diana.n shows up late to the reading party ... but still fashionably so?

I'd no plans to do a reading diary this year, but I've just reviewed my 2016 totals. They're low and off the pace, plus I haven't really touched my usual nonfiction topics. I thought I'd crash the party in hopes of encouraging myself to read more and more broadly.

I currently am rereading the Cadfael mysteries. Brother Cadfael's Penance is one of my all-time favorite novels.

I've a bit leftover right now, so I'm contemplating ordering Flâneuse, The Whale: A Love Story, and Writings from Ancient Egypt (an anthology that thrills me to no end: Egyptology is my oldest love.) The Essex Serpent looks fascinating as well.

Edited: added touchstone

Also, I recently began cataloging my music listening experience in a separate account, @diana.n.music. I'm curious if anyone else uses LT for cataloging media and how you go about the process.

I decided to use LT because I didn't like either Rate Your Music's or Discogs' layouts.

Glad you finally made it to the party! I'm always interested in what you have to say about books.

I'll add your thread to the list.

>2 LibraryPerilous:

I haven't experimented with media, but would like to start cataloging DVDs.

I do catalog every short story I read. Using LT beats any other system I've tried by a mile, due to the tagging.

>1 LibraryPerilous: Starring your thread. I'm so glad you've taken the plunge.

Come on everybody, make room in the circle for >1 LibraryPerilous:! She got me at the word Cadfael. :)

I have started cataloging my DVD/Blueray collection, but am not done by any means. I love that the cuecat can scan the barcode and usually if you are using Amazon.movies for search you can find it. I am overwhelmed at trying to figure out who to list as "author" so will usually list or leave the director there. If there are certain of my favorite actors I want to keep track of. I think I note in the comment field if it was made from a book, but I'm not sure. Most of the movies I've cataloged are action/scifi and such.

>3 SylviaC:, >5 clamairy: Thank you for joining me here in the corner whilst I sip my Diet Coke.

>4 amysisson: Oh, and I see you're doing a thread on the short stories. Cool idea! I like that LT lets me manually enter and tailor data. I don't like tags, but I use the summary box for something similar.

A few favorites from January through August:

Rereads of The Perilous Gard, The Sherwood Ring, Jenny and the Cat Club, and Jenny Goes to Sea were satisfying. I liked Alex Myers' Revolutionary, a historical novel about Deborah Samson.

Michael Ondaatje's The Cat's Table is a coming of age novel set on board a ship. It fizzled in the last chapters, but the adventures the boys have on the ship sparkled. A Coffin for Dimitrios could have been written yesterday. Highly relevant, both for its historical overview of pre-WWII Eastern Europe, and also for its parallels to contemporary politics. Penguin UK describes Eric Ambler's writing: "These are paranoid stories, but written at a time when paranoia was disturbingly close to common sense."

The Name of the Rose is just about perfect. The edition I read had an insightful introduction by David Lodge. I liked both The Story of My Teeth and Margaret the First, but neither quite lived up to their hype as groundbreaking. Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard was an interesting space opera with a heart of gold at its center. The story is self-contained, but I hope it sold well enough for a sequel set in the same universe.

Someone on LT recommended The Frozen Thames to me. Thank you, whomever you are. It's a lovely series of vignettes. Even my aunt, who normally doesn't like any fiction but SFF, loved it.

I liked this line, from Landfalls: "Perhaps it was our passion for discovery that doomed us, drawing us too close to the Vanikoran reefs when the weatherglass was falling and the sky boiling with storm." And this one, from Speak: "Feel increasingly loyal to water. Heart rebels against land." (I'm a currently landlocked surfer.)

Perhaps the best novel I've read this year is Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, a paean to nature and a wistful, whimsical view of the disorder of nature. Klinkenborg's an heir to E. B. White, with a similar writing style and similar views on the natural world. The novel explores how the human species' evolved need for order often makes us forget our place within the natural world. It successfully represents 18th century ideas of science while also being a defense of the 21st century science of conservation. I loved it, especially this: "I wish to live again in a place that is not a map of the gardener's mind. Book of nature, as humans love to think of it. But where I wish to live is not a book at all. Not an argument for the being and attributes of an unnecessary god. Not a theorem, hypothesis, or demonstration. Merely itself."

