spiralsheep's GeoKIT and BingoDOG pets, 2021

I'm hoping to complete GeoKIT and BingoDOG in 2021, ideally with 7 + 25 separate books. I probably already have books on my To Read shelf fitting all but two categories: Polar, and "Suggested by a person from another generation". I'm also planning to participate in the Reading Globally group's quarterly threads. I'm not aiming to complete the SFFKit but I probably have To Read shelf books for all those categories too.

I don't really use LibraryThing as social media but book talk and casual chat are both welcome here. This is the first time I've set up a talk thread to track my reading, and my first time taking on category challenges (yes, I know about the lovely BingoDog cards).

(Number of books on To Read shelves on 1st November 2020: 121)

Number of books on To Read shelves on January 1st 2021: 158
Number of books on To Read shelves on February 1st 2021: 156

Number of countries unread on January 1st 2021: 56
Number of countries unread on February 1st 2021: 49

Countries read 2021: Algeria, Antarctica, Antigua, Aotearoa, Australia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Congo, Denmark, Doggerland, Egypt, England, Estonia, Ethiopia, fantasy Spain and Portugal, Finland, France, Georgia, Gibraltar, Greece (ancient), Grenada, India, Iran, "island full of noises", Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Martinique, Mauritania, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Qatar, Scotland, {secret places}, spaaaaaace, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tahiti, Uganda, UK, Ukraine, US

2021 Category Challenge GeoKIT

I completed my first tour of GeoKIT's seven categories on 8 Feb 2021. Onwards! :D

• Europe:
- The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson, 3
- Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 4
- How to Avoid a Tragedy, by David Henry Wilson, unrated
- Time Song: journeys in search of a submerged land, by Julia Blackburn, 4

• Africa:
- The Desert and the Drum, by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, 5
- Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe, by Doreen Baingana, 4

• Asia:
- The Border : a journey around Russia, by Erika Fatland, 3.5
- Mischief Diary, by Nada Faris, 3
- The Girl Who Fell to Earth, by Sophia Al-Maria, 4
- The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, by Nizrana Farouk, 3

• Oceania:
- Tiare in Bloom, by Celestine Vaite, 4

• Polar:
- The White Darkness, by David Grann, 4

• Central and South America:
- Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, 4
- The Ladies are Upstairs, by Merle Collins, 4.5

• North America:
- Talk Stories, by Jamaica Kincaid, 3.5
- Spell on Wheels Volume 2: Just to Get to You, by Kate Leth and Megan Levens, 3.5

2021 Category Challenge BingoDOG

I completed my first BingoDog card with 25 separate books, out of 31 read, on 11 Feb 2021. Onwards! :D

• Fewer than 200 pages
- Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, 4

• Time word in title or time is the subject
- Mr Tiger, Betsy, and the Blue Moon, by Sally Gardner, 3.5

• Set in or author from the Southern Hemisphere
- The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, by Nizrana Farouk, 3

• Book with or about magic
- The Lord Sorcier, by Olivia Atwater, 3

• Arts and recreation
- You're All Just Jealous of my Jetpack, by Tom Gauld, 5
- Baking with Kafka, by Tom Gauld, 4

• Classical element in title (earth, water, fire, air, aether, wood, metal)
- The Girl Who Fell to Earth, by Sophia Al-Maria, 4

• Name of a building in the title
- The Castle of Inside Out, by David Henry Wilson, 5

• By or about a marginalised group
- The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson, 3

• Senior citizen as the protagonist
- The Ladies are Upstairs, by Merle Collins, 4.5

• Suggested by a person from another generation
- The Name of this Book is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch, 4

• About nature or the environment (includes the sea)
- Time Song: journeys in search of a submerged land, by Julia Blackburn, 4

• Made me laugh
- Talk Stories, by Jamaica Kincaid, 3.5

• Shared with 20 or fewer LT members
- Mischief Diary, by Nada Faris, 1 member (me), 3

• About history or alternate history
- The Border : a journey around Russia, by Erika Fatland, 3.5

• Title that describes you
- Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld, 5

• Book you heartily recommend
- The Desert and the Drum, by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, 5

• Author you haven’t read before
- Tropical Fish : Tales from Entebbe, by Doreen Baingana, 4

• Impulse read!
- A Tempest, by Aime Cesaire, 3.5
- How to Avoid a Tragedy, by David Henry Wilson, unrated

• One-word title
- Battlepug: War on Christmas, by Mike Norton, 5

• With a character you think you'd like as a friend
- To be Taught, if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, 4

• Dark or light in title
- The White Darkness, by David Grann, 4

• Set somewhere you’d like to visit
- Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 4
- Tiare in Bloom, by Celestine Vaite, 4

• By two or more authors
- Spell on Wheels Volume 2: Just to Get to You, by Kate Leth and Megan Levens, 3.5

• With a love story included
- Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, 1

• Read a CAT or KIT
- Mooncop, by Tom Gauld, for SFFKIT, 4

Reading Globally

• January-March: Notes from a Small Population: 40+ places with under 500,000 inhabitants
Thread with recs: http://www.librarything.com/topic/327232
Read:
- A Tempest, by Aime Cesaire, Martinique, 3.5
- Talk Stories, by Jamaica Kincaid, Antiguan-American 3.5
- Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, Antigua, 4
- The Ladies are Upstairs, by Merle Collins, Grenada, 4.5
- Tiare in Bloom, by Celestine Vaite, Tahiti, 4
- Penguin Modern Poets 15, by Edward Brathwaite, unrated

• April-June: Childhood around the world: books for and about children
Possibilities: Small Country, Code Name Butterfly, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, Land of Childhood, Drum Dream Girl, Mischief Diary, Girl Who Fell to Earth, The Butterfly Workshop, Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui
Read:
- Little Night / Nochecita, by Yuyi Morales, Mexico/US, 4
- The African Child, by Camara Laye, 3.5

• July-September: The Lusophone World: Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, East Timor, Goa, and Macau.
Possibilities: The First Wife : a tale of polygamy by Paulina Chiziane, The Book of Chameleons, Death with Interruptions by Jose Scaramago recced by Kidzdoc, Abdulai Sila and Fernando Pessoa. But Trifonia Melibea Obono writes in Spanish.

• Also August: VMC month
Possibilities: Two Serious Ladies (VMC), Keepers of the House (Virago), She knew she was right (VMC), The Colour of Forgetting (Virago), The World My Wilderness (VMC) and What Not: a Prophetic Comedy, The Lark (VMC author), also Muriel Spark and Margery Sharp too.

• October-December: Translation Prize Winners
?

I'm not aiming to complete the SFFKit but I probably have To Read books for all the categories.

• January: sff book you meant to read in 2020
- Mooncop, by Tom Gauld, graphic novel, 4
- To be Taught if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, 4
- Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld, 5

• February: sentient things
- Mr Tiger, Betsy, and the Blue Moon, by Sally Gardner, 3.5

• March: Indiana Jones in space (or fairyland)
• April: series
• May: time travel
• June: it's about the journey
• July: historical fantasy
• August: female authors
• September: near future / alternate reality
• October: creature feature
• November: short stories
• December: gothic fantasy

wikis:

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_GeoKIT

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_BingoDOG

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2021_SFFKIT

So it looks like I need book recs.

- "Suggested by a person from another generation": I'm middle aged (Gen X although USian categories aren't a perfect fit for my country) so I need recs from elders and youngsters. :-)

- Polar: the Polar books I read in 2020 were poetry from Greenland and Finland. I'd be happy to read more polar poetry, especially by indigenous people. Or maybe I need recs for the best ever book about penguins? Or ... ?

>7 spiralsheep: I'm middle-aged too so can't help you on the first one, but for polar books, I read Barry Lopez' Arctic Dreams this year and thought it was excellent. Alternatively, if you like historical fiction, then Andrea Barrett's The Voyage of the Narwhal is an account of polar exploration in the 19th century.

>8 Jackie_K: Thank you! Recs are usually better than trying to trawl through a zillion possibilities.

>7 spiralsheep: - Ack, I'm a GenXer too so while logically I know I'm middle-aged, it took me aback to see it written out. :) So, can't help with a recommendation either.

I enjoyed The White Darkness by David Grann. It's an account of Henry Worsley's exploration of Antarctica.

>10 LittleTaiko: Sorry for the nasty shock! :D

Thank you for the rec. My local library system has several copies of The White Darkness, which is definitely an additional point in its favour.

I make no claims on being middle aged or not. The body might be, the mind refuses to accept it. >;-)

This year I read Ankomst which is set in the polar latitudes. It ramps up the tension very effectively and leaves you not knowing what is true and what is imagined.

Welcome aboard! Hope you have fun with the challenges!

I'm what some call an "old millennial" (born in the early to mid-1980s) so feel free to wander through my library if you need a recommendation :)

I really liked Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, about Shackleton's voyage.

>12 Helenliz: Meanwhile, I make no claims about the age of my thought processes, but my body seems to be prematurely knackered. ;-)

Thank you for the rec! I like translations generally, and I've had good experiences with Norwegian writing so far. Your review advice about reading chilling books on warm bright days seems useful too.

>13 rabbitprincess: Thank you. Setting myself geographical challenges in 2020 certainly helped vary my reading so it'll be good to try expanded challenges next year.

Shackleton is probably the one polar explorer I'll never get bored reading about, but I think I've read Alfred Lansing's 1959 take as it was already library fodder when I was a young reader. I'll pay attention to your other faves though, thank you!

ETA - Using LT's "what should you borrow" on rabbitprincess' library gives two varied results rated five stars that are also in my local library system: Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. Interesting picks.

Good luck to you too! :D

I'm a millennial so suggesting Hysteria by Kim Yideum, a short book of poetry. Imo one of the best books I read this year and only 1 other person on LT has it.

>16 Settings: I'm sure you already know I'm stalking you for recs, lol, and I don't think either of us would have difficulty fulfilling a "shared with fewer than X other members" challenge. :D

I searched for Kim Yideum, and her 2011 novel Blood Sisters was available secondhand for only twice what I'd usually pay for a library reservation so I bought it, and I've found eight of her poems online so I can read those to get a feel for her writing for now. Thank you for the rec, it's definitely more my style than the other South Korean novel tentatively on my list!

General comment: I read over 100 books most years so please all keep posting those recs as there are at least four on my list for 2021 so far and room for a few more....

It looks like you are getting some good 'other generation' recommendations, but just for fun I asked my 12yo what book he would recommend, and he mentioned The Secret Series, the first book of which is The Name of This Book Is Secret. It's a middle grade series, of course, and might not hold any interested for you (although I've read them all and can safely say that they're a hoot), but I thought it would be fun to ask him.

