Charl08 reads words with pictures in 2022 #2

I'm Charlotte, I'm based in north west England and I like to read. I started in the category challenge last year.

I've not had much of a chance to get to galleries or museums in the past year. I do love going to art galleries, and taking pictures and buying books when I'm there. I've enjoyed finding out more about women artists in recent years, so thought I'd focus on that for 2022.

Artist of the month
Malala Andrialavidrazana born 1971

https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/malala-andrialavidrazana/

January 23

1 We Run the Tides (Cat: New to me)
2 The Fine Art of Invisible Detection (Cat: N/A)
3 Laura Knight: a panoramic view (Cat: My Books)
4 Esther's Notebooks: tales from my eleven year old life (Cat: GN)
5 Deep as Death (Crime fiction Cat: authors I've read before)
6. The Emigrants (Memoir/biography Cat: My books)
7. The O Zone (Romance Cat: previous authors)
8. Library of the Dead (Fantasy/dystopia Cat: Africa)
9. Okay Universe (GN)
10. Turtle in Paradise: the graphic novel (GN)
11. The Appeal crime fiction (New to me)
12. According to Queeney historical fiction (My books)
13. Forty-one False Starts: essays on artists and writers literary criticism (My books)
14. Small Things Like These literary fiction (Prize winners)
15. Brickmakers (Women in Translation /Book groups)
16. Real Estate Memoir(authors I've read before)
17. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital literary fiction (authors I've read before)
18. Pulp (GN)
19. The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing
Historical fiction (Authors I've read before)
20. The Mirror and the Palette (History & Politics)
21. The Serpent's Tale (Authors I've read before)
22. Stone Fruit (GN)
23.The Mad Women's Ball (in translation)

Library books read in January: 11

February 27 (Total 50)

1. All Grown Up (Authors I've read before)
2. Walk the Blue Fields (Authors I've read before)
3. Over Easy (GN)
4. The Magician (Authors I've read before)
5. To the Warm Horizon (In Translation / My books)
6. Matrix (Prize nominees)
7. Cruel Summer (GN)
8. Topics of Conversation (My books)
9. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Africa)
10. Year of the Rabbit (GN)
11. Punishment of a Hunter (Women in Translation)
12. The Fade Out: act one (GN)
13. Devil in the Grove (History)
14. Index of Women (New to me authors/ poetry)
15. Twice Shy (New to me authors/ Romance)
16. Friday: Book One The First Day of Christmas (GN)
17. Marzahn Mon Amour (women in translation)
18. The Contradictions (GN)
19. One Night Only (New to me authors)
20. Redemption Ground (New to me authors)
21. The Sentence (Prizewinner)
22. Lady Violet Investigates (Authors I've read before)
23. Lady Violet Attends a Wedding (ditto)
24. Lady Violet Finds a Bridegroom (ditto)
25. Ancestor Stones (Africa/ reading my own books)
26. Wild Thorns (Women in translation)
27. The Swimmers (Authors I've read before)

Library books read in February: 11

March 28 (Total 78)

1. Lady Violet Enjoys a Frolic (Authors I've read before)
2. Parenthesis (GN)
3. Network Effect (New to me authors)
4. Blame This on the Boogie (GN)
5. Often I Am Happy (New to me)
6. Enemies Abroad (Authors I've read before)
7. All Systems Red (Ditto)
8. Artificial Condition (Ditto)
9. This Charming Man (Ditto)
10. The Love Objects of Dunya Noor (Group reads: Syria)
11. The Roles We Play (GN)
12. City of Ice (New to me authors)
13. A Blood Condition (Africa)
14. Rogue Protocol (Authors I've read before)
15. The Kids (New to me authors/ prize nominees)
16. What it feels like for a girl (Group reads)
17. Exit Strategy (Authors I've read before)
18. These Precious Days (Authors I've read before)
19. Fugitive Telemetry (Authors I've read before)
20. Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life (New to me)
21. Build Your House Around My Body (Prize nominees)
22. Lady Violet Holds a Baby (Authors I've read before)
23. Homecoming King (Authors I've read before)
24. In Memory of Memory (in translation)
25. Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop (Authors I've read before)
26. Kingdom of Characters (History)
27. The Woman with the Knife (Women in translation)
28. The Dead Girls' Class Trip (Women in translation/ my books)

Library books read in March: 12

April 20 (Total 98)

1. Salt Lick (Prize nominees)
2. The Bread the Devil Knead (Prize nominee)
3. Parks and Provocation (New to me authors)
4. Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments (Prize nominee)
5. The Lady Doctor (GN)
6. In Case of Emergency (Women in translation/ Book groups & challenges)
7. The Book of Form and Emptiness (Prize nominee)
8. Ten Trends
9. Incredible Doom (GN)
10. The Master Key (Women in translation)
11. Creatures of Passage (Prize nominees)
12. Dien Cai Dau (Prize nominees)
13. These Days (Prize nominees)
14. This One Sky Day (ditto)
15. Strangers I know (Women in translation)
16. Memories from Limon (GN)
17. The Island of Missing Trees (Prize nominees)
18. Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel GN
19. The Slowworm's Song (Authors I've read before)
20. Concerning my daughter (in translation)

Library books read this month: 9

May 1 (Total 99)

1. Bless the Daughter raised by a voice in her head

Reading my own books (Art I've seen in person, (and have photos of... )


From recent visit to Laura Knight exhibit, MK gallery.

