Arubabookwoman’s Tenth Anniversary Thread

Hello all! It’s my 10th anniversary here! I joined LT and the 75 group on 1/1/09-I can hardly believe it’s been 10 years.
I went MIA midway through 2018. We were in the process of preparing our house for sale for a move to the east coast when my husband’s cancer came back with a vengeance. We have been on a roller coaster of ups and downs since October and I am not sure how much visiting I will be doing here for the near future, but I do want to continue to track my reading, so at the very least I hope to list the books I read in the first several messages here. Right now my husband is in a clinical trial for a targeted therapy drug, and things are somewhat stable, but either a killer T cells clinical trial or a bone marrow transplant is looming as the next step. We did decide to proceed with the sale of our house (it goes on the market in 2 weeks), but will stay in Seattle for the time being, where we are so grateful for the medical care my husband is receiving.

First Quarter

JANUARY

1. Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton
2. Blood’s A Rover by James Ellroy (2009) 658 pp
3. Moo by Jane Smiley (1995) 434 pp
4. The Death of Truth by Michiko Kakutani
5. Vox by Christina Dalcher (2018) 336 pp
6. The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers (1942)
7. The Deadly Dinner Party by Jonathan A. Edlow 260 pp
8. Juniper, The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon by Thomas French and Kelly French (2016) 357 pp
9. Bibliophile by Jane Mount (2018) 224 pp
10. The Futilitarians by Anne Gisleson (2017) 273 pp

FEBRUARY

11. Seventeen: A Novel by Hideo Yokoyama (2003) 368 pp
12. Labyrinths by Jorge Borges
13. Educated by Tara Westover (2018)
14. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
15. Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld (2016) 128 pp
16. The Apprentice by Greg Miller (2018) 449 pp
17. The Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel (1964) 347 pp
18. Signal Loss by Gary Disher (2017) 353 pp
19. The Cleaner by Paul Cleave (2006) 402 pp

MARCH

20. The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham () 656 pp
21. Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua (2010) 352 pp
22. Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif (2019)
23. The Wall by John Lancaster (2019) 255pp
24. The Art of Dying Well by Katy Butler (2019) 289 pp
25. Maid by Stephanie Land (2019) 289 p

Second Quarter

APRIL

26. The Lost Man by Jane Harper (2019) 352 pp
27. The Watchtower by Elizabeth Harrower (1966) 352 pp
28. North of Dawn by Nuruddin Farah (2018)
29. The Ravenmaster by Christopher Skaife
30. Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent (2018) 240 pp
31. Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston (2017) 336 pp
32. The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson
33. Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher (2019)
34. The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (2016) 433 pp
35. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou (2018) 352 pp

MAY

36. A Change of Time by Ida Jessen (2015) 250 pp
37. Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton (1922) 188 pp
38. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (2017) 248 pp
39. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
40. The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi (1948) 353 pp
41. Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker
42. Afternoon of a Faun by James Lasdun

3Q

4Q

Welcome back! I’ll be paying for you and your husband. We’re here when you’re able to join us!

I’ll be sending positive and healing energy your way, and keeping you and your husband in my thoughts.

Sending best wishes to your husband and you! May 2019 be an easier, healthier, happier year for you both. Good luck on the house!

Happy New Year!

Happy reading in 2019, Deborah!
Sending good thoughts for you and your husband.

Welcome back, Deborah. I'm glad you're here and I send warm thoughts to you and your husband.

I wish you from my heart a healthy 2019 filled with happiness, satisfaction, laughter and lots of good books.

Welcome back, Deborah. I am sorry to hear about your husband's cancer. Sending healing thoughts your way.

So sorry to hear about your husband's health issues. Sending good thoughts.

Oh Deborah I’m so sorry to hear about your husband’s illness.. I’ll keep you both in my prayers.

Happy 2019
A year full of books
A year full of friends
A year full of all your wishes realised

I look forward to keeping up with you, Deborah, this year.