Happy reading!

>19 scaifea: Thanks to you and your son for the rec! I love reading children's books, from picture books to ya (and have several on my To Read shelf), and am always happy to pass recs on to my friends' children and grandchildren.

ETA- Bonus: Pseudonymous Bosch's The name of this book is secret is in my local library too!

>20 spiralsheep: Yay!!

You might like Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq, an Indigenous writer from Canada. Or, Death and the Penguin a quirky tale by Ukrainian author Andrei Kurkov.

I'm regarded as a boomer so these would fit either polar or recommended by another generation category.

>22 VivienneR: Thank you! Those are both excellent recs, and Death and the Penguin is in my local library system, but they also both sound a bit grim and with 2020/2021 already being difficult I'm rationing my intake of grim fiction. I've put them both on my list of possibles though because they do sound intriguing and I'd only heard of Split Tooth before.

Another boomer here. Recommending Michel Houellebecq's Submission (alternate history), J. G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur(history) and Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves (Southern Hemisphere).

>24 pamelad: Thank you for the recs! I'll have a look at them (my) tomorrow as it's past my bedtime here now. :-)

Welcome to the challenge. I would definitely fall under the class of "elder" so if I can be of any service, please give me a shout out. :)

Good luck with your 2021 reading!

>15 spiralsheep: Ha, of those two books, I would recommend The Blue Castle over Shadow of the Wind. I have a feeling that my rating of Shadow of the Wind was overly generous.

>26 DeltaQueen50: Thank you! Good to meet you.

>27 Tess_W: Thank you! Good luck to you too.

>28 rabbitprincess: Well, yes, but I've had more Spanish people rec me Zafon than Canadians rec me Montgomery, although clearly they're both respected popular authors in their own countries, and I can read them both with the library's help so.... I've also read over 150 books this year and, unfortunately, will probably have time to read the same next year so a few not-great-but-interesting books don't burn too much of my reading time, although I do wish Shadow of the Wind had fewer pages, lol, but I probably would have tried it before now if it was shorter. :-)

Welcome back!

>30 thornton37814: Ta!

>7 spiralsheep: >8 Jackie_K:

I'll 2nd Jackie's recommendation of Barry Lopez Arctic Dreams, and I'm a boomer, so you can count it as from another generation.

I like Andrea Barret's short fiction better than her novels. She's a good writer, but I thought Voyage of the narwhal dragged in places.

You’ve been getting some interesting sounding recommendations.

Good luck with your reading in 2021.

I'm a baby boomer. I recommend One Day the Ice Will Reveal All It's Dead aka Wegener's Jigsaw. It's set in Greenland and is a fictionalized biography of German meteorologist Alfred Wegener. He hypothesized the theory of continental drift.

>32 markon: Arctic Dreams is certainly a classic. I might even have read it, lol, although I don't specifically remember it. At one point I'd read all the Arctic and Antarctic books in my large local library. Thank you!

>33 hailelib: Thank you, and good luck to you too!

>34 VioletBramble: Ooo, Wegener's Jigsaw looks interesting. It's not in my local library system but I might be tempted to buy it because I'm secretly a nerdy geology fan. Thank you!

The Reading Globally group's theme for January to March 2021 is Notes from a Small Population: 40+ places with under 500,000 inhabitants.

Thread with recs: http://www.librarything.com/topic/327232

I'm planning to read Jamaica Kincaid's novel Annie John and her travel writing about New York collected in Talk Stories, which will also count for GeoKIT.

I might also read something by Merle Collins, either The Ladies are Upstairs or The Colour of Forgetting. ETA: Or Angel. /ETA

During January I'm also planning to read two of the recs people kindly suggested above. :-)

And possibly also To be Taught, if Fortunate by Becky Chambers for the SFFKIT. ETA, found on my To Read shelf: Mooncop, and Neverending Story which I bought because I've never read it and the German author fitted my 2020 European Union challenge. /ETA

Wow, your reading looks so organized!

I hope to participate in GeoKIT, too, and also with books that I already own!

>37 MissBrangwen: Let's hope the appearance of organisation lasts into 2021. :-)

I definitely want to reduce my To Read pile back under 99 books by 2022. I look forward to meeting you again in the GeoKIT threads.

I wasn't planning to read this at all but here I am three days early, which I'll count as a BingoDOG "Impulse read!". I blame temptress cindydavid4.

1/2021. I read the 1969 play A Tempest by Aime Cesaire that retells Shakespeare's Tempest, set on an island where the European colonial Prospero enforces slavery on a mulatto Ariel and a Black/indigenous Caliban. The text pushes beyond critiquing colonialism and into decolonisation. I read Richard Miller's 1985/1992 anglophone translation but wished I'd also had the original French for side by side comparison.

There are some interesting linguistic choices that aren't from Shakespeare, such as Prospero being "marooned" on the island, and the first scene very pointedly has people participating as players literally choosing their own characters: "You want Caliban? Well, that's revealing." "And there's no problem about the villains either: you, Antonio; you Alonso, perfect!" Caliban's first word is "Uhuru!" (Freedom!). Caliban rejects the slave name foisted on him by Prospero, and wants to be called "X" (like Malcolm, clearly). There's intertextual Baudelaire: "Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux,/ Et des femmes dont l'oeil par sa franchise étonne." And the play's intellectual coup de grâce is Prospero's choice of taunt at Caliban for not murdering him: "See, you're nothing but an animal... you don't know how to kill." Unlike Prospero and his fellow Europeans, Antonio and Sebastian, who have shown they know how to murder motivated by personal ambition.

In the end we find that Caliban has always been free in his own mind while Prospero continues to enslave himself to his desire for power over others.

ETA: Some context for Aime Cesaire's play The Tempest, published 1969, from Ryszard Kapuscinski's book Travels with Herodotus; a description of the Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Negres, Dakar, Senegal, 1963: "Theatrical performances abound in the streets and the squares. African theatre is not as formalistic as the European. A group of people can gather someplace extemporaneously and perform an impromptu play. There is no text; everything is the product of the moment, of the passing mood, of spontaneous imagination. The subject can be anything:" (my note: anything that is a shared story which can be improvised around, from daily life to texts such as Shakespeare's The Tempest to traditional oral myths and legends.) The subject matter must be simple, the language comprehensible to all." /para/ "Someone has an idea and volunteers to be director. He assigns roles and the play begins."

>40 This-n-That: Thank you! And I can assure you that I see every rec as a gift. In fact the next library book I'm aiming to read was recced to me in this thread. :-)

This sounds like a very interesting read! Great to see you started your challenge, too!

>42 MissBrangwen: I finished all my planned reads for December 2020. I had more reading time because of bad weather and my internet disappearing for five days. So I started on my January library books (aiming to finish two on 1 Jan), and then cindydavid4 tempted me with that retelling of a Shakespeare play....

And two more books are waiting for me at the library but one has 624 pages so that will slow me down!

Happy Gregorian rollover! We're still ice-bound here but the foxes, badgers, and birds have all been out and about in our garden. The all-year around weeds that I leave for bees etc are still flowering - Welsh poppy, corn marigold, groundsel, cats ear, hawkbit, and hawkweed - and a few very early spring primroses have decided to join them. All with bright yellow petals.

My first GeoKIT read and it's from an Antiguan-American author because why not? :-)

2/2021. Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid is a compilation of autobiographical essays taken from the New Yorker magazine's Talk of the Town section from 1974-83. Some are local gossip column style, some are sociology disguised as gossip, and some are travel writing disguised as sociological gossip. The first essay, which Jamaica Kincaid didn't expect to be printed without more editing, ends with an excellent carnival clowning joke referencing Malcolm X. The subsequent essays are more sedate, as one would expect from a marginalised writer trying to fit into the mainstream, but all of them are professionally written and retain more interest than might be imagined for pieces printed as 1970s gossip columns.

Quotes

Carnival clowning, 1974: "As Lord Kitchener said to me, 'accessibility is the key to success.' After that I had a large hunk of Shabazz Bean Pie. I say without reservation, this is the No.1 Third World dessert. In fact, every time I have some of it I think kindly of Mr Shabazz and everybody with an 'X' after his name."

Advice from editors, 1979, lol: "A fiction writer can write about anorexia nervosa, abortion, death, and homosexuality in hard-cover books for young adults but not in soft-cover books for young adults."

Lmao, 1981: "The other day, the people at the Ford Motor Company threw a cocktail party for Anne and Charlotte Ford at the new Palace Hotel. Almost all the guests there looked as though they never drove themselves anywhere or, if they did, they didn't actually have to."

The waning moon was so bright last night that it woke me when it shone on my face.

>19 scaifea: 3/2021. I read children's novel The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch (a splendid nom de plume!), which was "Suggested by a person from another generation" as a rec from scaifea's 12 year old son, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Firstly: DON'T read this book!

Secondly: I mean it!

{Still here?}

Okay, thirdly: don't say I didn't warn you!

Fourthly: The Name of this Book is Secret is a delightful metafictional adventure story about {name removed for safety reasons} and {name also removed for safety reasons} who get together because {reason removed for safety reasons} and have adventures such as {you don't actually expect me to tell you that, do you?}.

In conclusion: don't read this book even though I rated it as 4/5 because you might enjoy it but that won't do you any good if {conclusion removed for conclusive reasons}.

>45 spiralsheep: Love the review. Tempted to defy you and read it myself.

>46 Helenliz: Fifth warning: the book is part of a series so if you get hooked then you might be fished in for several books.

That's a fantastic review!!! :-)

>48 MissBrangwen: Thank you. I just copied the style of the book. It's a fun book. :-)

Ha! Great job on the review! I've read the whole series on Charlie's insistence, and the other books do hold up to the first. Definitely a hoot!

Happy new year, and thanks for visiting my thread!

>36 spiralsheep: - I really liked Annie John when I read it years ago...

Good review. Now I’m tempted to hunt down the book!

>50 scaifea: Thank you for the recs, and the kind compliment.

>51 katiekrug: Annie John is very well written.

>52 hailelib: So many disobedient readers! :D

There was a fresh fall of fluffy snow yesterday evening, which recovered the trees, shrubs, and thawed patches of ground, but by dawn it had mostly melted down to the persistent layer of ice underneath. At first light two magpies were picking at the food I'd put below the bench seat.