Potential books from my shelves (A-B authors)
Bird Summons Leila Aboulela
Stay with Me Ayobami Adebayo
We Should All be Feminists CAA
Our Sister Killjoy
The Storyteller
The Yacoubian Building
Bosnian Chronicle
War of the Saints
According to Queenie
Eclipse

1. Laura Knight: a panoramic view (Acq Oct 21)
2. The Emigrants (Acq ?Dec 21)
3. According to Queenie (Not catalogued!)
4. Forty-one False Starts (Acq. April 2021)
5. To the Warm Horizon (Acq. July 21)
6. Topics of Conversation (Acq. April 21)
7. Ancestor Stones (Acq. 2013! )

NB books only count if bought before 1st Jan 2022.


Reminder to myself of some outstanding books on the shelves...

Bookclub books & group reads
(Still life "groups of things" by women artists)
Dora Carrington



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Carrington
Borderless Bookclub (now monthly) https://borderlessbookclub.com/

January Borderless - read Brickmakers
March Read Marzahn, Mon Amour

Upcoming:
Thursday April 21st, 8pm UK time
Fitzcarraldo Editions | Strangers I Know
Thursday May 19th, 8pm UK time
And Other Stories | Phenotypes by Paulo Scott.
Thursday June 16th, 8pm UK time
Bitter Lemon Press | Kalmann

Work bookgroup
Read (March) What it feels like for a girl

Asia year long read (75ers group)
January: Turkey My Name is Red
February: Palestine Wild Thorns
March: Syria (read) The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor
April: Iran
Read: In Case of Emergency / Mohebali, Mahsa
Potentially: My Bird (Middle East Literature In Translation) / Vafi, Fariba
Things We Left Unsaid / Zoya Pirzad
May: to read a "-stan" I have The Devil's Dance on the shelf to read.
Caroline's shared read (20 AoC)
March (Still! Currently reading) Night Haunts: A journey through the London night

Histories & politics (early artists: Mary Beale, first English female professional painter)



Self portrait
Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beale
1. The Mirror and the Palette (art history)
2. Devil in the Grove (civil rights)
3. Kingdom of Characters (history / linguistics)

Graphic novels and memoirs (The amazing Posy Simmonds)

Cassandra Darke

1. Esther's Notebooks
2. Okay Universe
3. Turtle in Paradise: the Graphic Novel
4. Stone Fruit
5. Over Easy
6. Cruel Summer
7. Year of the Rabbit
8. The Fade Out: Act One
9. The Contradictions
10. Parenthesis
11. Blame This on the Boogie
12. The Roles We Play
13. Lady Doctor

Women in translation (International artists - Hilma af Klint)


https://www.hilmaafklint.se/en/

1. Brickmakers (Argentina)
2. The Mad Women's Ball (France/US)
3. To the Warm Horizon (South Korea)
4. Punishment of a Hunter (Russia)
5. Wild Thorns (Palestine)
6. In Memory of Memory (Russia)
7. The Woman with the Knife (South Korea)
8. In Case of Emergency (Iran)
9. The Master Key (Japan)
10. Strangers I know (Italy)
11. Concerning my daughter (South Korea)

Prize nominees (women artists who have been nominated for and/or won prizes)


Emma Hart, winner of the Max Mara prize.
https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/prizes-awards/max-mara-art-prize-women/

1. Small Things Like These (Author has won the inaugural William Trevor Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Olive Cook Award and the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009)
2. Matrix (Groff was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction)
3. The Sentence (Erdrich won the Pulitzer for her last book)
4. The Kids (Lowe won the 2021 Costa book prize)
5. Build Your House Around My Body (Women's prize 22)
6. Salt Lick (Women's prize longlist 22)
7. The Bread the Devil Knead (Women's Prize longlist 22)
8. The Book of Form and Emptiness (ditto)
9. Creatures of Passage (ditto)

Books by authors with links to the African continent, loosely defined

1. Library of the Dead (Author is Zimbabwean)
2. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Author is Somali, born in Kenya, lives in London)
3. Ancestor Stones (Sierrra Leone / UK)
4. A Blood Condition (Author born in Zambia, now UK)



Art by Ntombephi Ntobela
https://www.ubuhlebeads.com/personnel/ntombephi-induna-ntobela/

Familiar faces - authors I've read before
(Favourite artists)
Kara Walker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Walker

"Gone..."
From https://awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/de-representation-violence-lart-de-kar...

1. Deep as Death
2. The O Zone
3. Real Estate
4. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital
5. The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing
6. The Serpent's Tale
7. All Grown Up
8. Walk the Blue Fields (short stories)
9. Lady Violet Investigates
10. Lady Violet attends a wedding
11. Lady Violet finds a Bridegroom
12. The Swimmers
13. Lady Violet Enjoys a Frolic
14. Enemies Abroad
15. All Systems Red
16. Artificial Condition
17. Exit Strategy
18. These Precious Days
19. Fugitive Telemetry
20. Lady Violet Holds a Baby
21. Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop

Keeping things interesting i.e. first time authors & new-to-me authors ('new' artists under 40)
Kate Cooper
"Care work" 2015

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-30-emerging-artists-to-watch-this-...

