RidgewayGirl Reads Some Books in 2020 -- Second Quarter

Another year of reading with the Category Challenge! This year's theme is the artist Kelly Reemtsen and most of my categories are ones that have worked well in past years, but I've added a few news ones.

Let's get this party started! And by "party" I mean "reading quietly in a comfortable chair."



The pictures in my challenge are all by Kelly Reemtsen. If you're interested in finding out more about this amazing artist, here's an article: https://artmazemag.com/kelly-reemtsen/

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Books Acquired



Reading miscellany:

Owned Books Read: 28 -- Look at me, reading off of the tbr shelves!

Library Books Read: 22 -- Thanks to this pandemic, I'm reading more from my own shelves!

Netgalley: 11

Books Acquired: 49 -- Not a great start to the year of only bringing home as many books as I read from my shelves, but I don't regret any of them.

Rereads: 1

Category One.



A Map of the World

Books by authors from different countries.


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

1. Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead
2. A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
3. Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
4. In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami, translated by Ralph McCarthy
5. The Missing American by Kwei Quartey
6. The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine

Category Two.

We Need Diverse Books



1. Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
2. Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz
3. The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez
5. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
6. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
7. The City We Became by N. K. Jemison
8. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Category Three.

Books by Women



1. Looker by Laura Sims
2. Oval by Elvia Wilk
3. Certain American States by Catherine Lacey
4. Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
5. True Love: A Novel by Sarah Gerard
6. Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg

Category Four.

The Rooster



Every year I follow The Morning News Tournament of Books, also known as The Rooster because of the grand prize - a live rooster. This year's competitors can be found here: https://themorningnews.org/article/the-2020-tournament-of-books-shortlist-and-ju...

1. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (2020 longlist)
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (2020 Competitor)
3. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer (2020 Competitor)
4. Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa (2020 Competitor)
5. We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (2020 Competitor)
6. Overthrow by Caleb Crain (2020 Competitor)
7. Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Category Five.

Expats, Immigrants, Works in Translation



1. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin
2. Dominicana by Angie Cruz
3. My Mother's House by Francesca Momplaisir
4. Sovietistan by Erika Fatland, translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
5. You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
6. Herkunft by Saša Stanišic

Category Six.

Books I Own -- I brought them home for a reason.



1. Gods of Howl Mountain by Taylor Brown
2. All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
3. Apartment by Teddy Wayne
4. The Narcissism of Small Differences by Michael Zadoorian
5. A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh
6. This Wicked World by Richard Lange

Category Seven.

Crime. True or Fiction, It's All Deadly



1. Her Daughter's Mother by Daniela Petrova
2. The Body Double by Emily Beyda
3. Dry County by Jake Hinkson
4. Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers edited by Joyce Carol Oates
5. Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime by Val McDermid
6. Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

Category Eight.

Countries, States, Cities, Towns -- Books with Place Names in Their Titles



1. Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda
2. Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
3. In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Category Nine.

CATs and Book Clubs



1. The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea (February book club)
2. Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston (March book club)
3. The Whispering Wall by Patricia Carlon (April GeoCAT)
4. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, translated from the Spanish by Ruth L. C. Sims (April book club)
5. Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn (June RandomCAT)

Category Ten.

Published in 2020



What can I say? I like fresh books.

1. Stateway's Garden by Jasmon Drain
2. Apeirogon by Colum McCann
3. You Again by Debra Jo Immergut
4. Long Bright River by Liz Moore
5. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

Category Eleven.

The Ebook and Nothing But



While I generally prefer to read a physical copy, I tend to have a book or two going on my iPad.

1. Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
2. Precious You by Helen Monks Takhar
3. Weather by Jenny Offill
4. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
5. The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson

Category Twelve.

The Overflow



Get it? The overflow?

I almost forgot the BingoDOG!



5. Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza
6. Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
9. The Whispering Wall by Patricia Carlon
10. The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
12. Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
14. The Body Double by Emily Beyda
15. Looker by Laura Sims
18. Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
19. Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
20. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer
21. Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
22. Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa
23. The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
24. Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda
25. Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz

This is my local bookstore and who can resist another reading challenge? Not me, apparently. #mjreads2020

Jan: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Feb: Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa
Mar: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

I'm such a sucker for reading challenges.



1. Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal
3. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
4. Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life by Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez
11. Sovietistan by Erika Fatland
13. Overthrow by Caleb Crain
14. Looker by Laura Sims
19. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
20. Saudade by Suneeta Peres da Costa
21. Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz
24. Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer

And the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge!



1. A book published in 2020. -- The Body Double by Emily Beyda

2. A book by a trans or non-binary author.

3. A book with a great first line.

4. A book about a book club.

5. A book set in a city that has hosted the Olympics. -- Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

6. A bildungsroman.

7. The first book you touch on a shelf with your eyes closed.

8. A book with an upside-down image on the cover. -- Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

9. A book with a map. -- The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

10. A book recommended on a podcast. -- Apartment by Teddy Wayne

11. An anthology. -- Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers edited by Joyce Carol Oates

12. A book that passes the Bechdel test. -- A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio

13. A book with the same title as a movie or tv show.

14. A book by an author with flora or fauna in their name. -- Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

15. A book published in July. -- You Again by Debra Jo Immergut

16. A book by or about a woman in STEM.

17. A book that won an award in 2019. -- Herkunft by Saša Stanišic

18. A book on a subject you know nothing about. -- Stateway's Garden by Jasmon Drain

19. A book with only words on the cover, no images or graphics. -- Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza

20. A book with a pun in the title.

21. A book featuring one of the seven deadly sins. -- Looker by Laura Sims

22. A book with a robot, AI or cyborg character.

23. A book with a bird on the cover. -- Apeirogon by Colum McCann

24. A fiction or non-fiction book about a world leader.

25. A book with "gold," "silver" or "bronze" in the title.

26. A book by a WoC. -- Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

27. A book with at least a four star rating on LT. -- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

28. A book you meant to read in 2019. -- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

29. A book about or involving social media. -- The Missing American by Kwei Quartey

30. A book with a book on its cover.

31. A medical thriller. -- Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer

32. A book with a made up language.

33. A book set in a country beginning with "C."

34. A book you picked up because of the title. -- All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang

35. A book with a three word title. -- Her Daughter's Mother by Daniela Petrova

36. A book with a pink cover. -- Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

37. A western.

38. A book by or about a journalist. -- Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diáz

39. A banned book.

40. Your favorite prompt from a past PopSugar challenge.

Welcome to my second quarter thread! Expect lots of cat pictures because I am home all the time now and frankly a little bored with that. Still, taming the new and formerly feral kitten, Ollie, is a great distraction. He's doing so well.

Happy new thread! Those pics of Ollie on your old thread are lovely. How are the other cats coping with him?

Happy new thread, Kay. Looking forward to getting hit with more book bullets - and the pictures of the cats!

June and Val are bored fifteen-year-old girls on that summer night they decide to take a rubber raft down to the water and float around a bit. They only looking for a bit of adventure, something to occupy their time during that summer that they're too young to join the older teenagers partying and too young to be content with a backyard sleepover, but only one girl will survive their excursion.

Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda is packaged as a crime novel, but its far more ambitious than that. Set in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, the novel follows several characters who were altered by the night's events, from the girl left alone to be an object of curiosity and gossip, to the man who rescued her, to the owner of a local convenience store hoping to create a sense of community out of the very different groups living in the area. Visitation Street examines what makes a neighborhood into a community, and how hard it can be to move forward while living half in the past.

There are too many point-of-view characters for this novel to hold together, but Pochoda has a talent for creating complex, nuanced characters from a variety of backgrounds. I look forward to reading her novels as she progresses as an author.

>19 Jackie_K: They haven't met him, Jackie. I'm wondering how to slowly introduce him to the many members of our household without shocking him. All things in time.

>20 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, Judy. There will certainly be more cat pictures.

>22 RidgewayGirl: And most certainly Book Bullets - I was looking over your recently acquired books and the author Taylor Brown caught my attention - I went to check him out on Amazon and now I have a copy of his Fallen Land on my Kindle and there's a couple more of his that look interesting, including the one you have, Gods of Howl Mountain.

>23 DeltaQueen50: I have Gods of Howl Mountain thanks to one of the owners of my local independent bookstore, M. Judson Books, Ashley Warlick, who recommended it. They're doing a thing now where you can call and get personalized recommendations as well as curbside delivery and I thought I should take advantage of that because I really want them to still be there when this pandemic is over.

Happy new thread! Your bingo card is being filled in a most interesting way!

I for one can't get enough cat pictures, so please post lots of them :D

I am so happy Ollie is adjusting to his new quarters! Good luck with the introductions.

Happy New Thread! I noticed how your Bingo card was filling in also. I don't know how you keep track of so many challenges

>25 rabbitprincess: There will be plenty of cat pictures, rp. Ollie is a photogenic bit of fluff.

>26 thornton37814: Lori, Ollie is doing so well.

>27 dudes22: It's all random, Betty. Once I've finished a book, I look to see if I can count it anywhere.

Happy new thread! I also noticed the interesting way your Bingo card is filled. The other challenges look very, very tempting, especially the one from your bookstore.

So nice to see the Kelly Reemtsen art again in your new thread! I would wear every single one of those outfits, especially the dress in >4 RidgewayGirl:.

I really am intrigued by the art work. It is beautifully done but the messages are even more compelling.