Deborah, best wishes to you and your husband in the next few months.

>1 arubabookwoman:

So sorry that this disease has returned and will be praying that the new targeted therapy drug works toward remission.

Many brave people have faced clinical trials for bone marrow transplants and so made them safer.

Oh, Deborah, so sorry to hear of your husband's troubles. I hope you get only good news this year.

Deborah, glad you're still in the group. Much sympathies and good wishes for your husband. I hope the clinical trial experience is a positive one. I totally understand plans being derailed due to new cancer diagnosis. That would be my 2018. Luckily, it was very, very minor. May 2019 be a year of recovery and new beginnings for both of you.

Wishing you a lovely weekend, Deborah and that your husband's treatment is successful.

I'm sending my best wishes to you and your husband, Deborah. I hope the new treatments are successful. I'm glad you live in an area with state-of-the-art medical facilities. I know you want to move closer to family. I hope you get to realize that dream soon. In the meantime, keep posting when you can and know that we are thinking of you.

Still sending good thoughts to you and yours...!

Thinking of you, Deborah. xx

>6 drneutron: Jim; >7 Matke: Gail; >8 Berly:, >23 Berly: Kim; >9 The_Hibernator: Rachel; >10 FAMeulstee: Anita; >11 EBT1002: Ellen; >12 Ameise1: Barbara; >13 BLBera: Beth; >14 SuziQoregon: Juli; >15 brenzi: Bonnie; >16 PaulCranswick:, >21 PaulCranswick:, >24 PaulCranswick: Paul, >17 markon: Ardene; >18 m.belljackson: Marianne; >19 ffortsa: Judy; >20 justchris: Chris; and >22 Donna828: Donna:

Thank you all so much for your good wishes--it means a lot.

We are hanging in there. We have withdrawn from the clinical trial--the drug was not working. The Hutch has located several "full house" matches for my husband. However, before the transplant process can take place my husband's white count has to be reduced to 20,000 (normal is less than 10,000; he is currently at 258,000). His regular oncologist believes that a 2 month course on chemotherapy will accomplish this. He will start 2/19, so on Sunday, 2/10 we are heading to Florida to visit my son and family in the Tampa area. Right now it looks like at least one other son and one daughter will also head to Tampa at the same time for a mini-family reunion. Yay!

The weekend before last I was able to attend the ALA convention here in Seattle with a ticket provided by LT. I got 17 FREE books, even though I intended not to acquire any new books--there were just so many good ones. There was also an LT meetup and dinner, so I got to meet MichiganTrumpet and Benitastrnad, which was great, and there was lots of book talk. At the dinner, I also met LT's founder Tim Spaulding and Loranne. My suggestion to Tim on how to improve LT is that he needs to make it easier to post pictures, a skill I have never acquired despite many efforts. I have now given up trying, though there is a very nice photographic record of the meetup--perhaps on MichiganTrumpet's thread?

Now for some books. I have been reading.

1. Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton 292 pp

I'm not a short story fan, nor am I a horror/ghost story fan. However, I can recommend this book. Because--it's Edith Wharton. While there were a few stories I was puzzled by, or that didn't pull me in, or that were duds, in most of the stories Wharton's prose shone, the characters were well-developed, and the plots were varied and original. My favorites were: "The Dutchess at Prayer" in which an evil husband isolates his wife at an Italian country estate and, knowingly or unknowingly, seals her lover into a tomb; "A Bottle of Perrier," which is set in the middle eastern desert castle built by a medieval crusader, where the water tastes and smells terrible; and "Kesfol" where the ghosts of murdered dogs appear once a year on a Brittany estate.