>10 LittleTaiko: 4/2021. I read The White Darkness by David Grann, which was recced to me by LittleTaiko for a GeoKIT Polar read. It's a well written short book of 143 pages, including many photos, about Antarctic walker Henry Worsley and his polar expeditions. I now understand what he did but I admit that despite having enjoyed winter mountaineering myself I still don't really understand why he persisted after his first success (apart from "Because it's there", and "What is Antarctica other than a blank canvas on which you seek to impose yourself?").

Quotes

Ernest Shackleton to his wife after having failed to reach the South Pole for the third time at the age of 42: "A live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn't it?" His wife said yes. He subsequently died on his fourth expedition to the Antarctic at the age of 47.

Henry Adams: "What is Antarctica other than a blank canvas on which you seek to impose yourself?"

You asked me about books about penguins - I have to admit to being very poorly read about them generally, but do check out penguin related books in children's sections in libraries and bookshops. I very much like Oliver James' picture books featuring them, plus Penguin Problems and 365 Penguins.
For a NF picture book about Shackleton, Shackleton's Journey is just a work of art if you can find a copy. I can't now find it on the shelves, which is very annoying.

>55 charl08: Thank you!

My local library system has 365 Penguins and Shackleton's Journey (and Wolves of Currumpaw by the same author). It also has two different PP books: Penguin Problems by Kathryn Lamb and Penguin Problems by Jory John. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the penguins now, with all these problems!

I could have sworn I had posted here, but I must have been lurking. Looking forward to following your reading.

>45 spiralsheep: LOVE this review!

>57 Crazymamie: I'm already getting confused by all the loooooong threads!

The review is very much in the style of the book. Kids get all the most fun metafiction.

>54 spiralsheep: - I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I don't quite understand the mindset of those who take on those massive challenges but I always find them intriguing to read about. I like my creature comforts way too much. :)

>54 spiralsheep: These are two very striking quotes! And it sounds like an interesting book.

>59 LittleTaiko: I think I understand why some people (not me, lol) want to be first to do x or push themselves with challenge y but months in the "red zone" of dangerous physical exertion is not something I'd personally choose as a challenge.

>60 MissBrangwen: I do love a good quote. And I can recommend the book to anyone looking for a short but satisfying polar read.

Another penguin book rec from MissBrangwen elsewhere:

Some Folk Think the South Pole's Hot by Elke Heidenreich.

I didn't want to double post and hoped that you would find it in the other thread :-)

>63 MissBrangwen: Found and noted! :-)

It's not about penguins per se, but I enjoyed Death and the Penguin. The sequel was less good.

ETA: Never mind. I just found the origin of this conversation and this book has already been mentioned (possibly more than once).

>45 spiralsheep: LOVE the review! I giggled.

>65 ELiz_M: I appreciate all personal recs. Repeats, and yours is my third rec for Death and the Penguin, just prove it's a good book! :-)

>66 pammab: The librarians will throw us out if we giggle too much! :D

When it's very cold the sky seems more transparent, probably due to less moisture in the air, and I've noticed the surface features on the moon are clearer.

5/2021. For SFFKIT's January "book you meant to read in 2020" challenge I read Mooncop by Tom Gauld. A short graphic novel about, unsurprisingly, a policeman on the moon. Tom Gauld is better known for his short cartoons but his style of understated minimalist storytelling expands well to book length. Who else could make me laugh aloud at, "I'm afraid that item is not in stock."? Or delight in moonbase buildings that look like mid 20th century furniture? And parks that look like Victorian glass dome displays? Or create an uplifting comic about the horrible feeling that your life is being dismantled around you?

4*

>68 spiralsheep: I love Tom Gauld so will definitely have to read Mooncop!

>69 rabbitprincess: My third bb victim of the day! It's a good choice though. Tom Gauld is a skilled storyteller and the moonbase buildings styled like retro furniture are genius: both startlingly surreal and yet as familiar as everyday objects.

The remaining ice melted out of the garden overnight, although there's at least hoar frost still visible up on the hilltops.

6/2021. I read Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, which is a bildungsroman (coming of age story) set in Antigua. It's well written and the descriptions are interesting enough to be a 4* read, but unfortunately I didn't find the protagonist personally engaging.

When describing language, the story doesn't distinguish between the familiarity of Leeward Islands Creole and Standard English but does mark out the unfamiliarity of the protagonist's mother's "French patois" from Dominica.

Both Jamaica Kincaid's non-fiction Talk Stories, which I read recently, and Annie John anticipate and revel in the potential anonymity of big city life compared to individual visibility on a small island.

And in Annie John the surrounding sea is ever present.

But I'll let the following quotes speak for the book.

Quotes

Swimming, or not: "My mother was a superior swimmer. When she plunged into the seawater, it was as if she had always lived there. She would go far out if it was safe to do so, and she could tell just by looking at the way the waves beat if it was safe to do so. She could tell if a shark was nearby, and she had never been stung by a jellyfish. I, on the other hand, could not swim at all. In fact, if I was in water up to my knees I was sure that I was drowning. My mother had tried everything to get me swimming, from using a coaxing method to just throwing me without a word into the water. Nothing worked. The only way I could go into the water was if I was on my mother’s back, my arms clasped tightly around her neck, and she would then swim around not too far from the shore. It was only then that I could forget how big the sea was, how far down the bottom could be, and how filled up it was with things that couldn’t understand a nice hallo. When we swam around in this way, I would think how much we were like the pictures of sea mammals I had seen, my mother and I, naked in the seawater, my mother sometimes singing to me a song in a French patois I did not yet understand, or sometimes not saying anything at all. I would place my ear against her neck, and it was as if I were listening to a giant shell, for all the sounds around me - the sea, the wind, the birds screeching - would seem as if they came from inside her, the way the sounds of the sea are in a seashell. Afterward, my mother would take me back to the shore, and I would lie there just beyond the farthest reach of a big wave and watch my mother as she swam and dove."

Abandoned lighthouse as panopticon: "The Red Girl and I walked to the top of the hill behind my house. At the top of the hill was an old lighthouse. It must have been a useful lighthouse at one time, but now it was just there for mothers to say to their children, “Don’t play at the lighthouse,” my own mother leading the chorus, I am sure. Whenever I did go to the lighthouse behind my mother’s back, I would have to gather up all my courage to go to the top, the height made me so dizzy. But now I marched boldly up behind the Red Girl as if at the top were my own room, with all my familiar comforts waiting for me. At the top, we stood on the balcony and looked out toward the sea. We could see some boats coming and going; we could see some children our own age coming home from games; we could see some sheep being driven home from pasture; we could see my father coming home from work."

I just watched a life-sized image of a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, white bones on black background, pass my front hedge (on the side of a lorry), which is definitely a rarer sighting than the usual birds in my front garden.

>72 spiralsheep: Makes you glad to be awake,eh?

>73 markon: I might just wander down past the farm in the valley to see if they've renamed themselves Jurassic Farm or something....

A sudden fresh covering of snow, but there's a blackbird determinedly working the lawn under the bench seat for food.

7/2021. I read To be Taught if Fortunate by Becky Chambers, which fits the January SFFKIT theme of books unread from 2020. While reading I also discovered it fits the BingoDOG square of characters with whom I'd like to be friends (Chikondi and Elena).

The beginning of this novella indicated that it wasn't written with people like me as the intended audience, which is fine and meant I could put the plot to one side and enjoy the author's typically well executed writing about relationships, whether human to human, human to other species, or human to our habitat, until the end of the book.

I'm assuming the ending was supposed to read as a triumph of hope over experience but to me it read as an attempt to justify abdication of self to the point of suicide and I was surprised Elena and Jack went along with what was presumably Ariadne's suggestion, especially after having seen her previously attempt suicide (but, as I observed earlier, I'm probably not the intended audience). It reminded me that when science fiction writers consult "experts" to assist with their "realism" they almost always mean scientists, and rarely to never mean psychologists or ethicists.

4*

Interesting comments - I did not read the spoilers because I have that one in the stacks. I loved the first two books in her Wayfarers series but have not yet read the third one.

I am jealous of your "sudden fresh covering of snow". Enjoy.

>76 Crazymamie: Don't read the spoilers!

I've read all three Wayfarers novels, and am looking forward to the 2021 fourth, and while they're all character driven the few plot spoilers all have major effects on the characters if not the plot. Despite realising that the storytelling of To be Taught is probably aimed at people younger than me, I enjoyed spending time with the characters and would recommend the novella.

Snow: my walk into town will be prettier but also foggier, lol, and anything less than last week's 100% ice-bound is a good result!

I promise not to read the spoilers. I'm sure I will read the novella at some point.

I love fog because it always feels like magic to me. Unless I have to drive in it, and then it is not so magical. Heh. I agree that anything less than 100% ice-bound is good!

>78 Crazymamie: You should move here. Between fog coming up and cloud coming down you'd be in mysterious magic heaven often. :-)

I would love that.

>75 spiralsheep: It reminded me that when science fiction writers consult "experts" to assist with their "realism" they almost always mean scientists, and rarely to never mean psychologists or ethicists.

Good point.

Now I'm going to have to read the ending again, because while I retain a favorable impression overall, I don't remember the decision clearly.

>81 markon: Eep. Don't let me ruin the story for you!

No obligation to read the following, obviously.

I think the reactions of the four characters to their situation would have made it difficult to reach enough of a consensus to override their mission plan. My readings of the characters at the end (to be taken with a pinch of salt)....

Ariadne had already demonstrated her notable impulse towards self-destruction in the void of space so choosing probable death in torpor seems characteristic.

I found it difficult to believe anything in the story we were told (by Ariadne, who seems presented as a reliable narrator) would persuade Elena to abandon their mission to return to Earth and also fail to deliver the scientific reports they couldn't transmit (theirs and Lawki 5 too!).

Jack would presumably have wanted to impulsively travel onwards to another new system "because it's there" without a second thought for their mission or reports but I also think he'd at least listen to Elena if she argued strongly in favour of maintaining the original mission plan because he did seem to me to have some sense of duty and team spirit under his impulses.

Chikondi might still have been suffering from shock and self-doubt enough to accept or even desire self-abnegation through probable death in torpor, and would almost certainly have vetoed travelling onwards without a new mission plan from Earth (and possibly even with that impetus), but again I saw no indication that he lacked a sense of duty to the original mission.

The reason implied for the necessity of blue skies scientific exploration, despite the immediate threat of climate change, was wholly correct though: solar flares, but also preventable or at least predictable impact events, etc. So I'm not disagreeing with that as the "moral" of the story.

(Lastly, I'm assuming it goes without saying that Ursula Le Guin's interest in professional level anthropology was one of the factors that made her work an exception to many previously established norms of science fiction.)

