RidgewayGirl Reads in 2019 -- Part One

I've been happily looking at all the fresh new reading threads and forgot to start one of my own. Here I am again, looking forward to all the books I'll read, which are, at this point, all perfect, five-star reads.

I'll think of a visual theme sometime in the future, in the meantime, here is our newest cat, Melmoth, discovering that she isn't the only one-eyed kitten out there.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

Pedantic Lists that Make Me Very Happy

Books by Year of Publication

1987
Desert Fabuloso by Lisa Lovenheim

1990
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

2003
Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

2009
Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

2011
Our Man in the Dark by Rashad Harrison

2016
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

2017
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

2018
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Dead Girls by Alice Bolin
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
The Lonely Witness by William Boyle
Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent
Milkman by Anna Burns
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman
Snap by Belinda Bauer
So Lucky by Nicola Griffith
Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent

2019
American Pop by Snowden Wright
The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
The Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam by Elias Khoury
East of England by Eamonn Griffin
Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr

Nationalities of Authors Read

Argentina
Samanta Schweblin (Mouthful of Birds)

Britain
Belinda Bauer (Snap)
Anna Burns (Milkman)
Eamonn Griffin (East of England)
Sarah Moss (Ghost Wall)
Ruth Ware (The Death of Mrs. Westaway)

Canada
Esi Edugyan (Washington Black
Michael Ondaatje (Warlight) (Country of Residence)
Heidi Sopinka (The Dictionary of Animal Languages)

Ireland
Liz Nugent (Lying in Wait)

Japan
Hideo Yokoyama (Seventeen)

Lebanon
Elias Khoury (Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam)

Nigeria
Oyinkan Braithwaite (My Sister, the Serial Killer)

Sri Lanka
Michael Ondaatje (Warlight) (Country of Birth)

USA
Alice Bolin (Dead Girls)
William Boyle (The Lonely Witness)
Jonathan Carr (Make Me a City)
Molly Dektar (The Ash Family)
Keith Gessen (A Terrible Country)
Nicola Griffith (So Lucky)
Rashad Harrison (Our Man in the Dark)
Uzodinma Iweala (Speak No Evil)
Lisa Lovenheim (Desert Fabuloso)
Janet Malcolm (The Journalist and the Murderer)
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Call Me Zebra)
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
Sarah St. Vincent (Ways to Hide in Winter)
Sarah Weinman (The Real Lolita)
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
Snowden Wright (American Pop)

Books by Month In Which I Finish Reading Them

January
The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman
Snap by Belinda Bauer
A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Lonely Witness by William Boyle
Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Our Man in the Dark by Rashad Harrison
Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent

February
Milkman by Anna Burns
Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
Desert Fabuloso by Lisa Lovenheim
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell
The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
East of England by Eamonn Griffin
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
Make Me a City by Jonathan Carr

March
Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
The Dictionary of Animal Languages by Heidi Sopinka
The Overstory by Richard Powers
So Lucky by Nicola Griffith
American Pop by Snowden Wright
Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam by Elias Khoury, translated by Humphrey Davies
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm

Space reserved for a summation of my 2018 reading.

Based on Deborahs review, Melmoth seems like the perfect name for your cat. Happy 2019, Kay!

That is who she is named for, Daniel. When she was found by the side of the interstate, she even had bloody paws. Also, she is a terror.

Poor thing, glad he has a good home. (not that that will stop his terrorizing it)

I love the picture and name of your cat, Kay. I also look forward to your thread topper, and, of course, your wonderful book suggestions.

Daniel, she also has a great vet, who didn't charge us for all the medical care she needed in those first weeks. She is currently terrorizing our 93 pound German Shepherd, and I'll need to go rescue the dog here in a minute, poor thing.

Hi, Colleen. It's going to be another excellent reading year for all of us.

Happy New Year, Kay.

Hi, Beth! I hope we both have great reading years.

During the period when Vladimir Nabokov was writing his best-known work, Lolita, a high profile criminal case was in the newspapers. Eleven-year-old Sally Horner was abducted and kept captive for twenty-one months by a man who told her he was an FBI agent. Her escape and return home were cause for much media attention at the time and, in The Real Lolita, author Sarah Weinman examines what happened to Sally Horner as well as what the Nabokovs were doing during that time, and what Nabokov knew about the case. She looks at the details of Horner's ordeal that made it into the novel, as well as the Nabokovs's denials that there was a connection. Weinman finishes up with the history of the novel's publication and of the subsequent movies and adaptations.

This was an interesting book. Weinman was working with few hard facts and managed to make the most of it. I read the original long article she wrote on the subject and suspect that the material was more suited to an article than a book. Still, I enjoyed learning about Nabokov's life and work during his years in the United States and the photo of the author in shorts, marching along with a butterfly net was delightful. Weinman has put together a few anthologies of mid-century noir fiction and that is where her real strength lies, but this book was a diverting holiday read and there's no doubt that Weinman has an eye for interesting historical events.

>14 RidgewayGirl: Hmm. I'm sort of on the fence about this one. I'll probably skip it. Maybe I'll find the article instead.

>15 japaul22: Here you go, Jennifer. It's a great article.

https://hazlitt.net/longreads/real-lolita

Thank you!

>16 RidgewayGirl: I read about half that article before finally convincing myself I don’t have time for that just now. Fascinated and I blame the author.

I've also been on the fence about The Real Lolita but I'll probably end up reading it. I do like interesting historical facts, and I'm somewhat planning to read some Nabokov this year.

Jennifer, isn't it fascinating?

Daniel, that made me laugh. I did the same thing recently with a long article about the culture at Georgetown Prep school. Interesting, but not useful to me.

Meredith, it was a peek into the 1950s and interesting for that alone, and Horner's story was noteworthy. This was the same time frame as my father's childhood and the attitudes and culture Weinman portrays does shed light on how he views things. I'll have to discuss some of the contents with him.

I went back and finished the article later, which is terrific. Thinking about a Nabokov theme for 2020.

>21 dchaikin: I would really enjoy following your exploration of Nabokov's work. I vote yes.

On a hot summer's day, two children and a baby wait in a car on the side of a highway. Their pregnant mother has left them there while she walks to an emergency phone box to call for roadside assistance. After far too much time has passed, they walk out to meet her and find only the phone, with the receiver dangling. Their mother has disappeared.

Belinda Bauer writes solid crime novels that are well-plotted and hard to put down. There's more depth to the characterizations than is usual. She's an author I'm always happy to read. Snap takes the familiar plot of a missing woman and moves it to the impact on the family left behind. The police investigating are less well developed but the tension between an arrogant big city detective in disgrace and his by-the-rules partner is not dull. And Bauer writes so convincingly about the conflicted nature of a teenage boy who is both full of rage and desperate to keep the shreds of his family together.

---

This is the crime novel that was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and which created a bit of controversy as a result. This really isn't a case where the author wrote both a crime novel and literary fiction. Bauer has here written a straight genre novel. It's a good one, but it isn't trying to do something new or doing anything that would make it suitable for the Booker. And it's unfortunate that the Booker committee attached themselves to this book - it makes it less attractive to someone looking for a solid crime novel and it does a disservice to the genre by putting it in the crosshairs of readers expecting not just literary fiction, but for it to be an outstanding exemplar thereof. There are an ample number of novels written each year that are both crime novels and literary novels and one of those could have be easily chosen instead. Snap was a perfectly good crime novel, but a terrible literary one.

Interesting commentary. I imagine a book can be both, but something to think about (and, noting your vote)

>20 RidgewayGirl: Yes, what a great article. I've read Lolita twice, despite (or because of??) it being a brilliant but disgusting novel. Interesting to hear about Sally Horner's experience.

>25 japaul22: Jennifer, I was planning on just never reading Lolita, when a friend insisted that I read it just for the language. I'm very glad I did. It is both brilliant and distasteful.

Looking forward to following your thread again this year. The Real Lolita sounds interesting but maybe I'll just try the article you linked to rather than the book, at least to start with.

>25 japaul22: and >26 RidgewayGirl: Yes! It was brilliant but my skin crawled the whole time I was reading it.

