Paul C's 2016 Reading and Life - 17

August is my mother's birthday so this thread which heralds this golden month is dedicated to her:

Opening lines



The Sellout by Paul Beatty has made the Booker longlist and will be at the start of my first attempt at reading all the longlist before the winner is announced.

The may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything.

BOOKS READ FIRST QUARTER

JANUARY
1. Ru by Kim Thuy (2009) 153 pp
2. A Story I am in : Selected Poems by James Berry (2011) 208 pp
3. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983) 200 pp
4. Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis (2015) 159 pp
5. Clem Attlee by Francis Beckett (2015) 476 pp
6. The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Theriault (2005) 117 pp
7. 40 Sonnets by Don Paterson (2015) 44 pp
8. The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth (2011) 294 pp
9. The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry (2010) 92 pp
10. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (1993) 269 pp
11. Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen (1998) 104 pp
12. Coast to Coast by Jan Morris (1956) 238 pp
13. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler (1982) 314 pp
14. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014) 688 pp
15. The Perfect Stranger by P.J. Kavanagh (1966) 182 pp
16. The Manticore by Robertson Davies (1972) 255 pp

FEBRUARY
17. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934) 347 pp
18. The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara Tuchman (1958) 200 pp
19. Coventry by Helen Humphreys (2008) 169 pp
20. Selected Poems by Cecil Day Lewis (1951) 158 pp
21. Return of a King : The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple (2013) 487 pp

MARCH
22. Assalamualaikum : Observations on the Islamisation of Malaysia by Zaid Ibrahim (2015) 200 pp
23. That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (2009) 339 pp
24. How to be Both by Ali Smith (2014) 372 pp
25. Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally (1989) 320 pp
26. New Selected Poems by Robert Minhinnick (2012) 185 pp
27. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (1986) 664 pp
28. Around the World ichael Palin (1989) 241 pp
29. Poems of the Past and the Present by Thomas Hardy (1901) 96 pp
30. The Boat Who Wouldn't Float by Farley Mowat (1969) 243 pp

BOOKS READ IN 2016

Second Quarter

APRIL
31. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1991) 371 pp
32. What Work Is by Philip Levine (1991) 77 pp
33. Eventide by Kent Haruf (2004) 300 pp
34. A New Selected Poems by Galway Kinnell (2001) 179 pp
35. The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi (1995) 276 pp
36. Demelza by Winston Graham (1946) 521 pp
37. Geography III by Elizabethe Bishop (1976) 50 pp
38. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) 142 pp
39. Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russell (1957) 259 pp

MAY
40. Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson (1989) 108 pp
41. Ruby by Cynthia Bond (2015) 330 pp
42. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman (1994) 289 pp
43. The Sea Runners by Ivan Doig (1982) 275 pp
44. Make Me by Lee Child (2015) 544 pp
45. Old Filth by Jane Gardam (2004) 290 pp
46. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin (1964) 46 pp
47. Fault Line by Robert Goddard (2012) 509 pp
48. AWOPBOPALOOBOPALOPBAMBOOM by Nik Cohn (1972) 247 pp
49. Risk by C.K. Stead (2012) 267 pp

JUNE
50. Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey (2006) 46 pp
51. The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad (1917) 145 pp
52. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) 333 pp
53. Crow by Ted Hughes (1970) 89 pp
54. A Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durrell (1960) 173 pp
55. The Green Road by Anne Enright (2005) 310 pp
56. Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley (1981) 396 pp
57. Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx (2011) 234 pp
58. Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser (1969) 691 pp

BOOKS READ IN 2016

THIRD QUARTER

July

59. The Pearl by John Steinbeck (1948) 89 pp
60. The Sergeants' Tale by Bernice Rubens (2013) 217 pp
61. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1895) 106 pp
62. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (2013) 487 pp
63. The Battle for Scotland by Andrew Marr (1992) 240 pp
64. The Fifth Son by Elie Wiesel (1985) 220 pp
65. Holiday by Stanley Middleton (1974) 222 pp
66. Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich by Barry Turner (2015) 275 pp
67. Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham (1950) 344 pp
68. The European Union : A Citizen's Guide by Chris Bickerton (2016) 230 pp
69. An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell (2013) 169 pp
70. Bad History : How We Got the Past Wrong by Emma Marriott (2011) 173 pp

August

71. March by Geraldine Brooks (2005) 273 pp
72. The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2016) 289 pp
73. Rape : A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates (2003) 154 pp
74. Black Dogs by Ian McEwan (1992) 174 pp
75. Eileen : A Novel by Otessa Moshfegh (2016) 260 pp

Reading Plans and a little about me

Me?
I am 50 this coming September and have enough unread reading material on my shelves to take me safely into my seventies! I have lived in Malaysia since 1994 and have a long suffering (but never quietly) wife, Hani (sometimes referred to as SWMBO), three children Yasmyne (18), Kyran (16) and Belle (12 - well almost), as well as a supporting cast which includes Saad Yasmyne's Egyptian boyfriend and very much part of the family fabric, my book smuggling assistants Azim (also my driver and a part time bouncer who, despite his muscles, lives in almost as much fear of my wife as I do) and Erni (my housemaid, almost-little sister and the worlds greatest coffee maker). On this thread you'll probably read as much about the vagaries of life, book buying and group related statistics as you do about the actual books themselves.


clockwise from top left: Kyran, Saad, Yasmyne, Belle, Hani & I

2016 Reading

American Author Challenge - Mark (msf59) is on the third year of this great challenge where the task is to read a work by a featured US author each month.

Canadian Author Challenge - This is its inaugural year and I will try to read (and find books for!) as many of the 24 authors featured as I can.

ANZAC Challenge - Set up by Kerry this year. I will try to follow this one alternating between Oz/Nz

Pulitzer Challenge - Bill has created a challenge to read a Pulitzer winner each month in 2016

Chunkster Challenge - Also set up by Bill to take care of that small matter of books over 600 pages!

Non-Fiction Challenge - Suz (Chatterbox) has put this up and I will follow this one too

TIOLI Challenge - Surely needs no introduction!

1001 Books First Edition - I am working my way through these. So far at 262.

Booker Prize Winners - Another one I am wending my way through

Nobel Laureates - I am trying to read something by all the Laureates - so far have read 57 of the 112 winners.

Poetry - I will be trying to read a different collection/anthology each week and at the same time promote poetry in the group (tough one that) which will include my own occasion clumsy scribblings.

Series I have so many I follow Montalbano, Reacher, Hole, Banks, Davenport, Sejer, Allon, Lennox .....and I will be trying to read many of those as I can.

History Another favourite of mine

Political Biography - I am of the left in political terms so I prefer to read more from my heroes than my villains but sometimes it pays to check out what the opposition are up to!

I will try to combine challenges as much as I can to do something in each challenge each month.

Reading Plan for August 2016

I did a little better in July but still failed to hit my targets. Headed for optimistic failure as usual in August.

I will have primary and then secondary targets this month so I hope to hit at least the former and some of the latter.

Primary Targets (1) - Unfinished books

1 The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (CAC, 1001) Reading
2 March by Geraldine Brooks (ANZAC, Pulitzer) COMPLETED
3 The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Reading

Primary Targets (2) Main Challenges

4 Rape : A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates (AAC) COMPLETED
5 Black Dogs by Ian McEwan (BAC, 1001) COMPLETED
6 Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (BAC)
7 Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler (CAC)

Primary Targets (3) Booker Longlist
8 The Sellout by Paul Beatty COMPLETED
9 My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
10 Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh COMPLETED
11 Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
12 All That Man Is by David Szalay

Secondary Targets - Catch-ups and Other Challenges

13 Staying On by Paul Scott (Booker)
14 Warleggan by Winston Graham (Series)
15 Ake : The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka (Nobel)
16 The Heart Laid Bare by Michel Tremblay (CAC)
17 Silas Marner by George Eliot (BAC & 1001)
18 One Bloody Thing After Another by Jacob F. Field (History)
19 Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (CAC)
20 An Imaginary Life by David Malouf (Anzac)
21 Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (Bowie Books, 1001)

BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE 2016

August thread : http://www.librarything.com/topic/227948

January : Susan Hill & Barry Unsworth
February : Agatha Christie & William Dalrymple
March : Ali Smith & Thomas Hardy
April : George Eliot & Hanif Kureishi
May : Jane Gardam & Robert Goddard
June : Lady Antonia Fraser & Joseph Conrad
July : Bernice Rubens & H.G. Wells
August : Diana Wynne-Jones & Ian McEwan
September : Doris Lessing & Laurie Lee
October : Kate Atkinson & William Golding
November : Rebecca West & Len Deighton
December : WEST YORKSHIRE writers
Wildcard : Rumer Godden and George Orwell

Round up of Stats

1001 Books First Edition - Read 264 of 1001

Nobel Winners - Read something by 59 of the 112 Laureates

Pulitzer Fiction/Novel Winners - Read 14 of 88 outright winners

Booker Winners - Read 22 of the 50 winners

Bowie 100 Books - 21 read a further 22 owned

1000 Guardian Books - 309

TBR Records Update : (Revised after giving away 114 books in June)

Year reading record to date:

January 1st frozen TBR : 3,600

Books read : 53

Revised TBR : 3,547

January 1st Pages : 1,254,776

Pages read in completed books : 13,359

Revised TBR pages : 1,241,417

Other Books added since 1 January : 174
Pages : 61,338
Read : 11
Read Pages : 3,313
Books still to read from this year's purchases : 163
Pages to read : 58,025

Total Books Read in 2016 - 64
Total Pages Read in 2016 - 16,672

Total TBR Physical Books @ 13 July 2016 - 3,710
Total TBR Pages - 1,299,442

BOOKS ADDED SINCE 1 JANUARY 2016

1. Fifteen Dogs Andre Alexis (2015) 159 pp (Added 6 Jan) COMPLETED
2. Rain by Barney Campbell (2015) 362 pp (Added 6 Jan)
3. Coventry by Helen Humphreys (2008) 169 pp (Added 7 Jan -Secret Santa (Katie)) COMPLETED
4. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro (2015) 362 pp (Added 14 Jan)
5. How Good We Can Be by Will Hutton (2015) 250 pp (Added 14 Jan)
6. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (1988) 641 pp (Added 14 Jan)
7. The Chimes by Anna Smaill (2015) 289 pp (Added 14 Jan)
8. Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1991) 669 pp (Added 14 Jan)
9. The Black Moon by Winston Graham (1973) 546 PP (Added 14 Jan)
10. Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford (2014) 238 pp (Added 22 Jan)
11. Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker (1992) 270 pp (Added 22 Jan)
12. Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass (1961) 191 pp (Added 22 Jan)
13. The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino (1969) 129 pp (Added 22 Jan)
14. The Enigma of Arrival by VS Naipaul (1987) 387 pp (Added 22 Jan)
15. Mao II by Don DeLillo (1991) 241 pp (Added 22 Jan)
16. A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham (1990) 343 pp (Added 22 Jan)
17. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe (1958) 189 pp (Added 22 Jan)
18. Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernieres (1991) 280 pp (Added 22 Jan)
19. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare (2000) 182 pp (Added 22 Jan)
20. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (1972) 172 pp (Added 22 Jan)
21. Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts (2014) (Added 29 Jan)
22. March by Geraldine Brooks (Added 29 Jan)
23. The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen (1935) (added 29 Jan)
24. Mary Barton by Mary Gaskell (1848) (added 29 Jan)
25. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990) (added 29 Jan)

26. White Crocodile by KT Medina (2014) 374 pp (added 8 Feb)
27. A Brief Stop on the Road From Auschwitz by Goran Rosenberg (2012) 331 pp (added 13 Feb)
28. Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser (1996) 274 pp (added 13 Feb)
29. The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (1967) 199 pp (added 20 Feb)
30. The End : Germany 1944-45 by Ian Kershaw (2011) 400 pp (added 20 Feb)
31. In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman (2014) 555 pp (added 20 Feb)
32. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929) 293 pp (added 20 Feb)
33. Peacemakers : Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (2001) 500 pp (added 20 Feb)
34. My Life as a Foreign Country by Brian Turner (2014) 224 pp (added 20 Feb)
35. Astragal by Albertine Sarrazin (1965) 190 pp (added 20 Feb)
36. If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes (1945) 259 pp (added 20 Feb)
37. The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt (1929) 304 pp (added 20 Feb)
38. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2012) 331 pp (added 20 Feb)
39. Six Days : How the 1967 War Shaped the Middle East by Jeremy Bowen (2003) 373 pp (added 22 Feb)
40. I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane (1947) 164 pp (added 22 Feb)
41. The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery (2015) 258 pp (added 22 Feb)
42. Ostland by David Thomas (2013) 430 pp (added 22 Feb)
43. Trigger Mortis by Anthony Horowitz (2015) 310 pp (added 26 Feb)
44. The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon (2016) 321 pp (added 26 Feb)
45. Assalamualaikum, May Peace Be Upon You: Observations on the Islamisation of Malaysia by Zaid Ibrahim (2015) 200 pp (added 27 Feb) COMPLETED
46. The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan (2015) 293 pp (added 27 Feb)
47. The Children Who Stayed Behind by Bruce Carter (1958) 216 pp (added 27 Feb)
48. Armada by Ernest Cline (2015) 349 pp (added 28 Feb)
49. The Walk and Other Stories by Robert Walser (1957) 197 pp (added 28 Feb)
50. Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (1977) 98 pp (added 28 Feb)
51. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (2016) 191 pp (added 28 Feb)
52. The Civil War : A History by Harry Hansen (1961) 655 pp (added 28 Feb)
53. The Invisible Guardian by Dolores Redondo (2013) 420 pp (added 28 Feb)
54. Lindbergh by A. Scott Berg (1998) 562 pp (added 28 Feb)
55. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Edward Shepherd Creasy (1851) 380 pp (added 28 Feb)
56. Hitler's Spy by James Hayward (2012) 278 pp (added 28 Feb)