1. We Run the Tides
2. The Appeal
3. Index of Women
4. Network Effect
5. Often I Am Happy
6. Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life

Are you accepting visitors yet?

Happy new thread Charlotte!

Hi Charlotte, Happy new thread!

Edited to say....now I can see all the fabulous pictures!

Hi Charlotte - Happy new thread. I love the art! From your previous thread, looking forward to a new Erpenbeck. I have a couple of hers unread, so I can wait for the translation.

I do have Ancestor Stones on my shelf as well, and have loved everything I've read by Forna, so I hope to get to that this year.

Love all your pictures!

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

I love all the paintings you show with your categories.

Happy new thread! The pictures are beautiful.

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

>9 humouress: Hi Nina, thanks for finding me. I decided to get started before March as it was the weekend.

>10 mdoris: Hi Mary, I wondered if you had seen the new Julie Otsuka about swimming? I am enjoying it so far.

>11 BLBera: Hi Beth, I also really like Forna, and am really tempted to get more of her books for my own shelves. I have no space left though, so not sure what to get rid of. Or maybe I just wait until I have more space! Not exactly a problem in the context of world events right now.

>12 Nickelini: Thank you. I really enjoy finding them (and finding out more about new to me artists).

>13 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita. I am adding to the lists of galleries I want to visit. It looks like I just missed an exhibition of Mary Beale's paintings though!
https://www.visit-burystedmunds.co.uk/blog/2021/observations-the-mary-beale-coll...

>14 Jackie_K: Thank you! I've tried to include links with all the pictures: there is always lots more by the artists to explore.

>15 bell7: Thanks for visiting Mary.

I read Wild Thorns (for a group read - this month Israel/Palestine). Written by a Palestinian author in the 1970s and translated into English in the '80s. It's pretty grim.

The book is framed by Usama returning from working abroad to his home town, Nablus, and his rediscovery of home and what has changed since he left. His mother is delighted he's returned and tries to set him up with a local girl. Instead he's trying to convince his former friends and relatives to join him and attack the buses that take Palestinian workers into Israel to work every day. Despite the desperation that drives this choice, the political powers that be have determined it needs to be stopped. Alongside his commitment to the cause, one of his cousins (Adil is trying desperately to support the rest of his family, another is just trying to keep his head down in the face of racism in an Israeli factory.

I found this a tough read, although it's relatively short (at approx 200 pages). No one is living an easy life. Everyone is angry or upset or keeping secrets from their families.
As a side note, women barely feature with any kind of agency (one of the "guerrillas" but we barely see her), their concerns are feeding their families and marriage. I'm guessing this must be part of her feminism, ie a critique of this positioning.
Wikipedia tells me that her most recent book was published in English last year, I will see if I can get hold of a copy to see how she described the situation over 40 years later.

The house lay in ruins. The men dispersed. The women came down from the roofs. Adil slipped away from the crowd, cutting through the narrow back streets and heading for the main square.
He stood on the pavement watching the people on their way home, on their way to work. They lived their everyday lives stoically, silently. Nothing had changed. The square stood where it always had; the town clock ticked slowly as it always had. Only the flowers seemed to have grown larger, taller; otherwise nothing had changed.
The smell of roasting coffee and kinafa reached him. The chimneys of the soap factory poured clouds of smoke over the ancient roofs of the houses. People were eating, shopping, smiling.
Adil walked through the square in silence, crossing the main street in the centre of town. The street peddlers were crying out their wares: 'Fish from Gaza!' 'Oranges from Jaffa! "Bananas from Jericho!"
The liquorice and carob-drink peddler clashed his cymbals rhythmically.

Happy new thread. Love the amazing pictures!

Thanks Birgit. Looking at these images it's really hard not to go down a rabbit hole of beautiful artworks.

Paul's challenge over in the 75ers linked to reading Asia.

For March he's termed it 'the Arab world' and given us a list of options (below). However, I've got a couple of Rabih Alameddine's on the shelf, so will probably pick those up to read. Tempted by The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor after a look at https://hoopoefiction.com/

Lebanon
Amin Maalouf
Kahil Gibran
Elias Khoury
Hoda Barakat

Jordan
Jamal Naji

Saudi Arabia
Abdelrahman Munif
Raja Alem
Abdo Khal

Syria
Khaled Khalifa
Rafik Schami

Iraq
Dunya Mikhail
Ahmed Saadawi

Oman
Jokha Alharthi

Kuwait
Saud Alsanousi

Hello, Charlotte! Happy new one. I have added Ancestor Stones to The List - thanks for mentioning it over on my thread.

I have no idea what I'm reading for March's Asian Reading Challenge.

>16 charl08: Hi Charlotte, yes, I put the swimming book on a library hold as soon as I read about it. I'll be having a peek over here to see what you think of it.

>21 Crazymamie: I asked my library to get hold of two more, Mamie. Fingers crossed they have space in their budget...

>22 mdoris: I really enjoyed it Mary. Although the second half has no swimming, fair warning. It has made me want to get back in the pool. Covid and a low tolerance for fellow swimmers got me out of the habit.

The Swimmers (Authors I've read before)
I really like Julie Otsuka. I'm not sure the two halves of the book work together here: the first half is centred on a pool, the second on one of the swimmers, an elderly woman's, retreat into alzheimers. But I loved the writing, so I'm not complaining.

