Kerry's (avatiakh) commonplace challenge

I'm planning on keeping my categories to 10 plus an extra one for the overflow.

This coming year my categories will be rather lacklustre hence the 'commonplace' in the title of the thread. I do hope to do mini-challenges within a category, where I make use of some of the categories that I haven't succeeded in in previous years.

I hope to follow some of the challenges in the group as well. i've said this in previous years and haven't managed it past Jan or Feb when my life in reading falls apart or sets sail on a totally unexpected tack. Anyway I've agreed to host one of the scifi months and have been active in the group reads planning thread.

My 2017 challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/248332#

My categories:

1) ANZAC - Australia / New Zealand literature
2) Israel & Jewish World literature
3) Nonfiction
4) Young at Heart - children's & YA
5) Scifi & fantasy
6) Books in Translation
7) The Big Read - doorstoppers & series
8) Challenges - CATS, TIOLI & Theme reading
9) Anthologies, short stories, essays, poetry
10) Thrillers - adventure, crime & espionage
+
Overflow / General Fiction

ANZAC - Australia / New Zealand literature

I ran the ANZAC challenge over in the 75er group in 2016 and hope to bring it back again in 2017 as a Bingo challenge. Currently in the planning stage.

1) Trust No One by Paul Cleave - Jan 06
2) The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth - Jan 10
3) Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher - Jan13
4) Tell the truth, shame the devil by Melina Marchetta
5) Blood Moon by Garry Disher
6) The dark days club by Alison Goodman
7) Whispering Death by Garry Disher
8) Signal Loss by Garry Disher
9) Missus by Ruth Park
10)
11)
12)

Junior ANZAC:
1) The Sam and Lucy Fables by Alan Bagnall
2) The Severed Land by Maurice Gee
3) Ghosts of Parihaka by David Hair
4)Magic and Makutu by David Hair
5)

Possibles:
American Blood by Ben Sanders
Tarzan Presley by Nigel Cox
The Sunken Road by Garry Disher
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
Wish by Peter Goldsworthy
Singing home the whale by Mandy Hager

Israel & Jewish World literature

Maybe do a Focus on a writer - not sure yet, possibly read more Amos Oz
1) The Realist by Asaf Hanuka (GN) - Jan 24
2) Bitter Herbs: A Little Chronicle by Marga Minco
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)

Nonfiction:
1) The Lies they tell by Tuvia Tenenbom
2) A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York by Liana Finck

Juvenile:
1) Mister Doctor: Janusz Korczak and the Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irène Cohen-Janca - Feb 11
2) Lauren Yanofsky hates the Holocaust by Leanne Lieberman - Feb
3) Willy & Max by Amy Littlesugar - Feb
4) Shadow of the Wall by Christa Laird - Apr
5) The fighter by Jean-Jaques Greif - Apr

Lined up:
The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev
The Smile of the Lamb by David Grossman
The Secret Purposes by David Baddiel
The autobiography of God by Julius Lester
Louisa by Simone Zelitch
The song of names by Norman Lebrecht

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport by Saul David
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Nine Suitcases by Bela Zsolt

The Golem by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Judas by Amos Oz

Nonfiction

1) The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis by Darryl Cunningham (GN) - Jan 24
2) Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life by Patrick Van Horne - Feb 09
3)
4)
5)
Juvenile/Illustrated:
1) Religion : A Discovery in Comics by Margreet de Heer
2) Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela S. Turner
3) Such a lovely little war: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong
4) Becoming, unbecoming by Una - Apr
5) The red Virgin and the vision of Utopia by Mary & Bryan Talbot
6) To be a slave by Julius Lester

Maybe do a focus either on travel writing or war
Possibles:
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
The anatomy of a moment by Javier Cercas
Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story by Rebecca Coffey

Young at Heart - children's & YA
Piles and piles of books in my house for this category.

Juvenile
1) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (reread) - finished 04 Jan
2) Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes Danforth Hewes - Jan 05
3) Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff - Jan 17
4) The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz - Jan 22
5) Goth girl and the ghost of a mouse by Chris Riddell - Jan 21
6) Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk - Feb 08
7) Rump:The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Liesl Shurtliff
8) The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill
9) Kings of the Boyne by Nicola Pierce
10) The Far Distant Oxus by Katharine Hull & Pamela Whitlock
11) The story of Diva and Flea by Mo Willems

Young Adult
1) The Leaving by Tara Altebrando - finished 7 Jan
2) I am Rosemarie by Marietta Moskin - Feb 07
3) Strange Star by Emma Carroll
4) Another Me by Eva Wiseman
5) Nothing tastes as good by Claire Hennessy
6) The Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin
7) The girl from everywhere by Heidi Heilig
8) We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan & Brian Conaghan
9) Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci

Illustrated books - graphic novels etc
1) Bandette Volume 3: The House of the Green Mask by Paul Tobin - finished Feb 01
2) The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua - Jan 22
3) Fist stick knife gun: a personal history of violence: a true story in black and white by Geoffrey Canada & Jamar Nicholas - Feb 10
4) The white cat and the monk: A Retelling of the Poem "Pangur Bán" by Jo Ellen Bogart - Feb 10
5) Jane, the fox and me by Fanny Britt - Feb 10
6) A year without mom by Dasha Tolstikova - Feb 11
7) The storyteller by Evan Turk - Feb 12
8) The Grand Mosque of Paris co-written and co-illustrated by Karen Gray Ruelle & Deborah Durland DeSai
9) Harvey by Hervé Bouchard
10) Cloth Lullaby: the woven life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Noveesky
11) Miracle Man: the story of Jesus by John Hendrix
12) Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier
13) Cardboard by Doug TenNapel
14) Rivers of London: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch
15) In Real Life by Cory Doctorow
16) One hundred nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg
17) The Encyclopedia of Early Earth: A Novel by Isabel Greenberg
18) Flight of the Raven by Jean-Pierre Gibrat
19) House held up by trees by Ted Kooser
20) Varmints by Helen Ward

I might focus on British classics or 1001 Books. I'll update and put in a list of possibles
Ok, I've created a pinterest board of 1001 children's books you must read, just a selection of books i'd be interested in picking up for this category, plus my YA to read board from this year which I keep adding to.
https://uk.pinterest.com/jelsamina/1001-childrens-books/
https://uk.pinterest.com/jelsamina/ya-to-read/
The Twelfth of July by Joan Lingard
The Miller's Boy by Barbara Willard

some tidying up of series/trilogys etc
The FitzOsbornes at War by Michelle Cooper
Starry Night Troubles trilogy by Martin Waddell
Frankie's Story Troubles trilogy by Martin Waddell

Focus on SF Masterworks:
1)
2)
3)
scifi
1) The Incal(GN) by Alejandro Jodorowsky - moebius - 11 Jan
2) The Power by Naomi Alderman - 29 Jan
3) The World of Edena by Moebius - Feb 16
4) Orbital, Vol 1: Scars by Sylvain Runberg, illustrator: Serge Pellé
5)
Focus on Dragons:
1)
2)
3)
fantasy:
1) Thraxas at the races by Martin Scott/Millar
2)
3)
Young people's scifi & fantasy
1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
2) When the sea turned to silver by Grace Lin
3)

Possibles
Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop - failed to read in 2016
Black powder by Naomi Novik
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The windup girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The servants by Michael Marshall Smith
The Fifth Season by NK Jemison
The Emperor of the Eight Islands by Liarn Hearn
Roadside picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven

Books in Translation:

1) The Flaw by Antonis Samarakis (Greece) - finished 09 Jan
2) Wabi Sabi (Spain) by Francesc Miralles - finished 02 Feb
3) Silence by Shūsaku Endō (Japan)
4) More Beer by Jakob Arjouni (Germany)
5)
Young People in translation:
1) War without friends by Evert Hartman (Holland) - Feb 02
2) Shylock's Daughter by Mirjam Pressler (Germany) - Feb 12
3) The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux (France) - Apr
4)

Possibles:
The cat who came off the roof by Annie Schmidt
The Song of Seven by Tonke Dragt
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Mikhail Strogoff by Jules Verne
The sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus
The case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig
The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani

The Big Read - doorstoppers & series -
Place for those doorstopper paperbacks that I avoid even though I've owned them for years and series reading, thought I'd have a go at Poldark.

1) Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)

Group Read - possibles
Poldark by Winston Graham
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
A suitable boy by Vikram Seth
King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett
A Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
And the Land lay still by James Robertson
Underworld by Don DeLillo

Challenges - CATS, TIOLI & Theme reading

Hoping to participate in shared reading
1) The invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach - TIOLI shared read
2) Ross Poldark by Winston Graham - group read
3) Demelza by Winston Graham - group read - Apr 25
4) The Green Man by Kingsley Amis - BAC - Apr
5) The glorious heresies by Lisa McInerney - Orange Jan - Apr

Anthologies, short stories, essays, poetry

1)
2)
3)
4)

Possibles:
Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature ed. Alberto Manguel
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Oxford Book of Scottish Short Stories ed Douglas Dunn
First Light: a celebration of Alan Garner ed. Erica Wagner
Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy by Michael Moorcock

Thrillers - adventure, crime & espionage

1) A voice in the night by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #20) - Jan 18
2) The spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson - Jan 30
3)
4)

YA & children
1)
2)
3)
4)

Possibles:
All That Followed by Gabriel Urza
The Whispering City by Sara Moliner
Moskva by Jack Grimwood
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Gerald Seymour
The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard
Blood is Dirt by Robert Wilson
A Darkening Stain by Robert Wilson
Murder in Passy by Cara Black
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Night Manager by John Le Carre'
In cold blood by Truman Capote
The merchant's house by Kate Ellis

Overflow or General Fiction:

For all the books that don't fit elsewhere:
1) The Book Boy by Joanna Trollope - Jan 25
2) The grand tour by Adam O'Fallon Price - Feb 06
3) Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo
4)
5)

Possibles:
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
The virgin suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

I want to fit in my mini categories but not sure where as I don't have a general fiction category so might have to make a change here and there.

Looking forward to another great year of following your reading. I always know that I am going to get lots of reading ideas from your thread.

Thanks Judy - I'm a bit out of it this year, so decided I need a 'back to basics' category challenge for 2017.

You've picked some great pictures for your categories this year. Good luck with your reading.

Yes, those pictures are wonderful. Happy reading!

Excellent pics for your categories.

Nice setup! Hope it works well for you!

Great setup! I hope to follow along with you on Poldark as I continue the series.

Like your categories - hope you enjoy Flowers for Algernon as much as I did.

Some interesting choices that you you have lined up there!

Looking forward to following your reading, especially the ANZAC category!

Looks good - I like the focus areas within your categories.

Great to see you here - another thread where the bookbullets will come flying. :) Looking forward to it.

Great categories and great graphics! Mini-challenges within a category sounds like a fun way to keep the categories interesting. I tend to experience "category burn out" by the end of the year, so I will be keeping your mini-challenges idea in mind when I get around to planning my 2018 reading.

Looking forward to seeing what books your read to fill out your categories.

You should end up with a lot of interesting reading with your set-up.

Looks like some great reading!

Thanks everyone. I'm now thinking about my January reading and which longer reads I want to kick off with.

I think I'll still be clearing the decks with a lot of library books but the chunksters I want to pick up are:
To green angel tower by Tad Williams, the final book in the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy - at over 1000pgs a fitting epic read for the conclusion. I've just finished book 2 and I took several months over it as I was reading it on my phone.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra - long on my tbr and I'd like to have it done before I tackle A suitable boy later in the year.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong (14th century Yuan Dynasty) - my kids are obssessed with The Three Kingdoms and are slowly watching all 95 odd episodes via you tube, they've read most of the book and have been pressing me to get onto it, so I will set myself the target of 100pgs per week. There's three volumes so looking at about 1500pgs altogether.

King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett - will pick this up once I'm done with one of the above. Will probably watch the new MacBeth movie first and maybe read the play.

Lots more chunksters on my shelves but will be happy enough if I get these done early in the new year.

Your categories sure have a wonderful structure to them. Subcategories, too! I have a soft spot for dragons so I'll be sure to watch what books get posted there.

I hope 2017 will be a wonderful year for you!

Looking good!

I'm starting off my first year in this group by participating in the women & SFF categories. Which month are you up for science fiction? I am reading Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning for January.

>33 markon: Hi Ardene - Welcome to the group and I'm also going to participate in the SFF challenges. I'm doing October's Near Future sci fi one. The Palmer book looks interesting so I hope you enjoy it, I'll look out for your comments and have already added it to my 'to read' list over on goodreads.
I've just visited the January thread and added the last book in the Tad Williams trilogy that I had hoped to finish this year, To Green Angel Tower which will probably take me all month to get through.

>31 mamzel: I'm also partial to a good dragon read though I didn't read that many this year so am looking to continue in 2017. Hoping to finish the Temeraire series, I've only read two so far and really like them.

>32 The_Hibernator: Welcome and thanks.

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
children's fiction
I've decided to listen to the Stephen Fry audios of HP. I've gone straight for the third book as I've read the first two many times and #3 is a favourite. I've only read the other 4 books once and that was when they first came out, so I thought I'd do a slow listen to them over the next year or so.
I'm only listening to them in the car when I'm on my own so I won't get through them that fast.

Anyway this was fun, I got through the last two CDs yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed the unveiling of Sirius Black as good guy, not villain.

Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes Danforth Hewes (1930)
children's fiction
Newbery Honour book, an historical fiction set in Portugal during the last years of the 15th century, it revolves around Vasco da Gama's voyage to discover the Spice Islands. I loved this, the politics of the times were really well done. There was lots of intrigue with the Venetian attempt to sabotage the Portuguese goal to wrest control of the spice markets from Arab domination. Also the expulsion of the Jews became an important part of the plot as the marriage of the Portuguese King to a Spanish princess would only go ahead if he expelled the Jews from Portugal. Magellan, as a young page, was also an endearing character. I need to find another book on this corner of history.

The illustrations at the start of each chapter by Lynd Ward were quite superb.

Trust No One by Paul Cleave (2015)
crime / ANZAC category
Read this for the ANZAC reading challenge. I lapped up this entertaining psychological thriller in a couple of days. My second book by Cleave and I'll definitely be back for more as I thought his debut, The Cleaner was a great read too.

Jerry is a fairly successful crime writer with the pseudonym, Henry Cutter, who at the age of 49 develops Alzeimer's. The disease's grip on him is sudden and rapid. He keeps a journal to remember who he really is because he sometimes gets confused between what is real and what is fiction, confessing to the murders from his books could land him in a lot of trouble but maybe he really has done murder...Jerry could be his own worse enemy, maybe Henry Cutter is some sort of alter ego? Where did he put his journal, it could have all the answers.
The book does a back and forward time thing using the journal to the point that the reader too becomes a little confused just like Jerry.

I also really enjoyed The Cleaner (if one can say that about a book about a serial killer) and hope to read more books by Paul Cleave soon.

The Leaving by Tara Altebrando (2016)
YA
An interesting premise and held my attention though it finished up with a bit of a whimper. Eleven years earlier six 5 yr old children were taken from a small town in Florida. One night, 5 return, they are pushed out from a van, each with a map to their family home, each with no memory of the past eleven years. The story focuses mostly on two of these teens plus Avery, the sister of the boy who did not return, as they try to solve the mystery of those missing years.

>40 DeltaQueen50: I have Cleave's The Killing Hour on my tbr pile, a lucky snaffle at the library sale table last year.

Spice and the devil's cave sounds interesting.

>43 markon: Yes, complex history dished up as a great middle grade read. I was surprised how informative it was, really brought the motivations for the Age of exploration to light.

