tangledthread asymptotically approaches 75 in 17

I'm in for the coming year. I didn't quite make it to 75 this year, but will try again.

Awesome! Welcome back!

Great to see you back for another year.

I am part of the group.
I love being part of the group.
I love the friendships bestowed upon my by dint of my membership of this wonderful fellowship.
I love that race and creed and gender and age and sexuality and nationality make absolutely no difference to our being a valued member of the group.

Thank you for also being part of the group.

Happy reading in 2017!

Love this! Thank you and Happy New Year to you!

Thank you...and may many good books come your way!

Happy New Year! Sorry for the late greeting, but I've finally finished with my Christmas and New Year's Day work stretch and now have time to make the rounds.

The 2017 Reading List

January:
1. Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard, nonfiction
2. Sapiens: a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, ebook, nonfiction***
3. Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon, ebook, nonfiction
4. Desert Queen by Janet Wallach, ebook, nonfiction
5. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth L. Ozeki, fiction
6. Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale by Kerry Egan, nonfiction, ebook
7. Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear, fiction, audiobook

February:
8. Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, fiction, ebook
9. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, fiction, ebook, audiobook
10. Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, nonfiction, ebook
11. Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem... by David Oshinsky, nonfiction
12. Jane Steele by Lindsay Faye, fiction, ebook
13. The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles, ebook, audiobook
14. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, nonfiction

March:
15. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, fiction
16. Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller, fiction, ebook, audiobook
17. Wintering by Peter Geye, fiction
18. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris, memoir -nonfiction
19. The Woman Next Door by Yawande Omotoso, fiction
20. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, nonfiction
21. Your New Money Mindset by Brad Hewitt and James Moline, nonfiction

April:
22. Once in a Great City by David Maraniss, nonfiction***
23. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson, fiction, ebook, audiobook
24. Miss Jane: a novel by Brad Watson, fiction
25. The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller, fiction, ebook, audiobook

May:
26. The Winter in Anna by Reed Karaim, fiction
27. The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald, fiction
28. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy, fiction, ebook*
29. Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles, fiction, ebook

June:
30. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, fiction, audiobook***
31. The 19th Wife: a novel by David Ebershoff, fiction, ebook
32. News of the World by Paulette Jiles, fiction, ebook, re-read.
33. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, nonfiction
34. Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss, fiction
35. Addlands: a novel by Tom Bullough, fiction, ebook

July
36. The Alzheimer's Prevention Food Guide by Sue Stillman Linja Rdn Ld, nonfiction, ebook.
37. And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer: A Novella by Fredrik Backman, fiction, ebook
38. Grief Cottage: a novel by Gail Godwin, fiction, ebook
39. Cold Earth by Sarah Moss, fiction, ebook
40. The Night in Question: short stories by Tobias Wolf, fiction, ebook***
41. Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss, fiction, ebook*

August
42. Independent People by Haldor Laxness, fiction, ebook
43. Storm in a Teacup by Helen Czerski, nonfiction*
44. Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason, fiction, ebook

September
45. The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck, fiction, ebook & print book
46. The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss, fiction
47. Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan, fiction
48. The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry, fiction, ebook
49. Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear, fiction, audiobook
50. A Stash of One's Own by Clara Parkes, nonfiction (essays) ebook

October
51. The Good People by Hannah Kent, fiction
54. The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes, fiction, ebook
55. The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott, fiction
56. Killers of the Flower Moon: the Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, nonfiction, ebook
57. History of Wolves: a novel by Emily Fridlund, fiction
58. The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks, fiction, ebook*
59. To Lay to Rest Our Ghosts by Caitlin Hamilton Summie, fiction, e-book*
60. The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne, fiction, ebook

November
61. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, fiction
62. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, fiction, ebook, audiobook
63. A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear, ebook, audiobook*

Just started the tracking of this year's reading. It looks like it is heavily weighted toward nonfiction....for now.

Nothing wrong with that!

I guess not. It just surprised me once they were written down.

It seems for the past while I have been entrenched in the beginnings of the 20th century. Hero of the Empire and Desert Queen have me right back there.

Ach, you'll have a month heavily weighted toward fiction some time later.

>14 cammykitty: Yep, funny how that goes. It must be similar to when you pick up a book and just can't get into it.....then 6 months later you pick it up and you can't put it down.

Books and themes just have to line up with life sometimes.

I've got Sapiens on my pile waiting to be read, so I'll be interested to read your thoughts on it.

Started reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi last night. So far, the story is engaging, the writing is not overly complex, but there's a part of me that feels the writing does not quite fit the time period.