And this almost wrecked me: "He places me in a wooden box filled with earth and moss. Ship-board again for me, I think. Sea-borne back to the Cilician coast, to my antique city. Great wrong set right at last.

But no."

>6 MrsLee: Hi, hello! Thanks for joining in. I luuuurrrrrve Cadfael, especially Hugh. :)

I think I'd use directors as authors for films, too. I've been entering both the artist and the executive producers as CD authors—so I leave off quite a bit of the credits! I put the track listings in private comments and use comments for recommended tracks, in case anyone happens to peruse the library.

Oh, by the way, all: I currently am reentering my catalog so that everything is a manual entry. I have about 1K titles left to do. It's quite messy if you look at my recently entered books. I'm not sure why I decided to do this, but once the project was started, there was no looking back.

Oh, goody. Someone else has joined the party. I'm too tired tonight to do more than pull up a rocking chair and listen but I'll pipe up periodically.

Welcome! I'm looking forward to following your reading as we seem to share similar tastes. I hope that starting a thread will inspire your reading.

We catalogue DVDs at work (not on LT) and use Director for author. Part of me would like to catalogue my music collection but as it's 80% classical I feel the task would be frustrating and neverending. I don't think there's any site that handles classical music cataloguing well.

>1 LibraryPerilous: Greetings! It is great to have another person to join in with in discussions on books, especially somone who described The Name of the Rose as, "just about perfect."

>9 jillmwo:, >10 Sakerfalcon:, >11 pgmcc: Thank you for joining me. I'm gently tapping your rocking chair's leg for you, Jill.

>10 Sakerfalcon: I agree. I haven't added any classical or opera yet, but it will be messy. The @LWMusic library is classical music.

A fair bit more time spent on LT than reading last week, but I did reread St. Peter's Fair. I like the attention to monastery details that Peters works into her stories. And the fair sounds like it would have been so much fun to attend. I currently am working my way through the essays in The Armchair Birder Goes Coastal.

The Leper of St. Giles: I think this is my favorite Cadfael, after Penance, for its grace and for its attention to historical details. The edition I read this time had an odd cover. A twinkly-eyed garden gnome missing its pointy hat lies dead on the ground.

I finished The Armchair Birder Goes Coastal and was charmed. The book is a collection of essays about shorebirds of the southeastern US. Each essay has an anecdote of the author's birding, historical and scientific information about the bird, and an overview of the bird's conservation status. Virtually all of the birds in the book have been or are endangered or threatened. Specifically, the MBTA is responsible for saving a majority.

Goodness! The author Elizabeth Essex liked one of my tweets on Twitter.

>14 LibraryPerilous: It is nice when that happens.

>13 LibraryPerilous: They had garden gnomes in the 1100s?! :D

All Marshal Guarnaccia wants to do is go home for Christmas. But he's come down with the flu, and there's been a murder. I'm glad I stuck with Death of an Englishman. The novel becomes quite charming and interesting around page 65. I also like the lack of red herrings. The reader is expected to be as observant and unfettered by ego as is the Marshal. We solve the crime through his self-effacing methods of observation. I'll read more in this series.

>16 MrsLee: Dead ones, apparently! :)

>17 LibraryPerilous: LOL! I have that same version, but never made the connection.

Now you've hit me with a bullet, too. Death of an Englishman goes on my wishlist.

>15 pgmcc: It was my first time!

The Bachelor of Arts: Chandran is a moody, spoiled man in his early twenties who vacillates between ennui and intensity. Narayan spends the novel gently mocking him while also displaying empathy in clipped prose that is almost a newspaper-style recitation of facts, punctuated by Chandran's outbursts. Narayan is one of my favorite authors.

"She then expressed a desire to send a small basket of vegetables to her sister-in-law. Chandran said he would not take it with him. But she argued that she wasn't asking him to carry the load on his head. He threatened that if he were given any basket he would throw it out of the train." (210)

Actually, I know I have a copy of Death of an Englishman upstairs somewhere. I am now feeling a gentle impulse to go search it out. (However, I'd just got 'round to reading The Lies of Locke Lamora on the most recent business trip, so Englishman may be a bit off in the future.)

