RidgewayGirl's Year of Books, Part One

And with 2017 almost upon us, I hereby open my category challenge thread.




As you'll see scrolling down, my challenge this year is loose and easy.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Books acquired - TBR book read: 11:4 (11 - 4)

Category One.



The Rooster

You can't kill the rooster. http://www.themorningnews.org/video/you-cant-kill-the-rooster

The Morning News Tournament of Books is a favorite book award of mine. The long list this year is very, very long at 120 books. I'll use this category to track my reading of that list.

Here's a link to that list:

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-year-in-fiction-2016

1. American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis
2. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
3. Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty by Ramona Ausubel
4. The Nix by Nathan Hill
5. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
6. Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
7. Version Control by Dexter Palmer
8. Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet
9. Moonglow by Michael Chabon

Category Two.

Published in 2017



I like new books. I've decided to stop fighting and embrace it instead.

Category three.

Bookshelf Challenge, Part One



I've got some shelves with books on them. On some, the read and yet-to-be-read books share space, on others, the books are all unread. I've counted cases and shelves and am planning on reading a single book off of each shelf. This is the big white bookcase in the living room.

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13. My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell
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Category Four.

Bookshelf Challenge Part Two



This is the wall unit in the living room.

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Category Five.

Bookshelf Challenge Part Three

"The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it." --Anthony Burgess

These are the shelves in the bedroom.

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6. The Public Prosecutor by Jef Geeraerts
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Category Six.

We Need Diverse Books



1. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
2. We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Category Seven.

Expats, Immigrants and Works in Translation



1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
2. The Fall Guy by James Lasdun

Category Eight.

Books by Women



1. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
2. The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer
3. The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
4. Transit by Rachel Cusk

Category Nine.

Around the World





Books written by authors from different places, set in different places. Tracked by the nationality of the author.

Category Ten.

CATs



1. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (February AwardsCAT)

Category Eleven.

Free Reading



1. True Crime Addict by James Renner
2. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapeña
3. The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney
4. Night School by Lee Child

As you can see, I have crafted a challenge with the surprising and no doubt controversial theme of "books." Here's to a great reading year in 2017 for all of us.

I'll begin posting here as of the first of January.

I almost forgot the BingoDOG!



4. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
7. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
9. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
10. Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet
11. Night School by Lee Child
12. The Public Prosecutor by Jef Geeraerts
13. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
17. Moonglow by Michael Chabon
22. American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis

Yay you're here! Looking forward to seeing what gems you find on your bookshelves! Have a great reading year :)

I'm so excited to see how you fill in your most excellent categories. Plus, I love a little casual shelf-stalking - what book lover doesn't?!? - so I'm especially interested in seeing what pops up there.

What great categories! I'll be looking for some BB's!

rp, I show up and you already have over 50 posts on your thread! It's nuts over here.

Laura, I'm curious as to what will be chosen, myself. I'm hoping it's an exciting way of choosing a book to read.

Hi, Tess! I never fail to gather huge numbers of BBs every thread I visit. I hope to return the favor.

I like your set up Kay, Im sure I'll be taking book bullets of course, and I wish I could stay out of the library database to concentrate on my shelves more ! Now I'm reading the second Alex Morrow book and can't put it down.

Lots of people are doing looser categories this year. I really like your strategy for exploring your own shelves but leaving room for shiny new books. I've about decided on something similar.

Lisa, I'm glad you're loving the Morrow series! I'm going to use some of my Christmas amazon gift card to pre-order the next one.

I'm hoping it works, hailelib!

Just leaving a bread crumb. I really like your setup. I always find interesting books in your thread.

As always, I look forward to following your thread and reading your insightful reviews.

Each time I come to your page I seem to begin a post with "I'm interested to see what you think about" whatever title caught my eye that you are reading. So, may as well post the first for 2017...I'm interested to see what you think about To the Bright Edge of the World. Looks like LTers highly endorse it but I've read several reviews elsewhere that were not as favorable. I have it on Kindle but won't get to it in January, I'm expecting to like it and hope I won't be disappointed.

Welcome, Kay. Nice to see you again. Looking forward to your thoughts on the Rooster TOB books. I caught a few BB's last year from that and expect I'll get a few more this year too.

Love your categories, I particularly covet the suitcase photo! Will be following along. I have shamelessly ignore my own books for my reading goals for the year. I wonder if I should do something about that...

Likewise, Shannon.

I'm not far enough into The Bright Edge of the World to have formed any real opinions, clue, but the beginning is good. I'll let you know.

Hi, Betty. Good to see you here. I figured with a longlist that long, I could use the Rooster as a category, no problem. Once again, I'll try to read all of the books chosen to compete ahead of time.

Charlotte, books is books and reading is reading. I dislike the idea of any books causing guilt and resentment. Read what you want. And don't forget how much your Guardian summaries are appreciated. Is your 75ers thread set up for 2017?

Found and starred! Have a great 2017!

It looks like 2017 is the year many of us are determined to work on books we already own. I love how you have broken your categories up according to the room the book is stored. I can only imagine that books have been added to each in turn. Best of luck meeting your goals.I will be interested to see what you choose to tackle this year. Have a wonderful year!

Looks like it is going to be a great reading year, with bullets flying in all directions! Glad to see you here.

>10 RidgewayGirl: That quote looks familiar :)
Yay! So glad you see you here.

>26 RidgewayGirl: Yup! The penguins strike again...

Nice setup, I especially like your little bookshelf challenge. Good luck with that and enjoy your reading!

Hi, Jennifer. I've already staked out your 2017 version of the BBC!

mamzel, I'm not sure if it's determination to read my tbr - more like I unpacked all the books I'd put in storage while I was in Germany, and in the process got excited about reading them all.*

Likewise, Vivienne. Lots of great reading ahead.

Huh, Victoria, I wonder where? ; )

Good. I've got you starred, Charlotte.

Thanks, Chrischi. It's so much fun to see all the new threads getting set up.

*Probably will not get to all of them this year, given both the quantity available and my love of shiny new books.

If only my owned TBR books were on bookshelves. I'd have to go with boxes for the most part. A few are on bookshelves but very few. Hanging my star!

Happy Reading in 2017!

Lori, my husband asked me a few days ago if he needed to make more bookcases. I'm holding to the idea that everything I own should fit - it just needs a little rearranging.

That is one cute rooster, Rachel!

Happy New Year, Jennifer!

May we read many books this year, Tess, and may they all be wonderful.

I too need more bookcases, but I have no place to put them.

Happy new year, and good luck for 2017

Just posting to more easily follow along with some of the people I "know". :-)

Ha, Julie. My husband's suggestions as to where he could build shelves were inventive. I'm going to spend time over the next week weeding out books I've read and don't need to keep in order to create space. It'll work.

>40 LibraryCin: I'm making the rounds, too. I'm reminded that you win for best mayor, up there in Calgary.

>41 RidgewayGirl: Ah, thank you! Yes, I'm quite proud of Naheed! (That's his first name... I actually knew him back in university. :-) He was a friend of a friend, but when he sees me now, he still remembers me, so I guess we knew each other well enough!) And that best mayor thing was pretty cool!

There's no question that Yaa Gyasi's debut novel, Homegoing is enjoying a moment. And deservedly so. Constructed as a chronological series of short stories beginning with two sisters, one who marries a British soldier and goes to live in the Cape Coast castle, while her sister is sold into slavery and passes through that same building's dungeons. Generation by generation, Gyasi writes about a single descendent from each sister, one in what eventually becomes Ghana, and the other in the US.

This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories.

