May RandomCAT: I could have danced all night...

In Germany we “dance into May”, on the eve of the first of May. Nowadays, this means clubbing into the early dawn for most young people, but many also practice the old tradition of putting up a maypole to dance around (and because Labour Day on 1st of May is a national holiday we can sleep in). Some think it is a remnant of “Walpurgisnacht” when witches dance on the Brocken, in the Harz mountains (made famous by Goethe’s Faust) but the jury is still out on that. Other countries have maypoles, too.

So this month’s challenge is to read a book that has dance, dancer or dancing in the title or as a subject. It doesn’t have to be exactly dance, it can also be the name of a particular dance, such as waltz, menuet, tango, two-step, charleston, sarabande etc. It could be a book about ballet, famous ballerinas or dancers, or the book on which a ballet is based. It could be a book celebrating rock, pop or the jazz age – whatever makes you tap your feet, clap your hands, snap your fingers.

The picture shows Apollo dancing with the nine Muses, found on the website of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

Have fun choosing your book and don’t forget the wiki!

What a fun theme! Given my recent re-interest in swing dancing, I'll take this opportunity to read Swing, Swing Together, by Peter Lovesey ;)

Oooh, fun! I'll have to see what's on the tbr, but I'm sure I'll be able to find something!

I found three options, but only two are available to me from my library, so I'll likely be getting either of these:
Cat in a Topaz Tango / Carole Nelson Douglas
Dancing Lessons / Cheryl Burke

My third one (though I'd have to request via ILL):
Waltz with Bashir / Ari Folman

Such a fun theme! Seems like the perfect time to read Horse Dancer by Jojo Moyes.

Although I haven't looked for a book to read, yet, I can recommend A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman who is a local author and writes YA books.

I think I'm going to re-read The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky for this one.

I have a Cornell Woolrich book called Waltz Into Darkness that I am going to read for this.

Space Unicorn Blues should work!

The thread title "I could have danced all night..." reminds me that I have Julie Andrews' memoir Home on the shelf. Not sure how much dancing she did, but she did an awful lot of singing, so I'll be reading that for May (and, of course, from Camelot "It's May, it's May! the lusty month of May!").

I have a couple on my TBR that will work for this - Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd or Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan.

I like this fun theme! I have several that will work and at the moment I think it will be Dancer by Colm McCann, it's been on my Kindle since 2013.

I have chosen Jazz by Toni Morrison.

I love this theme! I have two possibilities (and they also fit May's TBR cat): Swing Time, by Zadie Smith, and Apollo's Angels, a history of ballet, by Jennifer Homans.

I am reading Masked Ball at Broxley Manor by Rhys Bowen. This is a prequel to the Royal Spyness series,, and on my TBR list for ages.

I'm thinking I'll read either Swing Time by Zadie Smith or Dancing Fish and Ammonites, Penelope Lively's memoir.

I plan to read Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami. It's been on my shelf for ages, though I love his work, and the title makes it kind of ultra-perfect :)

I've been trying to read mostly off my TBR shelves this year, and I can't find anything with "dance" in the title or as the topic.

Would a book with the word "river" in the title be acceptable? I'm thinking of tying it to the theatrical dancing show called River Dance...and I do have a book Llano River that needs to be read...what do you think?

>18 fuzzi:, I have no complaints with anything anyone wants to count, though I'm just participating, but when I was brainstorming related words I might have to search to find something in my tbr shelves, I thought of 'step', which is maybe slightly more common? (At least, it is in my library lol, and dances are danced through dance steps...)

>19 whitewavedarling: There is also such as thing as called "step dancing", isn't there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_dance

>20 LibraryCin:, Oh, I hadn't even thought of stepping!

>18 fuzzi: I think you can easily count it. Those Riverdance shows are amazing.

As a ballroom dance addict, love the theme! I have a couple of books that jumped to the top of the list for me: Six Moon Dance by Sheri S. Tepper and Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamund Lehmann.

I think the theme is pretty fun, too. Hope the dancing is going well tonight! I have several choices, but I haven't decided which yet:
Dance of the Assassins by M. Fagyas, a historical novel about the Balkans. The author wrote a mystery set during the 1956 Hungarian uprising that I thought was great (The Fifth Woman).
Promenade by G. B. Lancaster, a historical novel about 19th century New Zealand.
Skeleton Dance by Aaron Elkins, part of a mystery series featuring a physical anthropologist as detective.

I read through my short selection yesterday:



The Jazz Man by Mary Hays Weik
A young boy in living in Harlem spends his days looking out the apartment window across to other windows, keeping up with the neighbors' lives. He's particularly intent on waiting to see who moves into an empty place and is delighted when it turns out to be a jazz pianist. He also struggles with his unhappy parents and is even abandoned by them for a short period (? The narrative is fuzzy here). The premise is good, but the writing is wonky, it seems. Zeke's abandonment seems sudden and not really in line with where the story was going, and then the ending is way too abrupt and pat, making the arc even more strange and difficult to follow.

I started Skeleton Dance on April 30 and finished it this evening. I really enjoyed the Gideon Oliver series back in the '90s, but when I've read a couple more recent ones in the last few months they've seemed sort of mechanical. And sadly while the name fit the theme, no dancing occurred in the story.

