RidgewayGirl Reads in 2022, First Quarter

Here we go again. I anticipate a slow start to the year as my husband got an unexpected and enticing job offer and we've decided to move to Bloomington, Illinois. Everything is moving very quickly, but there is no shortage of tasks and decisions to be made, leaving me with very little time or brain space for reading at the moment. But things will go back to normal eventually. I'm looking forward to exploring this new part of the world and making a life in a new place.

As for reading plans, I currently commit to nothing.



Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

First Quarter Reading

January
1. The Dry by Jane Harper
2. The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse
3. The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang
4. Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh
5. Self Care by Leigh Stein
6. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
7. In Concrete by Anne Garréta, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
8. The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
9. Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

February
1. Joan is Okay by Weike Wang
2. Matrix by Lauren Groff
3. Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon
4. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
5. The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

March
1. Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
2. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
3. Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge
4. Nervous System by Lina Meruane, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
5. The Fell by Sarah Moss
6. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
7. My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
8. The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

The Lists

Books by Author's Nationality

Australia
Jane Harper (The Dry) (country of residence)

Britain
Jane Harper (The Dry) (country of birth)
Sarah Moss (The Fell)
Louise Welsh (The Cutting Room)
Lucie Whitehouse (The Bed I Made)

Chile
Nervous System by Lina Meruane

China
Weike Wang (Joan is Okay) (country of birth)

Cyprus
Alex Michaelides (The Maidens)

France
Anne Garréta (In Concrete)

Ireland
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)

Russia
Gary Shteyngart (Our Country Friends) (country of birth)

United States
Lan Samantha Chang (The Family Chao)
Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie)
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
Jennifer Haigh (Mercy Street)
Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart is a Chainsaw)
J. Robert Lennon (Subdivision)
Ruth Ozeki (The Book of Form and Emptiness)
Gary Shteyngart (Our Country Friends) (country of residence)
Leigh Stein (Self Care)
Simone St. James (The Sun Down Motel)
Weike Wang (Joan is Okay) (country of residence)
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns)

Books by Year of Publication

2002
The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh

2010
The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

2016
The Dry by Jane Harper

2017
In Concrete by Anne Garréta

2020
Self Care by Leigh Stein
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Matrix by Lauren Groff
My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Nervous System by Lina Meruane
Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon

2022
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang
The Fell by Sarah Moss
Joan is Okay by Weike Wang
Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh

Last Year's Stats

TK

Happy New Year, Kay! Look forward to your reading this year and hearing all about your move.

As for reading plans, I currently commit to nothing.

Good for you, resisting the lure of the lists. Nice topper photo. I wish I were there instead of the land of ice and snow.

Happy New Year, Kay. I hope your move goes smoothly.

Hi Kay--Glad to see you back. Having just gone through a move in 2020 (from a house where we lived almost 35 years and raised 5 kids), I sympathize with what you are going through. Doing it fast is probably the best way to go though. We dithered around a bit before heading to Florida, hoping covid would go away. Ha!

Happy New Year, Kay! Like Deborah, I also moved in 2020 from a house where we’d been for 30 years. It forced me to pare down considerably. Anyway, I will be following along to see how your move is going, and, of course, to take the book bullets once you get back to reading.

Good luck with the move and hope you'll be able to do some reading soon!

Good luck with the move!

Happy new year, and good luck with the move!

>1 RidgewayGirl: I love your reading plan (and the photo)!

Sitting next to you on the "commit to nothing" bench, Kay. Good luck with the move, and I hope you can squeeze some good reading in there.

Good luck with the move!

Happy New Year, Kay! Good luck on your upcoming move to Illinois.

Wish you well with all the moving craziness. In the meantime, I will quietly suffer without your enticing cascade of new high-end titles. : )

Happy New Year, Kay!

Thank you all. Deborah and Colleen, I'm pretty sure I thought that you were brave and nuts to move during a pandemic and now here I am. I know I'm not brave, so draw your own conclusions. Our house goes on the market tomorrow morning and I'm already tired of living in this perfect, minimalist, clean place.

Things still have to happen, pandemic or no. We debated heavily about moving in the early-ish days of the pandemic (August 2020) but it was either that or miss the opportunity, so we went for it.

>20 ursula: Yes, life does go on and opportunities must be taken when they present themselves. Looking forward to the point where the job is unpacking and painting and all the things that go into settling in. That part's fun.

I knew I had been missing someone's thread. Good luck with the moving!

>22 AnnieMod: Thanks! I hate it.

>23 RidgewayGirl: Now now... :) I moved halfway across the world 11 years ago but at least I did not have a house to dispose of (or a good way to move much more than a couple of suitcases with me). Moving to the new apartment 5 years ago? That was MUCH harder. Moving a house must be even worse... I was considering moving this year (to a new apartment) but decided to stay put for at least another year - not wanting to pack everything again IS part of the reason...

You know - when it gets overwhelming, you can always just pick up a book and escape in its world ;)

>24 AnnieMod: I've done a few international moves and they were relatively straightforward, involving moving into rentals and the one house we did own, we rented and the renters eventually bought it which was stupendously easy. This endless keeping of the house in a state of readiness and leaving to let people poke around is surprisingly unsettling, as is the lack of selection in houses to move to. But these are minor complaints in a situation that is basically very good and which will get easier as soon as one of these poker-rounders decides to buy the house.

And on a happy note, since we have to be out again today, I'm meeting a friend at the local used bookstore.

When we were getting our house outside Seattle ready to sell, our realtor recommended a stager. She did a good job, I think, the house sold quickly, but her suggestions regarding my books were funny. She had me remove 3/4 of them, especially any dealing with war,etc, which comprises a big proportion. Then she had me organize them by color. Finally she brought in lots of baskets and Knickknacks to put on the shelves. The end result was a house you would never recognize as mine

In The Dry by Jane Harper, Aaron Falk returns to the town he left as a teenager to attend a funeral. That part of Australia is enduring its second year of severe drought and everyone is suffering financially. As he gets drawn into looking into recent murders that involved a childhood friend, Falk also has to come to terms with events that caused him to move away.

This is a fairly standard crime novel/thriller that is elevated by the vivid setting and solid writing. I was in need of an entertaining and yet not too challenging read and this book was perfect.

>26 labfs39: Oh, thank goodness our realtor never suggested that! I did have to pack away half my books and most of our general stuff has been stuck in drawers, but the stuff visible is all ours. The house looks bigger, but also impersonal.

Belated Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2022. Cheers!

>29 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry! I look forward to following your reading again this year.

>27 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed The Dry. She is a great writer with a great descriptive gift.

I also enjoyed The Dry, Kay. Good luck with all the moving, sorting, etc.

>26 labfs39: >28 RidgewayGirl: That was what the stager told us too. Luckily by the time the house went up for sale we had already packed away the books, and she put neutral generic Knick knacks on the shelves that hadn't already been disposed of. The worst advice was that she didn't like that our family room was painted a deep Chinese red, which I loved and always received compliments on. She wanted us to repaint it white or at least something bland. We didn't, and the house sold anyway.

