Ursula Is ... Back? (Part 2)

I don't know, maybe I'm back. I read next to nothing in 2020, which was kind of weird because it seemed like everyone on the planet read more than usual. *shrug* It was a stressful year.


Tiles in the Şişli Metro Station

I'm 49, an artist married to a mathematician. I am currently living in Istanbul, Turkey. In my previous off-and-on years with the 75ers, I have lived in Denver, Colorado; Gent, Belgium; Antioch, California; Padova, Italy; Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and Fresno, California.

I have three cats in my apartment and two grown children who live in the US. Hello if you remember me, hello if you don't! I ... don't know how to write an introduction anymore, it seems.

My reading year so far:

January (Ocak)
Into the Water by Paula Hawkins 🌟🌟🌟
The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester (non-fiction)🌟🌟1/2
A Son of the Circus by John Irving 🌟

February (Şubat)
Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo (1001 Books) 🌟🌟
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt 🌟
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus 🌟

March (Mart)
The Road Through the Wall by Shirley Jackson 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz (non-fiction) (Nobel) (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟1/2
The Vegetarian by Han Kang 🌟🌟🌟1/2

April (Nisan)
Childhood by Maxim Gorky 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan 🌟🌟🌟
The Umbrella Academy Volume 1: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá (graphic novel) 🌟🌟🌟
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden (non-fiction) (audio) 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk (Nobel) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
There's No Such Thing As an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura 🌟🌟🌟
So You Want To Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo (non-fiction) (audio) 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2

May (Mayıs)
The Idiot by Elif Batuman 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Waiting for the Barbarians by JM Coetzee (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens 🌟🌟🌟
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟1/2
How To Do the Work by Nicole LaPera (non-fiction) 🌟🌟🌟
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Gertrude by Herman Hesse (Nobel) 🌟🌟🌟
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice 🌟🌟

June (Haziran)
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World by Alan Mikhail (non-fiction) 🌟🌟1/2
Kindred by Octavia Butler 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟1/2
All Systems Red by Martha Wells 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Northern Lights by Tim O'Brien 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells 🌟🌟🌟🌟

July (Temmuz)
There There by Tommy Orange 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Strait Is the Gate by André Gide (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟
Transit by Rachel Cusk 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Zealot and the Emancipator by HW Brands (non-fiction) (audio) 🌟🌟🌟
No One Is Talking about This by Patricia Lockwood 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Plague by Albert Camus (1001 Books) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P Djèlí Clark 🌟🌟1/2
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

August (Ağustos)
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith 🌟🌟🌟
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin 🌟🌟🌟
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone 🌟🌟🌟1/2

September (Eylül)
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
Colorful by Eto Mori 🌟🌟🌟
With Teeth by Kristen Arnett 🌟
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells 🌟🌟🌟🌟

October (Ekim)
Kudos by Rachel Cusk 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 🌟🌟🌟1/2
Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen 🌟🌟🌟
Bewilderment by Richard Powers 🌟🌟

November (Kasım)
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi 🌟🌟🌟1/2
The Next Everest by Jim Davidson 🌟🌟🌟1/2

December (Aralık)
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 🌟🌟🌟
Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak 🌟🌟1/2

Year to Date Total: 63 books read

CURRENTLY READING

 The Wild Palms by William Faulkner

ABANDONED
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (too twee)
The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector (too esoteric)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (too exhausting)
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (too revolting)
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (too preachy and fake)
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka (too bathroom-focused)

In other news, my son's girlfriend commissioned me to do a portrait of her dog, so here's that:

And finally, comments on the latest book I finished.



Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence

I previously read The Rainbow for the 1001 Books and it's interesting - I have very negative memories of that reading experience, and yet I rated it 3 1/2 stars and said I enjoyed at least the beginning of it. Hm. Anyway, this is another 3 1/2 stars read for me. I could rate it 4 stars, but I don't know, in the end it's just another one of those "women drain me of my will to live" stories. Autobiographical, the main character has an unhealthily close relationship with his mother and it ruins him for all other women. Sounds like DH Lawrence was a prize.

Happy new thread, Ursula.

>4 ursula: I am a bit worried by your review of Sons and Lovers. I liked the book a bit better than you did as I recall (it is more than 30 years ago that I read it) but I think my own relationship with my mum was a pretty normal one!

Happy new one, Ursula! I love that picture of the tiles in the metro station. And your dog portrait is really impressive!

Happy new thread, Ursula! I love the photo of the tiles.

>3 ursula: Sweet.

Love the puppy portrait. You’re very talented

>5 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul! I liked it quite a bit while I was reading it ... but by the end of it I had had enough of the main character mistreating Miriam and her "I'll just sit here waiting for you ... forever" attitude. I wouldn't presume to say anything about your relationship with your mother?! But the character in the book did not have a healthy one with his. It was Norman Bates without the murders and keeping her corpse in the house.

>6 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I don't know if there are tile murals in all the stations, but there are in several of them so I may show more at some point. And thanks about the dog portrait - she was really happy with it!

>7 karenmarie: Thank you, Karen! Lots of tile around to take pictures of!

>8 Nickelini: Thank you! It turns out she got it as a present for her dad. Waiting anxiously to hear how it goes over.

Happy new thread! Love >3 ursula: --- so expressive.

Happy new thread! I love the station mural.

>11 banjo123: Thanks! She felt that I really captured him, which made me extremely happy.

>12 drneutron: Thank you! I really need to sort through my photos and see what else I have. So many pictures ...

>3 ursula: Lovely Ursula.

Like the topper too. And glad Cleo is back to her old self.

Happy new thread, Ursula!

>1 ursula: Lovely topper, with the ships on high waves.

>3 ursula: Aw, looks adorable, what breed is it?

Happy new thread, Ursula. I always like to see what you choose for your header; you have such great photos. I love your dog portrait.

I've been meaning to give Lawrence another go -- maybe there's no hurry.

>14 Caroline_McElwee: Thank you, Caroline! We are so happy Cleo is herself again. Although we are still working on fattening her up. She is so skinny now.

>15 FAMeulstee: Thank you! I really don't know what breed her dog is ... some kind of Shih Tzu mix maybe?

>16 BLBera: Thanks! I have so many photos. So many.

As for Lawrence, I think that this one was actually quite good. It just depends how you are feeling at any given moment about the usual man-centered bullshit in The Canon, you know? I really enjoyed the reading experience most of the time, it was just when I started really thinking about it that I got sort of exhausted.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

I saw this series mentioned in so many people's threads that I borrowed a copy from the library for Morgan to read. He spent a few nights laughing here and there while reading it and said he would recommend it, so I read it too. Not my usual fare, but it was a breezy, enjoyable read. The second one is on hold for Morgan now.

----------------------------

Also, after a short break, we've continued on our listening project. I was hoping to have all of the "best" 2020 albums listened to by the end of June; it's gonna be a race.



A Small Death - Samantha Crain (singer/songwriter) Neither of us felt like there were any hugely standout tracks on this one, but we both enjoyed it. Interestingly, Crain is Choctaw and sings one of the songs in that language.

Morgan: 👍
Me: 👍



The Slow Rush - Tame Impala (alternative/psychedelic rock) Okay, we didn't go into this with the most open minds. Tame Impala is a band that simultaneously bores and annoys Morgan and I'm not far behind. Comments from our listening session:

"I think this song is called 'Everything That Annoys You about Tame Impala x 10'"
"This cover looks like Pink Floyd rejected it"
"I hate the way he does drums like that"
"I feel like I'm stuck in some alternate 1970s universe where everything sucks"
"Namedropping Mick Jagger. Only this douchebag would turn some sentimental song about his dad dying into an excuse to humblebrag"
"He weaponized those keyboards too" "Yeah, I feel assaulted"

Morgan: 🙄
Me: 🙄

But look, part of what's confounding is that they seem to be everyone's darlings. So maybe we just don't get it and you'll love it. Give it a shot!

After a week and a half of banging our heads against a wall and trying every single thing and being told a variety of things, something finally happened and I was able to make my appointment for my first dose of vaccine today. So I’ve had the first shot and I could not possibly be more thrilled.

In other news, I’ve decided to abandon The Chandelier. I chose it because a couple of other books of Lispector’s are on the 1001 list, but this one was available from the library so I figured I could see what she was all about. If this is anything to go by, she is about stream of consciousness and obfuscation. I made it to 32% and decided life is too short.

>19 ursula: - Life is definitely too short.

And hooray for the vaccine! Morgan's already gotten his, I think you said?

>20 katiekrug: Yes! He had his first one just about 2 weeks ago. It has been ... an adventure to try to get mine.

But now we are on track and that is amazing.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

This is an offbeat book in style, but I loved it, even starting it without knowing what I was going to be getting into. A screenplay format takes us through the adventures of Generic Asian Man in the middle of the cop drama Black and White. He hopes to one day become Kung Fu Man but it's a long, hard road out of the various permutations of Generic Asian Man.

>19 ursula: Congratulations on your first vaccination, Ursula!
Did you get a date for the second?

>23 FAMeulstee: Thank you! The second doses are no earlier than 45 days out, so I will be able to make an appointment between August 8 & 16.

>22 ursula: this one really sounds good. I expect I’ll pick it up at some point. Congrats on the vaccine

>25 Nickelini: It was really engaging. I imagine the style is not for everyone but I enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks re: the vaccine. It was not easy to get.

Congrats on getting your jab, Ursula!

Lots of music to write about. I'll hopefully do it before I forget what we both thought.



Someone New - Helena Deland (singer/songwriter) Neither of us was crazy about her voice, but it wasn't unpleasant. The album was ... fine. I think if you're into meditative, moody female singers you might like this one.

Comments:
Morgan: "the vocal melodies don't do a lot for me, either in choices or execution"
Me: "part of this melody sounds like the Beatles' Don't Let Me Down"
Morgan: "it's refreshing to see songs with a single songwriting credit"

Morgan: 🤷‍♂️
Me: 🤷‍♀️



NO - Boris (punk/metal) Disclaimer: this is one of Morgan's favorite bands. Morgan says this is not his favorite album but in re-listening to it, he enjoyed it more than he remembered. I thought it was okay. Although I have added some pretty heavy albums to my music library, this one didn't make the cut for me.

Comments:
Morgan: "This may not be the Boris album I would recommend someone as a starter, but the intro is very Boris.🤘"

Morgan: "This one almost feels like a parody"
Me: "raaaaaagggghhhhhhhhhuuurrrrrrrrggghghhhhhhh" (this was me imitating the singer in that song)

Morgan: 👍
Me: 🤷‍♀️



Mordechai - Khruangbin (funk, though somewhat genre-blending) Hm. We listened to this yesterday and I don't remember anything except there was one song that was pretty interesting.

Comments:
Morgan: "For all the varied influences, this is kind of ... boring? Not bad. But not notable I feel like."
Me: "you could totally put this one while you ... I don't know what, but when you don't need to listen"

Morgan: 🤷‍♂️
Me: 🤷‍♀️



Underneath - Code Orange (metalcore) That's a nope.

Comments:
Morgan: "This is like nu-nu metal"
Morgan: "they are trying to make me kill myself"
Morgan: "This is a 3rd wave grunge nightmare."
Me: "This is a bad imitation of Linkin Park. Mike Shinoda should be personally offended."
Morgan: "It's like Linkin Park, Korn, Deftones and NIN were put into a blender and then someone's dog crapped on it."

Morgan: 💩
Me: 🙉

>27 BLBera: Thanks! Definitely a relief to be started on the path to full vaccination.

Hi Ursula!

>19 ursula: Congrats on getting your first dose of vaccine.

stream of consciousness and obfuscation. Ugh. You’re right, life’s too short.

>30 karenmarie: Thanks!