The Flaw by Antonis Samarakis (1966 Greece)
translated fiction
I wanted to read this novel after coming across it in a Spanish novel I read last year, love in lower-case where the main character is meeting the love of his life in a bookshop cafe and buys it for her as a gift. Luckily my library had it stored in their stacks.
It's a great little read, dated but really well done. I'll quote Graham Greene from the back cover of the book - '...a story of the psychological struggle between two secret police agents and their suspects told with wit, imagination and quite outstanding technical skill...'
It won a few awards in Greece and France way back when and was a bestseller and widely translated, and a film in 1974. '...his novel “The Flaw” was honored in Greece, receiving the prize of the “12” in 1966, and in France, receiving the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière (Grand Prize for Crime and Detective Fiction) in 1970. In recognition of his entire opus, he was awarded the “Europalia” Literary prize in 1982, and the French National Prize for the Arts and Literature in 1995.'
An obituary for the writer here explains he had an impressive life outside of his writing & poetry: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/antonis-samarakis-37031.html
'His work is a testimonial on the tragedy of totalitarianism, the absence of freedom and people’s struggle to attain it. His work also has a strong element of denunciation of social ills, and it reflects his personal concerns for the present and future of modern society.'

The Essential Leunig: Cartoons from a Winding Path by Michael Leunig (2012)
cartoons
Read through this collection of Australian Leunig's cartoons, a mix of philosophical, silly and anti-war statements.
http://www.leunig.com.au/


Rivers of London: Body Work by Ben Aaronovitch (2016)
graphic novel
A short story featuring Peter Grant is given the graphic novel treatment and it all works out rather well. The first in a series of graphic novels that slot into the overall Peter Grant series. It was fun seeing the characters in full colour.


What I was doing while you were breeding by Kristin Newman (2014)
memoir
Not counting this one. This is billed as a sexy travel memoir and I thought it would be a fun read as Newman has worked as a writer or producer on several well known comedy shows such as 'How I met your mother' & 'Chuck'. After reading the first chapter I decided to flick through and read bits n pieces, so flicked through the chapter on New Zealand, another where she spent a month in South America and then the chapter on Israel. Went on to read the last chapter about meeting and dating the guy she ends up marrying. So I read quite a bit after deciding not to read the book, but it was only mildly amusing/interesting and sort of superficial gloss as far as travel goes. I'm not the target audience, though a good book should rise above that and this doesn't.

The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth (2013)
historical fiction / ANZAC
I loved this, probably not as much as Bitter Greens but close second. I'll have to read some of her YA fantasy.
This tells the story of Dortchen Wild, the young girl who lived next door to the Grimm family and was one of the main storytellers who supplied the Grimms with the tales that made them famous.
From the age of twelve Dortchen knew she was in love with Wilhelm but it took many years for them to be married (she was 32 and he was 39 when they finally married). She grew up in a time of war and Napoleon's thirst to conquer all of Europe including Russia.
There's a good article about Forsyth and the book here: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/missing-piece-of-puzzling-tale-2013032...

>47 avatiakh: oooooooo The Wild Girl is a BB for me!

>39 avatiakh: Trust No One sounds very interesting.

The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius (1981-88 French) (2015 Eng)
graphic novel / scifi
A fun scifi adventure in graphic novel form. Starring John Difool, a rather shabby detective, who basically gets chosen to save the universe when all he wants to do is have a holiday with the woman of his dreams.
The artwork is extremely good. The Incal was first released in serial form.
_

There's a film trailer that's pretty amazing based on the same artwork as in the book - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Vkyzrs1Fk

Crush by Frédéric Dard (1959 French) (2016 Eng)
fiction / translated
This has aged well. What starts out as a merely interesting read turns outright creepy to finish. One of the Pushkin Vertigo imprint, classic crime novels from around the world.
17 yr old Louise talks her way into a job as maid to a young American couple. She's seen them driving a big beautiful car near her home, a small neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris and they only live a few streets away. Their home and way of life is so different from her own and while they are the perfect couple there does seem to be some unhappy secret.

>51 avatiakh: This one sounds interesting! And the Pushkin Vertigo imprint definitely sounds like something I need to check out.

>51 avatiakh: Yes, I am very interested in this one and am adding it to my wishlist.

>51 avatiakh: Me three.

>52 christina_reads: >53 DeltaQueen50: >54 LisaMorr: He seems to have been quite a prolific writer and Pushkin Press has a few of them on offer.

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher (2007)
crime fiction / ANZAC

Hal Challis #4. Read for the ANZAC Reading Challenge - read a book that won an award. This won the 2007 Ned Kelly Award for best novel. I'm really enjoying this series, have become a real fan of Garry Disher over the past year when I read through his Wyatt series. This book is one of those perfect police procedural reads, you know the characters well from the previous three books and the plot is intricate and satisfying.
Challis is on a month's leave visiting the remote rural area in South Australia where he grew up. His father is dying and he also wants to look into his brother-in-law's mystery disappearance from five years earlier.
Destry is left to manage on her own, there's a missing child and it looks like a paedophile ring is operating in the area.

>47 avatiakh: - Oooooohhhhhhh..... I think you got me with both The Wild Girl and Bitter Greens.

The story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (2002)
fiction / TIOLI challenge
William Trevor died in November 2016 and I meant to read this for a TIOLI challenge that Paul set in December but never got to it.
A lovely read. Trevor describes the times and the local setting vividly. Lucy is a delightful little girl, in love with the rural setting that she is growing up in.
The Gaults are an old Anglo Protestant family who have lived in Ireland for several generations. It's the 1920s and after some disturbances at the family estate the parents decide it is best that they take their young daughter and move to England until all the violence settles down. The night before they're to leave the unhappy Lucy does a disappearing act...an act that has consequences that echo down the years.

>57 lkernagh: Lori - Bitter Greens is just wonderful.

Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff (2002)
children's fiction
A great read. Hollis Woods is 12yrs old, shunted from foster home to foster home, she runs away a lot. She's also a talented artist and at the start of the book she's come to stay with a retired art teacher and her tough old cat.

A voice in the night by Andrea Camilleri (2016)
fiction
Montalbano #20. So the series rolls on. I'd seen the tv episode of this one but not remembered enough for it to matter. Montalbano starts the week with a run in with an impatient motorist and ends up with two murders to investigate.
At the library I'm first in line for the final season of the tv series Montalbano which is on order and also requested another Italian tv series to try, Murders at BarLume which is from the makers of Montalbano and is based on books by Marco Malvaldi. It's set on the Tuscan coast. So a new series to read as well.
http://www.mhzchoice.com/wordpress/from-the-makers-of-montalbano-murders-at-barl...

>58 avatiakh: - Taking a BB for the Trevor book!

>61 avatiakh: - Yay, the next Montalbano book is available in English!
heads off to the public library catalogue to reserve a copy.

Goth girl and the ghost of a mouse by Chris Riddell (2013)
children's fiction
This is the first of four in the Goth Girl series. Riddell is probably better known as an illustrator, he's done the UK editions of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I knew him first as the illustrator of Paul Stewart's The Edge Chronicles. I love his style and he's also written a few children's books before. This book is a fun story about a young girl, Ada, who lives with her grieving father, Lord Goth of Ghastly-Gorm Hall. Her mother, a Thessalonikan tightrope walker, died tragically on the roof of the Hall during a thunderstorm when Ada was only a baby.
Ada must wear big heavy boots as her father believes that children must be heard and not seen, so when he hears her he has time to make an escape. One night Ada wakes to find the ghost of a mouse at the end of her bed.

some of the characters in Goth Girl

The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz (2016)
children's fiction

Wow, this was a wonderful and very different read. Gidwitz has chosen the style of The Canterbury Tales, set in 13th century France. The book is set out like an illuminated manuscript, with beautiful chapter headings done by Hatem Aly, just a shame that it's all black & white. The book isn't perfect but will be lapped up by children and so it should, it will make them aware of history, persecution, sainthood, religion, all the while they are being totally entertained by these three incredibly different children.
A passing stranger stops at a village inn and asks for tales about the three children and a greyhound who are being pursued by the King. Are they saints or heretics?
Here's a quote from a review by children's literature expert, Betsy Bird: '...so let’s talk religious persecution, religious fundamentalism, and religious tolerance. As I write this review in 2016 and politicians bandy hate speech about without so much as a blink, I can’t think of a book written for kids more timely than this. Last year I asked a question of my readers: Can a historical children’s book contain protagonists with prejudices consistent with their time period? Mr. Gidwitz seeks to answer that question himself. His three heroes are not shining examples of religious tolerance born of no outside influence. When they escape together they find that they are VERY uncomfortable in one another’s presence. Mind you, I found William far more tolerant of Jacob than I expected (though he does admittedly condemn Judaism once in the text). His dislike of women is an interesting example of someone rejecting some but not all of the childhood lessons he learned as a monk. Yet all three kids fear one another as unknown elements and it takes time and a mutually agreed upon goal to get them from companionship to real friendship...Yet here we have a man who has found a way to tie-in stories about religious figures to the anti-Semitism that is still with us to this day. At the end of his Author’s Note, Gidwitz mentions that as he finished this book, more than one hundred and forty people were killed in Paris by terrorists. He writes of Medieval Europe, “It was a time when people were redefining how they lived with the ‘other,’ with people who were different from them.” The echoes reverberate today. Says Gidwitz, “I can think of nothing sane to say about this except this book.” '
Here's the link to her review which sums up this book far better than I'll even try to: http://blogs.slj.com/afuse8production/2016/07/07/review-of-the-day-the-inquisito...
another:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/books/review/inquisitors-tale-adam-gidwitz-ha...

The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua (2015)
graphic novel

All I can say is that you are taken on a journey exploring a sort of 'what if' alternate history. What if Babbage had actually built his difference engine, what if Lovelace had been right alongside him helping in the process. The graphic novel gives you the actual true story of Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, a master mathematician and Charles Babbage, father of the computer, but also explores a sort of weird steampunk world where the ideas no longer remain on paper but are built and put in action.
It's an interesting read with lots of footnotes and endnotes supplying details of their lives and also the lives of their contemporary mathematicians and writers.
_

Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood (2016)
picturebook

An informative picturebook telling the true story of a small Paraguayan village, Cateura, that built musical instruments out of items they found on the nearby landfill so their children could learn to play. The resulting orchestra has traveled the world raising funds that go back to help the villagers build a better life. The text is a bit workmanlike, the art lovely and the story inspiring.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/jul/13...
There's also a documentary: Landhill harmonic
http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/




We found a hat by Jon Klassen (2016)
picturebook
Klassen's third 'hat' book and he still manages to delight with subtle subversive humour and minimal text.

>62 lkernagh: Ooh the dreaded BB. I must go off and visit a few threads so I can collect a few!

I love Jon Klassen's "hat" books!

>64 avatiakh: I am definitely interested in getting my hands on The Inquisitor's Tale as I have previously read another Adam Gidwitz which I really enjoyed, A Tale Dark and Grimm, and it was dark but also humorous and very clever.

>68 rabbitprincess: Oh yes, I'm a 'hat' fan too.

>69 DeltaQueen50: Yes, I've read A tale dark and Grimm, it was really good.

Ideas are all around by Philip C. Stead (2016)
picturebook

A delightful, whimsical picturebook that just wallows in the everydayness of a neighbourhood walk. Stead takes his dog, Wednesday, for a walk as he's out of ideas for the story he must write.
I loved the art which is a combo of small instamatic-like photos, collage and drawings. He talks a lot about typing and typewriters and the font choice reflects that too. Overall, a lovely artistic evocation of writer's block.

___

The Realist by Asaf Hanuka (2015)
graphic novel / Israel
This is a collection of comic strips that follow the reality of Hanuka's life as a family man, struggling to make enough money to live the life he had once hoped for, domestic and lifestyle choices and the nitty gritty of ordinary day to day interactions. I loved it, his art is beautiful and full of irony and imaginative ideas. Hanuka has an identical twin brother, Tomer, who is also a graphic artist and they collaborate on projects such as sharing the artwork for The Divine.

__

The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis by Darryl Cunningham (2015)
graphic novel

This nonfiction read gives an overview of Ayn Rand's life and her legacy, Alan Greenspan & the financial crash. I was wondering if I could find something Ayn Rand-lite so I didn't have to read Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead but would inform me a little on the who, how, what of Rand's philosophy. This graphic novel fits the bill very nicely. The first third tells of Ayn Rand's life and growing influence, the second third is about the how the 2007/8 subprime mortgage crisis and financial crash happened and the last third is about the current politics of the US in the age of selfishness. Really interesting.

Waaay too many book bullets here! At least I can get get some of the children's books at my library! But The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage and The Age of Selfishness and The Realist are going on my wish list.

>74 markon: Yes, these threads are all dangerous!

The Book Boy by Joanna Trollope (2006)
novella

I've put this down as a novella, it's part of a Bloomsbury series - 'Quick Reads is the initiative for adults who have never got the reading bug or who have lost the habit, or indeed avid readers wanting a quick read.'
I thought it was a great little story about Alice who has a secret, a secret that has mightily impacted on her life...she's illiterate. How she solves this problem is done really well here. Trollope covers Alice's feelings of being disenfranchised by her husband and also her teenagers who feel emboldened to question her authority as she doubts her own worthiness and value.
I had this in my handbag as something to read as I was out and about but after I started it I just polished it off once I got home. The vocabulary is fairly basic and the font size fairly large but never were that noticeable once you got to know Alice.

Cry, heart, but never break by Glenn Ringtved (2001, Norway) (2016 Eng)
picturebook

This won the 2017 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the U.S. It is a soulful look at death and grief, and is a very sympathetic read. The cover shows a young girl comforting Death before he must go upstairs to the ailing grandmother. It's Death who tells a story to the grandchildren that gives them the ability to cope with their grandmother's inevitable death. Inspired. Illustrations by Charlotte Pardi are just right for the narrative with lots of hopeful colour.


They all saw a cat by Brendan Wenzel (2016)
picturebook

This won a 2017 Caldecott Medal Honor Award for illustration. Simple repetitive text showing how different animals and insects 'see' the family cat. Imaginative rather than scientific.
_


Journey by Aaron Becker (2013)
picturebook
The first of three books in this series of wordless fantasy. A young girl escapes her room by drawing a door with her red crayon. Helped by her imagination she draws a boat and has a lovely adventure in this fantasy world. Delightful, quiet, unassuming and finishes with a new friendship, just perfect. Followed by Quest and Return. I saw Return mentioned on someone's LT thread so had to have a look. I'll be getting the others from my library if it has them.
_

Lovely video of the making of The Return - Becker lived in Spain while creating this book - http://www.storybreathing.com/making-of-return/

The Power by Naomi Alderman (2016)
scifi

I enjoyed this. The premise is that teen girls suddenly start developing a power, sort of an ability to give electric shocks, mostly they can control the intensity. They are able to 'wake up' this power in adult women. This becomes a world wide phenomenon and causes all sorts of changes in gender equality. Women in Saudi Arabia rise up against the male domination and in East Europe women hidden away by sex trafficking gangs are able to overcome their captors.
It is premised that the power has come from leftover WW2 chemical agents that got into the world's water supply and has taken a couple of generations to take hold. The book follows the fortunes of several women as they rise to power and a young male journalist who documents it all.

Cart's Top 200 Adult books for Young Adults: two decades in review by Michael Cart (2013)
nonfiction

This is an annotated list of books put out by the ALA (American Library Association) of adult books that would appeal to teen readers. There are two sections, fiction and nonfiction and two appendix lists - 'books noted for their originality' and 'books notable for their overall excellence.' The ALA has an annual Alex Award, given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18, and these books are also noted.
While I'm aware of many on the list, there are others that I've not heard of so browsing through the book is quite illuminating. Each entry gives a wealth of information and there's an interesting introduction as well.
A sampling of those I hadn't been aware of:
Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan - graphic novel
Getting In by James Finnay Bolan
More like not running away by Paul Shepherd
Snow in August by Pete Hamill - well, I own this one!
Youth in Revolt: the journals of Nick Twisp by C.D. Payne
Fist stick knife gun: A Personal History of Violence in America by Geoffrey Canada - NF graphic novel
Nickle and dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature by Ilan Stavans
True Notebooks by Mark Salzman

The spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson (2014)
fiction
I've had this on my to read list since it won the Betty Trask Prize in 2015. It's a rather brutal look at life in Berlin at the end of World War 2. The city is a pile of rubble, to survive one must use the black market and there are many ready to exploit the vulnerable. Kasper Meier is a minor player in the black market but now he's caught up in a blackmail attempt that turns darker and darker. Almost every character is a ruined version of their former selves here, Meier was once happy running a bar with his lover, Philip, but that was long before the war, now he survives on the dregs that Berlin offers while trying to uncover who is behind the blackmail. I liked this for all the unrelenting darkness.
Another book set in Berlin about the direct aftermath of the war is The Good German.