So relieved all the spoiler tags worked!

Wow, you read the next one already! Looks like your first reading week of the year has been really good!

We had a little bit of snowy rain this afternoon, but that was the only thing coming anything close to winter this year so far!

We've had stay indoors weather here ( -1C or less air temperature ), in addition to the pandemic, and I haven't read that many words:

(1. Play read 2020.)
2. Finished book of essays from Dec 2020.
3. Children's novel.
4. 140 page non-fiction including photos.
5. Short graphic novel. (Read twice! :D )
6. 145 page novel(la).
7. 135 page novel(la).
(8. Another book-length comic just finished.)

I collected a 626 page book from the library today so that will slow me down as, even at top speed, that's four to six days. :-)

>82 spiralsheep: I'm hoping she has a new one out soonish, such a great writer.

>85 spiralsheep: Haha, I see :-) That‘s part of why I don‘t like numbers as reading goals, it doesn‘t do justice at all to the kind of books you read. Even if you do pages it‘s not really fair due to font size, printing etc.
A few years ago I took the numbers game really seriously until I realized that it made me favour just the shortest of books and I postponed fat books that I really wanted to read just because I wanted to meet my number for the month. It really took the joy out of reading (that was when I had a bookish instagram account).

But on the other hand it‘s great to read a few short books to get into the flow! :-) I‘m doing a similar thing this month, I haven‘t planned on any really long stories, just to get a good start and stay motivated.

>86 charl08: Here's hoping! Publishing schedules have been altered due to the pandemic but not for most potential bestsellers so The Galaxy, and the Ground Within: Wayfarers 4 by Becky Chambers should be released in the UK on or around 18 February 2021. I don't usually buy hardbacks though as I read everywhere and find big books unwieldy so I might wait for a library copy or a paperback.

>87 MissBrangwen: I agree about chasing numbers and ticking boxes, or taking any goal too seriously, sucking the pleasure out of many leisure pursuits. I could never take number goals seriously in reading because of the larger font sizes in popular novels compared to academic non-fiction, and my library has many large print books for people who need them too so I would gain an inflated page total. Even word counts don't show the difference between a wordless graphic novel such as The Arrival, the words in "the cat sat on the mat", and "abstruse sesquipedalianism". ;-)

It's good to relax and enjoy!

Oookay... not sure what's going on around here but I just watched a larger than life-sized image of a herd of zebras, white shapes on black background, pass my front hedge (on the side of a lorry).

And while I'm here, my weather report: the ground temperature has dropped to match the air temperature and everything's been coated with sparkling white hoar frost, even in the sun at midday.

>75 spiralsheep: I've enjoyed all the Wayfarers books and I really liked seeing your thoughts on the ending. I expect that I'm part of the "typical" audience for these books. I get caught up in the descriptions of the spaceships and aliens and don't think too critically about the psychological aspects. :) Anyhow, I found your analysis interesting. When I'd read the book last year, the part that I recall liking best was the authors' depiction of the joys of scientific discovery, as that resonated with my own experiences.

>91 mathgirl40: I love the Wayfarers series and already have the unpublished number 4 on hold at the library. I especially love the enthusiasm for exploration of all kinds, from outer space to inner self. Writing effective character driven fiction must be much more difficult than plot driven fiction and I respect any author, such as Becky Chambers, who can make it work.

8/2021. I read a collection of Tom Gauld's single page newspaper and magazine cartoons, You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, which is clever and witty and frequently made me laugh aloud. 5*

--------

Hoar frost turned to light snow during the night before last, and then the remaining patches of snow became ice last night. One of the male blackbirds is already aggressively territorial about the front lawn where I feed the birds and he's not only fighting other male blackbirds but even chasing off much smaller birds he'd usually ignore. The dunnocks and robins just retire into the beech hedge and return as soon as the blackbird is patrolling elsewhere.

ETA: The fog, which I'd assumed was melting ice, has cleared off the hills and revealed them covered with new hoar frost. There's a clear altitude line where the tree trunks are green but the tops are white, and everything above that is white. /ETA

>75 spiralsheep: >82 spiralsheep: Like markon, I read To Be Taught, If Fortunate and came away with a satisfied sense but didn't remember sufficient details to make sense of your initial review -- but the second helped bring it to mind. I see exactly what you're saying now, and I think I agree. Though I did take the ending less as abdication of self and much more as authorially trying one more time to hit on the idea of there being many motivations and the challenge of keeping them all on track.

I liked it, but not as much as A Closed and Common Orbit or Record of a Spaceborn Few. Each of her books is very different in theme.

Also, interesting reflection on Le Guin standing the test of time and deviating because of her engagement in anthropology. I'm in the midst of The Lathe of Heaven now, and I quite like it, though I keep trying to read it as a metaphor for... something. It's very, very different than any other Le Guin I've read, and now that you mention it, I do see a strong anthropology-first angle.

>94 pammab: The fact all three of Becky Chambers' full length novels have averaged over 4* on LT speaks for itself. I especially enjoyed the first two but I thought Record of a Spaceborn Few was cleverer because it functioned as a novel but also as a commentary on contemporary readers' expectations of space opera genre novels: examining assumptions about the roles of the Protagonist and the Hero.

I love Lathe of Heaven, and it's definitely in my top five Le Guin fiction books, but I've never tried to interpret it. I know this is probably an unpopular opinion but I tend to think Le Guin is at her absolute best in short stories: The Birthday of the World, and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, and her novel length suite of four stories Four Ways to Forgiveness. I don't undervalue Lathe of Heaven or the Dispossessed though, and of course her essays have also been influential.

The only reason I didn't dnf the following book was to check if it contained anything not easily available in similar but better books. It doesn't. I've listed a choice of books to read instead, which have more interesting content and style, in the last paragraph of this post (so it's possible to skip down).

Warning for non-graphic mention of murder, slavery, racism, and rape.

10/2021. I found Barefoot through Mauritania, 1936, by Odette du Puigaudeau remaindered for £2-50 so I bought it without researching it first, assuming it would be the usual mix of travel, autobiography, curiosity, colonialism, period racism, tall tales, and self-aggrandising fibs published in popular adventure books of the time. Unfortunately it was so much worse than that.

The author was in favour of slavery, and continued to claim into the 1970s that pale skinned people should be allowed to enslave darker skinned people.

The usual excuses would be difficult to apply to du Puigaudeau as France officially abolished slavery in 1848 so she actively chose to be more evil than her society, even after casually mentioning some of the murderous violence of slavery in her book.

She obsequiously describes the slaveowners she chooses to suck-up to while mostly failing to record the lives of enslaved people she meets, whose labour she relies on for her survival, but she does casually mention that enslaved women were customarily raped by any passing higher caste men and that the resulting babies were more often murdered by slaveowners than the alternative horror of being allowed to survive until childhood then sold away from their mothers for profit.

Her intended journey by camel through Mauritania ends halfway because du Puigaudeau had a carbuncle on her bum and a septic thorn in her thumb and couldn't cope, but at least she wasn't enslaved and repeatedly raped and her babies murdered which would have been acceptable according to du Puigaudeau if her skin tanned darker.

/end warning

If you decide you'd rather read a superior book then similar journeys described by less terrible people include ‪The Lost Oases by Ahmed Mohammed Hassanein‬, also books by Isabella Bird, or Rosita Forbes, or Freya Stark. Or there's the 2016 novel The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, who is Mauritanian, which is available in either English or French.

Sounds like she deserved that carbuncle!

Thank you for pointing out alternative reads.

>97 MissBrangwen: I wouldn't laugh at a septic thumb because that could become a serious problem... but her having to ride a camel for many hours with a boil on her bum is hilarious!

Aren't most LT talkers here for the book recs? :-)

Meanwhile I've been recalling Clive James' poem The Book of my Enemy has been Remaindered.

"Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad."

https://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyenemy.html

>96 spiralsheep: Added The Desert and the Drum to my to-read list!

>99 rabbitprincess: I'll give everybody one guess which book appeared with my mail today. :-)

>88 spiralsheep: I've bought more hardback in lockdown, partly because I have nowhere to take the books! My library is still doing reservations (kerbside pickup) though, so maybe they will find a copy for me.

>96 spiralsheep: Does not appeal. Thanks for the review though.

>101 charl08: I foolishly failed to remove my donations to a charity shop between lockdowns and now have two moving boxes full of books squatting in the corner of my living room.

I've definitely bought, and read, more books in lockdown. I prefer paperbacks though as I find hardbacks less portable, and I read everywhere. I'm reading a 600 pager from the library and it's both heavy and unwieldy although my wrists haven't given out yet.

My local library system is doing click and collect with free reservations, which helps. I managed to be second in the queue for Becky Chambers' next novel. \o/

I wanted to like Barefoot through Mauritania, and the author (probably lgbt), but I have boundaries and advocating in favour of slavery is a NO.

The dove-grey wood pigeon feeding by our beech hedge looked almost blue in the early light.

11/2021. I read The border : a journey around Russia through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northwest Passage, by Erika Fatland in the 2020 English translation.

I didn't enjoy this as much as the author's previous travel book Sovietistan because The Border concentrated on military history along a line on the map, while Sovietistan expanded more on the inhabitants of the places visited and their differing societies. The Border also covered more territory with which I already had basic familiarity, so it had less to offer me personally as a reader. Both books are equally well written and translated. 3.5*

Quotes

Favourite sentence: "He was arrested in 1930, accused of having established a counter-revolutionary organisation of agricultural specialists."

Drunken pensioners on a day trip: "The radio was on for the whole journey, but no-one seemed to be listening until the entire boat broke out in a rapturous roar. I realised it must be something to do with ice hockey, because only brutal skating sports can trigger that kind of emotional response in Finland." (...) "Felted Viking helmet hats were produced from the depths of shopping bags and donned in sheer delight."

Finnish crime boss: "In 2015, Santa Claus in Rovaniemi was forced to file for bankruptcy as he owed millions in tax"

Nearly twice the size of the USA or China: "There is only one country between Norway and North Korea"

If you're still seeking Arctic/penguin recs, I really appreciated Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories last year. A quick read and very interesting. And of course there's the classic And Tango Makes Three. Not remembering that title, I did a search for "gay penguins" and find there's lots and lots of instances in zoos around the world.

>104 justchris: Thank you for the recs!

And, yeah, both same-sex pairings for rearing offspring and same-sex sexual activity are not at all uncommon amongst living creatures. Although my favourite beasties are slime molds with 720+ sexes which are all inter-compatible.