Re: staging . . . we've been looking to move forever but I live in an area where real estate is bananas ($1 million buys you only a house worthy of a wrecking ball, on a "meh" street) . . . anyway, I see the same silver knick-knacks in every white house I view. They looked fine the first two or three times.

>27 RidgewayGirl: I'm a big fan of Jane Harper, especially her two latest, The Survivors and The Lost Man. As you say the setting plays a big part in her books - The Lost Man is set in the outback (a man dies of thirst within walking distance of his vehicle, which has lots of water and supplies) and The Survivors in a tourist town right at the very end of the season.

>27 RidgewayGirl: - This series only has two books!! Maybe I should try it - BB.

>35 wandering_star: Seconded about The Lost Man and The Survivors.

>27 RidgewayGirl: I’ve read both books in this series, Kay. I wonder if there will be more.

>27 RidgewayGirl: >36 dudes22: >38 NanaCC: I don't know if it's really a series, since the featured detective appears only in the first two, The Dry and Force of Nature. The other two by Harper, The Lost Man and The Survivors are more like stand-alone. I really liked The Dry and The Lost Man, but had issues with the other two.

So glad I haven't had to hire a stager and go through all that! Now that I spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at houses on-line, I can see the point of providing as neutral a setting for a house as possible. There are a few houses I've looked at where it's hard to see the house underneath the lives being lived there.

I'll definitely pick up another book by Jane Harper when I run across one.

By the time Kate realizes she has to get away from Richard, things have gone too far. Isolated from her friends, scared he'll come after her, she flees to the Isle Wight in the winter, hoping the remoteness will keep him from finding her. But an insular place outside of tourist season isn't the friendliest of places and Kate is both scared and lonely. When she realizes that the woman she spoke with briefly is the same woman who disappeared while sailing, she becomes fascinated with her, to the point of listening in on conversations and watching the husband.

The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse has all the elements of a solid thriller, but ends up being, well, not very thrilling. Whitehouse takes so much time setting up the story that it never really takes off, with the evil boyfriend not really posing much of a threat until the final pages. But the descriptions of island life in winter were lovely and and the story of a lonely woman finding a few friends was well-told. If you're looking for something with pacing and excitement, give this one a pass, but if you're open to vivid descriptions of life on an English island as well as an unconvincing love story, you might enjoy this one. I liked it well enough.

So we managed to avoid Covid until now, even with two kids in college, one is even in Florida. But my daughter was with someone who had a positive test and has herself tested positive. No symptoms, but I'll get tested tomorrow. Meanwhile, we have to periodically leave the house so someone can come look at it and it's a challenge to find places where we can be without contributing to the spread.

>41 RidgewayGirl: I like your recommendation

>42 RidgewayGirl: one weird thing about covid is the unexpected inconveniences, like showing your house. Wish you well and hope it’s mild for everyone.

Fingers crossed that you can avoid the plague, Kay.

>42 RidgewayGirl: Sorry to hear this! It seems that everyone I know who has avoided covid so far is finally getting it with omicron. The good news is that everyone I know who is vaccinated with the booster has had a mild case (I know that's anecdotal, but it still makes me feel better as we feel like we're just waiting to get it!). Fingers crossed that you stay healthy and that your daughter's case is mild!

My three youngest grandchildren wound up testing positive around Christmas. Old enough to be vaccinated, but not boosted. They will get boosters now that it seems the age has dropped. But they all basically had the sniffles. Similar to a mild cold. So hopefully that is the trend for the vaccinated.

>43 dchaikin: It's just an added layer on top of all the things going on. But given that we are all fully vaccinated and have no symptoms, it just means staying away from people a little more than we were already doing.

>44 BLBera: We are all symptom-free, even the daughter who had the positive test. My husband and I get tested today.

>45 japaul22: I'm glad we managed to avoid infection so long.

>46 NanaCC: There is a reason we all got vaccinated after all. Glad your grandchildren sailed through.

As if you needed another stressor right now. Hope everyone who gets it has a mild case. Hang in there!

Hope the test is negative. Like others have said, everyone I know who was vaccinated and tested got through COVID fairly easily. The 14-year old daughter of a friend has been confined to her bedroom for a week, feeling pretty rotten. Her parents are vaccinated, but she had not been not.

My husband, who was tested at his work, had a negative test. I'm still waiting on the results from mine. My daughter remains entirely free of symptoms.

Finally caught up on your thread, Kay, and—oy. Omicron is coming for everyone, it seems, and that has to be the last thing you need right now (not that it's the first thing on anyone's list, but you know what I mean). I hope you stay well and your place sells fast.

I really liked both The Dry and The Survivors, and would definitely read anything else of Harper's.

>51 lisapeet: Thanks, Lisa. My daughter is still symptom-free and so am I, although I still haven't gotten the results of my test, so that's good. And we have sold our house and will spend a few days next week in Bloomington looking at houses, if the forecast weather doesn't stop us. I'll have to remember my winter coat and boots!

I've become very interested in a local architect there. Arthur Pillsbury, looking absolutely perfect in the picture below, designed over 400 houses in the Bloomington area and over 100 still remain. I'm eying the two that are for sale (one is not yet on the market) with a new understanding for the mind of a stalker.



Wouldn't you want this man to design your house?

Congratulations on selling your house! Good luck finding a Pillsbury house. What do you like about them other than the handsome designer? ;-)

>53 labfs39: Lisa, the houses are a mix of styles popular in the late Victorian era and feature the deep cove molding, subtle stained glass and with all the craftsmanship of the day without pretension and they are kind of impracticable but also solid. I like old houses, far more than new ones with flawless floors and giant closets.

Sorry to hear about the COVID exposure--sending best wishes for a negative test/asymptomatic cases.

Sorry about the covid, but thankfully it does not appear to be too serious.
And congratulations on selling your house so fast. I hope you are able to get the house of your dreams in Bloomington.

Congrats on the house sale, and good luck in purchasing a Pillsbury. Hope you all stay symptom-free and that the tests come out negative.

Congratulations on selling your house! And I'm glad you posted the picture of Pillsbury, if only to supplant the image in my mind of a white puffy house that you could poke your finger into and it would pop out again.

Congrats on selling your house. I am a fan of older homes as well. Good luck!

Neither my husband nor I got covid and my daughter remained entirely asymptomatic, so we were all lucky.

Thank you all for your kind wishes. Our flight to go see houses was canceled because we have a lot of snow! It's very pretty. We'll have one day to look at houses, but my list of houses to look at is very small anyway. I've added a craftsman bungalow and a Victorian fixer-upper for variety. Maybe one of those will grab my heart.

I've started The Warmth of Other Suns, which I've had on my tbr shelf since 2019. It seems apt, under the circumstances, to read about the Great Migration.

I'm so glad you are all feeling well. Here in Maine we are getting the snow tomorrow. Today when I woke up it was -11 (-21 with wind chill).

I hope you find a house you can fall in love with, and that your own migration goes smoothly from here on out.

>60 RidgewayGirl: hope you enjoy Wilkerson.

