RidgewayGirl's Year of Books, Part Three

The kids are in their last week of school before summer vacation, the weather is warm and humid and I've moved my reading time to the screen porch, at least until it gets hot out. Pets have become exceptionally lazy creatures. Summer may not officially begin for a few weeks, but happy summer everyone!

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Books acquired - TBR book read: (58 - 22)

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. There's also a summer reading program this year, so my Rooster reading will continue.

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
10. High Dive by Jonathan Lee
11. The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge
12. Marlena by Julie Buntin

Category Two.

Published in 2017



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

1. A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
2. The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker
3. Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki
4. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
5. Ill Will by Dan Chaon
6. A Separation by Katie Kitamura
7. Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
8. Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
9. The Long Drop by Denise Mina
10. Goodbye Vitamin by Rachel Khong

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.

1.
2. I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
3. The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12. American Rust by Philipp Meyer
13. My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell
14.
15.

Category Four.

Bookshelf Challenge Part Two



This is the wall unit in the living room.

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2.
3.
4. The Trespasser by Tana French
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

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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2.
3.
4.
5.
6. The Public Prosecutor by Jef Geeraerts
7. The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

Category Six.

We Need Diverse Books



1. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
2. We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge
3. Black Wave by Michelle Tea
4. The Break by Katherena Vermette
5. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
6. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien
7. How to Survive a Plague by David France
8. Rapture Culture by Amy Johnson Frykholm
9. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
10. The Girl at the Baggage Claim by Gish Jen

Category Seven.

Expats, Immigrants and Works in Translation



1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
2. The Fall Guy by James Lasdun
3. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
4. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
5. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
6. The Patriots by Sana Krasikov
7. Letters to a Young Writer by Colum McCann
8. Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan
9. Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa

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
5. Autumn by Ali Smith
6. Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
7. True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies
8. You Had Me at Hello by Mhairi McFarlane
9. The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood
10. Dis Mem Ber by Joyce Carol Oates
11. Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston

Category Nine.

Around the World





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

1. Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue (Mexican author)
2. Human Acts by Han Kang (South Korean author)
3. Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag (Indian author)
4. War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans (Belgian author)
5. Twisted River by Siobhan MacDonald (Irish author)
6. An Atlas of Countries that Don't Exist by Nick Middleton (British Author)
7. Autopsy of a Father by Pascale Kramer (Swiss Author)
8. All the Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan (Israeli Author)

Category Ten.

CATs



1. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (February AwardsCAT)
2. This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell (April RandomCAT)
3. Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta (May WomanCAT)
4. No One You Know by Michelle Richmond (July CultureCAT)
5. By Gaslight by Steven Price (July CultureCAT)
6. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund (August RandomCAT)

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
5. Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin
6. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
7. Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
8. The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

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!




2. Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue
3. A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
4. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
6. Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
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
18. Black Wave by Michelle Tea
22. American Housewife: Stories by Helen Ellis
24. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

And there it is. All shiny and new. This thread is open for business.

Happy New Thread!!

Oooh, shiny! Have a wonderful summer!

Dustin Tillman is a psychologist and a widower with two sons. When he was thirteen, in the early eighties, his adopted brother murdered his parents and his aunt and uncle. Dustin's testimony helped put him in prison and the case was notorious at the time, when the Satanic Panic was in full swing. Now he discovers that his brother is being released from prison. At the same time, he's spending more of his time with one of his patients, an ex-cop who is obsessed with what he sees as a series of serial killings of drunk college students.

Dustin's younger son is adrift. He was supposed to have begun college classes, but he never made it to a single class, using the tuition money for drugs and hanging out with his high school friend Rabbit, and Rabbit's dying mother. Since his mother's death, his father hasn't noticed anything and so when an uncle he hadn't known he had gets in touch, Aaron is eager to get to know him.

Ill Will is an odd and brilliant book. Dan Chaon plays around with structure and language in a way that made me very happy. The two central crime stories twine around each other and Chaon allows each story to feel both plausible and like a weird conspiracy theory. Like the two primary narrators, the reader is left with many questions as the book progresses. The ending has me utterly confused, and I'm still trying to figure out what was and wasn't true. Chaon is clearly an author who is comfortable making the reader pay attention and drawn conclusions without any hand-holding. I generally like an ambiguous ending, but in this case I'm looking for someone to explain it all to me.

Hi Kay:
Happy New Thread! I think you liked Ill Will better than I did. Maybe I was especially crabby when I read it, but the pages where the text was in column format frustrated me a bit. I was also very confused by the ending and I felt that I was reading random thoughts most of the time.

Lisa, I liked those columns. I'm a sucker for things like that, though. I liked how Dustin wasn't great at completing sentences, too. The ending left me utterly confused. I have a high tolerance for ambiguity in endings, but that was a stretch for me. The Morning News is hosting a summer book club to discuss some new books and Ill Will is up in July. I'm happy that someone will be able to explain everything to me.

Happy New Thread!

>1 RidgewayGirl: - I wish we'd get a little summer weather here. It's been rainy and drizzley for most of the month.

Happy new Thread.

Betty, we had a rainy spring, but now it's warm and humid. Rainy is not good moving weather for you.

Thanks, Kristel.

Blood at the Root by Patrick Phillips took me weeks to read. It's not an overly long book, the author writes well, and the story is a fascinating one, but Forsyth county is just a hundred miles from my home and a quick two hour drive away. It could just as easily have happened here.

Forsyth county lies just outside of Atlanta, Georgia and Patrick Phillips moved there with his family in the 1980s, when the county still didn't allow non-white people to live, or even pass through there. In 1987, his family went to march with Civil Rights campaigners seeking to integrate the county, but when the busloads of peaceful marchers were turned back by crowds of Forsyth county residents, Phillips and his family had to have the police escort them home. Then Phillips left for university and his hometown became just a colorful topic of conversation.

Years later, he has written a book about how in 1912, after one woman is discovered in bed with a black man and another is discovered murdered in the woods, angry mobs drove all African Americans from the county. And they and their descendants kept Forsyth county free of anyone not seen as white until the 1990s. Phillips is rigorous in his research and the story he tells is shocking and difficult to read about, but is tremendously important -- it's essential reading given how recently the county was integrated and how the attitudes still exist today.

A married couple have separated, but agreed to keep their marital status quiet for a while, when the husband disappears while in Greece. Sent by her mother-in-law, who still believes them to be together, the unnamed narrator of A Separation checks in to a room at the resort hotel in an isolated area to look for her husband.

A Separation reminded me a lot of Rachel Cusk's Outline series, with its detached tone and how the narrator is content to keenly observe what is going on around her. She's in an odd position, being viewed as the wife of the absent man, but having been apart for six months, she's moved on with her life.

There is a crime in this novel, but this is not a crime novel, or a thriller, but a quiet examination of relationships and how a change in one relationship affects other relationships. Katie Kitamura's writing is clear and lovely and does much to enhance the meditative feel of this novel.

>25 RidgewayGirl: That's not normally my type of novel, but it sounds like one I actually might enjoy -- perhaps just enough element of a mystery there.

It's not a long book, Lori, so even if it doesn't grab you, it might be worth giving it a try.

>27 RidgewayGirl: I did figure out my library has a copy. It's currently checked out, but that's okay. I'm heading out of town this weekend, and don't want to take physical books with me. Maybe it will be in when I get back.

To anyone who read Ottessa Moshfegh's excellent and distasteful noir, Eileen, her new collection of short stories, Homesick for Another World, follows much of the same ground, being full of creepy, repulsive and lonely people interacting with other repulsive characters. It rarely ends well.