Yes ... I can go with it sometimes (I loved Mrs. Dalloway!) but this was more like Jacob's Room for me. In fact, I went back to look at my review of that one and this is the majority of it:

My impressions of this impressionistic book: There's Jacob, and he's a kid and he's up on a giant rock by the ocean. I think he's going to fall off. Oh, I guess not. Okay now we're at a dinner party and Jacob's in college. He hates dinner parties. In fact, as we find out from the seemingly endless dinner parties we'll have to attend with him, he's like the Holden Caulfield of the 1920s and really doesn't think much of society. Now he's on a boat with a friend and they're talking endlessly about the Greeks and is this friend in love with him or what? Now we're in Italy and Jacob's on his way to Greece and talking philosophy and he doesn't like French women and oh dear god how many more pages of this are left? Oh good, I'm done.

This one was definitely along those lines but with a river and a hat of maybe a drowned man in it? And then a city and a white dress and yeah that's enough for me.

So, the vaccine. Morgan got his when they added academics to the priority groups. Just a couple of days later, it was announced vaccines were available for everyone 45 and up. Yay, right? So I hopped onto the national health app and ... got a sad yellow box that said I wasn't in any of the priority groups. We went to the hospital near our house to ask about it. Answer? "Wait."

O-kay.

Morgan got some advice on possible places to call/things to do.

Maybe it was because I wasn't signed up with the Turkish Social Security yet. Signed up: sad yellow box.
Maybe you should call the Health Ministry. Once: hung up on because there was no English translator available. Once told by a German translator that she was not allowed to translate English, call back. Once told it was Turkish citizens only for the vaccinations. Continued sad yellow box.
Maybe I needed to be put onto his private supplementary insurance through the university. (As it turns out, he needed to do this too... the number of things people don't adequately explain would require a post of its own.) Done: sad yellow box.

Meanwhile, the eligible age was lowered to 40, then 30. Still the sad yellow box.

I go to the hospital and try to just get a vaccine without making an appointment. They say they can't do it because there's no way to register it in the system unless I am in an eligibility group ... also, I'm not in an eligibility group because I'm not a citizen. They tell me to go in person to a Health Ministry office. "This is the wrong office" ... but they took pity on us and phoned and talked to some people. "It is because you are not Turkish. You have to wait." Sad yellow box.

Also meanwhile, the State Department information site says that the vaccination groups apply to US citizens with Turkish residency. Yep, sad yellow box.

Maybe I should see a doctor, to get my heart condition registered in the system, or just put myself in the system as existing by seeing someone. He says "The groups are for Turkish citizens only. You have to wait." Then he says "It's because you are a foreigner and if you get the vaccine when you've had the virus within the last six months you could get really sick." (as far as I can tell this is... a made-up flight of fancy?) I tell him I need to get the vaccine because I have a heart condition. Finally, he says, "You have to take an antibody test. We'll get the results tomorrow. If they're low enough/zero, then I'll see if I can help you."

After that 4 hour adventure, I come home and see the sad yellow box.

Later that afternoon: OMG it's the green make-your-appointment-now box!

What triggered it after almost 2 weeks of constant work - the doctor visit, the heart condition, the antibody test I didn't even have the results for yet, every Turkish citizen getting their vaccination? No clue.

Northern Lights by Tim O'Brien

I love Tim O'Brien. The Things They Carried is my favorite book of all time. I've read a couple of his others, and I'm eager to read everything. This is his first novel. It's very much a first novel. Paul lives in Minnesota (of course!) and his brother Harvey is coming home from Vietnam, having lost an eye. The brothers have no idea how to relate to each other. Paul is in a stable though static marriage to Grace, while Harvey is constantly trying to get them and his sort-of girlfriend Addie to run off to Africa with him. Or maybe somewhere else, anywhere else, really. Harvey convinces Paul to go with him on a backwoods skiing trip that goes very wrong.

The themes here are safety, guilt, heroism, fear, and family. The dialogue is repetitive, intentionally. I don't know how much of that is the fact that people tend to repeat themselves to fill space and how much of that is about conveying that feeling of someone going on and on and you're not really listening, didn't they already say that? Maybe I just imagined it. And then tuning them out again.

O'Brien went on to much better things, and this is mostly interesting as a marker of his starting point, although there are some good scenes here. You can see the beginning of ideas he would continue to turn over in later novels.

I love O'Brien too. I read this last year. I echo your sentiments. Definite echoes of things to come.

Have a great weekend!

>34 mahsdad: I had more patience for it because I admire his writing and thinking, but I would certainly not recommend it to someone who wasn't already a fan!

Thanks, hope your weekend is good too.

>32 ursula: - Oh, my.

>32 ursula: I have no words.

I also love O'Brien. I have some books of his that I haven't read. Is The Things They Carried your favorite? I have a great story about that one. I was teaching the novel, and one of my students, a young man who said he was NOT a reader, loved it. He later told me that he searched for all of O'Brien's books and read them. I don't know if he ever became a reader, but I can always dream.

>36 katiekrug: That about sums it up!

>37 BLBera: Mm hmm. It was so frustrating.

As I said up there 😉 it’s not only my favorite O’Brien, it’s my favorite book, full stop. I do hope your student did find his way to becoming a reader. Even if not, he read some good books at least!

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Morgan and I both finished the second Murderbot novella. It's not really my style to just jump right into the next book in a series (and not much my style to read series at all), but since it was checked out from the library, I did. He felt like the story took a while to get going in this one; I didn't. We both enjoyed it, and he had me request the third one.

Listening updates: (I am way behind)



Wunna - Gunna (rap) Do you like songs about Adderall, lean and hos? This might be for you.

Comments:
Morgan: "ew."
Me: "I missed it, but unfortunately I scrolled back in the lyrics"

Morgan: "Everything about this is boring"
Me: "ewwww."

Morgan: 🤢 (DNF)
Me: 🤢 (DNF)



From King to a GOD Conway the Machine (rap) The subject of this one is real life - prison, lost friends, police brutality. Unsurprising, considering all the events of 2020. "Front Lines" directly addresses George Floyd, and it's a punch in the gut. The beats are good, the rapping is good, but there are some totally unnecessary interludes that are people talking about how great Conway the Machine is. Thanks, we're listening to him. It feels like he has an inferiority complex.

Lyrics quotes:

"I'm about to have Paul robbing Peter to pay me"
"lyrics written in Braille, you gotta feel it to understand"

Morgan: 👍
Me: 👍



Expectations - Katie Pruitt (singer/songwriter) Young, gay Southern singer/songwriter. Occasionally the content reminded me of Julien Baker, but Pruitt is the more defiant, less questioning.

Me: "this one sounds like Fleetwood Mac"
Morgan: "I agree ... also it felt like a departure from the previous tracks a bit" (Expectations)

Morgan: "her voice is really crystal clear, it has a magical tone"

Me: "not in love with the metaphor here. I mean I get it, but I don't like the pro-addict take, in whatever context. It's the first one I haven't liked." (Loving Her)

Morgan: 👍
Me: 😍

There There by Tommy Orange

So good. It's about the experience of a range of Native Americans in Oakland. Yes, there are chapters that bounce between the characters. Yes, they're all interconnected in various ways. Yes, they all come together in the end. But it's very well done, and also, I feel like that's a bit of the point with the subject matter. The Native community is small overall in the country, let alone in a city like Oakland. You're going to overlap and meet and have various points of intersection.

Anyway, the writing was good, the story was good, the truths sprinkled throughout will hit you right in the heart. The ending didn't entirely work for me, but it's a minor thing - the most important thing is that I never wanted to put this book down.

I'm going to put my absolute favorite quote here but it is 100% a spoiler.

Something about it will make sense. The bullets have been coming from miles. Years. Their sound will break the water in our bodies, tear sound itself, rip our lives in half. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact we’ve been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.

>41 ursula: I have this one in the tbr mountain. Nudging it up Ursula.

>41 ursula: - This has been on my list for quite a while now. I should get to it!

Also, I wanted to say I really enjoy your posts about the music you are listening to. I never have anything to say in response to them because I know very little about music, but your and Morgan's reactions are always interesting.

I also loved There There, Ursula. I can't wait to see what Orange does next.

>42 Caroline_McElwee: Hopefully it makes it to the top eventually!

>43 katiekrug: You should! And thanks for the comments about the music posts. I'm having fun putting them together and honestly, I'm doing it about 75% for myself because we listen and talk about them over Messages and then the comments scroll by and I forget everything about most of them. So it's good to have a record. It's good to know they're at least interesting! :)

>44 BLBera: Yes! I saw in the interview at the back of the book (this is how you can tell I was really into it, I never read that stuff) he says he may continue on with some of the characters. We'll see.

I decided to give Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir a shot, and at about 7% in, I'm just not sure. I'm not one for questioning much in books or movies (I essentially never even try to guess whodunnit, etc) so I rarely get bothered about inconsistencies while I'm reading/watching. But- the main character wakes up with no memory of who he is, etc. He speaks out loud to the machines surrounding him, and then when he's looking at the height of a ladder, he realizes he thought in feet rather than meters and wonders if that means he's American, or maybe Canadian or British. Why would you have to wonder if you've heard yourself speak out loud?! You would know if you had a British accent, and maybe you weren't sure about American vs Canadian but just say "about" and "process" or ask yourself what those winter hats are called.

Listening:



City on Lock - City Girls (hip hop) Apparently they rose to prominence after a guest spot on a Drake song (I think this is a common story). Kind of like my comments about Gunna above, if you're into handbags and cars and the things you'll do for them, have at it.

Comments:
Me: Skit. Great. And it sounds like he's reading from a script, which is not better

Morgan: haha Apple Music had one of those lines as “Ugh, you ain’t ???” as she clearly said an entire sentence of some sort

Me: Isn't this the same song as the last one?
Morgan: Yes, but now with Doja Cat
[I don't think I'll post any of the song titles here!]

Morgan: hahahaha all of this is so ridiculous. it only took 17 people to write that one

Morgan: 😆
Me: 😳



Map of the Soul: 7 - BTS (k-pop) The phenomenon. Because I'm old, I am kind of reminded of Menudo, the 80s Puerto Rican band that would kick the members out once they reached a certain age. BTS doesn't do that, but they do carefully cultivate their images. It's worth checking out the video for "On" if you're at all curious.

Comments:
Me: I have to keep opening the lyrics to see if I am actually hearing English or not
Morgan: ha, right, with the interspersed English words?

Morgan: it's kind of ludicrous how maximalist it is

Morgan: "Can I someday finna find my time?" I'm going to start saying that
Morgan: "I'm nothing'er than nothing/But you say I'm something'er than something"
Me: I mean, that makes a sort of weird logic but no english speaker would have come up with it

Morgan: These are all fine, but ironically the ones that aren’t “too much” I don’t find super memorable.
That beatles-y one aside, that was pretty good [00:00 (Zero O'Clock)]

Morgan: 🤷🏻‍♂️
Me: 🤷🏻‍♀️



The Caretaker - Half Waif (indie rock) This is sort of a concept album, the story of someone taking care of an estate and having everything falling apart around her. As for what it sounds like, it's sort of hard to describe. Prog and synth-pop get mentioned, and I guess that does it as well as anything. It's super atmospheric.

Comments:
Me: I like how lush it is
Morgan: I don’t know if I’m crazy about everything she’s doing with it (her voice) in this song, but it’s the kind of thing lots of people try without being able to hit the notes… she manages them very well

Morgan: I'm not super into this one (Window Place)
Me: I like it better than the one I didn't like (Brace) but not as much as the rest of the album definitely

Lyric quote:
“I tried to dry my tears outside, I forgot it’s a season of rain”

Morgan: 👍👍
Me: 👍👍 (added to my library)

-------------------------------------------

(A note about the emoji ratings. Originally we were going to do a strict rating system: 😍-👍-🤷🏻‍♀️-👎 but then we found ourselves wanting to say a little more with them so now it's a free-for-all.)