Helen Garner finally gets round to reading and reviewing Pride and Prejudice. Warning: spoilers!

I had never encountered Helen Garner before. Is there something by her that you might recommend?

>21 LibraryPerilous: That was fun! Thank you for sharing.

>22 jillmwo: This was my first time encountering her. Ah, I do have The Spare Room on Mt. TBR. I quite liked her writing style in the review.

>23 Sakerfalcon: You're welcome!

I'm reading Above Suspicion now. The book has the wit and hijinks of the film, plus a more serious look at the politics of its time period. It takes place in Europe during the summer of 1939 and was written in 1941. It's a poignant "farewell to innocence" narrative that resonates today because the writing feels fresh and also for, umm, shall we say, other reasons.

Helen MacInnes is an interesting writer. She's very much a product of her time, and her female characters often are stereotypical. And yet, Above Suspicion also presents Frances as an intellectual equal to her husband, one who has his respect and devotion. Frances and Richard Myles love and like each other and they hold on to both of those feelings throughout their ordeal.

I agree with this response to the doxxing of Elena Ferrante.

>25 LibraryPerilous:

The only reason I ever wished Ferrante hadn't opted for anonymity in the first place is because I knew this was inevitable. The poverty of contemporary Italian literary culture is matched only by the sleaze it's sunk in. I'll reserve my thoughts on the slimeball who outed her--in fact I plan not to waste another thought on him. But yes it is a great example of another instance of male violence against a woman.

As for the idea that there's some kind of problem with the books not being autobiographical, it's too laughable to comment.

>26 LolaWalser: Agree. The misogyny of the NYRB article was gross—and grossly common—but I actually found his complete failure to grasp even basic lit theory the most ridiculous part. He was just so petulant.

I knew this was inevitable

I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner, tbh.

>27 LibraryPerilous:

Oh my, did the NYRB publish something? By that guy? I don't think I have the stomach... I was going by what the article in the TLS you linked said.

He snooped through people's banking accounts and property records--I don't know how can that be legal.

I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner, tbh.

I know, and they've been playing the guessing game for years. There was no real surprise left, only the payoff of being the one who outed her.

It heated up tremendously with her breakthrough in foreign markets--a LOT of men absolutely hated that. (To begin to understand some of the resentment, one must learn the first fact of Italian journalism--that 99% of the journalists see themselves as actual or future literary writers. Journalism has been traditionally an Italian writer's "day job", or security fallback. In fact, I can't off the top of my head recall a single modern Italian writer who DIDN'T work as a journalist. At least men. Women, for reasons easy to imagine, less often had this option.)

It's not over yet. Cue theories that her husband has really written the books.

>28 LolaWalser: Yes. Article originated in English in the NYRB and was published simultaneously in Italian, French, and German magazines. Here's a link, for those interested, but blech. I will say that the disgusted reaction to it seems to be almost universal.

I don't know much about Italian politics or culture, so thank you for this v. interesting background. This re-centers some thoughts I recently had about Eco's work, which I'm reading in depth this fall.

Cue theories that her husband has really written the books.

Yep. The doxxer went there in the article. Of course.

I don't know how can that be legal.

I don't either. Creepy, and it would be interesting to know how much of it is legal in Italy. The whole article has the feel of a Peeping Tom who has developed a crush on a famous woman and decides to write a hit piece instead of shooting her. So there's that, I guess.

Edited to correct HTML markup error.

I'd be interested to hear more about your reading of Eco (I'm a big fan). Coincidentally, I hear journalism is one of the themes in his last novel. He was himself a long-time columnist of a political weekly, L'Espresso.

It's an inbred scene born of a tiny market, a handful of self-important people (and all dottori, i.e. university graduates with diplomas--typically--in literature, useless for anything else) writing and reading each other, while the masses go for sport, scandal sheets with lots of boobs, comics and genre junk. It's also incredibly, consciously and violently male-dominated. In North America you get some flavour of that in random blogs of disgruntled nobodies who can't get beyond self-publishing; in Italy they are the people who write the newspapers.