Bandette Volume 3: The House of the Green Mask by Paul Tobin (2016)
graphic novel
Cute heroine, Bandette, always seems to be one step ahead of everyone else. I enjoy these, Bandette is fun, a chocoholic Robin Hood- style thief.

War without friends by Evert Hartman (1979)
YA / translated fiction
This was one that Anita read last year which sounded interesting and as there was an English translation at my library I was able to read it too.
What makes it interesting is that the story is told from the POV of a teenage boy, Arnold, whose father and hence the family is part of the Dutch NSB (National Socialist Movement) which supported the Nazis. Arnold must eventually confront his family's steadfast support for the Nazis when all around him his classmates are defiant in their opposition.

Rivers of London: Body Work was part of my Christmas loot - looking forward to it!

Wabi Sabi by Francesc Miralles (2016) (Spain 2013)
translated fiction
This is the sequel to Love in Lowercase and at first I thought it wouldn't have the charm of the first book, however I was soon back into the life of hapless Samuel, the literary academic, who ends up taking a holiday in Japan on a whim. Like with the first book, Miralles loves to name drop numerous books and this time I'd read most of them, but his use of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's In praise of shadows was pretty much perfect and I just have to read this essay on aesthetics for myself. A quick delightful read.

>83 -Eva-: Eva, I've got the next one on order

The grand tour by Adam O'Fallon Price (2016)
fiction
It's a debut novel, a road trip novel and a great read. Richard, failed writer and disgruntled old man has managed to write a bestseller, a memoir of his Vietnam service, so he's off on a book tour. First stop, he's met by Vance, a depressed recent college dropout who is also Richard's biggest (only?) fan. Together they make a deal that Vance will drive Richard on the tour. Richard needs looking after, he's alcoholic and completely not prepared to do readings and just be normal. Vance is a wannabe writer, awkward, just out of adolescence and already on the road to being a loser.
It's funny, painful, makes you wince but so wonderfully real and human. I loved this.

"You asked me the other night, at the thing, what advice I’d give young writers,” Richard tells Vance. “And I gave you some glib answer, and I feel shitty about that. I probably acted like I think it’s all a waste of time, which I do, but still. Everything’s a waste of time, but books are better than everything else. There’s some kind of dumb honor in it, at least.”

I'll definitely be hanging out for his next book.

Checking out your ANZAC category and hoping to hear that Wish is as memorable as Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam.

I preferred Garry Disher's Hal Challis series to the Wyatt books. What do you think?

Yes, I read the Wyatt books straight through and enjoyed them but the Hal Challis ones are better. I have Blood Moon out from the library.
I might not get to Wish as I'm doing a ANZAC Bingo challenge of Australian & NZ reading. Here's my current proposed list.

ANZAC Bingo 1x25
1: Read a book set around WW1 - Somme Mud by E.P.F. Lynch
2: Read a dystopian novel - The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison
3: Read a book published between 1950-1979 - Living in the Maniototoby Janet Frame (1979)
4: Read a book about convicts or forced migration - The Second Bridegroom by Rodney Hall
5: Read a book by a dead author - The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde
6: Read a book from a 'best of' list - The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks
7: Read a book with a rural setting - The White Earth by Andrew McGahan
8: Read a book with yellow on the cover - Between Sky and Sea by Herz Bergner
9: Read a book less than 200 pages - The severed land by Maurice Gee
10: Read a book set outside Australasia - The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth
11: Read a journal/memoir (can be fiction) - Looking for Darwin by Lloyd Spencer Davis
12: Read a book about colonists/settlers - Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
13: Read a book with a name in the title - The Legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir
14: Read a fantasy novel - The Magicians' Guild by Trudi Canavan
15: Read a book about the goldrush - It's raining in Mango by Thea Astley
16: Read an award winner - Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher
17: Read a book with a murder - Trust No One by Paul Cleave
18: Read a book by a young writer under 35yrs - While we run by Karen Healey
19: Read a book with a school/education setting - Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
20: Read a book published in 2016/17 - Tell the truth, shame the devil by Melina Marchetta
21: Read a book with a # or quantity in the title - Sixty Lights by Gail Jones
22:Read a book about a marriage - Perfect Couple by Derek Hansen
23:Read a young adult book - The dark days club by Alison Goodman
24: Read a book by an indigenous writer - Mutuwhenua by Patricia Grace
25: Read a book with an animal/bird on the cover - All the green year by Don Charlwood

I've added titles but reserve the right to chop and change as the year progresses.

I am Rosemarie by Marietta Moskin (1972)
YA
This is an autobiographical novel of Moskin's experiences as a teen girl in the Holocaust. She wrote it as a novel so she could composite some characters, put some emotional distance between herself and the main character and also so she could make the character more mature and reflective.
Rosemarie and her parents have been living some years in Amsterdam, having moved from Austria. While most of their relatives are leaving for America or Palestine, they are happy to stay in Holland. Once war breaks out it soon becomes clear that this was a bad decision. They spend about 18 months in Westerbork Transit Camp in Holland, while there they are able to get Paraguayan passports sent to them from a family member in Switzerland. These passports give them some protection and they are moved to Bergen-Belsen for a year and then after a prisoner transfer with Switzerland falls through, spend some months in a Red Cross Camp in Biberach with civilian internees who'd been deported from the Channel Islands.

Westerbork Transit Camp: From this camp, 101,000 Dutch Jews and about 5,000 German Jews were deported to their deaths in Occupied Poland. In addition, there were about 400 Gypsies in the camp and, at the very end of the War, some 400 women from the resistance movement. Only 5,200 of them survived, most of them in Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen, or were liberated at Westerbork.

>88 avatiakh: Some interesting categories in your list!

I love how you set up the ANZAC Challenge this year. I'm not officially joining in but I do have a number of ANZAC reads planned for the year and I couldn't help but see how they would fit into the Bingo format.

Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk (2016)
children's fiction

Oh wow, this was brilliant. Very thoughtful plot with wonderful characters. Annabelle is being bullied rather viciously by new girl Betty who threatens to hurt Annabelle's younger brothers if she doesn't cooperate. Betty is a real nasty piece of work and she manages to divert the blame of a serious incident onto a harmless tramp, Toby, who has lived in the woods for several years. Annabelle, her brothers and Betty must all pass by the woods and Wolf Hollow on their way from the farms where they live to school. This was a Newbery Honor Book (2017).

>90 MissWatson: Thanks, I had fun choosing all these bingo lines.

>91 DeltaQueen50: Do please post there whenever you read an Australian or NZ writer as it all helps create some enthusiasm for this part of the world.
I felt that I had to be a bit looser with the guidelines for the ANZAC challenge. The 75er group has so much going on and a lot of it is too tied to the month by month which I find impossible to keep to.... and I need to pick up another ANZAC read.

>93 avatiakh: I came across some very promising ANZAC books last year with the GeoCAT and I hope to make time for them this year. Thanks for the link to the ANZAC challenge, I'll certainly go and explore those lists.

>93 avatiakh: I did drop by, Kerry and I certainly will again as I read more books that fit.

>78 avatiakh: I'll take a BB for The Power; thanks for your review.

Fist stick knife gun: a personal history of violence: a true story in black and white by Geoffrey Canada & Jamar Nicholas (2010)
graphic novel

This graphic novel is an adaption of Canada's 1995 novel of the same name. It's a story of growing up in the Bronx in the 1960s, poor, black, no father figure. Canada eventually rose above it all to get a college education and to come back to found the Harlem Children's Zone. This is rather impressive, showing how the hierarchy of the street worked back then - boys had to fight to be accepted, had to learn how to fight, to stand up for themselves and their friends. Once they'd established their place on their street, then they had to do it all over again once they got to school, where the kids from all the other streets turned up. This was a time before the current gun culture, before crack cocaine changed the way things were.
There's a TED talk with Geoffrey Canada here: https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools_enough_is_enough


The white cat and the monk: A Retelling of the Poem "Pangur Bán" by Jo Ellen Bogart (2016)
picturebook

Illustrations by Sydney Smith of Sidewalk Flowers fame.
Quite delightful, the text is very simple and the fact that the poem has lasted down through the centuries makes it quite the marvel. The art is all in muted browns and set out like a graphic novel.

'Sometime in the ninth century, somewhere in present-day southern Germany, this solitary scholar penned a beautiful short poem in Old Irish, titled “Pangur Bán” — an ode to the parallel pleasures of man and feline as one pursues knowledge and the other prey, and to how their quiet companionship amplifies their respective joys.' 'The poem has been translated and adapted many times over the centuries (perhaps most famously by W.H. Auden' - Brainpickings

Irish version:

Messe ocus Pangur Bán
cechtar náthar fria saindán:
bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im saincheirdd.

Version by W.H. Auden:

Pangur, white Pangur, How happy we are
Alone together, scholar and cat
Each has his own work to do daily;
For you it is hunting, for me study.
Your shining eye watches the wall;
My feeble eye is fixed on a book.
You rejoice, when your claws entrap a mouse;
I rejoice when my mind fathoms a problem.
Pleased with his own art, neither hinders the other;
Thus we live ever without tedium and envy.

Another version:

I & Pangur Ban my cat
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit & find
Entertainment to our mind.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye,
Full & fierce & sharp & sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

So in peace our task we ply
Pangur Ban my cat & I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine & he has his

And The scholar and his cat, translated by Robin FLowers: https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/pangur-ban.html

__

From wikipedia: In the 2009 animated movie The Secret of Kells, which is heavily inspired by Irish mythology, one of the supporting characters is a white cat named Pangur Bán who arrives in the company of a monk. A paraphrase of the poem in modern Irish is read out during the credit roll by actor and Irish speaker, Mick Lally.

Jane, the fox and me by Fanny Britt (2012 Canada/French) (2013 English)
graphic novel

The attraction here is illustrator Isabelle Arsenault whose work I've enjoyed before. This is about Helene, a lonely school girl who is bullied by classmates. She escapes into the story of Jane Eyre, comparing herself to the heroine.
When the class goes on a school camp, Helene ends up in the outcasts' tent, meets a fox and comes home with a new friend. Lovely and the illustrations really do capture the idea of loneliness.
More here at brainpickings: https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/25/jane-the-fox-and-me/

__

A year without mom by Dasha Tolstikova (2015)
graphic novel
I liked this. It's set in 1990s Moscow and covers the year that 12 yr old Dasha lives with her grandparents while her mother goes to the US for postgraduate study. The illustration style is all clean lines, b&w with a focus on the use of red and also occasional other colours.

__
a studio visit with the real Dasha: https://penandoink.com/2016/02/15/a-studio-visit-with-dasha-tolstikova/

Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley (2014)
nonfiction
This was an interesting read about the Marine's combat hunter program and how you can use some of the tactics to keep yourself safe as the world evolves into an increasingly unsafe place. The term left of bang is referring to noticing and taking some sort of action before an incident (bang) rather than reacting to one that is/has taken place (right of bang). This involves becoming self aware of one's situation, the environment, becoming more observant of others.

'Staying left of bang, write Van Horne and Riley (the son of a police officer), starts with enhancing your observational skills. Drawing on scientific research findings, they describe in detail how to detect and analyze suspicious human behavior in six “domains” that “communicate current emotions and possibly future intentions” to determine a potential threat. The domains, or cue sources, are:

Kinesics, people’s conscious and subconscious body language
Biometrics, human beings’ “uncontrollable and automatic biological responses to stress”
Proxemics, the way subjects use the space around them and interact with surrounding people
Geographics, reading familiar and unfamiliar patterns of behavior within a given environment
Iconography, the expression of beliefs and affiliations through symbols, and
Atmospherics, “the collective attitudes, moods, and behaviors present in a given situation or place.”
The book points out that by searching for “clusters” of cues from these domains, you can learn to enhance your abilities to observe your surroundings and improve the skills you already possess.' - https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/situational-awareness-lets-stay-left-bang/

Some of the videos mentioned in the book can be found here:
http://www.cp-journal.com/articles-videos-mentioned-left-bang/

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan (2006)
graphic novel
I loved the artwork by Niko Henrichon, so much orange and yellow. This is based on the true story of the lions that escaped from the zoo in Baghdad during the initial US air raids in 2003. The lions all have different survival instincts which makes the storyline compelling. At the back of the book is a section devoted to initial concept art which is always interesting to look at.
From wikipedia: 'IGN named Pride of Baghdad the Best Original Graphic Novel of 2006, calling it a "modern classic", and commenting that the book "can be enjoyed on several levels. Those wanting a 'simple' tale of survival and family will find that. Those wanting a powerful, gripping analogy of war will find that as well. Writer Brian K. Vaughan was also careful to avoid pinpointing any one particular viewpoint—each lion represents a different attitude, which is refreshing since many books do not allow that choice.'
_


Elmer: a comic book by Gerry Alanguilan (2009)
graphic novel
This was originally self published in 4 issues by Filipino writer/artist Alanguilan before finding a publisher and coming out in one volume. This was one that I'd never have come across except for browsing through Cart's Top 200 Adult Books for Young Adults. An unlikely premise but a highly enjoyable read. The artwork is good, so many chicken drawings, what a feat to turn so many into individuals. I liked how so many of the chickens fought back, had strong menacing personalities and protected their right to no longer be eaten.
Imagine a sudden white flash across the world and chickens all around the world waking up with the equivalent of human intelligence. At first chaos and killing both of humans and chickens. Battery farm chickens finally take revenge, fighting cocks long bred for their killing instincts form gangs. Later the UN accepts chickens into the human family. All this seen through the lens of one chicken family, in the present the assimilated adult children who have gathered at their family home as their parents are ailing, and also through a diary kept by the father, Elmer, as he navigates those first months and years of chaos, prejudice and learning.

Mister Doctor: Janusz Korczak and the Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irène Cohen-Janca (2015)
illustrated story

I found this children's story about the orphans and Janusz Korczak really inspiring. The text succeeds to convey the spirit of Korczak's philosophy of respect, honour and kindness that made his orphanage so different. There are hints of fairy tale and also mentions of his character Matt from King Matt the First, the children carry a King Matt flag when they enter the ghetto for the first time. Overall a very good children's story about a very sad event in human history.

The artwork is by Italian Maurizio Quarello and looking at his other work it appears to be quite a departure. Here he uses graphite pencils on a tinted background to great effect.

A youtube presentation of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUgdKA_BQVY
A more informative review here: https://thechildrenswar.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/mister-doctor-janusz-korczak-orph...

Janusz Korczak: "The lives of great men are like legends-difficult but beautiful, "

'Janusz Korczak once wrote, and it was true of his. Yet most Americans have never heard of Korczak, a Polish-Jewish children´s writer and educator who is as well known in Europe as Anne Frank. Like her, he died in the Holocaust and left behind a diary; unlike her, he had a chance to escape that fate-a chance he chose not to take.
His legend began on August 6, 1942, during the early stages of the Nazi liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto-though his dedication to destitute children was legendary long before the war. When the Germans ordered his famous orphanage evacuated, Korczak was forced to gather together the two hundred children in his care. He led them with quiet dignity on that final march through the ghetto streets to the train that would take them to "resettlement in the East" -the Nazi euphemism for the death camp Treblinka. He was to die as Henryk Goldszmit, the name he was born with, but it was by his pseudonym that he would be remembered.

It was Janusz Korczak who introduced progressive orphanages designed as just communities into Poland, founded the first national children´s newspaper, trained teachers in what we now call moral education, and worked in juvenile courts defending children's rights. His books How to Love a Child and The Child´s Right to Respect gave parents and teachers new insights into child psychology. Generations of young people had grown up on his books, especially the classic King Matt the First, which tells of the adventures and tribulations of a boy king who aspires to bring reforms to bis subjects.