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Guys, I'm quitting. I got to 12% and I just couldn't take it anymore. The dialogue is like reading a Reddit thread.

First half of 2021, visualized:

(plus my first book of July because I forgot to take the screenshots before I added it and I couldn't bother to delete and re-enter)

Strait Is the Gate by André Gide

Hm. The bumbling narrator, Jerome, is in love with his cousin Alissa since childhood. It's always been assumed they would marry, but as the time appropriate to an engagement gets closer, things get in the way. One of those is Alissa's increasing religiosity and understanding of how romantic love fits into a faithful life.

I didn't enjoy this one that much. It took a considerable amount of time to get through its slim 148 pages. Apparently, this was intended to be a sort of companion piece to The Immoralist, which I read years ago and really loved. Maybe it would have been better if I'd read it closer to that one.

Negro Pink Siifu (hip hop/punk) This was an interesting album. Apple Music classifies it as rap/hip hop, but the majority of it isn't that at all - it's more punk/hardcore ... and a melange of a whole bunch of other things. It's loud and chaotic and when you get glimpses of what he's talking about, it's like a primal scream about the Black experience. It is one of those albums that's clearly not made for me, but I appreciate it for what it is.

Comments:

Morgan: I... admit that I was not expecting a punk album.
This is apparently his follow-up to a breakthrough critically acclaimed soulful rap album he made
So that’s bold

Morgan: I can appreciate some of the sentiments being expressed, but I wish they were slightly more coherent

Me: this chris dorner thing is … weird [there's a song called Chris Dorner, about an LA police officer who went on a shooting rampage, and the cops were hunting him down and shot into two different trucks driven by people who were not him... I was out of the country at the time and didn't hear about this when it happened, but it's a crazy story.]

Morgan: ❓
Me: 🤔



Letter to You Bruce Springsteen (rock, I guess) Get ready to clutch your pearls. Neither of us is a Springsteen fan in general, but we do try to come into these things with an open mind. This album apparently includes several songs that Springsteen wrote decades ago and has now worked on and recorded. We didn't like it.

Comments:

Me: this is the kind of thing that makes me go "don't I know this song"
like, I heard it in the 80s (Letter to You)

Morgan: I thought he said "take me on your butter train"
Me: I read that right as he was saying it and I was like "uh then what does he say if it's not that" (Burnin' Train)

Me: WTF is this song (Janey Needs a Shooter)
... long discussion about how the lyrics don't help, it was written in the 70s, there's a novel-length discussion of it on some website, Warren Zevon liked the title and wanted to hear the song - finally Bruce let him use the title to write his own song, which became "Jeanie Needs a Shooter" and is on Zevon's self-titled album from 1971.)
Me: I'm interested in the Warren Zevon version

Me: those opening lines are the WORST. "faded pictures in an old scrapbook/faded pictures that somebody took"

Morgan: this one might be the worst so far. It has competition though (House of a Thousand Guitars)

Me: If there were any justice in the world this song wouldn't exist. I miss the house of a thousand guitars (Rainmaker)

Morgan: I just wish he would have been able to give Warren Zevon the names of all the songs, and then Warren would have taken it from there

Morgan: 🦨
Me: 😖

>49 ursula:
okay, how do you make those magic pie charts, and how do you stick them into your thread?

I have some pie charts over at Storygraph, but I feel like I haven't fed the program good data, and I think they're wonky

>51 ursula:
LOL - love your Bruce Springsteen comments. I too, am not a fan. I did listen to him a bit in the early 80s, but then he came out with "Born in the USA" and I found it so obnoxious. Here's my conversation:

Daughter, learning music history in grade 7 where they are up to Springsteen: "My teacher says that we might not recognize these songs, but she promises our parents love him"
Me: your teacher is really wrong

ETA: I think Springsteen has inspired many other people though, and that's a good thing, and from what I know of his politics, he's not a horrible person or anything. I just don't care much for his music.

>52 Nickelini: I adapted a Google Docs spreadsheet made by someone else. I made some changes and rearrangements and this is a version with my modifications.

For getting the images into my thread, I take screenshots and upload them to imgur.com and copy the direct link to the image here.

>53 Nickelini: Haha, I was pretty sure we were the only Philistines. I like Bruce in exactly two songs: Born to Run and Thunder Road. Sometimes I look back and I'm amazed I made it through the Born in the USA era because that was pretty awful and in constant rotation everywhere. Funny about your daughter's teacher - it's probably a decent bet, but when it's wrong, it's oh so wrong!

He's definitely inspired people that I like a lot more.

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon - Pop Smoke (rap/hip hop) This one was released posthumously (we had also listened to Meet the Woo 2, which was released a couple of weeks before his death. Like a lot of posthumous projects, I feel like this one suffered from having others finish it. Lots of guest verses and a decently strong beginning was too short-lived and ended up with a lot of similar-sounding beats.

Me: ooter?
Morgan: according to urbandictionary, just NY slang for a shooter
Me: okay, now I am fully informed

Morgan: This one doesn't feel very creative (Snitching)

Me: oh man, the lyrics on this one 🙉 (Mood Swings)

Morgan: 🤷🏻‍♂️
Me: 🤷🏻‍♀️

-----------------------
*Program note

We are nearing the end of our 2020 Best Albums listening. I think Morgan said we have 12 albums to go. So, along with the current albums we've been listening to, I want to go back and add comments about some of my favorites from this project.
-----------------------

FAVORITE


New Vanitas - William Tyler (alternative/folk/country/ambient) William Tyler is a guitarist who has played with Silver Jews/Purple Mountains (if those names mean anything to you). This album is instrumental, mostly guitar but also including ambient elements like snippets of radio and swirling backgrounds made up of I'm not sure what instruments. Beautiful and contemplative.

Comments:

Morgan: I liked the first one more but this is nice for doing stuff to
Me: I agree, there were some moments in the first one that drew my attention (in a good way)

Morgan: this one is super pretty (Four Corners)

Me: The beginning of this one with the overlaid talking etc. reminds me of Burial. (Slow Night's Static)
Morgan: Good catch, there's a lot of similarity (muffled talking samples, everything warped like through a cassette tape left in the sun, super dreamy feel)

Morgan: 🤩
Me: 🤩

Transit by Rachel Cusk

So, a funny thing happened. Looking through my wishlist on the library site, I saw that Outline by Rachel Cusk was available, so I checked it out. I started it and wondered if I had read it before, it seemed sort of familiar. But I wasn't positive it wasn't just reminding me of a different book. But it turns out that during my last couple years of somewhat spotty record-keeping on my reading, I did read this one. (This has never happened to me before, although I know it happens to plenty of others!) So I moved on to the second of the trilogy, Transit.

These are kind of odd little books. The main character is a writer, and everything is told as an observation. There is more about her life in this book (in the first one she was almost entirely a passive observer), but still a lot of it is listening to other people tell her about their lives, so she serves as a sort of lens through which to see things. That sounds terribly boring, but it really isn't. Why do we read, but to hear other people's stories? This just makes you a bit more aware of the voyeuristic aspect of it.

Great comments on Transit, Ursula. I did like Outline, but it's been so long since I read it, I almost feel I should read it again before I continue with the trilogy. Maybe it doesn't matter.

>57 BLBera: Personally I don't think it matters that much. If it touched on the storyline (such as there was) in Outline, I didn't notice, haha.

The Zealot and the Emancipator by HW Brands (audio)

Man, I listened to this book forever. It was only 17 hours long but it took me an eternity. I picked it up partially because we had somewhat recently watched The Good Lord Bird so John Brown attracted me. But I felt like there was not that much of a connection between the two subjects of this book, or at least not enough to make a whole book out of it, when it can be summed up in a sentence: John Brown was a true believer who crusaded for the end of slavery and Lincoln was an agnostic politician who did end it. (Other people liked this a whole lot more than I did.)

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

This was ... an experience. The first part of the book is told in essentially Twitter-length paragraphs, very flippant and strange in that way the internet has. And also vaguely desperate in that way Twitter is. The woman is an internet celebrity for a viral post (Tweet, I'm sure) asking "Can a dog be twins?" She's making the rounds of various panels of internet famous people, when her mother sends her a message saying that everything is not all right at home with her sister who is pregnant.

The second half of the book is then about what happens with that pregnancy and what it's like to realize that maybe there's so much more to life than tweeting the cleverest non sequitur. Which sounds a bit like an afterschool special but ... I don't know, I can imagine it feeling that way although I didn't feel it personally.

If you aren't totally plugged in to the internet, the first half might be hard to deal with (and if you are, it's still hard to deal with but in a different way). Then the second half is so much the polar opposite of the first that if you were enjoying the first half in a certain way, you might not enjoy the second half at all. A very strange book, but one I overall liked.

Quote: Every day their attention must turn, like the shine on a school of fish, all at once, toward a new person to hate. Sometimes the subject was a war criminal, but other times it was someone who made a heinous substitution in guacamole.

The Turkish government shortened the time between vaccines again, down to 3 weeks. So I just got my second dose, 22 days after the first one. Yay!

>61 ursula: - Great news!

>62 katiekrug: Yes, now I'm only 6 days behind Morgan, which is convenient.

Last week's listening.

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never - Oneohtrix Point Never (electronic/experimental)
Untitled (Rise) - Sault (neo-soul/funk)
Big Conspiracy - J Hus (hip-hop)

Burden of Proof - Benny the Butcher (hip-hop)
Manger on McNichols - Boldy James & Sterling Toles (hip-hop)
Loveless - My Bloody Valentine (alternative/shoegaze)

YHLQMDLG - Bad Bunny (latin trap)
Making a Door Less Open - Car Seat Headrest (indie rock)
The New Abnormal - The Strokes (rock)

Mostly from our list listening (which - we have ONE ALBUM remaining and we're done!). Non-list were My Bloody Valentine and Car Seat Headrest, so I'll just talk about those.

MBV is one of Morgan's favorites (he is super into shoegaze) and one that I've somehow never really listened to. I liked it, but nothing really stood out to me. More research needed.

Car Seat Headrest is a favorite of both of ours, but this isn't his best album. (That's Teens of Denial. So good.) He also recently put out an EP of covers that influenced is writing for Making a Door Less Open, which gave him the honor of having the first version of Kate Bush's "Running Up that Hill" that didn't make me want to stab myself in the eardrums. Admittedly, I haven't listened to a lot of covers because I loathe that song.

>56 ursula: I have Kudos out from the library to read.

>60 ursula: I found this a really odd read: I was vaguely aware of some of the social media stuff she was talking about but never felt like I really "got" it. The second half made more sense to me but didn't strike me as particularly original.

Congrats on getting hold of the vaccinations, despite all the red tape.

Great news about the vaccine, Ursula. Congrats on your second jab.

Great comments on No One Is Talking about This - it IS original.

>65 charl08: I'm going to try to get to Kudos this year, I think. I've seen her new book bandied about here and there (Second Place) too, but I doubt I'll read that one for a while.

Thanks for your comment about No One Is Talking about This, it is basically what I suspected. There is a specific sort of internet experience that is being described, way beyond what the casual user would relate to, I think.

The red tape was a nightmare for the first one, luckily after that it was just a matter of watching the changing standards for timing of the second shot. So happy to be done!

>66 BLBera: Yes, thanks so much! It's a relief to just be waiting for two weeks to go by now.

As usual, I went into No One Is Talking about This knowing nothing about it, so it was definitely a wild ride. It did make me wonder if people have written novels on Twitter, which led me to the Wikipedia page for Twitterature (cringe).