YOUR MAIN ACTIVITY, of course, will be waiting. For the medication to kick in. For "Afternoon Snack" French Fry Fridays. Your birthday (a single candle on a frosted cupcake at lunch). Your monthly appoint ment with Miss Sharon at our in-house beauty salon. "Just a trim, please," you will say. For the next phone call from your daughter ("I'm fine!" you will tell her). For any small act of kindness. A hand on your shoulder. A tap on your wrist. A hug. A squeeze. A wink. A nod. For someone to crouch down beside you and look you straight in the eye and say, "Everything's going to be all right" (to which the old you would reply,"You have no idea what you are talking about"). And last, but not least, for the sweet oblivion of sleep.

Lady Violet Enjoys a Frolic
Fourth book in this regency crime series. I should stop now before they become annoying.

Parenthesis (GN)
Beautifully drawn GN exploring the author's experience of epilepsy.

>23 charl08: Oh good, I look forward to it. i am trying to swim every day now. It sure boosts the happy cells!

>25 mdoris: I wish I had a pool I was happy in to swim every day.

I am now on the Murderbot bandwagon. Late to the party. The review on the back mentions Marvin the paranoid android, and now I am tempted to read Hitchhiker's Guide again. True to form, I started in the wrong place. Network Effect was very good though. Made me grin, which was great in a blah week.

The other humans were listening on the comm so hard I could pick up their breathing. Thiago pretended not to listen, flashing his helmet light over the stations on the upper tier of the control area. Overse added, "Just remember you're not alone here." I never know what to say to that. I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

Hooray for Murderbot! I haven't read (listened to) Network Effect yet. They do make me laugh. The audiobooks are great.

>26 charl08: Oh, glad to see you're enjoying Murderbot, even if you're a little out of order. The novellas are pretty easy to read a day apiece.

>27 BLBera: Murderbot as a character is so well done, what took me so long?

>28 bell7: I will try and space them out a bit (but probably not manage!)

Reading the TLS and adding books to my wishlist. These Days about Belfast in the 1940s. (It's already been ordered by the library, so hopefully not a long wait!)
Also tempted by a travel Memoir The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street. Given how slowly I am reading NF apart from Memoir I should probably not look to get hold of The Restless Republic, but since it does one of the things I love, blending individials' accounts of life with the wider historical picture for the end of the Cromwellian period, its hard to be sensible.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/current-issue-6/

>30 charl08: I liked the two Lucy Caldwell books I've read very much, her first novel Where They Were Missed back in 2010, and her second (I think) and most recent collection of short stories. I've had her second and third novels and first short story collection on my Kindle TBR for a while, but was really excited to realise that I must have found an ARC of These Days in a charity shop in November. I had wishlisted a collection of short stories she edited a few years ago, but none of my libraries have Being Various in their collections; however, I found another paperback ARC in a charity shop a few weeks ago.

These Days appeals to me for several reasons - WWII historical but a setting much less explored in fiction than London during the Blitz, girls growing up and family relationships, a talented author. If the library copy comes through you'll probably get to it before I do so I'm looking forward to your review.

>30 charl08: They do sound interesting. I have a lot of unread NF on my shelves, so I will hold off on those for now.

>31 elkiedee: I've not read her before, looking forward to it. I was a bit wary about another WW2 book, but as you say it's a not the usual setting.

>32 BLBera: Must be nice to think of all the time you will have to read the NF soon, Beth!

4. Blame This on the Boogie (GN)

Fun GN, a mix of memoir and a diary of an obsession with a particular season of Dancing with the Stars. A little bit disjointed as a result, but a distinctive style, and not as "heavy" as some memoirs can be.

5. Often I Am Happy (New to me author)
Odd Danish novella. A woman writes a letter to a dead friend. She married the friend's husband after she died. Now the husband has died too, and there are some things she wants to tell someone. Left with two adult stepchildren, relations are fraught. They judge her for putting the house up for sale. She wants to move back to her old, less wealthy neighborhood. She remembers meeting her first husband, and the secret about her father. Her mother had slept with a German soldier and been all but thrown out of her village as a result. He had said he would return, but never did. Neither mother or daughter told anyone.
I think this one suffered from comparison to another book which dealt with a similar separation (deliberately vague because spoilers). Plus the book was translated by the author into English, and I think in places it showed. There were several points where I thought words that were similar to the "right" word but threw me out of the story. Rather grumpy of me, I know.
Not a winner for me, I think.

Thingaversary! XV

Happy Thingaversary, Charlotte!

>36 katiekrug: Thanks Katie.

I think I'm going to pass on the 'Traditional' haul, given the number of books which have found their way onto my shelves recently!

>37 charl08: - Totally understand. Somehow I find bringing a book here, a few there into the house is more satisfying than massive hauls all at once. I am more likely to forget about books that way!

Happy thingaversary, Charlotte. Good call skipping the traditional haul. Oddly I found getting my 15 to fulfill the tradition harder to reach this year. It probably has something to do with all the full bookcases around here!

Happy Thingaversary, Charlotte!

*that means I forgot mine, as you are exactly one year ahead of me*

Happy Thingaversary, Charlotte!

>38 katiekrug: Of course, another day, more books I want to read (looking at the women's prize longlist).

>39 Familyhistorian: It's the space issue for me, Meg. The shelves are pretty full. I moved some things around to try and make more space but I think I'm going to have to make some choices about what I keep or put stuff into storage or I don't know, really.