>23 RidgewayGirl: 'Snap was a perfectly good crime novel, but a terrible literary one.' Yep, that just about sums up what I thought about it too. And I agree that it's a shame about the hype - it creates expectations that aren't justified, but it's not the book's fault; the book is what it is.

I look forward to following your reading again this year.

>23 RidgewayGirl: I was underwhelmed by this one as well - especially when read alongside the other longlisted books (or at least, some of them!).

Very belatedly wishing you a great reading year in 2019.

Darn, Snap sounded so interesting until the comment about it not being terribly literary. Does that mean it's an average mystery, or really poor writing?

>28 rhian_of_oz: Yes, Lolita isn't intended to entertain or make the reader happy. There was a fun article in The Independent about Marie Kondo's concept that items should "spark joy." The writer said that there are books that do not and should not "spark joy," but they are worth keeping in one's house all the same.

Rachel and Charlotte, yes! Because it was long listed, the reader's expectations change and Snap can't fulfill those heightened expectations, despite being a very good crime novel.

Margaret, it's a fine crime novel. Certainly of the standard set by authors like Ruth Rendell or Minette Walters. But it's unabashedly a crime novel, not an evocative portrayal of how we live today, nor does it do anything innovative with language or form. Bauer did have some interesting things to say about middle-aged women at one point that I thought was clever.

>3 RidgewayGirl: Just checking in to see how your reading year has started off! I love to see those "pedantic lists" that make people happy.

. . . I felt the terrible freedom of this place. It was a fortress set down in a hostile environment. On one side the Mongols; on the other the Germans, Balts, and Vikings. So the Russians built this fortress here on a bend in the Yauza River, and hoped for the best. They built it big because they were scared. It was a gigantic country, and even now, in the twenty-first century, barely governed. You could do anything, really. And amid this freedom, this anarchy, people met and fell in love and tried to comfort one another.

In A Terrible Country, under-employed adjunct professor, Andrei Kaplan, moves to Moscow to care for his grandmother. He grew up as her adored grandson, but soon after he arrives, she says this:

"Andryusha," she said. "You're such a dear person to me. To our whole family. But I can't remember right now. How did we come to know you?"

And so begins Andrei's life in Moscow. He's teaching several on-line courses, so he spends hours in the only affordable coffee shop he can find. He cares for his little grandmother, someone he cares deeply about, but is nonetheless often frustrated by. He has trouble making any connections, and even finding a place to play hockey is an insurmountable task. But eventually he settles into Moscow, into the place his grandmother consistently reminds him is a terrible country.

I was utterly charmed by this novel, even charmed by the Moscow Keith Gessen presents, a violent place where might makes right and ordinary people are trampled, if not by the authorities, then by the gangsters who control much of what goes on. Because underneath that cold and disregard are ordinary Muscovites, quietly making lives for themselves, playing hockey, building a dacha, falling in love and working to change their country. This is an outlier for me, as usually a WMFuN* is not something I have tolerance for, but Andrei is such a warm, caring, struggling guy that I liked him and the setting, from Moscow, to the academics scrambling to find employment, to the Muscovites joining together to change Russia was just so fascinating and vividly described.

*White Male Fuck-up Novel

>34 RidgewayGirl: This sounds interesting, Kay. I’m going to look for it.

Colleen, it was one of the books that had the Tournament of Books not put it on their roster, I would never have picked it up.

Oh crumbs. The annual ToB avalanche on my wishlist via this thread begins here...

Oh good, the Tournament of Books again - I look forward to seeing where it takes you this time. I’m intrigued by this one, anyway (A Terrible Country; it’s gone straight on my wishlist.

I’m just going to watch your ride through the ToB. This one sounds really good.

>34 RidgewayGirl: A Terrible Country sounds very inviting, and that's a wonderful quote from the grandmother!

Hi, Charlotte. This year's ToB shortlist is really good. There are several books that were phenomenal and I'm looking forward to reading the ones still to go. The Tournament always elevates my reading a bit.

Rachel, I hope you enjoy it when you get to it. It was such a fascinating look at what life is like in Moscow.

Thanks, Daniel. It's books like A Terrible Country that make the tournament so much fun. The better-known books I would read anyway (like There There and House of Broken Angels), but there are always a few books that I would never have read without the Tournament.

Margaret, Andrei's little grandmother is wonderful. She has such a vivid, strong voice and she has had quite the history, having been born in the early twentieth century.

In Warlight, Nathaniel looks back at his teenage years, a time just after the Second World War, when his parents left he and his sister in the care of their lodger, a man they named The Moth and who Nathaniel believed to be a criminal. The truth ended up to be much more complex than that, and years later, Nathaniel revisits those years and discovers what was really going on.

Michael Ondaatje has written a cloudy, atmospheric novel, where events are half-remembered and people's identities are uncertain. The writing is just beautiful. As Nathaniel moves through his memories, the second half turns into his suppositions based on what he has learned, pulling together disparate details to form a narrative about the people who were in his life during those years.

>34 RidgewayGirl: A Terrible Country sounds good, Kay. I just checked and my library has an e-book. Checked out and ready to go! I love your WMFuN. I may use it at some point.

I also loved Warlight. Ondaatje can write.

I will have to check out the ToB list.

Catching up. An interesting start to the year as always!

>34 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I read many negative reviews of this one but your review is so convincing!

I hope you like it, Beth. It's really different from the Ondaatje, but excellent.

Hi, Alison!

Barbara, not on LibraryThing! The goodreads ToB group is divided between those who loved it and those who abandoned it partway through. I'm really looking forward to the play-in round. Speak No Evil is a powerful and emotional novel so far and while I didn't love America is Not the Heart, I think it was a notable achievement. It'll be an exciting opening round.

>42 RidgewayGirl: I loved both Warlight and The Cat's Table. Now I'm looking at other books he's written.

>42 RidgewayGirl: I had mixed feelings for Warlight—loved the first half, but felt the second was a little overly cerebral as part of the same novel. Maybe it was just my mood, who knows. But from what I've heard about The Cat's Table, that might be the Ondaatje for me.

Hi Kay! We're only half way through January and the book bullets are flying! I am interested in The Real Lolita, A Terrible Country, and Warlight.

>47 auntmarge64: My favorite Ondaatje novel is Anil's Ghost. It's about a young forensic scientist who was educated abroad and now lives in the US. She is sent to her native land, Sri Lanka (also where Ondaatje was born), by an international human rights group and asked to help determine who committed various atrocities and mass executions: The Tamil Tigers in the North, the government, or insurgents in the South. She works with a jaded officer, whose line (paraphrasing) "I would tell the truth if I thought the truth would make any difference," is one of my all time favorites. The characters struggle with questions of what is right and what is doable. "I wanted to find one law to cover all of living. I found fear. . . ."

>47 auntmarge64: I'm interested in reading The Cat's Table. I'd mentally set it aside when it was published since I hadn't liked The English Patient, but I remember liking Anil's Ghost, so clearly I'm not done with Ondaatje and I've been reminded that unless the book was badly written, an author deserves more than one book before I dismiss them.

>48 lisapeet: Lisa, it was an interesting mental exercise going on - he describes it as being able to draw a complete picture having only a few details to go on (words to that effect).

>49 labfs39: Lisa, I think you'll like The Real Lolita - Sarah Weinman is so fascinated by that time period. And I'd like to reread Anil's Ghost. It's been probably twenty years since I read it and as this was long before I'd started writing reviews for myself, my memories are hazy.

>50 RidgewayGirl: I too did not like The English Patient, and it is his most well-known. Fortunately I read Anil's Ghost. I also read The Cat's Table and gave it four stars. Unfortunately I didn't write a review, and now I can't remember why!

Amy lives quietly in a basement apartment in a working class part of Brooklyn. She dresses nondescriptly and spends her days bringing the Eucharist to elderly shut-ins and volunteering at church. She has a past, of dressing "like an extra in a John Waters film," bartending and partying with her girlfriend, but she left all that when Alessandra left her to pursue her acting career in Los Angeles. She seems to genuinely care for the elderly women she ministers to, but all that changes on a dime when she sees a man being murdered.