But a short story collection isn't the best platform for her writing. Most of the stories would do very well set apart from the others, but all together, they form an unrelenting repetition of misery that becomes less effective when read one after the other, although I did try to only read one story a day. In the form of a novel, an off-putting character creates an effective atmosphere of unpleasantness that is a great deal of fun to read. In a series of short stories, with each main character as creepy as the last, the effectiveness is reduced.

That said, the story called Mr. Wu encapsulated Moshfegh's style perfectly. In it, a shy older man wonders how to approach a neighbor, a woman he has fallen in love with from afar. As he tries to work up the courage and to find the right approach, the reader slowly realizes how terrible it would be for this relationship to blossom.

Author Stefan Hertmans was given his grandfather's diaries but it took him several years to get around to reading them. With War and Turpentine he has taken his memories, his family's memories and the diaries and written a novel about his grandfathers' life. The book is divided into two themes, that of painting (turpentine) and WWI (war). His grandfather, Urbain, was a keen amateur painter, carefully copying various classical paintings. His own father had been a church painter, restoring paintings and frescos in religious buildings around Ghent and further afield. A love of art in general and of classical painting in particular bookended his life.

Urbain was a young man when WWI started and Belgium was a battlefield. This part of the book is taken directly from Urbain's diaries, which he wrote some years after the war had ended. This part of the book has a very different feel than the rest. Urbain was either a brilliant and prescient soldier, surrounded by less able men, or he thought he was a brilliant soldier surrounded by idiots. In any case, he was injured numerous times and spent one convalescence in England, before returning to the battlefield.

War and Turpentine is a picture of Belgium that no longer exists, and is a character study of a man who was both ordinary and unique. I found the parts about his childhood and what being poor meant at a time before government assistance and social safety nets to be both fascinating and sobering.

>29 RidgewayGirl:
Hmmm. An "an unrelenting repetition of misery" does not sound like something I'd be into reading.

Happy new thread!

I don't know, Andrea, unrelenting repetitions of misery do have their charms.

Thanks, Lori.

>30 RidgewayGirl: That one sounds interesting.

You might really enjoy it, Lori, being all about family history.

Universal Harvester was an odd book that sucked me right into it. John Darnielle has written a sort of horror story about Jeremy, who is working as an assistant manager at a video rental store when a few of the tapes appear with odd and frightening insertions in the middle of the VHS tapes. Looking more closely, the location of these clips is a farmhouse not to far from the small town of Nevada, Iowa.

The horror in this book is subtle, and is effective for most of the book. It's a masterclass in creating a feel of rising dread. Whether that creepiness is maintained as the origin of the clips is unveiled is debatable. Universal Harvester does succeed unreservedly in portraying a specific time and place and Darnielle's writing is never gets in the way of the story he's telling.

>36 RidgewayGirl: I think this means you liked it? I agree that it was a subtly effective book. I'm still not sure what exactly happened, though.

>35 RidgewayGirl: As luck has it, my library has it, and it's supposedly on the shelf. I'm intending to stop there tomorrow. I probably would have gone today, but the cats needed an uninterrupted day with me.

>36 RidgewayGirl:
Ooooh! Great review and a BB!

Shannon, I'm not entirely sure what happened, either, but whatever it was, it worked for me. Thanks for the recommendation.

I'm glad your library has it, Lori. It's rare to get history from the Belgian perspective.

Thanks, Andrea!

With The Long Drop, Denise Mina has changed directions somewhat. Mina has taken what is known about Peter Manuel, a serial killer who killed the family of William Watt in 1956, and a night these two men spent drinking together.

After Watt's family was murdered, Watt was arrested and spent time in prison. He ended up trying to find the murderer himself, to clear his name. Manuel agrees to meet with him and promises he has information. So begins Mina's tale of a night two very different men spent drinking together in the bars of Glasgow, and as the evening progresses, Mina takes the reader both back to the time of the murders and forward to the eventual trial of Peter Manuel.

If you didn't already think Mina was a masterful writer, this novel will convince you. Mina tells a compelling story, gives life to the characters, writes 1950s Glasgow into soot-encrusted life and even adds a touch of humor to the mix. Mina's made a name for herself writing tough, flawed women and here she shows she can write about anything and make it sing.

>41 RidgewayGirl: Yes! I recently finished this one too. She is always excellent. I cracked up at the bit about how Dandy McKay got his nickname.

rp, I loved the bits of humor Mina threw in. And the way she described Glasgow. But I'm a biased reader - I'm ready to adore anything she writes.

>41 RidgewayGirl: & >42 rabbitprincess: Thanks to your recommendation I've placed a hold on this at the library. It's on order, not arrived yet so it will be a while. Mina is such a wonderful writer.

Hi Kay: I was happy to find out that I was first in line for The Long Drop, I will start reading it this weekend. Mina is one of those writers that I will read anything she writes.

Belated happy new thread!
I think I lost you for a short time, but now I've found you. And you hit me with two BBs right away, for Homesick for Another World and Universal Harvester.

Another huge Mina fan here, so of course, The Long Drop is going on my list!

Vivienne, Lisa and Judy, I look forward to finding out what you think of The Long Drop!

Jennifer, you did pick out the weird ones! Enjoy.

>48 RidgewayGirl: I gotta be me, ha!

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge is the story of a summer author H.P. Lovecraft spend in Florida with the family of a teenage fan and of what happened. It's the story of Charlie, who had disappeared from a psychiatric facility and was presumed dead, and of his wife, Marina, who was looking for him and for clues she hoped could be found in looking into Charlie's research into Lovecraft's life. The Night Ocean tells the story of a book published and immediately banned, a book formed of Lovecraft's own diaries, or it's a book about a controversial forgery, written by a hard-to-track-down con man. It's the story of Barlow, the boy who spent a summer with Lovecraft and about his adulthood as a college professor in Mexico City, where he would encounter William S. Burroughs under less than ideal circumstances. And, finally, it's the story of a fraudster, who both is and isn't telling the truth.

The Night Ocean is a clever novel, crammed full with fascinating people, none of whom are telling the truth, even on the third or fourth "real" version of events. I was utterly unable to untangle the mess of lies and plot threads and I didn't care. This book was so entertaining, with the stories growing more interesting as the book progresses, so that the story of an old man living in a small lakeside town in Ontario is the most compelling of the bunch.

Lovecraft is a tricky person to write about. He was an undeniably imaginative writer of that genre that combines science fiction and horror, but he was racist even by the standards of a century ago. He's about a controversial a figure as one can use to fashion a novel around, and La Farge ducks and avoids the issue in an unsatisfying way, in large part by only allowing Lovecraft into the novel in small doses and keeping him talking about other things. But Lovecraft is not the most interesting character here, nor is Charlie, the person the novel is structured around; both he and his wife Marina remain ciphers. But Barlow and Spinks, two men whose lives were shaped by Lovecraft, are wonderfully drawn, so complex and alive even when one is hiding the truth and the other is lying as fast as his lips will allow.

>50 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad you liked it. I also thought it was very entertaining. Are you planning to read Marlena? I think it will appeal to you.

Shannon, I plan to read it during the first week of July. I'm enjoying the Tournament of Books Summer Reading Challenge, even though I may be the only person who loved A Separation.

For a few years I've been reading a blog that deconstructs the Left Behind books, a popular series of novels about the Apocalypse, page by page, examining why they are bad, both from the standpoint of the writing and of the eschatology behind the events they describe. So when I saw Rapture Culture: Left Behind in Evangelical America by Amy Johnson Frykholm I was intrigued at the thought of finding out who reads these books and why.