It's still early in the book...so we'll see where this goes.

Oh...and fiction! ;)

Will do. I've been reading it while on the treadmill (e-book)....so it's not difficult to read.

Guess I should go get on the treadmill right now!

I finished reading Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad last night.

What a thought provoking book! I'm still gathering my thoughts but will write a review soon.

Looking forward to it - on of my faves last year!

My review of The Underground Railroad (also on my book page)

Colson Whitehead's re-imagination of the phenomena of the underground railroad in the US during slavery is thought provoking, informative, and heart breaking.

We meet Cora at the beginning of the book when she is asked by Caesar to run away with him. At first she says no, and we learn of the influence of her grandmother, Ajarra, who was kidnapped from Africa as a child and never left the Randall plantation in Georgia once she arrived there. She is the one who established a small vegetable plot which Cora inherited and staunchly defends as an orphan and outcast among the other slaves.

The second time Caesar asks, she says yes after more brutality on the Randall plantation. There is also the influence of her mother, Mabel, who orphaned 10 year old Cora in the night when she ran away from the plantation. The fact that Mabel has never been caught gives Cora hope in the possibility of freedom from slavery.

As Cora and Caesar escape from the Georgia plantation, the narrative begins an odyssey of various states, each of which has a different way of imagining and expressing the oppression of slavery which Cora must interpret, adapt, and confront in order to survive. Each of the scenarios are based on factual accounts of the pre-civil war era. At the same time, they reflect unresolved racial issues in this country today.

The author presents us with an underground railroad as an actual subway system, albeit rickety and unreliable, which is a spurius notion most children entertain when first presented with the term. As a result the metaphor of the railroad nagged at me like a loose thread....has the metaphor outlived its usefulness? Has it been a vehicle for the dominant culture to co-opt the deeply personal story of the oppressed culture? The author seems to think so. More than once, when Cora asks "Who built this...." The answer is who builds anything in this country?... the slaves.

The accolades this book has received are well deserved.

Currently reading: Midnight in Broad Daylight, Bellevue: three centuries of medicine and mayhem, and The Signature of All Things

All at the same time with deadlines toward the end of the month (1 library book and discussion groups) Tired eyes ahead!

>21 tangledthread: I definitely found the metaphorical railroad the downside to the book, but I hadn't really thought of it deliberately over-the-top and therefore used as a way of portraying that idea as outdated. Thanks for giving me something else to ponder on.

>23 lunacat: lunacat I found it distracting and detracting at first. At the book progressed I was sure he was trying to make a point.

Sometimes metaphors develop a life of their own, separate from the original intended use. After this book, I'm thinking that the phrase underground railroad is one of them.

I just became aware that Martin Scorsese recently released the movie Silence, based on Shusaku Endo's book Silence. That book has been on my shelf for awhile....I think it's time that it moves to the top of the pile.

Has anyone here seen the movie?

Finished David Oshinsky's Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem last night and I will give it 5 stars. I enjoyed the author's depiction of medicine's evolution through the lens of one of most iconic hospitals in the US. Along the way I came across some characters that were featured in other books. William Welch & William Halstead I remember reading about in a book about Johns Hopkins.....I have to look through my library because I can't recall the name of the book. And Charles Norris and Alexander Gettner were featured in The Poisoner's Handbook.

I'll write a review early next week.

I found the book with William Halstead in it: The Anatomy of Deception which was fiction, but included Halstead in the story line.

Bellevue sounds good! I think I spotted it at my public library - will have to check when next I go.

And thanks to you I've downloaded Jane Steele (ebook) and In the Kingdom of Ice (audiobook) from the library. They were both available immediately.

Awesome!

oh my....just realized that I have four books going at once. It's not unusual for me to have three going, but four? They are:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (LOL funny in the way he tells a story);
The Color of Lightning by Paulette Jiles (this woman knows her horses and her Texas landscape);
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye (an interesting twist on Jane Eyre);
Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto (non-fiction about a family split between the US and Hiroshima as the US entered WWII)

Each one of them is a great book.

Review: The Signature of All Things (also posted on my book page)

This sweeping book is about the life of fictional character, Alma Whittaker, who is the daughter of a self-made, wealthy botanical entrepreneur. Alma is an only child, born at the turn of the 19th century, and raised on an estate on the outskirts of Philadelphia. She is educated by her mother, the daughter of a botanical family from Amsterdam. So her interest in all things botanical arises from both her nature and nurture.

There are a variety of botanical and biological themes in the book with too many twists and turns to enumerate here. The saga ends toward the end of the century when the theories put forth by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace are being introduced to society.