>40 FAMeulstee: Happy thingaversary back to you too!

>41 MissWatson: Thank you! It doesn't feel like fifteen years. I remember sitting in my old flat living room adding books for the first time to the website (I think I remember because my flatmates were bemused that I was keen to catalogue books!)

Happy Thingaversary, Charlotte!

>43 RidgewayGirl: Thanks Kay. Have you unpacked the bookshelves yet? (This is my favourite bit of moving house. Not the moving the boxes of books though, just the putting them on the shelves)

Happy Thingaversary! You can always use it as an excuse to buy books later. :)

>45 BLBera: I cracked already Beth. Some of the new Women's Prize list was too tempting.

Happy Thingaversary Charlotte.

Which ones are especially calling your name, Charlotte?

>47 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline.

>48 BLBera: Nearly all of them, Beth, but fortunately my library has holdings for some too.

Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

The Bread the Devil Knead - ordered a copy as its paperback
Salt Lick by Lulu Allison - ordered a copy as its paperback
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
✅️The Sentence
Build Your House Around My Body out from the library
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
The Book of Form and Emptiness have started... from the library
This One Sky Day ordered from the library
The Island of Missing Trees waiting for the paperback!
✅️Great Circle
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev ordered from library
Creatures of Passage bought my own copy. There was a discount (Blackwells)

Hi Charlotte! Congratulations on 15 years on LT! In case you are interested, Elizabeth, Raidergirl , has started a thread on the Longlist for Women's Fiction here - https://www.librarything.com/topic/340154#n7781970

I have not read any of the books as yet, I'll have to look into them further, but right I think I'm interested in reading Careless by Kirsty Capes. I've not had a chance to see what my library has . Build Your House Around My Body captures my interest too .

Hope all is well with you and yours.

I've read 4 of these books, had-3 through Netgalley, but actually bought Opal & Nev on a 99p deal before I read it. I think I rated them all 4.5* when I read them so I liked them very much!

I've 3 on my Kindle TBR (including Build Your House Around My Body which I've just bought at £1.99 and 2 more on Netgalley. Which means that I've had at least 8 of these from Netgalley so I will try to do reviews for the ones I've read soon.

I'm going out on a library expedition this afternoon and think I'm going to adjust my plan slightly to look for a copy of The Paer Palace that is allegedly in stock at Archway anyway. This is actually simplifying my plan to 4 buses instead of 5 or 6.

>50 vancouverdeb: Lovely to 'see' you here Deborah. I didn't realise Elisabeth had a thread too - I'd started on her list that she had set up. Thank you for posting about it. I really loved both the two that I have read so far, so at the moment hoping that they make the shortlist. (Fingers crossed)

>51 elkiedee: That's a great recommendation (but which four?!)
I just wait for the books to come to me, but I like the idea of an expedition across Lancashire to pick up books.

I'll watch for your comments, Charlotte. My library has a few, so I'll probably start with those.

Happy Thingaversary!

>54 BLBera: Thanks Beth. I still think they'll struggle to beat The Sentence and Great Circle (but I've been wrong before).

>55 Helenliz: Thanks Helen. I was tempted yesterday to just buy the whole longlist and then remembered Trying to Be Sensible.

Meh day yesterday, so came home and watched ridiculous(ly entertaining) Pop Up Noodle Shop and listened to Murderbot Diaries #2. The narrator does a good job of the ART voice, I think.

The Island of Missing Trees is really good, too, Charlotte. And I am really interested in the chorus of cows in Salt Lick.

>57 BLBera: Those cows do sound intriguing, don't they!

A chorus of cows sounds interesting!

>57 BLBera: Yes, your review of The Island of Missing Trees was what made me pre-order the paperback (before the announcement of the longlist).

>58 Nickelini: >59 Familyhistorian: I await reading about the cows with interest.

I have mostly been listening to Murderbot. Now on book 3.

The Murderbots are addictive, aren't they, Charlotte. I have listened to all of them, and they are great audiobooks.

>61 BLBera: Yes. They keep making me laugh on my way to work, which gets me some odd looks

Interesting news about the storage limitations of the British Library and plans to create a northern visitor centre.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-60668721

Congratulations on your 15th Thingaversary! (I suspect whoever came up with Thingaversaries didn't think this far down the line. 16 books in one shot does sound desirable - except for the hit to the wallet, the lack of bookshelf space ... and the fact that I don't stop buying books through the year. Though I am on an enforced go-slow due to the aforementioned.)

>51 elkiedee: That's keen of you. More than 2 buses (one way) would put me off a journey; I could stretch to 3 for a book though :0)

>62 charl08: What a fascinating article! I remember during my PhD going on a trip to the British Library in London, going 'behind the scenes' and seeing how they store and retrieve all the books there. I was bemused to see that everything is shelved according to height rather than genre so that they could maximise the physical space available and not have any dead space between shelves - it made sense when they explained it like that, and they have computer systems that knows exactly where each book is and robots to retrieve it if it is requested by a user. It was really fascinating!

>64 Jackie_K: See, that's what I need.

I'd actually decided that I could get to libraries in both Islington and Camden in two journeys (2 buses each), one there and one back, instead of three (One bus to Finsbury Park, 2 buses to Kentish Town, 2 buses home). Because I went to the branch that is just across the road from where I would change buses anyway. Some are actually very straghtforward changes and journeys and there is a hopper fare (You can change buses for up to ah hour for free)., though how long that will last given the government's attitude to public services.....