57. A Cautious Approach by Stanley Middleton (2010) 220 pp (added 2 March)
58. Incandescence by Craig Nova (1979) 297 pp (added 2 March)
59. Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid (2014) 343 pp (added 2 March)
60. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977) 337 pp (added 2 March)
61. Love in Winter by Storm Jameson (1935) 407 pp (added 2 March)
62. How I Became a Holy Mother by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1976) 363 pp (added 2 March)
63. On Horseback and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant (1877) 130 pp (added 2 March)
64. Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski (2007) 349 pp (added 2 March)
65. Anything but the Law by Tommy Thomas (2016) 334 pp (added 4 March)
66. The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker (2011) 841 pp (added 4 March)
67. Why the West Rules by Ian Morris (2010) 645 pp (added 4 March)
68. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (1937) 330 pp (added 4 March)
69. Make Me by Lee Child (2015) 544 pp (added 4 March) COMPLETED
70. The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall (2015) 432 pp (added 4 March)
71. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936) 984 pp (added 4 March)
72. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (1986) 664 pp (added 7 March) COMPLETED
73. From Restoration to Reform by Jonathan Clarke (2014) 299 pp (added 7 March)
74. Josephine : Desire, Ambitions, Napoleon by Kate Williams (2013) 303 pp (added 7 March)
75. Britain's Royal Families : The Complete Genealogy by Alison Weir (2008) 331 pp (added 7 March)
76. A Brief History of Indonesia by Tim Hannigan (2015) 277 pp (added 12 March)
77. Max Havelaar by Multatuli (1860) 320 pp (added 12 March)
78. Jernigan by David Gates (1991) 339 pp (added 12 March)
79. Private Life by Jane Smiley (2010) 480 pp (added 12 March)
80. Betrayal : The Crisis in the Catholic Church by Matt Carroll (and others) (2002) 265 pp (added 12 March)
81. The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015) 310 pp (added 12 March) COMPLETED
82. When I was Old by Georges Simenon (1970) 452 pp (added 15 March)
83. The Full Catastrophe : Inside the Greek Crisis by James Angelos (2015) 292 pp (added 15 March)
84. No Highway by Nevil Shute (1948) 325 pp (added 19 March)
85. The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch (1964) 171 pp (added 19 March)
86. Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki (1961) 177 pp (added 19 March)
87. Most Secret by Nevil Shute (1945) 346 pp (added 19 March)
88. Kathleen and Frank by Christopher Isherwood (1971) 510 pp (added 19 March)
89. The Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin (1980) 101 pp (added 19 March)
90. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948) 330 pp (added 19 March)
91. Sarah Thornhill by Kate Grenville (2011) 304 pp (added 19 March)
92. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980) 688 pp (added 27 March)
93. Home : A Time Traveller's Tales from Britain's Pre-History by Francis Pryor (2014) 290 pp (added 27 March)
94. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962) 576 pp (added 27 March)
95. Ultimate Questions by Bryan Magee (2016) 127 pp (added 31 March)
96. The Four Books by Yan Lianke (2015) 338 pp (added 31 March)
97. Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg (2015) 278 pp (added 31 March)
98. A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell (2015) 371 pp (added 31 March)
99. The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855) 142 pp (added 31 March) COMPLETED
100. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) 168 pp (added 31 March)

Books bought second quarter

101 The Carpathians by Janet Frame (1988) 196 pp (Added 2 April)
102 Georgy Girl by Margaret Forster (1965) 171 pp (Added 2 April)
103 Great Apes by Will Self (1997) 404 pp (Added 2 April)
104 The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (Added 14 April)
105 My Son, My Son by Howard Spring (Added 14 April)
106 A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin (Added 14 April)
107 Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins (Added 14 April)
108 The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (Added 15 April)
109 Common Ground by Andrew Cowan (Added 15 April)
110 The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard (Added 18 April)
111 AWOPBOPALOOBOPALOPBAMBOOM by Nik Cohn (Added 18 April) COMPLETED
112 Montalbano's First Case by Andrea Camilleri (Added 18 April)
113 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad (Added 18 April)
114 I am Radar by Reif Larsen (2015) (Added 18 April)
115Ruby by Cynthia Bond (2015) (Added 18 April) COMPLETED
116 The Faithful Couple by A.D. Miller (Added 18 April)
117 A Strangeness in my Mind by Orhan Pamuk (Added 18 April)
118 The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens (Added 18 April)
119 How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup by JL Carr (Added 18 April)
120 The Outsider by Colin Wilson (Added 20 April)
121 Puckoon by Spike Milligan (Added 20 April)
122 Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell (Added 20 April) COMPLETED
123 Arcadia by Iain Pears (Added 22 April)
124 The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney (Added 22 April)
125 The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Added 24 April)
126 A Whole Life : A Novel by Robert Seethaler (Added 24 April)
127 The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild (Added 24 April)
128 The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie (Added 24 April)
129 The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Added 24 April)
130 The Bird Artist by Howard Norman (Added 27 April) COMPLETED
131 The Edge of the World : How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are by Michael Pye (Added 27 April)
132 A Heart so White by Javier Marias (Added 14 April)

133 Silas Marner by George Eliot (added 3 May)
134 The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (added 13 May)
135 Girl at War by Sara Novic (added 13 May)
136 Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh (added 13 May)
137 I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers (added 13 May)
138 The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir (added 20 May)
139 Unknown Soldiers by Vaino Linna (added 20 May)
140 Stop Time by Frank Conroy (added 20 May)
141 What Is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman (added 25 May)
142 Black Dogs by Ian McEwan (added 25 May)
143 S. : A Novel about the Balkans by Slavenka Drakulic (added 25 May)
144 The Angry Tide by Winston Graham (added 25 May)
145 The Master by Colm Toibin (added 25 May)
146 Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (added 25 May)
147 The Secret History of Las Vegas by Chris Abani (added 25 May)
148 Love and Obstacles by Aleksandr Hemon (June 16)
149 The Book of Memory by Pettina Gappah (June 16)
150 The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu (June 16)
151 The Four Swans by Winston Graham (June 16)
152 Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert (June 16)
153 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (June 16)
154 SPQR : A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard (June 16)
155 The Sympathizer by Viet Tanh Nguyen (June 16)
156 Black Earth : The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder (June 16)
157 The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry edited by Ruth Dove (June 16)
158 The Hanging Girl by Jussi Adler-Olsen (June 16)
159 The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (June 16)
160 Laurus by Eugene Vodolazin (June 16)

Books Added Third Quarter
July
161. The European Union : A Citizen's Guide by Chris Bickerton COMPLETED
162. Dust by Elizabeth Bear
163. King John : Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta by Marc Morris
164. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
165. Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
166. Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young
167. The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
168. One Man Against the World : The Tragedy of Richard Nixon by Tim Weiner
169. The House of Ulloa by Emilio Pardo Bazan
170. Sweet Caress by William Boyd
171. Vermilion Sands by J.G. Ballard
172. The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
173. The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
174. The Orphan Train by Christina Bake Kline
175. The Aerodrome by Rex Warner
176. Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich by Barry Turner COMPLETED
177. The Cossacks by Leo Tolstoy
178. Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy
179. Bad History : How We Got the Past Wrong by Emma Marriott COMPLETED
180. One Bloody Thing After Another by Jacob F. Field
181. The Ends of the Earth : The Wide World by Robert Goddard
182. Morning Sea by Margaret Mazzantini
183. London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins
184. Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby
185. Eileen : A Novel by Otessa Moshfegh
186. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
187. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
188. All That Man Is by David Szalay

Next one is yours

Happy new thread!

>15 BBGirl55: Thank you Bryony. Nice to see you out and about at this late hour!

Happy New Thread, Paul. Love the Mom Topper. That is perfect.

>17 msf59: Thanks Mark. That photo was taken in 2011 and she has had her problems since then, but she does seem to be a little on the mend and I am looking forward to seeing her this coming month.

>1 PaulCranswick: My mother was also born in August. I miss her so much.

Hi!

>19 thornton37814: I miss mine too Lori but obviously in a profoundly different way. I realise that I don't appreciate her any way near enough.

>20 amanda4242: Hi right back Amanda. xx

Lovely picture of Mom....and who is that adorable little fella with her?

Hi Paul. A Mother's Month is a deserved honor.

Recalling your admiration for poet Ted Hughes... I just read The Girl on the Train and I'm certain Mr. Hughes popped up in the mind of one of the female characters. She was sparring (verbally) with the new wife of her ex-husband. And she wanted to remind this woman that after 7 years of marriage to Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath stuck her head in the gas oven and killed herself. Then her successor, Assia Wevill, after living with Hughes 7 years, killed herself in the same manner as Plath.

But I haven't found the passage.

That's my recall of Hughes in a nutshell.

Cute thread topper!

Along for the ride!

Happy new thread!

Happy New Thread, Paul!

Happy new thread, Paul!

Happy new one, Paul.

>22 laytonwoman3rd: Thank you Linda. That is my nephew, Christian, who is my sister's son. He is a cute little fellow.

>23 weird_O: Thanks Bill. Well for sure Hughes was a much better poet than he was a husband. His family were a tragic bunch indeed.

>24 banjo123: I am glad you liked it Rhonda. I don't have nearly enough in the way of photos of my mum.

>25 Berly: Yikes I am dizzy just looking at that one, Kimmers. xx

>26 foggidawn: Thank you Foggy.

>27 ronincats: Thanks a lot Roni. I am a little disappointed you didn't arrive with some of those very delicious tomatoes in hand. Just in the mood for a good salad.

>28 Familyhistorian: Meg, I am pleased to see that your thread is about to cross the 1,000 post barrier too - the fourth Canadian thread to do so in 2016.

I will get the posting league up this evening (my time).

>29 Ameise1: Thank you Barbara. xx

Happy new thread, Paul. Are you coming to Europe soon?

August is an excellent month to have a birthday, I feel, and I wish a very happy one to your mom. And a Happy New Thread to you!

Hi Paul! Excellent photo, and Happy August Birthday to your Mum. My daughter's birthday is in 2 days - as is my MiL's and one of husband's best friends.

>33 DianaNL: Probably in the third week of August, Diana, all being well.

>34 scaifea: Thanks Amber. Her birthday is actually 14 August 1945 which is celebrated in the UK as VJ Day. Victory over Japan in the last war and which explains why my Grandpa named her Vivienne Joy

>35 karenmarie: Happy birthday to all of them too Karen. Isn't it amazing how these things seem to clump together. I mean my twin and I even share the same birthday!

Congrats on the new thread, Paul. I took note of your recommendation of The Hawk in the Rain, and I'll track it down.

>37 jnwelch: Still bleak but not as bleak as some of his other stuff, Joe.

Paul, there are so many definite reasons why people care deeply about you here in the 75 challenge group. Shining a bright light on your mother in the month of her birthday is but one reason you are a very special person!

Two messages into your thread, and I am captivated. I added The Sellout to the tbr pile.

Have a bright, shiny day!

Titled Books Give You Wings:

>39 Whisper1: Pot. Kettle. Black. My dear Linda. xx

Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to travel? About three volumes and a couple of dozen chapters from Kuala Lumpur to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!

Happy new thread, Paul. What a lovely photo of your mom. My little Scout's birthday is in August, too.

>41 BLBera: It looks like a plentiful month for all of us Beth. I will, God willing, be getting our tickets for the UK in the next few days. I am trying to get a visa for dear old Erni to finally make the trip to my homeland too - she so much wants to go there and I think after fourteen years as a honorary member of the family she more than deserves it.

I had a meeting this morning next to the mall with the only discount bookstore in it in Kuala Lumpur. Well the flesh is weak of course and I couldn't just walk past it could I? The fact that is occupies a corner of the top floor of the mall and one flight of the escalator was broken didn't stop me planning a route to the car that took me adjacent to the store's doors.

189. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (2013) 384 pp
Booker Longlisted in 2013 - "Late Shakespeare meets modern family" according to The Times whatever that means
190. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003) 433 pp
Orange and Booker shortlisted. I have an up and down relationship with Atwood but this was cheap!
191. In the Dark by Mai Jia (2003) 396 pp
Tash Aw considers his style "a mixture of Kafka and Agatha Christie"
192. The South by Colm Toibin (1990) 254 pp
"Prose of a heartbreaking quality" according to Hilary Mantel
193. Extraordinary People a.k.a Dry Bones by Peter May (2006) 420 pp
First in the Enzo series.
194. Brodeck's Report by Philippe Claudel (2007) 277 pp
Le Monde thought this "a magnificent book"
195. A Proper Marriage by Doris Lessing (1954) 447 pp
"I don't think there has been a writer to touch her since Jane Austen" thought John Wain probably when full of whisky.