>61 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. We're enjoying the snow today (we rarely get any at all) and then we'll start looking at houses tomorrow evening.

>62 dchaikin: Daniel, the beginning is compelling. I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Unfortunately, my copy is far too large and heavy to be my book while traveling.

Leo and Winnie Chao, immigrants from China, came to the small, midwestern city of Haven, Wisconsin and opened a Chinese restaurant. Of their three sons, Dagou, the oldest, came back home to run the restaurant only to have his father renege on his promise to give him the restaurant. Ming became a success elsewhere and stays away as much as he can and the youngest, James, dutifully fulfilled his parents' wishes and is in medical school. When they all converge the old faultlines fracture and when the Chao patriarch is found dead, the suspicion falls on one son.

Lan Samantha Chang bases The Family Chao on The Brothers Karamazov and it's hugely fun to see where she has chosen to follow that novel and where she diverges. But there's no need to have read, or even be familiar with the Dostoevsky; this novel is wild and fun and full of its own heart. Chang has taken the framework to create her own memorable group of siblings. I've been a fan of Chang's work since I read her previous novel, All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost and this new book shows the same beautiful writing, while being utterly different.

>64 RidgewayGirl: sounds fun. Ambitious too, maybe.

>64 RidgewayGirl: Very intrigued. Since my library doesn't have the ebook yet, I've added it to the wishlist.

>64 RidgewayGirl: Imitation is the highest form of flattery after all (or something like that). Sounds like something I want to read. :)

>65 dchaikin: It was ambitious, but Chang pulls it off. I particularly liked what she did with the characters of Katerina and Grushenka.

>66 nancyewhite: I'm hoping this book gets all sorts of attention.

>67 AnnieMod: Annie, I do like retellings. It's so interesting to see how the author adapts a familiar story to a different time and place and seeing what they omit or retain is half the fun of reading.

The Family Chao was already on my list, Kay, but your comments make me want to get it in my hands today! It sounds great.

>69 BLBera: Ditto. It's been recommended to me by a few people who know my reading taste.

Hi Kay, just popping it to look at your reading. You are staying much more contemporary than I (not that I'm trying very hard these days).

Glad to hear you are Covid free. My 6 year old grandson got Covid in school, but neither parent got it.

Good luck with your move. We had two bathrooms completely renovated this fall, and there was no Covid spread (considering the number of contractors).

Will pop in from time to time.

>64 RidgewayGirl: I've been reading Chang's work since her first short story collection came out. Looking forward to this one, which was already on my wish list.

The Family Chao goes on the wishlist!

I'm so happy to see excitement for Lan Samantha Chang's new novel. It's so good.

I've just returned from Bloomington, Illinois. The midwest is weird and flat and it's going to be interesting to live there. Bloomington is also a lot smaller than Greenville, SC. They do like that Lincoln guy, who apparently practiced law there for a while. And there's a lot of older architecture remaining that hasn't been gutted and modernized. We ate in two restaurants with outstanding pressed tin ceilings.

And we did buy the Pillsbury house I had been stalking on Zillow. It's much smaller in person and just felt like a family house where dogs and children have run around and life has been lived. We went to see the house twice, and for the second visit I asked if the current owner could be present (for the record, the realtor was scandalized by this request and felt that it killed her plan to drive a hard bargain) which was fantastic as he knew the history of the house and even had the plans drawn up by some historic society to turn it into a tourist attraction. Turns out that the childhood home of a failed presidential candidate is not a huge draw, but they did do the necessary updates to the wiring and plumbing, while keeping the style of the house intact. And he walked us all over the house showing us details and explaining changes. I felt like a tourist getting a very thorough tour.

>74 RidgewayGirl: Congrats! I love this.. I sold a house once and due to the circumstances (similar to yours - a buyer who was moving from a different province and only had a weekend to buy), we all ended up having coffee in the living room while making the deal. It was an amazing way to buy/sell a house. We knew she was new to the area so we left her all kinds of information about local restaurants/coupons etc. and introduced her to the neighbours. I wish this was done more often.

>75 Yells: I agree. He told us stories about the Stevenson family (the previous owners) and walked us through what work was done when. While some of the information I'd probably have come across, he had suggestions of places to find out more about the house and its history. There's a group in town who goes and retrieves what they can when old houses are torn down or renovated and his wife designed the backsplash behind the kitchen sink out of some of those rescued tiles.

Congrats on your house. What an interesting backsplash. I hope we get to see more pictures.

>77 BLBera: You'll see more pictures, whether you want to or not.

Congrats about your new home! Nice backsplash, it's something I might of thought of doing ;-)

>74 RidgewayGirl: " Turns out that the childhood home of a failed presidential candidate is not a huge draw, . . . "

Whoa! You're moving into the house Adlai Stevenson lived in? That's really cool. For the record, Stevenson was not just a failed presidential candidate. He was the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the man who famously told the Russian ambassador that he was willing to "wait until hell freezes over" for a direct answer to his question about whether there were Russian missiles in Cuba. He was also a very, very thoughtful commentator on American culture. Well, you probably knew all that, sorry. I recently read a collection of his writings and speeches called What I Think.

Lots of luck with the move and the new living situation!

>79 avaland: Lois, I love how it's all period pieces, but put together in a modern way. It's clear that the people selling the house love it.

>80 rocketjk: I was exaggerating, Jerry. I'm looking forward to diving into the details of his life. I'm trying to not brag too hard about the house. It's very hard as every single thing I learn about it is so interesting. My realtor made a point of emphasizing that he did not win McLean County, where Bloomington is located. It's a pretty conservative area, but it is also one of the few counties that voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

>81 RidgewayGirl: Being Canadian, that part flew right over my head. What a cool house AND buying experience!

>81 RidgewayGirl: Sorry about that, Chief! I should have known . . .

>83 rocketjk: I was tremendously gratified by your excitement. It is a big deal!

What a great story about the house! It sounds amazing - I hope you and your family will be very happy there.

Glad you got the house. I love the backsplash!

>74 RidgewayGirl: Congrats for the house! :) Realtors can be funny (not!) that way :)

So looking forward to seeing the new house pics. I love interior design and it sounds fabulous.

New house sounds so cool! Can't wait to see some photos. I'm sure you have a book nok all planned out.

>76 RidgewayGirl:, >80 rocketjk: Adlai Stevenson
That is way cool!

>42 RidgewayGirl: Sorry about the COVID and glad you've emerged unscathed.

What qebo said, >90 qebo:, way cool! Congrats.

>85 wandering_star: I think we will be. I'm looking forward to being settled in and am thinking of the first projects to undertake.

>86 arubabookwoman: So fun that someone else did all the work of creating it and I just get to appreciate it.

>87 AnnieMod: Our realtor was on vacation when we were there, so her 79 year old mother (also a realtor) was the one showing us around. She is definitely a character.

>88 AlisonY: I do, too, Alison. I've already started looking for ideas and at color palettes. I want to keep to the spirit of the style and colors used without ending up with a lot of heavy furniture and dark colors.