As with any collection of short stories, some are better than others. A few seem to be little more than a historical moment and a filling of the space in the narrative, but the ones that are good are very, very good. And, taken as a whole, this book is a powerful look at how history shapes our present and the effect of the slave trade and colonialism on both Ghana and the US on the present day.

We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, You begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

Great categories, as always. I'm eager to follow along!

Happy New Year! I look forward to seeing what you'll read this year. I'm listening to Homegoing right now and I love it so far. I'm partway through Kojo's story.

Congrats on your first completion.

Congrats on your first book, I am half way through Homegoing and liking it. Dropping off a star,
Oh, and love your set up!

Can't believe I'm just now getting to your thread. Happy to see a Rooster specific thread. Counting down the days to the short list.

Just got Homegoing from the library so should be reading it in the next couple of weeks.

>47 Kristelh: I like your stars, Kristel!

Thanks, Birgit, although they are very loose and ordinary as categories go. I am hoping for a good reading year this year.

I look forward to finding out what you think about Homegoing, Carrie.

Thanks, Lori. It's probably the only time this year I'll be ahead of the curve.

Kristel, Homegoing really is everywhere. I love it when everyone is reading the same book.

Stacy, last year the books in competition were announced on January 13. So less than two weeks to wait.

Happy New Year! Looking forward to doing some more book talk with you!

Likewise, Andrea. Let's get reading.

Hi Kay,I am excited to see your thread up and running and I look forward to all the great books I am going to be introduced to here!

>43 RidgewayGirl: Interesting review. I have Homegoing as one of the options for my Africa category. Let's see if I get to it.

It's only fair, Judy. I can only read your thread when I don't also have a tab open to amazon.

Chrischi, I'm so pleased at all the excellent fiction now coming from African and African expatriate authors. It used to be so hard to find.

Sure, everything you own should fit with a little rearranging and adjustments to the laws of physics. Got you starred! I'm being less structured this year so I'm hanging out at the 75ers, but I'll come by for visits!

Katie, the 75ers are so busy and huge. Can you link to your thread over there?

If you're looking for a fun, light and off-beat book that reads like Mallory Ortberg has moved into Cheever territory, and George Sanders has helped her unpack, while remaining solidly grounded in present day, American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis is the book for you. The title's a bit misleading. There are plenty of housewives, American version, but of the twelve offerings in this book, not all are really stories. Some read more like very clever blog posts; fun but not stories. Like Southern Lady Code, Take it from Cats, and How to be a Grown-Ass Lady:

Accept it: you're too old to drink more than one drink and sleep through the night. Face it: you're never going to get carded again, so quit asking bouncers if they want to see your ID. Quit going places where they have bouncers.

The tone of the stories is breezy, and hides the work and skill it takes to create the effect of effortlessness. The stand-out stories include Dumpster Diving With the Stars, about an author whose has stalled out after a single book and who now takes part in a reality show,

I published one book, fifteen years ago, but it was a doozy. What they call a "cult classic." Meaning the book was odd, but identifiable, and is now out of print.

and My Novel is Brought to You by the Good People at Tampax, in which the light breeziness has taken on a weird, threatening undertone.

I really enjoyed this collection, but I do wish it had had more substance to it. More substantial stories that rely less on the clever hook (and sometimes those hooks are very clever) than on Ellis's skilled writing and incisive sense of humor. Less icing, more cake.

I just heard on the news that Greenville County is expecting @ 5 inches of snow. You hunker down and be safe. Do you own snow shovels?? LOL

Betty, it's not five inches - more like two, but it started as rain, came down wet and then froze, so it's treacherous out there. Cat went out briefly, dog has been taken for a walk, but neither seem to want to stay out in it. A good day for reading.

We have about 3 inches here, but no ice underneath. My road hasn't been plowed, so still not a day I want to be out driving. At least I'll be able to walk Adrian without worrying about falling.

>58 RidgewayGirl: - maybe I should give this one another try. Picked it up in the store last year and read the first couple of pages and promptly put it back down. Just wasn't grabbing me at the time.

Sounds like an excellent day for reading. I'm not quite sold on American Housewife, although I could well still pick it up. Great review.

To the Bright Edge of the World is Eowyn Ivey's wonderful second novel about the relationship between a husband and a wife. Allen and Sophie Forrester are newly married, living in an Army-provided cabin in Washington state, when he is given the leadership of a small group of explorers tasked with traveling up the Wolverine river in Alaska territory in 1885. The book takes the form of diaries, letters, photographs, newspaper articles and various artifacts and keepsakes that were inherited by a great nephew who sends them north to a small museum located along the route the explorers traveled through. The museum curator and the elderly man exchange letters as the curator pieces together the story's chronology and the old man recounts what he remembers.

The Wolverine river is a wild place; the Russians were forced to abandon their own explorations due to the topography and the hostility of the Native Alaskans. When Sophie and Allen part, it's with the expectation that he'll return either in the fall or not until the following spring, if they are forced to overwinter along their planned route. Allen Forrester and his companions have a difficult path ahead of them, but Sophie has her own struggles as she isn't fond of the rigid and gossipy social life of a military wife.

For the most part, this is a straight-forward historical novel, told in a chronological way, but as Allen sets out from an island off the coast of Alaska, strange things occur and the inexplicable twines itself with the traditional narrative. To the Bright Edge of the World began slowly for me, but as it progressed, I became more and more enthralled.

>64 RidgewayGirl: I'm so glad you liked it, I always worry about the second book by an author when I loved the first.

>64 RidgewayGirl: - I haven't gotten to the first one yet although it was on my list for last year. And this one also sounds interesting. I like historical novels told in the form of letters or diaries.

clue, I'll have to read The Snow Child now.

Betty, I think you might really enjoy it.

I'm trying to catch up on threads and already bullets are flying in my direction. I must check out Eowyn Ivey's books at the library.

>64 RidgewayGirl: a BB for me!

For awhile now, I've been unable to appreciate novels about the travails of young, beautiful and rich white people. There are so many of them and I question how taking the least interesting people and situations will make for a novel that breaks new ground and is compelling enough to spend several hours with.

Apparently, it can be done. Ramona Ausubel has written a book called Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, in which a wealthy, happy family is sent into a tailspin when it's discovered that the money has all been spent. Fern and Edgar have three happy children and a lot of money. They have a summer house on an island and the sailboat to go with it. They spend entire summers there, unfettered by jobs or obligations. Fern's parents are old money, and it's from them that the money flows, money earned generations ago from rum and slaves and cotton, but this was long enough ago to have erased the guilt that might have gone with that.

To their friends and children both, generations to come told the story of the abolitionist over the story of his father, proud of the relative who had fought on the side of right. They did not speak of the fact that in order for a family to free their slaves they must first have owned them. They did not stop spending the money that had been earned with the help of bodies, bought and sold. It was that money that furnished every single thing in their good American lives.

When they discover the money has all been spent, the only solution apparent to Fern is that Edgar must finally take up the reins of his father's steel mills, a fate he's been running from all his life. Edgar is the kind of person I'd dream of punching in the neck if I met him at a party and he started in with his usual rant of how he despises money, delivered while wearing the privilege that allows him to hate what he doesn't have to earn. But in a novel, he's a fascinating character. And that's what Ausubel does, with beautiful writing and a real understanding of her characters, she paints a portrait of people who aren't necessarily sympathetic, but they are understandable. There are also the children, especially Cricket, the daughter, who is forced into the role of caretaker to her two younger brothers when her parents spin out of control.

Ausubel is a true storyteller and I look forward to reading everything by her I can find. There are ways in which this book reminded me of Anne Patchett's Commonwealth, another novel I loved.

Finding some time to visit some threads. Great reviews and I think I may have even taken a BB for the To The Bright Edge of the World.