It was as beloved in Poland as Peter Pan and Alicein Wonderland were in the English-speaking world. During the mid- 1930s, he had his own radio program, in which, as the "Old Doctor," hedispensed homey wisdom and wry humor. Somehow, listening to his deceptively simple words made his listeners feel like better people.

At the end, Korczak, who had directed a Catholic as well as a Jewish orphanage before the war, had refused all offers of help for his own safetyfrom his Gentile colleagues and friends. "You do not leave a sick child inthe night, and you do not leave children at a time like this," he said.' - from http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-1who.htm

Shylock's Daughter by Mirjam Pressler (1999 German) (2000 Eng)
YA in translation
This is a retelling of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and comes with a short essay by Professor Brian Murdoch who discusses the book, Venice and the play.
I'm no longer familiar with all the ins and outs of the play so was fairly taken aback by Jessica's elopement with Lorenzo, mainly because of her robbing her father when she did it. There are a few extra characters including a foster sister for Jessica who is much more deserving of our attention. The book follows the plot of the play, including the 'pound of flesh' though we don't get to visit the court room scene.
What the book does very well is outline the life for Jews in the Venice Ghetto in 1568, the differences between Ashkanazi, Marrano & Sephardhi Jews living in Venice at the time. It also explains the reasons behind the Jews agreeing to live in the ghetto.

The storyteller by Evan Turk (2016)
picturebook

I wanted to explore the art in this book but found the story really interesting as well. It's a nonfiction picturebook relating myths from Morocco, an Arabian Nights style plot. The artwork is sort of a blend of traditional with modern, the intricate with the suggestive sweep of bold lines. A lot to enjoy especially the bold colours.
There's a good article here on Turk's love affair with both Moroccan art and oral storytelling: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/articl...
and a book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKV_ZBRRzXo

From the publisher: 'From Ezra Jack Keats 2015 New Illustrator Honor recipient Evan Turk comes his debut work as author-illustrator: an original folktale that celebrates the power of stories and storytelling.
Long, long ago, like a pearl around a grain of sand, the Kingdom of Morocco formed at the edge of the great, dry Sahara. It had fountains of cool, refreshing water to quench the thirst of the desert, and storytellers to bring the people together.'

>97 avatiakh: Your bullet The white cat and the monk hit the mark. I'm on my way to the library to pick up a copy.

Pride of Baghdad looks wonderful, will have a look for that. Tempted by several others, but better not succumb.

Lauren Yanofsky hates the Holocaust by Leanne Lieberman (2013)
YA / Canada

I found a list of YA Jewish reads a while back and requested several that sounded interesting from my library - this was one of them, the title alone made it worth a look. It's a mixed bag sort of read, one I would have abandoned except I decided to finish it to see where Lauren ends up. Lauren is a 16 yr old high school student, she's ditched her Jewish school for a public high school. In fact, since her bat mitzvah she 's given up on being Jewish. She used to be obsessed about the Holocaust to the point that she suffered panic attacks, her grandmother was a survivor and her father is a lecturer on Holocaust studies. It seems her whole Jewish identity rests with the Holocaust and nothing more. Mostly it's a typical high school romance story, though through it all Lauren continues to struggle with her Jewish identity.
I suppose when I read YA Jewish fiction I want the main character to accept their Jewish identity and be stronger for it. Here Lauren is a mess, she's rejected her ties to Reform Judaism, but it doesn't seem to have helped. The parents don't seem to care that their child has rejected their identity, she even burns her bat mitzvah certificate.
I could go on but I'll leave it here.

Willy & Max by Amy Littlesugar (2006)
picturebook

A Holocaust story around the friendship between two Belgium boys, one of whom is Jewish. Willy's family promise to look after a painting, The Lady, belonging to Max's family when the Nazis arrive and take valuables from Max's home. However someone informs on Willy's family having contact with Jews, so their antique shop is raided. Many years later in the USA, Willy is contacted, authorities have found the painting and because of a photo of the two boys attached to the back of The Lady, they've identified him. Willy, an old man now is determined to track down Max to give him his painting back. He locates Max's family, Max has recently died, but his family finally gets the painting that Max talked about so much. A good story that could lead to much discussion. There is nothing too upsetting in this story. Illustrated by William Low.

The author's note tells about The Commission for Art Recovery and stolen Jewish art.

The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Rescued Jews During the Holocaust co-written and co-illustrated by Karen Gray Ruelle & Deborah Durland DeSaix (2010)
picturebook

This was quite fascinating. During World War Two the Muslims of Paris helped many North African Jews and small children pass as Muslim and avoid capture by the Nazis. At the time most of the Paris based Muslims were Berbers from Kabylia in Algeria. The Kabyle were also active in the resistance, hiding people in the mosque for a few days before getting them out of Paris. The Nazis were less likely to search the premises thoroughly as they didn't want to stir up trouble with any North Africans while they had a war on in the North African desert.
The author got most of their material from interviews with Derri Berkani who made a documentary on the 'forgotten resistance' in 1990. The illustrations are quite lovely, the coverart especially.

The World of Edena by Moebius (2016)
graphic novel

This started out in 1983 as a commission by car manufacturer Citroën. The first chapter has a classic vintage Citroën driving across an unknown planet. I won't go into details, not sure really how to describe it, except to say it's set in outer space and you get a bit mixed up eventually as to what is dream and what is reality. The artwork is excellent.

>111 mamzel: Those are beautiful illustrations.

>105 VivienneR: I found the idea of such a simple poem lasting through the ages a delight.

>106 charl08: Charlotte, I know that feeling. I'm forever requesting books from the library that I read about on LT and not getting serious about my own tbr pile.

>111 mamzel: I would never have known about Moebius except that I read the GN biography of Osamu Tezuka where he mentions inviting him to Japan.

>112 avatiakh: The book is a delight in itself. And the poem, so suitable for the solitary monk. I was given a book about the Book of Kells and if you look closely some of the illustrations have a little mouse running along the border. It is said that the monks might have become a little bored and added some fun. I love that idea and can see how it might have inspired Pangur Bán.

That sounds delightful. There's a picturebook about an Irish monk and his garden of plants for making inks, I read it a few years back, The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane.

Harvey by Hervé Bouchard, illus. Janice Nadeau (2009)
children's graphic novel

This just scrapes in as a graphic novel, the illustrations dominate too much to call it an illustrated novel, though the strip layout is missing. The plot is fairly simple, it's about Harvey's reaction to his father's sudden death. We meet Harvey and his younger brother (who is taller than Harvey) coming home from school to see a small crowd and ambulance outside their home. It hits the spot emotionally and the illustrations are very well done.
The author is from Quebec and the character names and feeling of the book reflect that.

Cloth Lullaby: the woven life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Noveesky, illus. Isabelle Arsenault (2016)
picturebook

A very effective blend of word and illustration to portray the life of an unusually creative woman, sculptor Louise Bourgeois. The illustrations are a delight, lots of detailed look at fabrics and how they are woven.

From wikipedia: Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) was a French-American artist. Best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a variety of themes over the course of her long career including domesticity and the family, sexuality and the body, as well as death and the subconscious. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not formally affiliated with a particular artistic movement.


_

Miracle Man: the story of Jesus by John Hendrix (2016)
picturebook

Hmmm.....I was interested in reading this one, a colourful jazzed up looking treatment of the story of Jesus. The book plunges us into Jesus's life at about midpoint when he's already an adult and about to perform some miracles. The first lot of text describes the land as 'dry and dusty', 'people were in need', 'the land was a sick place, in need of healing', '...blind place...' and '...thirsty place...'
I had a few issues with this book, possibly I'm too sensitive but I like to see these books give a balanced treatment to historical events and biblical stories - here, the Roman soldiers are drawn to resemble perhaps Persian soldiers, anyway not Roman though they have Roman weaponry, the local people are well drawn. No mention of the towns, Jerusalem even or Galilee though it looks like the author's focus was on the message not the details.
I will say that the illustrations are skilfully done, detailed and there's lots to look at, some I didn't particularly like or were too hard to read, but overall it's all so bold and larger than life, which again is probably the effect the writer/artist was after.
In his author's note Hendrix says he's stripped the Gospel of Matthew of many details in order to tell his own version of the story and to focus on Jesus, the individual himself.
..so if you want a modern looking adaption of the story of Jesus, this is for you...'
I think it would work well if it was used along with other dryer texts on the life and gospel of Jesus.

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier (2016)
graphic novel

Before I read this I noticed that there was some criticism by childlit experts that I follow about cultural aspects/cultural appropriation of the book. It's possible to read this book and enjoy it for what it is and not even notice what draws the ire of some Mexican or Native American children's literature people. One commentor (Yuyi Morales) makes the point that ghosts aren't part of the Day of the Dead tradition and that it's celebrated on Nov 2, not Halloween.

For me the story was ok, a family move to a new town in California and find out that it is full of ghosts who appear to mix and mingle with the living on the night of Halloween. However the celebration is more in the style of the Mexican Day of Dead. I didn't gel with the characters in the book and would definitely recommend her other graphic novel, Drama over this one.

_

The invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach (2016)
fiction

A very moving story. Heaven knows where Stambach got the idea for this one but it really worked a subtle magic on me for all the depressing world it encompassed. Ivan has lived in the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus since he was left on the doorstep seventeen years earlier as a newborn. He's a product of Chernobyl, severely deformed but with a fierce intellect and a devourer of books. Into his barren world comes Polina, sixteen yrs old, recently orphaned and dying of leukemia. She's smart, funny and irreverent. In her short time at the hospital they become more than friends. This won an Alex Award (2017) - given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.
Stambach is interesting, I had a peek at his bio - 'Scott Stambach lives in San Diego where he teaches physics and astronomy at MiraCosta and Mesa colleges. He also collaborates with Science for Monks, a group of educators and monastics working to establish science programs in Tibetan Monasteries throughout India. '

The Sam and Lucy Fables by Alan Bagnall, ill. Sarah Wilkins (2016)
children's fiction
Oh, this was fun. A collection of short stories starring Sam and Lucy, two smart little pigs.
'We learn how whales got to the sea, how bus drivers learn not to stay stopped just because it's a bus stop, how fish learned to read (in schools of course) and how not to despair because your computer has crashed.'

Alan Bagnall is well known here for writing many stories for the Education Department's school reading programme. Wilkins has built a career doing graphics for magazines, editorials and the occasional collaboration for picturebooks.
http://www.sarahwilkins.net/

The Severed Land by Maurice Gee (2017)
children's fiction

Always something to celebrate when Gee pens another book, this one a children's fantasy. He had retired from writing some years ago, but the image of Fliss sitting in a tree and watching soldiers chase a drummer boy to the wall, the impenetrable wall that she now lives safely behind, was too strong and once again he put pen to paper.
There's been so much talk in the media about building walls, so quite interesting to read about a fantasy wall, one that divides the land between the colonisers and the native tree people. A wall that decides who can cross over and live safe from slavery and hate.

Tell the truth, shame the devil by Melina Marchetta (2016)
fiction

Marchetta's first adult novel is a crime mystery. Bish Ortley is a suspended policeman who gets caught up in an investigation into a terrorist bombing of a bus full of high school students in Calais as his estranged daughter was on the bus. He rushes across the channel and is one of the first of the parents on the scene, making crucial bonds with the surviving children and parents and with the French investigators. One of the girls has gone missing and it's quickly revealed that she's the daughter of a notorious terrorist from a bombing 13 years earlier that Bish had investigated. Was she the bomber or was she the bomber's target? All up is a huge mystery that unravels and reveals many secrets in a totally satisfying read.

>116 avatiakh: I love the red and blue color scheme!

>122 avatiakh: Looks good. I've put it on reserve at the library.

Some great books and excellent reviews! Keeping Melina Marchetta's book in mind.

Counting Lions: Portraits from the Wild by Katie Cotton (2015)
picturebook

A counting book of beautiful wildlife portraits of endangered animals designed to create awareness of the plight of the world's wildlif1. The artwork by Stephen Walton is stunning. The book itself is large size.

Blood Moon by Garry Disher (2009)
crime, australia

Inspector Hal Challis #5. Continuing this series and really enjoying the ensemble cast of characters of detectives and uniformed cops. I've already downloaded the next book onto my phone to read, I now have three e-library books to get through.

Last night I watched the first Jack Irish tv movie which stars Guy Pearce. It was quite good and encourages me to look out for this series by Peter Temple when I finish up reading Garry Disher, the first book is Bad Debts. There's 3 tv movies and also a newer tv series all starring Guy Pearce. I think the books will be good judging by what I've seen.

Rump:The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Liesl Shurtliff (2012)
children's fiction
This was a great retelling of Rumpelstilsken, told from the POV of Rumpelstilsken, so this time our sympathies lie with him rather than the miller's daughter.
Another good retelling was the YA fantasy by Elizabeth Bunce, A curse as dark as gold.


Strange Star by Emma Carroll (2016)
YA

This was a great little read also. Lord Byron, Percy & Mary Shelley are all characters in this tale which echoes some of the real-life inspirations for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The party of Englishfolk, staying in a villa on Lake Geneva are sharing scary ghost stories, Mary Shelley is stuck for a story to tell when her turn comes round. At that moment an insistent knocking on the door scares them all, at the door is a girl, scarred, blind and almost dead from exhaustion. When she recovers she has a tale to tell...she has followed them from England, from the last place they stayed before they came to Europe...a tale of a scientist with a crazy idea.

The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill (2016)
children's fiction

This won the 2017 Newbery Award. A great children's fantasy, lots of magic and a strong plot. I did find the ending stretched out rather a lot but overall a very satisfying read.
Once a year the people of the Protectorate leave the town's youngest baby out in the woods as an offering to the witch who dwells in the deepest, darkest part of the woods. So the people suffer from great sorrow and some mothers can't accept the loss of the child, still it's more bearable than the wrath of the witch...who is this witch, and how evil is she?

Another Me by Eva Wiseman (2016)
YA historical fiction
This is set in 14th century Strasbourg, France and based around the true story of how 2,000 Jewish inhabitants were burned alive by their fellow citizens, blamed for the Black Plague that spread quickly among the inhabitants. Because of Jewish customs of cleanliness, they were less likely to catch the plague and so were under suspicion.

Natan is in love with Elena, a Christian girl. One night after sneaking a visit to her, he comes across Kaspar, a butcher and his thugs poisoning the town well, they plot to blame it on the Jews.
I didn't gel so much with the characters in this story, unfortunately Natan is killed early on and his soul ends up in the body of Elena's father's worker, an ugly, squat fellow with greasy hair, so every time Elena talks to Natan she has to deal with the ugliness of the body he now inhabits. Still, it sheds light on an awful event from the past,and I'll look out for other historical fiction.

Cardboard by Doug TenNapel (2012)
YA graphic novel
This was fun. Cam lives with his Dad who is out of work and skint. So for Cam's birthday he ends up bringing home a cardboard box. He's paid 78c for it from some wiseguy and they'll be able to do some construction fun with it. However Cam's Dad forgets that there were two rules regarding the cardboard - 1) bring back all the scraps 2) Don't ask for more. Turns out that this is not just any cardboard box...

Du iz tak? by Carson Ellis (2016)
picturebook

This was a Caldicott Honor Book (2017) and is quite fun and educational. The text is all in a non-English insect language which is easy enough to understand. An insect points to a new shoot and asks "Du iz tak?" "Ma nazoot" answers the other insect. The book proceeds to show the growth of the shoot into a beautful plant, then flower and how a plethora of insects take advantage of it. The artwork is restrained with muted colours, the book could be wordless but the idea of an insect language moves this one up the ranks to outstanding.

_

The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane by C.M. Millen
picturebook

This was a reread, I felt I had to revisit after reading The White Cat and the Monk: A Retelling of the Poem "Pangur Bán" a few weeks back. This is set in an early Irish monastery and features several of the incidental poems that monks sneaked onto corners of the manuscripts that they worked on. Brother Theophane is young and a little carefree, so he is sent to collect bark and make the brown ink. While he's outside he decides to collect different plants and make more colourful inks so the monks can add colour to their gloomy work.