>29 MissWatson: I do like a reading challenge. I rarely finish them, but I enjoy ticking boxes and compiling lists!

>30 christina_reads: & >31 Kristelh: I highly recommend googling Reemtsen's paintings. She's done quite a few and they are all fascinating.

Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life is a fun and entertaining book that uses the popular reality tv show, RuPaul's Drag Race, to give an introduction to LGBTQ history. The show is not the focus of this book, but the scaffolding for a fast-paced primer to how queer entertainers have been able to make their mark in a society where what they did and even who they were was grounds for arrest and social opprobrium. This is a hopeful book, with powerful examples of what happens when people come together to support each other and to demand that civil rights apply to every American, with a basic who's who, from Marsha P. Johnson all the way to Pete Buttigeig.

If you're looking for more than a survey-level understanding of gay culture, or just want to enjoy a book about a popular tv program, this isn't going to be for you. The authors, Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez, run a popular celebrity-focused website and there's more than a hint of that style being used here, with the book set up in short sections. But despite it's format and writing style, there's a fair amount of substance and the authors emphasize trans culture and the importance roles that transgender people have played in LGBTQ history. It's a lot of fun to read, and I spent a lot of time amplifying what is in this book by looking up specific performances on YouTube or learning more about the ground-breaking entertainers and activists mentioned.

It's becoming harder to take pictures of Ollie because he's now not terrified of us and so is behaving like a regular kitten and is racing around, attacking blankets and toys, knocking things over and annoying all the older cats. He is still quick to startle and is a little more alert to his surroundings than other kittens we have known, but he's well on his way to being a regular member of the household. As a longer haired white cat, we think he'd do very badly on his own in the woods.

And Ollie again. He's almost just a regular kitten at this point. Still quick to startle and hide, but comes back out quickly.

Happy new thread!

Ollie is adorable. Mind you, I think all cats are adorable.

Those dark ears are so cute.

>35 RidgewayGirl: looks like someone's been in the tumbledrier, all fluffed up!

Thanks, guys. He is adorable. And not successful as a feral, what with that white fluffiness. He tried to cuddle up to one of my old cats, but was quickly told off.

Ollie is adorable!

He just is, Lori. And I won't deny that it's enormously satisfying to have domesticated a feral, even if he was only four months when he moved in. It's quite a change from needing to be handled wearing welding gloves to cuddling on the bed! That said, it's hard to get a picture of him as now that he's not terrified, he spends his days racing around.

Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers is a collection edited by Joyce Carol Oates and it shows. The collection is distinctly noir-tinged and the pieces focus largely on domestic situations or ones with a striking power imbalance. Oates has also assembled an impressive roster of authors here, from Edwidge Dandicat to Aimee Bender; there's no lack of talent on display.

There's an enormous variety to the pieces here. Most stories fit well into the crime genre, from Valerie Martin's Il Griffon, a classic noir about a young married woman living in an old apartment building in Rome; to Lisa Lim's bleak and unsettling illustrated domestic drama, The Hunger. There are also some pieces that sit outside traditional genre parameters, but fit beautifully with the themes of the collection, from Bernice McFadden's sharp-edged satire, OBF, Inc., to six poems by Margaret Atwood, to a creepily atmospheric story about a museum, An Early Specimen by Elizabeth McCracken.

This is a solid and well-conceived collection. Not a single author sent in a mediocre offering. But considering who was editing this collection, is that any surprise?

I've been feeling a little unsettled and so have been reading lighter fare than usual, which is to say that I'm reading more crime novels than usual, but maybe because of this, I've become a little less choosy. Strap in, guys, this next one was not good.



Precious You by Helen Monks Takhar tell the story of the relationship between two women. Katherine, in her early forties, is the editor of an business magazine called Leadership, which is sold and the new owner's niece, twenty-four-year-old Lily, is hired, ostensibly as an intern, but because of her family connections, she has more importance than that. Katherine and Lily begin with an antagonistic relationship that is marked by both attraction and enmity. As their conflict intensifies, it's clear Lily has an ulterior motive behind her actions and that Katherine is not equipped to deal with any conflict whatsoever.

The ages of the two protagonists is constantly mentioned and the story is often framed as a conflict between generations. Apparently, Gen X professional women are sexual predators of a kind to make Don Draper uncomfortable and frankly incompetent and mentally unstable as well. And Millenials are conniving and manipulative. Along with bludgeoning the reader, over and over again, with this idea of a conflict between generations and Katherine's accompanying obsession with how very old and past it she is (she's in her early forties!), there's the persistent idea that women are obsessed with age and how sexually attractive they are as the only thing that gives them value. Had this been set in the modeling world, or among a group of paid escorts, that world view would be obsolete, but at least understandable. In the publishing world, this strains belief.

The other problem is the greater one. Neither character is likable, nor do they have any characteristics that make them interesting to read about. Lily is a cipher, manipulative and beautiful. The reason she has for her actions is explained at the very end of the novel, but there's not enough substance there to ever understand her motivations or reasoning. And Katherine is a stew of conflicting character traits. Clever and driven enough to become the magazine's youngest ever editor and to run the magazine single-handedly for two decades, she is nevertheless malleable and vulnerable to the point where even being asked routine questions sends her into a tailspin. She's either too drunk or too hung-over to function, even when it's clear she's fighting to keep her job and she continues to give Lily important tasks even when it's evident that Lily is sabotaging her, Katherine knows she's sabotaging her, and a particular task can ruin her career. It made no sense at all.

On the plus side, the author writes well. I just wish that she had come up with characters worthy of her writing ability and that she had trusted the reader enough to not have to make every plot point obvious. The plot did hold promise, it's just unfortunate that the author couldn't be subtle about her intentions.

>42 RidgewayGirl: I took a BB for Cutting Edge. This sounds just like the sort of book I'd love. I'm very happy to see that it's available in our library's digital collection.

>44 mathgirl40: I'm glad it's available to you, Paulina. I think that short stories are a perfect for these unsettled times.

>41 RidgewayGirl: This photo made me laugh - thanks for posting it!

>43 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for a good review of a bad book!

Set in modern day Pakistan, Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal is a retelling of Pride & Prejudice. It follows the book it's based on very closely, which makes for a less interesting book, but I enjoyed it as a light diversion from the news of the day. Kamal's writing is clear and doesn't interrupt the flow of the story.

>46 charl08: Trying to take a picture when he just wanted to play was hilarious, Charlotte. He's a great source of quality entertainment.

>47 chlorine: You are welcome, chlorine!

>48 RidgewayGirl: Oh, I think I liked this more than you did. The following of the original plot (but still making sense in the context of the family) suited me down to the ground. And I liked her writing.

>50 charl08: The writing was good, but I kept running into how mean the insults were and how nobody cared. I can't even type out what Bungles' relatives called Darsee as a joke.

Happy new thread! Great to see that Ollie is settling in so well.

>52 lkernagh: He really is! He's hanging out on the screen porch right now trying to subdue the leaf shadows.

Weather by Jenny Offill is a very short novel told in a series of short, seemingly disjointed segments that end up giving the novel more mood and atmosphere than plot. Offill writes gorgeously and those sentences, which feel so immediate, are finely crafted. In Weather, Lizzie is a librarian living in New York. Her brother is a recovering addict who is in a relationship and expecting a baby. Her mentor has a podcast and wants to hire Lizzie to answer her mail, which deals largely with concerns about a collapsing world. Lizzie ponders global warming and how best to react to the changes in climate.

But a synopsis of what happens very much fails to explain what is so compelling about this book. As Lizzie negotiates her way through her daily life, she thinks about the people she knows and about what to do if everything falls apart, taking advice from doomsday preppers and scientists. It was an odd feeling reading about the end of the world while staying inside because of the pandemic. The segments about surviving were both applicable and distant from the current situation, although global warming is still occurring and the risk grows greater even as we're distracted by more immediate perils. And despite the focus on the state of the earth, this isn't a heavy-handed or hopeless novel at all.

>51 RidgewayGirl: Now I want to reread it to see how I missed that completely, and it's trapped in the locked down library.

>55 charl08: I miss my library so very much. I have plenty of books here and the ability to order more, but I miss the library.

>56 RidgewayGirl: - I'm with you. Even though our library will make arrangements for picking up books, there's something about just browsing.

Happy Easter, Kay! Ollie is so adorable and I'm happy that he is settling in. :)

I also miss the library. Ours is completely closed, so I need to read what I have, buy new books (our local bookstores have organized a bike-delivery-service) or check out the little free library around the corner. It would be so good just to check out the library to have more variety...

>57 dudes22: Betty, my library closed quickly, with very little notice and the only sign that they may one day open again is that the three books I had checked out ahead of the closing are now all due on April 24th.

>58 Chrischi_HH: Ollie is ridiculously adorable and hilarious to watch. He still runs away whenever anyone enters a room he's in or moves suddenly, but he now comes racing back to see what's going on. And his purr is very loud.

And this is a very good time to order from local bookstores! We want them all to still be there when this is over.

The Whispering Wall is a crime classic from the sixties by Australian author Patricia Carlon. Sarah Oatland lies confined to her bed. Cared for by a nurse, she's paralyzed but aware of her surroundings, although no one else knows that she can see and hear them. Her husband is dead and her single living relative is a niece of her husband's; a woman eager to take possession of Sarah's house and belongings. In order to pay for her care, this niece divides Sarah's ground floor into two apartments. One rented out to a single mother and her daughter, the other to a married couple. Sarah discovers that she can overhear what is said in the couple's sitting room when her bed is pushed against the wall. And she discovers their murderous plans. But how can she reveal their plot when she can't speak?