12/2021. I read the second collection of Tom Gauld's single page newspaper and magazine cartoons. I prefer his first and third collections but Baking with Kafka has plenty of Gauld's clever wit and made me laugh aloud. 4*

I find reading a book with short pieces I can dip into helps me get through longer texts such as the 584 page The Border : a journey around Russia which I was reading at the same time.

>103 spiralsheep: I agree: From what you have described, Sovietistan looks like a more interesting read. The Norway/North Korea quote blew me away!

>106 spiralsheep: That is one of my reading strategies as well. I like to have a book of short stories that I can choose from when I don‘t feel like my current read.

>107 MissBrangwen: For anyone who has a basic knowledge of northern and middle/eastern European history then Sovietistan would probably be a more interesting read. The Norway - Russia - North Korea connection is amazing, yes. I thought Fatland was showing her Norwegian prejudices about the Finns though.

It seems that avid readers often use a second book strategy.

>108 spiralsheep: WRT reading strategies, I'm not a short story lover, but I do generally have one audio book and one ebook going at the same time, and switch between them when I need a change.

>108 spiralsheep: My bad, I didn't notice that. I just had another look at the map.

>110 MissBrangwen: You were correct about the geography the first time: Norway - Russia - North Korea.

I should have split my paragraph, sorry.

My comment about Fatland's attitude to the Finns was based on her comment about the drunken pensioner sports fans: "The radio was on for the whole journey, but no-one seemed to be listening until the entire boat broke out in a rapturous roar. I realised it must be something to do with ice hockey, because only brutal skating sports can trigger that kind of emotional response in Finland."

>109 majkia: That sounds sensible. I'm also not generally a fan of short stories as I prefer more detailed and immersive fiction, so I tend to use poetry and comics to intersperse in slower reads.

I wonder if the brain takes in and stores visual and audible information differently or similarly. I used to listen to the BBC Radio 4 (talk) every day but my ageing hearing means my brain prefers sound with visual cues now, so reading is easier for me than listening.

>111 spiralsheep: Ah, I see! Thank you for explaining.

Grim day, cold and cloudy, so my usual walk over the hills became a partial run to keep warm.

13/2021. I read Mischief Diary, which is a Kuwaiti book of anecdotal short stories "based on real events" and told in the first person by one Nada Faris. The anecdotes appear to have been written separately and don't attempt to form a coherent whole.

The first seventy pages tell stories of a young girl aged 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 12, 12, and 13, and are mostly set at private schools. The Nada character is self-willed and, by my cultural standards although not by her own, a spoilt brat. The first three stories (4, 7, & 9 years old) are dedicated to recounting incidents which would have turned out better if the child protagonist had received better guidance from parents, teachers, and other adults around her. The next two (10 & 12 years old) admit her own self-responsibility and lack thereof. The next (12) demonstrates how conformity and a failure to justly rebel against authority can also have negative results, and is a subtle critique of people who allow themselves to be manipulated by the misuse of religion (and, of course, those who do the manipulating). The next (12) is about the boundaries of friendship. The last in this section (13) is, somewhat surprisingly, about professional boundaries, and like the earliest three stories is as much a guide for future adults as a story for young girls.

The next fifty-five pages are about an adult in her twenties and working but unmarried and living with her parents: 23+ x 7 stories. They cover adult children's relationships with their parents, and adult friendships. There were two especially culturally telling stories: one that was supposed to be revealing about Kuwaiti attitudes to women's sport, yikes, and one that probably wasn't supposed to confirm prevalent stereotypes about Kuwaiti drivers, lol. These texts include brief interspersions of Kuwaiti/Gulf Arabic in phonetic Latin letters, like real conversations amongst educated Kuwaitis, which are understandable from context without translation.

I found reading these stories, presumably aimed at young adult Kuwaiti readers, a mixed experience. My favourite aspect was that this is an ethics-centred book, a mutant hybrid of a bratty girl's diary and one of those life instruction manuals aimed at young ladies. My least favourite aspect was the obliviousness of a wealthy young woman offering little perspective on her own privileged place in her society. 3*

Filled the BingoDOG "Shared with 20 or fewer LT members" challenge as I'm the only LT member who has this book.

The hills are in post-ice winter drab, but dulled colours bring out the naked purple birch tops, and vivid green moss growing where grass has died back.

14/2021. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson is an influential bestselling 1991 British children's novel about a young girl in a children's home. It became the first part of a series and was subsequently adapted for television. Wilson was later children's laureate in the UK for two years. I was too old for this book when it was first published and my friends' kids were too young for the initial Tracy Beaker fandom but it's remains popular and further novels in the series, now featuring Tracy as a mum, are still being released. The Story of Tracy Beaker received a further massive publicity boost in the British media this week, followed by a tsunami of online nostalgia, and I ended up persuaded to read the book with some kids. It's not my type of story but it's well-written, apart from the abrupt ending, and I can imagine the appeal for others. I'm glad it encourages young people to read and to think positively of reading as recreation. 3*

My favourite phrase: "put an entire shoal of fish fingers under the double grill".

GeoKIT: Europe.
BingoDOG: about a marginalised group.

>115 spiralsheep: That phrase is priceless. Thanks for the giggle!

>116 MissWatson: I do like a good quote. :-)

Rain. Wind. Rain. Probably flooding, but not on my doorstep.

15/2021. I read The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria, an autobiographical account of a girl growing up in Tacoma, USA, and amongst settled Bedouin in Qatar, with camping trips in the Saudi desert and university in Cairo. The author's self-protagonist is neither heroine nor villain, although she does choose to emphasise her roles as an outsider. The prose is readable, and the content is interesting. These aren't the usual published perspectives on life in any of these societies. Although I was left wondering about the status of the Bedouin family's maid, who is mentioned once by name as a cook and then never referred to again. On the whole, a satisfying read. 4*

Quotes

On flying out of Qatar: "She folded the hijab up and slipped it into her seat pocket with the barf bag and escape instructions."

Generation gap: "At ten years old I had played Oregon Trail on a computer, shooting squirrels with pixel bullets and getting virtual dysentery on a wagon train. My father, at ten, was on an actual epic trek, hunting with an actual falcon and risking very real tuberculosis while riding in a bona fide camel caravan."

BingoDOG: "Book with a classical element in the title"
GeoKIT: Asia

I woke up to more snow/ice but strong morning sun is melting it away drip by drop.

16/2021. I read The Desert and the Drum by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, set in Mauritania, which is about a young, high caste, Bedouin woman, Rayhana, who becomes disillusioned with her nomadic tribe, and their traditions, and leaves alone for the unknown in a nearby city to search for her only urban social contact, her mother's escaped slave (note: slavery is illegal in Mauritania but some high caste Arabs and Bedouin still hold lower caste and generally darker-skinned people as slaves), and her child born outside marriage, stealing her tribe's sacred drum as vengeance on her way out. Anyone who knows how hostile societies can be to an inexperienced woman without a back-up network will understand that the protagonist's life isn't likely to improve under these circumstances.

Before reading, I had qualms about a middle aged man from a traditionally gender-segregated society writing in the first person from the point of view of a teenage girl but the author is either keenly imaginatively empathetic or has spent a significant amount of time actually listening to young women or both, perhaps due to his experience as a journalist. I found the protagonist and her reactions realistic, complete with her youthful tendency to self-dramatise and her limited perspective on life because of her sheltered upbringing. The text doesn't shy away from depicting Mauritania's caste system, including illegal slavery, or mentioning other systemic problems such as corruption, although this brutal honesty is balanced by the humane decency of a few individual characters. However, anyone expecting an unlikely happy ending will be disappointed.

I won't spoiler the ending, because this is one of those rare stories that I think truly deserves to be read along with the protagonist as a journey into the unknown, but I will mention that the whole book works as both a contemporary style novel and a nuanced political allegory, and anyone who thinks the point of the story is that the high caste protagonist should have stayed at home without straying needs to ask themselves how any of the high caste women anywhere in this scenario would survive if their slaves escaped to live their own lives, for themselves, and their high caste dependents had to actually work for their own keep.

The prose is simple but effective, and Rachel McGill's translation seems sympathetic to Mbarek Ould Beyrouk's original.

I also love the cover art by ReeM Al-Rawi (and you can find more on her website).

5*

Quotes

"I didn't sleep that night. I worried about what the next day might have in store, in this city I'd been told was merciless, where life could slap you down and no one would even bother to look. I was afraid of what might befall me in such an enormous camp of stone and cement, where nothing was quiet yet nothing ever spoke to me. I trembled to think that my lost love could be hidden somewhere in this chaos of soulless dwellings and lives, that the sneers of heartless city people might have wiped away his smile."

BingoDOG: a book I heartily recommend (for discerning readers)
GeoKIT: Africa

Snow of the fun powdery type. My neighbour cleared all our individual and shared paths. I cleared the grass under the wooden bench and scattered some bird food. The lone magpie caught on first, swiftly followed by an observant wood pigeon, then the jackdaw air force arrived but as usual the jackdaws wasted energy asserting their flock pecking order before eating (this presumably means they're already well-fed).

17/2021. I read The Lord Sorcier by Olivia Atwater, which is a freebie prequel novella to Atwater's Regency Faerie Tales series and was drawn to my attention by christina_reads (thank you!).

One of the reasons I read very little "historical" fiction is because much of it fails to give even a passing nod to historical realism, and this is exactly why "historical" fantasy tends to appeal to me: throw any semblance of authenticity in the bin and bring on the magic! This novella, for example, reads more like a simplistic version of Discworld than a Napoleonic war novel and that's fine by me.

Quotes

Brexit, lol: “It is not so strange for human beings to search for an easy villain to blame for all their troubles,” Albert told him. “We often lie to ourselves every bit as much as we lie to each other, in order to feel some comfort in hard times.” He paused. “Do not mistake me — the French are a danger to everything we hold dear. But their defeat will not solve every English woe overnight.”

Extremely brexit: “I asked why the workhouses were so terrible, Mr Lowe,” he said. “I was told that it was all to do with the taxes, and the war, and the evil French behind it all. But even if I killed the Lord Sorcier himself tomorrow, none of it would change, would it? The French are not evil. That was a lie. I am not sure that I can see the point in all of this now.”

But is he seedy: "Lord Carroway's son".

Actual quality of the novella: 3*
Amount I enjoyed reading it: 3.5*

BingoDOG: Book with or about magic

Very poignant quotes, indeed!

>121 MissBrangwen: There's always an "other" we're told to hate.

>120 spiralsheep: Glad you enjoyed the Atwater!