Frykholm is well-situated to look at this topic. She approaches her project as an ethnographer, and one who is able to approach both the books' defenders and detractors with openness and with a lack of judgement. She interviews a number of people, attending church with them and learning about how the books fit into their worlds. The book consists mainly of these interviews, along with her observations and I found it interesting. It certainly reinforces my desire to never read the series!

>53 RidgewayGirl: That's a BB for me! Sounds fascinating!

Jackie, I found it very interesting.

I have a great fondness for dark crime novels, so I picked Twisted River off of a display labeled "Celtic Noir" with great excitement, having never heard of author Siobhan MacDonald. It's always exciting to discover a new favorite author. What I discovered instead is that while I love the genre, I also love a well-written and well-plotted book, and Twisted River was neither of those things.

Two families swap houses for a week in October. Kate and Mannix want to give their sensitive and bullied son the treat of a week in New York and Hazel wants to show her hometown of Limerick, Ireland to her family. Told in chapters that alternate between the adults, the reader learns about the problems both families are facing.

The story starts to take off on page 159, although the two women mention that they are feeling a sense of rising dread or impending doom several times. The tension in the story is based on characters withholding information from the reader even as the chapter is told from their point of view. So one character will ruminate at length on the ominous text messages he's receiving, while failing to think about the actual messages, or a character will make oblique references in a personal journal that point in one direction, but this will be shown to be a red herring later on. And the ending was just silly.

I loved that this book was set in an unrepresented locale. That's what was good about this book.

Sorry Twisted River wasn't such a good read, but I am glad that you have warned us. If I saw that title and/or the Celtic Noir reference, I probably would have picked it up, now I will know better!

Ruth goes home for Christmas for the first time in three years to find that her father's Alzheimer's has progressed and her mother wants her to move back home and help with his care. Goodbye, Vitamin is about the year Ruth moves back home, reconnecting with her best friend and taking care of her father, with a little help from his former grad students.

I see, walking on the other side of the street today, a man with enormous pecs. They look as inflated as popcorn bags right after microwaving.

The phrase "born humans" is what I think of whenever I see someone wildly different from me.

Fetal circulation is different from that of born humans. Fetuses have fine hair all over them that born humans don't have. Fetuses do a thing like breathing that isn't actually breathing--the motions develop their lungs. They take their first breath when they're born and that's when the whole system changes incredibly: unborn to born.

We're born humans, I think, about the huge pec'ed man. With our functioning circulatory systems. Breathing, walking, having real hair. Just look at us.

Rachel Khong has a light, humorous writing style that pairs surprisingly well with the subject matter. Ruth is a fun person to hang out with as she gets a haircut from her best friend, remembers her childhood with a father who would buy an order of fries for some pigeons and schemes with her father's former students to have him teach a class on campus, while keeping him out of sight of the administration.

And the Alzheimer's is handled with sensitivity and humor. Ruth's Dad is a fully realized character and the family's struggle to accommodate and understand what was happening felt very real.

Later at the farmers' Market, I watch a couple bros sample dates.

"Shit," says one bro, coughing, "I think I'm allergic to this giant raisin!"

"That's not a raisin, Steve," says another bro. "That's a Medjool date."

Born humans, I remind myself.

DNF.

I usually battle on to the bitter end of a bad book, hoping for redemption or at least for it to move from "bad" to "so bad it's good," but I couldn't with this one. From the main character being a male fantasy of the perfect woman (while she didn't spend time fondling her own breasts, she did possess a perfect and "petite" body, a startling lack of agency in a woman with an alleged Ph.D and a voracious sexual appetite, focused on a vampire who claims to be her Dad. Ugh.), to the idea that a violent offender in a psychiatric prison would be a woman's sexual fantasy, this book made me too angry to continue. Write women as though they were actual people, Mr. Pyper!

Andrew Pyper is a good author. I'm a fan. I have no idea what happened here, but there will have to be some seriously good reviews for me to pick up another book by this author. The Killing Circle is a solid and well-written thriller. Read that instead. Unless the thought of a man ripping the ears off of a random passer-by is exciting to you. Then you and this book's main character are peas in a pod and I wish you a vampire of your very own.

Ha! The book may not have reached "so bad it's good" levels, but your review is enjoyable.

>59 RidgewayGirl: FYI, the touchstone is linking to a different The Killing Circle.

I keep coming across Pyper's books, and he is very popular at my library, so I keep considering picking up one, since I do enjoy horror and thrillers. But the reviews are usually mixed, at best. Perhaps I will try The Killing Circle, but I'll definitely avoid this one. Thanks!

Thanks, Jennifer. I wasn't going to say anything about it, given how little of it I read, but I was too filled with rage to stay silent.

Shannon, I've fixed it. The Killing Circle is worth reading.

A dear friend gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card for my birthday and so the kids and I went off to find books. I came home with three, all found in the bargain area. I forgot to use my gift card, so I'll be forced to go back.



And then my husband gave me a well-chosen book from my favorite bookshop.

Nice haul, and what a sweet husband!

>59 RidgewayGirl: - Oh dear. Sounds like a good author has produced a bit of a dud. Sad when that happens. ;-(

>63 RidgewayGirl: - Lovely!

Jennifer, I like him. He's decided to bite the bullet and buy me what I really want, which is books. The local independent bookstore downtown (M. Judson Books) is helping him out. They're enthusiastic about hand-selling books.

Lori, it happens. The question is whether The Only Child is a misstep or how he's going to proceed from now on. We all have authors we loved who either lost interest in the series they were writing or who decided that it would be more lucrative to write predictable thrillers. Time will tell.

An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States by Nick Middleton is a beautiful book. A lot of attention to detail and care has been put into the design of this amazing book, from the color scheme of subtle gray-blue and cherry red, to the way each location is set in a map, with the previous page having a cut-out so that the reader first encounters the country, and then its place on the globe. This isn't the kind of book designed to help children with their geography homework, or to be an information-filled guidebook, instead, each entry is features a flag and some basic information, with a few paragraphs telling the story of each state, with the intention of arousing curiosity and interest, rather than providing a lot of details. These stories are often poignant or weird, but always interesting.

I loved Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands, and this book falls into the same wheelhouse, being more about the idea of these places than anything else. The places featured range from the well-known and expected (Greenland, Catalonia) to the off-beat and obscure (Transnistria and Somaliland) to the downright odd (Elgaland-Vargaland, Atlantium), but all are fascinating.

>67 RidgewayGirl: That is already high priority on my wishlist (I loved Atlas of Remote Islands too) but I'm quite tempted to treat myself...

Jackie, I keep thinking that I need to just get my own copy of Atlas of Remote Islands. They'll look good together on the shelf.

>50 RidgewayGirl:
The cover immediately draws me, but you great review makes it a BB.

>53 RidgewayGirl:
Oooh. Rapture Culture does sound interesting...

>67 RidgewayGirl: I'm sure I'd love that one.

I think you would, Lori. I can loan you my copy if you'd like.

>72 RidgewayGirl: I did look and see none of my libraries have it. I could, however, recommend it as an Overdrive purchase and be placed on the waiting list for it. I'll see if they add it before I take you up on the offer.

>67 RidgewayGirl: - Having already taken a BB from you for Atlas of Remote Islands (although I haven't gotten to it yet), I'll take another BB for this too.

Just checking in to tell you that I have picked up a bunch of book bullets from you (thank you very much...) from this thread and your previous thread: American Rust, Three Things About Me, Human Acts, The Long Drop and The Night Ocean.

Also chuckled at: I forgot to use my gift card, so I'll be forced to go back.

Betty, both those books are so much fun to spend an evening with.