It turns out that I'd already read this one some years ago, but that didn't stop me from enjoying a well-told, superbly plotted noir. The characters are beautifully rendered and yet also perfectly part of the time they lived, it was impossible to not read this as taking place in black and white with the clipped delivery of of an old movie. I'll be reading more by Patricia Carlon soon.

>60 RidgewayGirl: Tempting!

Went past the library on the way to shop for food, got all excited about picking up some books and then remembered it wasn't open. Their digital content is pretty good, but not the same range, of course. I am most impressed by Liverpool city library, who are allowing registration online so people who weren't already members can access books.
My library hasn't managed that yet.

>60 RidgewayGirl: A BB for me!

>61 charl08: Charlotte, my library is now no longer allowing for holds to be placed on books. Which I'm sure is a mercy for the librarians who would be faced with so many holds and transfers when everything reopens. They'll be busy enough as it is! But I'd like to place a few holds and it's so weird to not be able to do so.

>62 Tess_W: Tess, I really like Patricia Carlon's writing style and will have to read another of hers soon.

We can't place holds either. And you're right - just a few?

>64 dudes22: Betty, my library system sets a limit on holds to ten books. I would have ten books on hold now.

>60 RidgewayGirl: Glad to see I'm not the only one who re-reads books without realising, and that this one was good enough to enjoy twice.

>60 RidgewayGirl: I've occasionally done that!

>66 pamelad: Thanks to the LibraryThing app, I no longer bring home duplicates. I now see that I have to check my library here before starting an older book too, just to be sure.

>67 Tess_W: I guess as long as we enjoy the second read, it's all fine?

One of the most valuable things that books can do right now is to provide an escape into some other world for a few hours and The Hating Game by Sally Thorne was the perfect escapist read for me. I spend the day carrying the book around with me, utterly immersed in the story.

So Lucy works as the assistant to the CEO for a small publishing company that merged with another publishing company, the merger so badly done that the new company has two CEOs, and Lucy shares a space with the assistant to the other CEO, a tall, stern man named Joshua. When the decision is made to combine their jobs into a COO position, the competition between the two grows fiercer. You all can see where this is going.

Predictable doesn't mean boring and in this case, the charm lies with the engaging main character and how the relationship slowly develops despite the seemingly mutual animosity. There's a lot of entertaining banter and a warm heart to this slight novel. I would have liked a greater sense of place, but the author clearly intended this to take place anywhere in the world.

>69 RidgewayGirl: Glad you enjoyed The Hating Game! I really liked it as well. The plot is incredibly formulaic, but it's just so darn FUN! Sadly, I ddin't like Thorne's follow-up novel, 99 Percent Mine, quite as much. But I'm still excited to see what she writes next!

>70 christina_reads: It was predictable and formulaic, but also fun and charming and had a bit of bite. I have 99 Percent Mine on my list of things to grab if they go on sale for my kindle.

>60 RidgewayGirl: Perfect. This is exactly the kind of thing I feel like reading these days, and I'd never heard of the book or author. :)

It's sad you are unable to place holds on physical books. I've had a few Overdrive holds that I've deferred simply because I'm not quite ready for them. I'm just not reading as fast with all the distraction. I'm still working a nearly normal shift although I don't have the commute. However, I'm finding plenty to keep me occupied, and the cats demand lots of attention.

>72 madhatter22: I think that sometimes I'm quick to dismiss reading for pleasure as a perfectly fine reason to read, when it's really one of the best reasons.

>73 thornton37814: Cats demand a huge amount of attention! Luckily, Ollie the Feral Kitten and my husband have fallen in love with each other, because a kitten is a lot of work. As for reading, for much of March I was too distracted to concentrate on anything substantial. This month is much better, although I've spent much of it so far reading shorter, lighter books, so I've read many more books this month than usual. Now to catch up on reviews.

>74 RidgewayGirl: I've had trouble concentrating too. I'm reading some now, but I'm still not making the progress I was for awhile.

>74 RidgewayGirl: One of my favorite book quotes:
"She had always been an unashamed reader of novels."
Barbara Pym, Quartet in Autumn

>76 madhatter22: Oh, that's lovely.

Rory comes home from Korea to the mountains of North Carolina missing half of a leg, which means he's not going to find work in the textile mills or in the logging camps. But making a living outside of what is legal is a family tradition and connections get him a job running bootleg moonshine to the red light district of the nearest town. It's a job that requires driving skill and the willingness to take risky chances and Rory is doing fine with his job. His grandmother, who raised him, is involved with the boss of the moonshiners and his best friend runs a small garage and keeps Rory's car fast and powerful. But the local sheriff is under pressure to make arrests when the FBI sends a new agent in. And Rory sees a young woman attending the Pentecostal church that occupies an old gas station building on the edge of the red light district and can't get her out of his mind.

Set in the 1950s, Gods of Howl Mountain is full of atmosphere and excitement. Taylor Brown has an eye for detail and a love for the history and geography of the South and it shows. The plot is predictable, as are the characters (the wise mountain woman, the evil sheriff, etc...) but Brown is enjoying the story so much it would be rude to not just go with it and do the same.

>78 RidgewayGirl: I already have another book by Taylor Brown on my wishlist - Fallen Land but I am now going to add Gods of Howl Mountain as it sounds like one I would really enjoy.

>79 DeltaQueen50: I'm eager to read more by him as he frequently appears at my local bookstore (one of the co-owners is thanked by name in the acknowledgements of Howl Mountain). Fallen Land sounds interesting. I should try that one. He has a new book just out, Pride of Eden, that sounds interesting, too.

Abigail is on her way home from work one evening when she sees a young woman on the sidewalk. She's wearing the same pink thrift store coat that Abigail wore in her early twenties and when Abigail gets out of her taxi for a closer look, she realizes that she's seeing herself, twenty years younger. This glimpse of her past sends her into a closer look at her current life - then she was preparing to go to art school with the intention of living solely for her art, but now she's the art designer for a pharmaceutical company, deciding on the exact shade of lavender to use in the packaging for a new drug, or working on the precise shades of pink to use for a brochure illustration of the digestive system. As her sightings of her former self become more frequent and she begins to interact with her, her life begins to spin out of control, the carefully constructed security she's built become less satisfying. At the same time, one of her sons is becoming involved in an antifa group, putting Abigail's values into question and putting her in the path of a seemingly nice police detective.

I'm not sure what exactly was going on for much of You Again and the possible explanations trotted out at the end of the novel weren't convincing to me. But there's no question that Debra Jo Immergut had me reading as fast as I could, trying to keep up with the twists and the rapid pace of events. And despite my finding some of the central events utterly unbelievable, this didn't stop me from enjoying the wild ride this novel took me on, which is to say that Immergut has constructed a clever bunch of inter-connected plots and kept them all from falling apart, resulting in a novel that is more entertaining than most.

>81 RidgewayGirl: You Again sounds fascinating! It's one for the list I'm keeping of titles to seek out after this virus nightmare is over.

Amazon has nine free books available for kindle download for World Book Day. If you're interested in reading globally or in free books, here's the link.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/crossing/wbd/common/header/WBD_Crossing_h...

It was raining early this morning and all the cats joined me on the bed. Look how well Ollie is doing!





And the reason I was starting my day slowly is that yesterday, while attempting to run down the stairs into the garage and find a podcast to listen to at the same time, I found myself suddenly on the ground. I've sprained my ankle thoroughly, and it has swollen dramatically, enough to keep me off of it for now. I won't share my picture of my ankle. It's decidedly less photogenic than peaceful cats.

>84 RidgewayGirl: Ouch! I hope your ankle recovers soon with no lasting damage. I can attest to the fact that trying to do two things at once can result in disaster.

The cats look like they are making sure you are comfortable. Ollie is one of the family now.

>85 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne. I'm grateful that this seems to be the extent of the injury as I have no desire to go sit between people who think they have CORVID-19 in the ER waiting room and my doctor's office is shut until the pandemic is over. Ollie is still skittish, and quick to run away, but then he runs right back again. He's beginning to hang out in the middle of things instead of hiding.

Sorry to learn about your accident! Lovely picture of your resting buddies. I have yet to encounter a cat that will not take advantage of the opportunity to nap.

Well, that escalated quickly.

Kenji is a young man who makes his living giving tours of Tokyo's red light districts to foreigners. Over the New Year weekend, a time when the Japanese are focused on quiet family celebrations and many clubs are closed, Kenji is hired by Frank, an American businessman. He needs the money, but Kenji finds Frank off-putting and the things Frank says put him on edge. He tries telling his girlfriend about Frank, but what does he have beyond vague suspicions and a distrust of someone who isn't Japanese?

In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami begins so subtly. Kenji works illegally in an area that exists outside the mainstream, so is it any wonder that the kind of man who would hire a personal guide to the legal and less-than-legal parts of Japan's sex industry seems unsavory? And Kenji's suspicions are so vague that it seemed this novel was going to explore Japanese xenophobia, especially given that many of the sex workers are not Japanese. And then Kenji meets Frank for their second night of sex tourism and, well, every single thing I had thought for the first third of the novel was turned on its head and things begin to happen.