Music post:



Adès Conducts Adès - Boston Symphony Orchestra & Thomas Adès & Kirill Gerstein & Christianne Stotijn & Mark Stone (classical) Two parts - a piano concerto and a cantata called "Totentanz" (Dance of Death).

Comments:

(Piano Concerto)
Me: Jazzy! Actually, in a couple of places there it reminded me of Rhapsody in Blue

Morgan: This sounds like soundtrack music
Morgan: This sounds like warmup exercises

Me: It kind of sounds like a Disney movie - an old one though

(Totenkanz)

Me: I know it's a thing but I'm not entirely sold on German as a singing language

Morgan: Oh dear the circus has arrived
Me: I like this part though, like a horror movie circus
Me: But in general I feel like I need a visual

Me: I guess she's going off with Death at the end here
Morgan: That's my guess too.

Morgan: 🧐
Me: 🎩



The New Abnormal - The Strokes (indie rock) The darlings of the indie rock scene of the aughts, then they kind of fell off the face of the earth for a while. As you can see from the comments below, they seem to have had trouble writing original songs. Overall the album sounds good, but that is a bit of a problem.

Comments:

Morgan: The guitar lines are classic. The falsetto was a bit much.

Morgan: This sounds like Billy Idol ("Bad Decisions")
Billy Idol writing credit
Me: Not surprising because it's basically "Dancing with Myself"

Morgan: This one has writing credits from the Psychedelic Furs, it's "The Ghost in You" according to Reddit ("Eternal Summer")

Me: No other writing credit on this one? It reminds me so much of something else. ("Why Are Sundays So Depressing")
Morgan: An older Strokes song, I'm 90% sure
Me: Well as John Fogerty proved, it's not illegal to plagiarize yourself

Morgan: 😎
Me: ©🙀



Untitled (Rise) - Sault (funk/neo-soul) I've already said I liked their other album from 2020, Untitled (Black Is). This is another great one. It still deals with societal issues but it is a much more upbeat sounding album. Such good stuff.

Comments:

Me: I really like this
Morgan: Yeah, this is 👍 👍
It’s almost a little disco, but somehow not in a bad way

Morgan: I really like this one ("Street Fighter")

Me: I think one of the interesting things about these albums is that they make me feel like I’m at an event of some sort
Morgan: yeah, it really does. It’s interesting, and powerful

Me: also I think part of what contributes to feeling like you’re at some kind of event is that the album is just put together so well
Morgan:I can agree with all of that
it’s perfectly sequenced
Me: polished without being soulless
Morgan: definitely

Morgan: 🕺🏻
Me: 😍

>61 ursula: Congratulations on getting your second vaccination, Ursula!

>70 FAMeulstee: Thanks! I'm over the side effects now too, so that's good. Nothing too terrible, just aching and probably a low fever one day (because for once it felt cool in the evening to me, haha).

The Plague by Albert Camus

Well. I'm glad I didn't read this a year ago! Plague descends on Oran, Algeria; hilarity ensues.

Okay, not really. Some things strikingly similar to 2020 ensue, except with buboes. You have disbelievers, challengers, death in numbers that lack meaning to most people. Brave deaths, senseless deaths, meaningless deaths. Religious hopes, scientific hopes, hopes in the face of seemingly endless setbacks.

In other news, I did another pet commission:

>73 ursula: Oh, nice!

>73 ursula: Nice, though the cat looks a little concerned.

I used to have a beautiful grey cat years ago.

>74 drneutron: thanks!

>75 Caroline_McElwee: well, that’s the thing about commissions, you work with the photos they give you.

Gray cats are very cute.

>49 ursula: I like your Dot-graph for your Year published chart. The spreadsheet I copied and adapted for one of my 5 or 6 tracking methods had a Decades published bargraph. I think I might have to change it up and start graphing the actual year.

>73 ursula: AWWW.

>72 ursula: Love your comments on The Plague; it's one I keep meaning to read again.

>77 mahsdad: Yeah, the spreadsheet I modified didn't have that feature at all, just the span of years and the average year. In poking around through graph options, I figured out how to create the dot graph. I also created one for all the years of the spreadsheet together, which is kind of noisy but still, I like it.

(Dots are oldest to newest, so red is 2021.)

>78 BLBera: They're cuties!

I think that it's definitely interesting reading The Plague having gone through this whole pandemic. I certainly don't think I would have related to it in quite the same way otherwise.

Hi Ursula!

>31 ursula: Excellent review. … and yeah that’s enough for me.

>46 ursula: and >48 ursula: I loved The Martian, passed on Artemis, and hadn’t heard much about Project Hail Mary. Okay.

>49 ursula: I love your charts and graphs. I keep the same info, but present it in a much more boring fashion.

>61 ursula: Congrats on your second dose of the vaccine.

>72 ursula: My daughter’s got my copy of The Plague, so I just spent 99¢ on one for my Kindle.

>73 ursula: Sweet and well done.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djélí Clark

Eh. Not really my thing. Djinns, a Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, etc in early 20th century Cairo. It was short, and I finished it because there were some Easter eggs about the setting that amused me. Like they started off talking about sudjukh, a sweet, and I said "what? Sucuk (pronounced sujuk in Turkish) is a sausage!" But then within a few paragraphs it was mentioned that it's a soundalike. There were a few things like that. But overall while it wasn't actually unpleasant to read, it didn't do anything for me either.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

What do you need for a gothic novel? A marriage to a man from a wealthy but down on its luck family - check. A family who is suspicious of this man, who sends someone to investigate what is really going on - check. A dark, gloomy house with creepy family portraits (and creepy family!) - check. A cemetery on the grounds - check. Warnings to leave, leave now while you still can! - check.

It checked those boxes and more, and was just pretty great all the way through.

Yup, all the boxes, including fog. Lots of fog. I wasn't sure how we'd get a real Gothic set in Mexico, but she pulled it off.

>83 ursula: Oh good! I bought it, even though I heard mixed reviews. Looking forward to it.

>81 karenmarie: I thought I had heard that Project Hail Mary was better than Artemis, which I had heard was not good. But either way, I think The Martian was a one-off for me.

I do like some non-boring graphics!

Thanks re: vaccine and pet commission. I used to be really nervous about the idea of doing commissions but I feel like I'm mostly over it (for animals ... not interested in doing people!).

Kind of funny that it didn't occur to me that there would be a resurgence of interest in The Plague but of course it makes sense!

>84 drneutron: Yes, fog! I can't believe I forgot that one. :) Sounds like you enjoyed it too!

>85 Nickelini: I think you'll like it, I'm kind of surprised about mixed reviews. It's exactly what it says in the title, so I'm not sure if people were expecting a subversion of the idea or something, but it delivers what it promises.

>79 ursula: You inspired me. I hadn't had a combined sheet yet. But I just created one. I've only been using my tracker for 3 years, so not quite as many points of "light" on mine, but I like the way the scatterplot looks. I'm gonna see what else of yours I can co-opt for mine. Thanks!

>88 mahsdad: Oh cool, glad to inspire you. I am drawn to the visual so even though I don't consider myself a huge data nerd, the combined totals had to be done!

Co-opt away! :)

Mestarin Kynsi - Oranssi Pazuzu (psychedelic black metal)

Comments: I don't know, I think most of what I could say about this is either contained in the genre description or in the comments below. Black metal + synths and generalized weirdness.

Me: um.
Morgan: I have a hard time not laughing when I hear that voice. I don't know if that's what they're going for

Me: the music is interesting to me but I dunno about that voice
it sounds like the voice of a witch in a kids' story

Morgan: it fits a LITTLE better when the guitars were going heavier behind it. But it's still a stupid metal voice.
Me: I feel like I'm stuck in the cheesiest horror movie and some ridiculously badly cgi'd thing is doing an incantation over me, and I can't stop laughing

Morgan: The music is cool, almost bordering on jazz. I really want to like this, but the crone voice pops up just often enough to keep me from fully endorsing it.

Morgan: 🔥
Me: 🤷🏻‍♀️



Manger on McNichols - Boldy James & Sterling Toles (hip hop)

Comments:

Morgan: This is a promising opener. Had to look up the lyrics on Genius but they're really good.

Morgan: I’ve heard them say “Concreature” a couple of times. (thanks Urban Dictionary)
Concreature Noun. Popularized by Detroit rapper Boldy James, "concreature" combines the words "con," "concrete," and "creature" to emphasize the lowest state of existence (literally being criminal--"con" or "convict," base level--"concrete," and being a "creature" --not even resembling a wild animal).

Me: interesting
did they say “I got the drug free school zone high”?

Morgan: The music on this is SO good, it works really well. It’s a shame it took 10 years 🤣

Morgan: That one sure had a lot going on (B. B. Butcher)
Me: it did. at some point I lifted my headphones to make sure there wasn’t some chaos in the street
Morgan: haha same

Me: "fell in love with my anger"
Morgan: there's some seriously heavy shit on this. I applaud it.

Morgan: 👍
Me: 👍

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Mmm, this was good. Gifty is the child of Ghanaian immigrants, researching reward-seeking behavior in rats at Stanford. What pointed her in that direction? The death of her brother Nana from a drug overdose. That's enough for a story there, really, but added to that is a lot about the brain vs. the self, the soul, the mind, whatever you want to call it, and the idea of a higher power. Great writing, and a lot of breathing room for the characters in what is said and unsaid, or left to the reader to fill in.

>91 ursula: I'm hoping that this one will be here in Malaysia in regular sized paperback form soon as I am restless to get to it.

Have a lovely Sunday.

>91 ursula: I'm looking forward to reading this one Ursula.

>92 PaulCranswick:, >93 Caroline_McElwee: I'll be interested to see what you both think when you eventually get to it!

*waving*

Thought of you last night at pub trivia - one of the (easy) questions was what major city straddles two continents :)

>95 katiekrug: Hey! I visited the other continent on Saturday!

Isn't Transcendent Kingdom great, Ursula? There's so much to think about in that novel. I want to read it again.

>91 ursula:, >97 BLBera: Definitely great!

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Russia, in 1980. Three bodies are found in central Moscow, in Gorky Park. Not the usual place to dump bodies, and these bodies are also mutilated in a not-commonly-seen way: their fingers and faces have been removed. Arkady Renko, the chief investigator, is concerned by this - murder in Russia is usually pretty basic, he says: motivated by drink and/or jealousy, usually ending with the killer turning himself in. This is something else entirely.

And from there we go through typical thriller territory, though with the added paranoia of having the KGB hovering over everything. Almost nothing is as it seems, motives shift and mutate, Renko has to wonder if he can trust anyone at all, etc. Typical stuff, reasonably well written and (over)plotted. I could have done with fewer twists and turns and honestly, the body count was ridiculously high. But it was fine.

>97 BLBera:, >98 drneutron: I liked it much better than Homegoing, and I liked that one quite a bit!

This afternoon Morgan and I will be attending our first Turkish class! I'm super excited. And nervous. But mostly excited.

>100 ursula: Ultimately Homegoing was my favourite of the two Ursula, but Transcendent Kingdom was a worthy second novel for me.

>101 ursula: Ooo, good luck with that.

>101 ursula: - Cool!

Hi Ursula! Good luck with your first Turkish class.

Good luck with your first Turkish class! I am with you in liking Transcendent Kingdom more than Homegoing, Ursula. I think we are in the minority, though. :)

>102 Caroline_McElwee:, >105 BLBera: I am intrigued that it is maybe a minority opinion about Transcendent Kingdom! I wonder what sets each of them apart for a person.

Unfortunately I can't think too much about that because my brain is pretty frazzled! Thanks all for the good wishes on my class. 3 hours of Turkish later, I have worn my brain to a smooth finish. Unfortunately, the class runs every day so hopefully I can wrinkle it back up in time for tomorrow.