Review of July 2016

Books Read : 12
Year to date : 70

Genre : Literary Fiction : 6 (Year to date 36)
Thrillers/Sci Fi : 2 (Year to date 5)
Poetry : 0 (Year to date 13)
Plays : 0
Non-Fiction : 4 (Year to date 16)

Author Nationality : UK : 8 (Year to date 35)
Canada : 1 (Year to date 9)
USA : 2 (Year to date 19)
France : (Year to date 1)
Jamaica : (Year to date 1)
Australia : 0 (Year to date 1)
Malaysia : 0 (Year to date 1)
New Zealand: 0 (Year to date 1)
Ireland : (Year to date 1)
Sweden : 1 (Year to date 1)

Author Gender : Male : 10 (Year to date 50)
Female : 2 (Year to date 20)

Booker Winners : 1 (Year to date 2) // 22/50 done

Pulitzer Fiction/Novel Winners : 0 (Year to date 2) // 13/88 winners

Nobel Winners : 0 // 59/112 winners

1001 Books First Edition : 1 // 264/1001

British Author Challenge : 2 (Bernice Rubens & H.G. Wells ) (Year to date 13/14)

American Author Challenge : 1 John Steinbeck (Year to date 7/7)

Canadian Author Challenge : 1 Joseph Boyden (Year to date 7/14)

ANZAC Challenge : 0 (Year to date 2)

Doorstopper Challenge : 0 (Year to date 3)

Non-Fiction Challenge : 1 : The Battle for Scotland (Year to date 7/7)

Pages Read : 2,772 ( Year to date 18,093)
Average Pages per day : 89.42 (Year to date 84.94)
Average Pages per book : 231.00 (Year to date 258.47)

Books Added : 28 (Year to date 188)

Book of the Month : The Orenda by Joseph Boyden

Paul, I was jealous last night (my time) when I saw you were the only one with steps posted for August (since it wasn't August in most other time zones yet), but I see that your lead didn't last through the first day. ;-)

Stopping by early to say hey from across the Pacific.

Happy new thread mate, the thread topper photo is lovely.

>45 ronincats: To be a frontrunner for even a couple of hours is great Roni! I was exhausted yesterday due to working on a proposal most of the day so I didn't get out for a long walk in the evening as I had planned.

>46 mahsdad: The echo sounders are sounding, Jeff, howdy!

>47 johnsimpson: Thanks John.

Happy New thread Paul! I've put a hold on The Sellout at my library, as Work Like Any Other. I'm getting more cautious about purchasing books I may not enjoy. Happy Birthday to your mum!

What a lovely photo, as your header! Happy birthday to mum!

Day 12 of 59

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Muriel Rukeyser

It is about time I caught up a little here!

That great poet of third person objectivity, Elizabeth Bishop was born in that hotbed for American poetry, Worcester, Massachusetts. Extremely gifted Bishop won the Neustadt International Prize in the 1970s and wrote solidly and superbly throughout her life.

Robert Hayden was much maligned and unfairly so as an Uncle Tom during the height of his career due to his considering himself an American poet foremost and a black poet secondly. He was the first African-American Poet Laureate who steered away from the polemic but delivered the poetic.

Muriel Rukeyser was as much a progressive activist as she was a poet but she was effective as both. The poems here are some of her less controversial but her voice was inimical. Adrienne Rich considered her a great influence.

This is Robert Hayden's Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

>49 vancouverdeb: Smart move, Deb. I wish I had a library such that I could employ such sound tactics.
Mum's birthday is a couple of weeks away but I am trying to see whether or not we can surprise her.

>50 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley. Hani is very good at capturing such moments with that nifty handphone of hers!

I had better get my reviews up to date also:

67.

Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham

Date of Publication : 1950
Pages : 344
Series Reading

The third instalment of this wonderful series set in Cornwall in what could roughly be described as the Napoleonic era sees our hero on trial for his life at the Assizes for his part in the wrecking of two ships off the coast next to his land.

Demelza works hard to secure him his freedom and to reconcile family differences.

Excellent addition to the series and I was non-plussed to the last chapter as to the reason for the title.

8/10

Happy new thread, Paul!

68.

The European Union : A Citizen's Guide by Chris Bickerton

Date of Publication : 2016
Pages : 230
Suz's Non-Ficiton Challenge

To state that this book is timely is really stating the bloody obvious.

Bickerton's extremely qualified acceptance on the continuing need for the EU pretty much sums up why the Brits voted to leave. It is a sort of grudging treatise that points out most, if not all the pitfalls and weaknesses of Europe but still surmises that withdrawal would be disadvantageous. He articulated in 230 well written but not overly enthusiastic pages why I was a reluctant Remainer. Mine was a Project Fear vote. The EU is patently not working but the alternative is unclear and it's message unsound.

The level of antipathy across Europe to the EU as it has evolved from a "Common Market" to something unwisely and improperly defined surprised me somewhat - Holland, Italy, Denmark and France in particular having extremely vocal minorities opposed to the direction Europe has been heading towards. Bickerton is a Remainer but states:

"More than anything else, the EU involves the close cooperation of many thousands of national officials and politicians in a shared project of law making at the European level." pp40
Hardly democratic and rightly pointed out by many as something we hadn't signed up for.

He also points out the French efforts under De Gaulle to keep Britain out and the subsequent poor deal obtained by the Eurocentric Ted Heath, especially on the Common Agricultural Policy, which disadvantaged Britain and caused bad feeling.

Bickerton accepts the breakdown of national sovereignty but believes that it is the breakdown in trust for national governments that makes the EU relevant and needful.

Europe today is a continent of member states. While national political elites increasingly rely on EU membership as a basis for their own authority, citizens have lost faith in their own governments........In a Europe of member states, governments rely on each other for their authority while citizens search for legitimacy outside politics altogether." pp229 (hardly a positive endorsement of the European project).

I cannot say that I accept this thesis. My own view is that Europe has overstretched itself and committed its peoples to a closer integration such peoples have never actively sought. As a trading group of friends it was a great idea; as a United States of Europe it is doomed as there is insufficient homogeneity to sustain it. Free movement of peoples and the open trading are reasons to justify the EEC which had, I believe popular support. It is the EU and its enlargement that peoples across Europe are skeptical of. I think that it was this failure to sketch a positive vision for the future of Europe which lead to the UK referendum result and allowed the discontented and the malcontents to combine against. It is also ultimately why this book fails in its purpose.

7/10

>54 kidzdoc: Thanks mate.

69.

An Event in Autumn by Henning Mankell

Date of Publication : 2013
Pages : 169
Scandi

I started my love of Scandi by being enraptured by Inspector Wallander - inspired miserablist and flawed individual in Faceless Killers. I have ended my journey with Wallander in this his last published outing.

In truth a fairly slight novella about a body uncovered in a house the Inspector was otherwise intending to buy but nevertheless all the ingredients of realism and self-examination that made the series so engaging are there.

I will miss Inspector Wallander. I will miss Henning Mankell.

7/10

70.

Bad History : How We Got the Past Wrong by Emma Marriott

Date of Publication : 2011
Pages : 173

This was good fun.
Abe Lincoln fought the Civil War to abolish slavery? No it was to preserve the Union.
Mussolini made the trains run on time? Er, no they actually got no better.
St, Patrick was Irish? No, he was English.

Despite being fun a lit of this amounted to either splitting hairs or the exercise of opinion and it was luckily shy of 200 pages otherwise I might have thrown it through an open window.

Hi Paul! Hope you and your lovely family are all doing well. It's nice to see someone who buys books like I do - often, and never just one at a time. :)

Happy new thread Paul have a great week.

>59 LauraBrook: Lovely to see you back in the fold so to speak Laura. It is a very rare event indeed that I buy a single book at a bookstore visit.

>60 GeezLouise: Thanks Rae. I hope it will be a decent week.

>51 PaulCranswick: That is such a classic. I love that poem.

Go Poldark! So far I've made it through the first five.

>62 jnwelch: It is a very simple and affecting poem isn't it Joe?
I will get through number four this month on the Poldark series, I think.

>51 PaulCranswick: This is probably a dumb question, but was he the first re austere and lonely offices, or is it a quote from somewhere else? I'm sure I've come across it (but may well be someone quoting him! ). I do love Bishop. Can't recommend Colum Toibin's recent (little) book on her and her work highly enough.

I've not had a great start on my Booker reading. As per Nathalie's review, Hystopia doesn't work for me either. Pointless tricksiness as far as I was concerned.

Nice book haul, Paul. I think I may reach 75 before you do. I am loving your Penguin poetry anthology comments.

>64 charl08: No, Charlotte, I am pretty sure that is Hayden's original voice. Superb line though isn't it?
Bishop was a wonderful poet with such a sure and steady touch.
I reckon Hystopia will be the one that confounds all of us this year.

>65 BLBera: I am pretty sure you'll get there first - I am Scott to your Amundsen - I'll be hot on your heels but fail gloriously!

71.

March by Geraldine Brooks

Date of Publication : 2005
Pages : 273
Pulitzer Challenge / ANZAC Challenge

This Pulitzer winning novel re-enters the world of Alcott's Little Women and focuses on what befell the father and without any sugar coating afforded to the original.

Mr. March of our story has left his freshly impoverished family and gone off to war to minister to the troops and to act out his abolitionist principles as preacher and activist. He manages to alienate the forces he was intended to succour and irritate the reader immensely.

Beautifully crafted Ms. Brooks paints her "hero" extremely unsympathetically such that his eventual deliverance is as unexpected as it is effective. A love story. A story of war. A story of marriage, fidelity, relationships and principle. A story of the meaning of bravery. A must read story.

8/10

Posting league Update

The top 150 threads in terms of number of posts
1 crazymamie 5163
2 msf59 5026
3 scaifea 4887
4 PaulCranswick 4531
5 jnwelch 4215
6 Charl08 3168
7 kidzdoc 2792
8 KatieKrug 2725
9 EBT1002 2261
10 Ameise1 1739
11 Berly 1719
12 vancouverdeb 1579
13 cbl_tn 1484
14 Carmenere 1451
15 SusanJ67 1378
16 lkernagh 1302
17 Whisper1 1267
18 ireadthereforeiam 1260
19 BBLBera 1255
20 ronincats 1191
21 DianaNL 1168
22 lit_chick 1073
23 FamilyHistorian 1003
24 LizzieD 941
25 johnsimpson 940
26 thornton37814 929
27 Chatterbox 914
28 mstrust 906
29 smiler69 890
30 Ape 801
31 Deern 801
32 Sibyx 758
33 Donna 754
34 lyzard 752
35 drneutron 719
36 bell7 718
37 MichiganTrumpet 668
38 rosalita 666
39 The_Hibernator 657
40 nittnut 636
41 Weird_O 634
42 karenmarie 631
43 souloftherose 605
44 laytonwoman3rd 595
45 Ursula 594
46 SandDune 585
47 Oberon 575
48 coppers 562
49 laurelkeet 558
50 tymfos 551
51 avatiakh 547
52 FAMeulstee 544
53 Streamsong 542
54 Dianekeenoy 539
55 mahsdad 522
56 foggidawn 508
57 maggie1944 496
58 MickyFine 487
59 ctpress 485
60 AMQS 479
61 rebarelishesreading 467
62 PaulStalder 452
63 luvamystery65 451
64 TheBookDiva 444
65 qebo 432
66 Banjo 413
67 Swynn 398
68 norabelle414 394
69 lindapanzo 385
70 harrygbutler 348
71 SqueakyChu 338
72 storeetllr 338
73 inge87 318
74 labwriter 315
75 cameling 313
76 _zoe_ 308
77 lycomayflower 298
78 ffortsa 290
79 BBGirl55 289
80 Humouress 282
81 mdoris 281
82 eclecticdodo 278
83 Porch_Reader 260
84 dk_phoenix 259
85 Morphy 241
86 Fourpawz2 235
87 rosylibrarian 235
88 fuzzi 223
89 brodiew2 215
90 evilmoose 214
91 Kassilem 203
92 RichardDerus 203
93 SuziQOregon 201
94 archerygirl 188
95 Luxx 183
96 seasonoflove 183
97 rretzler 181
98 connie53 178
99 kmartin802 177
100 Cariola 171
101 dragonaria 167
102 Rbeffa 165
103 Aunt Clio 162
104 aktakukac 156
105 Bekkajo 150
106 cyderry 148
107 lovelyluck 144
108 klobrien2 141
109 arubabookwoman 140
110 beeg 137
111 Xymon81 137
112 tiffin 135
113 elliepotten 131
114 tututhefirst 129
115 jessibud2 128
116 kac522 127
117 roundballnz 127
118 amanda4242 125
119 dajashby 124
120 susanna.fraser 124
121 leahbird 122
122 Cait86 121
123 LauraBrook 115
124 mckait 114
125 hredwards 113
126 catarina1 110
127 witchyrichy 107
128 jillbone 105
129 CassieBash 102
130 kgodey 102
131 torontoc 100
132 jennyifer24 98
133 cushlareads 97
134 Geezlouise 97
135 okrysmastree 97
136 countrylife 95
137 Deedledee 93
138 LoisB 93
139 SirFurboy 93
140 yoyogod 93
141 scvlad 90
142 someguyinvirginia 89
143 CDVicarage 87
144 ccookie 86
145 walklover 83
146 cal8767 82
147 fairywings 80
148 JustJoey4 80
149 LibraryLover23 80
150 bluesalamanders 78

>67 PaulCranswick: So glad you loved March. It was my first Brooks and firmly put her on my radar. Funny, I have still not read Little Women. Bad Mark!