This is noir with a hard edge and plenty of undercurrent.

>84 RidgewayGirl: Awwwww that looks like a most therapeutic gathering of cats! I hope the ankle is better soon.

>87 lkernagh: Today I have learned that my cats are fantastically lazy. Homer (the tabby at the end of the picture) is in exactly the same spot now as he was at 7:15, when I took the picture. That takes real dedication.

>89 rabbitprincess: Thanks, rp. It would be more therapeutic if they would move over so I could put a few pillows under my foot, but even I know better than to move a sleeping cat. They are so tired!

Hope your swelling goes down soon. Sure wouldn't want to sit in an emergency room either.

Love the pictures of Ollie.

I've taken a BB for In the Miso Soup. Rest up that ankle!

>91 dudes22: Betty, my foot is healing well. Now that it has turned purple and black, it looks much worse than it feels.

>92 hailelib: We are taking so many pictures of Ollie! Nothing like a kitten doing hilarious things to make staying home a lot more fun.

>93 DeltaQueen50: I think you'll like In the Miso Soup and I look forward to finding out what you think of it.

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang is a quiet throwback of a novel. Although it was published in 2010 and the story begins in 1986, it has the feel of something taking place a half century earlier. Although the main characters are very different, this reminded me of Stoner, with its tight focus on one man's adulthood spent in academia.

Roman attends a prestigious MFA writing program in the midwest, where he attends a seminar led by a prominent poet, Miranda Sturgis. He doesn't participate in class and only turns in work before the final meeting. He's critical of Sturgis and her air of detachment as well as her often cutting remarks about his fellow students' work. Nonetheless, he shows up at her house late one night demanding more and to his surprise, she invites him in.

Later, his joy in winning a writing prize that leads to his getting a tenure-track teaching job is marred by discovering that she was on the selection committee. He marries, has a child, settles down to teach, but also to write, to produce something that will out-shine his one published collection in a way so decisive as to lay to rest his own insecurities, as well as taking him back into the limelight.

He dug a trench into the process and stayed inside of it, waist-deep, sweating out the individual monologues, piecing them together. From inside the trench, there was no way to think of anything else: not marriage, not fatherhood. There was only the strength of voice, of words.

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost is a look at the life of a man whose insecurities and arrogance shaped his life. It looks at his marriage to a fellow MFA graduate, his long friendship with another member of that program and at his own blindness in seeing how his own behavior affects those around him. It's beautifully written, with a melancholic edge.

Kate and Peter grew up next door to each other, always having known each other. By the time they're finishing middle school, that friendship of proximity has become a real bond. Despite both having fathers who were police officers and both having a parent who emigrated from Ireland, their upbringings were very different. Kate had a large, rowdy, loving family, of which she is the youngest of three daughters. Pete is the only child of an alcoholic and he spends his childhood simultaneously caring for and protecting himself from his mentally ill mother. Events one night send Kate's father to the hospital and break apart Peter's family for good. But despite the distance between them and the disapproval of their families, Kate and Peter decide to marry and start a family together.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane is about families and how it's impossible to shed oneself of their influence. It's about how mental illness and alcoholism can be inherited, how hope and love are not always enough and especially about forgiveness and about how facing the past, or not doing so, affects the future. This book reminded me of novels by both Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler. This is a straightforward story, but Keane allows for nuance and is experienced enough an author to allow insights and complexities to be revealed in a single, seemingly unimportant sentence, and she trusts the reader enough to not repeat herself. There are no easy happy ends here, but there are grace notes and moments where hope is allowed to flourish.

>95 RidgewayGirl: I'm so pleased to see your reference to Stoner. What a really fine writer John Williams was! I see Butcher's Crossing will be released again next year and that pleases me greatly too. I've never read Augustus so I need to do that and settle down with the other two for another reread.

I've taken a BB for All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost as well.

I've got Butcher's Crossing on my tbr. I should go read it!

Cat Update:



Staking up the plants means that the cats ripen much earlier in the season. This one seems ready to pick.

>99 RidgewayGirl: Lol!
Typical cat maneuver!

>99 RidgewayGirl: Is that what the catnip flower looks like?? :)

>99 RidgewayGirl: It's like a cardboard box only with ventiliation

>100 NinieB: Last year, the catnip was planted in a window box and he was able to stretch out.

>101 rabbitprincess: Every year, we plant catnip, and every single year, the plant produces cats. We need to stop planting it!

>102 Helenliz: You have a point. He doesn't even look comfortable.

>99 RidgewayGirl: You must be using the right combination of soil and fertilizer to get such a spectacular result!

>104 DeltaQueen50: Tarzan thanks you for noticing and agrees that he is spectacular.

Sorry to hear about your ankle, I hope it heals well and quick! Thanks for the many reviews, all interesting, as usual.

>106 chlorine: Thanks! It's healing well. Turning all sorts of colors, but clearly nothing was damaged.



Ollie is exhausted from a busy day racing around like an over-heated molecule.

>107 RidgewayGirl: I do miss having a kitten. It has been a long time since our somewhat cranky elder cat was racing around!

>107 RidgewayGirl: He is so cute! Hard to believe that dignified Tarzan ever behaved like that.

>99 RidgewayGirl: Aw!

Great reviews. I seem to be avoiding the heavier stuff at the moment, you're clearly not having that problem!

>107 RidgewayGirl: Oh, Ollie is so sweet there!

>108 NinieB: Our cranky older cats highly disapprove of Ollie's antics.

>109 MissWatson: Tarzan was a hyperactive nut as a young cat. We adopted him from the Humane Society when he was already past the kitten stage, but he'd been in a small crate for some time and was ready to play.

>110 charl08: Charlotte, it comes and goes. I have both escapist stuff and more substantial novels on the go right now. The combination seems to be working for me.

>111 thornton37814: Ollie and my husband have quite the bromance going.

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares was originally written in 1940 and if I hadn't gone and read a few articles about it partway through, I might not have finished. The story is nuts, although also brilliant and boring. Casares was a good friend of Jorge Luis Borges and this novel is fantastical and a little surreal.

The narrator is a fugitive, a man on the run, who hears about a deserted island in the South Pacific from an Italian rug seller in Calcutta. He steals a rowboat and sets out, finding the island. The island is small and marshy, but there are a few buildings and a swimming pool, all deserted and falling into disrepair. One day, the man wakes up and finds the buildings occupied by a group of vacationers, who play music loudly and wear oddly old-fashioned clothing. The man hides in the marsh, convinced they are there to capture him. He notices a woman, who goes every evening to an outcrop of rocks to watch the sunset. He becomes quickly fascinated in her and becomes determined to speak to her despite the danger.

A few times, he's sure he's been spotted, but the behavior of the guests never changes. He leaves clues for the woman, but she never indicates that she's noticed. He tries to speak to her, but she ignores him.

There's an explanation for what's going on. And it's an interesting one that I'm glad I found out about because the story was, despite its brevity, becoming repetitious and annoying. Of course, the repetition was a necessary part of the tale, and the explanation is one that opens up so many questions and implications. The Invention of Morel is the inspiration for the French modernist film classic, Last Year at Marienbad, just to give you an idea of what goes on. The film is set in an utterly different setting, the people are not the characters in the book and the explanation that ties the book together and makes it all worthwhile is missing, but other than that, it's eerily faithful.

>113 RidgewayGirl: The film is set in an utterly different setting, the people are not the characters in the book and the explanation that ties the book together and makes it all worthwhile is missing, but other than that, it's eerily faithful. Well, of course! You made me laugh with that. I've had the idea of buying the book in the back of my mind for years. Now I'll have to do something about it.

>114 haydninvienna: This sentence will make perfect sense once you've read the book. I assume you've seen Last Year at Marienbad? What did you make of it? Could the setting or the costumes have been any more gorgeous?

LOL, love the "planted" and exhausted kitty pics!

>113 RidgewayGirl: Have you read Asleep in the Sun by Bioy Casares? It's a bizarre yet interesting book about a man whose wife starts behaving strangely after she returns from a short stay in a sanatarium. I think you might like it! (Although I strongly recommend not reading any plot summaries or reviews before you read the book -- it's best to go into it knowing as little as possible.)

>117 christina_reads: No, this was my introduction to Bioy Casares. It will be awhile before I read more of him, but I'm thinking it's probably time to try Borges. Asleep in the Sun does sound interesting though.

>113 RidgewayGirl: This is already on my wishlist, but after reading that you thought it was boring, repetitive and annoying I thought, "Perhaps not." But it's only short, I loved Last Year at Marienbad, and you appreciated it by the end, so I will give it a go.

>99 RidgewayGirl: & >107 RidgewayGirl: Beautiful!

>119 pamelad: Pam, if you liked Last Year at Marienbad, you'll like The Invention of Morel. I just needed to know why things were happening as they were. With the film, it was enough to just enjoy the gorgeous costumes and scenery.

>120 VivienneR: We do seem to have started a collection of white cats!

Michaela and her sister survived a rough childhood being raised by an undemonstrative grandmother after being abandoned by their addict parents. But while her sister falls into the same trap their mother did, Michaela grabbed structure wherever she could find it, in school, in an after school program run by the Philadelphia Police and then by joining the police force. Eleven years after joining, Mickey is still a patrol officer in the Kensington neighborhood, a drug and poverty-ridden area. She stays because she can keep an eye on her estranged sister this way.