>29 LibraryPerilous: Like @LolaWalser, I will be interested to hear more about you reading of Eco. I am also a big fan.

>30 LolaWalser: I hear journalism is one of the themes in his last novel.

Numero Zero is excellent and is Eco at his best in terms of spreading suspicion of conspiracy and leaving the reader aware that nothing in the press or in history books can be taken at face value or believed at all. The novel is quite short but it is well worth a read.

I will not read a think piece about the Nobel. I will not read a think piece about the Nobel. I will not ...

>32 LibraryPerilous: Do I hear the sound of silence?

>33 pgmcc: The only thing that I did wrong, I stayed on Twitter a minute too long.

>43 pgmcc: A fatal error.

The Sanctuary Sparrow: I found this entry in the Cadfael mysteries as affecting upon rereading as I did on the first read. The villain, such as it were, is indeed a sympathetic character. I'd missed the anti-Semitism of this novel on the first reading.

>30 LolaWalser:; >31 pgmcc: Thanks. I'm working my way through The Prague Cemetery now, and reading some criticisms of it along the way. The debate about what responsibilities an author has is one that resonates right now, especially given the current climate. I also have read some commentary on Eco's fiction that situates his novels within his experiences as a journalist, so LW's information was very helpful. I'm still unpacking how much I think Eco's own politics impacted his fiction.

Sorry to be so vague, but I'm trying to follow the Green Dragon's rules!

>36 LibraryPerilous: I really enjoyed The Prague Cemetry. Many of the criticisms I found of it demonstrated that many people misunderstood it.

>37 pgmcc:

Me too, I even felt impelled to commit one of my solemnly inept reviews.

Have not bothered with the criticisms, to be frank. Do they sum up to some big thing?

>37 pgmcc:; >38 LolaWalser: The thoughtful ones seem to agree with pgmcc's viewpoint, with the caveat that one can't prevent the people who would willfully misinterpret the novel from accessing it and using it to spread their bile. On a similar, but lighter note, I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan's misuse of "Born in the USA" as a campaign theme song.

This is the first important thing: how little it takes for the obsession to take root: this, from LW's great review, especially is timely.

>38 LolaWalser: I would suggest your review is far from inept.

>38 LolaWalser: & >39 LibraryPerilous: I was astounded to read some criticisms that The Prague Cemetery was anti-Semitic and that Eco was spreading hatred against Jews. That was the main flaw I spotted in criticisms. Whether such interpretations were due to incomplete reading of the novel, stupidity, or, as @Diana.n indicates, willful misinterpretation of the novel, I do not know. Other criticisms were whinges about it being difficult to distinguish one character from another, too long, or some other such puerile complaint.

I interpreted the book as being about more than a plot to spread hatred against Jews. In my mind that was just a specific example of a more general practice. The Prague Cemetery is about governments wanting to manipulate groups of people, and to steer public opinion in a direction that leaves the politicians, or should I say the people in power, free to build up their own position and wealth.

I found several of Eco's works to play with this theme, Numero Zero being another fiction example, with his book, Inventing the Enemy, being a non-fiction example.

>40 pgmcc:

Thanks both for undeserved compliments, funny how self-deprecation works... :)

In my mind that was just a specific example of a more general practice. The Prague Cemetery is about governments wanting to manipulate groups of people,

Hm, it could be my biases, but I don't think this interpretation is very likely--at least, I doubt something like this was in Eco's mind (authorial intent being dead, as we all know, the interpretations are fair game). Eco wasn't one for right-wing conspiracy theories about the inherent evil of governments and given the importance of the matter, I think he really wanted to highlight antisemitism in a time of renewed antisemitism in Italy and Europe in general. Antisemitism is a uniquely peculiar form of discrimination, I do believe it would do disservice to its history and its criticism to reduce it to just one instance of some vague tendency to oppression.

>40 pgmcc:, >41 LolaWalser: Thanks, both, for these thoughtful comments. One of the reasons I chose The Prague Cemetery next, instead of Foucault's Pendulum, is that it specifically is about an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. As LW notes, it's a unique form of bigotry, and one to which many other forms of discrimination often circle back. It's also a timely topic here in the US (and elsewhere, too, of course, but specifically vis-à-vis the US general election.)