The teacher is a yeller, in a very hilarious way. He must have yelled "RAHAT! RAHAT!" a thousand times as he tried to tell us to take it easy on the vowels. "Turkish, no long vowels! No "ahhhhhhh". "Ahhhhhh" YOK."

There are 8 students in the class - Morgan, me, a girl from Somalia, and 5 people whose native language is Arabic. I might accidentally learn some Arabic.

Thank goodness I've been studying on my own for the last year, 95% of the vocabulary was at least familiar to me. It took me half the class to realize that when the teacher said what sounded like "Bida" he was actually saying "bir daha" (again). Which was good, because he says it all the time to get you to repeat what you said (assuming you understood what that meant, haha).

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Murderbot #3 - I think this one was my favorite so far.

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Horror/speculative fiction novel which takes place in a world where animals had some sort of virus that could be transmitted to humans when they were eaten (think mad cow disease). The solution to the problem? Kill the animals, and normalize the eating of human flesh. But don't call it human flesh, call it "special meat."

Our main character, Marcus Tejo, works for a processing plant, working with suppliers and also with large customers. He started doing it as a way to support his young family - wife and baby boy - and now he's pretty used to it. It's not great, but it's a job like any other. Then his baby son died of SIDS, his wife left to sort out her feelings, and he has been left with a lot of time to think about the state of the world. And now a supplier has left a gift in his barn - a very expensive First Generation Pure female.

This was really quite a good book in a lot of ways, but there is absolutely no one I would recommend it to.

Sometimes I put it down because it was all a bit too much, and sometimes I picked it up because I was dying to know what was going to happen. The ending surprised me greatly, but it was perfect.

If you choose to read this, you have to be know you're going to read graphic descriptions of the inside of processing plants, one brief but graphic description of animal cruelty, and a whole lot of depravity.

>108 ursula: Yikes. Hard pass. Thanks for the warning.

>108 ursula: I'm both drawn to that, and utterly repulsed by it, all at the same time

>109 karenmarie: some books I read are definitely not for everyone!

>110 Nickelini: that’s an apt description of how I felt reading it. Grim at times but it also gave me some food for thought. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

>108 ursula: I think I might pass on this. I am squeamish. This might be too much for me.

>112 BLBera: Yeah, squeamishness will not fly with this one.

Dropping by to wish you a lovely weekend, Ursula.

>114 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul.

------------------------------------

Obviously, this Turkish class is keeping me extremely busy. Yesterday before class we went to Gülhane Park, which is right behind Topkapı Palace. Super beautiful! We had a great time, and then we went to go to class and I had lost my Istanbulkart (transit card). Replacing it is not that easy because you have to not only buy a new card and load it with money, but you also have to associate your health code number to it. It simply would not work for us. The guy at the tram station made us buy a single-use ticket (half the price of the new card), we were very late to class, etc.

Then when leaving class, we still couldn't get it to work, so bought another single-use ticket for the tram home. Then a few stops into the trip, the tram stopped and there was an announcement that due to traffic accident farther up the line, trams wouldn't be running for a while and everyone had to get off. We walked past several stops but it was still some distance to get past the accident, so we bought another single-use ticket and took a bus the rest of the way home.

Not my favorite day ever! But we did have a lovely morning, and now my transit card situation is sorted out (worked fine on our computers at home).

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

This is a book from the 1001 Books list. I was pretty excited because I haven't read any Baldwin, but I'll tell you the truth: this one did not set my world on fire. Semi-autobiographical, the book is about John and his family. His father is a Pentecostal minister, his mother an unknowable entity to him. He has a brother who is getting in trouble all the time, and John himself is treated very harshly by his father in spite of not being a troublemaker himself. It turns out there's much more to everyone than what meets the eye.

So much religion, and honestly it bored me a lot of the time. The story was interesting but I could have done with half or less of the religion.

>115 ursula: Ooof. Sounds like a pain of a day!

>115 ursula: Painful day indeed. Glad it got sorted in the end Ursula.

>116 ursula: It's the quality of writing for me with Baldwin. His other books are not particularly religious, but as you say, as a young man he was brought up in a religious, if violent, home. Not an uncommon hypocrisy.

I have the biog of the three mothers of: Baldwin, King and Malcolm X in the pile.

>117 drneutron:, >118 Caroline_McElwee: It was a doozy! Did I mention it was 32C? Blargh. But we got through it, and didn't even get home a whole lot later.

>118 Caroline_McElwee: The writing was good, I agree, and I'm interested to read some more by him. The content wasn't for me and I think it's also a bit of a timing issue. I'm spending 8 hours a day going to, from, and being in class and I'm pretty exhausted all around that. So this book probably required more immersion and attention than I was able to give it.

That biography sounds interesting. I wonder how similar their experiences might have been.

Eight hours! Wow, that's quite a commitment to langage learning you've got there. Do you have to pass a test at the end (of the class/term/year)? Are people keen to help when they hear you're learning? I've been surprised at how positive some places can be when even just "attempting" a language. (Let us not speak of France, however!)

>120 charl08: I guess on a good day it's more like 6.5 hours. I might have added wrong, oops!

Anyway, it's a 6-week course to get us to A1. The next class follows immediately, up to A2. I dunno what happens after that exactly, if these are compressed summer courses and the ones that will start in October will be on a regular semester schedule or what. I'm guessing that's the case, but I'm not positive. The good news is that we're taking the classes for free through Morgan's university. Turkish courses are kind of crazy expensive for some reason, to the order of 1200TL per class. (For reference, an okay but not great salary would be 5000TL/month).

We do have to pass a test at the end of our course to move on to the next level. 25% speaking, 25% writing, 50% grammar. He said if you answer two speaking questions wrong, you will fail. But I mean, at this level those questions are like "what time do you get up in the morning? How many siblings do you have? What do you do on the weekends?"

People are pretty pleased to find out you're learning the language. I guess I should say, pretty pleased if you can understand them, there is not a lot of English speaking going on. They're pretty patient, but they will just keep saying things in Turkish until you start to get the idea, whether or not you're learning it. We were in a touristy area the other day and did manage to get a guy at a restaurant to switch to Turkish with us just by persisting in using it ourselves even when he spoke English to us.

I would say that people were much more complimentary and encouraging in Italy than they are here, generally speaking. Maybe it's just because I could speak more Italian/was more confident with it, I'm not sure. But I feel like if you said anything at all in half-decent Italian, you got told you spoke "perfect Italian!" Here, I don't know that anyone has complimented my ability to speak Turkish so far. I'll be on the lookout!

Good luck with the Turkish classes. It sounds like a huge time commitment, but immersion is a good way to learn quickly.

>122 BLBera: The time commitment is about 2/3 class time and 1/3 transportation. It is a big city!

I am definitely feeling more confident the more I’m forced to speak. Looking forward to finishing this one already and getting on to the A2 class.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This was rather more esoteric than I was expecting. Agents on opposite sides of the titular time war write to each other and develop a relationship that just doesn't work in their current situations. A sort of futuristic, time-traveling, lesbian Romeo and Juliet. Both Morgan and I enjoyed it.

Unsurprisingly, August ended up being the month with the fewest read books since March.

But we have completed 4 weeks of our 6-week A1 Turkish course. And when this one finishes, we will immediately begin our A2 course. Morgan will only be able to attend 2-3 weeks of it because his own semester will start at that point, but I'll do the whole thing.

It's kind of amazing how exhausting it is to spend 4 hours every day struggling in another language. I sometimes read on the bus there or the tram back, and I still read a little before bedtime, but more often than not I'm pretty beat.

On the way back, we take the tram and then walk up the stairs to our neighborhood. Here's a time-lapse video of going up the stairs: YouTube video. Every afternoon!

In a way I do a bit of a Turkish course last year as I watched the entire run of Ertugrul (about 450 hours of it) in subtitles.

Have a great weekend.

>125 ursula: Wow re the stairs Ursula. Not good on stairs myself, but I guess it keeps you fit.

Yes, an intensive course will have a knock on on your reading for sure.

How are your furry friends doing?

Hi Ursula.

>115 ursula: Expensive and frustrating day, glad your transit card situation is back under control.

>116 ursula: Well. I think I’ll pass. I don’t have any Baldwin on my shelves, and now don’t feel the need to. Organized religion and I have a rocky history. The last book I remember reading about a religious family was The Rapture of Canaan. It was very good, I felt no compulsion to read anymore by her, and mostly shy away from religious complications in books. Not always, but mostly.

>125 ursula: Congrats on being over halfway through the Turkish course. Up the Stairs – oh my. My legs ache just watching it. With my knees being the way they are, I don’t think I’d leave the house at all!

Wow those stairs! Good for you! And also wow and good for you with learning Turkish! I’m not sure where that one falls on the difficulty levels but it sounds hard. Which alphabet does it use? (Why don’t I know this? Lol). I find that when I’m working on my Italian (which is never 4 hours a day), I read way fewer books.

How long will you live in Turkey?

>126 PaulCranswick: It will be a while before I watch Ertuğrul, at least for any Turkish learning reasons. The language in it is a sort of pastiche of old and new so it’s not good for my purposes. We’ve been watching Atiye (The Gift in English).

>127 Caroline_McElwee: What doesn't kill you, keeps you fit. I cannot even describe how many stairs there are in this city. Not always in a giant flight like that, but to get to our neighborhood from the waterfront, you have your choice of at least 7 different staircases. It is also possible from the end of the tram line to take a funicular up to Taksim and walk relatively flat ground from there.

Here the kitties are this morning:

>128 karenmarie: Yes, I'm very glad to have my transit card sort out too! Ugh, I feel so dumb for losing it but whatever, these things happen. On the plus side, I got a new leather wallet and I can now scan my card without even taking it out of the wallet so that situation will not repeat itself!

I don't know if the rest of Baldwin is religious? Maybe/probably not? But definitely skip that one. I have a few more on my eventual reading list because there are maybe 2 more on the 1001 Books list.

Thanks on the Turkish course! Very exciting. Morgan's knees are not great either and sometimes the stairs around here are a real struggle (we have 4 more flights just in our building). Adding in 34C weather and 70% humidity does not improve the situation. But it's starting to cool off now, so that's pleasant.

>129 Nickelini: There are a lot of stairs everywhere. It's a bit like Naples in that way, and although there are funiculars, there are definitely fewer than Naples has.

Turkish is considered a difficult language for English speakers to learn. It does use the Latin alphabet. The language was reformed after the establishment of the republic in 1923. Atatürk switched it from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one, and also removed a lot of the Arabic and Persian loan words. It is difficult (among other reasons) because it is agglutinative, meaning that words are formed by adding suffixes. It shares that characteristic with Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, for example.

So: ev = house, eve = to the house, evde = in/at the house, evden = from the house.

Ofisimizden evimize gidiyoruz = We are going home from our office.

Also things like: Tatildeyim = I am on vacation.

How long will you live in Turkey?

Unknown. It's been a year so far, it will be at least another year, it could be indefinitely.

>131 ursula: What cuties.

Great picture of your cats. I needed a rest after watching the YouTube of the stairs! Well, you will be very fit.

>134 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks! We're partial to them! :)

>135 BLBera: It's always fun when they're all hanging out together like that. There are about 300 steps in that staircase, I counted it once a while back. The city is my Stairmaster.

I am about 20 seconds away from abandoning Shuggie Bain. Ugh, just ugh. I am at 41% and although there was a moment around the 30% mark when I thought it might improve, I really hate it. I hated it in the opening pages, and now I hate it in different ways. But I also am annoyed that I've spent so much time trying to like it, trying to finish it, only to have it be a complete waste of time.

>137 ursula: that’s an awful reading experience. That one has never sounded good to me so now I really won’t feel pressured to try it. I also especially dislike the title

Hi Ursula!

>131 ursula: Aww, sweet babies.