3 1/2 stars

2. Blood's A Rover by James Ellroy (2009) 689 pp

This is the third volume of Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy, in which historical figures from mid-20th century America mix with fictional characters to give us an inside look at dirty politics, corrupt law officers, and the criminal underworld (Mafia). I loved the first volume, American Tabloid, which took us through the assassination of JFK in Dallas in November 1963. Volume 2, The Cold Six Thousand began in Dallas on the day of JFK's assassination, and brought us through the 1968 assassinations of RFK and MLK. I also liked the second volume, in which many of the same characters carried through. There's lots about the Vietnam War, LBJ, drugs, the Mafia moving on Las Vegas, and Howard Hughes also making a move on Las Vegas.

This final volume begins with the RFK assassination, brings us through the 1968 election of Nixon, continues on with the activities of the Mafia, as well as the decline and corruption of J. Edgar Hoover, and ends as Watergate is beginning. However, I didn't like this one as much as the first two. It seemed more scattered and less focused, and either I began to tire of Ellroy's staccato prose, or it wasn't as compelling as in the first two volumes. In fact, the only reason I kept reading is because the book began with the brutal heist of an armored car, and the failed attempts to solve that crime constitute a sort of leit motif throughout the novel. I kept reading because I wanted answers regarding that crime.

Overall, I highly, highly recommend American Tabloid and also recommend The Cold Six Thousand. Read this one only if you are a completist.

2 1/2 stars

3. Moo by Jane Smiley (1995) 434 pp

A lot of people haven't liked this offering from Jane Smiley. It's a satire of life at a midwestern agricultural university. There are dozens of characters. Most are stand-ins for particular campus types, and include students, professors, and administrative officials (including a super-human administrative aid who really runs the whole university). Even the lunch lady from the cafeteria has a part to play, as well as the owner of a big corporation who, with possible evil motives, is dangling the offer of research money to the cash-strapped university. All the characters are broadly-drawn and no one individual could be called a "main character." I had a hard time keeping track of who was who, which detracted from my enjoyment of the novel. There is also very little plot. It is more of a "slice of life" novel.

Nevertheless, the novel is enjoyable if you go into it recognizing these limitations. Instead of focusing on and examining a specific aspect of academic life or a character or two, Smiley is covering Academia and its denizens with the broadest possible brush. It's not her best novel, but still worth a read. (If you haven't read anything by Smiley, the one to read is A Thousand Acres.)

3 stars

>28 arubabookwoman: I haven't read A Thousand Acres yet, though I keep meaning to order it. I really love the first two books in Smiley's Last Hundred Years trilogy, Some Luck and Early Warning, and I have the third, Golden Age, on my TBR for this year. Each chapter is a year in the life of the Langdon family. Really good, if you like sprawling family epics.

I always enjoy reading your comments on the books you read!

>29 Cait86: Thank you Cait. I have Some Luck and Early Warning on my Kindle but haven't read them yet. I hope to get to them soon. I read Moo first because it's a physical book, has been on my shelf 15 years, and I am trying to get rid of a lot of physical books. I think you will love A Thousand Acres.

Sorry to hear the trial drub wasn't working. Continuing to send good thoughts your way.

Safe travels, Deborah. I hope the chemo goes well.

>28 arubabookwoman: I seem to remember enjoying Moo when I read it years ago.

Sorry to hear that the drug trial has not been successful for your husband. Best wishes for the new course of treatment.

>26 arubabookwoman: Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton sounds like a perfect October read. Noting it.

Deborah--Sorry the trial didn't work out. Hoping chemo does the trick and I hope you have a great meetup in Florida! I have been to the Tampa areas many times. My folks currently winter in the Brad-enton area not too far from there.

Sending lots of hugs to you and yours.

Missing you Deborah.

>31 SuziQoregon: Julie, >32 BLBera: Beth >33 SandDune: Rhian Thank you.
>34 Berly: Thanks Kim, we really liked the Tampa area. We are looking for a condo on the beach on the barrier island between Tampa and St. Petersburg.
>35 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul.