>89 Cariola:Cariola, there are built-in bookshelves in a small ground floor room with a bay window. And I have plans to put bookshelves upstairs, too. I'll have to get some bookshelves as the large wall unit in our current living room will not work in the new place. But there will be comfortable reading nooks on both floors.

>90 qebo: & >91 dchaikin: See, you get it! Feels like bragging (because it is) when I mention the house's refined past. Years ago, we inherited a truly oppressive painting of one of my husband's German ancestors (the short story is that no one else would take it). We are hoping she will like her new digs and will spend less time in open disapproval.

Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh is about Claudia, who has run the clinic on Mercy Street for years, during the winter Boston was hit by snowstorm after snowstorm. She's never been afraid and sometimes argues with the protestors who stake out the entrance and yell at the women attempting to access the clinic's many services. She has a weed dealer named Timmy she visits now and again. Timmy fell into the job a long time ago and now that his son is a teenager, he's thinking that it's past time for him to start a legitimate business and make a life where his son could come and live with him. Anthony also visits Timmy. He hasn't been the same since a workplace accident put him on disability, but the weed helps with the vertigo and the headaches. Anthony found a place to belong in his local church and a priest has him running an anti-abortion website for him. He has a friend he only knows by his internet name, and who has asked him to take pictures of women entering the clinic on Mercy Street for him.

Haigh does a great job with the structure of taking unconnected characters and gradually showing how they relate to one another and putting those characters on a collision course. And while the novel centers on a women's clinic and the people it serves, this isn't a book that exists to drive home a political point. The characters are all so believable and human, from the drug dealer to the guy with very unfortunate views about women. I've read a few of Haigh's novels now and I've enjoyed the thoughtful way she approaches polarizing subject matter in every one.

>93 RidgewayGirl: Onto the wishlist it goes!

Wow, congrats on your new house! It must be such a relief that you found this house in the short time you had. I'm looking forward to more pictures!
I have never heard about Adlai Stevenson (being German and also too young), so I read >80 rocketjk: with interest!

How exciting! I'm so glad you were able to get the Pillsbury house. I was worried because the real estate market is crazy right now. Indiana was a big change for me when I moved from the Northeast to the Midwest, but not nearly as big as moving to Florida after 18 years in Seattle. I hope you settle in nicely to both your house and the city. Important question: what is the bookstore situation?

That's fantastic about the house, Kay—sounds like kismet to me. I hope you'll slap up some home improvement photos as you go...

>93 RidgewayGirl: I've never heard of Jennifer Haigh, that looks really interesting.

>95 MissBrangwen: Here you go, then. This video gives a brief synopsis of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and at about the 1 minute mark begins a video of Stevenson's interaction with the Russian U.N. ambassador. Stevenson asks him if he is denying that there are Russian missiles in Cuba. The Russian ambassador tries to stall and play the situation for laughs, but Stevenson doesn't bite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoBTgLq40Ck

I've had Mercy Street on my WL as well, Kay. I really liked Heat and Light, which is the only one of hers that I've read. Can you recommend others?

>94 nancyewhite: Oh, good. Haigh is one of those authors who seems to fly beneath the publicity radar.

>95 MissBrangwen: I spent a lot of time on-line making sure it was still available. And there really isn't much out there outside of new houses on tiny lots still under construction.

>96 labfs39: The market really is crazy. And Greenville, SC is nuts right now. It took us four days to sell our house. The market in central Illinois is not as wild, but there isn't much to choose from. That we were able to buy this fantasy house seems so unlikely. As for the bookstore situation, I have no idea. There's a B&N and a used bookstore in Bloomington, and several in Peoria, about an hour away, which I'll have to go visit. I've been lucky in having an excellent local independent bookstore a short drive away, but I will find alternatives. Road trips to bookstores are always fun and both Chicago and St. Louis are close enough for that.

>97 lisapeet: There will be more photos. Probably more than anyone else wants to see.

>98 wandering_star: She isn't as well known as she should be.

>99 rocketjk: Thanks for that, Jerry. I need to work on my midwestern accent.

>100 BLBera: My favorite of the ones I've read is Mrs. Kimble. And I have a copy of Heat and Light on my kindle, so I have that to look forward to.

I'll look for Mrs. Kimble.

I’m glad your house hunting was successful, Kay. Selling seems to be fairly easy right now, as long as the house is priced correctly. But the inventory for buying is very low. Your find sounds fantastic.

All the conversation about your new house has been very interesting.

I don't know very much about US presidents from before I became an adult. The only thing I could tell you about Adlai Stevenson was that Richie Cunningham campaigned for him in an episode of Happy Days and was crushed when he lost. Until now I wouldn't have had a clue how to spell his name.

>99 rocketjk: i found that clip fascinating

>101 RidgewayGirl: “I need to work on my midwestern accent.“ 🙂 You might want an updated version.

>102 BLBera: I will be interested in hearing what you think about it. (If your tbr and wishlist are like mine, it may be years.)

>103 NanaCC: But even when the house sells quickly (ours took four days), there's an endless series of hoops to jump through. The appraiser was here this morning and my husband is currently fixing a thing the home inspector noted. Meanwhile, the buyers asked would we just buy and install a new HVAC unit, despite the current one passing all the tests with flying colors. We've turned that over to our realtor to turn them down. We are too gobsmacked by the audacity.

>104 Nickelini: I was trying to think of a prominent Canadian politician who didn't become Prime Minister and embarrassingly, I can't think of one.

>105 dchaikin: But the old-timey, black and white movie version would suit the house.

"To be honest, I grew up working-class in Cupertino. Both my parents worked, like, a lot. My dad is an anesthesiologist and my mom is an econ professor at Stanford. When I tell people I'm from Cupertino, they assume I grew up immersed in tech and startup culture, but I really had zero exposure. Everything I've built, I built it myself."

Self Care by Leigh Stein is a send up of internet social media. Maren and Devin are friends who started a website together, a social media site focusing on women taking care of themselves. Richual, "the most inclusive community platform for women to cultivate the practice of self-care and change the world by changing ourselves," is just as terrible as it sounds. Maren and Devin are scrambling to pull together financing, although Devin leaves plenty of room for the expensive self-care required for her image and Maren is scrambling because she has plenty of student debt and the nominal pay until the site becomes profitable is not enough to support her and her not entirely hardworking boyfriend. Then there's Khadijah, the sole Black employee who is always positioned front and center of any publicity pictures, and who single-handedly writes most of the content, who is trying to keep this job going now that she's pregnant and her partner plans to become a house-husband.

Doug was like fifteen or twenty years older than Evan and I, old enough to have bought a Nirvana CD back when that was the only way to hear music, but not old enough to be our dad.

This novel is ridiculous, but never unbelievable. Richual allows women to compete over how much self-care they engage in along with the idea that self-care is work every bit as important as social activism. None of the characters are laudable or even that nuanced, but somehow Stein gets the reader to care about all of the women, no matter how shallow and no matter how little they learn along the way. If you're even glancingly familiar with millennial/gen Z internet culture, this novel will feel all to close to reality and if you're not, I'm not sure what you'll make of it.