>123 christina_reads: I did, thank you, and I'm looking forward to reading her Half a Soul too.

18/2021. I read Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski, which is a travel book describing how his reading of ancient Greek author Herodotus influenced Kapuscinski's perceptions and writing as a journalist. I've read plenty of travel writing and journalism by foreign correspondents but this book made me think and even provoked one entirely fresh perspective. Sometimes it's useful for journalists and historians to ask questions for curiosity's sake without necessarily expecting those questions to be fully answerable. 4*

The copy I read is a Penguin paperback kindly gifted to my local library system by the Polish embassy, and two Polish arts organisations, in a thoughtful diplomatic gesture. So I laughed when I saw the first pages included a map of Herodotus' world which, of course, includes neither Poland nor the UK, lol.

Quotes

On border walls, written before 2007: "That is how the world’s energy is wasted. In complete irrationality! Complete futility! For the Great Wall — and it is gigantic, a wall-fortress, stretching for thousands of kilometres through uninhabited mountains and wilderness, an object of pride and, as I have mentioned, one of the wonders of the world — is also proof of a kind of human weakness, of an aberration, of a horrifying mistake; it is evidence of a historical inability of people in this part of the planet to communicate, to confer and jointly determine how best to deploy enormous reserves of human energy and intellect."

On war: "In the realm of human affairs, admittedly, one also needs a pretext. It is important to give it the rank of a universal imperative or of a divine commandment. The range of choices is not great: either it is that we must defend ourselves, or that we have an obligation to help others, or that we are fulfilling heaven’s will. The optimal pretext would link all three of these motives. The attackers should appear in the glory of the anointed, in the role of those who have found favour in his chosen god’s eye."

In conclusion: "The past does not exist. There are only infinite renderings of it."

BingoDOG: set somewhere you’d like to visit (the inside of Ryszard Kapuscinski's head!)
GeoKIT: Europe

Again, you have provided us with some striking quotes!

May I ask which travel writers or journalists/foreign correspondents you like best?

>126 MissBrangwen: Kapuscinski is very quotable.

It's difficult to choose favourite travel writers and foreign correspondents because they aim at such a wide range of goals. Travel writing can cover anything from a solo adventure, to an attempt to live like one of the local people, to luxury tours. Some journalists are good at explaining politics, some economics, some society, some culture/history, but for deep analysis a reader usually needs to choose a specialist in one subject and/or one place.

Can I claim my cousin is my favourite foreign correspondent? Because I do like him, lol. :D

Apart from that I'd probably choose individual works rather than writers, although respected professionals such as Ryszard Kapuscinski have usually earned that respect over a lifetime.

The most recent travel book I especially enjoyed was Sovietistan by Erika Fatland. The travel books that originally hooked me as a teenager in the 1980s were probably by Dervla Murphy. I've always preferred travel books about people and cultures, but I liked more adventure thrown in when I was a teen and I like more social/historical context now.

Do you have favourites?

>125 spiralsheep: This is one of my very favorite books! I also really liked his The Shadow of the Sun. I love travel writing and am currently reading The Snow Leopard, which is very good so far.

>128 Crazymamie: If Ryszard Kapuscinski has ever written a book that isn't worth reading then it definitely wasn't any of those translated into English!

I recall reading a travel book in the 1980s about searching for snow leopards so it must've been Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard but I don't remember a single thing about it. No, wait, laying still on the side of a hill/mountain and catching a glimpse of the beastie, but that could be from any book, lol. The cover is familiar though. I hope you enjoy it.

>127 spiralsheep: I don't really, that is why I have asked, haha :-) I haven't read a lot of travel writing so far, just scratched the surface reading obvious ones like Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson (both not my favorites). There are a few German publishers series on travel that I like, with books published for a specific country, region or city by an author who is a local or has another connection to the place. Apart from that I've read a few German standalones, I liked some of them and didn't like others.

I will definitely check out Kapuscinski, though! I have never heard of him before.

How fascinating about your cousin!

>130 MissBrangwen: I was obsessed with travel books when I was a teen. I must've read a significant proportion of the generous selection in my local library. My journalist cousin, who is over a decade older than me, fuelled my wanderlust with his exciting tales from around the world.

I think you'd enjoy Kapuscinski's thoughtfulness.

Note for myself: I've just been looking at Dervla Murphy's books and I suspect I especially enjoyed her writing about travelling with her daughter, so Where the Indus is Young, Eight Feet in the Andes, Muddling through in Madagascar, and Cameroon with Egbert. I'm tempted to put a couple of them on my re-read list for 2022. Or the new to me The Island that Dared with her daughter and grandchildren.

Great reviews! You are very convincing and are not helping my TBR agenda.

>132 justchris: It's joyful to meet people with similar tastes in books but also potentially expensive and time-consuming. :D

And now I've discovered elsewhere that you also very much enjoyed A Civil Campaign, ha!

I was woken in the night by a very large chunk of ice/frozen snow sliding juddering down the tiled roof immediately above my bedroom.

19/2021. I read Spell on Wheels Volume 2: Just to Get to You, by Kate Leth and Megan Levens, published 2020, which is a fantasy comic set in contemporary USA about three young women witches, each with a specific power, on a road trip. 3.5*

It's over three years the first volume was published and I didn't re-read so some of the ongoing character development went whooshing above my head.

BingoDOG: Book by two or more authors
GeoKIT: North America (I wouldn't usually count fantasy fiction but this is about a road trip across the USA)

>125 spiralsheep: I love Herodotus, so maybe I should give this one a try...
Thanks for the great review!

>135 scaifea: Basically if you have any interest in a brilliant popular journalist's ideas about the sociology of knowledge with especial attention on reflexivity, illustrated with examples from Herodotus, then you should probably read this, and it's a small but perfectly formed 275 pages because there are no academic notes. The translation is mostly smooth too, and I only noticed one ambiguity (which just made space for readers' own interpretations - I thought of three likely possibilities - and conclusions).

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts if you do read Travels with Herodotus. You'll probably have a few nitpicks with Kapuscinski's presentation of historical detail but one could say much the same about Herodotus.... ;-)

>136 spiralsheep: If one *didn't* say much the same about Herodotus, there's something wrong with...one...

Thanks - definitely adding it to my list now!

>137 scaifea: I've definitely taken to the idea of Herodotus being historian-as-tabloid-journalist, lol, and Kapuscinski has always wanted to be understood as a journalist-spy; so they seem at least as good a match as Herodotus is with the attitudes and professional practises most modern (or post-modern) historians and classicists.

You're welcome. Enjoy!

>138 spiralsheep: I even assign some of Herodotus in my myth class, and I love the student responses; at first, they say "Why are we reading an historian?!" which then changed to, "THIS is HISTORY?!" So many great discussions from that.

>139 scaifea: Your students can cry me a river. I'm old enough to remember when the only route into classics for someone like me went via TWO YEARS of Caesar's Gallic Wars, which has more bullshit than Herodotus and a lot less entertainment value. Probably less educational about life too.

"So many great discussions from that."

Talking about reflexivity, without necessarily using that word, is such a good way to open up empathy with Other perspectives, whether distant in time or culture.

And, yes, East versus West, is the history that never, alas, gets old.

Caesar's Gallic Wars, which has more bullshit than Herodotus and a lot less entertainment value

Careful, those are fighting words around this Caesar-loving Latinist...

>141 scaifea: Well, I stand by my assessment about Gallic Wars including more bullshit and less entertainment value than Herodotus, but in on the plus side the text is in exemplary Latin and it's also the classical study in wartime propaganda. More importantly, reading Gallic Wars meant I got all the in-jokes in Asterix. ;-)

I went rubbish collecting on the hills between snows, but after the sledders so the sheep won't eat their trash and die, and as my reward for keeping my eyes on the ground instead of the views I found a handful of nineteenth century pipe clays. Good to feel connected with the shepherds.

20/2021. I read The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farouk, which is a children's novel (about 8-10 imo) set in a pre-colonial Sri Lankan kingdom (I think it's a somewhat alternative history medieval Sri Lanka with an idealistic amount of multicultural harmony and a vague nod towards Liluvati). The protagonist is a young Buddhist girl who tries her hand at some redistribution of wealth by thieving from the rich to give to the poor. Unfortunately, having worked her way up to stealing from the royal family, she manages to accidentally get her best friend, a young boy, sentenced to death. A prison break, elephant theft, and the invaluable assistance of their new acquaintance, a young Muslim girl, ensue. The ending is unlikely but sweet. 3*

How did Sri Lankans measure time before wristwatches, I wonder: "Let's give her five minutes." "Fine, Just five. And counting."

What sports did Sri Lankans play before cricket (not baseball, I suspect): "The Princess is right to cover all bases."
Hmm: "Our task is to meet your people and get them onside."
Too many businespeak idioms imo: "All you need to do is help get your people on board."

Rolling in her grave? No: "Your poor late mother must be squirming in her ashes."

BingoDOG: Set in or author from the Southern Hemisphere
GeoKIT: Asia

What a great find!
And I'm happy to report that for once, we had some snow, too! About 10cm. I cannot remember the last time we've had so much snow, it must be years.

The Girl Who Stole An Elephant sounds like a great story, but I agree that that the expressions you quoted don't really fit.

>144 MissBrangwen: Victorian pipe clays aren't uncommon around here. The shepherds must have smoked and smoked and smoked! The older clays are much rarer here but I've found them elsewhere.

Congratulations on your snow! I hope it's the pretty kind that stays white until it magically disappears overnight, with no trouble. We've been lucky this year, apart from one icy period, as all our snow has been the fun kind. The sky is giving us a new covering today. It's very windy so the fat flakes are swirling picturesquely, like in a sentimental winter movie, lol.

The Girl Who Stole an Elephant is a first novel so the author gets a second chance from me, but the out of place/time idioms were distracting to me.

>145 spiralsheep: That's so cool! It must be great to find something old like this. I didn't know there were so many to be found in certain areas.

I don't know yet, but so far we are just happy that the snow has stayed over night and looks like it might be there for a few days. We are planning to do a longer walk tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it!
And yes, yesterday I felt like being in such a movie, too - rather Christmassy, although it's the end of January! ;-)

>146 MissBrangwen: The oldest objects I've found are Mesolithic flints, if we don't count fossils or geology. Flints are easy to spot here because there's no natural flint or chert.

Enjoy your walk!

>143 spiralsheep: Ooh, lovely finds!
And yeah, those dialogue anachronisms are very jarring.

>144 MissBrangwen: Lovely snow! We're getting more snow right now too! Snowshoes tomorrow!