When it rains it pours. The day after we got back from Fla. hubby was hospitalized for extreme anemia. They began his chemo while he was in the hospital, and he had a bad reaction, but all is fine now. While he was in the hospital we accepted an offer on the house which gave us only 3 1/2 weeks to find a place to live, pack, and move. By last Friday we found an apartment in downtown Seattle and signed a lease.

Then on Saturday I was hospitalized with large blood clots in both lungs (pulmonary embolism). I was released Thursday and will be on blood thinners for several months. Still to be determined is whether I have permanent lung or heart damage from the clots.

Also my knee started hurting while we were in Fla. so while I was in the hospital I had an mri. The knee has a torn meniscus, a Baker’s cyst, totally worn away cartiledge by the knee pad (housemaid’s knee) and severe arthritis. It’s quite painful. No surgery while on blood thinners though.

This week we learned that Fred Hutchinson center will be scheduling the intake procedures for the transplant for the end of the month, so the transplant process will begin soon. We move March 16.

I’ve been too stressed and distracted to read much other than once in a while a crime novel grabs my attention. I enjoyed The Cleaner by Paul Cleave. Right now the second to last Poldark novel is managing to keep my interest off and on.

>36 arubabookwoman: Wow. I'm very sorry to hear about your and your husband's serious health problems, Deborah. I'll keep the two of you in my prayers.

>36 arubabookwoman:

So good that you enjoyed your visit to Tampa and now have the fun of a beach house search to look forward to!

And good news that chemotherapy is now working well and that your husband is up to the top of the transplant process.

Prayers will be coming to both of you for all of these incredible challenges, with hope for no permanent damage and glad that the clots were found "in time."

Bet you will have plenty of help for your packing and moving!

Oh dear. You and your husband are going through much too much now. I"m glad your husband is doing better, and scared for you about the embolisms, which of course can be quite dangerous. And that knee on top of it all.

My best wishes for a return to health for both of you, in as much of a hurry as possible!! In the meanwhile, let's hear it for the comforting distraction of mystery stories.

>36 arubabookwoman:. Oh no Deborah. What a time you've had. Just awful. I will keep you and your hubby in my thoughts. I hope his transplant is successful and you can't move on to less stressful times. Take care.

>36 arubabookwoman: Oh my that's a LOT! Keeping you both in my thoughts!

>36 arubabookwoman: Thanks for the update, Deborah. I'm so sorry to hear about your health woes. Take care. Fingers crossed that all goes well with the transplant.

Hope things are improving in the health arena. That's a lot to deal with! Keep distracting yourself with the book. Hugs.

Please take care of yourself and your husband, Deborah.

Hugs a-plenty from tropical climes for both of you.

Hope that the move went smooth and life is calm again, with Spring bringing Good Health news to both of you.

Thinking of you Deborah

Still thinking of you, Deborah. x

>37 kidzdoc: Thank you for the good thoughts Daryl.
>38 m.belljackson: & >45 m.belljackson: Thank you for the good wishes. Luckily I have been found to have no permanent heart damage from the clots, though I will be on blood thinners for a while.
>39 ffortsa: Thank you Judy. Things seem to be turning the corner--finally!

>40 brenzi: Bonnie Thank you for the good wishes.
>41 SuziQoregon: Thank you Julie.
>42 BLBera: Thank you Beth.
>43 Berly: Thank you Kim.
>44 PaulCranswick:, >45 m.belljackson:, >46 PaulCranswick: Thank you for all the cheers Paul.

Brief update:
I really appreciate the visits during my prolonged absence. It really has been a whirlwind first half of 2019. Out house of 35 years has been sold, (and we had to get rid of so much stuff it was sinful, including many, many, many books). We are now living in a high rise apartment in downtown Seattle (I stare out my living room window at several highrises where Amazon corporate headquarters are located. We'll be living here til next spring when hopefully all will be stable enough for us to move to the beach in Florida.
Right now my husband is day 50 post-transplant, and is doing very well overall, though there have been lots of ups and downs. He is totally engrafted and cancer-free. Unfortunately, right now he is battling some graft vs host disease, so we are still spending a lot of time at the Hutch.