Thanks for sharing the posting stats. A cozy, little group there, at the top. Go Mamie! Go Mamie!

>69 msf59: I did enjoy it very much Mark. Got the tone and balance pitch perfect, I think.

The top 8 or 9 or so doesn't seem to have changed much over the last couple of years but has just juggled around order wise a little.

Day 13 of 59

The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman & Randall Jarrell

Three fairly big hitters today!

Schwartz hailed from Brooklyn and wrote poetry of a deeply meditative nature. His "The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me" is a perfect example of his style and is included here.

John Berryman is a favourite of our dear pal Joe whose infectious enthusiasm has worked upon me like a good virus. His Dream Songs are among the most affecting and effective of post-war American poetry and cloak a style that is difficult to define with rhythm and irrhythm at play in equal part. Unanointed leader of the Confessional School and apparently a wonderful teacher of poetry (Philip Levine was very much in thrall), Berryman was also an alcoholic and manic deppressive. He killed himself by throwing himself off the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. Even that was beset by tragi-comedy as he missed the water apparently and smothered in the thick mud.

Randall Jarrell was eulogised by Robert Lowell as the "most heartbreaking" poet of his day. Another deppressive and possible suicide, Jarrell was hit by a car walking on the interstate. Whilst ruled an accident many of his friends believed otherwise. He was famous as a poetry critic but his poetry on war and childhood is uniformly excellent. He won the National Book Award in 1960 for The Woman at the Washington Zoo.

This is Berryman's Henry's Understanding:

He was reading late, at Richard's, down in Maine,
aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,
my good wife long in bed.
All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,
putting the marker in the book, & sleep,
& wake to a hot breakfast.

Off the coast was an island, P'tit Manaan,
the bluff from Richard's lawn was almost sheer.
A chill at four o'clock.
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,

& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of warm pajamas,
I'd take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island.

Ooh, stats. Thanks for those, Paul.

Oh those stats! A lot of work. I think I'll be skipping Hystopia based on Charlotte's review.

>72 Familyhistorian: Welcome Meg. As you can see you have passed 1000 posts already and steadily accumulating posts every day.

>73 vancouverdeb: It is fun for me to do to be honest Deb and, once set up, it is not too much trouble to keep up with it.
As a completist nut I will read Hystopia but I am expecting to not expect much!

>74 PaulCranswick: That low expectation is probably for the best. Although investments can go down as well as up. Or something.

>75 charl08: Unfortunately I don't often have too much cause to dissent from your opinion on a particular book and since you hated the bloody thing........

Happy new thread, Paul! Gotta love those stats! Thanks for taking the time to track the numbers. You are the olive in a martini, the cherry on a sundae! Just that little something extra that makes the 75ers special.

>77 Carmenere: Lynda, I am blushing just like that cherry and it's only Wednesday and not even sundae. xx

>67 PaulCranswick: Good day, Paul! I have not liked any of Geraldine Brooks' books except Year of Wonders. I read but unhappily for People of the Book compared it to The Source by James Michener and found it lacking. I started March but have never read Little Women and didn't have the background to want to appreciate it.

So, ATD on this one, I'm afraid.

>68 PaulCranswick: I love reading the stats for everybody! And, being #42 is good. 4 x 2 = 8. 631 messages is good too. (6+3) - 1 = 8.

>71 PaulCranswick: Powerful poem, thanks for sharing it with us, Paul.

Wishing you a good rest-of-the-week.

>80 PaulCranswick: It does seem to be one of those books that divides opinion. I am not sure that I would have put it forward for the Pulitzer but I did think that some of the sections were extremely engaging.
You had a pretty good month in posts in July, Karen, that's for sure.

Berryman is a poet that is worth the trouble to try to understand. His work has inspired me as much as any american poetry I have read in the last five years.

From >68 PaulCranswick: above

Of the 150 threads

124 belong to ladies
26 to the male of the species

In terms of residency

105 from the USA
15 from Canada
11 from the UK
5 from NZ
3 from Australia
3 from Holland
2 from Switzerland
2 from Italy
1 from Malaysia
1 from Singapore
1 from Belgium
1 from Denmark

Top Tens

USA Residents

1 Mamie
2 Mark
3 Amber
4 Joe
5 Darryl
6 Katie
7 Ellen
8 Kim
9 Carrie
10 Lynda

Canada Residents

1 Deb
2 Lori
3 Nancy
4 Meg
5 Ilana
6 Micky
7 Mary
8 Faith
9 Megan
10 Tui

UK Residents (incl Channel Islands)

1 Charlotte
2 Susan
3 John
4 Heather
5 Rhian
6 Bryony
7 Jo
8 Bekka
9 Ellie
10 Sir Furboy

European Residents

1 Barbara
2 Diana
3 Nathalie
4 Ursula
5 Anita
6 Carsten
7 Paul
8 Connie
9 Monica

Asia Pacific Residents

1 Paul
2 Megan
3 Liz
4 Jenn
5 Kerry
6 Nina
7 Alex
8 Derrick
9 Cushla
10 Adrienne

Excellent review of March, Paul. I liked and admired the book, though I've not read Little Women. I haven't be able to balance reviewing and reading this year.

I have gotten August off to a flyer in terms of books acquired. Knowing that Kino would have had a few additions this week with the turn of a new month I had Azim stop off there. Since this coincided with Hani visiting a friend and not being on book patrol, I took advantage:

196. Don't Trust, Don't Fear, Don't Beg by Ben Stewart (2015) 357 pp
The story of the "Arctic 30" who spent 100 days as a "guest" of Mr. Putin
197. Questions About Angels by Billy Collins (1991) 91 pp
Collins' fourth collection turning "an apparently simple phrase into a numinous moment"
198. The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds (1983) 80 pp
This won the 1984 National Book Critics' Circle Award and was her sophomore anthology
199. Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (2014) 236 pp
Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 - "goes to the heart of what it means to be a human being"
200. The Caliphate by Hugh Kennedy (2016) 376 pp
Has the makings of a great series these "Pelican Introductions"
201. Wanderlust : A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit (2001) 291 pp
Bloody fitbit is even impacting my book buying! "A lovable book that makes you look anew at something so familiar"
202. Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy (2016) 519 pp
Sixth purchase for the Booker Longlist in expensive hard back version. She is currently lecturing at my alma mater so I am rooting for her!

>83 weird_O: Thanks Bill. Your travails are possibly because your reviews are as close to works of art produced amongst our little troupe whilst mine are throwaway efforts bashed straight onto the computer with no idea what I'm going to say when I start hitting the keys.

I enjoyed Mend the Living, which was published as The Heart: A Novel in the US.

>86 kidzdoc: The story has an interesting premise for sure, Darryl.

Still sitting pretty in the middle of the uk top ten I will take that!

Hi Paul, thanks for the posting stats mate. Not a good day with the bat for England but we will have to see how Pakistan perform with the bat first to see if it is a good enough total. Ballance grafted well for his 70 but too many of the wickets were given away. Our beloved cricket team moved into the Royal London cup quarter finals so the rest of the season has us battling on all fronts.

Hi, Paul! I'm late to your latest thread, but love that you've dedicated it to your mother -- lovely photo!

Good luck with reading all the Booker Longlist books.

>68 PaulCranswick: Wow, what stats! I'm amazed that, as absent as I've been, I squeaked into the "top 50" for now.

I will miss Inspector Wallander. I will miss Henning Mankell.

Amen!

>88 BBGirl55: Bryony you have more than doubled your number of posts compared to last year when you had 130 in total.

>89 johnsimpson: A bit frustrating because I am not sure that this is a difficult track. Vince is a frustrating fellow isn't he? All the skills in the world but he contrives to throw away his wicket when seemingly set fair.

>90 tymfos: Thank you Terri. Scandi. Mankell. Wallender. Original. Best.

>43 PaulCranswick: What a book haul!

>92 Whisper1: And, gratifyingly, a cheap one too, Linda!

Day 14 of 59
The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Weldon Kees, Dudley Randall, William Stafford

I have to admit to having only heard of Stafford from these three and then not being especially familiar with his work either.

Kees was Nebraskan born and another poet who almost certainly died of his own hand. His car was found deserted next to the Golden Gate Bridge in July 1955. His failure to become famous during his lifetime and the feeling that his work was neglected probably contributed to his barbiturate habit. Ironically his poetry was collected by Donald Justice and published to some acclaim in 1960.

Proficient as Dudley Randall was as a poet he is today more known as the publisher of many leading voices in the Black American poetry scene - Brooks and Tolson amongst them.

William Stafford was a late bloomer. He was 46 when he published Traveling Through the Dark to acclaim and the National Book Award. His poetry was conversational, accessible and extremely prolific - his known work extends to more than 22,000 poems!

This is Traveling Through the Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Hi, Paul. I loved your review of March which was a book that I loved when I read it. A very happy birthday month to your Mother and congratulations on a couple of great book hauls already this month.

>7 PaulCranswick: I love that you have primary and secondary book targets, and a few more categories too I bet!

>84 PaulCranswick: I also love the thought of Hani on book patrol. Marching back and forth in front of your apartment, wagging finger cocked and ready!

>95 DeltaQueen50: Thank you dear Guru. xx I hope to be taking my birthday wishes to the old girl in person.

>96 LovingLit: You have the "advantage" of having met her already so you can vouch for the fearsome visage! I need to prioritise the reading plans Megan as I never finish what I intend to!

Went home for work sick and coughing like a trouper. I had one meeting with a potential Korean client and it was a tragicomedy as I couldn't say a sentence without erupting into coughing fits. I had an antibiotic jab and was put on a nebuliser for seemed an age. Still feel like death warmed-up but at least after soup and plenty of warm water I appear a little more human!

Hope you feel better soon Paul.

Really interesting group of books you've got there. I'd like to read more by Sharon Olds snd the introduction to the Caliphate sounds like a timely book.

>94 PaulCranswick: Oh, whoa, that's a powerful one. Thanks for sharing, Paul.

Hi Paul! I'm sorry to hear that you're sick again, glad that you got medications to help get over it. I hope that there is some opportunity for you to rest soon.

>99 charl08: I enjoyed her Satan Says and this follow up is reputed to be even better. The Caliphate is timely and is part of a great series called Pelican Introductions. I read the Euro book by Bickerton last month which was in the same series.



>100 scaifea: It was the title-poem from his American Book Award winner in the beginning of the 1960s. Very effective and very thought provoking. I would like to think that I would have tried a little harder to birth that doe but the reality is I would have been scared to death.

>101 karenmarie: My own fault entirely Karen as I neglected the Doctor last week despite never stopping coughing and it took revenge pretty vindictively today. Head bursting, hacking cough unceasing, bones aching like Billy-O and generally feeling on the cusp of 500 instead of 50! I will try and sleep a little more in a short while.

Ouch, Paul. Not fun. Glad to see that you went to the doctor. Try sleeping a bit elevated, with an extra pillow perhaps. That might ease the coughing, as well. Feel better soon!

Oh, I'm sorry you're still sick, Paul! Diffusing essential oils usually helps me to break up congestion and breathe easier. Here's hoping you start to feel like you're in your 400's, at the very least. Take it easy.

Sorry you're under the weather, Paul! Sleep is good but get thee to a doctor.

HI Paul. I hope you feel better soon.

Hi Paul hope you fell better soon.

Don't be sick, man. Please take care of your fine self.

Hi, Paul.

>94 PaulCranswick: I'm enjoying your posting of poems from the anthology that strike your fancy. This Stafford poem is another one I remember well - strong stuff.

Hi Paul. Dropping by quickly to wish you for your new thread.

Sorry to read you feel so bad, hope your health improves soon!

Sorry that you are feeling ruff. Please get better soon.

>104 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley. I took your advice and had some sleep with an extra pillow. Still not feeling too good this morning but I am not coughing quite as much or as painfully.

>105 LauraBrook: Hahaha nurse Laura, I could do with your ministrations here! Hani is far more concerned that she doesn't catch whatever it is I have! The diagnosis this morning is better as I feel a bare 300. xx

>106 Carmenere: I did finally go to the Doctor, Lynda. She was actually surprised to see me as I am normally only there in moral support for Hani and she has a season ticket for the place!

>107 Whisper1: Thank you, Linda dear. I could do with a little more of your fighting spirit I think.

>108 GeezLouise: Rae, thanks. I hope all at the Pecan Paradisio is well as I understand the Matriarch had been under the weather a little too?

>109 laytonwoman3rd: I will pridefully consider that an order, Linda. xx

>110 jnwelch: It is an effective short piece isn't it, Joe? Moral dilemmas are something that are a great source for poetic fodder.