>64 Jackie_K: I love those behind the scenes tours.

>65 humouress: Ha! Me too.

>66 elkiedee: If I'm not in a rush I really enjoy people spotting on a bus, especially on the top deck.

Read for the Asia challenge over on the 75ers.
I read The Love Objects of Dunya Noor by a first time author Rana Haddad, who was born in Syria but left as a teenager.

A fleet of yellow taxis (most of them looking as if they certainly would be retired or fail their road safety inspections in more sensible countries) moved through the streets, hungry for lira, almost breaking down under the weight of the plastic flowers that adorned them; cars hooted like sick owls and trucks heaved, burdened with their loads of flour, melons, and live meadow cows. Most of these vehicles were inevitably adorned with plastic, glass, and feather accesories, complete with self-congratulatory, flirtatious, or provocative proclamations: "I'm as pretty as they come"; "Your eyes are my ocean"; "To hell with those who envy me!"

Now that they were nearer to the center, their taxi crossed through the old Latakia vegetable market, where at this time of day, it was like a festival. The biggest recompense for not being able to speak freely in the Republic of Syria was the freedom to sing and shout, and this is what all the vegetable and street sellers in Latakia, and all across the country, did in the morn ings. Dunya watched, with awe and wonder, men of all ages, shapes, and sizes praising and extolling their produce louder and louder, like a chorus in an outdoor choir. A man emptied two large bags of apples on a table. Another one drove in with a blue truck packed full of red grapes, another truck came in loaded with fresh green figs.

In the acknowledgments she says that the plot is not her own experience but that her memories inform the setting. This is not a subtle novel, Haddad makes clear she finds the dictatorship ridiculous and attitudes to women more so. The central character Dunya, is sent to England as a young girl after risking shame for her family through her enthusiasm for photography. She meets a Syrian man as a student and returns to her family to introduce him. Her father hates that her boyfriend (Hilal) is not of the right class. Hilal then 'mysteriously' disappears, picked up in a flash car associated with the officials of the dictatorship.

I thought I knew where it was going at this point, but instead the plot took a sharp left turn and became a much more engaging novel for it, I think.

This book seemed to be a classic first novel, trying to pack lots of different elements into the story that didn't necessarily service the plot. The author weaves in a strong mystic or fable element too, with characters influenced by fortune telling and philosophical ideas about love.

For me the interest was mostly in terms of the setting, about somewhere I only really know as a conflict setting on the news. Glad I read it for the different perspectives it offers.

Posted the reviews in the wrong order.
Book 9. This Charming Man
Second book in the comic fantasy series set at a newspaper in an alternative Manchester populated with supernatural communities alongside the normals. After the dramatic events of the previous book, the characters of the newsroom have a new case. An apparent suicide is found to have had fangs and an involvement in a murder themselves.

WHY?' bellowed Banecroft. 'IS THE NOISE BOTHERING YOU?'

With that, he marched back into his office and slammed the door shut behind him.

Hannah shook her head. 'How has he got this far in life with out anyone stabbing him?"

'I heard that,' roared Banecroft from the other room. 'Shows what you know. I've been stabbed twice!'

>69 charl08: I need to read this series!

>69 charl08: *snort* plus ca change & all that...

>69 charl08: I've got this on the kobo already, hopefully will get to it sometime this year. Very much looking forward to it.

Gorgeous day for a walk yesterday.

>70 rabbitprincess: >71 Helenliz: >72 Jackie_K: I'm tempted to track down his other books too.

The Roles We Play
GN memoir by a British-Pakistani author exploring her family history, conflict between British and Pakistani values, Muslim traditions and ideas, and her own life and choices. Beautifully drawn, with a continued commitment to Islam and her family, whilst documenting her gradual rejection of the hijab and marriage to a white man. There's a lot of detail here, and careful discussion of what it was like to grow up in a large multi-generation home, the de facto segregation at the heart of much (English) schooling, and the implicit racism in HE and professional life. Not a light read, but a thoughtful and thought-provoking one.


ETA This isn't the most striking image, but chosen because it struck a chord with me. When I moved to London, from a university in a small town (and having lived before that in small town) I loved the anonymity of London as she describes here.

City of Ice
Finished this crime novel this morning (couldn't sleep) taking me back down to only (ha!) 15 books in the euphemistically named 'currently reading' section of my LT books. I picked this up from the shelf thinking it was international crime, which I usually think of as crime fiction by an author from that place. This wasn't that, although the author has spent time living in China. The book is set (mostly) in a rural town outside Harbin, not a place I was familiar with.


Image from Sightdoing.neet

Harbin has reinvented itself as a tourism destination with winter / snow festivals, which do look impressive.

Image from China Discovery

Inspector Lu is called to investigate when the body of a young woman is found, only three weeks after she buried her mother. Lu has a chequered history (in the grand tradition of just about every fictional detective) having gone to an elite university and been placed in Harbin (a big city posting). For unclear reasons, his apparent success has been cut off and he has somehow ended up in a rural backwater. A detective is sent in to run the investigation from the big city. The case requires a return to Harbin for Lu, and political maneuvering as local bigwigs demand their interests are respected.