I wasn't tempted until you mentioned Commonwealth, but I enjoyed that book so will have to rethink.

I need to get on with To the Bright Edge of the World - think I have a digital copy.

Given recent political events, it seemed a good time to revisit Rebecca Solnit. I'd read the opening essay in Men Explain Things to Me and a few other articles by her and she has an ability to cut to the heart of an issue and clearly explain what is going on. The title essay begins with her encounter of an older, well-to-do man at a party who, upon hearing she'd written a book about a fairly esoteric subject, proceeded to lecture her about a very important book on the subject that had just been published. When she was finally able to interrupt him long enough to communicate that the book he was telling her about was indeed the book she had written, and which he had only read a review of, his reaction was not to apologize and ask her questions, but to continue his lecture. While this is a particularly blatant example of the phenomenon she discusses in this essay, it's something that happens more often than one would suspect. Her initial essay on the subject led to other women working in academia to also talk about their similar experiences, and then to the coining of the term "mansplaining." Solnit has, as a result, become a polarizing figure.

Which is a shame, because her writing is balanced and relentlessly fair. There's no broad sweeps being made at any group. She's interested in how the conversation surrounding equality has moved forward, and there's no doubt, she says, that we have moved forward, and compares where we were as a society in the 1970s when it came to racial, sexual or gender equality. We are still working towards a more just society, but what we're fighting for has changed.

Solnit is an academic and historian and so her essays are serious and well-reasoned. She's interested in the environment and anti-war activism as well. Men Explain Things To Me is a hopeful and determined look at our progress toward a more just world, with a clear-eyed look at where we are now and why it matters.

>73 RidgewayGirl: That's a BB for me! There have been some classic examples of mansplaining highlighted on twitter recently including (IIRC) some guy lecturing Mary Beard on classicism.

That's pretty funny, Jackie. I wonder if he started his lecture with a "Well, actually. . ."?

I read part of Men Explain Things to Me a while back and I should really take the time to read the rest of it.

>76 hailelib: It's worth a read. I had forgotten how kind and even-handed Solnit is, even as she pulls no punches.

This book! I'm conflicted about what to say about Nathan Hill's debut novel, The Nix. On the one hand, it's one of my favorite kind of book - a big, meaty novel full of heart, and it's well-written and there are characters who are so nuanced and fully realized that it's a pleasure to read about them. Hill manages to humanize even the one truly bad man in this book - sure it's his wife's fault, but he's got layers. The Nix is a book about family, about how the ones you love are the ones who will hurt you, about the weight of the past, forgiveness and understanding.

And it's a messy, bloated book, in which one character is made to be the one we are all supposed to hate and, unlike every other character, drawn without depth to be the butt of jokes. It's a novel where women are the source of men's discomfort, the cause of their failure and their reward for successfully changing their ways. And it's a novel with everything neatly and nicely tied up at the end, no ambiguity allowed.

Samuel teaches English at a suburban university. He's not very good at it, preferring to put all his energy into not writing the book for which the advance has long been spent and playing an online World of Warcraft-style game. He's mad at his Mom for leaving him when he was eleven, which is also the year he made a good friend and developed a crush on his friend's talented sister. When his mother resurfaces - she's arrested for assaulting a presidential candidate - he agrees to write a nasty tell-all.

The Nix moves forward and back as it follows his mother's past, Samuel's childhood and their present, in a world almost, but not quite like our own. It's the kind of book that's hard to put down, at least when Hill sticks with his main and secondary characters. He does go off on tangents that detract from the story he's telling, but the parts that center on Samuel, his mother or the people in their immediate orbit, the book is fantastic.

I'm looking forward to what this author does next, and in seeing how he hones his craft.

>73 RidgewayGirl: I read this last year and loved it. I especially love the essay, Woolf's Darkness: Embracing the Inexplicable. I have 2 more of Solnits collections to read this year.

Wonderful review

Roberta, I liked that, too. It is good to remember that while Woolf is known for talking about a woman's need for an independent income and a room of her own in which to write, she also championed educational opportunities for women.

The house becomes a physical encyclopedia of no-longer hers, which shocks and shocks and is the principal difference between our house and a house where illness has worked away. Ill people, in their last day on Earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying 'OH NO YOU DON'T COCK-CHEEK'. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone.

A woman dies suddenly, leaving behind her husband and two young sons. As they negotiate the days, months and years that follow, they are accompanied by the physical manifestation of their grief, a large and not entirely benign crow.

I was pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy Grief is the Thing with Feathers and for the first half that remained largely true. My brother died suddenly last year and grief, it turns out, is both unique to each person and utterly, utterly universal. Max Porter's understanding of grief is so deep as to move past the differences and grab the heart of it.

Some days I realize I've been forgetting basic things, so I run upstairs, or downstairs, or wherever they are and I say, 'You must know that your Mum was the funniest, most excellent person. She was my best friend. She was so sarcastic and affectionate ...' and then I run out of steam because it feels so crass and lazy, and they nod and say, 'We know, Dad, we remember.'

'She would call me sentimental.'

'You are sentimental.'

The offer me space on the sofa next to them and the pain of them being so naturally kind is like appendicitis. I need to double over and hold myself because they are so kind and keep regenerating and recharging their kindness without any input from me.

This is a slight book, told from the alternating viewpoints of the husband, the two sons speaking together, and the crow, who begins as a malevolent and destructive force, then mutates into something approaching, but never quite reaching, comfort.

>81 RidgewayGirl: Kay, I remember the moment you told me about your brother. My heart just goes out to you. I still recall parts of Agee's A Death in the Family which I haven't read since college. Some books just speak to that vulnerable part of you. Hang in there.

Thanks, Victoria. I am doing well. I'm going to have to hunt down Ted Hughes's poems on the subject as they are referenced in this book.

And that cover and title looks like it could be a collection of Ted Hughes. Great review. I'm wondering if I'm strong enough to read it. No recent deaths in the family, but grief never does quite go away.

... and neither do I! My thread at 75ers is https://www.librarything.com/topic/244638# and I miss you guys! And I'm wondering what I've done! I wanted to start a new thread with a new focus each month, partly because of the whatever that is happening in this country, but I'm feeling runover there!

Lovely review of Grief is the thing with feathers. I didn't think I could cope with this book when it came out but will have a look for it now.

Katie, it's good to know where you are. I'll catch up with you when I have a bit more spare time - the 75ers group is certainly a talkative one!

Charlotte, it's worth reading. I'm going to get my own copy.

And Grief is the Thing with Feathers is not at all a hard book to read. I found it comforting and thoughtful.

>81 RidgewayGirl: - Taking a BB for the Porter book.

I'm enjoying your Tournament of Books reviews. I started Homegoing and am liking it so far. Last year, I'd read a couple of excellent volumes of interconnected short stories (The Tsar of Love and Techno and All Saints). This format can work well in the hands of a good writer.

Lori, it really is excellent.

Thanks, Paulina. I love short stories in general and inter-connected ones in particular. I've just finished another Tournament book that is set up that way and I hope to review it later today.

Despite the title, Mister Monkey isn't about a monkey, but rather it centers on a not-very-good musical by that name, which is itself based on a children's book. Beginning with an actress with a role in a cheaply produced off-off-Broadway version of the play, Mister Monkey spirals out, following people whose connection to the play becomes more and more tenuous. Just when it seemed to be in danger of abandoning the musical altogether, Prose pulls the pieces together so that the separate stories all connect in meaningful ways.