_

Religion : A Discovery in Comics by Margreet de Heer (2011 Dutch) (2015 Eng)
graphic novel

A visual presentation of the idea of religion. De Beer gives us a brief overview of five of the world's main religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. As well she tackles atheism and humankind's quest for spiritual enlightenment. She also rates the five religions from a feminist point of view. It's an interesting read, more a springboard to further reading than anything else.
She's also done similar books on philosophy, world domination and science.

_

Silence by Shūsaku Endō (1966 Japan)
fiction
This was a wonderful read about Jesuit missionary, Rodrigues, who enters Japan in 1639 after the Shimabara Rebellion. He's to bring succor to hidden Japanese Christians and also find out the fate of his mentor, Ferreira, who it is rumoured has become an apostate. Nothing could prepare him for what he finds and Rodrigues' faith is tested to its limits.

The dark days club by Alison Goodman (2015)
YA fantasy
This is the first in the Lady Helen series, it's Regency with paranormal elements. The main character, Lady Helen, is your typical young lady launching on her first season but from her late mother she's inherited a unique ability. She's a Reclaimer, a special one. The enemy is demon-like and inhabits human bodies at all social levels of society. Lady Helen is initiated in to the Dark Days Club, a coterie formed to assist and support the few Reclaimers that exist. She's going to be a sort of Regency Buffy but how does that co-exist with the sort of demure ladylike existence that is expected of her.
What I liked is the detail of the world that Lady Helen lives in, not just the social circle she moves in, but also that of the ordinary people. Also that the romance is pared right down, Goodman injects just enough to give us hope that a great love story is underway, but the main focus is primarily on Lady Helen's emerging abilities and what this means for her.
Luckily the second book The dark days pact just came out in January. I've already got it on request at my library.

Whispering Death by Garry Disher (2011)
fiction
Inspector Hal Challis #6. I'm very much enjoying this police procedural series and now only have one left to read.
This one revolves round a serial rapist, a young woman whose an accomplished cat burglar and Hal Challis speaking his mind to a reporter about police budget & staffing cuts in his state.

>123 mamzel: Yes, a great colour combo for the book

>124 pamelad: I hope you enjoy it

>125 VivienneR: Marchetta writes a good read!

My goodness! How many hours do you have in your days?

>130 avatiakh: I read this and another book by Wiseman - The Last Song - also about Jewish persecution. I'm glad she's writing these books to bring these events to the attention of today's teens. Especially with the hate crimes going on today.

>139 mamzel: I'm mainly reading YA and picturebooks at present, so not so much of a timesuck!

I've also read The Last Song. I came across a website list of Jewish historical fiction for teens and children a few months ago and found quite a few good reads on the list. I'm about to read The fighter by Jean-Jacques Greif.

A lot of great artwork in your reading lately! The GN about religion sounds interesting. And my library has it, so I shall go ahead and request it :)

>136 avatiakh: Glad to see you enjoyed The Dark Days Club, as I just bought a copy! I'll have to read it sooner rather than later.

Nothing tastes as good by Claire Hennessy (2016)
YA, Ireland
I loved this. I've read a few YA around the topic of eating disorders and they can be quite disheartening reads. In this one, anorexic Annabel has already died and has been given the option to be a sort of 'guardian angel' or 'ghostly helper' to another teen who has problems. Annabel projects and sees Julia's problem straightaway, she is fat. The book is about saving Julia from herself in her final year of school and also finally making Annabel confront her own death as right to the end she had felt in control and would never admit that she had a sickness. Annabel needs to get it right for Julia as she'll earn the right to leave a last message to her own family. Mostly the story revolves around Julia's love of journalism and her role as editor of the weekly school paper, the need to meet deadlines and motivate her news crew.

Irish Times Review: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/nothing-tastes-as-good-by-claire-henness...

Sam & Dave dig a hole by Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen (2014)
picturebook
Much love for this one. Here the text does not exactly tell us what is going on in the pictures as Sam and Dave dig a hole.



No Bears by Meg McKinlay & Leila Rudge (2011)
picturebook
The girl in the story says there are "no bears" in her book, but a bear is there and actually saves the day. Another where text and pictures deliberately don't match up.



Lion Lessons by Jon Agee (2016)
picturebook
Fun. Boy tries to learn to be fierce and strong as the lion teacher but is failing, that is until it really matters.



How to be a hero by Florence Parry Heide & Chuck Groenink (2016)
picturebook
Gideon wants to be a hero, but what is a hero? Heide lets the reader decide who the hero is.



How this book was made by Mac Barnett & Adam Rex (2016)
picturebook
Another fun read. This is a humorous look at how a book gets published and how it isn't really a book until it has a reader.

Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman (1995)
picturebook
How can you not like this one. Officer Buckle gives boring safety talks at schools and the children drift off to sleep. When he starts bringing police dog, Gloria, to his talks he's suddenly got an enthusiastic audience and lots of bookings. Unknown to Officer Buckle, Gloria is acting out his safety tips behind his back - so again, a book where the text and pictures don't completely match up to the glee of the young reader.
This was a Caldicott Medal winner back in the 1990s.
_

The Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin (1998)
YA
Very intense and tautly plotted psychological drama. I picked up a tatty ex-library copy from the sales table as I'd read and enjoyed Werlin before. This ragged paperback sat round the house till the other day when I finally picked it up so I could read and discard it. Great read.
David has been acquitted of killing his girlfriend, it was an accidental death but he's still grieving from the incident, recovering from the court case, the initial guilty slander he's been through. He must now repeat his final high school year in order to apply for college, his parents suggest he moves to a different city and stay with relatives and attend a new school. He immediately feels bad vibes from the relationship between his aunt and uncle and his young cousin, Lily just gives him the creeps, she's so hostile.


The girl from everywhere by Heidi Heilig (2016)
YA
Well, actually she's from 1860s Hawaii. This time travel in a pirate ship idea was a good not great read. I liked a lot of the ideas in the travelling from map to map, but most of all I loved reading about old Honolulu & Hawaii in Victorian times. Heilig is from Hawaii and knows her history and the local myths and legends and this was the part of the story that I enjoyed most.
The sequel, The ship beyond time has just come out and I've already asked my library to get it.

Signal Loss by Garry Disher (2016)
crime, australia

Hal Challis #7. This is the latest in the series so i'm up to date and now only have a couple of Disher's novels to read.
There's a few crimes to solve this time and but it all starts off with a hit job that gets complicated. The peninsula is overrun with drugs, if only they can find whose behind it all. And then there's the burglar turned rapist.


Kings of the Boyne by icola Pierce (2016)
children's historical fiction
I noted this from a best of list of 2016 books recommended by Irish children's writers back in December. I find the literary pages of The Irish Times a useful resource for new fiction.
Pierce has previously written Behind the walls about the 1688 Siege of Derry. This book continues the story of the Williamite War waged between the Protestant William of Orange and the Catholic King James II, his father in law. The 1690 Battle of the Boyne was the last deciding major engagement and William's victory entered the Orange folklore.
The book follows the fates of four soldiers from both sides as well as including the Kings themselves.
Pierce has also included the story of Ulsterwoman, Jean Watson, a story that shows how desperate times were back then for poorer folk. http://forgedinulster.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/the-story-of-jean-watson-and-king.h...

I enjoyed this and will read Behind the Walls when I can catch my breath from all the other reading I have lined up. I know nothing about this era of history, had never heard of the Battle of the Boyne which is considered one of the major battles in the history of the British Isles.

Rivers of London: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch (2016)
graphic novel
Fits into the Peter Grant series of books like colourful brief interludes. This one wasn't that compelling tbh. Russian Night Witches, millionaires, a child kidnapped, ransoms and Lesley wearing her mask. For fun, Peter's girlfriend, the river sprite Beverley charms some Russian mafia muscle and they end up doing her housework.

The Lies they tell by Tuvia Tenenbom (2017)
nonfiction

Expat Israeli Tenenbom drives across the US for seven months and reports verbatim conversations he has with a diverse number of US citizens. He talks to the rich, the powerful, the homeless and the poor. When he's warned not to go to certain neighbourhoods for his own safety he makes a beeline for them and talks to those who live there. All this while he catches up with the daily news reports and follows the primary debates for the 2016 Presidential election.
I read his Catch the Jew! and found it a revelation, this one is also a revelation though on a lesser scale as the US is such a huge country. Tenenbom's style is conversational, humorous and rude but he asks the questions that no one else is willing to ask and he asks them of all manner of people so the book is a compelling read. He sums up in just a few pages and is quite brutal but honest.

Publisher Weekly - 'He encounters propaganda and denial, and exposes political corruption in Chicago, gun culture, megachurches, anti-Semitism, polarizing opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, vanishing Native American culture, proud “rednecks”, intimidating African-Americans and Muslims, and climate-change deniers denigrating intellectuals. He reveals the hypocrisy of a nation where international aid organizations are well funded and $30 million is raised for a Catholic shrine in Wisconsin, yet devastated neighborhoods in Detroit and Chicago get nothing. His outlook may be bleak, but it’s hard not to share his incredulity at the levels of laughable self-delusion. '

An interview with Tenenbom about his book here - http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=36457
Interesting, here's what he said about Trump in Sept last year:
Why can't things go on as they have up to now?

"Because it goes against human nature! Why is Donald Trump doing well? After all, 10 or even four years ago he would never have been able to penetrate the establishment's outer defenses. He says things that Americans don't hear. In other words, they think it, but don't hear it. That is why the press has rallied, almost in its entirety, against him. Even the Republicans. Because everyone is afraid it will blow up."

What you saw on your long journey was that the mechanism protecting this fictitious unity is a phony mechanism, which is why, quite ironically, Donald Trump appears like someone who can save America from this quandary...

"That's it exactly. He will save America by placing a 'this is what we think' mirror in front of it. It's very important. On a personal level, I am not in favor of Trump and am not involved in the elections. I am keeping a distance, without voting. But I think it would be really good for America, on all fronts, if he is elected. Because then they will have to confront their problems."

Thraxas at the races by Martin Scott/Millar (1999)
fantasy
Thraxas #3. I'm enjoying this fantasy series. Thraxas is a disgraced PI, a sorcerer whose forgotten most of what he learnt and now can only carry one spell at a time. This book is set around the world of chariot racing and betting. Thraxas is engaged to discover the missing artwork of his old military commander, a man he's respected from the time they fought against the invading Orcs.
These books are great fun, a little irreverent, and enough mystery to keep one entertained. Millar went on to write the Lonely Werewolf Girl books starring Kalix which I also really liked.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (2000)
children's fiction

A re-read, this time I'm listening to Stephen Fry narrate the books. Very slowly done as I only listen to the CDs when in the car on my own. I enjoyed this, all the fun details I'd forgotten.

Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo (2017)
fiction

I really enjoyed Onuzo's debut novel, The Spider King's daughter which was loosely based on Romeo & Juliet but set in modern day Lagos, Nigeria.
This book is again set in Lagos, and again is an enjoyable read. Five mismatched young people end up together and are thrown into a political scandal. Chike, an officer and Yemi, his subordinate, are deserters from the army's cruel killing of civilians in the Delta region, and while making the journey to Lagos they meet up with Fineboy, a rebel fighter, and Isoken, a girl separated from her family who are most probably now dead. Lastly they meet Oma, a runaway wife from her abusive husband. Lagos is their mecca, but once there they realise it isn't the answer to their dreams. Jobs are scarce, they are living on the streets. They need each other for safety and support, to keep themselves from descending into the lowest dregs of society.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (2006)
fiction

This is one of those doorstopper paperbacks that sits on your tbr pile, too big to pick up on a whim so just sits there gathering dust. This year I decided to finally read both this and A suitable boy. The group read for the Seth book starts next month so I was keen to have this done before then and I just squeaked in.

This is a big robust story, lots of characters, a dual time line that meets near the end. There are also interesting back stories of minor characters that adds to the depth, the richness of the history, the tapestry of peoples that makes up India, especially the city of Bombay. So we follow the life of Sikh policeman, Sartaj Singh and also the story of the elusive gangster, Ganesh Gaitonde. The death of Gaitonde, at his own hands, near the start of the book leads Sartaj & others on an almost wild goose chase around the city, to uncover the secrets that Gaitonde hinted at. Along the way Sartaj also investigates blackmail, corruption and petty crimes.
A very satisfying read, not so much a page turner, though at times it is. I really felt immersed into Indian culture and feel the need to watch a couple of Bollywood films.
I've got a copy of Red earth and pouring rain somewhere in the house, I'll definitely be reading that in the next year or so.

Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela S. Turner (2016)
YA nonfiction

The book comes with a warning on the back cover: 'very few people in this story die of natural causes.'
This was an excellent look at the life of 12th century samurai, Yoshitune, one of the heroes of the Japanese classic, The tale of the Heike. It's more of a military history than a biography and is written in a fast moving style that would appeal to modern teens. Turner compares the various characters at times to more modern concepts such as beauty queens, celebrities, Star Wars, college jocks, baseball teams etc and for the historian this may rankle but I think for a teen reader it makes this ancient hero and the world he inhabited more easily accessible.
The narrative style is fun to read, the author includes chapter notes and masses of bibilography.

In the clash of two samurai clans for control of Japan, the Minamoto family and the Taira, Minamoto Yoshitsune rose to prominence as a military leader who took crazy risks which paid off time after time.

The illustrations by Gareth Hinds are excellent.

Ross Poldark by Winston Graham (1945)
fiction, audio

The first Poldark book. I'm behind on the group read, they'll be starting the 4th book in April but at least I've made a start. I decided to listen to the audio and Oliver J. Hembrough was a very good narrator.
I really enjoyed this story and will be continuing. The story is about Ross Poldark who returns home to his late father's farm in Cornwall after fighting in the American Revolutionary War.

Ghosts of Parihaka by David Hair (2013)
YA fiction

Aotearoa #5. The penultimate book in the series and I'm looking forward to the last one in this fantasy series that straddles real world New Zealand and a ghostly colonial era Aotearoa, a world where mythological creatures, ghosts of historical figures and those with strong ties to the land live together. There are some, adepts, who can cross between these worlds. I loved that this book included aviation pioneer, Richard Pearse, and his flying machine (he possibly flew before the Wright Bros but it can't be proved). The story begins in Taranaki's Parihaka, travels through Nelson, Wanaka and Arrowtown winding up at Dunedin's Larnach Castle.
This series should make any young NZ reader keen to find out more about the historical figures, both Maori and European and to simply discover more of our country's heritage.

Parihaka is an important event in NZ history, the pacifist Maori movement used passive resistance in 1881 in an attempt to resist the appropriation of their lands.

The Far Distant Oxus by Katharine Hull & Pamela Whitlock (1937)
children's fiction

I came across this book a couple of years ago and made a mental note to pick it up at some time as it's included in 1001 children's books you must read before you grow up. The story of how it came to be is really interesting and well covered by the introduction by Arthur Ransome in the Fidra Books edition I read. Written by two school girls as sort of fanfic for Swallows and Amazons they managed to surprise Ransome by sending a 400pg manuscript to him with accompanying letter. He was impressed as most fan letters he received were more on the lines of 'I'm going to write a book' or 'Are the characters real people' etc etc. The girls decided to write about a bunch of children having exciting adventures, just like in Ransome's books, except this time they'd be on the moors and riding ponies.

The book was a nostalgic type read, the adventures were mild but wholesome and I would have probably loved this book as a child, though less so now as an adult. Still I enjoyed reading it and their love of ponies really does come through in this book. I enjoyed that they made use of Persian mythology and place names to rename places and animals as part of their special 'club'. The three Huntingly children, their parents reside in Sumatra, come to an Exmoor farmhouse for their school holidays. The couple have ponies that they can ride everyday and they soon team up with two children from a nearby grand house and a mysterious older boy who appears on his black pony, Dragonfly, with a black labrador, Ellitas.