I picked up The Lonely Witness by William Boyle after seeing it described on a year-end "best of" list and seeing that Megan Abbott praised it. I was never able to get past the erratic nature of the main character. I like an unsympathetic character, but I do need that character to be believable. There was no telling what Amy would do next, whether that was help out a grieving mother or robbing an elderly parishioner, whether or not Amy was caring or criminal in her behavior was entirely random, and not in a fun, anarchic way. It was certainly fast-paced, though.

Great comments on The Lonely Witness, Kay. I think I'll pass.

>52 RidgewayGirl: shame. From the first part of your review I was getting ready to catch a book bullet.

>52 RidgewayGirl: sounds like an attempt at an update of Dostoevsky's underground man. (well, if true, that might make me want to try it)

Beth, there are so many better crime novels out there.

Alison, it did have so much potential. And I kept waiting for the big explanation for the protagonist's behavior that would pull the book together. It did have a wonderful picture of an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, though.

You're giving it too much credit, Daniel.

Speak No Evil is the debut novel of Uzodinma Iweala. It centers on Niru, a young man finishing up at an elite private high school in Washington, D.C. who runs track, has gotten an early acceptance into Harvard and is a responsible son. But it's not all easy. As one of the few black students, he isn't entirely accepted; he feels under enormous pressure from his parents, his coach and his church and when his only close friend, Meredith, wants to start a relationship, he's forced to come to terms with being gay. And when his parents find out, his life explodes.

Iweala is doing a lot in a short novel. He's looking at the immigrant experience, as well as that of their relationship with their country of origin, he's looking at the expectations placed on the children of immigrants to do well, racism, and what it means to be gay when your parents and their culture are hostile. For the most part, he pulls it off, although there are some awkward passages and scenes that seem pulled from a much longer novel. The ending is shocking, but more effective for its suddenness. Iweala in an author to watch. I'm eager to see how he develops as a writer.

>57 RidgewayGirl: why I stop by here, : ) Great review.

>49 labfs39: I will definitely put Anil's Ghost on my to read list. Thanks!

Thanks, Daniel. The Tournament of Books really pushes me to read books I'd not normally have even heard of. Of course, that's not always a pleasure. I'm reading one now that is dreadful.

>60 RidgewayGirl: I think I know which one you mean, Kay. Call Me Zebra? I read it last year and I'm still not quite sure why I bothered to finish it.

>61 BLBera: You called it. I'm dragging myself through it, page by interminable page.

>62 RidgewayGirl: dedication?

>63 dchaikin: I don't feel as though I can participate in a book conversation without having read the entire book. And I like to complain.

: ) wishing you well on the reading.

I've heard such mixed things on that book. I actually had the ebook checked out from the library but it was one of those times when a bunch of holds came through at once and that was the one that fell by the wayside. Maybe for the better, huh. I love following along the ToB but I just don't have the bandwidth to be a completist.

Ha! Thanks, Daniel.

Lisa, if there was a book to skip in this year's roster, Call Me Zebra is the one. This is the one most people are struggling just to read and as it's up against the excellent Warlight, I think it's inclusion in the Tournament will not last past the first round.

Ghost Wall is narrated by the teenage daughter of a Northumbrian bus driver who takes part in a reenactment of pre-Roman life as part of a class in experimental archaeology. Sylvie and her mother are there, wearing tunics and obeying Sylvie's father as he joins with the professor in guiding the project. As the two men become more and more involved in exploring possible spiritual rites practiced by early Britons, her father's controlling behavior amplifies.

Sarah Moss has here written a short novel that is exactly as long as it needs to be. There is a lot packed into the pages of this book, but it never feels rushed or condensed. Sylvie is a wonderful character to follow, combining an innocence with a knowledge of the world a seventeen year old should not have. There's a lot of subtle menace here, and the reactions and the interactions between the participants in this field trip are sharp and wonderfully written.

Our Man in the Dark by Rashad Harrison is a solidly written, solidly plotted noir that varies from the usual by it's setting, Atlanta in 1964. John Estem is an accountant working for the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) where he occasionally encounters Martin Luther King, Jr. Estem had polio as a child, leaving him with a heavy brace on his leg and an inability to fit in with the men he works with. He spends his free time drinking and hoping for a little attention from Candace, a not very good singer in a club owned by a man with his fingers in many pies. Desperate to feel better, Estem embezzles money from the SCLC, which lands him the attention of the FBI and his actions from this point forward careen between reactions to realizing that he's about to be caught and his plans to manipulate his circumstances to his benefit.

There's something so perversely entertaining about watching a character utterly destroy his own life. Harrison expertly juggles the different elements of a good noir, delivering a fast-paced story about a very flawed character doing some very bad things that this reader was unable to refrain from rooting for.

>69 RidgewayGirl: Sounds really different: I'll see if I can get hold of a copy here. How many more ToB books do you have still to read?

>66 lisapeet: I just don't have the bandwidth to be a completist.
That's too funny! And perfectly said.

>70 charl08: After I finish the two I'm currently reading, I'll have five to go. I think I'll be ready by the start of the Tournament.

>71 auntmarge64: If there's one book I don't finish, this will be the one.

Just dropping in to say Hi, Kay. I follow your thread over at the Category Challenge, but it's a completely different conversation here.

I'm on a very long, slow waitlist for Warlight. If I didn't already have a mountain of must-reads I'd just buy the book.

Vivienne, it's why I have two threads.

On a November night in Dublin, Ireland, a man strangles a young woman. His wife is present. They bring the body home and bury her in their back garden. Told in chapters that alternate between the wife, the man's son and the sister of the dead woman, Lying in Wait tells a truly bonkers story that seems really reasonable, sort of. Liz Nugent does a great job delving into the three central characters and makes their choices appear reasonable.

This was a fun crime novel that never failed to keep my attention. And the final chapters are utterly insane, in the best, most twisted way.

>75 RidgewayGirl: Oh gosh...you’ve done it again, Kay. Onto the wishlist.

Colleen, you'll enjoy it. I'm hoping to get to her previous novel, Unravelling Oliver, soon.

So Milkman won the Man Booker Prize and everybody was like, who is this Anna Burns and why has her pink book won the big prize, except for "everyone" substitute "me," because that was my reaction. Everyone else was probably fine.

So everybody's my next reaction to Milkman came a few pages in and can best be summarized as "wow, wow, wow," because this is a fantastic book with a unique and marvelous voice and I'm so happy to have read it, except I'd like to still be reading it.

Middle Sister lives in a city in Northern Ireland in the late seventies. She lives in a no-go area but survives by keeping her mind firmly in nineteenth century literature, her not quite relationship with maybe boyfriend and in her evening French class in the center of town. Then she is noticed by a man high up in the IRA, named Milkman, which throws her life into chaos as she tries to figure out how to protect herself. As his attentions are noticed by her neighbors, she's forced into ever tighter control of her actions and words.

What's so delightful about this novel is the protagonist's voice. It's impossible not to hear her accent as she speaks and my reading slowed down to the speed of a person speaking, telling a story of what happened back in the seventies. Here she is talking about maybe boyfriend's house, which is filled with parts of cars and various machines, to the point of being almost unlivable.

As for my reaction, I could bear the cluttered state of 'Come in and welcome, but you're going to have to squeeze a little' during times I stayed over because of the normality of the kitchen and of his bedroom and the half normality of the bathroom. Mainly though, I could bear it because of the 'maybe' level of our relationship, meaning I didn't officially live with him and wasn't officially committed to him. If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.

Milkman is told from deep within the musings of Middle Sister, and like thoughts do normally, themes and subjects circle in and out of her mind as she goes about trying to live her life in a place that isn't entirely compatible with life. This is a very, very good book, but it requires attention and a willingness to slow down and allow Middle Sister to tell her story in her own way.

>78 RidgewayGirl: And you’ve hit me with another one. Your thread is dangerous. :-)

>78 RidgewayGirl: Great comments, Kay. I have this on the pile on my desk, books I would like to get to soonish. It sounds like one I would love.

That does sound good.

>78 RidgewayGirl: I am right in the middle of this one and love your review. I sometimes have a hard time keeping concentrated but it is indeed as you name it: these are Middle Sister’s real thoughts and you should read and appreciate them in this way. Thanks for pointing that out. It encourages me to not start skimming!

I just received a copy of Call me Zebra, by the way... ;)

Great review, onto the list it goes.