There are a few things I reliably like when I read. One of them are short stories, especially inter-connected short stories. Another is when an author is talented enough and cares enough about the characters they've created, to write empathetically about all of them, even the most repulsive or mean-spirited creation. Mister Monkey has all of that, and being written by Francine Prose doesn't hurt its chances either. I found this book delightful. Prose's deep concern for her characters turned people who might have been laughable -- the desperate aging actress, the lonely and frumpy kindergarten teacher, the hormonal and unpleasant eleven year old -- into people I cared about.

>90 RidgewayGirl: - Once I have the 2 books from the TOB that I have from the library read, this is next on the list if I can get it before we go away for vacation. Both your description and Stacy's remind me somewhat of Station Eleven following the story from person to person and having it all come together.

>90 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read anything by Prose since Houeshold Saints many years ago. This sounds like a really interesting collection, so BB for me. Thanks for the review!

Betty, that is an interesting comparison. Structurally, they are similar.

You're welcome, Jennifer. It reminded me to read more by Prose.

Adding Mister Monkey to my recommended books list. I have never come across Francine Prose before. Such a good name for a writer.

Pam, Francine Prose wrote a brilliant book called Reading Like a Writer that I have read more than once.

>95 RidgewayGirl: Reading Like a Writer is joining the many books flying to me from all over the world. January has been a big month for impulse buys, and it's not over yet!

Pam, it really is excellent. And it pushed me to read a few authors I'd never considered.

Well, this was just a lot of fun. James Lasdun's newest book is a suspenseful novel that rushes along until it ends at just the right moment (so hard for authors to get this exactly right). The Fall Guy is Matthew, a chef trying to decide what to do with his life. His cousin Charlie has invited him to spend the summer with him and his wife at their vacation home in an affluent area of upstate New York. Matthew and Charlie have a long history together and Matthew also gets along well with Charlie's wife, Chloe. Sub-letting his apartment and moving into the guest house is a perfect way to give Matthew a financial break and time to think over what he wants to do with his life. The peaceful summer he'd pictured is altered when Matthew begins to suspect that Chloe is having an affair and his curiosity and concern begins to take an ominous turn, even as Charlie and Chloe seem to be losing their affection for him.

Told from only Matthew's point of view, The Fall Guy has an anxious and claustrophobic feel to it. The reader begins to suspect that how Matthew sees things may not be the way the others affected see things and the inability to step away from Matthew's brain adds to the tension as it becomes clearer and clearer that things are going very badly wrong.

James Lasdun may be known for his more literary work, but he knows how to craft a fast-paced and entertaining novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Less Difficult Women than Women Making the Best of Bad Situations, Roxane Gay's collection of short stories focuses mainly on relationships between men and women, from abusive or cold to the romantic and committed. Gay also returns to the themes of twins and sisterhood and how women support each other, and of pregnancy and motherhood; always fraught and likely to end in disaster.

Like any collection of short stories, the quality varied from brilliant to acceptable, but despite the way Gay constantly examined similar situations with different variables, the short stories never felt repetitive. They were strongest at their most raw - the stories that opened and closed the book were visceral and I think I'll be living with them for some time.

I'm not always a fan of short stories, but ever since I read An Untamed State I have been a fan of Roxane Gay so this one is going on my list. My list is also getting The Fall Guy added to it as well!

>98 RidgewayGirl: Heard him speaking on the radio this morning. I don't think I've come across his work before - this one sounds creepy.

Pretty varied reading you're doing just now. Makes for great reading (well, tempting reading) of the thread.

>97 RidgewayGirl: I also enjoyed Reading like a Writer. It got me to read Chekhov!

Have you read Blue Angel? That is my favorite novel by Prose.

>102 sturlington: No, but I have a copy. And also one of A Changed Man. As soon as the Tournament of Books is over, I'm diving into my tbr.

And Reading Like a Writer got me to read several books I otherwise would not have. I especially loved A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer.

The ratio of books purchased/obtained to books off of my TBR read has reached 1:1!

In utterly unrelated news, VictoriaPL and I are visiting the FOL booksale tomorrow.

>104 RidgewayGirl: so excited!

>104 RidgewayGirl: I hope you don't wind up in a fight and tear a book apart when both of you try to get it away from the other!

>106 clue: that would be exciting! But it hasn't happened yet, LOL. We don't really go for the same books. Maybe that's why it works.

>106 clue: - I think that ratio has a short shelf life if you're off to a library sale.

>104 RidgewayGirl: That is my eventual aim, but I'm building up to it slowly! Last year my TBR:acquisitions ratio was just a shade below 1:2 (in 2015 it was 1:3, although I didn't read as many books that year so am telling myself that wasn't so awful really), so this year I'm aiming for 1:1.5, with the hope that if I can do it then I'll aim for 1:1 next year.

I only added six books to the tbr today, which is nothing. Especially compared to VictoriaPL's haul. I wonder if the five books I forced her to buy had any impact on her total?

Betty, the writing was on the wall, I think. But they are such nice books.

Jackie, I've gotten much, much better. And I refuse to worry about a hobby that involves neither illicit drugs nor skeevy men from the wrong side of town.

>110 RidgewayGirl: Kay, you know I'll have nothing to do with math and numbers! It's all good...

Only six books at a good sale is really quite moderate.

I had so much fun today, as per usual, Victoria.

>112 hailelib: I think so. I was restrained and thoughtful in my choices. This is what I brought home:

>113 RidgewayGirl: When I went to the sale with you, you came away with a much larger haul. I'm not certain if this was the same sale or not.

Lori, the local FOL allows Friends of the Library members to shop while the volunteers are organizing the donations every Thursday. We took advantage of that and were the only ones shopping. The booksale we all attended together was The Really Great, Really Big Booksale held once a year. This was quite a bit smaller.

>115 RidgewayGirl: Okay, if this one was smaller, six was probably a "big haul."

>116 thornton37814: Lori, the FOL sale is a permanent site, so everything is well defined and in its place. The literacy sale that you came for is one weekend a year, so the books are just thrown into the venue in barely controlled chaos. The FOL is so much easier to browse.

>117 VictoriaPL: But you have to admit that the Really Big sale is much more exciting. I find more at the FOL sale, though. And being able to go between the public sales means that the recently published hardcovers haven't been snagged by dealers.

>118 RidgewayGirl: I like the quiet stillness of the FOL. At the Really Big there is the thrill of the hunt, true, but it's somewhat dulled by the press of the crowd... the sweaty arms reaching around you, the hot breath on you when folks inch in to see what that one overturned book might be.

The FOL is much more enjoyable, but the Really Big sale reminds me that reading is still a thing. Sometimes I need that reminder in real life.

>120 RidgewayGirl: I know what you mean.
I take reassurance in how many books are on the Hold shelf when I go into the Library. See all those other people requesting books! And the Hold page. Just look at those upteen people in the queue ahead of me for Demelza! I think we still have a healthy Library system - we're adding another branch this year. You are not alone!

>113 RidgewayGirl: Those all look like good choices. Congrats on your thoughtful choices.
Our big book sale, one of the largest in the country, is just a few weeks away! It's great, and for the most part, everyone is respectful.
Unfortunately, it draws the rude people with scanners who try to claim a whole section of a table by blocking it with a big cart. The sale has a rule that they aren't allowed to "scoop" the books up, meaning they aren't suppose to grab by the armful, put it in their basket and then scan them.

You have a point, Victoria. I do like peeking at what other people are requesting, too. I saw one last time with the season one of Poldark.

They were very thoughtful choices, Jennifer. And I expect a full accounting of your book haul when the time comes. Those people with scanners are the worst. I'm glad they haven't figured out that they can go by the FOL site any Thursday instead of just taking over the first night of the official sale.

Look forward to hearing about those books you picked up, Kay. The only one on my shelves is the Peter Robinson one, although I've had my eye on a couple of others.