>106 RidgewayGirl: I was trying to think of a prominent Canadian politician who didn't become Prime Minister and embarrassingly, I can't think of one.

Well they're forgotten pretty quickly. I'm not sure how many I can name who weren't in the most recent election. Jack Layton, who I think stood an good chance at election if he hadn't died prematurely. and Michael Ignatieff but I remember him because he writes books. Other than that, I'd have to think too hard.

>108 Nickelini: Joe Clark! There, I thought of one.

>109 RidgewayGirl: Joe Clark did become Prime Minister- for a very brief time!

>110 torontoc: You beat me to it . . . LOL, here's a funny little story . . . I guess it was 1980 when things were crumbling for him . . . the phone rang in my house and I was the only one home. Also, the teenager in the house, so that wall phone with the long cord was MINE.

Me: Hello?
Caller: Hi, I'm doing a survey about Joe Clark for Carleton University in Ottawa
Me: Um, I'm 16 years old, so you don't want my opinion . . .
Caller: No! That doesn't matter. Your opinion counts too.
Me: Um, okay, I don't know anything about politics
Caller: That's fine
Me: (seriously?) um, okay . . .
Caller: Do you think Joe Clark should be (fired? put in stocks? drawn and quartered? allowed to do whatever it was he was doing?)
Me: Um, he just barely got voted in. Shouldn't he be given a chance?

That's all I remember. But I've always been impressed that Carleton University didn't care that I was a kid. Also, I have no idea to this day what he did wrong so quickly.

>106 RidgewayGirl: Our sale was pretty similar, Kay. We put it on the market on a Wednesday and had four offers by Sunday. Our buyer wanted us to replace the central air conditioner unit. The inspector told them it was working fine, but they were worried because it was a little over 30 years old. We wound up buying a two year insurance policy that covered all of the appliances, furnace and a/c. They were happy with that, and as I recall, it wasn’t that expensive.

>110 torontoc: Nuts. I lived in Canada through my sophomore year of high school. You'd think I'd remember somebody.

>111 Nickelini: When I was living in England, some people came by to talk about an upcoming election. When I told them I was ineligible to vote in British election, they were concerned and wanted to find a way to let me cast a ballot.

>112 NanaCC: Our buyers have been kind of unpleasant. They can buy their own home warranty. Everything is in good working order and we're getting our regular guy out to fine tune it. By this weekend, everything should be done except waiting for the movers and the closing. Which is good, because my husband and one cat leave for Illinois early Sunday morning.

>113 RidgewayGirl: We were lucky when we sold our house in Woodinville, the market was so hot that the buyers waived the inspection (not that there was anything wrong, we had had a pre-inspection before it went on sale), but it prevented nitpicking. When I bought the house here in Maine, the seller gave me $5000 to cover the things that had come up in the inspection (and there were several).

You are in the home stretch!

>114 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. I had hoped for a pleasant experience, but the buyers seem to fancy themselves as hard bargainers. It's a process.

Wishing you well with closing, also enjoyed the Leigh Stein review.

>116 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. It's been an experience. But we've been taking time to get together with friends and that has been wonderful.

Beautiful World, Where Are You centers on two young, Irish women as they exchange emails. Eileen works for a small literary magazine, for which she earns almost nothing. She's unhappy and also unhappy about Simon, her childhood crush, who loves her but she doesn't want to risk their friendship with a relationship. Alice is a famous author who had a break-down and is now renting a home on the coast. She meets Felix on a tinder date and while they don't really hit it off, she invites him to come with her to an author event in Rome.

Sally Rooney is the new Jonathan Franzen when it comes to polarizing authors. Her notoriety came when her first few books were highly regarded and she became (unwillingly) the face of millennial fiction. There was the inevitable backlash, and this novel seems to be part of her working through that through the character of Alice. I'm agnostic on the subject of Sally Rooney (do not get me started on Franzen, I have strong opinions there); I loved her first novel, liked her second one fine, and found this one the weakest, but whether she's the Voice of a Generation or whatever, I don't care, just let me read.

Rooney structures her novel with first an event told in the third person, followed by an examination of that same event by one of the women, usually accompanied with their musings about the state of the world and some intense navel-gazing. I'm all for these things, but the repetitive nature of the structure, as well as the characters's lack of development through most of the novel left me feeling bored. I did think the final scene was fantastic, but I wish that the pay-off had been achieved with less trudging through beforehand. Still, there's something to Rooney's writing and to her project that appeals and so I expect that I will reluctantly pick up her next book.

>107 RidgewayGirl: Self Care is now on the Wishlist.

In Concrete is a playful, word-bending comically absurd novel by French author Anne Garréta, and brilliantly translated by Emma Ramadan. Two girls living in the countryside with their shambolic father and timid mother have adventures, mostly involving their father's activities with laying cement. What is important aren't the hijinks, but the wordplay, which is rapid and full of references and allusions. It's a very clever book. I was delighted with this book as I started it, but as I continued to read, I eventually just got tired of it. There's no substance behind the gloss and I could only read so far before longing for some sort of emotional substance.

>120 RidgewayGirl: Too bad this one didn't "set", as it were, it sounded good at first.

>119 nancyewhite: I would love to find out what someone else makes of this book.

>121 labfs39: Lisa, if it had been a short story, I would have loved it. Despite only being 175 pages, it was far too long. And there was one section where homophobic words were playfully used that made me uncomfortable.

In 1982, a young woman leaves home intending to pursue acting in NYC. Instead, she ends up in upstate New York, working as the night receptionist at a motel at the edge of town. Before long she notices strange things happening, from locked doors that swing open to the smell of cigarette smoke. Worse, she thinks she may have discovered a serial killer working in the area and when no one takes her seriously, she begins investigating him on her own.

Decades later, a young woman gets a job working the night shift at The Sun Down Motel. She's looking for the aunt who disappeared from that same motel years before she was born. Before long, she's being menaced by the same unexplained events, but she's sure she's on the right track to find out what happened in 1982.

I started this book during a time when I was distracted and having trouble concentrating on any reading, let along an entire book. This was the perfect book to pull me back in. Simone St. James writes with a breezy tone that is easy to read. There's no new ground here and the ending was both unlikely and a little predictable, but the enjoyment of this book was simply in allowing two likable (and largely interchangeable) young women to face the twin dangers of a haunted motel and a serial killer with guts and determination.

So, where in Carmen Sandiego are you now, Kay? Freezing in Illinois?

>124 labfs39: Not yet, Lisa. I leave around the 20th, once I've signed the closing papers and handed over the keys. Meanwhile, it's just pandemonium, paperwork and boxes all the time.

Hello Kay! I’ve only just made it to your thread, although I admit I’ve been eyeing it with trepidation for several days because of the endless book bullets I assumed you’d have had time to amass for me. In the end, not as many as I feared/hoped/expected (but some nonetheless), but lots of exciting news! Your new house sounds wonderful - I look forward to hearing about it as you settle in. All the very best for the move.

Wow, for someone who committed to nothing, you certainly have been doing some reading around the house showing, sale, viewing and purchases. What a house to buy! Like everyone else I'm looking forward to photos.