>78 RidgewayGirl: Great review! I can't wait to get my copy of Milkman. I'm near the top of the holds list but the book hasn't actually arrived at the library yet.

>78 RidgewayGirl: Yes: fantastic book. I would love to hear the audio, as you say the accent is a tangible thing.

Also wanting to get to Milkman soon. i feel slightly weird about reading NI books living there myself (don't ask me why - I just do), but I have to read this one.

Colleen, I think you'd like it.

Beth, my stack of books to get to soonish far outnumbers the amount of reading time in "soon," yet I persevere. Milkman is worth pushing up to the top of the stack.

Lisa, Milkman was a delight. The main character has a strong voice without being at all unrealistic and her family members are so vividly described, especially her mother, with whom she has a fraught relationship.

Barbara, I made the mistake of reading Call Me Zebra at the same time as Milkman and Zebra really suffered in my estimation, exacerbated by its proximity to Milkman. I'll be interested to find out what you think of both of these books as one is at the top of my Rooster reads and the other at the bottom.

Hi, Mary, and welcome to my thread.

Vivienne, how many other books have you requested? If you have several requested at once, they will all come in at the same time, so requesting a few already available books will get them to get Milkman to you immediately.

Charlotte, there's a discussion about this book over on goodreads and those who listened to it all loved it so much. Apparently the reader does a fantastic job. I'm tempted to get the audiobook just to listen to the Northern Irish accent.

Alison, I remember you saying that when I was raving about Lucy Caldwell. I have the opposite reaction to novels set near me, but maybe that's because I'm a transplant?

>87 RidgewayGirl: And you were right, because I really enjoyed the Lucy Caldwell book. I think it's because often nothing pleases us as a nation, and that irritates me. When I moved back to NI for good 10 years ago, I took off the rose-tinted glasses and saw it with new eyes after 12 years being away away on and off. I find we can be very negative as a people, and so my auto reflex is to stay away from NI fiction as a result. Of course, there are plenty of gems out there, so I'm glad I have CR for you all to rightly convince me there are NI books I shouldn't miss.

>88 AlisonY: That's interesting - I find that American Southerners tend towards the papering over and pretending that everything's just fine and Southern Lit provides a bracing antidote to that.

>87 RidgewayGirl: Most of the books I request are at the "on order" stage. It's always possible that they will all be processed in the same batch and I'll be overwhelmed. It's happened before.

I think NI is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment with literature. The Guardian has mentioned it twice so it must be true (!)

Definitely a book bullet with Milkman.

Charlotte, I have yet to be disappointed by an author from N. Ireland.

Meredith, I think it might be right up your alley.

Cute kitty!

>91 charl08: I think it was the same person both times, and coincidentally he has a new novel set in NI coming out shortly.

Thanks, Alison. Her lack of eyeball and ear does not slow her down at all.

Mark, are you suggesting that N. Ireland isn't enjoying a literary renaissance?

>96 RidgewayGirl: Far be it from me to say...
And they’re probably due for one - any seedlings that popped up whilst Seamus Heaney was still around would have had a tough time getting out of his shadow.

>97 thorold: And William Trevor. That's a lot for a small country. So now there's room for at least a half a dozen exciting new authors.

>98 RidgewayGirl: Ah, but William Trevor was Irish, not Northern Irish. You know how that wee border is a contentious issue!

There have been a lot more successful Irish authors than Northern Irish ones - it would be great to see a new emergence in the area of literature. My next door neighbour's brother lives in CS Lewis' childhood home which is pretty cool. I've never been able to wangle an excuse for accompanying her on a visit there, but I'm working on it!

>99 AlisonY: Now why did I have it in my mind that Trevor was from N. Ireland? Thanks for the correction!

Kathleen works as the sole employee of a small convenience store in a national park in the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. She's effectively hiding out; living in her hometown but spending all of her time at the store, which is frequented only by hikers and hunters, or at home, where she lives with her grandmother. Occasionally, her best friend can get her out for a few hours, but she insists she's content, recovering from the accident that took her husband's life. At the tail end of the season, when even the hunters are becoming scarce, a man shows up at the hostel next to the store. He's from Uzbekistan and clearly hiding from someone.

Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St. Vincent is a difficult book to describe. It's almost a thriller, but more of a character study and exploration of culpability and our responsibilities to each other, combined with a vividly described setting. The author has used her background to write a very well put together story that touches on the political situation in Uzbekistan and domestic violence.

I read this book thanks to excellent reviews by Lisa (lisapeet) and Margaret (AuntMarge64).

>101 RidgewayGirl: Such a different novel, wasn't it? And well done. Glad you gave it a whirl.

And by the way, I love your cat. We have a motley crue here, mostly seniors and one baby (who is currently at the vet getting spayed), and I do love a special needs critter.

>102 lisapeet: Thanks for pointing it out to me, Lisa!

I love my odd little girl, too, but it does mean that we officially have far too many cats. We now have five, only one of whom was intentional. My daughter found Melmoth on the side of a busy interstate and her injuries were most likely the result of having been thrown from a moving vehicle (her tail is also wonky).

Aw, poor baby. How's she doing now?

We have five too, all of whom were picked up somewhere in the neighborhood except the baby, who was born to one of our outdoor ferals in our basement. We gave away her brothers and sisters to good homes but fell in love with her. Suckers. We also have a dog.

>104 lisapeet: We have a German Shepherd mix, who is bewildered by the way the cats come in and twine around her legs. Melmoth is doing well and behaving like a normal kitten and the other cats would like her to settle down a little.

>101 RidgewayGirl: This sounds good, Kay. Off to check to see if my library has a copy.

Enjoyed your reviews of Milkman and ways to hide. I looked at Milkman in audible and tried the sample and didn’t hate it...but it didn’t grab me either (so I went with There There, which immediately did grab me). But seeing your comment about how people liked the audiobook a lot is encouraging. Maybe I’ll give it a go.

Beth, I'd be interested in finding out what you think of it.

Daniel, There There is a powerful book that does grab the reader right from the start.

>101 RidgewayGirl: I’m going to look for this one, Kay.

>47 auntmarge64:, >48 lisapeet:

I've read 4 Ondaatje novels, and by far my favourite was Anil's Ghost. >49 labfs39: - you make me want to reread it!

As a young girl, Zebra fled Iran with her father. The journey from their once comfortable, book-filled home to their eventual haven in a small New York apartment is a difficult one. After her father's death, Zebra decides to make the same journey in reverse, revisiting the places they traveled through on their way to America. Her first destination is Barcelona, where she meets an Italian professor, and changes her plans.

I've been examining my response to Call Me Zebra by Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi and trying to determine what factors caused me to hate it so very much. Sure, the writing was turgid and ponderous, with no noun left unmolested by a pair of adjectives, no sentence left without ample decoration, yet I love Victorian Lit, which tends towards embellished prose. Sure, the protagonist was just the worst, a self-involved pedant who spends the entirety of the novel treating others like things, stealing from them while contemptuously thinking about how much better she is than everyone else, but I do like novels about unlikeable characters, even the ones who are so without redeeming qualities that the reader spends the novel hoping to see them get what they deserve. There's a pretentiousness to the writing that feels unearned, names are dropped without much rhyme or reason, but this normally would not get more than an occasional eye-roll from me.

I don't know why I disliked this book so much. It's gotten some good reviews and, hey, it was published in the first place, so people more knowledgeable than myself clearly see something in it. Maybe read it for yourself and then come tell me what I missed.

I can't understand why you didn't like Call me Zebra perhaps you have something against Zebras - enjoyed your review.

>111 RidgewayGirl: I totally agree, Kay. Great comments. I would like to discuss it with someone who loved it and have pointed out to me what I missed in that novel.

Well, I'm still no further ahead on whether or not there is an N. Irish renaissance, but I've just read Music, Love, Drugs, War and really liked it as a picture of growing up.

Sorry to read Call Me Zebra was so unenjoyable. May the next one be better!

Thanks, Bas.

Beth, I have had a conversation with an ardent defender of Call Me Zebra and his enthusiasm made me wish I'd liked it more. It didn't, though.

Charlotte, Music Love Drugs War looks excellent. For such a wee country, they really are putting out some excellent stuff.