I'm eager to read the Robinson, Judy. It's a stand-alone novel and I've only read books in his DCI Banks series.

So this was outside my usual reading wheelhouse. This is a Belgian political thriller about The Public Prosecutor, a corrupt functionary who is targeted by an even more corrupt shadowy Catholic organization called Opus Dei. Savelkoul is not a sympathetic guy, what with his mistress kept in a property given to him by a development company in exchange for a ruling, and the pleasure he takes in the "gifts" he receives. His wife has taken refuge in religion and in obtaining titles for her two sons. Opus Dei is out to bleed as much money from the family as they can, taking advantage of the wife's religious fervor and Savelkoul's easy ability to fall prey to blackmail.

It's basically a bunch of people double-dealing and lying as they try to grab the advantage for themselves. They eat in very nice restaurants and drink a lot of wine and then plot for ways to destroy Savelkoul or, in Savelkoul's case, try to maneuver around the traps while finding a way to get laid. Belgium, Jef Geeraerts tells us, is a aristocracy-obsessed kleptocracy, although he does make the point that corruption is present everywhere. Also, the Opus Dei are weirdos.

All in all, it was interesting, but still not my thing.

Great haul at the book sale! Our library used to do a Mammoth Book Sale annually at one of the rec centres, but has now switched to what it calls "Mini-Mammoth" book sales on the third Saturday of each month at the city archives. I think the rec centre space was getting expensive to rent. They also run a small book sale during Doors Open Ottawa, because the city archives is one of the buildings open to the public and people can browse the books while waiting for a tour of the archives. The smaller sales more often seem to be a good strategy for them.

When I lived in Cincinnati, the big sale was down on Fountain Square in June. It lasted an entire week, and the final day was "bag day." It was spread out enough to be accommodating to the crowd. The FOTL certainly kept it well-running. All the books were covered by rented awnings (which were possibly donated or at least the funding for them donated). Looks like the dates are June 3-9 this year. If I decide to go to the library conference in Grand Rapids the next week and if I decide to drive, perhaps I can arrange to hit "bag day".

rp, I know from experience that the setting up and breaking down of a book sale is an enormous amount of work. Having a permanent site is a wonderful thing. What I like best about working at a big booksale it seeing the variety of people who come in the doors. We book-lovers are a diverse lot.

Lori, you know I love a bag sale! It's fun to pick up books that look interesting or you're not sure if you heard good or bad things about but you can take home and give it a chance.

Lots of great reading! And lots of BBs coming my way: To the Bright Edge of the World, Mister Monkey and The Fall Guy are going on the list.

>130 LisaMorr: Lisa, I hope you enjoy them all. My own wishlist never looks the same after I've caught up on all the threads!

January was a great reading month. It combined diving into the Tournament of Books roster, which always stretches my reading choices, with not watching much in the way of television (exception - we've started watching Netflix's The Series of Unfortunate Events and it is brilliant) and all of a sudden the number of books read increased.

I've been watching The Series of Unfortunate Events too, and love it! Neil Patrick Harris is so good and it only took a few episodes before I was singing along to the theme song. "Look away, looook away...."

And so the sad passing of David Fallon was barely and briefly reported, and by the morning bulletins he had been bumped out of the news completely by a cyclist under a bus in the City, and a drive-by shooting in Peckham.

Nobody fed his cat.

Eve is a TV crime reporter. She stands just outside of crime scenes and times her filming so that the body bag is carried out behind her as she delivers her report. She's good at her job, has a great working relationship with her cameraman, Joe, and connections with dozens of law enforcement personnel and first responders. But she's also almost thirty and she's battling to keep her position. She's moved back home to care for her father, who has Alzheimers and requires round the clock care, and the strain has made it harder to take the kinds of career risks that might move her forward. Then she's contacted by a serial killer who wants her to air exclusive footage of his murders. She's making decisions that will have repercussions far beyond questions of taste or ratings.

Belinda Bauer writes dependably good crime novels which are varied and unpredictable of which The Beautiful Dead is one of the better, although with Eve, Bauer has created a less unusual protagonist than in her other novels. Bauer has a talent for making her characters come to life, even those given only a few paragraphs. I enjoyed The Beautiful Dead enormously and Bauer has now become one of a half dozen crime novelists whose books I look forward to with unseemly anticipation.

>132 mstrust: Ha, Jennifer, both my husband and my son do this. So far, episode three is my favorite. Neil Patrick Harris as Count Olaf pretending to be Montgomery Montgomery's new assistant Stephano is the funniest character in the world. We've been saying things like, "My name is NOT...anything but Stephano," and howling like loons for days now.

>134 RidgewayGirl: We're also watching it as a family. Netflix is killing it in TV lately.

>135 sturlington: It really is. We're watching it much more than anything else. I think when our contract with the cable company is up, we may just abandon it altogether.

>134 RidgewayGirl: Yes, that was a great character! The look reminded me of the tall Minion.

>136 RidgewayGirl: Cut the cord! It's great. You spend less time mindlessly watching TV, and you enjoy what you do watch more. It helps if you have Amazon Prime.

Another book slated to compete in the Tournament of Books.



Version Control by Dexter Palmer is a novel about time travel, but not in the sense one expects. There are no madcap adventures in the past or future. This is a conversation about time travel, and a novel in which time travel occurs, but the packaging is subtle and more thoughtful than that.

Set in the near future, Version Control tells the story of an ordinary and likable woman named Rebecca, who is married to a physicist who heads up a lab that is working on what they call a causality violation device. She likes some of the scientists working in the lab more than others. She has a wild best friend. She works for a dating website that is quite a bit more advanced than the dating sites of today. And the world is similar to our own, but also different, with self-driving cars outnumbering the autonomous variety, civil unrest in the Dakotas and a president who frequently pops up on screens everywhere to give pep talks.

It's hard to discuss this novel without giving important events away, so I'll just say that this is the most interesting exploration of time travel that I've read. It explores several theories and ideas about time travel. My new favorite idea is spouted by a security guard who likes the sound of his own voice and my previously favorite theory is cut to shreds in a satisfyingly convincing way. But the discussions don't get in the way of the story Palmer is telling. Yes, there is a long scene with people discussing their working theory over breakfast that goes on for pages, but by that point I was invested in the story. The final chapters were a let-down, especially given the preceding section, but this was a book that I'm very glad to have read.

>139 RidgewayGirl: I'm interested in this book. I liked his first novel, but this one seemed very long. From your review, it seems worth the time, yes?

Shannon, it didn't feel like a long book to me.

>141 RidgewayGirl: Added to the ever-growing wishlist then.

>133 RidgewayGirl: Hurrah! Another Belinda Bauer to add to my wishlist.

>131 RidgewayGirl: Exactly! And I'll take another one for Version Control sounds like my kind of book!

Dropping a comment so that I get to follow your thread - happy reading! (I'm a little behind, so apologies for the generic comment - better to come, I hope.) :)

Shannon, my work here is done, then. I'm well into The Long and Faraway Gone now, and that's your fault.

Judy, I thought that The Shut Eye wasn't that good, but any author can have an off-book.

Lisa, it was really thought-provoking.

Hi, Eva. The threads are hard to keep up with!

15 books this year already, wow! I'm at 9.

Great review of Version Control I'm trying to decide if it's a book bullet or not. A president that pops up and gives pep talks on your personal device unasked for? Sounds dystopian to me!

Katie, it's a future that isn't quite dystopian, but neither is it utopian (by a long shot). Palmer takes the trends a step further but leaves much of society essentially the same. It's interesting what he does and I liked that he didn't let the ideas swamp the story or the characters.