>137 ursula: Nothing I read about Shuggie Bain ever wanted to make me read it, and your reaction confirms my opinion. Misery porn at it’s finest.

>138 Nickelini: I admit to feeling a bit of irrational irritation at the title too. But then I tell myself, it's not their fault Scottish people use a nickname for Hugh that makes me react to it like lots of people react to words like "moist". But it doesn't make me grit my teeth any less at it!

>139 karenmarie: They are pretty sweet a lot of the time!

I'll be honest, I'm often okay with books that a lot of people would call misery porn. But there has to be something drawing me in - this book has actively repulsed me the entire time. I was trying to push myself through it because of the Booker win, but it seems to get longer every time I open it so I'm officially calling it done.

>137 ursula:
I could not get into that book. I abandoned it when they were showing off their bras at the card game.

>141 Deedledee: I wish I'd had that level of foresight. If I'm being honest, I wish I'd abandoned it on page 2:

The book starts with a flash-forward to the adult Shuggie working at a deli counter.

"If he was very unlucky, the tongs would slip and the chicken would thud and slide its way across the gritty floor. He'd have to make an apologetic pretence of starting again, but he never wasted that dirty bird. When the women turned away he would put it back with its sisters under the hot yellow lights. He believed in hygiene well enough, but these little private victories stopped him from starting a riot. Most of the judgy, man-faced housewives who shopped here deserved it. The way they looked down on him flushed the back of his neck scarlet. On particularly low days he folded all types of his bodily discharge into the taramasalata."

I seriously considered quitting there, but I didn't. I wish I had. (I mean, I wish I'd been able to somehow quit before reading that but no help for that. And misery loves company so now you've read it too!)

>142 ursula: I'd forgotten that bit, but am also one of those who abandoned it. It felt pretty relentless.

>133 ursula: Fascinating.

I do like languages although my proficiency is a little bit suspect (apart from my mother tongue I am fluent in Malay and have a fair grasp of French - especially when it is written down).

Turkey's history (and Istanbul's) straddling two continents as it does is enthralling too.

>137 ursula: I can understand you. It is very heavy going and took me an age to read even though I did eventually come to appreciate it.

Have a lovely weekend, Ursula.

>143 charl08: I tried to forget it, haha!

Interesting to hear of other abandoners/people who aren't interested. I felt pretty alone, I'll admit, it seemed like everyone was praising it.

>144 PaulCranswick: I like languages too although I haven't had a lot of interest in being a superficial "polyglot" - lots of people seem to enjoy racking up very basic levels of a bunch of different languages. Turkish is really pretty interesting. I'm getting better at having working backwards in a sentence feel more natural, at least for simple sentences.

What is Malay like? What languages is it related to? I see people post in it online and I guess it looks a little like Indonesian to me but I've never read up on it.

I've rarely had a book feel like I was getting further from the end every time I read it, but this one succeeded. I'm glad you appreciated it in the end - I think the only thing I would appreciate is that it was the end, so I add it to the group of books I've abandoned this year. (The most books I've ever abandoned in a year!)

I hope you also have a great weekend. I still have to get through another class today before I can have mine. :)

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Well. It took me a long time to read this one. That wasn't the fault of the book, though, I just started it before we got into our Turkish class and then once that began, time was much more limited. It's a shame, this book would have benefited from longer, more frequent reading sessions.

Lyman Ward is an aging man with health issues that have resulted in the loss of one leg and having to use a wheelchair. He is living alone in a house that his family has owned for years, trying to write a biography of his grandmother. Lyman's son does not believe he should be there alone, that he is too frail to risk the solitude. Lyman is fiercely independent though, and fights off every suggestion that he needs literally anyone.

The narrative blends Lyman's story with that of his grandmother - a cultured woman from the East coast who marries a mining engineer in the 1870s and moves west with him as he seeks to find his place in the world. It's not an easy life for her, and it's not easy for Lyman to look directly at the life of his grandparents and the choices they made.

This won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972, and it's one that I enjoyed a lot (I don't have a good record with Pulitzer winners!).

>145 ursula: Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia re very similar languages, Ursula and from the same source. I can visit Jakarta and make myself understood very easily - only some of the words are different or used different and some of them quite comically.

In Malay for example - "tooth brush" is "berus gigi" (or literally brush tooth aka tooth brush)

In Indon it would be - "sikat gigi" or "tooth comb"!

>146 ursula: I loved that novel too Ursula, and read a couple of others of his afterwards.

>147 PaulCranswick: Ah, I see. Turkish also has some languages that are mutually intelligible to some degree. The closest is Azerbaijani.

>148 Caroline_McElwee: My mother-in-law had said she really loved this one. I would like to read some more. In my exceedingly brief college career, his son Page Stegner was my adviser.

>149 ursula: Interesting re Page, Ursula.

>142 ursula: Well, thanks for that image, Ursula. I won't be able to unsee it. :) Your comments have removed any desire to read Shuggie Bain; I just finished one that I wish I hadn't read either, but at least it was only 200 pages.

>146 ursula: >148 Caroline_McElwee: Me too. Enjoyed Angle quite a bit. Haven't read anymore, but I've got Big Rock Candy Mountain and Recapitulation on the shelf. I should get these sometime before the heat death of the universe. LOL.

>150 Caroline_McElwee: It was very brief, haha!

>151 BLBera: I know, that's how I felt when I started the book! I'll have to go see what your latest dud was.

>152 mahsdad: You just reminded me that I did read The Big Rock Candy Mountain a few years ago. Also really great, although I have the impression it was a little bleaker? (Kind of funny considering some of the things that happened in Angle of Repose/some of the themes.)

Colorful by Eto Mori

A soul meets up with an angel, who tells him he's "won the lottery" and gets to have a chance to redeem himself from mistakes made in his life by living another life and correcting the mistakes in that one. He is sent to fill in for Makoto Kobayashi, a 14-year-old who committed suicide. This soul has 4 months to make sense of Makoto's life, and to remember his own past misdeeds, and then he'll be able to continue the process of rebirth.

The replacement Makoto is not too impressed with the family - the father seems distant, unaware of the problems in his family, the mother is flighty and has had an affair, the older brother is mean and uninterested in Makoto. But of course there's more to every story than what anyone, especially a 14-year-old, sees. This was fine, no real surprises, and a mix of good quotes and trite ones. Apparently it's a very well-known book in Japan (first published in 1998, never translated to English before).

Today I took the test in my A1 Turkish class - grammar, writing, listening, and speaking. I got 99 points out of 100, then said I was "Çok üzgün" (very sad) about that 1 point and so it was restored to me. (Haha yes I've always been like this. Also, I was just teasing.)

First class down! Second class starts ... Monday. No rest for the wicked.

>155 ursula: - Wow! What a result - very impressive.

That's amazing! Congratulations! I'm sure I wouldn't score that high on an A1 Italian exam even though I've moved on past A1 material

>156 katiekrug: Thanks!

>157 Nickelini: Thanks! I am also beyond A1 material so I do have that advantage, but this included a question and answer section, which is where I have been most struggling. Also honestly, although I have been well beyond A1 material, I understand it thoroughly now, which is different than just knowing it.

You never know though, you might do that well on Italian!

Congratulations Ursula. Impressive performance.

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells

Murderbot #4, done. This installment was pretty good, although I think I might have liked it less than number 3. More growth for Murderbot in this one, and I enjoyed it, but I still think the last one edged it out.

>159 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline! We'll see if I can do it again in 7 weeks ...

Oops, I forgot a book in there.



With Teeth by Kristen Arnett

I could have sworn I picked this one from a list the Denver library had of horror novels, but ... unless you're supposed to be horrified at what a terrible parent the protagonist is, maybe I'm mistaken about what made me add this to my list.

Sammie is the main character, married to Monika, raising their son Samson. He's an enigma, mostly silent and sullen and generally unpleasant to be around. And that's when he's a grade-schooler! He doesn't get better from there. Sammie is a sloppy drunk who constantly complains she has no idea who her son is or how to have a conversation with him, but she doesn't try very often either. Monika is a non-entity. Although the book covers from the time Samson is a toddler to when he is in college, there's no progression for anyone. The only positive is that Samson goes to therapy for his entire life - at least someone will talk to him.

I don't feel like I got anything out of this novel at all.

Congrats on your stellar score, Ursula. Oh, you're one of THOSE students. :) I've learned to pick them out very quickly.

I've heard some other negative comments about the Arnett. Thanks for reminding me.

>163 BLBera: I mean, I was joking in this case. But on the other hand ... he graded the others very leniently (very leniently!). If some of these students got an 85, on a proper curve I probably would have had a 120. But the actual grade doesn't matter, just passing. The teacher asked me what he should score Morgan, and I said one point less than me, so he got a 98. That's how serious it all is.

Belatedly finding your thread. From memory I think we had quite similar taste in books when you used to post on CR.

>155 ursula: Well done, you!

>165 AlisonY: Hello Alison, thanks for stopping by! Apologies for not being very present here. As mentioned above, my Turkish class is eating my brain. I just sat down at my computer for the first time in a couple of days. I will definitely look up your thread as well!

>166 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul! I have to admit that although I haven't been in a classroom in about a million years, turns out I'm still a nerd, haha.

As mentioned above, my Turkish class is eating my brain

I totally understand that! When I was doing Italian for 6 mo from 2019-2020, I got very little else done. I enjoy it, and there are so many language rabbit holes to disappear down. This round, I'm not as consumed yet, because I want to do other things. But I'm also struggling more.

>169 Nickelini: About 5-6 hours every day is spent going to class, in class, and coming home from class. Then there's homework, and online work to keep up with Turkish in general, separate from the class (Duolingo, Memrise, elon.io). And finally, I spend some time every day working with Morgan on what we've learned since he's not able to take this A2 class with his own semester starting. So it adds up to a full-time job.

But I've already told myself this is a full-time job for the moment, so there's not much else that's happening. I am hoping things ease up a bit when I get to B1 (haha), since I'll have enough at the ready that a lot of the day-to-day stuff won't be such a struggle. There was a point with Italian where I could read books for pleasure, and watch videos by my favorite Italian YouTubers and not feel like it was language learning because I could actually understand it. Hopefully I'll reach that point soon-ish in Turkish.

Kudos by Rachel Cusk

It's weird, I've now finished this trilogy, reading two of them this year and I don't really feel like I have a lot to say about it. That's not because I didn't enjoy it, but it's really just the oddly passive way so much of the story is told. The narrator is an author and people tell her stories about their lives while she listens and occasionally comments or questions. Her own life is only somewhat present in the story. They're odd books that way but I have liked them.

Here's a roundup to the end of the 3rd quarter of the year (ish - it includes the above, which I finished on October 5). You can compare them to the stats from the beginning of July, in >49 ursula:

>170 ursula: Wow, that's a lot. I'd love to be able to do that with my Italian -- I feel like I'd make so much progress. I'm sure at the rate you're going, you'll be at B1 soon.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara is an Artificial Friend, or AF. The story begins with her in a store, trying to make a good impression on passersby when she gets her chance to stand in the shop window. Eventually she's adopted by Josie and her family. Josie is ill, and Klara thinks she might know how to make Josie better.

This book ... kind of left me cold. I wasn't crazy about the writing style - I get that it was being told by an artificial intelligence, and that she was essentially a naive, childlike being so the simplicity makes sense. It just didn't speak to me.

The story itself was intriguing, involving Artificial Friends and some sort of unspecified procedure for children to be "lifted", which seems to improve their intelligence. And I don't mind that sort of thing not being explained, I much prefer ample doses of Handwavium to paragraphs of details on the science behind everything. But I felt like I needed something to hang onto in the story, so maybe more worldbuilding would have helped. In any event, I'm sure the question of what separates humans from other potentially created forms of intelligence is worth lots of literary exploration, but this just felt very simplistic to me.