There is an amazing amount of research evident in this book, including the expeditions of Captain Cook, Joseph Banks role at Kew Gardens, the early botanical treatment of malaria are just some of the topics represented.

The story arc is about Alma, and though the book is well populated, Alma is the only character who is fully developed.

I give it 4 stars.

Review: Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital (also posted on my book page)

David Oshinsky traces the history of storied Bellevue Hospital from the acquisition of the land in the 1730's to the successful treatment of a patient with Ebola virus in 2014.

The story of the hospital reflects much of the story of health care, medical training, and public health in the United States. The chapters are arranged chronologically, and it seems that one challenging era follows another. Each challenge produced changes, mostly advances, in medical care.

It also covers the many notable characters of medicine who emerged from either training or service at Bellevue. But one of the underlying themes of the book is that the true heroes of Bellevue are the generations of dedicated physicians, nurses, researchers, and other care providers who have graced the institution over the past three centuries.

Catching up on review writing today. Here's a third one:

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell (also posted on my book page)

Gertrude Bell was an extraordinary woman for any time, but especially for the time in which she lived....the Victorian Era of England, through WWI, to 1924.

Born into a wealthy industrialist family in northwest England in late mid 19th century, her mother died in childbirth when Gertrude was just three. As a young child she formed an unusually close bond with her father which was to last all her life. The family's wealth and social connections provided her with an unusual education for a woman of her time. It also supported her extensive travel through the Middle East, and for mountain climbing expeditions in Switzerland as a young woman.

These travels, her acquisition of Arabic languages, and knowledge of the customs and mores of the desert people made her valuable to the British Government as they tried to sort out how to deal with Iraq as a consequence of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the close of WWI.

It's a fascinating story and proof that truth is often more engaging than fiction.

>33 tangledthread: Been eying that one. Nice review!

>35 drneutron: Thanks!

Just finished Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye. What fun to read a satirical presentation of an old favorite. In her treatment of the story line, the author has the heroine redress the unfairness to women of the 19th century in activitist fashion. I give it 5 stars for the fun.

Just finished reading Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller.

This is our April 2017 book group selection and I have to admit that I was a skeptic....yet another book about a grumpy old man. There have been a lot of them lately: A Man Called Ove, The Little Paris Bookshop, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Frye, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.....see what I mean?

Somehow, this one is different...I really liked it. Sheldon (aka Donny) the obligatory grumpy old man main character is 82 yrs. old, recently widowed, and has emigrated to Norway from NYC to be his adult granddaughter, Rhea, his only surviving relative. Saul is a veteran of the Korean War where he served as a Marine sniper....or perhaps he was a clerk?...He was not terribly forthcoming with his family on that point.

Rhea's father, Saul, was Sheldon's only son and a casualty of the Viet Nam war. A death for which Sheldon feels responsible because he applied WWII & Korean War sensibilities in Saul's upbringing, thus his fatal service in Viet Nam.

Shortly after we meet Sheldon, he is drawn into a situation where he witnesses a murder in his own home and becomes responsible for a 7 yr. old boy which he cannot communicate. Sensing that organized crime is involved and the boy is in danger, Sheldon sets off with the boy to protect him from the killer(s).

The result is an improbably odyssey through the Norwegian northwoods where Sheldon's depth of character is revealed.

There is humor, suspense, and tension as the drama unfolds.

I give it 4 stars.

A Review: Wintering: A Novel by Peter Geye

I picked up this book because all of the blurbers and online reviews exclaimed about Geyes' fantastic writing. And I always enjoy good, strong stories about the Great Lakes region, an area very familiar to me. My reaction to this book is ambivalent.

The story arc and the narrative as a confessional between Gustav and his father's companion, Bergit, after the father's (Harry) disappearance is compelling. It works in many ways...but is heavily reliant on dialogue...yet verbatim dialogue reported by someone who wasn't present is questionable (Bergit recounting Harry and Gus's conversation out in the wilderness is an example.)

But, there are many problems with this book. The author is at times compelled to give us too much inaccurate detail in areas where he hasn't done his research:

The scene where Harry bags a deer who has fallen off a cliff as a result of a wind gust....it is presumably late Oct. - early Nov. Two things are very wrong in this recounting: Gus says he can see the vestiges of the accompanying fawn's spots....those would be well gone by that time of the year. And the fact that the doe and fawn would be out in a wind storm. Deer bed down in unsettled windy weather to protect themselves from predators. The only way they would have been out in the open as described would have been if they had been flushed by a predator (wolf, coyote?) But no predator is written into the scene. As a result, this segment just seems like a hunter's tall tale, perhaps used as a metaphor for Harry's resentment toward his mother.