Thanks, Lisa. You have excellent taste. ; )

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin is a novella set in a hospital in an unnamed South American country. A boy questions a patient about the events prior to her admittance and she describes what has happened from when she first arrived from the city with her daughter. The woman's account is dreamlike and often confused, with it becoming increasingly clear that something has gone terribly wrong.



I like Joyce Carol Oates's short stories, so I was quick to grab her newest collection, Dis Mem Ber. The strongest stories by far bookend the collection, being concerned with uncomfortable and dangerous things that happened to awkward girls on the cusp of adulthood. Oates really excels at writing teenage girls who are rushing headlong into something they don't fully understand. A few of the stories were not quite finished, with one ending abruptly and another that read as though it were an idea that hadn't been allowed to fully develop. That said, a sub-standard short story by JCO is still worth a look.

oh my, two more BBs!

I don't think I've read any Joyce Carol Oates. She's been one of those authors that I keep hearing about all the time, as someone whose work I would likely enjoy, but who I've never gotten around to reading. Based on your review, Dis Mem Ber is not the place to start.

I hated that I couldn't join you this morning for book browsing. Did you pick up some nice things?

Hi Kay: Way way back at #63, Happy Belated Birthday! The Joyce Carol Oates looks good, I like her short stories. As a matter of fact I'm reading I Am No One You Know right now.

Hi, Victoria, yes, I got two of the books in the Ferrante quartet - they used to be priced higher, but this time they were just $2. And I got out with fewer books than I'd feared thanks to a particularly cranky volunteer who disapproved of letting people in to buy books. I was standing in the trade paperback aisle and she walked up to me to order me out of her section. It was weird. But I'm happy with the books I did find.

Lisa, I haven't read that one. She really is writing them faster than I can read them.

Well, I guess that's one way to keep people from buying the books you want for yourself, ha! Maybe she was hoarding "her" section.

>82 RidgewayGirl: - I had to read that a couple of times, Kay. Seems like a weird way to sell books.

Jennifer, there's no doubt that people taking books off of the shelf to buy does detract from its appearance.

Betty, the FOL here has a dedicated space for what were once just twice a year sales. Then they opened their doors once a month, too and that was a success so a little over a year ago, they started opening up every Thursday morning. These openings correspond to when the volunteers are there sorting and shelving. It's a lovely time to visit, since there are only a handful of other shoppers and most of the volunteers congregate in the open areas to chat. They're a friendly lot, and up til now, unfailingly nice. They were happy to have people buying books. Except this one woman. And when I mentioned the incident at the check-out, they knew exactly who the culprit was.

Still, it's a reminder that I HAVE PLENTY OF BOOKS. And there's the giant booksale in August put on by the literacy foundation. It's the day we get back from a week at the beach, but I'm still going to manage to make it before they close for the day. Sunday is when it's a flat rate of $10 for all the books you can fit in a paper grocery bag. The number is a lot.

I'm rearranging my shelves, my favorite relaxing activity that I can claim is housework. I found a book I'd thought had been lost years ago, shelved right out in the open, in alphabetical order, next to the copy I'd bought to replace it.

>85 RidgewayGirl: well then it's a shame I wasn't there. I think between the two of us we could have taken her on. We could have stashed her unconscious behind the mountain of Stephen King. Or James Patterson. Either would do.

LOL, Victoria. I was so taken aback by her, that I stood there for a minute trying to figure out why she was so upset.

>85 RidgewayGirl: ...next to the copy I'd bought to replace it.

I haven't done that since last week. It just irritates the heck out of me.

The worst part is shelving them side by side and never noticing!

>86 VictoriaPL: - I see a cozy mystery evolving from this scenario!

>90 LittleTaiko: ha!

>85 RidgewayGirl: - Oh - FOL volunteer. The new library I've been using only has a small permanent bookshelf and then a big sale once a year. My old library had, not a room, but a decent size permanent space, so I might stroll through there once in a while when I go back.

>90 LittleTaiko: Victoria and I could become a nefarious crime-committing team, roving bookstores and booksales, looking for rude employees to knock off.

>93 RidgewayGirl: Definitely!

Michael Eric Dyson is a professor at Georgetown University, but first and foremost he is a minister and that shines through Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. He writes in the format and the cadences of a sermon, and with that intensity. He's here to explain to us how life is experienced by black citizens and why that should matter to us. He's angry and determined and also patient and kind, a guide who isn't interested in making people feel guilty, but he does aim for the reader to find understanding, repentance and an interest in taking action.

Dyson here explains both history (why and how discrimination didn't stop with the abolition of slavery, or even with the passage of the Civil Rights Act) and our present (topics ranging from police shootings to Colin Kaepernick) with both the compassion of a pastor and the solid grounding of an academic. Tears We Cannot Stop is an important book for anyone with an interest in the welfare of all Americans.

Some fascinating books here - I lost track of your thread so I've got all the book bullets at once. I'm particularly envious you were given a copy of Alexie's latest - I'm going to ask the library and see if they can get me a copy when I get a UK publication date. Or I might just crack and buy my own copy!

Fever Dream didn't do much for me, I'm afraid.

I love the idea of an atlas of countries that don't exist. Tempting!

Charlotte, I was thrilled to get a copy of the Alexie. I asked my husband how he knew I wanted it (it isn't in my amazon wishlist) and he would only say that he'd been paying attention.

And I'm reading The Patriots by Sana Krasikov now. It's so good! Thanks for pointing it out.

When Cat's parents divorce, her mother moves her and her older brother to a small lakeside town in northern Michigan. They're barely scraping by, but they're better off than their new next door neighbors, Marlena, her little brother and her meth-cooking father. Cat is fascinated by Marlena, the cool bad girl, and they quickly become close friends. But Marlena's reckless behavior is self-destructive and even years later Cat, now living in New York with a kind husband and fulfilling job, is still haunted by Marlena.

Julie Buntin's debut novel is the book I had hoped The Girls would be. It's a deep dive into the intense relationships of adolescence, in an environment where the normal adventuresome nature of teenagers has lasting consequences.

>85 RidgewayGirl: I found a book I'd thought had been lost years ago, shelved right out in the open, in alphabetical order, next to the copy I'd bought to replace it.

Glad I'm not the only one who makes mistakes like that. I recently bought Do not say we have nothing and before it was delivered, I ordered another copy. Less expensive was the hold I placed at the library yesterday for a book I have already ordered. It sounded familiar, but I couldn't find it in any of my lists or collections.

Your FOL volunteer reminds me of a reference librarian I knew. There was great celebration at her retirement!

This conversation about the FOL volunteer made me think of something that happened several years ago. One of the women I worked with asked if I would go with her to test drive a car she was thinking of buying. Off we go, it had rained a little that morning and there were puddles here and there but it was not raining as we made our way to the lot. When we got there, the car salesman wouldn't let her drive it because it was clean and he was afraid she'd get it dirty! I was horrified and would not have gone back and driven it for anything, but she did and ended up buying the car.

Thanks, Vivienne, for reminding me that this is a not-entirely-unknown occurrence! I've had it happen with a hardcover and a paperback, but never two paperbacks shelved side by side. At least they were different editions.

clue, I wouldn't have gone back either! I will leave the FOL bookshop alone for a while - today I caught my husband measuring for new bookshelves. I'm determined to not make this a necessity.

No One You Know by Michelle Richmond was the ideal vacation read. It was diverting, without requiring my undivided attention. In it, a woman looks for her sister's murderer, after the man who she thought was the culprit convinces her of his innocence. It's pretty much a standard thriller/mystery novel, but it's well-executed, well-written and well-plotted, which is enough to make it a stand-out in a very crowded field. Refreshingly, the conclusion didn't involve the protagonist putting herself into jeopardy, the killer being unnaturally evil or the person a lesser novelist would have chosen. No One You Know was fun, and while I suspect I'll have forgotten it in a few months, it was good enough for me to want to find a copy of the author's other book.