One of the reasons I like novels written for a local market is that there is relatively little exposition of things that locals take for granted - you just have to try and make sense of things from the context. Here though, there was lots of explanatory text, from different police force jurisdictions to the corruption inherent in police reporting. Sometimes this was fun (the complaints from the police that all they got to do was answer queries from elderly people asking for help relocating their password for the most popular Chinese website) but a lot of the time it felt like it weighed the novel down and got in the way of the plot. I'd probably pick up another if I came across it, but I wouldn't go searching for it.

>75 charl08: Nice comments. I love the photo. This does sound interesting.

>77 BLBera: Thanks Beth. Thinking about it now, I guess a Chinese resident would struggle to get a book published that makes the kind of comments about police (and government) corruption that the author does here? Not sure. I was amazed at the Chinese author of one of the book group books I read, who wrote about rural Chinese life and how almost impossibly hard it was, and how that had been published in China and been very popular. (Or in brief: IDK!)

I finished A Blood Condition over my lunch break. I can't claim to understand all the poems - I'm assuming the condition he refers to is HIV/AIDS given the devastation of it in SSA, but I didn't find an explicit reference. Some powerful verse, and some that I feel like I should go away and look up the references. But hopefully that means I can come back to it again.

This lovely poem is included in the Guardian review too.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/may/11/a-blood-condition-by-kayo-chingony...

interior w/ ceiling fan
wish that we could lie here
for the rest of our lives
the blades of the fan above us
whirling like a tanguera’s skirt
everything outside this room
a distant country
let me be this unguarded always
speaking without the need of words
because breath is the oldest language
any of us know

Book #15 for March is The Kids, a poetry collection I picked up when I went into Waterstones for a present for my friend's 18 month old (he got a book about a sloth. It seems to have met with approval). Lowe's collection won the Costa but I'd missed it until I saw it in the display. The cover has a striking image from her youth, protesting racism. Some of the poems pick up this theme, her own experience as a 'white appearing' woman with a Black/Chinese heritage father. Others explore her teaching career, relationships and parenthood. I really liked it, one I will be keeping.

Sonnet for the A Level English Literature and Language Poetry Syllabus

all summer term reading poems -
down in the mud
of words, wanting
the kids to hear what I heard
breaking the poems apart, slapping
their parts to the board -
'I would love ten years
before the flood'
'The world is charged
with the grandeur of god'
'Yet dearly I love you
and would be lov'd fain'
'Batter my heart'
again, again.

>69 charl08: 😂

It's a fun read.
Edinburgh in the sunshine.

What It Feels Like for a Girl by Paris Lees
This memoir of growing up trans in working class Nottingham is written in local dialect and takes a bit of getting 'into' (or at least, it did for me). Paris is bullied, unhappy and alone at the opening of the book, but discovers her community through a series of misadventures, including underage clubbing, drinking and drugs. Throughout, her step-dad is unsympathetic and her mum is more interested in finding a new boyfriend, but the love of her grandmother gets her through. Although a very funny book, I found it hard to read in places, as Paris is mostly blind to the dangers she's putting herself into, at risk from men paying for sex and her vulnerability when out of it on drugs. But it also made me laugh.
I think this could make for an interesting book group discussion next week.

Thank God I had the sense to nick a coat from the club. There worra big pile of 'em on the floor on the way out, so I just took one. While we had a fag I put the hood up an' Lady Die sez I looked like the woman from the Scottish Widows advert. Fag Ash said I looked like Skeletor.

>81 charl08: I've still not been to Edinburgh. I was due to go 2020, but had to cancel due to the pandemic. Maybe next year.

>83 Caroline_McElwee: And I still want to get to Florence!

Exit Strategy
I think I'm all out of Murderbot Diaries. But I could be wrong.

ETA I still have Fugitive Telemetry to read (cheer)

Urgh, I'm feeling under the weather. Positive COVID test, so I'm at home. The sun is shining outside (wth?) And I've got plenty to read but feel more like sleeping.
Finished These Precious Days this morning: liked it, but even less likely to say anything useful about it than usual. Good gentle company though.

>86 charl08: I hope you recover quickly!

>86 charl08: oh noes! Feel better soonest.

Sorry about the virus. I hope you have a very mild case and get over it quickly!

>87 MissWatson: >88 Helenliz: >89 katiekrug: Thanks folks. I have self-prescribed more Murderbot.

Get well soon!

Feel better soon, Charlotte. I hope it's a mild case with no lingering.

>91 Jackie_K: >92 BLBera: Thank you. Mostly sleeping. And feeling very lucky to have got it at this stage instead of before vaccinations.

>84 charl08: Me too.

>86 charl08: Meh. My bro is on day 10 and still positive. Luckily relatively mild at least. Hope you get shot of it soon Charlotte.

>94 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline. Hope your brother is negative soon.
And an overdue *Thank you* for the nudge re the Stanley Tucci documentary. So lovely. And hungry making.

Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life
I wasn't much disposed to like this, as some of the first essays are pretty blokey (bars, wife complaining, husband has no clue). I'm generally rubbish with essays, so thanks to Mary (bell7) for the nudge to pick it up.

He kind of sucks the reader in with that "rubbish dad" stuff, which could almost be written from anywhere, so you know he's not by any means speaking as a "perfect" outsider. Cumulatively these collected columns he wrote for Haaretz, an Israeli paper, document the slow erosion of (his) hope for a new state, a new peace. The last couple made me a bit weepy.
I blame the Covid.