@pgmcc, the two works I've read by Eco, The Name of the Rose and Baudolino, have led me to think that Eco perhaps is concerned with the ways conspiracies and ignorance can undermine authority and the historical record.

Other criticisms were whinges about ... too long

! and LOL. I love long, detailed novels. I can't imagine a reviewer expecting less than this from an Eco novel.

>41 LolaWalser: I would not want to diminish the magnitude or nature of anti-Semitism but intended to draw attention to a theme running through several of Eco's works; in Baudolino he undermines the reliability of historical record and religious legend/myth and touches on misdirection by the powers that be; in Numero Zero he suggests the existence of a right-wing underground in Western Europe which is comprised of the remnants of the fascist forces defeated in WWII that was established and supported by the governments of the Allied powers as a tactic to counteract any Soviet advances into Western Europe, and he also undermined the reliability of the Press (as if the Press did not do a good enough job of that itself); in Inventing the Enemy he demonstrates the use of a common enemy to unite the masses and make them more manageable by distracting them from domestic matters. In The Prague Cemetry he has demonstrated the use of all these factors in an attempt to vilify Jews on a global scale. Perhaps I chose my words poorly as it was not my intention to play down the significance of the main element of the story. In many of his books he fudges the boundary between what is real and what is fiction and shows deliberate intent behind many of the fudging.

The Devil's Novice: another good entry in the Cadfael series, although the denouement feels a bit rushed. I love the Cadfael series, but I'm a bit burned out on them for the moment.

I made it halfway through Teranesia before deciding to finish it at another time. Egan is one of my favorite authors. I'm glad I didn't start with Teranesia. It's weaker than his later works, and I don't think I would have felt compelled to read more of his fiction if that had been my first encounter.

Quite a bit of nonfiction reading coming up, mostly in political science topics that are verboten around these parts.

I like the Cadfael books, too, but I think it would be too much to read several of them in close succession. I read a lot of them as they came out, so they were nicely spaced. I got rid of most of my physical copies, and have been buying them for Kindle when they come on sale.

I've spent the last few days reflecting on my 2016 reading: My total is down and I've not enjoyed (or even remembered!) as many books as usual. Some of it is the stress of a life in flux, but some of it correlates to the reading choices I've made. The books I've loved and lost myself in were books that already interested me and were in my areas of interest. I've spent too much time trying to diversify what I read and not enough time expanding my reading within fields and genres I do love.

So I've spent the last few days paring down my TBR account, and I already feel much better.

>45 SylviaC: Yes. I read them the first time over the course of a year, as the mood struck me, and enjoyed them differently by doing that.

Edited: typo

This is one of the best author interviews I've read in some time: Guardian 2004 interview with James Hamilton-Paterson.

I've not read anything by Sheri S. Tepper. Does anyone have a recommendation? Perhaps Grass?

>48 LibraryPerilous: Grass is a great one, maybe her most accomplished. I really loved The Gate to Women's Country even thought it is a little less polished. Gibbon's Decline and Fall and The Family Tree are other very good ones. But I think your first instinct is the right one.

>49 tottman: Thank you for your helpful reply. I read John Scalzi's blog post about her and was inspired to bump her up the TBR list. I'll borrow Grass first.

>48 LibraryPerilous: I have read her The Gate to Women's Country and recall that I enjoyed it, but I believe Grass has a wider popularity. (FWIW)

I have only read Grass, (touchstone defaults to Orwell's 1984?!?), and really liked it. I also have The Gate to Women's Country and Six Moon Dance waiting on the TBR shelf.

My understanding is that there are sequels to Grass. I need to locate those soon...

>52 ScoLgo: Yes, it looks like it's a trilogy.

>51 jillmwo:; >52 ScoLgo: Grass was the one most of the commenters on Scalzi's blog referenced, followed closely by The Gate to Women's Country.

I'm looking forward to reading her! So many of the commenters wrote about how her works had touched them personally as women and/or feminists.

Re: touchstoning to 1984—lulz.