>173 Nickelini: I will be starting B1 in about 5 weeks. I feel like getting more comfortable with using it just means it snowballs. I'm able to eavesdrop on people on public transport with less effort now, although I don't always understand everything. As the teacher says, "Zamanla." (In time.)

Very impressed with your language progress.

Fall has arrived in Istanbul.



Fishing boats on a rainy day just off the coast from Topkapı Palace.

Wow, that's beautiful!

>176 banjo123: Thanks! It's hard work and sometimes like hitting my head repeatedly on a brick wall but I'm determined. Also, I hope to one day have my life back.

>178 drneutron: Thanks! I guess rain is good for fishing?

>177 ursula: Lovely!

Back to the language studies, Ursula. Do you have native speaking friends to converse with regularly as I found this utterly essential in my own case.

>180 PaulCranswick: I mean, I speak in class every day, and often spend the breaks talking to the teacher and assistant. I also have to speak if I want anything out in the world. :) But in addition to that, I've met another woman who has offered to spend time practicing with me, so I'm looking forward to that.

And I need to figure out scheduling, because the assistant for our class wants to do a language exchange with me (her English is ... rough), and the teacher of the class actually wants me to work through an English book with him. His English is ... slightly less rough but also not terrific. He often has me translate things for the class.

So I have options, my schedule has made it difficult to take advantage of them, but next week our class moves to the morning, from 9-12, so I should be able to start figuring things out.

>181 ursula: That is difficult, Ursula, because you are sort of caught between your desire to learn from them (and which in part you are paying for) and their obvious desire to learn from you. If you have the time it could be fun!

>182 PaulCranswick: Luckily I'm not actually paying for the class! It's through Morgan's university so I'm taking it for free.

This is a good thing because Turkish language classes are outrageously expensive here.

>183 ursula: That is a relief! I know from experience that language lessons are pretty price prohibitive.

Ursula, try to make friends with a native speaker. That helped me a long time ago with Spanish. In fact, I am now married to that native Spanish speaker. :D He almost never speaks Spanish anymore. :( However, the more you get to practice what you learn in class *outside* of class, will be the most effective way to learn Turkish.

When I lived in Israel for a year, I had been taking Hebrew classes in an ulpan (a Hebrew language class). I did not like the teacher so I used to cut class frequently and go to visit my aunt Emma on her kibbutz. Although she spoke English fluently, she always spoke to me only in Hebrew to help me learn. It was essential that I do so because as part of my year in Israel I worked as a volunteer nurse both in a hospital and in home care. I still love speaking Hebrew, but I hear so poorly now that I often cannot even understand people when they speak English! *sigh*

>175 ursula: I don't always understand everything. As the teacher says, "Zamanla." (In time.)

My aunt always used to say: Savlanoot! , the Hebrew word for patience. She'd also say: La'at, La'at!, the Hebrew word for slowly.

Stopping in briefly to say, I've read some books:



Klara and the Sun (fine, I guess.)
Things We Lost to the Water (seemed to go on forever although it wasn't that long)
Bewilderment (hated it)

>185 SqueakyChu: I have native speaker friends. For example, I spent 5 hours with one on Saturday. Also, I get to practice outside of class every time I leave the house. That's the benefit/problem of living in a country where people don't speak English.

>187 ursula: Five hours speaking another language - I bet you were tired at the end of that day. Crumbs.

I still haven't got a copy of Bewilderment - if it wins I suppose I will pick it up. Begrudgingly!

Hi Ursula! Been a while since I visited.

>146 ursula: It’s on my shelves, tagged ‘2021 read’. Realistically, I’ll have to change most of my ‘2021 read’s to ‘2022 read’s on January 1. But this one really sounds like one I’d like.

>155 ursula: Congrats on your doing well on your test.

>162 ursula: I don’t have an ‘avoid like the plague’ list, but if I did Shuggie Bain and this one would be on it.

>172 ursula: I keep struggling with what’s a thriller and what’s a mystery. How do you define them?

>177 ursula: Thanks for sharing. I like it a lot.

>181 ursula: My, my. Turkish practice and English practice and working through an English book. I’m impressed.

>186 ursula: I’m sorry your recent reads are not good. I’ve never been attracted to Powers just by listening to descriptions of his books here on LT. I hope you get some good un’s going soon. All three would go on my avoid like the plague list.

>186 ursula: I think that Bewilderment and No One is Talking About This are two novels which rather prove the point that the Booker Prize really ought to have stuck to its identity and done to American authors what the Pulitzer does to non-American authors. Are those two really amongst the best six novels published in the UK in 2021?

>188 charl08: Yes! It's exhausting. At this point I can understand pretty well but it's certainly not effortless, I have to concentrate. And then there's the endless search in my brain for words to speak and how to put together a sentence (that hopefully says what I want it to). I've been really tired in general with class being so long and 5 days a week - it takes some effort to subject myself to it for another half day, even in the name of friendship.

It's interesting about Bewilderment - I had a quick glance around GoodReads partway through to see what people were saying and it seemed to be pretty starry-eyed. I don't know why.

>189 karenmarie: I started Angle of Repose knowing my mother-in-law said it was her favorite book - we have kind of a joke that if she loved it, I'm gonna hate it. It was a pleasant surprise that I enjoyed it! It's also like a love letter to the American West.

I agree that the line between thriller and mystery can be foggy. For me personally, a mystery is where the "whodunnit" is the focus - you aren't supposed to know until you get to the end of it, and figuring it out is mostly the point. A thriller encompasses things like spy novels, and also books where you know who did it and you're along for the ride, or where you don't know who did it but you're not really supposed to be able to figure it out as you read along.

I'm filling up your imaginary "avoid like the plague" list! It's a service I provide. ;)

>190 PaulCranswick: I have no idea why Bewilderment is on a best of books published anywhere list. And I don't know how No One Is Talking About This stacks up to whatever else was published in the UK, but I really liked that one. I know it's seriously divisive though.

>192 ursula: I am going to restart No One is Talking About This, Ursula and hopefully I will fare better with it second time around.

>187 ursula: Great! :)

>186 ursula: Love the mini reviews, Ursula. :)

I loved Klara and the Sun, but Bewilderment was meh. It seemed like he wanted to add every opinion he had about every topic. If it had been a father-son story, it would have been much better.

It sounds like you're getting a lot of language practice. It is easier when not a lot of people around you speak English.

>186 ursula: I enjoyed both Klara and the Sun and Bewilderment. I guess if we all loved the same books, there would be no need for reviews or prizes!

I'm interested in different views to mine, and shared views, but the latter may not be quite the same as mine either.

>194 SqueakyChu: I passed my A2 test today (I wasn't worried, but still, it's done). I'm telling myself that it's a bit like when a child is first learning to speak, it takes forever for them to say anything comprehensible besides words here and there but eventually it starts coming together.

>195 BLBera: I don't know if "hated it" counts as a mini-review but I'll take it. ;)

I just felt like it leaned hard on some things I don't entirely agree with and did so without much reasoning. Drugging kids is bad. Okay, but leaving your child subject to out of control rages is not loving parenting either. Once they at least started doing something I was better with the story ... but I already couldn't stand the father so it didn't really recover for me.

Easier to not speak English, but tiring. Every day is so tiring.

>196 Caroline_McElwee: Absolutely, when I was working in bookstores I learned not to take other people's opinions about books I loved personally! It's okay to have strong opinions, too. I understand people who like to be a little more subtle and say "it wasn't for me" etc, but I'm a love/hate kinda person, haha.

Also agree that sometimes it's surprising how different those "shared" opinions can be!

Plodding away.

Scored the highest in the class on the A2 exam: 95/100. Not quite the 99 I got in A1, but I'll take it.

I'm making flash cards to get serious about vocabulary now - answers only with Turkish synonyms and/or an image, no English.

Here's one of my favorites so far, for "brave":



I'm trying to eke out a few more minutes in every day to read just so that I don't take forever to read each book, and I'm having some small success. Maybe I'll get through more than 4 this month.

Listening to Blue Banisters by Lana Del Rey a lot.



Morgan and I have the same opinion on this one: 🔥

>196 Caroline_McElwee: Congratulations Ursula. On to the next unit, or a break?

Love 'brave'. Hehe.

Good luck with this months reading.

>198 ursula: love it! What are you using for your flag cards?

>197 ursula: Congratulations, Ursula! Learning and using other languages is so much fun!

>199 Caroline_McElwee: On to the next class. I started B1 today. No rest for the wicked language learner.

Thanks! I am hopeful, I want to finish out the year somewhat strong. For a while I thought I might actually hit the 75 but that was not meant to be!

>200 Nickelini: I'm using GoodNotes, they have an "experimental" flash card option. I'm not sure how long they've had it, I used Notability until recently.

>201 SqueakyChu: Thanks! It is, especially now that the entire class is more able to use the language. There are some people with whom I can finally start to have a conversation - some of the Arabic speakers have only a shaky grip on English. And of course, my grip on Arabic is nonexistent!

I'm using GoodNotes, they have an "experimental" flash card option. I'm not sure how long they've had it, I used Notability until recently.

Oh, I'll have to look into that. Does it have audio? I use Quizlet and my favourite thing is that I can hear how a word is pronounced and what it's supposed to sound like

>202 ursula: I would love to learn Arabic. Back in my good hearing days after I returned from Israel, I tried to teach myself Arabic with a book. I learned to write the alphabet which looks different than the Hebrew alphabet but so many of the words are based on the same root that I think it would have been easy for me to learn. However I had no one with whom to speak it so I concentrated on Spanish.

I have a friend who speaks some Turkish as she once had a boyfriend from Turkey. Of course, the first words she learned were all profanity! :D

>204 SqueakyChu: Of course, the first words she learned were all profanity!

LOL! Why is it so satisfying to learn swear words in another language? Seems like a popular thing to like to do

>205 Nickelini: I had a funny experience when I traveled to Mexico and Central America. I was learning Spanish with the help of my then boyfriend (now my husband) who is from El Salvador. A girlfriend and I wanted to learn Spanish profanity from my boyfriend before our traveling to El Salvador, Guatamala, and Mexico. He refused to teach me any. When my friend and I got home afterward, I think we had learned all those words on our trip (each in the dialect of the separate countries, of course!).

>206 SqueakyChu: HA! You showed him!

>207 Nickelini: LOL! I think I learned some words that were new to him!

>206 SqueakyChu: Funnily enough I have just had to consider an harassment case here via whatsApp messages between one of our supervisors (a guy) and a female site personnel from one of our Sub-contractors.

The Project is a Joint Venture between Samsung (the company I work for which has 60%) and UEM (a Malaysian company with government links) but the project is effectively run by Samsung.

We received a letter of complaint from our subcontractor alleging harassment and bullying by our staff against their own and in support of this they produced screenshot stills of the whatsApp communications. All of it was in Malay and as the only Senior member of staff au fait with Malay sufficiently to understand the shortened slang type communication in the vernacular language, I was asked to investigate and consider.

I had to balance the fact of feminism's demands for equality and consider that in many instances the language used was normal between a frustrated Main Contracting staff and the Sub-Contractor not really performing up to standard, if gender is not considered. There was, however one message using an extremely bad word in the local patois specifically aimed at the sex of the sub-contract staff. My recommendation was to give a written warning to the staff but he has since had further clashes with other staff here and quit his job.

>209 PaulCranswick: Wow, Paul! That's interesting usage for your knowledge of foreign language profanity!
I only wanted to know slang/profanity to have a better idea of the language and the speakers' intent.

>203 Nickelini: It doesn't have audio. GoodNotes is branching out a bit from their note-taking/digital calendar/digital planner model I guess. I don't know if they are planning to add something like that in. I have used Memrise and Quizlet, both of those it is dependent on the user who makes the deck to add in audio.