When Mickey and her rookie partner are called out to a dead body found in an area used by addicts, she discovers that the dead woman was murdered, and driven by worry about her sister, who she hasn't seen in awhile, she starts to look into the murders. She's coming up against resistance from her own supervisor, that can't be entirely attributed to her lack of friends on the force, breaking the rules and putting herself and her son into danger.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore is both a crime thriller and a picture of a specific place and what it does to the people who live there. Kensington is a community on the ropes, but it wasn't always the place people came to disappear. Between the complex characters, detailed setting and Moore's solid writing, this was a lot more than just a fun thriller. The plot holds together well, but I enjoyed the way Moore wrote. There's one scene where a group of kids from the low-income school go on a field trip to see a ballet that I loved -- Moore dug into the reasons for what happened and wrote with such sympathy -- she never goes for the easy laugh or the one-dimensional character. So while this is a solid crime novel, it also is broader than that, without harming the pacing. I enjoyed this one and look forward to reading more by the author.

My Mother's House is the story of a house's death. La Kay is a middle class house surrounded by other middle class houses that were built for returning GIs on an area near JFK Airport. South Ozone Park became a neighborhood of immigrants, the latest ones being from the Caribbean. Lucien and his wife buy the house and raise their three daughters there, while operating as an informal gathering place for new Haitian arrivals to find help getting settled, a card game and a taste of home. But Lucien's friendly demeanor hides an inner rot. He's done terrible things. Things the house finds unendurable and which lead it to decide to burn itself down in order to stop him. But Lucien, now an elderly man in poor health, a widower estranged from his children, has one more secret he's kept hidden from the house. And it's far worse than all of the other things he's done.

My Mother's House by Francesca Momplaisir is an impossible book to pigeon-hole. It's horror, sure. It's also a novel about immigrants struggling to make lives for themselves and those that prey on them. There's a grim realism here, but also a supernatural element that interact uneasily with each other. There are tonal shifts between the chapters, the ones centering Lucian have a black humor with a touch of slapstick that contrasts with the grim realism of another character's sections, which in turn are jarringly different than the magic realism of the sentient house.

Momplaisir is a talented writer, one who can evoke strong emotions or create a vivid image in very few words. This skill made this novel much harder to read than had her writing been just serviceable. The author is never overly graphic, nor does she linger on the act of harming being done. But she does dig into the emotions and harm being experienced by the victims and it makes for hard reading. It also made it difficult to appreciate Lucien's chapters or to enter in to what the house is experiencing. It's as though three very different novels about the same events were mashed together. Each element on its own is very good, but they lose something as a group.

Fresh cat picture. The catnip plant is very popular for lounging and snacking. Note that Freya has a leaf in her mouth. Freya initially moved in as an emergency foster who simply never left.

>124 RidgewayGirl: We have some catnip in the front garden - not as far on as yours - and that's popular with a pair of cats who seem to decide that out garden is in both of their terretories. At times it's all spits and hisses. It's nice to be popular.

>124 RidgewayGirl: Ahh. My boys just got some fresh catnip planted in the garden. I'll be bringing it in for them a bit at a time.

Your photos are like catnip for all visitors to your thread!

>125 Helenliz: Sounds like you need a second catnip plant!

>126 thornton37814: Probably would be messy as a houseplant, Lori. Your boys will enjoy their treat.

>127 VivienneR: I figured that I like cat pictures and there are never enough of them on-line.

This morning I went downtown, where the bookstore is having people in for half hour at a time. I reserved a time and met VictoriaPL there and we browsed and talked and enjoyed being together (in masks and six feet apart, of course). Then the next people in turned out to be friends I haven't seen since the end of February. Then we sat outside on a long bench and watched the dog walkers go by and I saw another person I knew. It felt good to be back in the world, if even for only a few hours. I brought home five books.

>124 RidgewayGirl: That is one blissed-out cat! I think I get the same look on my face when I have a mouthful of chocolate.

>128 RidgewayGirl: - That's great that you got to see each other and get books at the same time. Let us live vicariously - make a book stack and show us what you bought.

Erika Fatland travels through the five central Asian countries that were once part of the Soviet Union and tells us what she sees and tells us the stories of the people she meets. She also gives a basic history of the area, both as a part of the Soviet Union and some of the long and eventful history further back. It's a lot for one book, so Sovietistan: Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan is a bit random. I ended up with a wish for more, which may have been the author's intention.

The area is so deeply full of history. Long before Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, there were great civilizations and centers of learning and trade, from Samarkand and the Silk Road to the fertile Fergana Valley, where four of the countries intersect with squiggly lines and the ethnicities of the people living there are similarly entwined, and forward to the groups forcibly removed or resettled to the region under Stalin. Given the sheer volume and richness of the area's history, this book is a scant overview, but Fatland does a good job of alternating the information dumps with the conversations she has and with what life is currently like in these former Soviet republics. And it's the conversations that are the most interesting, whether with a human rights activist in Kazakhstan or the one elderly man willing to speak to her in a German Mennonite village in Kyrgyzstan. My personal favorite was the story of the artist Igor Savitsky and the museum he created in Nukus, Uzbekistan.

I was always eager to get back to this book, and I'm grateful to the author for writing such an engaging introduction to five countries I knew nothing about.

>131 RidgewayGirl: sounds wonderful, I will take a BB for that one!

>129 DeltaQueen50: Judy, here is Ollie, also somewhat relaxed. I think we can declare him Officially Domesticated now.



>130 dudes22: Here you are, Betty!



>132 Tess_W: Tess, if you have any interest at all in the area, or in forgotten places generally, you'll love it.

>131 RidgewayGirl: That's a BB for me too!

>134 Jackie_K: It's right up your alley, Jackie!

>133 RidgewayGirl: He looks right at home there! He realizes what a good choice he made in selecting his fur-ever family!

>131 RidgewayGirl: I tried to find that one when the GeoCAT visited that region earlier this year, but it wasn't available in a library here yet, and it wasn't one I wanted to purchase. I ended up going for some other book that was probably much less memorable. So it's already on my radar if our paths should cross. I do go through things I add to my Amazon wish list a couple times a year (usually sometime in summer and around Christmas) to see if my libraries have purchased anything.

>136 thornton37814: He is pretty smug these days. And I hope your library gets a copy of Sovietistan. I found out about it browsing through my library's list of books "on order," and placed a reservation right away.

Catherine House is the name of an exclusive college. Students who are accepted receive full scholarships and have everything provided for them. Graduates go on to prestigious careers. Ines ends up there at the urging of a high school teacher, but her heart's not in it. Something happened her senior year that changed her. She's far more into the partying and the sleeping around than learning, but over time, decaying, beautiful, confounding Catherine House exerts its influence.

Elisabeth Thomas has created a solid gothic setting and while there's no magic, the setting takes it's cues from everything from Harry Potter to The Magicians. But while the set up is fantastic, Thomas spends much of the book just spinning her wheels with far too little plot to stretch over too long a time. There's no question that the ending was well-done, but there was too little character development for it to be believable, and requires the reader to accept a slow pace for much of the middle of the novel.

When a group of people who went to college together rent a house for the summer, all the kids are relegated to bunk in the attic. As they watch their parents behave very badly, they decide to band together and to refuse all parental involvement for the summer. Evie is fifteen and she keeps an eye on her little brother, her parents being all too willing to ignore the children in favor of drinking and being with their old friends. When disaster in the form of a hurricane strikes, the children discover that they are better off relying on each other and set off for safety.

A Children's Bible is another fantastic and unusual novel by Lydia Millet. It's so well conceived and executed that after finishing, I had to sit back and just think about it for awhile. There's not a word or scene that isn't necessary to the story she's telling and despite the themes being clear, nothing is over-emphasized. If you're already a fan of this under-rated author, you'll love A Children's Bible, if you've never read anything by her, this is a fine place to start.

>137 RidgewayGirl: Knox County has it in print so I might eventually be able to read it.

>139 RidgewayGirl: I saw that one mentioned as an "anticipated book" of 2020 the other day when I was looking for book options for our book group to read this summer. I ended up wasting my time as we went with a suggestion made by the Spanish professor in the group. (She'll read it in Spanish, and the rest of us will read the English version.) I believe I added it to Amazon so I could keep track of it until it's available at a library. Things are so delayed because of COVID-19 at the moment.

>140 thornton37814: I feel very badly for authors whose books have arrived this year. It's a rough beginning.

>139 RidgewayGirl: Book Bullet - I have a number of her books on my wishlist - time to actually read one!

>142 DeltaQueen50: She's a really intelligent author. A lot is going on and she trusts the reader to figure it out.

"There is no good reason, at this stage of your life, to play it safe and hold back," she'd said. "This is the time to experiment and make mistakes and open yourself up to brutally honest feedback. That's the only way to grow as an artist. Fail again, fail better."

The narrator of Apartment by Teddy Wayne is lucky enough to not only have a father paying his tuition and living costs, while he's attending the Colombia MFA program, but he's living in his great-aunt's apartment, a rent-controlled two bedroom, a much nicer living situation than that of most of the other graduate students. He's always been a little awkward around other people, slow to get to know people, resigned to having a few acquaintances as his only connections.

He's been working on a novel, but isn't prepared for the harsh reaction he receives from his peers. Only Billy, a Midwestern transplant a little overwhelmed by the city, has anything positive to say. Soon after meeting him, and on a whim, the narrator offers the empty second bedroom in his apartment to Billy.