My own book for the May RandomCAT is Todeswalzer (Waltz of death), the next instalment in the Inspector Nechyba series. World War One hast just begun and the inspector has to find the killer of a young theatre enthusiast who didn't make it as an actor and turned to pimping. As usual, the food and the sights of Vienna take up more room than the rudimentary police investigation. The title refers to a painting made in passing, which didn't quite gel with the rest of the story.

I just finished Waltz Into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich and loved it. This story has a definite noir feeling even though it is set in the 1880's.

I read Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey. I am using it here as he took the title from the song Goodnight, Irene.
song "Goodnight, Irene", popularized by Lead Belly.

Sometimes I lives in the country
Sometimes I lives in the town
Sometimes I haves a great notion
To jump into the river an' drown

I just finished High Plains Tango by Robert James Waller the third in the "Bridges of Madison County" series.

I haven't read the first two so cannot comment on how this one compares. Waller's writing has a dreamy, flowery quality, and like the overly romantic story, it is not to everyone's taste. Carlisle McMillan, the son of of Robert Kincaid (Bridges of Madison County) is a drifter who settles down in a small town and perfectly restores an abandoned house. Carlisle's idealistic life contrasts sharply with the land speculators and developers who plan to ruin his peaceful life.

It's difficult to form an opinion of the story. The characters are either real rotters or they are unbelievably good, or beautiful, or talented, or intelligent. However, this novel has allowed Waller to bang his drum against development and destruction of nature.

In the struggle for domination, one bystander said of the standoff "It was a first-class tango."

I finished and loved Dancing Fish and Ammonites by Penelope Lively. 4.5 enthusiastic stars!

I’ve finished Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan which is a YA book.

Dancing Lessons / Cheryl Burke
3.25 stars

Cheryl is a professional ballroom dancer who has appeared on Dancing With the Stars since season 2. There were plenty of behind-the-scenes stories, more about her partners, rather than the other pros on the show. Of course, there were stories about her life, as well: growing up painfully shy, her hard-working Filipino mother, how she got into dancing to begin with, relationships (some abusive), her career including and since her DWTS fame.

I don’t usually read celebrity biographies, but this one fit a challenge and I’d been considering reading it. It’s fairly short and entertaining for someone who is a fan of the show. I stopped watching DWTS a few years ago, but I still enjoyed the stories, and I certainly remembered most of the celebrities she was talking about (I even looked a couple of the dances up on youtube after I finished the book so I could watch again!). It was interesting to read about her life, the bits and pieces that she included. She is a very positive person, so there was no “dirt” dished out about the show or the people on it.

COMPLETED The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Read The Horse Dancer by JoJo Moyes.

Just finished Swing Time by Zadie Smith. Not quite as good as I expected, but good nevertheless.

Read Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith (a picture book), which is a very good Own Voices Indigenous story about a Muscogee (Creek) girl in Oklahoma who wants to do the jingle dress dance but needs to find a lot of jingles to put on her dress, which she does by asking several older women for some of theirs.

I'm also reading Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier. I am going to finish it soon, but it's frustrating to read because every few pages there is this horrible, toxic male character who keeps doing overbearing, arrogant, sexist things and this seems to be the main source of conflict, or at least the most prominent one (there are probably some evil entities of some kind in the background who are the actual antagonists, but we don't see much of them). House of Salt and Sorrows has similar fairy-tale inspiration but without the obnoxious sexism, so it's possible to write stories based on old fairy tales---even this one (Twelve Dancing Princesses)---that don't feature {an overdone parody of} traditional male chauvinism.

edit: finished Wildwood Dancing, 3*. Also read Diana Dances by Luciano Lozano (another picture book).

Finished Dance Dance Dance by Murakami, and absolutely adored it. Full review written for those interested.

I just finished Six Moon Dance by Sheri S. Tepper and it was wonderful! I've had this book on the shelves for a long time. I think I got it from the Science Fiction Book Club, and I've had it since before I joined LT in 2008.

I've read one other book by Tepper, The Gate to Women's Country, which I also loved, and now she's an author for which I want to read all of her works!

Tepper created a really interesting world in Newholme, colonized by humans. The culture of Newholme is one where women have all the power, and I found reading it right now to be very interesting. Men have to be veiled, otherwise women might be tempted and corrupted by the sight of a male face. The planet has been going through a series of ever more violent volcanic eruptions, and for this reason mainly, the Questioner, from the Council of Worlds, has decided to visit the planet. Recommended!

And thanks MissWatson for coming up with this month's RandomCAT idea! Who knows how long it might have taken me to pick this book up.

I managed to squeeze in a ROOT read that fits the May RandomCAT: Dancing on a Moonbeam by Kate Perry is a rather frothy contemporary romance novel where sparks fly between a former prima ballerina and a music composer. An alright light romance bit of escapism reading, where hope and love wins.

Thanks all for participating, I hope you enjoyed your books!

Sorry for the late update. I finished Stardance by Spider and Jeanne Robinson, about a group of people pioneering the art of dancing in zero gravity. The book features spaceships and aliens but also a lot of interesting information about dance and the filming of dance sequences. Jeanne Robinson was herself a professional dancer and choreographer.

Adding one more: Lizzis letzter Tango which was surprisingly entertaining.