>111 humouress: Thanks Nina. I did notice that you have finally put up your new thread and so I shall be along to cheer you along shortly.

>112 FAMeulstee: I do feel ever so slightly better than yesterday, Anita. The concerning thing is that I normally shake off bugs extremely quickly but have floundered a little this time.

>113 BBGirl55: Thanks Bryony. xx

Feel better soon, Paul.

Oh dear, Paul. Hope you wake up feeling better. I'm betting you're even feeling too lousy to read, and that's awful.
Meanwhile, I love the picture of your mom and nephew!
I agree with you whole-heartedly about Jeremy Poldark and March. My only quarrel with the latter was making "Marmee," a nickname from her childhood. It was pretty clear to me that that's what one of her girls - Meg or Jo - called her when she was a toddler, and the rest followed suit. Oh well. Apparently, not so clear to Brooks.
I am SO envious that you have the Kennedy. It is cheap for Kindle here on pre-order, coming out in October. I hate to invest even a little this far in advance since it may become available for less sometime in the interim.
Anyway, pamper yourself and get well.

Everyone besides my mom is doing well Paul.

>117 Ameise1: Thanks dear Barbara. I could do with some of that crisp clean Swiss air.

>118 LizzieD: So nice to see you Peggy. I think Brooks could have painted "Marmee" a little more sympathetically to be honest. She came across as a bit shrewish and I don't think that switching to her voice for a while later in the novel helped matters. Overall though it was a splendid read.
I had a wee gulp when I bought the Kennedy because it is more expensive in hardback here than I could have got in the UK but sometimes I am a creature of impulse.

You are right also in that I hardly read anything yesterday. A chapter of Beatty and the three poets for my Penguin anthology is all.

>119 GeezLouise: I will pop along and wish her well, Rae. xx

Paul, I hope your family is taking super-excellent care of you and that you are rapidly recuperating!

>121 ronincats: Well they are sort of I suppose. I asked Hani to make me toast just now and she look at me as if I was from Mars! She did make it though!

I am feeling your pain, Paul. I had a recent ER trip for allergic reaction and asthma. Recovering but wiped out. Let's both get better! Hugs.

>123 Berly: I am heartily in concurrence Kimmers. Sending you healing vibes from these tropical climes.

I hope the antibiotic does the trick and you feel better soon!

>125 cbl_tn: I am a pretty lousy patient Carrie so all the house will be hoping I am better soon. We are supposed to attend a wedding of family friends tomorrow as something like guests of honour so I do need to pep myself up. We are only guests of honour because Hani played matchmaker in bringing the happy couple together. Our neighbour's son and one of Hani's best friend's daughter.

I hope you feel better soon, Paul!

>127 connie53: Thank you Connie. xx

Day 15 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Ruth Stone, Margaret Walker & Gwendolyn Brooks

Three ladies today:

Ruth Stone, unlike some of the male writers I have featured recently, experienced suicide from the other side bringing up three children alone after the death of her husband by his own hand. Much of of her references both that event and her enduring love for her husband. She died at the ripe old age of 96.

Margaret Walker was an african american poet of some distinction as well as the writer of the novel Jubilee. In fact she sued Alex Haley for apparently borrowing from her novel in Roots - it was dismissed. Most famous for the award winning poem "For My People".

Gwendolyn Brooks is a writer familiar to me as I read and thoroughly enjoyed her selected poems a few years ago. Deceptively simple but extremely effective wordsmith.

This is Margaret Walker's For My People

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs
repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues
and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an
unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an
unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the
gone years and the now years and the maybe years,
washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending
hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching
dragging along never gaining never reaping never
knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama
backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor
and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking
and playhouse and concert and store and hair and
Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn
to know the reasons why and the answers to and the
people who and the places where and the days when, in
memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we
were black and poor and small and different and nobody
cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to
be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and
play and drink their wine and religion and success, to
marry their playmates and bear children and then die
of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox
Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New
Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy
people filling the cabarets and taverns and other
people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and
land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time
being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when
burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled
and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures
who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in
the dark of churches and schools and clubs
and societies, associations and councils and committees and
conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and
devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,
preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by
false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way
from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,
trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,
all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a
bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second
generation full of courage issue forth; let a people
loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of
healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing
in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs
be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now
rise and take control.

>120 PaulCranswick: Yep, the fresh Alps air is wellknown for its cure.

>130 Ameise1: One of these fine days I will be there Barbara. xx

Sorry to hear that you are not feeling well, Paul. I hope you will soon be feeling much better. Best wishes with managing the wedding. So much pressure when you are not feeling well.

>132 vancouverdeb: I am not impressed with sitting at the 'VIP' table as Hani and I are anything but except in the privacy of our own company. Stomach muscles are already grumbling I have coughed so much - I guess that it is a sign that those same muscles are not bothered by often enough.

My incapacitation is damaging my ambitions for 300,000 steps this month.

Sorry to hear about the health troubles, Paul. I hope you are on the tail-end of it, my friend. Fingers crossed.

I did start Atonement. I have wanted to read this one forever. Have you read it?

>134 msf59: I am less achy Mark but my cough mechanism is thoroughly fed up with the rest of me.
I haven't read Atonement and considered it this month but decided against it in favour of Black Dogs.

Opinion on McEwan, seems so divided. I remember RD detesting him. I really liked On Chesil Beach and Children Act. I might try another one of his, in the near future.

>136 msf59: I could make a big old list of all the writers RD detested Mark! I actually think he sometimes drops the baton but when he is on point I reckon he is pretty good.

Paul, sorry to hear about the sore cough muscles. I am dealing with insomnia now that I am on Prednisone. Oh well. I am finally feeling well enough that maybe, perhaps I can get some steps in again. I felt so awful the last few days that I took off the Fitbit in defeat and only managed to be literary by watching the Walt Longmire series on TV. Couldn't even handle reading. LOL.

But my uninterrupted free time in the middle of the night has allowed me to be responsible and get up the new Bowie Top 100 thread for August. I think you said you were in on this one. So here it is!! Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/228526

>136 msf59: - Diversity! I guess that's what makes the world go round. The 2 McEwan books you mention, Mark, are the only 2 of his that I've read and I was quite disappointed in both. Felt they started off ok but really did not like how they ended up at all. I do have Atonement on the shelf but am, truth be told, in no hurry to get to it any time soon. Oh well... ;-)

>138 Berly: I never sleep overly well Kimmers but I did in fact pass quite a few hours last night.
I have left the fit bit on not that I am making much use of it really. I hope the weekend (Sunday at least will see me back closer to serious walking health) - walking to a meeting at the delightful Lake Club here this afternoon I noticed my heartbeat was a scary 144 beats and I struggled to climb the few steps to the lobby and my meeting. Thankfully the client didn't keep me too long.

I am definitely up for Flaubert's Parrot this month.

>139 jessibud2: I actually quite liked On Chesil Beach Shelley but it was a frail little thing and not what I thought was suitable for a Booker shortlist.

Hi Paul! It is so hard to get over something serious when you can't just languish in bed reading and sleeping for days.

I hope you can find time to Do Nothing Except Take Care of Paul.

>142 karenmarie: SUNDAY Karen, SUNDAY is my big hope for the week. A nice breakfast at the french bakery and a day of indolence and indulgence.

I hope you'll feel better soon, Paul. Take care of yourself. xx

>144 DianaNL: Thank you Diana. Hugs are always appreciated here, I am not one of those guys averse to such demonstrations of affection and good cheer. xx

>129 PaulCranswick: Good poem pick, Paul. Very appropriate right now.

>146 jnwelch: If she was famous largely for that poem, Joe, what a poem to be famous for.

Have a lovely weekend Paul.

>148 GeezLouise: Thank you Rae. I will get to wish the very same to you over at your own little nook in the group.

Get better soon, Paul!! And I hope you'll enjoy the wedding despite the VIP and can taste the food despite the cold!!

I don't love McEwan's books because they make me feel uncomfortable, but all I read were so well written, and I prefer his "uncomfortable" over Coetzee's.
I thought I wouldn't like Atonement as I'd seen the movie and knew the plot and the twist at the ending, but it was so wonderfully written, that it was a totally new experience. Also liked On Chesil Beach and The Cement Garden. Maybe least Enduring Love. High time to read a recent one.

>150 Deern: I had porridge oats with plenty of honey for supper - Erni had never made it before but did a much better job with it than I ever could have.

My favourite of his is probably still The Innocent which is somewhat obscure these days.

Well I am feeling a tad better. Still coughing but less often and gradually less painfully. Drinking lots of water and taking my medicine. Also managed to get some reading done.

Glad to hear it Paul. Take it gently please. Local bookshops rely on your health!

Day 16 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Robert Lowell, Robert Duncan & Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Yesterday was three ladies and today we have three gentlemen.

Lowell needs little introduction as he picked up a couple of Pulitzers and a National Book Award in a productive career. A Harvard educated Bostonian. He was imprisoned during WW2 as a conscientious objector explaining that he had been prepared to serve until he became aware of the terms of unconditional surrender put to Japan and Germany. He was also very vocally opposed to the Vietnam war. Someone whose style adapted and changed over the years and who was at his best a very good poet.

I was not as familiar with Robert Duncan but a poem included here "My Mother Would Be a Falconress" is an impressive piece. He was prominent in various movements in San Francisco relating to LGBT experience and the Black Mountain Group.

Ferlinghetti unlike Lowell served with some distinction in WW2 piloting a vessel on the Normandy landings. A visit to Japan in the immediate aftermath of the Nuclear bombs however turned him into a lifelong pacifist. Ferlinghetti founded City Lights books which became associated with the Beat poets and successively defended the obscenity case raised against Ginsberg's "Howl". One of the key themes of his poetry was the need for it to be more relevant to contemporary needs and not be art for art's sake. These are extracts from his long poem Populist Manifesto


Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds. .........

We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Poetry isn’t a secret society,
It isn’t a temple either.
Secret words & chants won’t do any longer.
The hour of oming is over,
the time of keening come,
a time for keening & rejoicing
over the coming end
of industrial civilization
which is bad for earth & Man. ........

All you ‘Poets of the Cities’
hung in museums including myself,
All you poet’s poets writing poetry
about poetry,
All you poetry workshop poets
in the boondock heart of America,
All you housebroken Ezra Pounds,
All you far-out freaked-out cut-up poets,
All you pre-stressed Concrete poets,
All you cunnilingual poets,
All you pay-toilet poets groaning with graffiti,
All you A-train swingers who never swing on birches,
All you masters of the sawmill haiku in the Siberias of America,
All you eyeless unrealists,
All you self-occulting supersurrealists,
All you bedroom visionaries and closet agitpropagators,
All you Groucho Marxist poets
and leisure-class Comrades
who lie around all day and talk about the workingclass proletariat,
All you Catholic anarchists of poetry,
All you Black Mountaineers of poetry,
All you Boston Brahims and Bolinas bucolics,
All you den mothers of poetry,
All you zen brothers of poetry,
All you suicide lovers of poetry,
All you hairy professors of poesie,
All you poetry reviewers
drinking the blood of the poet,
All you Poetry Police -
Where are Whitman’s wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
where the great’new vision,
the great world-view,
the high prophetic song
of the immense earth
and all that sings in it
And our relations to it -
Poets, descend
to the street of the world once more
And open your minds & eyes
with the old visual delight,
Clear your throat and speak up,
Poetry is dead, long live poetry
with terrible eyes and buffalo strength. .......

I apologise for taking liberties with his poem rather but it was just a little too long not to abridge it for LT!

>153 charl08: Hahaha Charlotte. I don't foresee any book buying escapades this weekend.

72. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Date of Publication : 2015
Pages : 289
BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST : 1/13

Well this is the first of this year's longlist that I have read and, if it goes on to win, then I know even less about books than I thought I did.

It starts off reasonably well with the premise a good one affording plentiful opportunities for satire and he does try hard to deliver slapping it on thicker than industrial render in a street style that is meant to be hip but comes over as foul-mouthed. He reminds me of a sort of Black American Martin Amis and I don't mean that in a praiseworthy way. I almost ditched the book at a little under half way and at page 120 he comes up with this:


"I miss your fucking plums. I swear to God, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about your fucking plums and the juicy-assed pomegranates. I almost didn't break up with you because I kept thinking, Where am I going to get fucking cantaloupes that taste like a multiple orgasm?"

Now I like my fruit and I don't think that anyone could call me prudish but if that is literature or necessary in literature then I might as well burn all my books.

I stuck with it and it did get a second wind as it careered towards its conclusion. Paul Beatty can certainly write and if he had pared down the unnecessary in this novel it would have been much more effective. Not my cup of tea I am afraid and I won't be recommending this one.

5/10

Oh dear Paul.

Plums always make me think of Langston Hughes. Despite that link I really don't fancy The Sellout now though!

Do Not Say We Have Nothing is up next - hoping that it is better than the last longlisted one I read.

Thanks for removing *Sellout* from my possibles list! Hope today shows more improvement in your coughing!

Hi Paul! Hope you're feeling so much better today! Sad so many LTer's are under the weather.

>156 PaulCranswick: Ugh! anyone could have written that sentence! and I'm sure many have thought it but never put it to paper.

"I could make a big old list of all the writers RD detested." Amen, mate! LOL.