>106 RidgewayGirl: >108 Nickelini: Michael Ignatieff was the first person who popped into my mind too. I would add Bob Rae, who was beaten for leader by Ignatieff, but then went on to far more humanitarian work than Ignatieff ever thought of (Canadian special envoy to Myanmar and advisor to the Prime Minister on the Rohingya crisis, Canadian Ambassador to the UN, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights senior fellow, on and on ) and he still manages to sound witty and interesting.
Both he and Ignatieff studied under Isiah Berlin

Going further back, there was Robert Stanfield.

Re moving - I'm still looking for stuff packed for a half continent move 5 years ago (did I throw it out before the move, did I give it away, I'm sure I've seen it here, ...) That's what comes of moving stuff around in the new house during projects before you know where they actually belong!

>126 rachbxl: Thanks, Rachel. I expect that I'll have lots of stuff to say about the house once I get there.

>127 SassyLassy: Things have not calmed down, but they have become less uncertain. And my lists consist less of "figure out what do to about X" than "do Y," which is somehow far less stressful.

When people start returning to the office, Gerald isn't among them. Somehow, he was sucked into the company's slack channels, or at least his consciousness was. His body remains slumped over his laptop at home. On the bright side, his productivity has never been higher.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke is told entirely through messages left on various slack channels. It's a choppy and necessarily truncated way to structure a novel, but if you're used to communicating in this way, it's not too big an adjustment. The structure does hide how weird the story is, with Gerald stuck wherever that is and another employee disappearing entirely, while simultaneously the normal workplace tasks and activities continue.

This book didn't quite work for me, but the story was definitely interesting. It would make a good short story.

>129 RidgewayGirl: "It would make a good short story."

That makes me chuckle a bit. I hate it when an author has a short story (or a novella) sized idea and decides to make it a novel instead.

>129 RidgewayGirl: I read that too. Also gave it 3.5 stars.

Joan loves her job as an attending at a busy teaching hospital in New York. She runs the intensive care units and loves how machines keep people alive, the clarity of the job. She works all the time, cheerfully covering for the other doctors. She lives alone but spends barely any time in her apartment. Then a new neighbor moves in across the hall and his overtures of friendship confuse and annoy her. And her father dies and although she took 48 hours off to fly to and from China for the funeral, her boss doesn't find that adequate and insists she take more time.

Weike Wang is the author of the delightful and surprising Chemistry and Joan is Okay is even better. Joan is a wonderful protagonist; relentlessly literal in her interpretations and single-minded in her devotion to her work, she has trouble figuring out what's expected of her when her mother calls to chat or her neighbor drops by with a pie he made. Wang drops the reader into the point in Joan's life when just being very good at her job isn't enough, for others and for Joan herself. This is a book that is set before and during the beginning of the pandemic. I wasn't sure I wanted to read about any of that, but Wang handles it all with subtlety. Weike Wang is an author I am very eager to hear more from.

>132 RidgewayGirl: I like the sound of this so onto the wishlist it goes.

>133 rhian_of_oz: It's really good!

>132 RidgewayGirl: I think I put this on my list of books to consider at the library. I'll make sure it's there.

I've put a hold on Joan Is Okay at the library. Sounds like a good read.

Joan Is Okay sounds interesting. Added to wishlist.

I very much am looking forward to finding out what other people make of Joan.

Matrix is the story of a Medieval woman's life, from when she is sent from France to Eleanor of Aquitaine's English Court to the end of her life. Marie is judged to be neither beautiful nor sweet-natured and so is sent off to take holy orders and run a small abbey. On arriving, she finds twenty women on the edge of starvation. What follows is the story of how she adjusted to the life she was forced into.

Lauren Groff writes beautifully of both the harsh realities of life at that time and of the creation of a vibrant community of women, existing outside of patriarchal society they are surrounded by. This is an unusual angle to look at this time and place, from the point of view of an unbeautiful older woman in a position of power.

Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon is a weird one. Set in a place called the subdivision, cut off from the city for unknown reasons, a woman arrives at a bed and breakfast sort of place with no idea of who she is, but she plans to find a place to live and a job. There's a puzzle, and an odd smart device and a little boy and a badger-monster-guy and some other weird people. For much of the book, it feels random and unstructured, like an extended dream sequence in an experimental film. And then all the pieces fall into place, sort of.

I dragged myself through this book but ended up delighted, but also not entirely sure what to think of it all. My least favorite kind of book is the ones were outside forces make random changes (not big on books that rely on magic or elves or powerful forces) so that the reader never has solid ground underfoot and this felt like that, until the moment when it didn't. I'm looking forward to getting to find out what other people think of this one.

>140 RidgewayGirl: Sounds unusual. Interesting cover.

So how is the move/settling in?

>141 labfs39: Lisa, we start moving in on Monday, the movers are bringing our stuff on Tuesday.

Exciting!

>140 RidgewayGirl: Intriguing. Sounds like the kind of book I could like, or hate, depending on the writing, the weather, and many other things. I might try to find an excerpt to get an idea.

I hope the move goes well, Kay. I can't wait to see pictures of the "new" house.

>143 labfs39: It is!

>144 FlorenceArt: It's very well-written.

>143 labfs39: I will definitely share pictures.

When Benny's father dies, Benny's mother grieves and he begins to hear voices in inanimate objects. Sometimes, those objects tell him to do things. Benny is labeled as mentally ill and his mother's coping skills and even her fierce love for her son are unable to deal with everything. Benny finds solace in the library, where he finds friends of a sort.

Ruth Ozeki's novel has an off-putting title and cover that that fails to communicate how approachable and interesting this book is. The Book of Form and Emptiness is the story of a boy growing up with sadness and with the book that narrates his life. It's a deeply humane novel that doesn't feel as long as it is.

>147 RidgewayGirl: I went to pick up library holds and they had a pile of ARCs that they were giving away. You would have thought they were giving away gold bricks from the way I danced outta there clutching this one. Glad it’s a good one! I hope to get to it soon.

>148 Yells: Enjoy! You'll love Benny, his mom, the homeless poet and the Children's librarian.

>147 RidgewayGirl: Oh good, I have a galley of that. I put down A Tale for the Time Being when I was reading it a few years ago because it just wasn't connecting for me—though I'd be willing to give it another chance when I'm in a different mood—but this one really appealed from the description.

Some library should make a display of books with weird ennui titles—put this one alongside Rebecca Solnit's The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness.

>150 lisapeet: That would be a fun display to put together.

>139 RidgewayGirl: As you probably know, I loved Matrix. So far I've yet to be disappointed by anything that Lauren Groff has written.

>147 RidgewayGirl: You pegged it: the title and cover of Ozeki's latest put me off, but I will give it a go after reading your comments.

>152 Cariola: I wasn't a fan of her earlier work, but I loved her book of short stories and Matrix was lovely. I like that she's not afraid to go in an entirely new direction.

And I really wonder what was up with the cover of the Ozeki. I found it really off-putting and would not have picked it up except that it's in the Tournament of Books and my library had copies on the New Books shelf.