Desert Fabuloso by Lisa Lovenheim is a book published in 1987 that tells the story first of John Aaron, who upon turning forty, divorces his wife and leaves the family business to move to Santa Fe, New Mexico to live openly as a gay man. Later, he meets Bradley Roberson III, a good-looking man with a fortune and a needy mother, and convinces him he'd find Santa Fe refreshing. Bradley is frivolous, fabulous and unhappy, and he manages to make himself the center of gossip as he drinks himself into oblivion and behaves terribly. But as time passes, his friendship with a neighborhood Latino boy and his mother, as well as a wooden statue of a Native American he steals from a local hotel, give him the impetus to change.

The chatty and casual voice of this novel, as well as its publication date, had me thinking that this book would be primarily a historical oddity. Set in that short span of time between when it became reasonably safe for some gay white men of means to live openly in a few places and when the AIDs crisis changed everything, I thought this novel, the only one Lisa Lovenheim ever published, would be a fun snapshot of fabulous gay life, of handsome men in snazzy pastel suits drinking champagne and making wry comments kind of thing. And there was a little of that, but it was a more interesting story about two people finding their place in the world. John Aaron becomes content with the friends he has and with his relatively quiet life, while Bradley's story is more poignant. Coming from Manhattan and buying a run-down adobe house in an established neighborhood, he discovers a love of gardening, and if that new interest is also accompanied by heavy drinking and a love of sun-bathing, it doesn't stop him from forming tentative friendships with a bored little boy and his very traditional Latina mother. The way that connection is strained by the actions of another member of that family serves to remind everyone that no matter how moneyed and popular, Bradley's space in the world is not a safe one, given his refusal to be anything other than who he is.

>115 RidgewayGirl: Did the ardent defender say what, specifically he loved about it?

>117 BLBera: He thought it was funny and intelligent and clever.

By now you have probably checked out the streaming service, MHz; but if not, based on your comments on Colleen's thread I predict you will enjoy it. The first show we watched was called "The Team" and featured a crime that involved detectives from Denmark, Germany and Belgium. That was really interesting. We enjoyed the "Sandhamm Murders" (set on coastal islands off Sweden) and most recently "Beck" (after trying the 1st season, which aired in '97, and found it too dated; so we started the 6th and most recent series which featured the big, red-headed guy from Game of Thrones as one of the detectives. It was excellent, so we have worked our way backwards through previous seasons. The 6th - 3rd are excellent, but we are finding the 2nd too thriller-eske. We also liked the adaptions of Camilla Lackberg's work. Some series we have partially watched ("Acquitted," "Mammon"...etc), others we tried and they didn't work for us, still others we had seen already (in the years before streaming) on DVD or on Acorn.tv (i.e. The French Village—excellent drama, but not a crime show per se— Spiral, Annika Bengtzon... ). Anyhoo, I think you will find enough there to keep you busy for a while (oh, and you can sort by country! just in case you want to watch a Polish, Swiss or Italian show....

>119 avaland: Thank you, Lois! I'm waiting for us to finish the series we're watching on Netflix now (Border Town, a Finnish crime drama set near the border with Russia) before giving it a try.

>120 RidgewayGirl: Oh, yes, we are watching Bordertown also. Enjoyed the first season; we'll see how this 2nd season goes. Did you watch the Norwegian "Occupied" on Netflix? It's not a crime show, but about the "soft occupation" of Norway by Russia. Intriguing, once you settle into it. There are currently two seasons.

>116 RidgewayGirl: Ooh, a 1980s gay novel I’ve never come across! Off to ABE Books...

>122 thorold: It's pretty obscure, Mark. I have a copy because I bought it shortly after it was published, when I was working in a bookstore.

>123 RidgewayGirl: Do you happen to know anything about the author? The internet only seems to know her as the person who wrote that book.

>124 thorold: I went looking after reading Desert Fabuloso and was able to eventually find her through a blog she wrote about Navajo country. Apparently, she has only had the one book published.

>116 RidgewayGirl: Such a rich time period and milieu to write about—I'm surprised there's not more mainstream literature there, but then again it was anything but mainstream back then. Did you ever read Andrew Holleran's Dancer From the Dance? It was a really well done literary treatment of gay life in 1970s NYC, wonderfully atmospheric. Or at least that's how I remember the book—it's been many many years since I last read it.

>126 lisapeet: Lisa, I've read far too little LGBT literature, so I'm adding that to my list.

Because Mark (thorold) asked me about the author of Desert Fabuloso, I tracked her down to a new blog about a trip to the southwest. I left her a note asking if she had written the novel and she has responded very pleasantly and somewhat surprised that anyone remembers it.

>127 RidgewayGirl: Thanks - nice to know that she’s still around, anyway. There’s a copy heading my way across the Atlantic (together with a few other things I’ve been meaning to order from the US). It obviously didn’t make enough impact for there to be any copies floating around the secondhand market in Europe. Back then, it was quite a thrill to come across any new book with LGBT characters, and I have far too many well-intentioned but not very well-written gay and lesbian paperbacks on my shelves...

Dancer from the dance from 1978 is the classic one, as >126 lisapeet: says. If you’re interested, there’s a good list here: https://www.librarything.com/list/254/all/Good-LGBT-fiction-for-LGBT-folk-and-fr...

>128 thorold: I remember the days of anything even remotely LGBT being carefully shelved in its own little segregated area. Probably located next to the shelf of books by African Americans.

Thanks for the link to the list. I'm surprised to have read more than a few of these.

My Sister, the Serial Killer is told from the point of view of a woman, a nurse, whose sister has the habit of killing her boyfriends. Each time, Ayoola calls Korede, and Korede goes to protect her sister from the consequences of her actions by disposing of the body and cleaning up the mess. But Ayoola is self-centered and demanding and when she meets the man who Korede cares for, will this be enough to break Korede's pattern of covering up her sister's crimes?

Oyinkan Braithwaite's debut novel is a lot of fun. It's short, with short chapters that make it fly by even faster. There's no question of pacing in this novel, it all speeds by. But this isn't a flat genre novel, meant only as entertaining, there's a lot going on. From the setting of Lagos, Nigeria and the peek inside of that culture, to explorations of how a strictly patriarchal society shapes and harms both men and women, to asking how responsible are we for our families, all of that is so wrapped in a fun package, that it never feels heavy-handed.

My Sister, The Serial Killer would almost be worth a read for the title alone. I could definitely use some layered fun global reads.

>131 mabith: It's one I'd like to read on public transport just to see what kind of reaction it provoked!

>101 RidgewayGirl: So glad you liked Ways to Hide in Winter!

Meredith, "layered fun global read" is an excellent description.

Charlotte, yes, someone asked what I was reading and when I said, "My Sister, the Serial Killer" there was a distinct pause in the conversation.

Margaret, thank you for reviewing it.

>130 RidgewayGirl: I think I took a bullet on this one. I'm a big fan of books that are fun but also more.

Welcome to my thread, Jim! I'm happy that we're seeing more global fiction here in the US and that the quality of it is so high.

I'd forgotten about MhZ but resubbed after reading your post. I need something new.

Samanta Schweblin is an Argentinian author whose work is finally being translated into English, first with Fever Dream and now with a collection of short stories called Mouthful of Birds. The stories in this collection are varied, but share a sense of discomfort, of things being off-kilter, of the ordinary rules not applying. A man murders his wife and stuffs her body into a suitcase only to find that his actions are badly misunderstood. A father comes to terms with his daughter's changing diet needs. An unhappy woman meets a merman.

Each story is odd, unsettling, and none of them are interested in answering any questions a reader might have. Stories begin in the middle or stop before or during the the moment of crisis. Backstories are hinted at. These are not stories to rush through, but to read singly, with time to mull over what happened or didn't happen or might happen later. There's often the sense of the environment being destroyed or turning against the people living in it. Intriguing and not necessarily satisfying, I'm eager to read more by this author.

>138 RidgewayGirl: I saw this in the bookshop yesterday and was hovering: I wasn't so keen on Fever Dream but wondered if short stories would make for a different read. I do love the cover (!)

Catching up. What a great find with Desert Fabuloso. (i’m in 1850’s New Mexico at the moment - pretty distant relation!) All those posts on Litsy about My Sister, the Serial Killer made it sound awful, except yours. This review makes it sound like great fun. Mouthful of Birds seems like the kind of short story collection I would like - open-ended little puzzling windows.