Many thanks to Carrie (cbl_tn) for this one!

>102 RidgewayGirl: - This sounded so familiar to me, Kay. Turns out I read something similar earlier this year but ended up not finishing because it got rather ridiculous. But then it turns out I actually have this still packed in one of the boxes of books.

>101 RidgewayGirl: - I may have to ask my husband to make a bookcase for one spot where I want one because I can't find one with the dimensions that I need.

Betty, isn't it great to live with someone able and willing to create a made-to-order bookshelf?

I'm not so sure about the "willing" part. Might be more like the "nagging" wife.

>105 dudes22: You say po-ta-to, I say po-tah-to...

LOL

Or I might do it myself.

Hi, Victoria!

That's an excellent idea, Betty. You'll get what you want and have fun along the way. Of course, building one's own shelves does reduce one's reading time.

". . . But that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind."

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid is a look at the situation of refugees, told through the story of Nadia and Saeed, two young people living in an unnamed country that falls into civil war when religious extremists begin to take control. Saeed is quiet and devoted to his family and his faith. Nadia is adventurous and intent on forging her own path. Their relationship is cemented in the dangerous circumstances they find themselves in, eventually leading them to flee the country together, taking only what they can carry.

Hamid is using Nadia and Saeed as representatives of refugees, and their experiences are also representative of the whole. Which is not to say that Nadia and Saeed are not fully fleshed-out characters; it's a testament to Hamid's skill that they are very much real people. He's telling a story that's universal, but also specific. The country Saeed and Nadia flee is unnamed, while the places they end up (a Greek island, London, the outskirts of San Francisco) are both specific and act as stand-ins for the various welcomes a refugee might encounter. Hamid uses the device of doors opening into other places as the method Nadia and Saeed use to travel, and the places, while specific geographically, are imagined reactions to a country faced with a sudden influx of migrants.

Exit West is a brilliant novel and deserves to be widely read. It echoes The Underground Railroad in its use of an artificial construct used to move characters from one situation to another and in the way it makes the reader examine difficult issues. It's wonderfully constructed and written, in a way that seems effortless and natural.

>110 RidgewayGirl: - That was quite a good book, wasn't it? I'm hoping it makes the ToB for 2018.

>98 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad you liked Marlena. That was a book that really surprised me. I ended up caring a lot about those characters.

>110 RidgewayGirl: This book keeps showing up in my recommendations, so I guess I should put it on the never-ending TBR!

Me, too, Stacy. I think the conversation about it would be really interesting.

Shannon, I liked Marlena, but I do agree with the decision to choose Ill Will over it in this summer challenge. And Exit West is tremendously readable. I highly recommend it.

>113 RidgewayGirl: I also liked Ill Will more--it's one of only two books to get 5 stars from me this year--but I doubt I would have read Marlena or The Night Ocean if not for the challenge, so that was a great result for me.

I had full intentions of following the summer challenge but just haven't been able to do so. However, I do have both Ill Will and The Night Ocean on loan from the library so maybe I'll be able to get to them soonish.

>59 RidgewayGirl: Too bad about the new Pyper! I was considering reading this one, as I did like The Killing Circle and The Guardians, though I found his last one, The Demonologist, rather disappointing.

>110 RidgewayGirl: This one is definitely on my reading list. I really liked How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and I was happy to see this one on the Booker longlist.

>110 RidgewayGirl: Great review - the Booker list has prompted me to put it on hold, but if it hadn't, this would have made me do it. Look forward to reading it.

>110 RidgewayGirl: This one goes straight to the wishlist, great review!

Hello RidgewayGirl! I hope all is well with you.

>53 RidgewayGirl: I am curious what led you to the Left Behind deconstruction book blog in first place.

Stacy, the summer is weird for reading. Either you have tons of time, or none at all.

Paulina, I know! I took this along on a trip with the thought that it would be a guaranteed decent read. I've liked his earlier stuff, although I haven't read his last two.

Charlotte and Chrischi, I'd expected it to be more of an effort to read. And then I was pleasantly surprised. That said, I'd heard an interview Hamid did about Exit West and he was so charming and interesting that even if he'd written a book about sports I would have read it.

Brodie, Hi! I'm looking forward to a weekend entirely ALONE and I do plan to read and I'm really happy about that. And also clean out the freezer, which is less alluring, but necessary.

As for my interest in the Left Behind blog, I'd been pointed to it by another LTer as an interesting blog about religion and those books and it sucked me right in.

An infinite nostalgia for everything that had gone wrong in her childhood began to weigh down on her like a stone.

Ania has been estranged from her father for years, and when he dies, she returns to her childhood home and has to deal with all the unresolved issues she left behind. Gabriel was a prominent and strong-willed man, who enjoyed his position until an ill-advised rant in which he defends the brutal murder of a young migrant turns him into a pariah. He was also an exacting man whose disappointment with his daughter's imperfections drove her away.

Autopsy of a Father is a slender book that packs a surprising amount into its 200 pages. Ania is a woman raising her deaf son alone, mostly content in the small world she has carved out for them in a Paris suburb. Her final unsatisfying meeting with her father as well as her return after his death bring up memories of her childhood as well as a needed reckoning with her present. This is my first encounter with Swiss author Pascale Kramer's writing, but it certainly won't be my last.

That sounds really interesting so it's going on the list. Thanks for the review!

It's beautifully written, Jennifer, and also very French. I got Autopsy of a Father through the Early Reviewers program and the publisher threw in another book by Kramer, so they clearly knew what they were doing.

Sounds intriguing. Are they originally in French?

Charlotte, Kramer is a Swiss author writing in French. The translation by Robert Bononno was beautifully done. It's always a treat to find an author I like whose works are being translated into English.

>110 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid so I am definitely adding Exit West to my wishlist.

I haven't read that, Judy. I did find The Reluctant Fundamentalist to be excellent, though. I've got to read his other books.

The Patriots by Sana Krasikov was a wild ride of a book. Krasikov tells the story of Florence, a young Jewish woman coming of age in Brooklyn and feeling stifled by the life expected of her. It's the height of the Depression and she's outraged at both the stark inequality she sees around her and the lack of opportunities for women. She gets a job with a firm connecting the Soviets with American companies and meets a Soviet engineer and after his return to the USSR, she sets out in 1934 to join him.

She's not the only American emigrating eastward at the worst possible time. And when she arrives, she finds the Soviet Union less open and free than it had presented itself. But Florence has grit and stubbornness and she makes a life for herself, marrying and having a son, before being arrested and sent to the Gulag.

None of that is a spoiler as there's a second story being told concurrently; that of her son, a man with an adult son who emigrated to the US in his teens and is now working with an American oil company, seeking to take advantage of the newly open Russian economy. But Russia in 2008 isn't a safe place to do business, and Julian is also tasked by his wife with bringing their son home from Russia, where he went to take advantage of the new business opportunities there.

Florence's story is impossible to walk away from. I couldn't stop reading about this idealistic and stubborn woman who was negotiating her way through a dangerous world. She was a very real character living through the most interesting of times. Julian's story, which begins as he is a child surviving in a Soviet orphanage, started well, but eventually it couldn't keep pace with Florence's story. As her situation became more and more perilous, Julian's became the safe world of a comfortably-off American executive. The story of doing business in Putin's Russia was interesting, but it couldn't compete. And, like in so many novels in which a modern story brackets the historical one, one story became a drag on the other.

I did love this book. Krasikov was born in Ukraine and was raised in Georgia, so her depiction of the people and environment were starkly vivid. I will certainly be watching for her next book to be released.