There are two sequels. Note the older Collins editions of the books were somewhat abridged.
From Fidra Books: In 1936 Katharine Hull (1921-1977) and Pamela Whitlock (1920-1982) met at boarding school whilst sheltering from a thunderstorm. They discovered their shared interest in ponies and the moors and decided to write a story together using the works of Arthur Ransome as a model. The girls, then aged 14 and 15, kept their project a secret from everyone and vowed 'to cut off all our hair if the book was not finished' by the time they took their Higher Certificate in July of 1937.

They worked together in a very methodical way; working out the entire plot and becoming familiar with the characters before they begun to write. During the winter term they worked on alternate chapters and then swapped them over to edit. By the Easter term they had completed their story ‘by children, about children, for children’.

Katherine and Pamela also wrote Escape to Persia in 1938 and Oxus in summer in 1939 and Crowns in 1947. Pamela continued to write throughout her life and married John Bell who was a literary editor for the Oxford University Press.


We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan & Brian Conaghan (2017)
YA, verse novel

Another shared writing venture, this one by two writers I've read before. I loved Sarah Crossan's One, truly outstanding and Conaghan's When Mr Dog Bites was a sympathetic look at Tourettes syndrome, his The bombs that brought us together won the Costa Children's Book Award and on my tbr list.

This is a verse novel, a little depressing, though a good read. Nicu is from Romania, his parent's youngest child. He meets Jess, a troubled teen on a Young Offenders community programme. Jess has a step father who abuses her mother and it looks like he'll soon be abusing Jess. Nicu's parents are saving hard for the bride price of a young girl back home, that Nicu will be marrying soon. As the friendship between Nicu and Jess grows, they see their best option will be to run away together, though like their own young lives so far, even that goes wrong.
What I liked was the broken English verses of Nicu, and seeing life from the point of view of a young EU migrant who understands that his culture is so different from what he really wants, though has no way of expressing himself to his English peers as they all prejudge him as a gypsy thief.

Such a lovely little war: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong (2016 Eng (2012 French)
graphic memoir

Truong's father was Vietnamese, his mother French. His father was a diplomat. The family had been stationed in Washington DC when his father was called back to Saigon in 1961. His new job would be as interpreter for the prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm. The memoir covers the tense two or three years that the family spent in Saigon, the politics of the time and how Truong and his brothers and sisters lived there as children while their mother suffered from the stress of being in a country at war.

Bitter Herbs: A Little Chronicle by Marga Minco (1960 Eng) (1957 Dutch)
fiction
A short, compelling story based on Minco's own experience during the war, is about a young Jewish girl and how she lost her family to the Holocaust. Her father says at the start of the war, "It won't come to that in Holland," but unfortunately person by person the family is taken, the girl going into hiding and becoming the only survivor. The bitter herbs of the title come from the Passover meal.
The cover does no justice to the excellent b&w illustration work on the inside by Herman Dijkstra.

I'd be interested to read more of her work.

There's a good bio of Minco here: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/minco-marga
'Minco made her literary debut with the short novel Het bittere kruid, translated into English as Bitter Herbs. In a painful, concise way the work narrates the story of a young girl during World War II. The “little chronicle,” as the subtitle calls it, achieved success both nationwide and abroad, selling four hundred thousand copies in the Netherlands alone. Awarded the Vijverberg Prize in 1958, the novel was subsequently translated into several languages and is still a popular work, particularly among secondary school pupils.
Minco’s books are distinguished by, and celebrated for, her sober, reserved way of using words and emotions. Her restrained style and cinematic turn of phrase give her books great power.'

Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci (2005)
YA

I picked this from the Time Magazine 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time List, one of the few on the list I had not read. It also makes John Green's 18 Great Books You Probably Haven’t Read list. I read it in a couple of hours and found it predictable and weak.
Victoria (Egg) is in her last year of high school, but she's not your regular student. She lives in Hollywood, her parents, divorced are both medium big shots in the movie industry. Egg is Egg because she idolises the character in her all time favourite movie, Terminal Earth. She has a shaved head and eyebrows and wears a cloak to school she's such a fan. She also has no friends just people she hangs out with when she doesn't want to be alone. She's virtually boy-proof, that is till new boy Max, starts class. He's even brainier and cooler than Egg, and while he wants to be friends, Egg doesn't know how to act normal anymore.
So a girl of privilege, who does whatever she wants suddenly realises that she wants the boy especially now that he's given up on her, that her hero worshipped actress hates Egg-fans and the homework isn't getting done.

>146 avatiakh: I also have an old and tattered copy of The Killer's Cousin which has been on my shelf for a few years now. I need to read and discard it as well.

>154 avatiakh: Samurai Rising is going on the wish list.

becoming, unbecoming by Una (2015)
graphic memoir

Una was a child growing up in the same area as the Yorkshire Ripper was finding and killing his victims in the 1970s. While the media was all about the Ripper's attacks on prostitutes, Una herself was the victim of sexual assault but never tells family or other adults of her ordeal, she blames herself. She goes on to discuss the phenomenon of violence to women and how society has not really dealt with it.
She manages to touch on really important issues while still telling her own story and that of the Ripper. She goes on to show how the assault affected her as a teen, her life choices and it wasn't till later as an adult that she began to heal. In the afterword she mentions Misogynies by Joan Smith as being the book that finally woke her up to the reality of her situation.
The artwork is quite stunning and emotive. Uno reports of an incident where a young girl was assaulted and the police and social services dismissed the case, considering her a prostitute-in-training, saying the girl was almost 16 and was making a lifestyle choice. I also kept thinking of those poor girls from Rotheram who were preyed on for years by those Pakistani sex gangs, and received no support from social workers or the police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

_

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis (1969)
fiction
My third Amis novel, I loved Lucky Jim and Take a Girl Like You was fairly dated and sexist though an enjoyable enough read. This one I didn't take to, it's a serious ghost story built around the main character of Maurice Allingham who seems to spend the whole time totally drunk on whiskey and scheming to bed his latest mistress.
He owns and runs The Green Man, a small historic pub/restaurant that is haunted. The haunting is from the 17th century, a previous owner, but Allingham feels there's something more malevolent at work. Everyone else in the story assumes that his behaviour is a product of his own drinking problem, that his ghosts are a product of a drunken imagination. The research that Allingham does makes him aware that it is much more than a simple haunting, more deadly and dealing with the occult and possibly the pagan.
Probably a book that I'll appreciate more now that I've finished reading it. The edition I read had an interesting introduction by Michael Dirda which placed the book at the forefront of the horror trend of Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Carrie etc which were all published within a couple of years of The Green Man.

The writing is very fine, I especially loved this description of the cat, Victor Hugo, entering a room - 'He entered, as usual, in vague semi-flight, as from something that was probably not a menace, but which it was as well to be on the safe side about. Becoming aware of me, he approached, again as usual, with an air of uncertainty not so much about who I was as about what I was, and of keeping a very open mind on the range of possible answers.'

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow (2014)
graphic novel

A quick read but covers some interesting issues in a lightish mode. Anda is a young highschooler who loves playing videogames. Her mum finally relents and lets Anda play an online game when she is recruited at school to play with an all-female clan. She joins her 'Captain' who takes her on a virtual killing spree of groups of 'gold farmers' who harvest the game's gold and onsell it.
Then she finds out by talking to one of these bots, that there is a real person behind this avatar, he's Raymond, a poor Chinese student who works the game with others in an internet cafe in China to make money for his family.
And she gets grounded and so on...
The artwork is by Jen Wang.

The glorious heresies by Lisa McInerney (2015)
fiction

This was my choice for my Orange Jan read though I only managed to actually read it in April. Once I got going I really loved this one and have already requested the newly released sequel from the library.
A burglary ends up in a killing, the killer is grandmother Maureen, newly returned to Ireland by her estranged son, one of the leading crims of Cork. The tidyup of the crime eventually brings all the characters of this story into play. The leading one is Ryan, a fifteen year old drug dealer with a golden future if he can only stay on the right side of it all. Ryan is a glorious mess, so much great potential but with a father like his, what chance does he really have.
A crime story with a heap of soul.

The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux (2003 France) (2007 Eng)
children's fiction

I saw this on the list of Mildred L. Batchelder Award Honours books (most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States) after reading this year's winner, Cry, Heart, But Never Break. The attraction was that it was set in Chile.

Ok, this is a great read and one of those books that never ever gets a decent cover so most young readers would probably never bother to pick it up.
Young Paolo lives in a remote location in the very southern tip of Chile, totally isolated. His parents are as tough as old boots and more motivated by daily survival than in thinking about their son who spends his days hunting for snakes. Angel Allegria is a killer and when he arrives at the farmhouse he immediately kills Paolo's parents. Really he should kill Paolo too, but keeps him alive to help with chores as he decides to settle in the shack of a farmhouse. So the story starts, a bit shocking but well worth persevering with as the plot unfolds so brilliantly.
I have to read more of this writer's books, my library has only one more.

The red Virgin and the vision of Utopia by Mary & Bryan Talbot (2016)
graphic novel

This is a graphic biography of French anarchist Louise Michel. I knew nothing of her before starting this, I just look up Bryan Talbot from time to time to see if there are any new books.
The bio is framed within two stories, one is a couple of women meeting on the day of her funeral and finding that one had met her once and the other is a daughter of one of Louise Michel's comrades, the outer framing skit, for an unknown reason, is about some idiot who designed and tried out his parachute, jumping from the Eiffel Tower in 1912.

'Louise Michel (1830- 1905), French anarchist who fervently preached revolutionary socialist themes. Rejecting parliamentary reform, she believed in sensational acts of violence and advocated class war.
Liberally educated, Michel developed her revolutionary ideas while teaching at Montmartre, in Paris. During the German siege of Paris (1870–71), she worked in the ambulance service and in 1871 fought zealously with the National Guard defending the Paris Commune against the Versailles troops. After the defeat of the Commune she was court-martialed and sentenced to prison. She was deported and spent 7 years in New Caledonia in the South Pacific.
Freed by the amnesty of 1880, Michel renewed her revolutionary campaign and lectured throughout France on revolutionary themes until her death. Her writings reveal a strong sense of social consciousness. Besides her Mémoires (1886), she published both poetry and prose.' Britannica & wikipedia mashup

_

One hundred nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg (2016)
graphic novel

Oh golly gosh, I loved this one. Read it all in one sitting. I should probably have picked up her earlier book The Encyclopedia of Early Earth first as this one is also set on Early Earth but I don't think it matters. Hero is the maid who saves her mistress from her husband's wager. He bets that his friend could not seduce his wife Cherry, a virtuous woman, even if he had a hundred nights to attempt it. Like, Scheherazade, Hero spins tales night after night that captivate and stall the attempt and that is only one part of the story.
_

Orbital, Vol 1: Scars by Sylvain Runberg, illustrator: Serge Pellé (2006 French) (2009 Eng)
graphic novel

First installment in a French 'Star Wars' like GN series. I liked it, the artwork is good, the storyline interesting.
Set in the 23rd century, Earth has joined a 8,000 yr old multi-galactic confederation of 781 alien races. Humans are seen as hostile and initially only allowed in the lower levels of the governing organisation. Caleb Swany is the first human to join the diplomatic ranks and his partner is a Sandjarr, a race that was almost wiped out by human interference. This is their first mission together.
My library has the next five in the series so I'll work my way through them.

Shadow of the Wall by Christa Laird (1997)
YA
The setting is Dr. Korczak's orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto. Misha lives there with his two younger sisters, while their sick mother is living elsewhere in the ghetto. He has been a smuggler but now the Nazis have clamped down he's finding it harder and harder to find food for his mother, and he's almost 14 when he'll have to leave the orphanage. The story takes us through the last weeks of the orphanage and Misha's involvement with the resistance.
This was a good read, another to feature Janusz Korczak and his children.


Magic and Makutu by David Hair (2014)
YA
Aotearoa #6. This is the final book in the series, one I've enjoyed for it's mix of present day New Zealand and the alternate world of Aotearoa, a magical world of ghosts and mythical creatures. I liked that it was not only Mat and his friends caught up in the fray during these books, but also his divorced parents had their roles to play in both worlds.

To be a slave by Julius Lester (1968)
children's nonfiction
This was a Newbery Honour Book. Lester has taken the actual testimony of former slaves and occasionally their owners in brief extracts to give young readers an idea of what the life of a slave was like. He introduces each testimony extract with a brief explanatory note. He also covers the history of the time and social conditions etc.

The chapters cover - capture, auctions, the plantation, resistance to slavery, emancipation and after emancipation. The content is geared towards children but still shows the horrors of slavery and in the resistance chapters, the social life beyond work is recounted with much enthusiasm. For such a short book it gives a good introductory overview of what it meant to be a slave. I came away wanting to read more about the resistance aspect of slavery and also a pre-colonisation history of Africa.

The Encyclopedia of Early Earth: A Novel by Isabel Greenberg (2013)
graphic novel

This was the debut GN of Greenberg and got a lot of excited buzz at the time. I have to say I agree, it's very good, highly imaginative and an entertaining read. Probably should be read before One hundred nights of Hero (see above post #11). Greenberg imagines a world, Early Earth, created by the daughter of the Birdman God and recounts the early history of the people. She has her own version of The tower of Babel and Noah's Ark. There is lots of storytelling, stories within stories, all drawing on how Early Earth came to be. Just wonderful.

A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York by Liana Finck (2014)
graphic novel

Fink has brought to life selections from an old collection of letters to the editor, mostly written by Jewish immigrants to New York in the early 1900s. They are asking for advice, mostly about relationships. The letters were originally published in a column, The Bintel Brief, in a Yiddish newspaper, The Forward. What's compelling is the clash between old country values and the new America where they find themselves, old values vs new ideas.
Fink drew some of the letters from A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward and others she had translated from the original Yiddish.
'For more than eighty years the Jewish Daily Forward's legendary advice column, "A Bintel Brief" ("a bundle of letters") dispensed shrewd, practical, and fair-minded advice to its readers. Created in 1906 to help bewildered Eastern European immigrants learn about their new country, the column also gave them a forum for seeking advice and support in the face of problems ranging from wrenching spiritual dilemmas to petty family squabbles to the sometimes hilarious predicaments that result when Old World meets New.'

The Forward is still in publication, though now in English and is known as a liberal Jewish magazine.
A review of Fink's GN here: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/books/a-bintel-brief-is-liana-fincks-graphic-...

_

Flight of the Raven by Jean-Pierre Gibrat (2017 Eng) (2010 French)
graphic novel

A story set during the German occupation of Paris during WW 2. Jeanne, a resistance fighter, escapes from jail with Francois, a cat burglar. They escape across the rooftops, Jeanne wondering who betrayed her. With the help of Francois she finds a place to hideout for a few days. The artwork is stunning with a beautiful colour palette. Jeanne wears a red beret, a fashion statement and a symbol of her Communist leanings. Francois is apolitical, more of a 'what's in it for me' sort of attitude to life. Very enjoyable read.

_

The story of Diva and Flea by Mo Willems (2015)
illustrated story
I loved this, it's a sweet story illustrated just perfectly by Tony Diterlizzi. Diva is a little white dog who never ventures past the iron gate of the building she lives in. She thinks that she is the guard dog, though she's extremely timid. Cue Flea, a stray cat who considers himself a flâneur. They strike up a friendship and Flea convinces Diva to have a look at Paris. Now they are both flâneurs and share a home.




House held up by trees by Ted Kooser
picturebook

Kooser is a poet and wrote this story about a life well lived in a rural home that once abandoned returns to nature.
Jon Klassen is the illustrator, the main reason I picked up the book. I can't see it appealing that much to children as it's quite a sentimental read.



Varmints by Helen Ward (2008)
picturebook

A large size Australian sophisticated picturebook for older readers. The story is simple, cue green countryside, only the sounds of bees buzzing, cute varmints picking flowers. Progress, machinery, noise, lots of noise, some scifi style happening, and then a protected area of green countryside, only the sounds of bees buzzing, cute varmints picking flowers. The art is good with mostly muted colours.