>118 RidgewayGirl: just an isolated thought. It seems whenever I don’t like a well-regarded book, my main problem is missing the humor, taking it too seriously. So, this comment was interesting.

>139 charl08: Charlotte, if you didn't like Fever Dream, you might not like Mouthful of Birds, it has all the amorphous dread and with more left unresolved. The cover, though, is indeed gorgeous.

>140 dchaikin: Very interesting idea about humor, Daniel. I'm going to think about that and I may bring it up when the book is being discussed during the Tournament of Books. And "open-ended little puzzling windows" is an excellent description of the stories in Mouthful of Birds. The author of Desert Fabuloso has another novel she's looking to get published, this time about a Navajo family. She taught in a Navajo school in Gallup, NM. I'm definitely going to find a copy if she manages to get it into print.

The Ash Family is a farming commune in the mountains of North Carolina. Berie is a young woman who doesn't know what she wants and has let her mother and her boyfriend tell her what to do until the moment she leaves for university and decides not to go, turning around and taking a bus to Asheville. At the bus stop, she encounters the charismatic Bay, who brings her to the Ash family farm and where she learns to work with farm animals, and is drawn into the close and tightly controlled group led by Dice, who also leads the inner circle of his group in a little light eco-terrorism. Berie is desperate to be trusted enough to join them and throws herself into the endless tasks involved in pulling a living out of the land. She's also desperate to get time with Bay, who is often gone recruiting new members and desperate to be accepted and find a home within the Ash Family.

As Molly Dektar's debut novel goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that the Ash Family is not a benign group and equally clear that the members are being kept under tight control and surveillance. Berie's need for belonging can't entirely hide the less savory aspects of the commune from her, especially as her one friend is protecting a secret and Berie will not be able to remain free of the consequences. And, back in Durham, there are people worried about her and while they might be able to tell her that they want her to come home, whether or not Berie leaves is entirely up to her.

While the novel does sometimes feel predictable and research into cults makes itself known, Dektar's writing is strong and clear. Berie is a wonderful character, very much an eighteen year old, but also a young woman who has a moral compass and who develops into someone who knows herself over the course of this novel.

HI Kay: I've just added three books to my WL. Thanks! I hope my library has copies.

>143 BLBera: Ha! One thing LT does is make sure that one always has plenty of books on the wishlist!

Hal isn't doing very well. Her mother died in a hit and run a few years ago and Hal is not quite getting by reading tarot cards on a pier in Brighton, England. She's in debt to a loan shark when she receives a letter telling her she's named in a will. But the woman named is not Hal's grandmother. In desperation, Hal decides to go to Cornwall and attempt to claim this inheritance that isn't hers.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware is a thriller of an old-fashioned kind with a gothic flavor, from the old house to the hostile housekeeper and the many secrets each member of the family are keeping from each other and from Hal, who stumbles around, trying to not get caught out. It's a fun, fast-paced read that hangs together as long as the reader doesn't think about it too much. A fun book for a rainy weekend, but I doubt I'll remember it in a few months.

If Lee Child and Daniel Woodrell went to Lincolnshire together to write a novel, it might look a lot like Eamonn Griffin's East of England. This is a gritty thriller, a fast-paced noir set in the flat agricultural areas and amusement arcade-covered beach towns of eastern Lincolnshire.

Dan Matlock walks out of the prison, where he has spent the past two years for accidentally killing a man with his car, and across the road to the adjacent hospital carpark where he steals a car to drive home. He wants to see his father, but first he has a plan he needs to set into motion. Two years has given him a lot of time to think about what happened and to stew in his need for revenge. But even a well-laid plan will not hold out in the light of day and it's not long before Dan is just trying to figure out what is going on.

A lot happens in this novel, much of it violent, but Dan is not entirely on his own. There's his old employer, Big Chris, for whom he used to help collecting money from people who don't keep up with their payments and there's the old guy he meets in the caravan park where he is renting a place to live. There's the receptionist at the nursing home and, in an odd way, the head of the crime family that sent him to prison. This is a novel where criminals face off against slightly worse criminals, where the seaside attractions are showing their age and the family farms have given way to giant factory farms. Lincolnshire comes to life as Dan goes about his business, but often the plot is interrupted by sections that regurgitated from road maps and guides to local attractions. Overall, though, this is a solid novel and I look forward to seeing what Dan Matlock gets up to next.

>145 RidgewayGirl:
That sounds like a good one to keep on the shelf for just the right moment. I read another by her that I thought was fun, but both my daughters thought was pretty dumb.

>147 Nickelini: I started another book by her a few years ago and gave up on in before the end of the first chapter, but this one was mentioned in a few "best of the year" lists for crime novels. It was fun and I read it exactly when I wanted to read something just for entertainment.

>144 RidgewayGirl: Yes, since I joined LT, my reading has expanded into many new areas, Kay.

I was wondering about The Death of Mrs. Westaway. I think I can safely leave it on the library shelf.

Washington Black is a young slave working in the sugar cane fields of a Barbados plantation when he catches the eye of the Master's brother, Titch. Titch is a scientist who has developed an aerostat, a flying machine that uses a hydrogen-filled balloon. Titch trains Wash in the natural sciences as well as teaching him the rudiments of reading and Wash finds he has a talent for drawing. But while Titch treats him humanely, Wash is still living on a plantation full of enslaved people and white men who regard the slaves as things. Circumstances cause Titch and Wash to flee in the aerostat, and the subsequent years bring both adventures and fear, as Wash travels to Virginia, the Arctic, Upper Canada, London, Continental Europe and Morocco.

Esi Edugyan has written this book as a traditionally structured historical novel, with plenty of adventure and lots going on. But there's a much larger and more subversive story going on as well. The reader feels Wash's real fear as a black man in a world that is hostile to him, where even when he is in places where slavery is illegal, he knows he can be forcibly taken. His moments of peace are always temporary. And Edugyan also looks at what slavery does to the traditional family structure and with a person's ability to function independently. Titch may be a caring person who can see Wash as a human being, but he's also still fed and supported by slavery and unable and unwilling to stand up against the existing structures. Each place Wash finds himself has its own racist structures in place, even in places known as places of refuge for escaped slaves.

From an abolitionist who studies decay in human corpses, to a woman with tobacco- stained teeth and a mind of her own, to a mute Dutch man more comfortable in the Arctic than at home, this is a novel full of colorful and unlikely characters, all of whom exist in some way outside of borders of respectable society.

>150 RidgewayGirl: I’m guessing this might be a good follow up at some point to the Frederick Douglass biography I’m reading.

>151 lisapeet: That might be a good pairing, Lisa. I've been comparing this with The Underground Railroad in my mind and while they are very different books, the sense of terror was common to both.

Major book bullet for me with Washington Black.

>153 mabith: Meredith, I look forward to finding out what you make of it.

Taking the first hundred years of Chicago's history as his starting point, Jonathan Carr has written a novel composed of inter-linked stories in the form of letters, news articles, excerpts from history books and biographies, as well as traditional story-telling. Make Me a City focuses on the ordinary laborer, the failed businessman, the dispossessed, and outsiders to tell the story of Chicago, from it's beginnings through to the early years of the twentieth century. The protagonist of one chapter might disappear, only to reappear in a story set a decade later, or to be a secondary character, or spoken about in a later chapter. It's an effective way to tell a sweeping story and to keep the novel from feeling too much like a collection of short stories.

And through every chapter, the city of Chicago is the real main character, rising out of the wilderness and based on cheating, evictions, grift and regular old corruption, this Chicago also features people doing their best, immigrants working to build new lives in an unfamiliar land, visionaries, and truth-tellers.

>142 RidgewayGirl: My first thought is, Asheville? Cult dangers? Really? And my second thought is along the lines of - well, actually...

Enjoyed these. Washington Black might be too out there for me, but I’m still really interested. Make Me a City sounds fascinating.

>155 RidgewayGirl: Oh, interesting! I grew up outside Chicago and have always loved the city. And I've been taking book bullets right and left for Washington Black. I'll have to go ahead and add it to the library list.