True Crime Addict by James Renner is about the disappearance of a Massachusetts college student named Maura Murray, but mostly it's about the author and his life. It's an interesting combination, but the sum is much less than the parts, as the missing woman case is thin and Renner's life would have been more interesting in memoir form.

Renner chooses to look into Murray's disappearance after losing his job as a journalist leaves him at loose ends. He's dogged, but random in his investigation and some of his decisions are simply odd. Murray had been drinking the night she left and drove north, so Renner gets drunk and drives the route Murray must have taken. I'm not sure of the insight he was looking for, but it was certainly a stupid and pointless thing to do. The story of his personal life was, in many ways, more interesting than the case he was investigating, and I'd be interested in a more introspective and in depth memoir from Renner.

The writing in True Crime Addict is not what I expected from a former journalist. The descriptions of the people he speaks to are either banal (a woman being describes as cute-as-pie) or weird (a man has insouciant facial hair) and there is a lack of the journalistic clarity customary in books by those who have worked as reporters. Still, it was a diverting book when I needed something that didn't require a full brain's worth of concentration.

>150 RidgewayGirl:
When I saw this title I thought 'well that's perfect for Kay!', remember how you used to like true crime books.
I'm sorry it wasn't a good read.

Victoria, he lost me early on, when, after driving drunk on unfamiliar mountain roads in the snow, he goes on and on about how dangerously he was living by catching a ride with an old dude he didn't know. Renner mentions that he's a large, healthy man and so I didn't buy the idea that he was taking risks for his story. Now if he'd noticed that driving drunk was a risky thing to do, I would have agreed. I think that the level of quality needed to get published is maybe lower than average for the true crime genre. Books like In Cold Blood or Missoula are anomalies.

>152 RidgewayGirl: oh, completely agree.

Which is a shame because it's all so interesting.

Back to fiction for me.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders is a fantasy novel set in the near future in a world just like ours, almost. Patricia and Laurence are outcasts in middle school; she has a reputation for being weird and witchy and he's just a nerd who has managed to build himself a small time machine he wears on his wrist, although it only manages to move him forward two seconds at a time. They become friends, but cautiously. He's aware that being associated with Patricia makes him even less popular and Patricia's been so thoroughly shunned that she's defensive. They're also much more than they appear to be.

So, YA and urban fantasy are not genres that I normally read, but I did like this book much more than I thought I would. It was fun. The book is divided into the story of what happened in middle school and what happened when Laurence and Patricia meet again as adults in San Francisco, as global warming and wars are making the world unlivable. The adult Laurence is a tech prodigy working on a project to get people to another, more habitable planet and Patricia's a witch, working with a ragtag band of magicians, who feel that the world can be healed.

All the Birds in the Sky was entertaining. It's been entered into the roster for the upcoming Tournament of Books and while it's too insubstantial to do well in that competition, I'm glad I was pushed into reading it.

And a couple for my wishlist!

You liked ATBITS a bit more than I did. Maybe had I realized it was considered a YA book before I finished it, I would have judged it differently.

>156 hailelib: My work here is done. : )

>157 dudes22: It doesn't appear to be marketed as YA, but it did have a YA feel to the writing. I looked at the comments on the Goodreads ToB discussion, and that it was YA came up often. I liked it a lot, but I don't think its up to the level of the other books in the competition. It'll be interesting to see how it does.

I looked at the book's Amazon page and there was a review by School Library Journal (a sure clue). The price of the book can also be a clue since YA books cost $17 to $18 dollars and books targeting adults cost $25 these days.

I can't, in good faith, recommend The Lesser Bohemians to anyone. It's an odd, acquired taste of a book that I loved inordinately and since it would forever taint my opinion of you, were you to read the book and dislike it, please leave it be.

Eimear McBride tells the story of a young Irish woman during her first year of drama school in London. Eily's thrust into the vibrant world of London and of drama school from her quiet life and it takes an effort for her to find her feet, both in finding friends at the school and in learning the ropes of independent life. One evening, she meets an actor twice her age in a pub and they begin a tentative relationship, which grows into an intense love affair between two broken and flawed people.

McBride tells the story from inside of Eily's head, and her stream-of-consciousness abandons grammatical norms, leaving the writing a challenge to follow. There are no quotation marks, and conversations take place over a single paragraph, with no indication of who is talking. This should have been annoying, instead it make the act of reading The Lesser Bohemians an immersive experience. This was not a book I could pick up and put down during a busy day. I needed to read it when I could set aside a block of uninterrupted time, during which I would enter so completely into Eily's world that I felt unmoored when I had to put the book down. I'm sorry to have finished it, but I'm eager to read anything else McBride writes, including her grocery lists, probably.

Your opening made me laugh. Thanks for that. I've got this on the TBR shelf so I'll come back for the rest of your comments once I've got to it. Hopefully!

If you don't like it, Charlotte, it won't affect my opinion of you. Much.

That sounded a lot more threatening than I'd intended.

As soon as you said "stream-of-consciousness" I lost all interest. So I'll still be your friend :)

I don't do well with most "stream of consciousness" books either so I will pass on this one but I am very glad that you enjoyed it as much as you did. :)

Betty and Judy, thank you. I love it when an author experiments with language, or tries something new with structure, but there are people for whom that does not work and there's no point reading something you'll hate or that will feel like a relentless effort. There are books I know better than to read.

Speaking of books, I took the time today to go through my tbr shelves with the intention of pulling out books that no longer appeal. Good news! I found a duplicate copy! That's about it, though, as far as purging. The rearranging and tidying did leave me with mysteriously more space than when I started. I can't see a reason for it, but I'm grateful.

The year has just started and I'm already playing catchup. sigh

>73 RidgewayGirl:
Men Explain Things to Me is one I've heard of and have had at the back of my mind for a while. May have to jump it up my list.

>81 RidgewayGirl:
This is the second great review of Grief is a Thing with Feathers tonight. I'm definitely going to be checking that one out.

>99 RidgewayGirl:
Difficult Women is another one on my list. It looks great.

>139 RidgewayGirl:
I'm a sucker for a good time travel yarn, subtle or otherwise, so I'll have to check out Version Control.

>155 RidgewayGirl:
I'm glad you enjoyed All the Birds in the Sky. It was one of my favorites from last year.

>162 RidgewayGirl: Ha! Maybe I'll just hide the review (if I get to it any time. Soon...).

>165 RidgewayGirl: rearranging sometimes does that.
I am, again, opposite of you in that I don't like it when authors start forgoing punctuation. I'm also not fond of those that spell out regional dialects.
Just the facts, ma'am, as they say.

Victoria, we may disagree on punctuation, but we do agree on dialect and accents. In my case, I think that they only work if the author is very, very good and that most authors overestimate their skills.

And now to plunge from the heights to the abyss of a Very Bad Book.



Most of the time when I pick up a book solely because it looking interesting it backfires on me. Not all the time. Every so often I'm rewarded, just often enough to keep me from giving up this self-destructive and time-wasting tendency. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapeña is not one of the exceptions, but a book that reminded me why I periodically vow not to do this anymore.

The Couple Next Door are Anne and Marco Conti. They have a baby and an invitation to dinner from their friends next door, who don't like babies. When the babysitter cancels, they go to dinner and it's not a great success. Graham barely participates and Cynthia spends the evening flirting aggressively with Marco. They have to run back to their house to check on the baby every half hour, despite also having the baby monitor with them. And Anne spends the evening sulking, because she's a new mom and that's what they do, especially when they feel fat. And then they return home to find the baby missing.