Apartment is a novel about the difficulty of making a connection, about how difficult male friendship can be and, especially, a novel about how one man can't manage to get past his own self-consciousness, despite his best efforts. It turns out that I like novels about people messing up their own lives, even when the protagonist is a white guy. While this does veer towards WMFuN* territory, it never quite manages to become one, despite the narrator's best efforts. There's a melancholy air to this story that I found utterly attractive. And when things careen past the merely uncomfortable, Wayne made the various things happening make sense and inevitable, given what had happened before. This is a really well done and beautifully written novel and I'm so glad to have found it.

* White Male Fuck-up Novel, truly a well established genre.

There is a lot going on in You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat. The unnamed narrator is Palestinian-American and she spends her summers with family in Amman, Jordan and in Nablus, on the West Bank. Her parents are immigrants, her mother is unpredictable and possibly mentally ill. She's bisexual and struggles with various self-destructive behaviors. She's not good at relationships, but needs to be in one. As I said, it's a lot for a single novel and it seems to be part of a slow change in publishing where characters can be more than one thing outside of the routine, and are no longer expected to be representative of anything but their own complex selves. Like actual people, in other words.

The novels opens with an unsettling experience in Bethlehem, when the narrator is twelve. While walking around the old city, she is yelled at by a group of men for wearing shorts. The thing that throws her into turmoil isn't the men's reactions to her, but her mother's reactions. As the novel progresses, fear of her mother's reactions to her take up an out-sized part of the narrator's life, even when she's an adult, living and working in a different city. As the narrator watches herself sabotage her relationship with her girlfriend, she's forced to come to terms with the harmfulness of her behaviors, and how most of the harm done is to herself.

The narrator is not someone I'd enjoy knowing in real life, but I loved spending time with her in the pages of a book. I like characters who can't help but blow up their own lives and she was engaging, intelligent and always had something going on. The glimpses of life Palestinian life were fascinating.

>113 RidgewayGirl: If you'd like to catch up with the films of Alain Resnais, or many other classics, Mubi has opened up its library so you can watch what you want, when you want. I'm considering an Agnes Varda binge.

Odd things happen to that link, so here it is again: https://mubi.com/library

Had another look. Not quite what you want, when you want, but there are a lot more films available to watch.

>54 RidgewayGirl: I saw that Weather was chosen for Camp ToB, so I'll have to put that on my reading list. Glad to see your positive comments about the book.

Are you planning to follow Camp ToB? I hope to read some if not all the books, but I'm also trying to get through the nominees for the Hugo and Aurora (sci-fi/fantasy) awards before the end of July, so I'm not sure if I'll succeed.

>146 pamelad: That looks super interesting, but realistically, I am a poor film watcher. My movie/tv time is either spent with various members of the family and the times I do get to settle down to watch what I want are few and far between (this isn't a complaint!) but I am passing the link on to my best friend, who is a huge fan of old and foreign films and will be delighted.

>147 mathgirl40: I'm all in for Camp ToB, Paulina. I picked up a copy of The City We Became just a few days ago. It's more challenging this year, since I can't get any of the books as physical copies from the library, but they have a few as ebooks and the rest I'll just go ahead and buy and chalk it up to supporting the book world. I may have to reread Weather as the details are already growing hazy.

Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime by Val McDermid was exactly the right book for my easily distracted brain. With each chapter covering a different aspect of forensics, from fingerprints to profiling to forensic anthropology, McDermid never dives too deeply into any one subject, but each chapter is well-organized and she includes relevant historical criminal cases to illustrate how each subject can make a difference in discovering what happened, who the victim and perpetrator are and ensure that the accused is convicted.
This is a fun introduction to the various fields that comprise forensics.

As they wait for the Night Boat to Tangier to arrive from Morocco, two middle-aged Irish criminals sit in the ferry terminal in Algeciras and reminisce. They're there to find Maurice's daughter, who left three years earlier to go travel with a loose group of hippies and vagabonds. As they look through the crowd for her, asking people if they've seen her, it becomes clear that Maurice and Charlie are not benign, that their superficial Irish charm hides a more menacing core.

Kevin Barry has created two fascinating characters in Maurice and Charlie. They've got a patter going as they reminisce, but they're also avoiding something in their story together, and while those revelations came too late in the novel for me, the heart of the story was undeniably enthralling. What really shines in this novel is Barry's gorgeous writing. He skillfully weaves language into something both beautiful and brutish. This is one to read for the language and to see the craft of it all.

My husband and Ollie, the feral kitten, are in love. Here's how they slept in together this morning.

>150 RidgewayGirl: Your review makes this sound unmissable, so I've added it to the wish list and located a copy on Overdrive (I now belong to 5 different libraries for this very reason) to read when I have finished Stalingrad.

>150 RidgewayGirl: I thought this was marvellous. Great review. I want to read more by him. I felt I was sitting down and listening to two apparently sweet elderly men - maybe in a cafe? - and then gradually realising their hidden depths were pretty horrendous. I really welcomed the ending: at least, that the daughter escaped them both.

And such a cute photo!

>150 RidgewayGirl: Excellent review! I've got this on my hold list at the library but it will be a while before my name comes up. I'm really looking forward to it now.

>151 RidgewayGirl: How wonderful that Ollie has found a BFF!

>151 RidgewayGirl: My cat does the paw thing too! Ain't love grand?

>152 pamelad: Signing up for a few more library cards in different systems is very tempting right now.

>153 charl08: Charlotte, I'm going to have to try his short stories.

>154 VivienneR: Vivienne, they are in love.

>155 NinieB: It's very touching. And just so funny how they pick favorites.

The Narcissism of Small Differences is about a couple, Ana and Joe, who have been together for fifteen years, outlasting most of the other couples they knew, despite never marrying or having children. They'd been happy with what they had -- Joe is a freelancer, writing for various alternative magazines, reviewing movies and music, and Ana works as an art director for an advertising company. But the cracks in the relationship have begun to show. Ana is tired of supporting them and of perceiving Joe's superiority in not have sold out like she did. Joe is finding fewer and fewer freelance gigs and tired of feeling like he's not doing his share. When Ana receives a promotion, things become less tenable.

The Narcissism of Small Differences is full of great observations. Joe and Ana are so well-crafted and believable that I was rooting for both of them even when I was yelling at one of them or the other in my head. It's a novel about Detroit, where Joe meets up with a blogger who explores and photographs Detroit's decaying splendor and they both are fiercely loyal to a city that means different things to different people. Michael Zadoorian is a fantastic writer, observant and with an easy style that made reading just one more page very easy.

When Saša Stanišic is given a form to fill out, there's a box labelled "HERKUNFT" (ORIGINS), with much too little space for Stanišic to respond. This book is the longer response to that bureaucratic question. There's his childhood in the city of Višegrad, in a country that doesn't exist anymore. There's his later childhood and teenage years as the child of refugees, living near Heidelberg, Germany. Then there are his parents and his grandparents, especially his grandmother, who remained in Višegrad throughout the war and who is sinking into dementia. There's also the mountain village of Oskoruša, and the graveyard holding his ancestors. Stanišic explores his origins and along the way takes the reader along as he hangs out behind the ARAL station with the other teenagers who started out somewhere else, reads Choose Your Own Adventure books, visits Oskoruša with his tiny grandmother and reflects on what it is to belong to a country that no longer exists.

Stanišic's writing is so perfect; full of humor and emotion, stark realism and boundless optimism. This is a very, very good book. It's not yet out in English, but as it won the German Book Prize and one of his previous novels has already been translated, it's only a matter of time. Make sure you grab a copy as soon as you can.

In Sarah Gerard's novel, True Love: A Novel, Nina is drifting through life, and choosing the worst men along the way. She becomes involved with Seth, an artist, who doesn't really do much, but also can't be bothered with her. Even if he asks her to come over, he may not answer the door when she arrives. Yet, this only heightens her ardor and when she moves to New York from Florida to attend an MFA program, Seth comes along because he wants to live in New York and she's willing to pack up his stuff, rent the moving van and make housing arrangements for them in New York. But in New York, Seth is incapable of holding a job, unwilling to do menial work, leaving Nina scrambling to support both of them. When Seth turns jealous and needy, Nina switches over to Aaron, with as much drama and conflict that she can wring out of the situation.

Nina is a lot to deal with. The friends she manages to keep are all messes themselves, as is her mother. There's a whole genre of novel of women destroying their own lives over terrible men, similar to the WMFuN,* but differing in that in these novels, selfless men don't leap out to help the women, nor is eventual forgiveness a given. But usually, and usually in most novels, there's character development, the protagonist is changed over the course of the novel, or seems like they would like to, at least. That doesn't happen here. Nina's path is a circular one, endlessly repeating the same behaviors, endlessly justifying them with the language she picked up in therapy. And since Nina's behavior is the same at the end of the book as it was at the beginning, the beginning and end are merely arbitrary. She'll switch men at some point, take advantage of different acquaintances and co-workers next time, find a new thing to be utterly irresponsible about.

Gerard can write well. And she can create scenes that are so vivid I would cringe. But the lack of an arc to this story left me feeling unmoored. What's the point of reading about a terrible person continuing to be terrible in the same way to different people? I do love an unlikeable narrator, but Nina's self pity and manipulations never led anywhere. Still, Gerard clearly has a great deal of promise as a novelist and I look forward to seeing how her writing develops.