Happy Saturday, Paul! I guess this is the reason, The Sellout was not higher on my T.R. list. African American authors have really been making some noise lately. Sorry, to hear this one didn't pay off.

>139 jessibud2: Just what I figured, Shelley. McEwan is a divider. LOL.

>156 PaulCranswick: I've not read too many recent booker prize nominees, but those I have read from the last few years seem to be rather more crude than previous years. Almost like to be offensive somehow makes them a better book. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but that's my observation.

Hi Paul! I hope you're able to get some rest this weekend. My heart rate always goes up when I don't get enough sleep and I have to use an inhaler or take a decongestant. Then the elevated heart rate makes it hard to sleep. It's a vicious cycle.

>157 charl08: I don't enjoy writing negative reviews Charlotte but I really couldn't get too enamoured of that one.

>158 LizzieD: I am definitely better than yesterday Peggy but still not back to my normal self. I dread that involuntary urge to cough because I know it will be painful.

>159 Carmenere: We have seemed to gone down en masse recently haven't we Lynda?
I don't see myself writing that paragraph to be honest - I know ladies boobs often get compared to various types of fruit but I want fruit that tastes like fruit.

>160 msf59: I miss that old curmudgeon. I think Darryl liked it better than I did but even then not overly so.

>161 eclecticdodo: Jo I can see places where crudity might be in order but I just don't think that this was one of those places. It does disfigure and despoil much of todays literature that for the sake of purported realise epithets replace adjectives. Surely literature is meant to elevate not bring low.

>162 cbl_tn: I do use an inhaler Carrie and I have especially to ease those passages a little and to let some of the bad stuff out. My heart rate was elevated yesterday which I didn't like much.

One recovering sickie to another--have a nice day!!

So Sunday is R&R day? *smile*

>165 Berly: Well mine is all but done Kimmers. Enjoyed the wedding but not the sitting at the top table as VIP (more than a little incongruous with a number of reasonably prominent personages watching from afar.

>166 karenmarie: Let's hope so Karen. I will have to pay a quick visit to one site tomorrow morning it looks like as we are supposed to hand over the ground floor section next week. After that though!

Hope that you are feeling better- I am just coming off antibiotics for pneumonia and dealt with the fatigue! ( I am eating a lot of comfort food and drinking a lot of water!)

>169 torontoc: That puts my aches and pains to shame, Cyrel! I'm glad your'e on the mend and there is plenty of goodness in comfort food. xx

Hi, Paul.

I read Ferlinghetti's Coney Island of the Mind when I was a lad, and thought it was pretty good, but I like his bookstore better than his poetry. I did get a grin at his send up of Ginsberg's "best minds of our generation destroyed by madness" line in Howl in the one you excerpt.

I was saying to Charlotte that, this year, I've seen so many negative LT 75er reactions to books they've read from the Booker list. So far the Booker longlist seems like a standout in unsatisfactory selections.

>171 jnwelch: He was of course close to Ginsberg publishing his work and all.
On the Booker, I do think that the Judging panel have been quite left field. There were a number of surprises in the selections and I would remind that I successfully forecast none of them! Time will tell I suppose whether they or we were right!

>156 PaulCranswick: Looks like I'll take this one off the tbr list.

Day 17 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

William Meredith, Howard Nemerov, Hayden Carruth

Three poets I am not familiar with today.

William Morris Meredith Jnr won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. He spent most of his life in academia teaching poetry and creative writing at a variety of institutions.

New Yorker Nemerov was a formalist writing generally in fixed metres and drawing comparisons with the English poet Larkin. His collected poems won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award in 1977.

Hayden Carruth's poetry drew the people and landscapes of Vermont. Prolific and wordy he won almost every major poetry award available other than the Pulitzer. I think of the three poets today Carruth appeals most to me in terms of finding more of his work.

This, however, is the poem Parents by Meredith

What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.

They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them

The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.

Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.

This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,

taking the last link
of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.

>173 Whisper1: Ah! Linda the power of a negative review. It is not a work beyond redeeming features but it certainly wasn't to my own taste.

Have a nice Sunday, Paul. I hope you are feeling better.

Sorry to hear you are under the weather, Paul. I hope that you get in almost a full day of resting, relaxing and rejuvenating for Sunday.

>176 connie53: I was able to venture out for a roast beef dinner Connie so I must be getting better. xx

>177 Familyhistorian: Not a bad day. My quick visit to site today was also a fairly pleasant experience given that the work was further ahead than I had planned.

>156 PaulCranswick: I'm not in a hurry to get to that one. I listened to My Name Is Lucy Barton. I have His Bloody Project and The Many on my Kindle. I'll be ordering a few of the others for the library as they come out in print in the U.S.

>179 thornton37814: I have started Eileen today which I think is certainly better than The Sellout but there is a definite immaturity in the sentence structuring and I don't think if basics like that can be pointed out it should be on a Longlist of this nature. It does show some promise though.

I am also reading Rape : A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates and without being uncharitable to the two rookie Booker longlisted novelists it is a short demonstration of the superior skills of a master craftswoman.

Hi Paul, I continue to enjoy your poetry postings, stats, and book chat. Thanks for taking on for the LT Team on The Sellout. I was disappointed in the list. I hadn't heard of most of them and after reading reviews wasn't that interested. Summer bugs are the worst. I'm glad your cough is better and that you are able to read again. Have a good week ahead!

I think there were only one or two titles on the Booker List this time that were of interest to me. I figured this was one year I could just skip.

The work is ahead of planned - how often does that happen?

A good win for England today mate after a scintillating partnership between Bairstow and Ali and then some good bowling after lunch to set up the win. I am still not convinced about Hales and Vince and Balance needs to try and get back to how he started his Test career.

A very good win for Yorkshire over Warwickshire and in three days has put our Championship run back on track although our batting was frail yet again, hopefully we will have our Test boys back for the run in.

Great choice of poem Paul. Kind if 'They f*** you up' but with a bit more tact?

I am relieved to report that Do Not Say We Have Nothing is rather wonderful (100 pages in). Although if they pick a stinker over this for the shortlist I shall be Mad.

So swings and roundabouts...

>181 Donna828: You are more than welcome Donna. One of the worst things about the bug this weekend was that it kept me off LT more than I would have liked. I didn't get to anywhere near the number of threads i would have liked. I wanted to update the book reading stats and just hadn't the energy to do it!

>182 benitastrnad: I am sure that, out of the 13, there will be some of the novels I like, Benita.

>183 Familyhistorian: Not a great deal recently in truth, Meg! We have to handover the workshop area and our client has a compliance audit from their Swiss authorities in a week's time so we have really had to step up to the plate.

>184 johnsimpson: Two very good innings from Ali. Vince has now had 6 tests or so and has not made a half-century. Few players have been given such leeway. He looks a really good player but it is all about scoring runs. They won't drop him but other players are crying out for a chance.

Yorkshire's bowling is edging us closer. A run of wins to the end of the season and it will be three on the bounce.

Disaster for Leeds yesterday and the only comfort I can take is that the last time we were promoted to the top flight we lost our opener by three goals.

>185 charl08: Yes Charlotte, it was very subtle but in a nicely spiteful way if that makes sense.
A sigh of relief that at least one of the books I can look forward to!

>178 PaulCranswick: Good to hear you are feeling better, Paul. Now keep that up! Go eat some more roast beef. ;-))

I see you are rapidly approaching the big 75! And I am sorry to admit to being off poetry lately, you'd think I'd be the opposite having just seen a film about Pablo Neruda, but, I'm nothing if not confused ;)
I can still handle stories written in verse, but that is as close as I get lately. Maybe I need to reopen some of my poetry books, which are still so attractive and remain on the top shelf of m bookshelf... There's hope yet.

Sorry the long listed Booker didn't pan out for you. And I hope you are breathing easy again!

I hope you are feeling much better, Paul! Sorry you have been feeling so badly. I'm still reading my current book, but the The Sellout arrived i n the library for me yesterday. Reading your review makes me quite dubious that I am going to read too far into. I quite dislike foul mouthed narratives. I do have Do Not Say We Have Nothing - but whether it will my next book, I'm not sure.

My son and daughter and law are back from Europe and Britain. We went over to their place to hear all about their travels and see there photographs. I think overall they really enjoyed themselves, but found France and especially very hot. I know Serenade is really into name brand handbags like your wife, so I jokingly asked if she had found a new Gucci bag in London. Her eyes lit up and she said she had hunted high and low but had not found the particular model that she wanted, but had loved all of the new styles that she does not see in North America. Fortunately she confines herself to one or two bags per year :) And they they told me how shocked they were to have pay 20 or 30 p to use a toilet in the London. They do make me chuckle and are very fun .

Okay, so after not looking forward to Hot Milk and that long Kennedy book of which I always forget the title, I'm now also not looking forward to continuing The Sellout or starting Eileen. :D
What a year! I looked through my Booker thread today and 3 complete LLs, and only 2014 was exceptionally good and also had a nice wide range of genres. Or I should say 2014 had brilliant and fluff and was overall very entertaining. For whatever reason out of that courageous and fascinating list they selected a strange SL.
The other two years were overall mediocre, but had 2-3 shining stars that made me forget the rest. I was also reminded that the books everyone finds beautiful in most cases didn't make it onto the SL, so My Name Is Lucy Barton might share that fate.

>188 connie53: Thanks Connie. Roast beef is always good for making me feel better.

>189 LovingLit: Making great progress with finishing my next book too Megan and I'll be at 73 by close of play today. I will always be an avid poetry reading after deluding myself for fifty years that I can write the stuff a little too but I certainly understand why it is becoming an art form less appreciated as poets have seemed to increasingly revel in being obtuse. I have read possibly 100 poetry anthologies over the last three or so years and, despite knowing generally what I like, still found three or four which were just too obscure of meaning for me to appreciate - I mean it shouldn't be such a blinking struggle.

>190 vancouverdeb: There is a similarity in our tastes in regard to unnecessary or simply excessive obscenity, Deb, and I can predict without fear of being contradicted that you will not like The Sellout. I wish I had taken mine from the library then I could have sent the motherf&*%$r back there.
Serenade and Hani would clearly get along. She was just telling me the other day what bag she wanted next.

>191 Deern: I still have hope for Eileen, Nathalie, to be fair as the beginning of it is certainly not dreadful.
I would expect to love half the longlist and find merit in all but a couple of the rest. If not I would hazard that either I or the Judging Panel need to develop reading skills and I am pretty sure mine are fine!

MUCH MUCH better today. Still coughing a little but no pain and chest much looser. No fever and not unduly tired. Someone actually commented as to how healthy I looked. When I asked "compared with what?", I received no response.

Day 18 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Richard Wilbur, James Dickey & Alan Dugan

Wilbur remains a favourite American poet of mine and the first of the poets in this anthology to still be alive at the time of my reading (Wilbur is in his 96th year). A great observer and technically proficient, Wilbur has been publishing since 1928 in periodicals and via anthologies since 1947. Among numerous awards he won the Pulitzer twice.

James Dickey is today most famous for his novel Deliverance but he was first and foremost a poet. He read his poem "The Strength of Fields" at Jimmy Carter's inauguration.

Dugan's debut collection in 1961 was a huge success winning the Pulitzer and The National Book Award Prize. Dugan is a poet that is hugely rewarding to read; self-critical, whimsical and with a sometimes jaundiced eye his world views are always readable, ever accessible.

This is Wilbur's poem Cottage Street 1953 which would seemingly exculpate Ted Hughes from complete blame about the death of Sylvia Plath. Her end was always going to happen.


Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward
Bends to the tray of Canton, pouring tea
For frightened Mrs. Plath; then, turning toward
The pale, slumped daughter, and my wife, and me.

Asks if we would prefer it weak or strong.
Will we have milk or lemon, she enquires?
The visit seems already strained and long.
Each in his turn, we tell her our desires.

It is my office to exemplify
The published poet in his happiness,
Thus cheering Sylvia, who has wished to die;
But half-ashamed, and impotent to bless.

I am a stupid life-guard who has found,
Swept to his shallows by the tide, a girl
Who, far from shore, has been immensely drowned,
And stares through water now with eyes of pearl.

How large is her refusal; and how slight
The genteel chat whereby we recommend
Life, of a summer afternoon, despite
The brewing dusk which hints that it may end.

And Edna Ward shall die in fifteen years,
After her eight-and-eighty summers of
Such grace and courage as permit no tears,
The thin hand reaching out, the last word love.

Outliving Sylvia who, condemned to live,
Shall study for a decade, as she must,
To state at last her brilliant negative
In poems free and helpless and unjust.

Sorry to hear that you've been under the weather Paul. Hope you make a quick recovery.

>197 PaulCranswick: Thank you Rhian.

73. Rape : A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Date of Publication : 2003
Pages : 154
American Author Challenge

I was troubled by the choice of the prolific Joyce Carol Oates as August's pick; troubled because I had too many choices to choose from reading wise.

I chose this short novel with its provocative title and I was, for once, on the right side of a decision. Brilliant storytelling from Oates told in a clickshot style that is highly effective and one which drives the narrative superbly. The unique style of seemingly telling the story back to the daughter seems to work brilliantly and adds a discordance that is suited to the harrowing theme.