Thank you, Charlotte, for bringing this book to my attention!

>126 DeltaQueen50: & >127 RidgewayGirl: - Those are the two books of his I haven't read yet, but really want to get to someday. Really enjoyed How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia as well.

>128 RidgewayGirl: Glad you liked it!

Stacy, I'm glad there are two books by Hamid out there that I still have to read.

Charlotte, your thread is a dangerous one!

It was a .36-calibre Colt Navy and in Chicago he kept it the way some other men kept secrets: it was the first thing you saw. You saw a gun and there was a man with it like he was on retainer and first the gun said hello and then the man nodded and said hello too.

William Pinkerton is the son of the famous detective agency's founder and a fearsome detective himself. With his father dead, he's trying to find a man his father couldn't; the mysterious thief known as Edward Shade. He's come to London because he's heard there's a woman there who was once Shade's associate.

Adam Foole, a small man of mixed heritage, arrives in England with his small crew of grifters. He's received a letter from a woman he once loved, asking him to come as she's being hunted by a Pinkerton detective. When he arrives in London, he discovers that she's been murdered and so he seeks to join forces with Pinkerton to find her killer.

By Gaslight is a Victorian novel in all the best ways. It's full of the stinking atmosphere of Victorian London and the novel is one that is simultaneously page-turning and taking its time. There are long digressions into both men's pasts, but as they are exciting pasts and shed light on their motivations as the novel moves forward, it never feels like lost time. Steven Price immerses the reader in the complexities of both men's lives, so that even when they are in direct conflict, one can't help but hope for the best for both men. The novel is also Victorian in its large cast of colorful characters, from spiritualists to child pick-pockets to Civil War spies. The writing reminds me of Mary Doria Russell's Doc in its ability to create warm, breathing characters. It wears its length lightly and I was sorry to have turned the last page.

I liked this book a lot too. Although so many twists and turns, I think it would have been difficult to keep up with it if I had to space it out.

>132 RidgewayGirl:
By Gaslight sounds rather fun. I'm always interested in Victorian stories.

>132 RidgewayGirl: - Taking a BB for that one!

>132 RidgewayGirl: Yep, the comparison to Doc sells that one to me! BB!

It's so great to see people excited about a big Victorian-style novel.

I'm off for a much needed week at the beach. I'm leaving my laptop at home and just bringing piles of books. I will have my iPad, but plan to use it only for reading purposes, although I suspect I'll check in once or twice, if only to log my reading.

Enjoy your week at the beach!

>137 RidgewayGirl: Have a good week!

Happy reading and beach time!

Thanks, guys. It was lovely. Lots of beach and I got a bunch of reading done.

I'm watching North and South and, wowza, how have I not watched this before? So much drama! And also Richard Armitage.

>141 RidgewayGirl: I'm so glad you liked "North and South"! It's one of my favorite BBC miniseries. The book is good, too...like Pride and Prejudice, but with more labor strikes!

Christina, I loved it. I was describing it to my daughter and she thought it sounded boring until I mentioned Richard Armitage spends all his time gazing into the middle distance and shout-proposing. I'm definitely going to read the book now. The cotton mills and the strike were really interesting, too.

>149 RidgewayGirl: "gazing into the middle distance and shout-proposing"

YESSSSS :)

>149 RidgewayGirl: Your daughter has excellent taste ;)

>149 RidgewayGirl: And looking cross. He does a lot of that...

>141 RidgewayGirl: Oh yay! I looooooove North and South. Also, Richard Armitage.

Christina, Charlotte, rp and Victoria, I'm glad to be in the company of people with excellent taste.

There are very few men who can wear a stovepipe hat (who are not Abraham Lincoln) and not look silly. Richard Armitage is one of those men. I believe a film entitled "Richard Armitage Looks at Things" would be a surprise hit. I'd watch it.

It was easy. It's still easy. You simply refuse to answer a woman. You don't engage in a dialogue. You let her words or her pictures die.

Harriet Burden is a talented artist who can't get any traction in the art world. Even her beloved husband, an important gallery owner, doesn't notice her art. So she comes up with a plan; she creates three stellar shows and has a different male artist take the credit for each one. Her plan is to then reveal herself and prove to the art world how sexist it is, but it doesn't work out as planned.

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt is not a gentle or tactful novel. It is an angry, vibrant portrait about living as an artist in New York, about pushing against boundaries, about mental illness and genius. Were Hustvedt to have wanted to simply preach, she would not have created Harriet Burden. Harry is wonderful; chaotic, impulsive, angry and immensely talented. Her life blazes across the pages of the novel, which is told in the form of interviews, articles, diary entries and other biographical notes. It's an effective way to tell the story, with Harry's friends and family, as well as her detractors and other artists able to give their view of the events. Harry is as controversial and colorful as Francis Bacon or any other modern artist.

I was impressed by Hustvedt's writing and the depth of her knowledge. I'll certainly be reading more by this author.

Taking a BB for The Blazing World. Sounds like an interesting premise.

>155 RidgewayGirl: Sounds good! I've got Hustvedt's collection of essays, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind out from the library just now, otherwise I'd be getting it out now!

(and if Kim Jong Un and his son father can have tumblr feeds looking at things http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/,
why not Richard Armitage?)

Charlotte, I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say for the record that I'd prefer the Richard Armitage Looking At Things Tumblr to the Kim Jong Un one.

The book of Hustvedt's essays sounds really interesting. I've got What I Loved on my tbr, so that's next.

Jennifer, I would be interested in finding out what you think of it. The descriptions of her art projects make me wish I could see them.

Deepak Unnikrishnan's book, Temporary People, is a collection of short stories set in United Arab Emirates, primarily among the guest workers who make up a majority of the population of the UAE, and have made their lives there, but who know they someday must leave. The stories are surreal and discombobulating and clever; I appreciated them more than I enjoyed them. Unnikrishnan is a talented writer, but often in these stories, the cleverness overrides the emotional depth.

In the opening story, workers fall from the skyscrapers they are building, landing injured in construction sites all over Abu Dhabi. A woman rides out every night on her bicycle and reassembles the workers, reattaching limbs and patching holes so that they can return to work in the morning. In Mushtibushi, children in a large apartment building believe that the elevator is a monster who needs appeasement, to explain a series of molestations. And in a few stories, the roaches take center stage, whether in a boy's desperate attempts to keep them at bay, or in the story of a roach outcast and how he becomes the leader of the roaches.

None of the stories are comfortable or fun, but despite the surrealism, they do paint a vivid picture of what life is like for guest workers and their families in the UAE.

It's the eclipse, guys. Greenville, SC is in the path of totality and I have a friend from high school and her family staying for the event. Really looking forward to the part where it gets cooler out.

I hope you had a good show. We were too cloudy to see it, try as I might, though apparently Tempe had some brief view.

Jennifer, we usually have cloudy skies in the afternoon, and we had perfect, blue skies and a flawless view of the complete eclipse. The whole nimbus effect thing is not over-rated.

It was awesome!

We were not in the path and were only expecting 65%. It didn't get as dark as I was expecting - more like a cloudy day. But still impressive.

We had what I would call a dimming. It was like going from a 65 to a 40 watt bulb. Actually kind of eerie though.

Our library had a viewing party, and today between opening at 9:00 and 1:00 this afternoon, they had 770 phone calls asking how to get the glasses. They had ordered 1000 and knew they would run out so they asked people in small groups to share a pair. Some people got mad and made hateful remarks. These people of course were most likely on their first visit ever to the library. Our population is about 90,000 and the librarian said she would order 80,000 next time! I'm afraid my plan would be to let viewers bring their own darn glasses.