"Never get so fascinated by the extraordinary that you miss the ordinary."

Death of a Dutchman: It's high summer, and Marshal Guarnaccia just wants to plan his holiday. But there's a dead man in an apartment, and the Marshal's conscience won't let him agree that it's a suicide. Guarnaccia is a rarity in recent crime novels: a fundamentally decent man with a solid home life who relies on observation and patience to do a job everyone else is too harried to do.

Nabb's series is what I would describe as thinking person's candy floss. There are cozy elements here, and lavish descriptions of Florence, but there's a sadder thread, too—that of a kind and experienced everyman slogging, because it's the right thing to do, through a bureaucracy that refuses to see his worth.

I think I'll save this series as an occasional treat, when my brain wants a lighter mystery but not a magical cat one.

Tepper is one of my favourite authors and I'm sad to hear of her passing. I also recommend Grass as a first book to read by her. I do enjoy some of her later, more polemical works as well, such as Gibbons decline and fall, The family tree and The fresco. And of her early works, the Marianne trilogy is wonderful.

So I read the top (date) couple of reviews for Grass and really it doesn't sound that great. If that's her best work, maybe I'll pass, whilst acknowledging the respect the community has had for her writing.

>55 Sakerfalcon: Thanks! The Marianne trilogy sounds lovely.

>56 reading_fox: So many books, so little time. I just pruned my TBR account from 20K to 7.5K!

"All the bones had been bleached white by the rain, the dew, and the snow."

Winter Mythologies and Abbots is a disappointment. I've given it four stars, because I learned from it, but the prose suffers from obscurity masquerading as intellect and purplish lines about sex that make a Harlequin author look Nobel-winning. "He looks at the wound of wet fire in her tuft of tow, then sees it no longer because he has plunged into the fire. She cries out like a seagull, the bolt of blue lightning unites them"

The vignettes concern themselves with what happens when religious fervor clashes with other strong emotions, e.g., warmongering or a love of reading. The book covers quite a bit of material and shifts between the early Middle Ages to the French Revolution. It's too meta for me, I think.

>58 LibraryPerilous: Um...That's some...unusual...imagery. Maybe it sounded better in French?

>58 LibraryPerilous: Holy cow. I can't even.

>59 SylviaC:; >60 MrsLee: I don't suppose it could be worse in French. :) I would have noped out right then had the book not been only a 115-pager.

reread of The Return of the Soldier: I found Kitty more sympathetic this go-round, perhaps because I saw a bit more clearly how Jenny's own feelings make her a subtly unreliable narrator. It's a lovely novel. "I was left alone with the dusk and the familiar things."

SantaThing will be here soon, and I've piles of books to catalog beforehand. The tsundoku is real.

I know we aren't supposed to talk about politics in this fine establishment, so I will only say that I'm going to curl up with The Lord of the Rings for the next couple of days and that Gandalf's quote really resonates right now.

I also PMed Tim to see if he would give us SantaThing a week early. :)

>63 LibraryPerilous: TLOTR will give you the dose of realism you need to help you recover from last night's surreal fantasy.

In Florida for the next few weeks, beachin' it during the day and reading in the evenings.

For those of you who find snarky history amusing, I recently discovered the Twitter account @CryForByzantium.

>65 LibraryPerilous: That looks like a neat Twitter account.
Enjoy Florida!

Hope you have a great time in Florida! Books and beaches sounds like the perfect combination.

>58 LibraryPerilous: So does it even vaguely live up to its marketing build-up? "Each...exemplifies a power of belief that brings about an achievement—or catastrophe—in the real world" I must admit the quote you provided is quite the eye-roller.

>68 jillmwo: I fear not. Most of the religious fervor feels forced, and there aren't enough of the cheesy lines to offset the sameness of the stories.

>66 SylviaC:; >67 Sakerfalcon: Thanks!

>64 pgmcc: Decided to save LotR for this vacation, so am looking forward to that.

River of Stars: I loved Under Heaven. This loose sequel has all of the problems of Kay and none of the charm of its prequel. I'm going to finish it, because I like it well enough, but I've had my fill of Kay and won't be reading any of his other works for quite some time.