>147 spiralsheep: Ooh, flints! Also nice finds! I'm not observant enough to find such nice things.

Love your thread and reviews! Lots of really interesting thoughts here. :) I especially like >114 spiralsheep: Mischief Diary and >118 spiralsheep: The Girl Who Fell to Earth. Lots to be drawn into -- including an image search for Victorian pipes, heh heh heh.

>148 justchris: I guess kids won't notice the oddness of the businesport language but I'd put money on at least one smart 8-10 year old in any classroom noticing the anachronistic measuring of time in minutes.

Our snow only settled on the hilltops. The lower ground is too saturated with water to freeze, even at constant minus C temperatures.

The Mesolithic flints are tiny but they stand out from the local native geology here.

>149 pammab: Thank you!

I can recommend The Girl Who Fell to Earth. I honestly don't think I'd previously read a book or seen a film about any urban place in Washington other than Seattle and Spokane. And honest accounts of urbanised Bedouin settled in the Arabian Peninsula are rare in English.

For anyone wondering what an average pipe clay looks like, they're basically 150 year old cigarette butts, lol:

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/493224

21/2021. I read Tropical Fish : Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana, which is a suite of short stories revolving around a Banyankole family of three young women growing up in Entebbe in Uganda in the 1980s. This book has all the usual middle class Middle Africa stories but better written than average: childhood nostalgia for grand/parents' material possessions, boarding school, university, emigration, and return. It also has the inevitable AIDS story but from a young female and very middle class point of view. All the stories are told from an individualist perspective, with only a limited sense of family or community life. Intelligent, interesting, and very much of its time / place / class. 4*

BingoDOG: Author you haven’t read before
GeoKIT: Africa

22/2021. I read Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld, which is a collection of his single-page comics mostly published in New Scientist magazine. It probably goes without saying that I laughed aloud. 5*

BingoDOG: Book with title that describes you (sorry, but the "Department of" is an old in-joke and my friends' kids have been calling me something similar for decades, lol)

>152 spiralsheep: I have never read a "usual middle class Middle Africa story" - would you say that this is a good place to start or do you recommendation anything else?

>153 spiralsheep: That's a great use of that square!

>154 MissBrangwen: I think Tropical Fish : Tales from Entebbe would be a very good intro to middle-class Middle African women's fiction. The story suite is structured like an average contemporary Western middle class bildungsroman, except it tells the stories of three young women and happens to be mostly set the suburbs of a Ugandan city. Baingana doesn't talk much about differing ethnicities, or village life (although her family presumably returned "home" to their father's village as often as most), or national politics, although the differences between middle class life in Entebbe and most Western cities are there in the ordinary everyday details from food to infrastructure. But bear in mind that many middle class Africans speak English (or French or both!), and listen to Western music and movies, and share Americanised international popular culture.

January summary

To Reads: 156 (only down 2 from 158), due to reading 11 library/online books and buying 9 books! Oops! :D

Countries unread: 49 (down from 56).

GeoKIT: 6 out of 7 categories, each covered by a different book.

BingoDOG: 20 out of 25 squares, each covered by a different book.

Read
1. A Tempest, by Aime Cesaire, 1969, play, 3.5*
2. Talk Stories, by Jamaica Kincaid, 2001, essays, 3.5*
3. The Name of this Book is Secret, by Pseudonymous Bosch, 2008, children's novel, 4*
4. The White Darkness, by David Gann, 2018, travel, 4*
5. Mooncop, by Tom Gauld, 2016, comic, 4*
6. Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, 1985, novel, 4*
7. To be Taught if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, 2019, novel, 4*
8. You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, by Tom Gauld, 2013, comic, 5*
9. (poetry book, 4*)
10. Barefoot through Mauritania, by Odette du Puigaudeau, 1937, travel, 0.5*
11. The Border, by Erika Fatland, 2020, travel, 4*
12. Baking with Kafka, by Tom Gauld, 2017, comic, 4*
13. Mischief Diary, by Nada Faris, 2018, short stories, 3*
14. The Story of Tracy Beaker, by Jacqueline Wilson, 1991, children's novel, 3*
15. The Girl Who Fell to Earth, by Sophia Al-Maria, 2012, autobiography, 4*
16. The Desert and the Drum, by Mbarek Ould Beyrouk, 2015, novel, 5*
17. Lord Sorcier, by Olivia Atwater, 2020, novel, 3*
18. Travels with Herodotus, by Ryszard Kapuscinski, 2004, non-fiction, 4*
19. Spell on Wheels, vol.2, Just to Get to You, by Kate Leth and Megan Levens, 2020, comic, 3.5*
20. The Girl Who Stole an Elephant, by Nizrana Farouk, 2020, children's novel, 3*
21. Tropical Fish, by Doreen Baingana, 2005, short stories, 4*
22. Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, by Tom Gauld, 2020, comic, 5*

Onwards! :D

Impressive!!! And I'm curious to see what's next - happy reading! :-)

I've got to try some Tom Gauld now. Gonna start with Mooncop, though Department of mind-blowing theories sounds fun too.

>157 MissBrangwen: Thank you for the encouragement!

>158 markon: Tom Gauld for beginners:
- Mooncop, graphic novel, slice of life but set on the moon;
- Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, collection of single page comics with emphasis on science but also SFF;
- You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack, collection of single page comics with emphasis on literature, including SFF, and literary culture.
All recommended.

Excellent reading month!

>156 spiralsheep: Wow! How many cards do you think you can fill if you continue at this speed?

>160 rabbitprincess: Thank you!

>161 MissWatson: I absolutely won't continue at this speed. I always read more in January and around midsummer when it's too cold or hot to be outside all day. I'm also reading from my To Read shelf and for my Read Every Country project so I've used the best bingo square fillers first and will have more difficulty filling second or third cards. Unless I use the library I'm going to get stuck on "Time word in title / time is subject" and "About nature or the environment". My To Read shelf currently only has Doggerland, for nature/environment. I like geology and natural history but I've read many many books on those themes. I probably need to read more books about Polar regions for GeoKIT too but, again, I've read many of the good ones before.

The beasties around here don't change colour in winter so they all become highly visible silhouettes against the ice, which also preserves their footprints. Yesterday I was out alone there were no other humans on the higher northerly hills so the rabbits were unconcerned by my presence.

23/2021. I read Mr Tiger, Betsy, and the Blue Moon, by Sally Gardner, which is a younger children's fantasy novel with many delightful illustrations, and was printed in a font supposedly more readable by dyslexic people. I'm told the text was also intended to be blue but my copy was black.

The girl protagonist Betsy goes on a quest with her dad who is an ice-cream maker, and her mum who is a mermaid, and a princess who has been turned into a toad, and Mr Tiger who is a circus ringmaster, and an extensive team of emigrant Gongalong acrobats who are all very small (and have very small ponies too). Whimsical. 3.5*

Apparently this is the first of a series of three but it works as a standalone story.

Quotes

"socks that had been specially knitted for him by sheep"

BingoDOG: Time word in title / time is subject IF a "blue moon" is a measure of time, e.g. "once in a blue moon". What do y'all think?

SFFKIT: Sentient things: an anthropomorphic moon.

>163 spiralsheep: I have often come across "moon" as a synonym for month, especially where they use lunar calendars, so I think it fits.

>164 MissWatson: Ah, yes! I hadn't thought of that. Thank you!

>163 spiralsheep: I actually have a pair of navy pants and a pair of black pants by the same manufacturer--same style and size--that are so near in color that unless I am looking at both pair, I cannot tell which color I hold. Maybe they employed the same ink in my fabrics!

>166 thornton37814: Ha! I used to have both indigo and black knee-highs to wear with dark blue or black trousers, and I often had to take them over to the window before I could see the difference. And yet if I wore the wrong ones then the difference was obvious as soon as I put shoes on.

>266 >167 spiralsheep: LOL, I once had two pairs of flats, one navy blue and the other black. And yep! You guessed it! Sometimes I would make it all the way to work and realize I had mismatched shoes on!

>168 Tanya-dogearedcopy: I once bought 2 pairs of the same flats: one navy, one black. At least, that's what I thought until I couldn't find the navy ones and discovered I'd inadvertently doubled the black set. Oops.

>168 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Lol! I expect having almost indistinguishable mismatched shoes made you far more self-conscious than was justified by anyone else noticing or reacting.

>169 justchris: Ha! One of my friends did the same.

> Anyway, I finally learned the lesson and in my early 40s I phased out all the dark blue clothes from my wardrobe, even though it's one of the rare colours that suits me, and I now have either black or brightly coloured clothes. I've reclaimed all that time I used to waste peering at blue-black clothes on dark winter mornings.

Random quote from my recent reading: "the troubled stones of the beach turn in my heart".

Quote of the week: "You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver!"

26/2021. I read The Ladies are Upstairs by Merle Collins, which is a collection of short stories set mostly on a fictional Caribbean island resembling Grenada. The first part is a reprinting of the author's 50 page story Rain Darling, which revolves around child neglect and the adult mental health consequences in a fully realised community setting, and was an innovative and unusually sympathetic perspective on the subject in 1990 when it was first published (and continues to stand out now). The next 100 pages are a set of ten short stories revolving around the life of Doux from girlhood to old age, and her family and communities. These successfully manage to be a bildungsroman, a detour into folktales (told in contemporary legend style), and an honest account of ageing. The language is plain but powerful, as readers would expect from Merle Collins who is known for her poetry. Every word is necessary to the overall effect, especially the occasional repetitions for emphasis, exactly as in the author's poetry. I'll mention that two of the three contemporary legends might not be as effective for readers not familiar with that style of storytelling but they should work for readers unfamiliar with the particular folktales on which they're based (and I personally find stories about sensible Joe from the garage seeing a ghost are much more effective than squamous eldritch whatnots). Oh, and the final line of the book is an absolute winner, but I won't spoil it. 4.5*

Quote

"Tisane's mother always said, 'Don't wait on nobody to make you happy, especially not no man. (...) Take you happiness outa de general world and don't wait on no one person to make you happy.' "

BingoDOG: Senior citizen as protagonist
GeoKIT: Grenada (South America and the Caribbean)

>171 spiralsheep: Call her Britney Spears! Yes, that Handforth Parish Council meeting has made it to Australia.

>172 pamelad: I shall always refer to her as Jackie "Britney Spears" Weaver because she's earned it! I watched the full 18mins edited highlights vid and have no regrets about this use of my time. Apparently Handforth Parish Council have another zoom meeting scheduled for 10 Feb. I imagine the list of people attending will be six or fewer councillors, several dozen journalists, and several thousand members of the public, lol.