In personal news, the long move is on the downhill slide. We get the keys for the Stevenson House tomorrow and the movers are scheduled to show up with our stuff on Tuesday. I am very sorry about this, but I am going to share pictures because I am in love with this house. Here is the window above the landing on the staircase.

>153 RidgewayGirl: Beautiful!

That's gorgeous.

Oooh that’s beautiful! Please keep the pictures coming!

What they said. Beautiful window, keep the pictures coming!

>158 labfs39: Congratulations on taking possession! As much as I hate packing, I love unpacking and deciding where things will go.

Beautiful window!

>153 RidgewayGirl: I am very sorry about this, but I am going to share pictures because I am in love with this house.

Don't be sorry! We want pictures. Or at least I do. :)

Here is the window above the landing on the staircase.

That is absolutely gorgeous.

Thank you all. You were warned. We signed papers and got the keys today, but are waiting until tomorrow to move in as the previous owners needed a little extra time to get everything out. He has kindly set aside the plans made by a historical society which had bought the house with the intention of turning it into a museum. They lay out exactly what is planted where in the yard and gives details about the house and I look forward to someday having time to look at them.

>158 labfs39: I agree entirely, Lisa. Putting things neatly away in their new places is highly enjoyable. Not to mention the choosing of new paint colors. I like painting and I especially like just having painted a room. Lots to do over the next few weeks.

>161 RidgewayGirl: I’m looking forward to your pictures and updates, Kay.

>162 NanaCC: It's just boxes and disorder right now, Colleen. But it's fun to figure out where things go.

Loved how you unpacked your cat. Perfect spot!

I am soooo looking forward to the house pictures. I love all thing interiors / garden related. Every best wish for your new home.

>164 mdoris: I moved him. I'm working on having a more organized home, so the cats are going to be stored in the same closet for convenience.



They are busy exploring every inch of their new home.

>165 AlisonY: I just have to dig out from under all the boxes first. Getting there.

>166 RidgewayGirl: Classic. Looking forward to more photos.

>166 RidgewayGirl: so the cats are going to be stored in the same closet for convenience LOL. Glad they are excited to explore their new digs

>166 RidgewayGirl: a very practical solution!!

Adorable pictures, Kay. My daughter sends me pictures every few days of her cats in interesting places. Enjoy your new home. It’s so exciting setting up a new place.

Looks like you have a lot of kitty cubbies! Won't it be lovely to follow the chart as plants begin to emerge in the spring?

>167 qebo: Parts of the house are almost in a state where I can take a few pictures.

>168 labfs39: It has been non-stop exploration. And one cat spent the night in the basement and I only heard her calling for help this morning. I will have to keep better track of them.

>169 wandering_star: They do not, however, stay where they are put.

>170 NanaCC: It is exciting. Finally starting in on the books, which is my favorite part.

>171 Cariola: I'm looking forward to spring!

The cats are adorable. I think they approve (well, maybe except for that one prolonged moment in the basement)

>173 dchaikin: They do enjoy the ability to run amok at 3 am, not only around and around, but also up and down, since there is a narrow back staircase.

This was a reread for me, since after twenty years, Louise Welsh has finally written a sequel. The Cutting Room is tartan noir at its grittiest. Rilke works for a local auction house and given the task of emptying and selling the contents of a house quickly after the death of the owner. His surviving relative also wants Rilke to personally destroy the contents of the attic office, which consist mainly of a collection of rare pornography, but also some photos that send Rilke across Glasgow's grimmest corners.

I loved the book when I first read it and it has aged well. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel. Books, especially crime novels, often don't hold up well to a second reading or the passage of time, but this one is a lovely exception.

>175 RidgewayGirl: Tartan noir? I havent heard that before -I like it. All I've read of 'tartan noir' is Denice Mina, I think. I'll have to keep an eye out for this one. Oh, maybe Jackson Brodie by Kate Atkinson counts?

>176 raidergirl3: tartan noir
I'm about a month ahead of you, having first seen the term on another CR thread.

>175 RidgewayGirl: Hmm, sounds interesting. Adding it my wishlist.

>176 raidergirl3: Yes, similar to Mina, although a little more hard-edged. I think Atkinson would also count, although she's so humane and essentially kind in her approach.

>178 rhian_of_oz: I liked it enough to keep my copy for over a decade and then reread it.

In Our Country Friends, a group of friends, some of whom know each other well, others who are meeting for the first time, gather at the country home of a novelist from Russia at the start of the pandemic. They stay for weeks. As time passes, old fault lines make themselves known, secrets are revealed and old friendships change.

Sure, the description sounds like dozens of other books and movies, but Gary Shteyngart is playing with older inspirations from literature. This is a novel that feels superficial, peopled as it is with often ridiculous characters behaving badly, but there's a heart in there, and Shteyngart is such an intelligent author that I couldn't help but become immersed in it.

> it was like a Russian Big Brother! I might have gotten more out of it had a been at all familiar with Russian literature. I'll have to try another Shteyngart book to decide if I like his style or not.

>181 raidergirl3: That's it, exactly! It did make me want to go read Uncle Vanya.

Set in a bookstore haunted by the ghost of a faithful customer, The Sentence is set up to tick all the boxes. But it's also set during the pandemic, which is not something I'm eager to read about, yet or maybe ever, thank you. But the author is Louise Erdrich, so I bought a copy the week it was published. She has never steered me wrong. Spoiler alert: I liked this book a lot (although I didn't love it).

Tookie works at Birchbark Books, Erdrich's own bookstore in Minneapolis. She served her time and since being in prison married the man who arrested her and has settled in to be a wife and an employee at a store that serves as a community hub and a place that emphasizes Native American literature and crafts. As the pandemic shuts things down, Tookie is being haunted by a woman who had been inventing a Native American heritage for herself.

Mainly, this novel succeeds because Tookie is such a wonderful character. And Erdrich writes about all the characters with such compassion, even the borderline Rachel Dolezal character. There's a wide variety of life experiences in this novel, and Erdrich leans into the compassionate interpretation of people's motivations. This is especially noteworthy given that the novel is not only set during the pandemic, but continues through the demonstrations in Minneapolis in the wake of George Floyd's murder. It's a ripped-from-the-headlines novel that doesn't feel exploitative, because at heart, this is a novel about one defensive, loving, opinionated woman living her life and doing her best to love and care for her family, whether at home or in the bookstore.

I wonder if part of the reason The Sentence works even though it is a pandemic book is that the pandemic is background to their lives, as it should be. I wouldn't have thought I was ready for reading about the pandemic, but I didn't mind it in The Sentence. The pandemic stuff was just part of what happened, and how their lives were disrupted, but it was still more about their lives. Nice review - it's bringing back good memories from the book.

>184 raidergirl3: Yes, it's less a book about the pandemic than a book taking place during the pandemic. I also think how the book handled the George Floyd protests was well done. And I'm always going to be rooting for Tookie.