>204 SqueakyChu: Yeah, I have been tempted to dip a toe into Arabic since I have access to a bunch of native speakers! But that way lies insanity. Also, I'd have to decide who to emulate since spoken Arabic all sounds different depending on where they're from. The Palestinians had the only accent I could differentiate myself, but I see the others going back and forth not understanding each other sometimes too.

Referencing that and >205 Nickelini:, I actually find learning profanity in other languages nerve-wracking. It's good to be able to recognize it, but I really hesitate to use it. I know what it sounds like when people use English cursing in all the wrong ways. *cringe*

Also, in Italian I never knew which ones were "appropriate" and which ones weren't. They have quite a variety of swearing, from the religious to the crude. And it wasn't always the ones you expected that friends would say they wouldn't utter in front of their grandmas.

>209 PaulCranswick: That's certainly an interesting case for knowing both internet abbreviations and profanity!

I find that when I use google translate on Turkish cursing it is ... oddly specific and colorful.

>204 SqueakyChu: When I worked as a visiting nurse in Jerusalem, and I had patients who only spoke Arabic, I'd go out in the street and just ask someone to come inside and translate for me from Arabic into Hebrew. It was 1972, and things were much more peaceful at that time. Had I stayed in Israel, I for certain would have learned Arabic at some point.

I don't think I've ever cursed in another language. When I use foul language, it happens so suddenly that it always comes out in English. :D

I also finished a book back on the 10th.



Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi

Hadi the junk dealer is always telling stories that no one believes. His latest story involves a corpse he had in his house, sewed together from parts of bodies left after explosions in the city. No one believes him, which he realizes is maybe a good thing when one morning he goes down to look at the corpse and it's simply disappeared.

The other characters are a newspaper reporter and a general, both on the trail of whoever has been committing murders in the city. The supernatural blends with the ordinary, which I guess is to be expected when one of your main characters is a reanimated corpse. However, at some point I put the book down and said out loud "oh, it's a metaphor!". Take that as a good or a bad thing, as you will.

Hi there! I lost you and I am hopelessly behind. But I will try to keep up from here. Happy weekend!

>213 ursula: Nice. Glad you figured out the metaphor. ; )

>213 ursula: This was one of those books where I wanted some "York notes" (or other brand of study aid!) to explain it to me.

I agree it's risky to use profanity in another language. In Spanish-speaking countries, what is mild in some countries may be extremely obscene in others, so I've found the safest way is to avoid it.

>214 Berly: No problem, I have been lost myself, haha.

>215 charl08: You know, I read a little bit about it after the fact and there was stuff saying it was a retelling of Frankenstein, sure, but also that it was a metaphor for war, which is what I got out of it. I feel like I'm sure I missed some other aspects about it all but at least I got part of it. That's enough for me.

>216 BLBera: Yeah, and even then some things that are perfectly innocuous in one country are rather filthy in others! (I mean, this happens even in English-speaking countries of course but I felt like when I was learning Spanish there were a lot more opportunities for saying something really humiliating. Maybe just because there are so many Spanish-speaking countries to have different slang.)

A Thanksgiving to Friends (Lighting the Way)

In difficult times
a friend is there to light the way
to lighten the load,
to show the path,
to smooth the road

At the darkest hour
a friend, with a word of truth
points to light
and the encroaching dawn
is in the plainest sight.

Ursula, to a friend in books and more this Thanksgiving

Ursala, I am so very grateful for you, my wonderful friend here on LT.

I wish you (and yours) happiness and health on this day of Thanksgiving. And cookies. : )

Hope to see more of you one of these days!

>218 PaulCranswick:, >219 Berly: Thanks to both of you!

We didn't celebrate, aside from me trying (and failing) to explain the origins of the holiday in Turkish to my classmates.

The Next Everest by Jim Davidson

If you've known me for long you probably know I'm an armchair mountaineer. I am a sucker for a book about climbing, and I've read my share of Everest books. One more seemed like a good idea.

Jim Davidson was on the mountain, at Camp Two acclimating for his attempt on Everest in 2015 when an earthquake hit Nepal. The earthquake caused avalanches which raced through Base Camp and killed enough people that 2015 became the new "deadliest year on Everest". Davidson and his climbing group had to be removed from the mountain by helicopter, and he thought that was it for his Everest dreams.

It's hard to have your dreams dashed while also realizing that the impact of the earthquake was much larger than your puny plans to climb a mountain. Davidson throws himself into raising money for relief efforts for Nepal. Eventually he starts to think about trying again, and in 2017 he is back on the mountain in full knowledge of how dangerous everything can become in an instant.

Spoiler: he makes it.

This wasn't my favorite Everest book, it felt a little long. But it's an interesting perspective: someone who tried, had the chance removed from them by no fault of their own, and considered a lot about whether that was their one shot and they should just walk away.

I'm a sucker for armchair mountaineering too. I've a few more of Joe Simpson's books on my Wishlist as I loved his first two.

>222 AlisonY: It's been a bit since I've read any mountain climbing books, it was good to be back. A guy I follow on Instagram is actually conditioning right now to climb Everest next year, and he pointed the way toward a Netflix documentary called 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. It's about a Nepali climber who set out to climb all 14 8000m+ peaks in 7 months. That was enjoyable too.

>223 ursula: I just watched that last night. I kept wondering why I was so fascinated by it

>224 Nickelini: I think it's good knowing when you go into it that it's not a tragedy. And Nims is a character, clearly.

I have been going on hikes each weekend, but our elevation was only 850 feet. Much more doable!!

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This was ... fine. I guess I felt like it suffered from a sort of one-dimensionality. I know that's the opposite of a lot of people's opinions, who felt that it made the myths come alive. They didn't seem any more alive to me here than in any other version of the story. *shrug*

>226 Berly: Yeah, I've hiked up part of a 14er or two in Colorado, but we didn't make it to the top. We'd have had to start much earlier, since you're supposed to be back below the treeline before afternoon in case of thunderstorms. It was fun, but it didn't inspire me to take up climbing!

Guys. I need to talk to you.

I've been reading (trying to read) The Interpreters and I hate to give up on a Nobel Prize-winning author but I think I'm done. I'm at 30% and it's super confusing, which is probably okay, but also weirdly bathroom-focused, which is not so okay.

Oh and I also hate Peace Like a River, which is supposed to be for an online book club. I think I'm noping out of that one too, but with less shame.

There is no shame in abandoning books that aren't working for you, Nobel winner or not!

Let them go! : )

>229 ursula: Nowadays I realise life's too short for a book that isn't ringing your bells, Nobel or not.

Agreed. Go find something fun or compelling or interesting

Soyinka's on my aspire list, but I've not managed any of his books yet that one. So agreed with everyone else.

ETA another memory fail: I have read his non-fiction/ autobiographical fiction!

>230 katiekrug:, >231 Berly:, >232 Caroline_McElwee:, >233 Nickelini:, >234 charl08:

Yes! They're gone. I just don't have the mental space to struggle so hard with books that don't feel rewarding. If I felt like I was getting something out of them, fine, but that's not the case.

So, on to something else. I checked out Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak as a sort of pre-game for the January focus area of the Asian reading challenge Paul is putting together, which is Turkey. I previously started and abandoned her book The Bastard of Istanbul, so we'll see how it goes.

>229 ursula: I have tried and stalled with two books by Wole Soyinka - Ake and Of Africa. I so much wanted to like both but couldn't swallow either. I must try again given that I want to read something by all the Nobel winners but I can sympathise with you abandoning that one.

I remember liking Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman . But I would agree that there isn't a lot of time for reading books you don't like.

>236 PaulCranswick: I'm trying to read the Nobel winners too, but I am going to call that one done for now. I might try something else in the distant future but I'm giving myself credit for trying.

>237 banjo123: Okay, that might be the way to go in the distant future! :) That's not one the library currently has, but maybe eventually.

I hope 2022 is a year with special moments Ursula.

>239 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline. I hope 2022 brings you good things as well.

This reminds me of a funny story that happened in my Turkish class last week. The question I was asked in our conversation portion was "when do you buy gifts for people?" And I answered "When I'm close to my family, at Christmas." And the teacher turned to the class and said "See, Ursula is Christian so she said she buys gifts for Christmas. That's December 25."

I said "I mean, I'm not Christian."

And he said "It's okay, all religions are fine, no problem."

So I said, "I mean, I'm not Christian, I'm just American."

I wish I could have gone into more detail to express what I was trying to say, but that's still beyond me at this point.

>240 ursula: Lol- that’s a great story

>240 ursula: No religion is probably not possible at all in his mind, Ursula.
Reminds me of my father in law, in his time as a captain (in the 1950s) he wasn't allowed to go from the ship in Saudi-Arabia, because he refused to write down a religion in the forms. Atheist wasn't acceptable.

Hi Ursula!

>240 ursula: "I mean, I'm not Christian, I'm just American." LOL. Great answer.

>240 ursula: That's a great story, Ursula.

And I agree, give up books that aren't working for you. I just spent two weeks slogging through a book that I kept expecting would get better. It didn't. Oh well.

Have a lovely holiday, Ursula.

>241 Nickelini: :)

>242 FAMeulstee: I mean, he's not a practicing Muslim. He's constantly scheduling things and the students ask "but what about Friday prayers?" He answers "What about them? I don't have them." (Of course, he accommodates their schedules.) I think you can't officially be an atheist (meaning it's not an option on forms), but pretty much no one cares if you are.

>243 karenmarie: It was the only way I could think to explain it!

>244 BLBera: :) I'm not opposed to the slogging at times, if I think I'm going to get something out of the experience. (Like you, sometimes I'm wrong in the end!) But right now there's just too much else going on and I am already having problems concentrating, let alone when the book isn't working for me at all.

>245 mahsdad: , >246 PaulCranswick: Thanks to both of you for the good wishes!

Happy not-christmas!

These were our family ornaments this year and, despite COVID, a merry time was had by all. I hope the same is true for your holiday and here's to next year!!

>249 Berly: Fun!!

>248 banjo123: Haha thanks! It was a good non-Christmas. :)

>249 Berly: I agree with >250 Nickelini: Those are pretty great. I'm glad you managed to have a good holiday even with the specter of COVID past, present and future hanging over everything.

Well, I got the second-highest score in the class on my B1 test: 92.

I'm trying to be satisfied with that. 😉

B2 starts on Monday!

Congratulations Ursula, you should be very proud of that.

Impressive stuff, good luck with your B2 classes.

A 92! That’s great!

Awesome job!!! Now relax until Monday. ; )

>252 ursula: Great! You should be happy.

>253 Caroline_McElwee:, >254 charl08:, >255 drneutron:, >256 Berly:, >257 BLBera: Thanks all!

I am relaxing a little, but I have to be sure to continue to push and learn so that I'm not rusty after having my first week off from class since August 6!

And I'm trying to finish a book before the year ends so that December doesn't have just one sad little book listed.

I did it, I finished Three Daughters of Eve last night. What do I have to say about it? Not a lot, really. It's the story of Peri, a woman from Istanbul who also spent some time attending university at Oxford. The book is mostly split between chapters of her life in 2016 Istanbul and her time at Oxford in 2001. Something mysterious happened there, although it's not that mysterious since the mention of a scandal involving a professor is brought up quite early.

I don't know, mostly this was an innocuous if overwritten book. But there were some really strange choices, like having a couple of chapters late in the book entirely centered around the professor. I didn't care at that point, and the chapters were ... odd. But it was better for me than her The Bastard of Istanbul, which I abandoned.

Forget your stresses and strains
As the old year wanes;
All that now remains
Is to bring you good cheer
With wine, liquor or beer
And wish you a special new year.

Happy New Year, Ursula.