_

More Beer by Jakob Arjouni (1987 German) (2011 Eng)
crime fiction
The second Kayankaya book. I liked the first which I read a year or so ago and when I saw this one on the display at the library I brought it home. Kayankaya is an assimilated Turk, living in Germany. He's a private investigator, drinks a lot, and has contacts in the sleazier part of Frankfurt. The books are quick reads and Kayankaya is quite likeable for all his faults.
This time he's hired by a defending attorney to find the missing fifth man in an ecological sabotage that ended up as a murder case.

When the sea turned to silver by Grace Lin (2016)
children's fiction
Another outstanding read from Lin, these are books to be enjoyed by all age groups, from children right through to adults.
When the emperor's soldiers come for Pinmei's grandmother, a famous storyteller, Pinmei escapes with her friend from higher up the mountain, Yishan. Pinmei has the same storytelling skills of her renown grandmother, and as she travels with Yishan to the City of Bright Moonlight these stories seem to come alive.
_
illustrations by Lin from the book

_

Missus by Ruth Park (1985)
fiction / audio
Harp in the South trilogy #1. This was written almost 40 years after the other two books, as a prequel. I loved it and am so pleased to have finally gotten to reading this trilogy so many years after enjoying her children's novel, Playing Beatie Bow.
Missus tells the story of how the parents, Hugh Darcy and Margaret (Mumma) get to know each other and the ups and downs before they eventually marry. Wonderful and evocative of the 1920s era. We meet lots of characters in rural NSW trying to scratch a living from the land and in the small towns, many are immigrants from Ireland including Margaret's family.


The fighter by Jean-Jaques Greif (1988 French) (2006 Eng)
biographical fiction

In the 1920s and 1930s many Polish Jews moved to France, away from the prejudice and poverty. This novel is based on the true story of one of Greif's parent's friends, Maurice Garbarz, who wrote a memoir, Un survivant : Auschwitz-Birkenau-Buchenwald 1942-1945. Greif's father also survived several months in the camps, but Greif has chosen to novelise Garbarz's story, quite an amazing one of survival. One of the few accounts that includes working as a miner, most miners died from exhaustion. Maurice's strength and prowess as a boxer was one of the reasons he survived, though the main reason was just having luck at the right time, every time it mattered.

In the author's note, Greif talks about meeting the Garbarz family every year on camping holidays as a child. His own father was determined to grow hardened children who could survive, their camping trips were water only and eating mostly raw food foraged from the countryside. He constantly talked about the camps, the cruelty of the SS and kapos.

This book is a common read in French High Schools for Holocaust studies.
'About writing The Fighter, he says, "I was born in Paris in 1944. My parents and their friends spoke French with a strong Polish accent. Some of them (including my father) had blue numbers tattooed on their arms. All they ever talked about in their faulty French was the war. How boring! But then, much later, when they had white hair and plastic knees and I met them at funerals, I thought their old heads were probably filled with great stories. I had become a journalist and writer. I started interviewing them. Five of my twenty published novels are based on what my parents and their friends told me. This is one of them."'

>176 avatiakh: I quite enjoyed the first in that series but have not managed to pick up any more as yet. Thanks for the reminder about it.

You have access to really stunning graphic novels. Lucky you!

>179 AHS-Wolfy: I've already got book #3 home from the library.

>180 mamzel: Yes, I had thought to curtail my GN reading but so many of them get such great reviews.

the stars at oktober bend by Glenda Millard (2016)
YA / Australia
I love everything I read by Australian writer Glenda Millard, she wrote the beautiful Tishkin Silk series for children. This book is on several awards lists at present including the UK Carnegie 2017 shortlist and I've been meaning to read it since it first came out.
I really loved the characters in this book, they are possibly unrealistic but that didn't matter to me. Millard says in the author's notes that she was inspired by a news story she read about how a homeless girl won a music scholarship for her singing and how she was also interested in a different voice by her daughter's university study -;One of the bigger impacts on the change of direction for ‘The Stars at October Bend’ was that my daughter was studying for her Masters in Speech Pathology and I became aware of language disorders, their causes and effects. That led me to thinking about what it would be like to be unimpaired intellectually, but to struggle with expressing ideas verbally.'

Alice is almost sixteen but all around her consider her development halted at twelve when the accident happened. She doesn't go to school, she's off the radar. She lives with her grandma and her younger brother Joey. The local community seems to have forgotten about them, Joey still goes to school but Alice lives and learns at home. Her speech is slurred, slow and clumsy, yet her poems are lyrical wonders.
Manny is new to town, new to Australia, he was once a child soldier and saw unspeakable acts done to his family. When he meets Alice, they both know they are good for each other.

This is a lovely read, the writing once again is pure delight. Millard captures the tenderness locked inside Manny, the goodness of Alice & Joey. Alice's voice in this is a joy to read - poetic, vibrant and beautiful. The sad story of Alice's accident is uncovered and how the fallout broke her family. The ending is just right.

Alice: ' ‘these new words, many, love and peaches, hungered me in places that never before seemed empty, for things I never dared want.’ ‘once upon a time, a boy with no yesterdays asked a girl with no tomorrows for something no one else wanted....not knowing it was the hardest thing of all to give. he wanted the sound of her. '
‘i wrote a poem for them. an utterance of grief. a lamentation.
flying
is letting go
fury
is a ball and chain
what poor birds are we
he won't fly and
i can't sing and
no one listens
when a caged nightingale cries
freedom’

Glenda Millard writes about her book here: http://education.youngwriters.co.uk/post.php?post=guest-blog-post-by-glenda-mill...

To the green angel tower by Tad Williams (1993)
fantasy

Phew, I finished this 1045 pg monstrosity final book in the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy. On finishing I noticed that the full list of characters and places was included in a glossary, which made me a bit angry as I had looked in hope several times at the front of the book for such a list. I haven't often found this at the back of a book and never once had thought to look.
I loved and hated this. I loved the story, the depth, the characters and how they overcame all the time so many obstacles. I loved the detail. On the other hand I hated having to devote so much of my time on an epic fantasy adventure, this was such a huge book and reading a few pages always took time. Anyway this is a fabulous trilogy and I believe he's just written a fourth book, The Heart of What Was Lost (only 210 pgs).

Not only a new book, a new series: The Last King of Osten Ard

The Servant by Fatima Sharafeddine (2013 Arabic) (2013 Eng)
YA
This was an interesting read from a cultural point of view though ultimately it falls a little flat. It's set during the time of the civil war.
Faten lives in a remote village in Lebanon, she's a bright student and is looking forward to passing the Baccalaureate exams in the next year and becoming a nurse or even doctor. Her father has other ideas and when she turns fifteen, he pulls her from school and she is taken to Beirut to become the maid for a privileged family. He turns up every month to collect her salary which makes Faten feel trapped in a life of servitude. She resolves to continue her education any way she can, and enlists the help of an older maid in her building to pass messages to a young man who lives in the next building, she's convinced he'll be able to help her.

One trick pony by Nathan Hale (2017)
(children's) graphic novel

I loved this. In a dystopian landscape, three teenagers are exploring and scavenging for old tech, when one of them, Strata, unearths a robotic horse, uncovering an underground tech cache. The problem is that there are pipers, alien drones, also searching out tech and the teens are in peril as they've stumbled into a Hot Zone full of pipers....and the chase begins.
The artwork and story are both fairly awesome.

Lighter than my shadow by Katie Green (2013)
graphic memoir
I also loved this. Green tells us of her troubled high school years when she suffered from eating disorders, this led to an abusive relationship with a therapist and troubled years at university. She persevered and ultimately was able to overcome her anorexia and associated anxieties. The artwork is really stunning and while this is a huge volume, the reading is done mainly through the illustrations.

_

The Beautiful bureaucrat by Helen Phillips (2015)
fiction

This was a quick read, speculative fiction that reminds one of Brave New World or similar. While I read it in one sitting as I quite like types of reads, I also felt slightly let down by the ending and the story in general. The ending would make a good film ending. Probably I never really engaged with the main character, though I don't think it was the writer's intention for any engagement. The world setting was dingy, grey, decaying and without hope.

Josephine finally finds work, but the job isn't exactly her dream job, she's stuck all day in a windowless office in a faceless grey building, inputting data to a computer from endless stacks of files. She and her husband, Joseph, move from one dingy sublet to another while waiting for their credit rating to recover from their combined period of unemployment. Life is fairly grey, Joseph also seems to work in an equally demoralising place, though both aren't allowed to discuss their work. Josephine is compelled to find out what these forms she's processing are about.

A Chinese Life by Philippe Ôtié & Li Kunwu (2009 French) (2012 Eng)
graphic memoir

This is a memoir of Kunwu's life and also a history of China from the early days of the Cultural Revolution to today.
The words are co-written by Ôtié & Kunwu and the illustrations by Kunwu. A very interesting read, starting in a rural village amongst the hopeful and poverty stricken villagers who see the People's Republic of China to be their chance at an equal and prosperous future. Hopes soon to be dashed. Anyway lots here to think about and well worth reading.

'Li Kunwu has had more than 30 of his comics published in the three decades he’s worked as a state artist. He lives in Kunming, Yunnan, China. Philippe Ôtié is a French diplomat who lives in Wuhan, China.'
https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/graphic-lit/from-a-chinese-life-great-step-f...

_

Demelza by Winston Graham (1946)
fiction
Poldark #2. I'm enjoying this series and have picked up the next one to read. The series is set in the last two decades of the 18th Century in Cornwall. The story revolves around Ross Poldark, the business of farming and mining, the local gentry and the working class.

>183 avatiakh: It's been a long time since I read that series and I really don't remember much from it. I do recall that the last book was split into two which made it a bit easier to digest (also easier on the wrists as well). I'd heard there was a new series in the offing so maybe a re-read is in order (though I have no idea when I'll find the time).

>190 AHS-Wolfy: Yes,the last book is also available in 2 volumes, but I ended up with just one large book. It was a good read, just that I have a pile of library books and other books to read and I just felt I'd never get it read. I'll probably try The Heart of What Was Lost. The new series is set 30 years after all the action of the first series.

>182 avatiakh: Beautiful! BB - I'm hit!

ETA: I'm so glad you are joining us for Poldark!

>192 VictoriaPL: I'm really enjoying Poldark, just so many other books that I couldn't start with the group read and now i'm behind.

The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle (2015)
YA
About the author: 'Moïra Fowley-Doyle is half-French, half-Irish and lives in Dublin with her husband, their young daughters, and their old cat. Moïra’s French half likes red wine and dark books in which everybody dies. Her Irish half likes tea and happy endings.'

I really enjoyed this, an urban fantasy, magical realism type read that was really perfect at messing your head as to what was imagined or ghostly and what was reality. The Accident season is a month every year where the Morris family is susceptible to accidents; cuts, bruises and much worse. It's the month their father was killed in a car accident and the month they lost their uncle. They always take extra care during these weeks but they still seem to be jinxed.

Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham (1946)
fiction
Poldark #3. I'm still enjoying this series and have almost caught up to the group read. The series is set in the last two decades of the 18th Century in Cornwall and revolves around Ross Poldark, the business of farming and mining, the local gentry and the working class.


Warleggan by Winston Graham (1953)
fiction
Poldark #4. I can catch my breath now as I've caught up with the group read. Again I'll say that I'm enjoying this series very much and will probably start watching the original tv series now that I'm 4 books in. Saving the new tv series to watch with my daughter later in the year.

The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman (1816)
novella

The Alma Classics edition comes with an excerpt from Freud's 'Uncanny' essay which analyses the symbolism in the story.
First I really enjoyed the story which centres on a young student, Nathaniel, his childhood memories and his love for the daughter of his professor. He's haunted by his childhood memories of The Sandman, a strange lawyer, Mr Coppelius who visits his family home late in the evenings. His nurse tells him about The Sandman stealing the eyes of children who refused to go to sleep. Nathaniel is possibly mentally unbalanced, he's pushed to the verge of madness when Coppelius reemerges as an optician friend of his professor and Nathaniel's love blinds him from observing the obvious, that there is something very unnatural about the daughter.
Freud's essay concerns the common childhood fear of losing one's eyes as really meaning a fear of castration. It was interesting to read his analysis.

Stefan Zweig: 'E.T.A Hoffman belongs to that eternal guild of poets and visionaries who take revenge on the life that is tormenting them by showing it examples of forms more colourful and diverse than reality can manage to convey.'

There are two more books by Hoffman in this Alma Classics series; The King's Bride and The Devil’s Elixirs.

The boy who dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti (2008)
YA fiction
This was unexpected. I'd asked @foggidawn who is a children's librarian if she knew of any juvenile books with a LDS main character. I'd been thinking about how I'd read so many books with children from a number of religions but couldn't recall any with a LDS character. She came up with a very short list and this was one of them.
This is a novel about the bravery of a real life person, Helmuth Hubener, 'the youngest opponent of the Third Reich to be sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof and executed' in 1942. Helmuth's family were members of the German LDS Church and while the religion didn't play a significant part in the book, it was interesting that such a minority congregation was acceptable to the Nazis.
Helmuth was denounced for listening to the BBC on short wave radio and producing anti-Nazi leaflets, leaving them in different parts of Hamburg with help from his three friends. During the trial, when he realised that all four of them would receive harsh penalities and possible execution, he stood up to the judge and confessed angrily, diverting all the attention to himself. His co-accused got away with 5-10 years hard labour while Helmuth at 17yrs was sentenced to execution. Helmuth had been a member of Hitler Youth but once he saw the destruction caused by Kristallnacht his enthusiasm wavered.

Schadenfreude: a love story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For by Rebecca Schuman (2017)
memoir
I read this as an e-book from the library, but first I saw it in the bookshop and really fell for it, such high book production quality. Anyway it's the story of Rebecca and her bad decision making, from highschool through post PhD, her love affair with Kafka and her love/hate relationship with the German language. It covers her visits to Germany, mainly Berlin, as a language student in the 1990s where she focuses more on having a good time and less on language acquisition. It's interesting, sometimes funny but overall she hasn't succeeded, she doesn't achieve tenure, who can...and now she's known for writing for online magazines and her blog.
I did enjoy it though her doctoral study period just seemed really quite depressing, applying for 80+ academic positions, each one requiring a huge amount of paperwork & preparation. Now she writes about the academic job market, tenure and adjunct teaching issues.
I really enjoyed her discussions of Kafka, German philosophers as well I liked reading about her time in Berlin, the popup bars, the differences between the West and East Berliners in a time that they were learning to live together.

A couple of her Slate articles:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2017/01/we_need_academic_jargon_mor...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/04/06/depictions_of_tenure_in_movies_an...

The legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir (2016)
fiction
Read this for my ANZAC challenge. I loved this, it was quite different and beautifully written. Winstone is on the run, that's clear right from the start, he's only about eleven and is hiding out in the hills, far from habited areas. He also has a love for old western movies and so the narrative is split between Winstone's story and the story of two cowboys, Cooper and The Kid who are riding across country chasing their quarry. Why Winstone is on the run only becomes clear towards the end, by then his past life has been revealed.
I hope this book gets taken up by publishers outside of New Zealand, it deserves a wide readership. The story is set in Otago and the descriptions of the desolate, remote landscape are stunning.

'In Winstone’s fantasy life, author Tanya Moir uses the elements of a Western film, which are interwoven into the narrative of the story. As Tanya explains, ‘I wrote it because I was interested by the idea of trying to write a film. Not to write a film script, but to take the visual symbolism of the Western — its camera work, its editing devices — and put them back into words.’

The man who never stopped sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld (2010 Hebrew) (2017 Eng)
fiction
Appelfeld uses his own personal experience to inform this his latest work to be translated to English. I was captivated. It's the story of Erwin, beginning as he arrives to the south of Italy at the end of WW2. He's a teenager, on his own having survived the Holocaust. He joins a group of Zionist Youth who train for the life of a pioneer in Mandate Palestine. His way of coping is through sleep, and a dream-like existence while sleeping where he revisits the past, talks with his parents, uncles etc. He prefers these dreams where he's back in familiar places to the reality of real life where he's alone and forced to adopt a new language, name and new way of life.
This novel was excellent at representing the internal life of a traumatised Holocaust survivor.