Lots of interesting reads to catch up on here. I'm certainly curious about Make Me a City and Washington Black, both going straight on my list. Also enjoyed your review of Mouthful of Birds which I've been considering reading recently.

>157 japaul22: Oh, interesting! I grew up outside Chicago and have always loved the city.

I've been to Chicago twice, both VERY brief trips when I've had a layover and went downtown for an hour and then back to the airport. I have to say I had the BEST $2.99 steak and eggs breakfast ever back in 1994. Obviously I need to get back for more but I'm not sure what to see and do other than the great art museum. Chicago is in a lot of movies and TV shows --which ones do you think capture it best? I'm partial to Ferris Bueller's Day Off and the first Bob Newhart series. I'm sure I could come up with better examples, but those popped up first.

RidgewayGirl - sorry to hijack your thread.

>150 RidgewayGirl: It's dangerous in here! I just took another one.

>145 RidgewayGirl: My feeling more or less is the same for the Ruth Ware. A bit o' fun (and it's like she went down a checklist of Gothic tropes). There are far better modern Gothics.

>155 RidgewayGirl: Make Me a City looks very, very tempting.

>159 Nickelini: I have been going to Chicago since I was a tiny kid. We lived in South Bend, Indiana, which is about a two hour drive from Chi-Town. My husband and I are going to another Cubs game in June. There is so much to do and see in Chicago! Lots of museums, Chicago Art Institute, Navy Pier, shopping on Michigan Avenue.

Has anyone read Devil in the White City?

Daniel, Washington Black is structured very traditionally. It might be a good choice for one of your audiobooks for the commute.

Jennifer, I'd be interested what you'd make of Make Me a City, as my only visits to Chicago were brief and spent at O'Hare. I had this with me at my gynecologist's office and she spent my appointment trying to convince me to go visit right away.

Gary, what have you decided about reading Mouthful of Birds?

Joyce, hijack away. My gynecologist was in medical school there, so all of her suggestions were based on fun things to do when you are broke.

Jim, I'm surprised everyone hasn't already read this one. It got a lot of hype when it was first released. I'm hoping to read her other novel, Half Blood Blues, soon.

Lois, right. The book was fun but not particularly good.

>164 RidgewayGirl: I'll most likely be reading it soon, it just sounds too intriguing not to!

I've added Make me a City to the wishlist too. I remember I liked Half Blood Blues but can't remember much more about it!

>155 RidgewayGirl: interesting. I’ll be going there this Summer so this book can be a good preparation I think.

Did you know that Chicago is sinking? Not fast, about 4 inches every hundred years, but still. It seems the land it's built on, after an initial "bounce" following the withdrawal of the glaciers, is subsiding back down.

Gary, good. I'm still thinking about a few of the stories.

Charlotte, it'll make you interested in visiting Chicago. And I'm going to read Half Blood Blues. Once my Tournament of Books reading is finished (I have half of Lucky Me, which is very short, left to go), I've promised myself a few months of indiscriminate free reading.

Barbara, this would be an excellent appetizer.

Margaret, no, I didn't know that. They did raise the streets several feet at one point, which was a really interesting process. I wonder if we'd be able to coordinate that well today. The intricate process used to raise a large building was fascinating.

On the day that Yuuki was scheduled to meet his best friend, Anzai, and go on a short climbing holiday, a plane crashes into the mountains, killing over 500 people. As the senior reporter for a local provincial paper, Yuuki stays in the office and is put in charge of the paper's coverage of the crash. Anzai also doesn't make it to the meeting point. He collapses on a city street and is taken to the hospital where he lays in a coma.

What follows is an intense procedural novel about how the news coverage is put together. Yuuki assigns reporters to specific stories, determines which stories go where, navigates the difficult office politics of a paper where the managing director is battling for dominance with the chairman, and anxiously waits for the stories to make it in to the paper before the presses have to roll. And he tries to sneak out of the office now and again to visit his friend's bedside, where he takes Anzai's son under his wing.

Framing the airplane crash story is one set Seventeen years later, when Yuuki sets out to follow the original climbing plan with Anzai's son. Hideo Yokoyama's story is not a thriller or a crime novel, but an oddly compelling detailed look at how a provincial newspaper covered a major story that happened to occur in their area. Set in 1985, the story is devoid of the modern electronics that makes communication so easy, with reporters running for pay phones to send in updates and newspapers could scoop each other by printing a story in an earlier edition than their competitors.

>170 RidgewayGirl:

Did you like this? Is it called Seventeen? Sounds interesting. (Ah, I confirmed that by using a touchstone. Never mind.) (Seventeen, as a title for me will always be Seventeen magazine, which I devoured as a 12 and 13 year old.)

Joyce, I really enjoyed it. I read a few books at once and I was always eager to get back to Seventeen. There's another Japanese novel of the same name, so I wonder if that number has some significance in Japanese culture?

>172 RidgewayGirl: Or the Japanese are big Booth Tarkington fans?

>173 thorold: This is probably the most likely answer.

Ivory Frame is an elderly woman who has been working for decades on The Dictionary of Animal Languages, a compendium of the various noises animals make to communicate, from the clicking of insects to bird songs to the howls of wolves. Ivory has had an eventful life, attending art school in Paris, where she falls in love with another artist until the Second Word War drives them apart. She finds her true calling with the dictionary, and even though she is in her nineties, she continues to work on it.

This is an odd novel about a strong and determined woman. Heidi Sopinka tells the story from a very close first person, so much that there is no clear way to tell the difference between what Ivory is thinking and what she is saying aloud. The novel is set in two time frames; her life in France and her years after the war, as she finds her vocation. Sopinka's prose is not written with clarity in mind, there's a ornate and poetic feel to the writing that I found got in the way more than it gave greater illumination to the story. The best part of the novel was the character of Lev, a Tortured Artist with a truly fascinating and harrowing past in Ukraine and while he is the great love of Ivory's life, there are many hints that she's just the next girl in a sequence that exists somewhere below his art. There was a lot interesting going on and I wanted to like it more than I did. In the end, it was just too opaquely written and the central conflict shouldn't even exist, the solution being so obvious and predictable.

>175 RidgewayGirl: Hi Kay, Are you following the Tournament of Books? There is an interesting judgement about The Dictionary of Animal Languages vs. Washington Black on the March 11th opening round. DOAL was the winner!

https://themorningnews.org/tob/2019/washington-black-v-the-dictionary-of-animal-...

>176 mdoris: Hi, Mary. I follow the ToB with a devotion that is probably a little creepy. And if you're over there, you'll see me having opinions in the comments section. I'm unconvinced the judge that day read all of either book and I definitely think she made the wrong call there.

Richard Powers's latest novel, The Overstory, begins with several chapters that read like short stories in which a person's connection to a specific kind of tree is explored. This part of the novel is excellent. From there, Powers widens the story and the various characters interact in different ways as each one reaches the conclusion that saving the trees is important. But the action they end up taking has deadly results.

This is a big book, both in scope and in size. The environmental issues Powers addresses are urgent and important. And a theme of this novel is how the only thing that can change minds is a good story. This is pointed out more than once, in increasingly ham-fisted ways. Unfortunately, this is not that story.

This story is bloated and overwrought. There isn't a nuance or a speck of humor to be found. And we'll leave Powers's skill at portraying women alone except to say that one woman is described using the words of a One Direction song.

I regret the hours spent reading this novel.

>177 RidgewayGirl: Not creepy at all! I have to keep in mind while I'm reading the judgements that it's only one person's opinion and view. Yes, I have been reading some of the comments each day and good for you for contributing!

>178 RidgewayGirl: Interesting and welcome review. i have not read it but husband did (because of all the hype on LT. and he got to it before me) and then did not suggest it for me. (doom and gloom) "one story is interesting, two is tiresome and three and more is tedious" with all the same theme. (HIs quotes right now!)

>175 RidgewayGirl: I'm unhappy you didn't like this more, because it sounds so interesting. I guess that one will now come OFF the TBR pile. There's a first!

>176 mdoris: Aha, but maybe there's hope?

Nah, I'll probably pass.