Widowed Teena and her daughter Bethie walk home across the park on July 4th eschewing a lift home from Teena's boyfriend. When they are set upon and Teena is brutally gang-raped by eight drug-fuelled locals their lives are altered devastatingly and the town chooses sides. The ladies find an unlikely protector and potential avenger.

Strongly recommended. This becomes a love story in surreal ways - of mother for daughter, of daughter for mother, of daughter for their saviour, of justice, even of mothers for their sons - the perpetrators.

8/10

Hi Paul! Just waving.

I'm sorry to hear you've been under the weather, but glad to hear you're recovering.

>198 PaulCranswick: Sounds like a heavy read Paul. Glad it was a good one for you. I have overloaded my library reservations so probably won't get to her this month - but thanks for putting her work on the radar.

Hi Paul! Sending wishes for a good week and continued improvement in your health!

Good morning, Paul. I hope you have a great Tuesday!

>199 humouress: I feel okay in myself Nina but the cough is back today with a vengeance. Very strange because I thought yesterday I was home and dry.

>200 charl08: It was a good read and quite digestible despite the obviously difficult subject matter. I will read a lot more of her work after this.

>201 karenmarie: Thank you Karen.

>202 brodiew2: Thanks Brodie. I am just starting my Tuesday and hope that it gives me more pleasure than annoyance!

Day 19 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Anthony Hecht, Richard Hugo & Denise Levertov

New Yorker Hecht won the Pulitzer Prize for his sophomore collection in 1968 as his work confronted more directly the horrors of the 20th century and the Holocaust in particular. A poet with a definite world view and one I always enjoy reading.

Hugo's real name was Richard Hogan and he had been a student of Theodore Roethke at the University of Washington. His poems were normally free verse in form but full of rhythm and meter.

Levertov was British born. Only in 1947 when she met and married her husband did she move to the USA and her style changed from a more formalist (British) style to one akin to the Black Mountain movement. An anti-war protestor and certainly a significant poet of the last 50 years.

This is Hugo's take on a villanelle; The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field


The dim boy claps because the others clap.
The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A.
Union Station, ’46, sweating through last night.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

Score, 5 to 3. Pitcher fading badly in the heat.
Isn’t it wrong to be or not be spastic?
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

I’m laughing at a neighbor girl beaten to scream
by a savage father and I’m ashamed to look.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

The score is always close, the rally always short.
I’ve left more wreckage than a quake.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

The afflicted never cheer in unison.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back
to stammering pastures where the picnic should have worked.
The dim boy claps because the others clap.

Two days into Blonde, a doorstop by JCO. A fictionalized life of Marilyn Monroe. I'm getting into it, and, having previously read, as you know, Black Water, I'm being impressed with JCO. That you appreciated Rape: A Love Story puts it on me list for future JCO reads.

Hope you regain complete health, sir. About the cough: just say NO! (not that that ever works for me)

>206 weird_O: I LOVED Blonde!!!! ---- Just saying. It was my favorite fiction of whatever recent year I read it. I'm convinced that she was pretty much channeling MM.
JCO has always been big hit or big miss with me. I never know beforehand.
Sorry that the cough lingers, Paul. I know all about the sore muscles and sympathize thoroughly. You will get over it!
I'm happy at your poetry reading, Paul. I've set myself a Mary Oliver poem a day until I have read the one collection that I own. I don't make much progress because I so often go back to reread a poem or two - all in all, a very nice project. Anyway, I love that Hugo villanelle.

>206 weird_O: I am also tempted by either Blonde or Black Water too, Bill; if not this month then very soon.
Mind over matter would be a wonderful thing but why, or why is my matter so much the heavier?!

>207 LizzieD: I guess with over 150 books published, Peggy, JCO will never be able to keep the same level of quality throughout.
I am a huge fan of Mary Oliver and I am trying not to peak further into the anthology to see when she is coming up but I realise it must be soon as she is born in 1935 compared to Levertov's 1923.

There is often a debate about the World's greatest living poet. America would have a few candidates with Richard Wilbur, John Ashbery (not a great favourite of mine) and Mary Oliver prominent in many lists.

I seem to be in the minority of people who hate Blonde. It's been many years since I've read it, but I remember hating the way that Oates portrayed Marilyn Monroe as nothing more than a victim who spent her entire life being taken advantage of--the average Victorian heroine suffers less abuse than Oates' version of Monroe! I'm not an expert on Monroe and I know she didn't have the happiest life, but I believe she was more than just a pawn in her own life.

Hi Paul, good to hear you are feeling better. Happy Wednesday!

>209 amanda4242: I am not really sure the difference between image and reality when it comes to MM. There is always a danger in writing fiction that borders on fact-ion in that our preconceived ideas about the subject are bound to intrude.

>210 connie53: Small steps every day Connie. Happy Wednesday too.

Hi Paul. I found a Booker longlisted book that I really like (what a relief!). Will be intrigued what you think when you get to it - Do Not Say We Have Nothing written by a Canadian of Malaysian-Chinese heritage. Just captured my imagination completely.

>212 charl08: Yippeee!! That is good news Charlotte because I have that one on the shelves already and pencilled in for later in the month.

Happy Wednesday, Paul! Rape : A Love Story sounds very good. It is now on my List. I plan on starting Blonde tomorrow.

I liked Atonement. It actually felt pretty conventional for him.

>205 PaulCranswick: Woo, good one from Hugo, Paul.

The afflicted never cheer in unison. There's one to think about.

Fascinating is the Wilbur poem about Plath. Yowza.

>214 msf59: I am pleased that McEwan hit the right spot Mark. His normal is sort of skewed isn't it like light through a concave glass?

>215 jnwelch: I like the villanelle form Joe as you probably know and Hugo's is a good example and one not too tied to traditions either.

>216 sibylline: I do like Richard Wilbur and that he had known and written about Plath like that show a prescience that is as impressive as it is sad.

...I heard talk of my son, but it was another Wilbur ;) Off I go again...

Hi Paul!

Always fun to see the stats

Sorry to see you've been under the weather. Good to hear you're feeling better.

>218 LovingLit: Ah! This time I was writing about the second most famous Wilbur. xx

>219 SuziQoregon: I wonder if there is a reason that coughing and coffin sound the same? xx

Hope you feel better soon, Paul.

>194 PaulCranswick: Just checking in here. Glad to know you look healthy (whatever that is!). Nice review of Rape: A Love Story. Although not an easy subject matter, that one sounds good.

>220 PaulCranswick: you could be on to something there

>221 Familyhistorian: Well Meg, it is like one step forward with one sideways and at least a half step backwards. Every time I think I am feeling much better the cough resurfaces.

>222 Berly: Kimmers, I think that JCO is a most versatile and readable writer and I am not surprised that she has been mooted for so many literary awards in the past.

>223 SuziQoregon: :D, Juli

Day 20 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Louis Simpson, Carolyn Kizer & Kenneth Koch

As with a number in this anthology the claims of Louis Simpson to be american are dubious but he is also that patchwork that best describes the american heritage - born in Jamaica with one parent Scots and the other Russian. He was also Jewish. His wandering life informed his verse and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964.

Carolyn Kizer hailed from the Pacific North West and won the Pulitzer in 1985. The themes of her work were feminism and the natural world. She was also strongly influenced by oriental literature especially Chinese and Japanese verse.

With Ashbery and O'Hara, Kenneth Koch was a leading poet of the New York school. He attacked the dullness of modern poetic writing and themes in an often exuberant style.

This is Koch's poem Permanently

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing - for example. "Although it was a dark
rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the
pure and sweet expression on her face until the day I perish from
the green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat
from the boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat -
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone Until the destruction of language.

A few years ago there were a couple of good biographies done about Marilyn Monroe. One of them was specifically about her effect on the idea of sex and beauty in America. I guess that technically that is not a biography. It would be a work of historical non-fiction. I looked and the title of it Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox by Lois Banner. I have not read it but I remember hearing the author interview on NPR.

Did you read about Arianna Huffington stepping down from her position at the Huffington Post? Very interesting event in the news media.

>226 benitastrnad: I know Norman Mailer did a very famous one too, Benita, but I haven't read it either - I prefer Elton John's take on her!

>227 benitastrnad: I think The Donald will be heaving a sigh of relief! Interesting character Ms. Huffington.

Hi Paul!

Candle in the Wind still gives me the shivers.

I really like that last poem, Paul. Happy Friday to you, my friend, even though yours is nearing completion. Hoping it was kind to you. And wishing for you a weekend that is full of fabulous! I had fallen very behind here - I'll try to do better.

Interesting comments about Blonde and MM mixed in the last 30 or so posts. I'm just past the halfway point in Blonde. Based on a few looks at Wikipedia, Oates simplified aspects of her early career, altered the timeline. And of course, she emphasizes MM's vast cast of possible sex partners (using the "cover" of the FBI's file on MM), including plausible names as well as implausibles--Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Trigger, Lassie. Amanda commented that the average Victorian heroine suffers less abuse than Oates' version of Monroe! I don't think the average Victorian heroine existed in the sort of overheated environment MM did. In Oates' telling, MM was capable of making her own bad decisions. It's intriguing to me. I may be compelled to consult a few bios of her.

Have a fantastic weekend Paul.

>225 PaulCranswick: Gorgeous poem. Thanks for sharing. So many poeta to be discovered.

>229 karenmarie: Me too Karen. It is on Elton's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album which is my second favourite of his after Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.

>230 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. Well you like myself have been struggling for full health. I will wish for the two of us fighting fit again this weekend. xx

>231 weird_O: I haven't read Blonde yet Bill, but I am fairly sure that I would prefer JCO's take on her life more than Norman Mailers'.

>232 GeezLouise: Thank you Rae, dear.

>233 charl08: I was looking at the anthology today and trying to work out which well known american poets were not included in the book. It is fairly comprehensive but I am a little surprised that Robert Penn Warren, the only man to win the Pulitzer for fiction and poetry, does not merit an entry.

A quick visit to the bookstore this afternoon:

203. Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison (1999) 298 pp
Published after Ellison's death this is the second novel following his brilliant Invisible Man
204. Save the Last Dance : Poems by Gerald Stern (2008) 90 pp
Came across Stern from the Penguin anthology I am enjoying
205. The Kindness of Enemies by Leila Aboulela (2015) 319 pp
I thoroughly enjoyed her Lyrics Alley; her take on Scotland should be interesting

>236 PaulCranswick: My library's copy of The Kindness of Enemies arrived earlier this week. I'm looking forward to that one. I really liked Minaret.

Happy weekend, Paul... I hope you are feeling better. I also liked March--- I actually liked the harsh version of Marmee; that seemed true to me.

>237 cbl_tn: I think she is a gifted writer and an interesting character, Carrie. Born in Sudan to Egyptian parents and living in Scotland since she was 22.

>238 banjo123: It would have certainly been a difficult time to live through and try to bring up four children, especially four so irritatingly chipper as the March children!

74. Black Dogs by Ian McEwan

Date of Publication : 1992
Pages : 174
British Author Challenge
1001 Books First Edition : 265/1001

A son-in-law intends to write a biography or write-up the memoirs of his mother-in-law who is dying. At the heart of her story is that she was attacked by two huge black dogs whilst on her honeymoon and never really recovered from the experience.

I would have to say that if an attack by such dogs - which left her uninjured if a little shaken - was the central event of a life; it would hardly be one worthy of writing a biography over. McEwan seems to be attempting to draw parallels with evil and the use of fear in society to critique fascism and communism and how the meet at the edges. This is given that the backdrop to the story happens as the Berlin Wall falls, that the honeymoon was in the immediate aftermath of the last war and that the honeymooners were at the time ardent communists.

Well written, but a little cold, I don't personally think the central premise of the book works as it is to subtle a point and one that without the historical context is difficult to follow. For this I do not see this book being on greatest books lists in another generation, being too much of its time.

Not bad, but shouldn't be on the 1001 books list IMO.

7/10

Day 21 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Maxine Kumin, Gerald Stern, A.R. Ammons

Maxine Kumin won the Pulitzer Prize but her star has faded in the time since she passed away. Compared to both Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Frost but never quite reaching the heights of either, her work is in large need of a critical reappraisal. She was probably the last person to see Anne Sexton alive having lunched with her on the day of her death.

Gerald Stern is an accessible and prolific poet still very active today at the age of 91. He has won the National Book Award and been a finalist for the Pulitzer.

Archie Randolph Ammons is another who like Stern has won both the National Book Award and the Wallace Stevens Award. He working in manufacturing before taking up residence at Cornell. He was well known for his very short verse and his loving use of the colon. That said the poems here are exemplars of neither.

The is Gerald Stern's The Dancing

In all these rotten shops, in all this broken furniture
and wrinkled ties and baseball trophies and coffee pots
I have never seen a post-war Philco
with the automatic eye
nor heard Ravel’s “Bolero” the way I did
in 1945 in that tiny living room
on Beechwood Boulevard, nor danced as I did
then, my knives all flashing, my hair all streaming,
my mother red with laughter, my father cupping
his left hand under his armpit, doing the dance
of old Ukraine, the sound of his skin half drum,
half fart, the world at last a meadow,
the three of us whirling and singing, the three of us
screaming and falling, as if we were dying,
as if we could never stop—in 1945—
in Pittsburgh, beautiful filthy Pittsburgh, home
of the evil Mellons, 5,000 miles away
from the other dancing—in Poland and Germany—
oh God of mercy, oh wild God.