* White Male Fuck-up Novel

>150 RidgewayGirl: - Well, you got me with that review! Adding it to my "seek out and find" list.

>151 RidgewayGirl: - AWE!

>159 RidgewayGirl: Well, that's a pass. Kudos for finishing it?

>160 lkernagh: We are still in love with Ollie, although he is growing rapidly and his over-sized paws indicate that he may end up being a sizable cat.

>161 charl08: Charlotte, I was expecting the main character to come to some sort of realization about herself. To grow up a little, or decide to not be with anyone for a while and figure things out. The lack of character development left me liking the book a lot less after I'd finished than when I was reading and expecting her to develop self-awareness.

In The Missing American by Kwei Quartey, a lonely widower is befriended on Facebook by a younger Ghanaian woman. They become close and he sends her money for her sister. His best friend, a dying journalist encourages him and he decides to visit her in Ghana. When he arrived, she is nowhere to be found. His friend convinces him to investigate sakawa boys, those who create false identities in order to scam money from unwitting westerners. The man disappears.

Emma joined the police force hoping to investigate murders, but the opportunity to join the homicide department came with sexual assault attempt from her boss and so she ends up working as a private investigator for a company in Accra and one of the first cases she is assigned is that of an American trying to find his father, who disappeared a few weeks earlier.

This is a solid mystery novel. The plot is solid and the novel is well-paced. The author is both Ghanaian and American and so this book is an introduction to life in Ghana, presented with an eye to what Americans don't know. Some of the characters and situations were what one expects in a thriller-type book but the uniqueness and richness of the setting minimized these elements and as this is the author's first book, there's a good chance this series will become better as it goes.

So glad I popped in! I'd heard some good things about Apartment, but assumed it was the kind of WMFuN I wouldn't want to read. I have Forensics in my pile for June but I was wondering if my distracted brain could deal with it right now. I was looking forward to The Narcissism of Small Differences and am glad it didn't disappoint. And I hadn't heard of HERKUNFT or You Exist Too Much but they are now on the list. Thanks! :)

>164 madhatter22: Hi, Shauna! I was lucky enough to hear about Apartment on a podcast I like called Book Fight and since I trust their book taste, I was willing to give it a try. But, yeah, the description sounds very WMFuN. Forensics is great for a distracted brain because each chapter is its own thing and you're not going to end up lost if your mind goes elsewhere for a page or two. And it was interesting enough to keep my attention.

My library has started allowing book requests for curbside pick-up, yay! On the other hand, they've cut the number of books we can put a hold on down to five. So I may get to read an actual library book again in a few months, as I already had five books with very long wait lists on my hold shelf. Boo!

>166 RidgewayGirl: - Our library has had pick=up all along, but only for books they actually possess. And no putting new holds. I had a book on hold from the beginning of the year, and when it was published, I got a notice to call for pick-up. At first they were the only library in the state doing it, but now others have started too. And they've just started an appointment system for you to come to the library. I think you can tell them what you're looking for (in general) and they'll pull out some books for you to "browse". They're only 15 minute appointments, so you need an idea of what you're looking for.

>166 RidgewayGirl: Wow! No sign here. Fortunately lockdown has meant no coffee buying, so the coffee money has gone on books instead (or so I tell myself).

Guess I'm a bit dense here, but what does WMFun stand for?

>167 dudes22: I'd be fine with that, Betty. I'm just unwilling to give up my place in very long hold lists and can't request a book they currently have on their shelves unless I do so. But I get that they're adapting as much as they can and I fully support keeping librarians alive.

>168 charl08: Charlotte, I tell myself that buying books is a public good these days. Especially with bookshop.org out there now.

>169 Tess_W: Not at all dense, Tess. It stands for White Male F-up Novel. I'm sure you've read a vast quantity of these over the years! That novel where the main character is a (usually well-off) white guy who, through his own poor decision-making, causes turmoil in his life (and often the lives of others). Usually features at least one scene where the beautiful woman makes love to him and there's at least one female character (often the beautiful woman who slept with him) who helps him out, sometimes over and over again.

>169 Tess_W: >170 RidgewayGirl: Tess, I'm so glad you asked the question! I thought I was the only one who didn't know! Thanks for the explanation, that makes a lot of sense!

>165 RidgewayGirl: I had a funny experience yesterday with curbside pickup at the library. I had requested 2 books online and the routine is that they will call when the books are picked and ready for pickup. When you arrive at the library you call, give them your name and they will bring the books out. When I pulled up to the designated spot one of the women that works in circulation was standing there with my books, I didn't even have time to call! We both started laughing and she said they all recognize my car by now and she saw me pull into the lot from her office window. I think I'm going to miss this service!

>167 dudes22: - >170 RidgewayGirl: - Since I posted that , our library system just opened up for ILL so we can go back to placing holds and requesting books that our own library doesn't have. But we are limited to requesting only 5 also.

>170 RidgewayGirl: TY for the explanation; now I know!

>171 Jackie_K:, >174 Tess_W: Jackie & Tess, I should have explained without being reminded. It's just such a good way to encapsulate a genre of novel that we've all read enough of.

>172 clue: After returning home after three years in Germany, I went to the library and was greeted with a friendly, "Oh, haven't seen you here in awhile!" And VictoriaPL told me once that they always just went and grabbed her hold books when they saw her walk through the door.

>173 dudes22: My library posted an explanation for the reduced holds so I guess a few people said something. They're overwhelmed with book requests and this is to help them not be buried. And I'm going to pick up a library book today, so that's exciting. It's not like I don't have plenty to read right here in my house, but I'm still happy about it.

When Stevie's boyfriend doesn't show up, she figures he stood her up. It had been a casual relationship anyway and she assumed he'd lost interest. She still goes by his apartment to pick up the things she'd left there, and discovers his body. A pandemic is sweeping across Britain, but Stevie is certain his death was murder. And so, in a city convulsing into uncertainty, she sets out to figure out what happened.

I've had A Lovely Way to Burn on my shelf for a few years, but the pandemic setting had me pulling it down. It really grabbed me -- Louise Welsh's virus is a far deadlier and easily spread than what we're dealing with, but she nailed some of the human behavior and the uncertainty that does as much to destabilize things as the disease itself. And having the novel be about solving a murder rather than about the pandemic itself made this a good distraction. Welsh puts together a good story and I've already picked up the second in this trilogy.

>175 RidgewayGirl: - I know. The book you want to read is always the one you don't have. In my case it was a couple of books for a book club read and the next in a couple of series that I didn't have on the TBR.

>176 RidgewayGirl: I have A Lovely Way to Burn on my shelf and it sounds like it is something that I will like - may have to give this one a little nudge. ;)

>176 RidgewayGirl: Ooh, this sounds perfect for right now. I'll look for a copy.

>177 dudes22: Betty, it's not even that. I have piles of books I want to read, right here in my house. It makes no sense.

>178 DeltaQueen50: & >179 charl08: I look forward to finding out what you think of it.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid is one of those books that capture a moment. It begins with a babysitter bringing her charge to a grocery store and having to have the father of the child come get them after a woman decided that she was not the child's mother and the authorities needed to be involved. It ends peacefully, but both the babysitter, Emira, and the child's mother, Alix, are unsettled in different ways. There is a video of the incident, but Emira doesn't want it made public. Emira loves her job, but the pay is low and the benefits non-existent and her friends are urging her to move forward with her life. And she meets a new guy who is really, really into her. Alix, who makes her living as an influencer and as a public speaker is having her own moment. She and her husband moved from New York to Philadelphia for his career and she's lonely without her friends and hopes to find in Emira some of the connections she's missing. Her attempts to forge a friendship with Emira are tone-deaf and heavy-handed. Then she discovers who Emira's new boyfriend is, and things go rapidly very wrong.

This is a novel forged out of our current moment and all credit to Reid for being willing to march into the middle of some charged issues. Reid takes the reader directly into the middle of uncomfortable scenes and lingers there, allowing things to be as awkward as possible. This is a soap opera of a book, full of unlikely coincidences, technicolor emotions and explosive secrets. Reid's approach certainly makes for a page-turner, but some of the impact of what she is saying is lost in the sheer drama of it all. For all that this approach didn't resonate with me, I'm rooting for this one to be widely read. A novel that manages to directly address racism and it's various iterations while also being fast paced and fun to read is a needed thing right now.

The City We Became is the first in a fantasy trilogy by N. K. Jemisin. Five people discover that they are the embodiment of a borough of New York City and must find each other to fight a Lovecraftian horror (plenty of tentacles and racism) menacing the city. This being the first book, the story is that of the boroughs's origin stories and how they meet, with a few menacing events to move things along. Some characters are more fleshed out than others, with the Bronx taking center stage for much of the novel. Luckily, she's a fascinating character. This novel is paced like a superhero movie with plenty of action scenes.

So this isn't my genre, but there were a few things I liked about The City We Became, primarily how it addressed racism and how one of the characters, who seemed to have been pulled from a Joyce Carol Oates novel, in a way that wasn't particularly comfortable to read about. I don't know if I'll read the next book in this series, but I will certainly be interested enough to read reviews about it.