From the NYT review:
'All of Appelfeld’s books draw in some way on his own extraordinary youth. Because he mines the painful bedrock of his life, it is worth knowing some of its most harrowing incidents, the ore from which he extracts the allusive, metaphorical poetry of his fiction. He was born Erwin Appelfeld in 1932 to a prosperous, assimilated German-speaking Jewish family in Bukovina, a territory of shifting borders between Romania and Ukraine. He was 9 years old when the Romanian Army retook the region from its Soviet occupiers in 1941, murdering his mother as he lay upstairs in bed, ill with mumps. He jumped out the window and escaped that attack, only to be rounded up and deported to a Nazi concentration camp. There he escaped again, rolling out under a fence and hiding in the forest before joining the Soviet Army as a cook. At the end of the war, he spent time in a displaced persons camp in Italy, then was recruited as a pioneer and brought to British Mandate Palestine.

Appelfeld was 14 years old when he began to learn Hebrew, the language in which he would become a writer. “The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping” is much preoccupied with this process of binding oneself into a new language, with what is lost and what is gained in such a process. At a convalescent home, the wounded Aharon tries to fuse himself to Hebrew by copying passages from a Bible a rabbi had pressed into his hands when he lay, semiconscious, in the hospital. “I was glad that I understood most of the words. The Binding of Isaac: the story was dreadful but was told with restraint, in a few words, perhaps so that we could hear the silence between them. I felt a closeness to those measured sentences, and it didn’t seem to be a story with a moral, because what was the moral? Rather, it was intended to seep into one’s cells.”'

The man who broke into Auschwitz by Dens Avey (2011)
memoir / audio

I'd noticed this when it first came out but didn't know there was some controversy over his memory of his accounts. What I do know is that by the time I was a third into the memoir, I had found his army experience so amazingly full of adventure and near misses that I had to look up some reviews of the book to see if he'd done what he said he did, and then found that he'd had quite a lot of push back from sceptics.
The title is quite misleading, most of the book is about other parts of his war experience and postwar life. As a prisoner of war he was in E715 prison camp for British soldiers, next door to the Auschwitz camps. He swapped uniforms with a Jewish prisoner twice to spend two nights in Auschwitz. He says he did this so he could be a witness to the horror of the death camps, but after the war he clammed up for 50-60 years, he suffered from PTSD.
I saw several reviews saying that they found a lot of his actions during the war coming across as quite selfish, and have to say it did cross my mind on occasion as well (just imagine the fallout if he'd been found in the wrong camp). So I found it hard to continue listening right through to the end, it did help that the last part of the book concentrates more on the story of a Jewish inmate who also survived the war. He also addresses some of the reasons for his inconsistent testimony in interviews. I've read quite a few war memoirs and this one just lacks the camaraderie and bravery that comes across in others, I think it's because he did so much on his own.
His obituary: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11828297/Denis-Avey-Auschwitz-witness...

Munch by Steffen Kverneland (2017)
graphic novel

This wonderful excursion into the life of Munch took Kverneland seven years to complete. This is really hard to comment on, the material is rich, so many interesting & provocative creative personalities that Munch hung out with including the Kristiania Bohemians and his art was so interesting, based on 'I paint what I saw not what I see.' The text is taken from primary sources, letters, news items, diary entries etc. Kverneland uses a variety of art styles even including photographs and caricatures of himself and helper, Lars Fiske. This is a seriously stunning piece of work.

_
_

One man, one murder by Jacob Arjourni (1991)
fiction
Kayankaya #3. I'm enjoying this series about a Turkish PI in Frankfurt. This time he's looking for a missing Thai woman who has probably entered Germany on a fake visa. This leads Kayankaya to a crime gang dealing in forged passports and illegal migrants.


The Next Day by Jason Gilmore (2011)
graphic novella
This was produced alongside an animated Canadian documentary. Four people who have survived attempts at taking their own lives talk honestly about their lives before and after. It's probably really helpful in the right situations.
I came across mention of it in a facebook discussion of the 13 reasons why tv adaption. Artwork is by John Porcellino.

The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave (2007)
crime

Charlie is caught up in a serial killing, though he's so out of whack that maybe he is the deluded killer, everyone else seems to think it's him.
This wasn't as good as the other two by Cleave that I've read, though now I know that this was the first book he wrote, though wasn't published first I can understand. It was rewritten from a horror story into a crime thriller.
I'll probably read the second Cleaner book next before beginning his Theodore Tate series.

All the rivers by Dorit Rabinyan (2014 Hebrew) (2017 Eng)
fiction

I first heard about this book (also known as Borderlife) earlier this year when there were several news items about the Israeli Education Ministry not including the book in the high school curriculum reading list. As the book depicts a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, journalists considered that this was a political decision. The story ran several times in the NY Times and for some reason calling it censorship of literature even though the book has always been available in Israeli libraries and bookshops. It has become a best seller because of this media attention.

I'm fairly sure that one of the main reasons it wasn't included in the curriculum is that this is not literature, it's a badly written romance novel, one that clumsily injects politics into a relationship. I found the first several chapters difficult to read as romance done like this is not my thing at all. Further in we must deal with Liat's continual angst and guilt, guilt to her family for falling for an Arab, guilt to her lover because she'd served in the IDF and held Zionist views.
29 yr old PhD translation student, Liat meets 26 yr old Hilmi, a Palestinian artist when on a six month scholarship to New York. As their love blossoms there is always unspoken, the fact of their inevitable separation when Liat returns to Israel. The book is set in the early 1990s and in the last part of the novel Liat returns to Tel Aviv while Hilmi visits his family in Ramallah for the summer so there is a chance they could meet up.
The writer has based it on her own real life romance.

'There are entire books — good ones — published that don’t get a single mention in the Times, let alone five different articles by five different Times journalists...Maybe the Rabinyan book merits all the attention on the basis of literary quality. It’s hard to know for sure, since the Times hasn’t yet published an actual review of it. When and if the paper does, it will be the paper’s sixth piece about the book.'
https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/05/05/new-york-times-overkill-machine-hypes-nove...

The girl who saved Christmas by Matt Haig (2016)
children's fiction

A delightful sequel to A Boy Called Christmas. This one gives us Haig's version of how Mrs Claus comes to Elfhelm. Along the way Santa must save Amelia, the young girl who hopes, he meets Charles Dickens who knows quite a bit about workhouses and then there are the pesky trolls.

The bone sparrow by Zana Fraillon (2016)
children's fiction

This book has been on a few awards longlists which is the main reason I finally picked it up. The story is set in an Australian immigration detention centre and features a Rohingyan main character, a young boy who was born in the camp and knows no other life. The depiction of life here is very very grim, food and cleanliness etc only pickup when Human Rights people come for a visit.
In a way this book reminds me of The boy in the striped pyjamas as here too, a child turns up from the outside and a friendship is formed through the fence. Overall a good read which should lead one to empathise more with the whole refugee debacle. The author's note gives an overview of all this.

Monsieur Linh and his child by Philippe Claudel (2005 French) (2011 Eng)
novella

Perfect little read about an unlikely friendship between two men who have both suffered loss, one is Monsieur Linh, a refugee from an Asian country at war and Monsieur Bark who has recently lost his wife after many years of marriage. Even though they don't have a common language they communicate their loss to each other. And then there is Monsieur Linh's granddaughter, just a few weeks old when her parents were killed in the rice fields.

Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali (1964)
fiction

I really enjoyed this semi-autobiographical look at how life for the Egyptian wealthy elite changed in the 1950s post-colonial Egypt. Ram Bey and his friends might be Egyptians, but culturally they feel English and are more likely to speak English than Arabic. They hang out at the Club, gamble and drink non stop. Ram's life is a bit of a mess, he has no money only connections. He thinks he's in love with Edna, a Jew from one of Egypt's most wealthy families.

'The novel depicts the urban wanderings of an Anglophone, aristocratic but poor and unemployed Coptic Egyptian with communist sympathies, Ram, upon his return to Egypt after having studied in London. Unable to unite his now fragmented loyalties and identities, Ram spends his days drinking, smoking and gambling in the Western cafes and colonial clubs of Cairo, in the midst of the rapid changes following decolonization and Nasser’s presidency.

Ghali’s novel has been described as a love letter to two cities: Cairo and London, and the different parts of the book are set against the background of the rapid political and social transformations taking place in both Egypt and Britain following the Suez Crisis in 1956. Ram mocks both the materialist, colonial elite, whose cosmopolitan lifestyle he is unable to give up, and the repressive socialist system under Nasser. Surrounded by hypocrisy, he feels alienated in his own country.
In the novel, the bars and cafes are both the universe of the aristocracy desperately trying to keep up its old lifestyle under Nasser, as well as a refuge for intellectual socialists, stuck between their elitist environment and Nasser’s repressive Arab-socialist state.'

https://arablit.org/2015/03/05/booze-tragedy-and-satire-why-beer-in-the-snooker-...

Girl Detached by Manuela Salvi (2016)
YA
This YA was banned in Salvi's Italy so she took it to the UK and got a publishing deal there. It has similar power to Louise O'Neill's Asking for it though O'Neil's book is a stronger read. This book is another very necessary book, dealing as it does with the grooming of teenage girls. At first I found the main character, Aleksandra, annoyingly too naive, but soon enough one's sympathy is with her.
Sixteen year old Aleksandra has a stutter which only disappears when she's acting. She's also been estranged from her Mum and brought up by her Gran who has just died. Now she's forced to live with her Mum, a step dad and a young half-brother. She comes under the influence of overfriendly Megan who introduces her to university student Ruben, a sophisticated playboy type who takes an immediate interest in her.
Ruben's advances and kindness, masks his intentions of grooming and exploiting Alek for cold hard cash. Alek is a highly desirable commodity in his world, she's beautiful and still a virgin and that is worth a lot to certain buyers. Once Alek's infatuation is punctured and she sees the truth behind the haze of drugs, drink and sultry glamour of the parties she's been going to she's horrified and finds it almost impossible to fight back. Ruben is cold and ruthless, connected and from a good family.
Like in Asking for it, it is the victim who ends up without the sympathy of the community she lives in. Other girls refuse to testify, they don't want to admit that they were dupes as well.

As several grooming gangs are currently before the courts in the UK, I feel this is a necessary book. Salvi has made Alek an older target, the gangs are more likely to start with preteen girls.

The Back Moon by Winston Graham (1973)
fiction

Poldark #5. Another volume down and I'm still right up to date with the group read. The Four Swans read starts in June and I can't wait. The Black Moon introduces us to two of Demelza's brothers, Sam and Drake who arrive in the area looking for work.


The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex (2008)
novella / horror crime

Atmospheric depiction of grave desecration and other awful happenings around 1903 in the Swiss rural area near the French border. A newly buried body of a young woman has been dug up and mutilated in especially depraved manner. Who could be guilty of this crime? As other freshly buried corpses are also desecrated in following weeks the search for the vampire of Ropraz intensifies. Eventually the finger is pointed at a young farmhand, he's probably not the guilty one and he is a victim of horrific childhood abuse...


No girls allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure by Susan Hughes (2008)
YA graphic novel

An interesting topic but this wasn't as good as it could have been. I think I would have preferred reading about just one or two of the more interesting stories in more depth. The story of James Barry was the most interesting one, a girl who wanted to be a surgeon so spent her entire adult life masquarading as a man in order to have a medical career.
wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon)

...and while not in this GN, but in some research on Marion du Fresne & Commerson that my daughter was doing she came across mention of Jeanne Baret,

From wikipedia: 'Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe. Jeanne Baret joined the expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition's naturalist, Philibert Commerson, shortly before Bougainville's ships sailed from France.'
She'd been Commerson's housekeeper for some years before this.

The bear and the nightingale by Katherine Arden (2017)
fantasy

Oh how I loved this. A beautiful story steeped in Russian folklore. I'm so happy that there are going to be at least two more books. The story is set in a small Russian village on the edge of a forest in the middle of winter. Christianity is pushing out the old ways, the priests have no patience for the old gods, those who've kept the villagers safe for centuries.

Wolf in white van by John Darnielle (2014)
fiction

This was one of the books I noted earlier in the year that had won an Alex Award (books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults). Very inward looking and quite a strange but compelling plot.
Sean Phillips was horribly disfigured in an accident when he was 17. He's had to live with with the results of that for the past 20 years. He makes a supplementary income to his disability allowance by selling a text-based role playing game, played through the mail. He's created a rich imaginary world, Trace Italian, and his players advance through turns, exploring a futuristic, dystopian America. Over time some of the regular players feel like friends as they communicate backwards and forwards.
We join Sean at a point where two highschool students have taken his game and played it out in the real world, with real consequences. Sean has been in court, dealing with the reality of their stupidity as the parents want to hold him responsible. As he deals with this, he also takes us back to the moments surrounding his own self-inflicted accident.
Quite the dazzling debut novel.

Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick (2016)
YA
This is set in Juarez and surrounding shanty towns, just on the Mexican side of the border. Over the years these areas have come under the sway of various narco gangs who viciously fight to dominate certain neighbourhoods. The book follows around 24 hours in the life of Arturo, a young Mexican teenager who lives on his own in a thrown together little hut. His parents are dead or missing, he's been on his own for over a year since his good friends Faustino and Eva moved away. Now Faustino is back and he has a huge favour to ask of Arturo, Faustino has been working for one of the gangs and 'borrowed' money he now needs to put back.
This is a racy read, one you know can't have a happy ending with such a place. I always enjoy reading Sedgwick, this is quite different from his others, mostly because of the setting.

Why I'm not a feminist: a feminist manifesto by Jessa Crispin (2017)
nonfiction

This will be a DNF for me, mainly because it gets to feel a little repetitive and also because it's overdue at the library and I don't feel like reading just this all evening, it's more of a chapter every couple of days sort of read for me.
Crispin is not arguing here for women to be equal to men, she thinks our whole Western civilisation has been constructed by men, we live in a patriarchal society. The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

'We keep losing women to participation in the system, instead of insubordination to the system.'

Crispin is is the founder and editor of the magazines Bookslut.com and Spoliamag.com and is a feminist despite the title of the book but rails against commercial feminism and celebrities marketing themselves as feminists -

What she disdains, then, is what she deems lifestyle feminism: a bland, ultra-inclusive marketing exercise that demands absolutely nothing from those who buy into it save for to ask that they use the word “feminist” as frequently as possible, preferably while looking utterly adorable. “Dior has this $600 T-shirt that says on it: ‘We Should All Be Feminists’,” she tells me, when she talks to me on Skype from New York (where she is ill and rundown, her pink kimono almost matching the colour of her feverish cheeks). “But what does that say about the person wearing it other than: ‘I can afford a $600 T-shirt’? Feminism has been entirely co-opted by consumerism.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/23/jessa-crispin-todays-feminists-are...

Frogkisser! by Garth Nix (2017)
YA
This starts with the fairytale idea of a prince being turned into a frog but continues into an adventure with younger princess Anya setting off on a quest to find the ingredients to make a magical lip balm as her older sister refuses to kiss the frog.
I enjoyed this, a long time since I read a retelling based on this fairytale. The Frog Castle by Jostein Gaarder was also good.

Ballad for a mad girl by Vikki Wakefield (2017)
YA

I loved this. 17 yr old Grace has a lot of issues, she's always been the most adventurous, the most inventive when it comes to doing pranks. She has her little gang of friends who join her, though she's always the edgiest, most outrageous. Now, however, when she really feels like she's losing control of herself, her friends just aren't as supportive as before. Is Grace going crazy? Does anyone care anymore or are they all just tired of Grace needing to be the centre of attention.
I've read one of Wakefield's previous novels and found it also fairly wonderful. This one had me on edge the entire time I was reading it, the dark depressing depths that Grace plunges to are described really vividly. Her friends are not as there as they once were, they're all on the cusp of their own futures and all seem to be heading somewhere, only Grace who always led the gang is now holding them up. As Grace grapples with her unraveling sanity she becomes obsessed about a lost girl from the past, a girl whose body was never found.
I received this book through a GoodReads giveaway, it has a June release date.