It's a good set-up and the initial chapter of the dinner party is the best part of the novel. After that it falls apart in a book more interested in providing the next twist than in character-building, plot or believability. The book is written in present tense, an odd decision that continually pulled me out of the narrative. The book swings from the point of view of one character to another, mainly it seems to make sure the thoughts of the person the reader is most interested in at the time remains opaque, so while we follow Anne's inner conversation with herself when she's alone at home moping, and when she's doing something random and inexplicable, her thoughts are hidden. And one thing each character can be counted on to do, it's to act randomly and without explanation. I finished this book waiting for the many, many plot threads to wind together. They just don't.

While this should teach me not to pick up a crime novel without reading a few reviews beforehand, experience has told me that I will learn nothing from this experience.

Awww, at least you got a good review that saves others from this stinker out of it. I too sometimes pick a book up just from the intriguing title or cover art. It's a crap shoot. Sometimes the art director is the real star. : D

This reminds me of the event a number of years ago now when a couple on vacation went to dinner leaving their daughter in the hotel room and came back to find her missing. Made big news at the time. Anyway - it's hard sometimes not to be pulled in by an interesting cover or back cover description.

>171 mstrust: And that elusive hope of a really satisfying and suspenseful story. I make this mistake almost solely with crime novels.

>172 dudes22: Yes, in Spain, wasn't it? But here the author hedged her bets. They were literally on the other side of a wall. With a baby monitor and they checked on the baby every half hour. It was overkill.

Now this. This is what a crime novel should be. Set in Oklahoma City, The Long and Faraway Gone by Lou Berney follows two people whose present is haunted by events that took place during the summer of 1986. Julianna was twelve when her older sister disappeared at the state fair. Wyatt was fifteen when the movie theater he was working at was targeted by armed thieves.

In the present day, Julianne works as a nurse, but half-heartedly, living alone and still looking for her sister. The man she was going to see is back in Oklahoma City, and she's determined to find out what he knows. Wyatt works as a private investigator. He's living in Las Vegas for now, but he's hired to do a favor by looking into a possible stalking case in Oklahoma City.

This is a book deeply rooted in time and place. And the setting isn't one often seen. This is a character study of how loss and uncertainty have shaped two people, and while they remain separate for much of the book, their journeys share a pattern. There's a lot going on, but Berney adeptly pulls it all together at the end in a satisfying way.

Many thanks to sturlington and DeltaQueen for bringing my attention to this excellent book.

>174 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad you liked it!

>174 RidgewayGirl: I'll take a bullet for this one - sounds very good!

Lisa and Shannon, I loved every minute of it.

>174 RidgewayGirl: - I took a bb for this too, but haven't yet gotten to it. Glad you liked it.

>174 RidgewayGirl: I took a BB from DeltaQueen for this one too. I saw that you had it tagged "currently reading" and I was hoping for a good review from you as well. When I first saw DQ's review Oklahoma City jumped out at me because it's only 200 miles from here. I'm still surprised I hadn't heard of Berney.

After reading several website comments and seeing that it had won an Edgar, I sent our public librarian an email to see if she knew him, she had previously worked in OKC though in an academic setting. She didn't know him but both emailed and spoke to him in person and he will be coming to our library in May.

I haven't read The Long and Faraway Gone yet, but have it on Kindle waiting for me. Hope to get to it soon!

Betty, I think you'll like it.

clue, that's exciting. He teaches at a university there. That's great that he's willing to come speak at your library. I hope you go and report back.

So glad you enjoyed The Long and Faraway Gone, I have since picked up another of this books, Gutshot Straight which looks to be the start of a series.

Catching up on threads, and just have to say that I was excited to see you picked up Travelers Rest-- Keith Morris is one of my favorite writers (Dart League King is incredible...), and it drives me crazy how few people have heard of him! I hope you enjoy it :) It's on my short stack of TBR books--I'm saving it for a weekend when I can curl up with it and have no distractions...

Thank you, Judy. And I look forward to finding out what you think of his earlier books.

Jennifer, this one was prominently displayed at the small independent bookstore downtown. They curate their books very carefully, and I know I'll at least appreciate the writing. He's a local author for me.

>183 RidgewayGirl:, That's right--I forgot you're in SC! I was his graduate assistant at Clemson, and loved working with him. By recommendation isn't too biased, though--there are plenty of writers I've worked with whose work I wouldn't recommend!

>184 whitewavedarling: That's another good reason to get to Travelers Rest soon, in addition to just wanting to read it.

Maybe our gods are as small as we are or as large, varying with the size of our empathy. Maybe when a man's mind is small his god shrinks to fit.

Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet is an odd, difficult-to-describe book that had me from the opening pages. Part of the plot is easy to describe; after she becomes pregnant, Anna finds that her husband wants nothing to do with either of them so, when her daughter is five, they leave. Her husband Ned decides to make his career in politics and needs his family back for appearance's sake. Anna eventually finds refuge at a seaside motel in the off-season, but their safety is tenuous.

The other aspects of the plot are more difficult. Anna begins hearing a voice after her daughter is born. It goes away once her daughter can speak. What keeps her from thinking it's some sort of auditory hallucination is that her husband mentions hearing it, too. Then she finds other people who have had the same experience.

Millet isn't a lyrical author, and while she writes well, it's not her writing or her characters or her plots that make her memorable. Millet is an author of ideas. Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a religious book, but not a theological one; she's exploring the idea of God and what that means to different people and different species. And with an emphasis on ideas, the plot becomes secondary, as does the idea of finding any answers.

>186 RidgewayGirl: that sounds interesting - a BB for me!

Book Bullets! You got me! The Lesser Bohemians and The Long and Faraway Gone both sound good.

Jackie and Katie, I can't tell you how happy it makes me that books I've described as idea-driven or stream-of-consciousness and devoid of quotation marks look attractive to people.

The premise of Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel, Night School, is a solid one. Reacher, who is a 35 year old MP, along with a guy about his age from the FBI and another guy from the CIA are told to report to a class on inter-departmental cooperation. Only it's not really a class, but a top secret mission to discover and foil a plot about something unknown. The NSA has picked up noise about a big deal going down but they don't know much more than that. To discover what's going on without tipping their hand, they've chosen a few of the brightest men and given them the vast resources of the American government.

The strength of the series is the main character, Jack Reacher. He's the strong, silent type; a man who says as little as he can, and isn't slow to bang heads when needed (in these novels, there are always several occasions that necessitate the use of fists or weapons of various kinds). He's also a thinker. He looks at situations in a Sherlockian way by putting together random details into a coherent whole. And he has a cast-iron sense of duty and moral obligation to help those weaker than himself. But in A Wanted Man, a different version of Reacher was presented; a chatty judgmental guy who seems to bear more resemblance to the actor playing him in the movie version than himself. This guy was not likable, although he had a quick mouth and did the same kind of things the real Reacher would do, and he was not a guy I'd ever read a series of action-packed thrillers about. He disappeared for the next few novels, but he's reappeared here, much to the detriment of the series and the case he's working on.

When Night School opens, Jack (as I prefer to call this alternative-Reacher) is just back from successfully assassinating two foreigners in Europe, which is one of the things the Military Police does when there aren't sufficient unruly soldiers apparently. Didn't seem likely to me, but I'm not in the military. Jack joins the two other agents and they briefly hang out while Jack tells them things. Then Jack goes to Hamburg, which is where the thing was first mentioned and the other two really talented guys sit on their hands until they join Jack in Hamburg, where they sit on their hands in the American Consulate. Sometimes they make a phone call. Jack is stuck doing everything, with the help of Neagley, his staff sergeant, a Hamburg detective, and a pretty woman from the NSA, who is there to remind us all that this is very important and that all the resources of the government are at their disposal. And also to give Jack a lady friend and the author a chance to write some exceedingly average sex scenes. Jack thinks about her hair a lot.