Boone is keeping his nose clean. He's got a not-great job as a bartender, but he has a job. He has an apartment where he's also the handyman and he's intent on not going back to prison. Then a friend asks him to come along with him as he looks into the death of an undocumented immigrant for the man's uncle. The search leads him into some bad places, gets him saddled with a dog and puts his tentative relationship with an ex-cop in jeopardy.

This Wicked World by Richard Lange is just about everything I want in a crime novel. The setting is gritty, the characters are all well-developed and feel like people, the plot is well paced and holds together right through the final moments. Boone is an easy man to like, even as he tries hard not to make connections or care about the people around him. I'm eager to read more by this author.

>182 RidgewayGirl: - Ack! I forgot I bought that book recently. It’s an ebook so I sometimes forget they are there. It’ll be the next one I read after I finish my current ebooks. Love the concept!

>184 LittleTaiko: Shannon, I do the same thing in forgetting that I have a book as a ebook. Thank goodness the LT app keeps me from buying duplicates!

>183 RidgewayGirl: Sounds good, adding it to the wishlist.

>185 RidgewayGirl: I need to make better use of this! I found several when putting the books on new bookshelves recently.

>186 charl08: It's maddening, isn't it? I always expect to remember every single book I own, but the truth is that I don't even remember the one I bought last Tuesday.

Right now, all bets are off on even knowing where a book is on my bookshelves as I have rearranged all my books by spine color. I've done this once before and it was a disaster (I wanted to read a book that I knew had a red cover. This was true, but it was also true that the spine was black and white.) My daughter had me take pictures of the back rows (because of course many shelves are double rows) and I've managed to keep it as it is so far, but at some point it will have to return to normal. It does look lovely, though.

>187 RidgewayGirl: - When I did a bookcase by spine color, I used one of the extra fields (call number) to log which shelf each book was on. It's the only way I can keep track.

>188 dudes22: Betty, I'll put it back in alphabetical order once it becomes annoying, but it does look lovely.

Lillian Preston was a photographer who achieved more notoriety than fame in her life. She was a street photographer, taking pictures of people in unguarded moments. Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg is set up as the text from the exhibition book for a retrospective of her work at MoMA. So there's a forward by the singer from a punk band from the seventies that took inspiration and a name from the photograph that caused Lillian's notoriety and the catalog text is largely by her daughter, who was the subject of some of her photographs, as well as people who knew her, letters and extracts from her journal. The result is a vivid character study of an extraordinary woman, one whose photographs are described but never shown, yet I feel as though I would recognize one of her photographs instantly.

This was a five star read for me, there was not a single page of this novel that I didn't love. The subject matter, that of a woman who chose to live without compromise as a photographer, who chose to raise her child alone in the fifties and sixties when neither of those paths was acceptable for woman, and that of living for one's art, is catnip to me, but the writing was also brilliant. Goldberg spent ten years writing this book and instead of being overwritten, it feels fresh and spontaneous. The format is so well executed that it enhanced the intimacy of the story Goldberg was telling.

>187 RidgewayGirl: LOL. My husband loves to arrange books by appearance. It *looks* beautiful!

>190 RidgewayGirl: Definitely a BB for me! I can remember when the real event happened.

>191 NinieB: It really does look fantastic. And I'll keep it until I can't find a specific book when I need it.

>192 Tess_W: Tess, Goldberg references several photographers as her inspiration and Sally Mann is definitely one of them.

Oh my, your thread is so dangerous for me. I am going way with two book bullets both Feast Your Eyes and This Wicked World sound very appealing to me.

>194 DeltaQueen50: Judy, This Wicked World is right up your alley, being a well-done noir-style crime novel. And Feast Your Eyes is brilliant.

When Margot is seventeen and preparing for her final exams, her family circumstances make it into the press. Margot lives with her mother, and while her father visits when he can, he has his own family who don't know about his other life. He's also the French Minister of Culture. Margot's mother is an actor and has raised Margot to be self-sufficient, but that lack of nurturing leaves her vulnerable. The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine follows Margot as she struggles to come to terms with and to understand her parents and herself, just as journalists are eager to hear from her.

There are shades of Mitterrand's secret daughter, but this was clearly just a jumping off point for Lemoine's novel, which is less about the press attention than it is about Margot struggling with her feelings about her odd family and, perhaps because this is a French novel, the things I expected to find in it were absent. Margot's story is far more interesting and nuanced than I'd expected.

>196 RidgewayGirl: Sounds interesting, I'd normally put this on the library list, so it will be a while before I'll have a chance to get to it.

Coincidentally, I'm reading what seems to me a "very French" novel (Summer of Reckoning) for the translated fiction book group. I usually find this style over the top, but I think lockdown helps this book - makes the different context more interesting to me.

>197 charl08: Charlotte, I spent six weeks unable to read anything but lighter books, so getting back into reading books that stretch me a bit is wonderful. My daughter gave me a copy of Ducks, Newburyport yesterday so I "would have something to read on the beach," so I'm committed to starting that soon.

Otis Lee can't help but care about the people around him in his community in North Carolina, and his care extends to his neighbor Azalea "Knot" Centre. Knot is the schoolteacher and she's a good one, but she's also prone to indulging in books, booze and men, but especially the booze. Otis helps her out each time her behavior lands her in trouble, accepting her as she is. In West Mills by De'Shawn Charles Winslow begins in 1941 and continues through most of the lifespans of Otis, Knot and the various denizens of West Mills, through the changing social conditions, as life in West Mills changes and remains constant, as people leave and return.

This is a novel about secrets, and how they are kept or not kept by an entire community or within families. It's about who has the right or the responsibility to reveal what has been hidden. It's also a deeply nuanced look at a few people in a community over time, how proximity can create deep ties and how the past impacts the present. Otis Lee is a wonderful character whose sense of responsibility is both a strength and a liability. Winslow writes well and with love about his fictitious community and I enjoyed every page I got to spend with Knot, Otis, Pen, Breezy and the rest.

The Lives of Edie Pritchard has an old-fashioned feel, in the best possible way. It's a thoughtful character study of a woman in Montana, beginning during her first marriage in the 1960s. Larry Watson knows what he's doing and knows how to write a sentence and the entire novel was a delight to read. Edie marries the quieter twin brother and deals with both her husband's insecurity and her brother-in-law's constant attempts to win her over. As the years pass, Edie develops from a woman who had a contentious relationship with her own daughter to one who is willing to go to bat for her granddaughter, and from a woman who runs away from a bad situation to one who is willing to stand up and speak her mind clearly.

Edie is a wonderful character who does her best to be a good wife and who is also willing to leave when the situation becomes intolerable, something she'll have to do more than once in her life. Edie feels constrained by life in a Montana town and yet she returns to it. She's pursued by men, but refuses to allow that to determine her life's path. This novel is an excellent character study of a woman who grows more secure in herself and less willing to compromise to meet the needs of men, as well as an evocative picture of rural Montana in the second half of the last century.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn is one of those books that is mentioned in the "books to look for" kind of list that I note and then never get around to picking up because reading hours are limited, my book budget sadly under-funded and there are so many books being published. But this one is a part of The Morning News Tournament of Books Summer Reading, and if there's one thing I like even more than reading, it's getting to have opinions about books, so a copy was purchased (and if you haven't switched over to bookshop.org, now is a great time to do so).

When Nainoa is a child, he falls from a tourist boat. He is returned to the vessel by a group of sharks, unharmed. His parents are amazed and from that moment he is viewed differently, as someone special, a situation that amplifies when he discovers in himself the power to heal. His siblings resent being left in his shadow, and less than understanding when he explains the pressure he feels. But all three excel in different ways, each ending up on the mainland at university, Nainoa graduating early from Stanford, and working as a paramedic as he waits to begin medical school, Dean on a basketball scholarship in Spokane and Kaui, the youngest, studying engineering in San Diego. What might read as an American success story in lesser hands becomes something more thoughtful as each member of the family struggles in a world where they are alone and without a support system.

What a wonderful surprise this debut novel was! Yes, there's a bit of folklorish magic in there, but at heart this is the story of a family. One that struggles to get by in a place where jobs are scarce and low-paying, where the kids are fully aware of their circumstances. One in which one child is favored, putting enormous pressure on him and harming the bond between the siblings as the other two fight to be appreciated. And along with a pitch-perfect look at family dynamics, there's a gorgeous, complicated description of life in Hawai'i and how Hawaiians feel when they move to the mainland. The writing is very, very good and Sharks in the Time of Saviors does not feel like a debut novel at all.

Growing up in Tallahassee, Florida in the 1960s, Elwood is hard-working and intelligent. He is being raised by his grandmother, who wants him to stay away from trouble, trouble that has very little to do with how a black boy behaves, but comes simply because he is. Elwood, being a good student, is given the opportunity to attend college classes while he's still in high school, but on his first day he is arrested. The car that picked him up when he was hitch-hiking the seven miles to the college was stolen and that he didn't know that, or the man who stole the car is irrelevant to the authorities. Elwood is sent to the Nickel Home for Boys, a detention center that is supposed to be a modern approach to wayward boys, giving them an education and preparing them for an honest life. This is, of course, not the case.

Based on the history of the Dozier School for Boys, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a book I avoided reading. Yes, this book is grim, but it's also full of resilience and hope from the opening chapters. Elwood is befriended by Turner, a street-smart survivor, early in his incarceration and that makes all the difference. This is a timely book and I'm glad to have read it.

I've opened a new thread, come and visit!

http://www.librarything.com/topic/321963