Victoria, we had such perfect weather for it!

Betty, the gradually dimming light in the middle of the day was eerie, but the best part was that the shadows cast during the eclipse were crescent-shaped.

clue, there were reports here about people trying to find glasses this morning, and the area has been bubbling with eclipse fever for a few weeks. And the glasses were only a few bucks a pair.

My son brought the glass from a welder's mask and we had a wonderful view. Thankfully the sky was clear and even the smoke from our record-breaking wildfires had cleared.

>167 brodiew2: I wish I'd noticed the crescent-shaped shadows :(

Vivienne, here's a picture I took of our deck during the eclipse.

>169 RidgewayGirl: Spooky!

We were expected to have only about 60% coverage. Fortunately, it was an obligingly sunny day, so we had good viewing conditions.

There are writing books that are instruction manuals, with exercises and chapters on plot, or semi-colons. Then there are the inspirational books about writing, that give little to no instruction, but leave the reader fired up and eager to put pen to paper. Colum McCann's Letters to a Young Writer falls somewhere in between, being both advice and inspiration.

Each chapter is brief and to the point, whether the subject is writing dialogue or finding an agent. McCann isn't wasting any words here, so each brief letter is packed full. I read this short book over a period of months -- the chapters run together when read all at once -- and I found it to be full of advice I'd be thinking of throughout the day. This is a generous and useful book.

>169 RidgewayGirl: That is really something! I don't think shadows like that happened here - surely I would have noticed.

Hello Ridgewaygirl I hope all is well with you.

>132 RidgewayGirl: Excellent review of By Gaslight. I am a sucker for Victorian crime novels whether taking place in Britain or the US. I'll definitely be looking to this one.

Those shadows look a bit spooky, but also beauiful.

And I'm a little late and taking another BB for By Gaslight.

Vivienne, they had to be pointed out to me. I was looking up.

Hi, Brodie! Good to see you here. I hope you like By Gaslight, too.

Chrischi, the book bullets are flying around here. I've had to stop writing them down.

I had the first meeting of a new book group last night and it was a mixed bag. The woman leading it taught classes in Southern Lit and she's great, but I wonder if a few of the women will manage the reading. We started with Joshilyn Jackson, writer of so-called "women's fiction" and the novel was in that vein. But a few of the older women had a hard time reading a book where the main character is an illustrator working in comics and graphic novels and who attends a ComicCon. It was too far outside of their experienced lives, they felt, and therefore uninteresting to them. My eyes, you will be happy to note, did not stick to my brain when I rolled them. Jackson also deals with race in the book and a woman felt that the main character dating a black man was an "unnecessary contrivance" and also her son was not allowed to wear his Confederate flag t-shirt to school, which was terrible, apparently.

The rest of the women were lovely, though. And we're reading Donald Ray Pollack in October, so I anticipate a lot of fun finding out what the women who thought graphic novels were too outrageous to be mentioned think of his writing.

I've found a decent book group here, but the first meeting I went to, the book was The Underground Railroad and one of the women had a hard time believing that slaves could have been treated as badly as portrayed because "then how would they work?" It was stunning.

Back to lurking!

>175 charl08: I hope you enjoy your new group, and maybe you'll get to pick the book soon.
I ran a book group years ago and was pretty amazed to find that exactly half the group had stopped reading our first pick mid-way because they felt it was critical of their religion. There's always something.

Lurk away, Katie! That particular point came up in an on-line discussion about the book, but fortunately several people jumped in with links to historic documents, which is an advantage of having a discussion on-line.

Jennifer, there really is. The book groups I've been in before were all in Germany and composed of women unlikely to get the vapors, so this is all new territory for me. I'm agog to see what they make of the Pollock, which is (according to reviews) both violent and full of depraved goings-on. Why did they join a group reading books they'll find offensive? That doesn't make sense to me. The reading list was part of the group description.

Looks like your August has been filled with a lovely week at the beach and some wonderful reading.

I must check out "North and South". Sounds like a good miniseries for when the rains return and all I want to do is curl up on the couch!

Lori, North and South is sublime. It's really beautifully filmed, too.

Oh I want a copy of North and South. I 'lent' it to someone. Boo.

Book group story sounds familiar. I'm still rolling my eyes at mine and it was weeks ago. Thank goodness for LT.

Charlotte, North and South is available on Netflix here and I am dreading the moment it goes away.

Alex Meier fled Germany as a young man, and then returned to Berlin in 1948, forced out of the US when he refused to cooperate with Senator McCarthy. The Soviets are eager to build their stable of prominent writers and Meier is in need of a country. His real intention is to find a way to return to his son in the US, but as both the Americans and the East Germans are eager to use him, the possibility of doing so becomes more unlikely than ever. He also meets up with people from his past, people who were scarred by the war and who have agendas of their own.

Joseph Kanon knows Berlin and he's good at both writing morally complex characters and intricate plots. With Leaving Berlin, he's playing to his strengths. This is a fun spy thriller, with a bunch of twists and a large dose of moral ambiguity. It was a solid vacation read.

>183 charl08:, I loved some of Kanon's early work, and just stumbled across this work and bought it at a used bookstore a few days ago, so I'm excited to get into it! Your note here is going to push it much closer to the top of my towering tbr pile :)

Jennifer, I bought my copy in Berlin, in Dussmann's, an enormous bookstore with an entire English-language bookshop tucked in next to the cafe. It was arranged in huge stacks all over the store.

>182 pammab: I have it on DVD. You can borrow it. ;)

Joshilyn Jackson has been writing novels that have been characterized as chick-lit/women's fiction for years. And they sort of fit that designation, with personable and likable main characters who fall in love while dealing with quirky family situations. Jackson is also an able writer, with the sort of light effortlessness and dialogue that is better than found in most novels and underneath the enjoyable and humorous stories is a sharp edge of substance.

In The Almost Sisters, a successful writer of graphic novels finds herself pregnant after an encounter with an attractive Batman at a ComicCon. Thirty-eight and financially secure, she accepts that this may be her only chance to have a child. As she's bracing herself to break the news to her mother and stepfather, her family situation turns to chaos. Her half-sister is considering divorce and her teenage niece is upset and in the small town of Birchville, Alabama, her grandmother has just had an episode at the church fish fry that shows she may be too elderly to continue to live independently. Leia takes her niece and heads for Birchville, where she finds the situation much, much worse than she'd thought.

There are plenty of humorous situations and heart-warming reconciliations, but Jackson is doing more than just entertaining. While her earlier novels have dealt with serious issues like domestic violence, The Almost Sisters takes on the racial tensions of a small Southern town. Leia, forced to examine social structures, comes to the realization that there are two Souths.

The South I'd been born into was all sweet tea and decency and Jesus, and it was a real, true place. I had grown up inside it, because my family lived there. Wattie's family owned real estate there, too. The Second South was always present, though, and in it decency was a thin, green cover over the rancid soil of our dark history. They were both always present, both truly present in every square inch, in every space, in both Baptist churches, at both tables.

>169 RidgewayGirl: That's an amazing photograph!

>186 RidgewayGirl: Jealous.

>169 RidgewayGirl: - Love that photo! We were in San Diego at the time and didn't really notice much difference. I'm looking forward to 2024 when Dallas is supposed to be on the path of totality.

>187 LittleTaiko: - I read her book Someone Else's Love Story earlier this year and have 2 more in my TBR pile which I'm looking forward to reading.

pammab, it was such a weird sight.

Victoria, I may take you up on that someday. Meanwhile, Netflix doesn't seem to mind me watching it more than once.

Stacy, I hope you and your family are staying safe and dry.

Betty, Joshilyn Jackson is one of my favorite authors. I like how solidly placed in the South her novels are.

