirl: Me too, I looked last night for Commonwealth the new one by Ann Patchett, and it wasn't there, it won't be released until the 13th. Was perusing tonight and there it was so I was able to get on the list...it will be interesting to see where I am in line when it does come out.

>178 RidgewayGirl: - I'm strongly inclined to take a BB for this since I've gotten some good BBs in the past from you. The only thing that has me on the fence is your comment about "brutal realism". I can read some violence, but there's a fine line where I have to step back and say "not for me". Still...hard not to with such a recommendation. Ok - off to check library availability.

Betty, it's not as bad as a typical noir or thriller as far as explicit descriptions go, but Whitehead evoked the experience of being a slave too vividly to make for easy reading and there were scenes that made me uncomfortable, especially set on the plantation where Cora is a slave.

I think sometimes it's the fact that they are true (or based on it) that makes them more difficult to read.

BTW - Over 250+ people on a list for 54 copies statewide. So a long wait even if some can only be borrowed for 7 days. You did luck out. I might check the shelves each time I go just in case.

I feel even luckier now!

Ivy update: she had her first obedience class. She was the only student so we got a lot done! She'll be fine with other dogs in time. She improved over our hours at PetsMart with people looking into the class area and plenty of other dogs. I was happy that she's good with cats since they were holding a cat event right in front with cats everywhere. She didn't even pause.

She got to choose her own treats afterwards and choose another big bone and a pig snout. The pig snout looks exactly like what it is. She likes it. And her previous bone was well chewed already. I threw it away this morning as she had taken it outside, buried it, disinterred it and placed it on the sofa. I will run the slipcovers through the wash tomorrow.

It sounds like Ivy is a good student! Sorry about the slipcover. At least it's washable! I keep throws on my sofa to protect it from the occasional accident.

Our Gracie was never a chewer of bones. If given one outside, she would take it over to her sandbox and bury it. Or sometimes in my flower pots. And if we gave her one inside, she would look for a place to hide it. And she'd watch us to see if we were looking where she put it. And then she'd move it from place to place until she was satisfied it was hidden.

Sounds like Ivy is taking to obedience class very well.

Carrie and Betty, the slipcovers are in the wash. And I came home from taking the kids to school this morning to find a thoughtful present waiting for me.



That's the new bone that she chose herself at PetsMart after class, chewed, buried and retrieved.

I enjoy Laura Lippman's stand-alone crime novels. They're set in Maryland and often concern how the past influences the present, but are varied and imaginative. The protagonists vary widely, and the plots are never predictable. So after a spate of more serious reading, I picked up a copy of Wilde Lake knowing that I'd enjoy reading it.

Wilde Lake moves back and forth between Lu Brant's present as a widow, mother and first female state's attorney of Howard County, as she prepares for her first trial since the election, the murder of an older single woman by a homeless man; and her childhood in the same county, where she followed her older brother around and idolized her father, who also served as state's attorney.

The story was fine, and I enjoyed reading it. There was a stretch were the story seemed to be going in a troubling direction, but having faith in an author meant I could enjoy seeing how Lippman would turn things around. All in all, though, this is not one of her stronger efforts. If you already enjoy her novels, you'll enjoy this one, but if you've never read anything by Laura Lippman, I'd begin somewhere else.

We had a Golden Retriever who would, after his dinner, find a piece of the kids' dirty laundry or one of their stuffed animals and drop it in my lap. Who knows what goes on in their heads!

>194 RidgewayGirl: Looks like Ivy is going to keep your washing machine very busy!

>194 RidgewayGirl: She says she loves you enough to share her most prized possession with you and she left it where you'd be most comfortable. Weren't you tempted to have a little chew before sleep?

>194 RidgewayGirl:
That's so generous of her! :)

Judy, there are worse things. Like not having a dog.

Jennifer, I thanked her and put the bone on her bed. She took it back outside to bury again.

Eva, she's so sweet.

Adrian likes to bury his chew treats in my bed, but only when I'm not looking. It's his favorite hiding spot.

>195 RidgewayGirl: - I have one or two of her stand alones in my TBR from something you said "once upon a time" ago. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I either packed one or saw it on the shelf just the other day.

I hate to say what that bone looks like at first glance.

Carrie, she buried her bone in the sofa cushions yesterday. She's napping on the sofa with me. For awhile the cat was asleep in my lap and she was leaning her head on my arm. I felt like a demilitarized zone.

Betty, the bone is disgusting. Burying it did not improve its appearance.

Please visit my new thread!