One funny thing is that since his donor is a female his blood DNA now reads as female--so if he committed a crime and left blood spatters behind, the police would think the criminal was a female. (Am I reading too many crime novels?) He has also taken on the blood-type of the donor (different from his blood type) and will soon have to get all new immunizations.

I'll be listing my readings in paragraphs 2 and 3 above, so if you have any questions about what I've been reading feels free to ask.

Also in the next paragraph I'm copying some of my comments on my other thread on my February and March reading, and I will try to update through June soon.

Thank you all for visiting and leaving you kind words.

Some comments on a few of the books I read in February and March:

I finished the Hal Challis series with Signal Loss by Gary Disher, and I strongly recommend the series to mystery fans. I also liked The Cleaner by Paul Cleave, in which we are in the mind of a psychopathic serial killer, but didn’t care for its sequel, Joe Victim, which I did not finish.

Other books I really liked are:

Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama, which is billed as a mystery, but really is not. It’s an in depth look at the inner workings of a newspaper covering a major story (a plane crash) back in the day before cell phones etc. made communications so much easier.

The Wall by John Lancaster I really loved his book Capital from a few years back (and a couple of his other books), so I picked this up. It’s in a genre entirely foreign to him (speculative/dystopian/post-apocalyptic), but I also loved this one. In near future Britain, climate change has caused the seas to rise, and also caused many refugees to try to cross into Britain. Britain has built a wall around its entire sea coast to keep out the “Others,” and every young person must fulfill a 2 year term on the Wall fighting off refugees. Highly recommend this one. (Negative reviews I read seemed offended by the recognizable political implications of “the wall” as well as climate change.

Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua. An Arab Israeli attorney finds what appears to be a love letter in his wife’s handwriting in a book He purchases at a used book store. He goes a bit off the deep end with jealousy. This was a fascinating look at the lives of Arabs and Palestinians in Israel, the obstacles and prejudices they face, as well as a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a secular Arab male.

I was also blown away by Labyrinths by Borges, one I hope to reread a few more times in my life.

And if you’re interested in more Trump reading I recommend The Apprentice by Greg Miller (subtitle: “Trump, Russia, and the Subversion of American Democracy”)

Didn’t care for The Night of Camp David, which I read and enjoyed in the 1960’s, and which was recommended as pertinent to our current political situation, but which is so dated and hokey I suggest you avoid it.

Any other books I’ve listed you’d want to comment on or would like my opinion, feel free

Hi Deborah, thank you for the update. I'm so glad to hear that your husband is making a recovery from his illness even if his DNA ends up being somewhat deceptive lol. Remind him to avoid committing crimes.

I sympathize with you about the move. It rings a bell with me because I moved in 2015 from a 2800sf house to an 1150 sf ranch. I salvaged most of my books but got rid of a ton of "stuff". It was very hard to do but in the end, I'm very happy in this small abode.

I read Second Person Singular earlier this year and found it to be a fascinating read on a subject I was not really well informed about.

I'll look for Labyrinths.

Thanks for the update, Deborah. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the transplant and your blood clotting problems will all be resolved. I did not know about the changes in blood type. Fascinating.

I have The Wall and Second Person Singular on my list. I hope to get to them this summer.

Take care.

Thinking about Deborah - especially looking out at the Amazon building and realising that your pals here have got a fair sized chunk of their stock!

Have a good weekend and I hope your husband continues to do well.

Missing you.

Wishing you a beautiful fall filled with good health and happiness (aka books!).

Thank you for keeping me company in 2019.......onward to 2020.

Best wishes this holiday season!!



Hope to see you in 2020!

Hope to hear in 2020 that you found a lovely new home in Florida
and that health for both you and your husband has vastly improved.