>171 spiralsheep: and >172 pamelad: and >173 spiralsheep: ??? *brb* oooohh! I'm glad our cohousing meetings aren't like that.

>174 justchris: Imagine behaving so badly as the Chair of a Parish Council meeting that the whole world knows about your behaviour... oh, wait, we don't have to imagine that! Imagine immediately becoming a gif of Theoden under the influence of Wormtongue but saying, "You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver!" Oh, wait.... Imagine choosing to be one of this person's two henchmen... on a Parish Council planning committee whose greatest power is sending a non-legally-binding letter! I just can't!

People. :D

Four sample stories available free online for anyone who wants to try before they buy any of the following three books.

I read a couple of online short stories from Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda. They didn't have any explanatory notes but I'm guessing Smartening Up is based on Hyosube legends, and Enoki is based on Kodama legends. I especially enjoyed the maddening aunt in Smartening Up, but I found Enoki bland (which she would probably prefer to a dramatic reaction).

Smartening Up: https://granta.com/smartening-up/

Enoki: https://granta.com/enoki/

I also read Sorrowful Beasts the first chapter of Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge. I have thoughts that I will be keeping to myself. I guessed where the story was going though.

Sorrowful Beasts: https://www.newwriting.net/2020/11/sorrowful-beasts/

I read Compulsory the very short prequel story to the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. It is what it is (the tone and the sec's media obsession reminds me of Halo Jones).

Compulsory: https://www.wired.com/story/future-of-work-compulsory-martha-wells/

27/2021. I read Tiare in Bloom by Celestine Vaite, which is a chicklit-style novel set in Tahiti about a middle-aged couple in their forties but told mostly from the husband's point of view and especially delves into the meaning and practice of various forms of fatherhood. It's technically the third novel in a series but it worked for me as a standalone. As ever with this relatively light-hearted style of social commentary, a reader is either in tune with the author's humour and perspective on life or not but I think this novel is easy to enjoy (and I'm not the target audience for this genre). 4*

Quotes from Tiare in Bloom

Small islands: 'And being Tahitian means... being diplomatic with the relatives, because you're going to bump into your relatives day after day after day until you die, so it's important to get along.'

Context is for the weak: ' "Our story wasn't just a story of arse..." Leilani's voice cracks.'

When your mother doesn't like your husband: 'Materena remembers a conversation she had with her mother a few days ago about how in her next life she might comes back as a lesbian. And her mother said, "Why wait?" '

Find a wife, or else: ' "Mama organized a prayer night at my place." Then speaking between his teeth he adds, "It's to help me find a good wife. All my aunties are here, they're driving me mad with their church songs." '

BingoDOG: Set somewhere you’d like to visit (who wouldn't want to visit Tahiti?!)
GeoKIT: Oceania (I've now read at least one book from all seven GeoKIT areas)

Reading Tiare in Bloom, with its focus on various types of fatherhood, immediately after The Ladies are Upstairs made the fatherhood issues in the short story Rain Darling stand out even further. In a small community everyone knows who a mother has been spending time with, and who a child looks like. Everyone knows if a father is good, indifferent, or bad in various ways. If a child is rejected or neglected then everyone knows why, including eventually the child. The status of a child, not only economic but also social, is effected by the perceived legitimacy of the child's relationship to its father. And, of course, the deeply multifarious family structures in Tiare in Bloom emphasised how colonialism and enslavement destroyed kinship-based support networks in many societies.

Also amazing to learn that Tahitians continued to be forbidden from speaking the Tahitian language (Reo Tahiti) in school classrooms and playgrounds into the late 1970s, that Reo Tahiti was only added to school curricula in 1981, and French remains the only "official" language of Tahiti.

28/2021. I read How to Avoid a Tragedy, by David Henry Wilson, 2003, which is a play script rewriting four Shakespearian tragedies to happy endings: The Moor the Merrier; Entente Cordelia; and Hamlet and Macbeth, All Hale. A couple of laughs, a couple of groans, and some shenanigans exiting stage alright. ETA: I'm guessing this play might have been written to help teach students about how theatre works. /ETA

Quote

"But if our words and actions caused offence,
We beg to plead the case for the defence:
By changing these existing tragic courses,
We do but what the Bard did with his sources."

GeoKIT: Europe (Venice, England, Denmark and Scotland)
BingoDOG: Impulse read!

29/2021. I read The Castle of Inside Out by David Henry Wilson, which is children's novel with glorious gothy ghastly illustrations by the inimitable Chris Riddell. The plot is a pun-tastic gothic Alice in Wonderland meets Animal Farm, set in junior Gormenghast, and begins with our heroine Lorina (not Alice) being led by the Black (not White) Rabbit to the Castle of Inside Out. A grimly entertaining farce that also reminds me of Chris Riddell's slightly gentler Goth Girl series.

Quotes

Eating people is wrong: "She remembered once hearing about people who ate people. They were called cannonballs."

Animal occupations: "allicaterers, hippopotters, photogophers, physioterrapins, steeplejackals," etc.

BingoDOG: Name of building in title.

30/2021. I read Battlepug: War on Christmas by Mike Norton, which is a graphic novel sequel to his original excellent Battlepug webcomic with script and art all by Norton. This is the mighty tale of a barbarian warrior and his trusty steed the giant, erm, pug dog known as Battlepug (aka Sir Sprinkles Goodsniffer von Wigglebottom) and the friends they make along the way.... And, yes, it's every morsel as mad as it sounds. I'd laughed aloud before the end of the first text box, and Mike Norton's artistic talent continues to range skilfully from the epic to the comedic. Full marks, despite the cliffhanger ending, but probably only if you've read the preceding five volumes (or the compendious Compugdium). 5*

Not recommended for anyone who can't handle cartoon violence, anyone who is a fan of Trump or Putin, anyone who doesn't think sweary children are funny, anyone who can't deal with a competent fat black heroine, anyone who objects to satire about a "war on Christmas", anyone overly attached to My Little Ponies, and anyone who prefers their barbarian power fantasies without a parodic sense of humour. Oh, and I suspect it also takes the piss out of Renaissance Fairs but I'm not entirely sure as we don't have an exact equivalent over here and I cba googling.

Quote

"But the wind grows colder already. // Maybe we should stop somewhere and find some pants."

BingoDOG: Book with a one-word title

>176 spiralsheep: I enjoyed a discussion with the author and translator of Strange Beasts of China last night as part of an online bookgroup. I hadn't realised these stories were first published in serialized format and that she was so young when she wrote them. The author spoke briefly about her more recent work which she described as realist, more accepted by the Chinese lit community, and I'm intrigued enough to want to pick them up.

>181 charl08: I saw your interesting review on your thread and posted a comment there but I think the timing crossed with your Spongebob celebration and you might have missed it. Thanks for coming over to make sure I knew. :D

I'll c&p it here too, although it's not that worthwhile, lol:

'Interesting. Thank you for sharing.

I found the first chapter/story had been published online (also none of the original illustrations) so I read it out of curiosity, and "capital, success and the commodification of living beings" definitely seemed to be a theme.

"one of the lessons of the book is that beasts are just like people"

Or perhaps, within the story's own terms, just "beasts are people".'

My 31st book of the year and my first completed BingoDOG card with a different book for each of the 25 squares. \o/

31/2021. I read Time Song: journeys in search of a submerged land, by Julia Blackburn, which is a lightweight examination of geography, archaeology, and personal history, in this case in and around "Doggerland" the undersea bank and plains that have sometimes formed a land bridge between Britain and continental Europe. The basic journalistic-style text is full of anecdotal "human interest" stories written with banal straightforwardness, especially in the "songs" which are chopped-up prose, but also in the author's passing encounters with local people and their stories. These commonplaces of ordinary everyday life contain fleeting contacts with prehistoric normalities that were equally banal in their originating time but are now extraordinary and are only revealed to us by fluctuating geography. 4*

Quote

Pontin's holiday park, Suffolk: "I stopped off at the reception desk. A woman with shiny orange make-up had 'Faith and hope and' tattooed on her forearm, but I couldn't read the last word and so I asked her what it was. 'Pixie Dust', she said proudly and she twisted her arm round so I could see it for myself. I asked her if she had heard anything about the palaeontologists who had been working along this stretch of the coast and the discovery that humans were living here eight hundred thousand years ago. She said no, she'd heard nothing about anything like that, but a young man who was also standing at the desk and whose arms were also alive with tattoos said he'd been told there were some First World War pillboxes somewhere nearby. The pixie dust woman said, 'Well, I have learnt a lot today, haven't I?' "

GeoKIT: Europe (Doggerland)
BingoDOG: Nature or environment

Yay, congrats on completing your bingo card!!!

I have never heard the name/term "doggerland" before, so I learnt a lot today, too!

>184 MissBrangwen: Thank you!

During some time periods Doggerland joined everywhere between Denmark, Shetland, Ireland, and Spain, together physically and large mammals migrated by walking. Amazing.

https://media.nationalgeographic.org/assets/photos/000/318/31836.jpg

That's amazing indeed! Thanks for sharing this!

>182 spiralsheep: I did miss it! Thanks for repeating it. I don't know if I'd be so into it if it wasn't for lockdown, but it has been such a good diversion.

Doggerland takes me straight into insomnia territory, listening to the Shipping Forecast.

>186 MissBrangwen: You're welcome! I have a feeling I'll be reading more about Doggerland.

>187 charl08: As I live in a rural area my life is much less effected by lockdown than most Brits. I can't attend live music / theatre / cinema and I can't travel (I miss the sea!) but that's not hardship compared to many others.

Yes, every mention of Dogger Bank causes my brain to add Fisher, German Bight, lol. I suspect it's a widespread affliction amongst certain demographics of Brits.

Doggerland is new to me also. Thanks for sharing.

And thanks for reminding me of the name of building in title BINGO DOG square in >179 spiralsheep:. I'm gonna add that square as completed.

Congratulations on completing your card!

>189 markon: Doggerland is like Atlantis but instead of supposedly concealing the remains of an advanced civilisation it's revealing the remains of thousands of mammoths and other large prehistoric mammals. Personally, I find the mammal bones more interesting than fictitious Atlanteans. :-)

The name of building square was so near and yet so far for me: Upstairs, nope, Ceiling, nope, Lido, maayyybe, Steeple, well technically a yes but still... CASTLE, YES!

Thank you! I hope you're enjoying your challenges too.

Congratulations on completing your BINGO card!

>191 thornton37814: Thank you!