>175 RidgewayGirl: I'm still interested in this because of the Leonora Carrington connection... I think that's why I picked up the galley in the first place, so I'll probably give it a whirl at some point. And hmmm... I have friends who loved The Overstory so much I'll probably try it out for a few chapters, at least, to see what the hype (or divisiveness) is about.

>179 mdoris: Mary, the first section is very good. It really is. And the book just gets worse the longer it goes on (and it's a long book). If your husband bought a copy, you should read the first section, which really brings trees to life. But Powers lost control after that and I'm not sure what his editor was thinking.

>180 auntmarge64: The first section is good, anyway. But there are better books about nature and the environment out there. I've been wondering if Barkskins is any good, except it's also very long and Proulx's writing style is not my favorite.

>181 lisapeet: Lisa, I only heard about the connection during the discussion about the book. It's definitely a case of whether or not you enjoy Sopinka's writing style. Many people think it's gorgeous.

>178 RidgewayGirl: Oh no! I liked that book. Although the beginning threw me for six, as I couldn't work out why the characters weren't connected.

I like the sound of Samanta Schweblin, hadn't heard of her before. I've also added Washington Black and My Sister, the Serial Killer to be wishlist. I don't think I ever come away from your thread with nothing!

>182 RidgewayGirl: Fair enough. I see it sometimes on the Express read shelf at the library and I will give it a go (at least the first part!) Just read the ToB today comparison of it and it was an interesting piece.

>178 RidgewayGirl: Oh dear when you regret the time spent on reading a novel - its really bad, especially if like me you have to finish it. It seems to have left a bad taste with you.

Two duds in a row is never fun. Hope your next read is knockout.

Charlotte, a lot of people loved it.

Happy to be of service, Rachel! Samanta Schweblin is fantastic. Fever Dream, her only novel translated into English, is a disturbing environmental horror story that has stayed with me.

Mary, the decision was interesting. The Goodreads discussion group thought that the decision would have gone differently with any other judge.

Bas, this is the second novel by Richard Powers that I did not enjoy, so I've decided that he's just not an author I enjoy and I'll leave him to everyone else.

Thanks, Meredith, the last two I read (I'm a little behind on the reviews) were good and the books I'm reading now are making me happy.

Kay - Seventeen sounds good. I enjoyed your comments on The Overstory; mostly I've heard positive things, so this will temper my expectations a bit.

I usually follow ToB, but haven't this year. I will go visit the website right now to see what's happening.

>189 BLBera: Beth, it's a fun year so far and while the comments are lively, no one is being mean (except to some of the books).

Mara has a great life. She's in a relationship and they live in a cute condo. Her job with a large AIDS non-profit gives her recognition and challenges and she's passionate about martial arts. Then, in a few days, it all collapses. Her partner leaves her for another woman and then she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), an unpredictable and disabling disease, which progresses rapidly, exhausting her, rendering her unable of continuing with the physical activity she loves. She loses her job and is quickly isolated, home alone, but also isolated by the distance that people put between themselves and the disabled.

In So Lucky, Nicola Griffith takes a strong, focused and self-focused woman and shows what becoming disabled does to a person. Mara is a fighter, and she's quick to turn her attention and experience to helping ms patients advocate for themselves by starting her own non-profit organization.

But this is not, despite the title, an inspiring book about a woman who overcomes odds or who learns acceptance. Mara is angry and her rage, which is open and uncontrolled, is an impressive thing. I'm used to men's rage. There are entire movie franchises and book series based on a man's rage at an injustice done to a woman he fancies, but here is a woman angry about what has happened to her and not about to sit home and suffer quietly. So Lucky not a comfortable book to read, nor is it a perfect book, but it is a worthwhile book.

Just for fun, I looked at the comments on Call Me Zebra; it sounds like the judge felt about it as we did.

Beth, the judge was so measured in her judgement that I was worried she'd advance Zebra to the next round.

If it had advanced, I think I would have given up on ToB forever. :)

>191 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read any Nicola Griffith since Ammonite, eons ago, which may have been her first. I'm glad this new one is worthwhile.

Beth, I'm too deeply invested to have left. But I would have had strong opinions on the matter!

Lois, the people who had read her other work said that So Lucky was very different. But she took up writing after being diagnosed with ms, and this novel felt very real.

During the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israel War, the residents of the city of Lydda (now Lod) were forced to leave their homes. Later, those homes would house Jewish refugees, themselves displaced from their homes in Bulgaria. But a few Arabs, Muslim and Christian, stayed behind in Lydda and were gathered together into what the soldiers guarding them called a ghetto. Children of the Ghetto: My Name is Adam by Lebanese author Elias Khoury and translated by Humphrey Davies, tells the story of one boy, the first child born into this new version of Lydda.

The novel begins with a long introduction from a university professor in New York named Elias Khoury, who met Adam briefly and disliked him intensely, mostly because they shared a romantic interest in the same woman but also out of consternation. Adam Dannoun is the cook in a falafel restaurant, well-educated and well-spoken, but he speaks both Arabic and Hebrew like a native. When Adam dies, the woman brings a stack of notebooks to Elias. She had been instructed by Adam's will to destroy them, but finds herself unable to do so. Elias, upon reading the notebooks, initially wants to write a novel based on the contents, but decides instead to submit them as they are for publication.

What follows begins as what one might find in the private notebooks of a scholar, a series of abortive attempts at writing the story of a Yemeni poet during the time of the Caliphates, followed by a rambling entry about his life in general, but all of this is necessary to the meat of the novel, Khoury taking his time to set up ideas and the life of this first witness before leading into what life was like for the people who stayed behind in Lydda, after most of the people had fled.

This was a powerful and understated novel about a part of the world whose history I know too little about. Khoury's slow and meandering style was wonderful and I'll be reading more by this author.

Just like an icy glass of coke on a hot summer's day, American Pop by Snowden Wright was a refreshing break to the (slightly) more serious reading that I've been doing. This is a soap opera, a family saga where the story shifts quickly between the various family members, going back and forth in time, to tell the story of an American family's rise and fall.

When Houghton Forster developed a cola drink to serve in his father's pharmacy, he had no idea that it would be so popular. Houghton's a savvy businessman, though, and quickly takes advantage of the soda's popularity to make it a national product that becomes a standard beverage throughout the US and the world. Although firmly rooted at their home in Mississippi, the money that Panola Cola's success brings with it means that the next generation can move comfortably in high society, but not necessarily that they, or the following generation, have what it takes to keep the family business profitable.

Ranging from Panola County, Mississippi, to the battlefields of WWI France, to New York, to Hollywood and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, American Pop also jumps back and forth through the timeline, so that a character's death is described before his first kiss, or a divorce before the marriage. It's a hard trick to pull off, juggling all the characters and their lives in a non-chronological way, but Wright pulls it off. The novel is pure entertainment that manages not to lose the story in all of that intricate structure.

>197 RidgewayGirl: I read White Masks by Khoury a couple of years ago - meandering is a good description of his style! This one sounds good, I'll have a look for it here.

>199 charl08: Charlotte, I've read far too little from that part of the world. I have collection of short stories by Selahattin Demirtaş and a novel by Sayed Kashua on the pile to read soon.

But first a few days at the beach! We're off to Hilton Head, SC with a few friends. My husband has packed as though we'll be a month in the wilderness as usual and I have yet to even think about packing, so things are proceeding normally here.

>198 RidgewayGirl: I’m adding this one to my wishlist, Kay. It sounds like one I’d enjoy when I need something light.

Enjoy your trip. I’m headed home from Marco Island, Florida on Friday. I’ve been here for 11 days that have flown by.

>170 RidgewayGirl: Hideo Yokoyama's approach to these stories is so unusual - Six Four, which was marketed as a blockbuster thriller, turned out to be much more about bureaucratic infighting between different elements of the Japanese police. Which wasn't really what I was expecting. You make Seventeen sound as if it would be a more interesting read.

Colleen, it's a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to a walk on the beach. It's been a long winter.

wandering_star, you've just sold me on Six Four. I don't know why I found the daily tussling for power so interesting in Seventeen, but I enjoyed Yokoyama's methodical style. They really do market his books like thrillers, don't they?

>203 RidgewayGirl: It obviously works... I couldn't believe that Six Four was such a bestseller - although it was interesting, I don't think all the purchasers would have been after the office politics!