Then there's the gear....these two men have set off in canoes for the boundary waters area for the winter. That kind of trip requires that you keep your gear down to the necessities to keep the weight and bulk to a manageable level. Once Gus realizes that it's in his best interest to start finding a way out of the wilderness, voila'...he has cross country skis and poles! Where did those come from? Then later on, when he and Harry are struggling out of the wilderness in the snow...again, snowshoes magically appear!? Really? They packed along skis and snowshoes? The author would have done better to leave the skis out of the story...and just have the snowshoes.....or one of those items could have been found stowed in the cabin they came upon.
By the time the story gets to the firearms, I began to wonder if he just included a Ruger and a Remington for the alliteration.

In some instances there is too little information given to the reader about key relationships in the book:
Rebekah, the mother that Harry scorns, is ever present in the book though she has been dead for 22 years. The birth of Odd, Harry's father, is assisted by Rebekah when she is at least 15 years old. So how did Odd and Rebekah come together to produce Harry? There is no explanation for this disparate fact in this book. I gather that this is covered in an earlier book, Lighthouse Road....but this book is not touted as a sequel.

In others there is too much embellishment. For example, Charlie Aas's demise....at first we are led to believe that there would be two other people with him in the float plane. Then it turns out there is just Charlie....so why did those two other people get introduced into the narrative?

Sarah, Gus' wife, is introduced with a full CV at the end of the book...not only is she a wonderful mother, great cook, put herself through law school by the age of 23, and is now a judge. Why do we need all of this information about a minor character who shows up at the end of the narrative?

I do think Peter Geye could be a very good writer, worthy of all of the exclamation points in the blurbs. However to do so, he is going to need a very great editor.

Great review of Wintering, tangledthread!

Thanks!

Review: The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso

In a posh Cape Town suburb, two octogenarian women neighbors have been trading barbs for years. Hortensia James was born in Barbados, trained as a textile designer in England, and had a successful career in her own design business. She and her white husband purchased home #10 about twenty years ago, making her the first black homeowner in the housing plan.

The architect for #10 was Hortensia's neighbor in #12, Marion Agostino. She designed #10 at the apex of her career as her own dream home. Family responsibilities thwarted her career, and residence in #12 was the closest she could get to her aspiration for #10.

Marion heads up the local homeowners association which Hortensia attends just to oppose Marion. Hortensia's bitter and oppositional personality is cued up perfectly against Marion's prejudiced upper class pretensions. When Hortensia sets up a home renovation project to spite Marion, a twist of fate damages Marion's home, breaks Hortensia's leg, and puts them in a situation of mutual need. Hortensia invites Marion to live in her home, not out of generosity, but as an attempt to keep visiting care nurses out of her home.

The two women set about forming a crotchety relationship as widows who have been betrayed by their husbands in different ways. Childless Hortensia is forced into meeting her deceased husband's love child, while Marion is forced to face her own inadequacies as a mother, and the limitations of her background as a while woman under Apartheid.

If you are looking for an antidote to all the current popular books about the redemption of grumpy old men...this is it...the redemption of two intelligent, creative, grumpy old women. I highly recommend it based on that fact alone.

Thought for the day:

when nothing else does, books make me happy.

currently reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Just finished reading Hope Jahrens' Lab Girl and will give it 5 stars. Will have to give it another day or so before reviewing.

Finished The Winter in Anna my 28th book of the year. Here's my review:

This is a beautiful little book that is a both a coming of age story and a meditation on loss. The story begins with Anna's suicide, years after the rest of the narrative takes place. The story is told by a mature Eric Valery as he reflects upon her death, and her life.

Eric (Rick) Valery drops out of college one semester short of graduation to become a local sports writer for a small town weekly newspaper in Shannon, North Dakota, on the edge of the badlands. Within weeks, he is promoted to editor. Anna also works on the newspaper: a single mother of two preteens, young but not so young as Rick, and a woman full of hesitancy. Anna and Eric quickly become friends as they work together on the final assembly of the paper on Thursday nights. He teaches her how to develop photos for the paper and they often function as a reporting team on local events in this time before the digital age.

Through the narrative, Eric reveals tidbits of Anna's past as he learned them during his tenure at the Shannon Sentinel. He also experiences the loss of his father during that year.

The story is populated with an interesting cast of small town locals. Their characters fill out and blossom as Eric matures in his first job and gains a greater understanding of life's complexities. The North Dakota landscape and seasons are beautifully described and are integral to the story.

The writing often prose and beautifully written. I give it 4 stars.

Nice review of The Winter in Anna.

Thanks!