The final quarter of the book hangs on Jack and his crew making a ridiculous mistake, a mistake so monumentally bone-headed that the real Reacher would have reacted by thinking some very pithy thoughts.

Look, I love these books. They're well outside of my wheelhouse, but reading about a highly competent and kind individual working a complex plan with effortless grace is a lot of fun. This variation though was not fun to read. This guy is not someone you'd like to have around, even in a crisis situation. Here's hoping the real Reacher is back in the next installment.

I've just started the second book in the series Die Trying and it will probably be my book for the plane tomorrow too. Since I read in order it will be a while before I get to these alternate books and I'll probably have forgotten your comments in my then advanced age. :)

>190 RidgewayGirl: Jack thinks about her hair a lot. LOL.

Betty, you've got dozens of books to go. And since the series itself jumps around chronologically, you shouldn't worry too much about reading them in order. But they are so much fun, aren't they?

Victoria, she had very good hair, even though she rarely combed it. I don't think that the author had a woman look over these bits ahead of time. Still, Child is one of the few action-thriller writers who never treats woman solely as sex objects and he's at pains here to emphasize the mutuality of their attraction, which is refreshing. I do wonder if the two alternative-Reacher books were written with Tom Cruise in mind, except in the first Jack mainly rides around in a car and in this one, he's just not that bright.

Much has been made in reviews and interviews of the fact that Moonglow is a fictionalized account of Michael Chabon's maternal grandfather's life. I'm less interested in what Chabon is doing to blur the line between fiction and memoir than I am in whether Moonglow worked as a story. And it did. Chabon's a talented writer working at his peak and so the writing here is fine and stays out of the way of the story he's telling, which is the story of his own family tree, mainly focusing on his grandfather, and using the framing device of Chabon spending time with his grandfather during his grandfather's final days and the conversations they had.

What emerges is a straight-forward novel about an interesting man with the framing device of their conversations before he dies. The story is mostly chronological, with some jumping back and forth in time, from his childhood as a Jewish boy running around places he wasn't allowed, to his involvement in trying to find German scientists before the Soviets do at the end of WWII, to how he met his wife and their life together, and his life as a widower in Florida. In many ways, he lived an ordinary life, but in others he was extraordinary; in his devotion to the wife who never fully recovered from her life in France during the war, in his feeling of obligation to a German man who is being bullied in prison, to his fascination with the space race.

Chabon writes with an enormous amount of affection about his grandfather, and that sentiment pervades the novel. It's also, at a more basic level, just a good story about an interesting, yet ordinary man, well-told.

>194 RidgewayGirl: It's on my to-read list from the library.

>194 RidgewayGirl: I enjoyed the few books by Chabon I read. We have a copy at the library right now. Maybe I'll find time to read it.

>194 RidgewayGirl:. I like Chabon's writing and will be getting to this one soon. It is my f2f book club read for April.

Victoria, you already know that I think that you might enjoy it.

Lori, just as a warning - there is a sub-plot involving a snake (he does retire to Florida after all) but the snake never actually makes an appearance so take that under advisement. I know your feelings on the matter.

Kristel, it's an unusually traditional novel for the ToB, although I guess the whole fictionalized memoir angle got it in? It is very well-written.

>194 RidgewayGirl: - I'm really looking forward to this one. It's the only one from the tournament that I actually purchased because it was going to take way too long to get from the library.

>193 RidgewayGirl: - I had heard before that they don't need to be read in order, but easier for me if I do.

>194 RidgewayGirl: - I was tempted by this on the 7-day express shelf at the library before we left for vacation, but was just to busy and had other library books that needed to be finished. And I think the hold list on Overdrive was long too, but it's a book I intend to get to even if I can't before the TOB starts. I'll probably go to the library when I get home and see if it's still there.

>198 RidgewayGirl: I didn't realise the ToB has that focus on new or different writing. Should pay more attention, I guess. I loved the Chabon, hope it does well in the Tournament too.

Stacy, there are at least two people I'd pass a copy on to had I not gotten it from the library. I think it's the most accessible of the Tournament books this year.

Betty, I hope that when you get back from Mexico, you'll be utterly relaxed and refreshed.

Charlotte, every year the Tournament stretches my reading. That said, the selection this year feels a bit more mainstream than usual, but that may be because my reading has been changing. Not sure.

We Love You, Charlie Freeman is the debut novel by Kaitlyn Greenidge that reads like a debut novel, which is to say that it's uneven, with parts that fit together uneasily, but also with sections that show the author she will become.

Charlotte Freeman moves with her family from their crowded home in Dorchester, Massachusetts to a spacious apartment in the Toneybee Institute, where they are to take part in a research project that has them living with Charlie, a young chimpanzee, as a member of their family. Her mother and younger sister are the most enthusiastic about the project, while Charlotte is more focused on starting at a new high school.

What this book does well is to create a rising sense of dread about the events as they unfold, as well as about what happened at the Institute decades ago. The point of view changes depending on the chapter, but stays primarily with Charlotte, who is a critical observer of what is going on. Greenidge gives a weaker ending to both storylines than is hinted at earlier, and she fails to develop the motivations for conflict as adeptly as a more experienced author might have done.

I have Difficult Women in the stacks. Looking forward to it.

The first story packs a punch, Roberta.

>198 RidgewayGirl: How to ruin a perfectly good book . . . add a hissing creature.

Lori, you read the spoiler, didn't you? And can a book set in Florida avoid the subject? I'm warning you now to never read Lonesome Dove - that has a scene that I think about quite a bit more than is comfortable, and I'm fine with the creatures.

>207 RidgewayGirl: I did read the spoiler.

>207 RidgewayGirl: >208 thornton37814: I read the spoiler too, LOL

I hope that knowledge doesn't spoil the book for you, Victoria!

I really like Maggie O'Farrell's novels although I find it difficult to pigeon-hole them - the best I can do is describe them as chick-lit for people who usually read more literary fare. Except they aren't quite chick-lit. In any case, I read them when I want to relax with a novel, and yet still feel like my brain is involved.

My Lover's Lover concerns Lily, who moves into the spare room in Marcus's loft and soon after begins a relationship with him. The problem is that Marcus is in mourning for his last girlfriend, and Lily begins to see her around the loft. She becomes fixated on finding out what happened.

The first half of this book just wasn't very good. It wasn't terrible, just strained and unconvincing. It improved dramatically after the big twist, and became a solid and interesting story, but the chapters I had to read to get there were lackluster. This is O'Farrell's second novel and it reads as though she wasn't quite sure what she was planning as she went along. I'd recommend After You'd Gone or The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox to anyone, but My Lover's Lover is best avoided.

I'm enjoying your thoughtful reviews of the ToB books. They've made me re-examine my own reactions to some of them. I read with interest your review of We Love You, Charlie Freeman. I've finished most of the ones on my "must-read" list and this is one of the ones I'm sitting on the fence about. I might wait and see if it makes it past the first round.

That sounds reasonable, Paulina. I've read all but 4 and a half - I'll read the sports book that makes it past the play-in round, and I'm halfway through Black Wave, with just High Dive to read before it competes. And while I'm really looking forward to the competition, I'm looking forward to reading without any plan soon.

And while I'll keep an eye out for whatever Kaitlyn Greenidge writes next, I think that this book is the weakest entry in the ToB.

>213 RidgewayGirl: Wow! Congrats on your ToB reading, Kay!

Victoria, considering how once I put a book on a list, it loses all allure, this is an accomplishment for me. It's only fifteen books, though.

Hi Kay: You've got some good reading going on here. Way way back at #174, I enjoyed The Long and Faraway Gone also.

Lisa, it was so good! I've got to read more by Berney.