>192 RidgewayGirl: - Thank you. Yup, safe and fairly dry. Fortunately we are very much inland so aren't having the horrible flooding that they are in Houston. Makes me shudder to look at the pictures. We've only had a few light showers so are quite lucky.

In Idaho by Emily Ruskovich a woman wants to understand her husband's past, especially his previous marriage, but is hindered by his early-onset dementia. Ann teaches music at a small private school in Idaho, where she meets Wade, a quiet man who comes to her for piano lessons, hoping to stave off the dementia that took his father from him and that he can now see signs of in himself. After a shocking and tragic event takes his daughters from him, Ann marries him and works to be a good wife even as she is haunted by all she doesn't know about what happened.

If grades were given to books, this one would receive an A for effort and for getting all the different elements right. But the book never quite hangs together the way it should. The characters never solidify and their motivations remain opaque. The reader knows that Ann loves Wade because Ann mentions that a lot, but she never explores why she chose to marry a man she had barely spoken to and whom she knew had dementia remains the central mystery of Idaho.

Rushkovich writes well enough and she certainly knows how to pile up interesting elements. I look forward to her developing further as an author and learning how to fit the various pieces into a harmonious whole.

Noo Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was murdered by the Nigerian government as part of their efforts to keep Shell Oil Company happy. Sara-Wiwa grew up in Britain, but spent her summers in Nigeria until her father's burial, at which point she never returned. Now, decades later, she returns to travel all over the enormous (much larger than Texas) and diverse country. Looking for Transwonderland is her account of her travels.

Saro-Wiwa is the ideal traveling companion for Nigeria. She is both native and stranger, intimately familiar with the country's history and culture, while also standing slightly outside of it, which allows her to explain and describe Nigeria in a way that was clear and fascinating to this non-Nigerian, while able to travel and explore with the freedom of someone born in that country.

And Nigeria is more than worthy of a guided tour. It's a diverse place, with artificially created borders containing three major and over 300 minor people groups. The country's size means it's land encompasses both desert and rainforest. Sara-Wiwa travels all over Nigeria, hunting down wildlife refuges, historically significant landmarks and art while talking to people from all walks of life about life in Nigeria. Sara-Wiwa is an opinionated and humorous guide and I would love to accompany her through any other county she chooses to write about.

>195 RidgewayGirl: yet another BB for me! I am so thankful for the wishlist (I am sure my bank manager is thankful for it too! I'd be spending a fortune if I bought all the BBs I am getting from you and @VivienneR !).

Jackie, Ha! Yes, my imaginary tbr is substantially larger than the one on my shelves and my actually tbr is not small.

Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston tells the story of a young surgeon who badly botches an operation. As she waits for a hospital committee to decide her fate, and as her patient lies in critical care, she thinks back over her childhood and her training. Nancy is a reclusive and hesitant person whose only personal ties are to her sister and her sister's family. Without friends in the hospital in which she works, she's less able to withstand the uncertainty that comes with having made a mistake.

Nancy is an OB GYN surgeon, and along with her other tasks, she routinely performs abortions. She and her mentor regard them as part of their natural duties, but part of her isolation at the hospital stems from the low-level harassment she undergoes from her co-workers who leave doll parts in her locker and make her life more difficult in small ways. Dirty Work addresses her reasons for performing these unpopular procedures.

While the subject matter was interesting and there is certainly a dearth of novels that address abortion, or the pressures of being fallible in life and death situations, the book was more focused on the issues raised than it was in character development or setting. Still, it packed a lot into a slender novel.

Dropping by to say "hi" as I make my rounds to catch up. I'm taking a break after this one and will come back to catching up later. A book is calling my name!

>195 RidgewayGirl: I remember ordering that one for the library. I'll have to add it to my list of books to check out and read!

Hi, Lori! I'm spending this Labor Day reading, which is the best possible use I can think of (we had the big family dinner yesterday). Hope your day is equally well-planned.

Carrie, I learned so much about Nigeria, and Saro-Wiwa was an engaging travel companion for the tour. I'd really love to see similar books about countries we don't get to hear much about outside of the news.

Charlotte Wood's impossibly grim novel, The Natural Way of Things, tells the story of a group of women who find themselves imprisoned on an old sheep ranch in the Outback. Each has been involved in some sort of sex scandal, from the girl who was gang-raped in the toilets of a nightclub to a the girl who had been sexually abused by a priest. Each carries both notoriety and the aftermath with her into this make-shift prison ruled over by a small group of utterly untrained people.

Yolanda was the girl in the nightclub. As her shock at incarceration fades, she learns to assess her situation and to make the most of it. She forms a tenuous bond with Verla, who had a relationship with a married politician when she interned for him. As conditions at the camp worsen, both women learn to rely on themselves and find themselves changed.

This isn't a story where a group of teenagers band together to defeat the bad guys. It's certainly set in a dystopian world, but one only a small step removed from our own. There's no great lesson learned (at least none that these women hadn't already learned when their stories became media fodder) and no grand triumph at the end. But while The Natural Way of Things sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading, it was a well-written and superbly imagined novel.

>187 LittleTaiko: - Wonderful review. My Kobo daily feeds has been trying to entice me to grab the Jackson as a summer read, but I have no time this year. Nice to see a good review from a reader I can trust.

Thanks, Lori!

In I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, a young university student drives out with her boyfriend to have dinner with his parents. The drive is a long one, and as they drive, she thinks about their relationship and how she's thinking of ending it. As she visits his childhood home and meets his parents, that decision becomes more certain, even as things go slightly off-kilter and a sense of foreboding grows.

Like John Darnielle's Universal Harvester, this is horror, but one that depends more on a rising sense that something very bad is about to happen and a creepy atmosphere than it does on gore or the supernatural. But, boy, is it an effective way to creep me out. Reid's writing is spare and there's a philosophical tinge to the young woman's thoughts, which does nothing to make this novel less tension-filled.

Creepy rather than gory sounds good so it's going on the list. Someone mentioned Universal Harvester to me recently but I'd never heard of it.

I'm surprised you haven't already read them, Jennifer. They are ideal for your autumn reading. I seem to reading a bunch of grim books in a row.

The Fact of a Body is Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich's book about her childhood and how it affected her adult life. It's also a story about a murderer, his life and crime and how the criminal justice system dealt with him. Both stories are interesting. Marzano-Lesnevich was molested by her grandfather from the age of three, until she finally spoke up many years later. Her family believed her and reacted by never allowing the grandfather to babysit or spend the night again. But they continued the normal visits and dinners with him and never spoke of what happened. Marzano-Lesnevich was left to deal with these multiple rapes on her own and without any support system. She encounters Ricky Langley's case as a legal intern working in on capital case appeals in Louisiana. Langley murdered six-year-old Jeremy Guillory and, once arrested, quickly confessed to the crime. His own childhood was not a good one, and Marzano-Lesnevich looks at the family history, the crime and the investigation and at the subsequent trials, in the hopes of understanding his motivations. Langley was a pedophile and the author hopes that if she can understand him, she might understand her grandfather.

The two halves are good on their own but lose intensity and focus as they are alternated and mashed together. The connections between the two are tenuous at best, and in trying to give the criminal case as much life and immediacy as her own personal recollections, the author resorts to making up the content of conversations she has only the broadest of outlines of. She's upfront about this, but it does lessen the reliability of the work she's doing in telling Langley's story.

I like the slow creepy build up much more than outright gore in my horror reads so I am definitely adding I'm Thinking of Ending Things to my list.

>207 I'm always surprised to see what everyone around here has read and I've never heard of, but it happens a lot. I'm trying to keep up!