Nice review of The Sentence, Kay. I bought a copy of it on the day it was released from Virginia Highland Books, my new favorite bookshop in Atlanta. Given all of the positive reviews about it in LibraryThing I'll read it soon.

>186 kidzdoc: I'm glad you got a final visit to your favorite bookstore. I'm looking forward to visiting it during the Decatur Book Festival in October, if it takes place.

>183 RidgewayGirl: I'm intrigued by the positive reviews, and the little parenthetical comment. No clue why I haven't ready anything by Erdrich yet. Big oversight.

>180 RidgewayGirl: i'm glad this works. I really enjoyed Shteyngart's autobiography, about a 7yr old immigrant, struggling to find a sense of humor. I would like to read more by him.

I'm not sure that I ever want to read fiction set in the time of the pandemic, but no surprise that publishing houses have been jumping on a few of these.

>187 RidgewayGirl: I'll need to return to Atlanta every 1-2 months for the foreseeable future, so I'll continue to visit Virginia Highland Books.

There's an outside chance that I could make it to this year's Decatur Book Festival, but my cousin from Michigan would need to stay with my mother while I'm gone.

>188 dchaikin: I would also like to read more by Shteyngart. And the trailer for his memoir is very funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sowt9Wq7zYU

>189 AlisonY: I'm not a fan, but I do prefer them to the rush to include 9/11 in novels. I also think that maybe we shouldn't be mining the holocaust for novel ideas, so take that with a grain of salt.

>190 kidzdoc: Darryl, I'm glad you're still tied to the place you spent so many years. It would be so fun if you did manage to make it down for the festival.

>183 RidgewayGirl: Well, you know that I really enjoyed this one. It had been a long time since I read anything by Erdrich.

>184 raidergirl3: I'm currently reading a very interesting short story collection by Roddy Doyle that is set in Ireland during the pandemic, particularly the lockdown: Life Without Children. It's not so much about the pandemic as it is about what people learn about themselves and those around them because of it.

>192 Cariola: I know I said I wasn't interested in reading books set during the pandemic, but Roddy Doyle is an author I'll make an exception for.

Kaitlyn Greenidge's second novel, Libertie, follows the story of the eponymous character from her childhood in a rural community near New York City, where she grows up free, but still under the restrictions of what it was to be Black in the United States. Her mother is a doctor, and often cares for people who have managed to escape slavery, not always successfully. Although she is respected, her stand-offish personality make it hard for others to get close to her, and that includes her daughter, Libertie, who struggles to find her place in the world, even as the Civil War ends and, theoretically at least, there are more opportunities available to her. She can't fit into the space her mother wants her to occupy, but when she takes a different path, things don't become easier or clearer.

This is a coming-of-age story with a protagonist we don't usually see in this kind of novel; Libertie flails about trying to find a purpose and she's not always sympathetic as she does so. Greenidge also plays with our expectations for historical novels by omitting white people, who exist on the periphery and always as an untrustworthy and potentially dangerous force. But while Greenidge is doing some interesting things in her clearly well-researched novel, it felt a little saggy in places, like it wasn't sure where it was going. Greenidge is a promising writer and the things she choses to write about are always interesting, but she is still developing her craft. I'm eager to read what she writes next.

>194 RidgewayGirl: This look interesting.

And because I am way behind...

>183 RidgewayGirl: - Is that a good place to start with Erdrich?

>180 RidgewayGirl: - I laughed my head off with his Absurdistan (although some parts way too close to be comfortable)

>195 AnnieMod: The best introduction to Erdrich is either early Erdrich, like The Beet Queen, or if you want something more current, The Round House, although I also liked The Night Watchman a lot. She's someone I now just go ahead and buy when the book comes out, which is not something I do for many authors (depending on one's definition of "many.")

And I have another Shteyngart on my tbr, which I'll definitely set aside to read as soon as I get to the box it's been packed in. I will have to buy more shelves.

>196 RidgewayGirl: I'll see what the library has (and is available) :) Thanks for the recommendations!

>194 RidgewayGirl: Nice review of Libertie, Kay. Given your lukewarm review of it ― combined with the dozens of books I hope to get to this year ― I'll take a pass on it.

>183 RidgewayGirl: If I didn't say so already I purchased a copy of The Sentence from Virginia Highland Books on the day it was released, as one of the lovely bookshop employees was putting copies of it in the Fiction section. I hope to read it later this spring.

>194 RidgewayGirl: I read Libertie last year and thought it was promising but ended up frustrated and skimming to the end. I wanted it to be really good and thought the topic was intriguing, but I didn't connect to the characters and found the writing sort of clumsy.

>199 japaul22: Yes, I agree that the writing is not quite there yet, but Libertie is a far better written than Greenidge's debut, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, and she picks really interesting subject matter to write about. Which makes me interested in whatever she does next, even if this one had flaws.

Struggling with her dissertation, a woman wishes that she could come down with some sort of injury or disease that would buy her some time away from teaching to finish it. When she becomes ill, leaving her too tired and unable to concentrate to work on it, it's hard for her to not see some sort of cosmic karma at work. Nervous System by Lina Meruane and translated into English by Megan McDowell starts out seeming like a novel about how a woman deals with life with a chronic illness, but that's not what the author is interested in, turning to a larger exploration into the ways our bodies can fail, whether through injury, accident, disease or simply aging.

There's a lot less plot and a lot more ambiguity to this novel than I enjoy. I'm not entirely sure what Meruane was doing here. There were some interesting moments, but far too often, something interesting happened and is brushed aside for something less interesting. I'm glad the Tournament of Books pushed me well out of my comfort zone, but I'm happy to be back in it now that I've read this one.

Just catching up with your reading! Too bad about the Ozeki.

>202 avaland: No, I liked the Ozeki! And it was the first book by her that I've read. I'll definitely read more by her.

In Sarah Moss's new novel, The Fell, the pandemic has strained Kate's precarious finances to the breaking point. She and her teenage son are home quarantining when she impulsively breaks the quarantine to go hiking alone one evening on the fell without telling anyone.

Moss always writes well and this book is no exception. It was, however, a little heavy-handed, which surprised me as Moss has always been nuanced in how she writes about charged issues. This novel was still enjoyable, with some lovely characters and the sense of people doing their best to do the right thing, but it's not a book I'll return to.

Just catching your last three, and always enjoy learning about these books through your posts. I’m intrigued by your comments on Nervous System. And interesting about the latest Sarah Moss (an author I want to return to). Good luck with the boxes.

>204 RidgewayGirl: I'm sorry that The Fell didn't meet the usual high standard of Sarah Moss's novels. Hopefully the copy of it I ordered from The Book Depository will turn up soon.

>204 RidgewayGirl: - This is the first Sara Moss that I've read and I liked it well enough but wasn't bowled over considering all the paise it's gotten. I guess I ws expecting something more. But I did enjoy the writing and I have another one in my book bullet list by her that I'll try.

>205 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. Every day a few more are emptied.

>206 kidzdoc: I'm curious to see what you make of The Fell. The characters are great, especially Kate's teenage son and the elderly lady who lives next door.

>207 dudes22: Betty, I do encourage you to give her another try.