>236 PaulCranswick: It didn't come off well in her The Translator, will be fun to compare. I've got it on my wishlist but seem to have forgotten to do anything about it. Need to fix that!

Happy Saturday, Paul. Good review of Black Dogs. Since it's a shorty, I might get to that one at some point.

Nice Stern poem.

I am still being dazzled by the Blonde. I have a feeling this will be one of those AAC highlights. It is that good.

Ooh, 74 books! Getting close...

>241 PaulCranswick: Powerful poem, Paul, and thank you for sharing with us.

nor heard Ravel’s “Bolero” the way I did in 1945 in that tiny living room on Beechwood Boulevard,

makes me remember quite a few of my 'firsts' listening to music, including Bolero.....

>242 charl08: I get the feeling Charlotte that she came to writing later in life and had not really decided on a career in it until settling in Scotland. Her sophomore work was always likely to be problematic.

>243 msf59: It isn't bad by any means Mark, but I just don't think it was 1001 books quality, whatever that is. JCO is an AAC highlight I reckon already.

>244 karenmarie: Karen, Ravel's Bolero conjures for most people Torvill & Dean but for me it is Bo Derek and those simply magnificent breasts. Music to make love to on a languid summer day with the surf clapping the shore in time to the coupling.

I made it:

Wishing you a happy weekend, Paul!

Bolero is also Bo Derek for me, but understandably I was more impressed by her hair. :) (saw T&D for the first time years later when they had their olympic comeback, was it Lillehammer?)
Later it became a piece abused to death by local jazz dance groups, usually brutally shortened down to 2 or so minutes.

Edit: cross posting, big congrats on 75!!! :))

75. Eileen : A Novel by Ottessa Moshfegh

Date of Publication : 2016
Pages : 260
2016 Booker Prize Longlist : 2/13

This was a strange and twisted little novel. It is one which sits a little incongruously in the same company as many other Booker nominated works but it is certainly not without merit.

The story careers a little off-kilter and its lead character dissects morbidly the detritus of her rather pathetic existence as she abhors her drunken father as she tends to him. Her life is without aim and without centre until a glamorous young lady makes an appearance at the boy's correctional facility she works at and changes her life forever.

The last 50 pages almost saves this novel - almost but not quite. The sentence construction is naive and would indicate a writer who will improve but still has plenty to learn. She also needs good editing. Our "heroine" goes out for a drink with the new colleague and there is a remark in the bar about someone's arms being like "Joe Fraziers'". The book is set in 1964 and Frazier was only 20 and had still a year to his professional debut. There is no way such a comment could have been made as Frazier would have not been a household name for another five or six years.

There is a sudden twist in the tale which is worth the waiting for. I preferred this to The Sellout but would be amazed if it won.

7/10

>247 Deern: Well I do at least remember that Bo Derek was blonde!

2016 BOOKER LONGLIST - PAUL'S RATINGS

1. Eileen : A Novel by Ottessa Moshfegh
2. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

Congrats on reaching the 75 milestone!

>251 cbl_tn: Thanks Carrie

Congrats on the milestone!! You rock! :-)

Hooray for hitting the 75 book mark, Paul!

Just watched the US women cyclist team set a world record in their qualifying round this morning.

>253 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley - do you have to be stoned to rock?

>254 ronincats: Thank you Roni. That is going to be some final race between GBR and USA as GBR again broke the world record straight after the USA did.

Congrats on 75!

>256 banjo123: Cheers, Rhonda. xx

Only 75 Paul? Myself, I'm as far as 28 ;0)

Congratulations!

>258 humouress: I am about at my usual pace these last couple of years which disappoints me a little as I always start off aiming at 200 books and rarely break 150 these days. xx

One day, I will reach 75; but it's not looking like this will be the year. Either :0(

Congratulations on hitting 75!

Congrats on the 75. I'm hoping Eileen misses the shortlist so I get to miss it out, after reading the review in the paper.

Congrats on reaching 75!!!

Hi Paul, congrats on reaching 75 books mate, hopefully I will join you by the end of August. What a turnaround for Yorkshire recently, after being bottom of the group at the halfway stage of the 20/20 we have got to finals day and Willey has come into some decent form and in the quarter finals of the one day comp, these were targets that Gillespie mentioned when I saw him at the sportsmen's dinner. Today we are playing the old enemy Lancashire in the championship and at one stage Lancashire were 268 for 3 but Yorkshire hit back to close with Lancs on 299 for 7. Yorkshire seem to be coming into a good bit of form at just the right time.

Hope you are having a good weekend mate, Cricket at county level going well and the GB cyclists doing really well in the velodrome. Sending love and hugs to you, Hani and the kids.

>255 PaulCranswick: - Not unless you want to be... ;-)

Congratulations on the 75. And I didn't like Eileen at all, so I'm guessing your 7/10 means you had a better experience with it. :)

Congratulations, Paul!

For me the Booker longlist has been a disappointment so far. I've read four books, and none of them has struck me as prize worthy. I have hope for Do Not Say We Have Nothing, based on Deb's comments, and The Schooldays of Jesus, but that's about it.

Congratulations on hitting 75 books, Paul!

I've only read Lucy Barton and I'd be okay if took the Booker, but I'd be surprised. I have The Sellout out from the library, but you have convinced that it is not for me. Maybe later I will give Eileen a try, but it sure not calling to me. I do have Do Not Saw We Have Nothing waiting, but I'll wait til the weather is a little less nice.

>260 humouress: You do have your hands full as a mum in Singapore, Nina. It is not a reading competition which is all well and good since Charlotte and Suz have read three times my total already!

>261 amanda4242: Thanks Amanda. You will pass 100 books very shortly right?

>262 charl08: It was not dreadfully bad, Charlotte, but neither was it particularly good.

>263 Crazymamie: Thank you Mamie, dear. I am about a month and a half behind schedule but never mind.

>264 johnsimpson: John surely Vince has had enough chances for now. Averaging less than 20 in seven tests and without a single half century would put paid to most, I feel. He looks a good player but good players get runs don't they? This looks like a win for Pakistan.
The cycling team are fantastic aren't they and really do us proud. I thought the USA might nick the ladies pursuit but what a performance by our ladies - really proud of them.

>265 jessibud2: I have a number of friends who shall remain nameless who enjoy smoking dope, Shelley. I have no philosophical ideas against the practice and will admit to having tried it. Unfortunately I have never smoked cigarettes and haven't the faintest idea how to inhale which means that the stuff has zero impact on me and those same friends will not let me waste their stash by simply blowing it straight into the evening air.

>266 ursula: I am a fairly generous soul Ursula and I had considered a six for the book before being kind with my seven. A seven from me is not a ringing endorsement.

>267 kidzdoc: Thanks mate. Well based on only two read I have to agree with you. I have heard good things about my next two reads which are My Name is Lucy Barton and Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

>268 vancouverdeb: Thank you Deb. Lucy Barton seems to be on most people's list of better Booker. Madeline Thien's book will be finished this month too.

Good call on Joe Frazier in Eileen, Paul. I'm leaving my rating at 3.5 for that incongruity even though I didn't catch it. I'll be shocked if Eileen makes it to the short list.

ETA Congratulations on hitting #75!

Yay for 75! :) Hope you're having a great weekend, Paul.

Congrats on reaching 75.

>272 Donna828: I pretty much agreed with your assessment of it Donna. Being something of a sports buff that misuse in time of Smokin' Joe clunked immediately for me.

>273 The_Hibernator: It has been pretty ok so far Rachel. Going to watch the Bourne movie later on and I hope to make some progress with the two books I am currently reading. Enjoying the Olympics too and pretty happy with GBR's steady accumulation.

>274 thornton37814: Thank you Lori. I am fairly satisfied that my reading is slowly picking up again.

>275 msf59: I reckon you will comfortably make it a double 75 this year buddy - going like an express train indeed.

Congrats on reading 75, Paul. Hope you are having a great weekend!

Happy 75 Books!

Congrats on reaching 75 books, Paul!

Bolero for me is simply the music itself on a 33 1/3 rpm record, the movie next, and I had to look up Torvill and Dean. Of course, I've got the music in my head now.....

Hope you've had a great weekend and all good wishes for the coming week.

>278 Familyhistorian: Thanks Meg. Caught the latest Bourne movie which I enjoyed but which Yasmyne slept through!

>279 BBGirl55: Thank you Bryony

>280 karenmarie: I also like the music Karen but it has connotations beyond the music for me. xx

75!! Whoohoo!! I have high hopes of reaching that landmark this year, although this month has not helped much. ; ) Hope your family is all in good health pronto!

>269 PaulCranswick: I'm at 91 right now, so I'll probably hit 100 in a week or so.

Congrats on your 75. A real achievement for a busy person such as yourself.

>282 Berly: Kimmers, I am sure that you'll make it to 75 this year.

>283 amanda4242: Amanda, I am always impressed at the number of BAC books you include in your totals. xx

>284 avatiakh: It is relative I suppose, Kerry. I do sometimes get the chance to read in the car (on the back seat!) in the KL traffic going to meetings or on my way home.

Congratulations on No. 75!

>286 laytonwoman3rd: Thank you Linda.

It was my mum's 71st birthday yesterday (14 th August) and I am so grateful that she seems to be slowly getting stronger after her cancer operation earlier this year. She had her first major check-up last week and the doctors were happy apparently.

Day 22 of 59

Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry

Robert Bly, Robert Creeley & James Merrill

A number of the group named Robert Bly as their favourite American poet. I am not overly familiar with his work but I do like what I have so far come across. Originator of the so called mythopoetic movement or men's movement, much of Bly's work centres around the absence of the father in the parenting role. He won the American Book Award in 1968.

Creeley was an innovative poet. He is closely associated with the Black Mountain poets. He was extremely prolific and added a great canon of work that was seemingly in free verse whilst never being short of rhythm.

Merrill was a master of form and can almost be described as two poets given the striking difference between his early formal work with its wonderful array of wordplay and the later work which has been described as "occultist" communing as it does with angels and spirits. He won the Pulitzer Prize.

This is Waking From Sleep by Robert Bly

Inside the veins there are navies setting forth,
Tiny explosions at the waterlines,
And seagulls weaving in the wind of the salty blood.

It is the morning. The country has slept the whole winter.
Window seats were covered with fur skins, the yard was full
Of stiff dogs, and hands that clumsily held heavy books.

Now we wake, and rise from bed, and eat breakfast!
Shouts rise from the harbor of the blood,
Mist, and masts rising, the knock of wooden tackle in the sunlight.

Now we sing, and do tiny dances on the kitchen floor.
Our whole body is like a harbor at dawn;
We know that our master has left us for the day.

Three big hitters coming up later today for my stroll through 20th century American poetry as Frank O'Hara, his pal John Ashbery and the wonderful Galway Kinnell will feature. I have Ashbery's long and famous poem "Self Porttrait in a Convex Mirror" to wade through as part of that so I had better concentrate as I have always found him maddeningly difficult.

Your mom is quite young yet, Paul. Glad to hear that she is doing so well. My mom is 74 and she seems very young to me - always on the go, walking a two - three miles a day. She had cancer back when I was 12 or 13, but it has not bothered since then.

You must have a lot of lovely walks around your area too?

>290 vancouverdeb: The problem with walking here is the humidity and heat is so sapping which rather knocks the enjoyment of it a little. I am looking forward to my return to the UK when I should be able to clock up the miles somewhat.

Your mum is a marvel if she is walking three miles a day well into her seventies.

>291 PaulCranswick: Oh, you can get around it, Paul, with a little innovation and will power ;0)

(But don't ask me where you find those)

>292 humouress: Hahaha, saps me something chronic I must say Nina - I have a little bit of the will power but little of the innovation.

Well, your Monday is closing and mine is just beginning. Hoping the week is kind to you - ours is full of appointments, so not my favorite thing.

Congrats!

Happy Monday evening, Paul! Congrats for reaching every 75er's happy milestone!! Wonderful that your mum's doctors are pleased with her recovery!!
Although, I'm a wee bit early, have an outstanding Tuesday!

Congratulations, Paul!

>294 Crazymamie: Monday evening here Mamie and a particularly good one for me. Hoping for a good week as I get ready to buy tickets for my UK trip.

>295 drneutron: Thanks Jim

>296 Carmenere: You are a tad early Lynda but I'll take it happily!

>297 kidzdoc: Thank you Darryl.

Congrats on hitting 75, Paul!

That's a good 'un up in >241 PaulCranswick: by Gerald Stern. I've been re-reading Sharon Olds recently, and being reminded what a powerful, fearless poet she is.

Robert Bly had a big influence on me when I was starting out, and I like that one of his up above in >288 PaulCranswick:. I got to see him perform way back when, and he had an engaging way of delivering his poems - avuncular might be the word. Respected the poems, but didn't take himself too seriously.

>299 jnwelch: Thanks Joe. I am relishing my journey through America's poetic landscapes. Gerald Stern was a find for me and Sharon Olds has been a favourite for a while.

Avuncular - I love that word!