I wanted to tell the Israelis a story, the Palestinian story. Surely when they read it they will understand, when they read it they will change, all I have to do is write and the occupation will end, I just have to be a good writer and I will free my people from the ghettos they live in, tell good stories in Hebrew and I will be safe, another book, and another movie and another column for the newspaper and another script for television and my children will already have a better future. Thanks to my stories one day we will turn into equal citizens, almost like the Jews.

Twenty-five years of writing in Hebrew, and nothing has changed. Twenty-five years clutching at the hope...

>96 charl08: That sounds right up my street, I've added it to my wishlist!

>97 Jackie_K: Hope it works for you too.

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

The Bread the Devil Knead - have a copy
Salt Lick by Lulu Allison - reading
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
✅️The Sentence
✅️Build Your House Around My Body
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
The Book of Form and Emptiness have started... from the library
This One Sky Day ordered from the library
The Island of Missing Trees waiting for the paperback!
✅️Great Circle
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev ordered from library
Creatures of Passage bought my own copy. There was a discount (Blackwells)

Build Your House Around My Body

I took a while to get into this, but once I did, was hooked despite the covid dozing. I think I liked reading about this knowing next to nothing about it, so would suggest not reading this post!

First Assistant's alleged clairvoyance was the reason that she had been promoted above Second Assistant, leaving him with all the shitty tasks: he was the one who had to chase after sacrificial chickens when they escaped, drag heavy teak furniture into arrangements the Fortune Teller deemed more pleasing to the spirits, and revive old women with eucalyptus oil when they fainted during exorcisms. He was the one sent outside to burn joss paper during a monsoon, crouching damp and miserable beneath a rusty umbrella while, inside, First Assistant draped herself over a sofa next to the Fortune Teller and pretended to chat with the dead.

As the book opens, an American-Vietnamese woman has gone missing in Saigon. Successive flashback chapters take us to her (unhappy) experiences visiting Saigon as an expat language teacher. We also discover the back story of a corrupt policeman, his brother and their friend, and the connections between them. There's plenty of supernatural activity linked to Vietnam's colonial past as well as current violence. And snakes. Lots of snakes.

After Dutch Alex accidentally knocked over a parked motorbike while trying to find a dark street corner to pee, the other, marginally less inebriated teachers phoned his wife, and ten minutes later she arrived in a taxi to retrieve him. The remaining five finished their corn while they watched the evening's regular lineup of street performers: first there was the man with an amplifier strapped to the back of his bi cycle who sang ballads and circulated through the crowds with a fistful of stale candies for sale; then the pair of fire breathers who looked no older than fifteen, armed with old Sprite bottles full of kerosene; and finally the man who took a live snake, small and jade green and pencil thin, fed it up one of his nostrils, and then pulled it back out of his mouth. ("Jesus," muttered Susan, wobbling to her feet and hailing a taxi for herself. "When the snake-nose man shows up you know it's time to leave.")

I liked the unpredictability of the novel: my ideas about Winnie's disappearance at the start of the book were completely wrong footed. I liked how the author wove "traditional" beliefs into the narrative, despite my mixed feelings about magical realism. And I thought that dealing with Winnie's depression / sense of not fitting in by having her become a spirit who would gradually gain power was a refreshing alternative to so many novel resolutions.

Hoping this one gets shortlisted (but I've only read three of the long list).

Of the three you've read, Charlotte, which is your favorite. I've only skimmed your comments about Build Your House Around My Body; I hope to read it soon.

I'm reading Creatures of Passage, which is very unusual.

>100 BLBera: Really hard to say, Beth. They were so different. I think any of the three I would be happy to see shortlisted.

Trying to pick a book to read by an Iranian author for next month's challenge. I've not read any of these.
https://electricliterature.com/8-novels-in-translation-by-iranian-women-writers-...

Ladybirds found in the garden today! I'm so happy as I bought some last year, and was convinced they had all gone kaput.

>102 charl08: Yay for ladybirds (I thought it was ladybugs??) still around, Charlotte.
I have seen some in my garden.

Still home with Covid?

>103 FAMeulstee: Ladybugs is the American name. In the UK they're ladybirds :) I'm yet to see a ladybird this year, but I've seen a couple of big fat bumblebees over the past week, so I'm happy that spring is on the way!

In Memory of Memory

In April, Lenin began a successful lecture series on political economy on the avenue des Gobelins (another place where my great-grandmother took lodgings). Gorky came to visit him at the end of the month and they discussed the current situation: 'There will be a war. It's inevitable,' said Lenin. In the Jardin du Luxembourg Akhmatova and Modigliani sat on a bench - they couldn't afford to pay for chairs. Each of these people hardly suspected the existence of the others, they were quite alone in the transparent sleeve of their own fate.

It took me a long time to read this book: it's 500 pages of dense text, but I recommend it if you're also a fan of reflections on memory, family history and/or Russian history. Stepanova comes from a Russian Jewish family who, she says early in the book, somehow managed to avoid many of the major upheavals of Soviet life. No one went to a gulag or was "purged". But as she tracks back through family photographs, objects and public history records, she explores more about what living through such "interesting times" might have meant for her family, from the dirt poor son of a peasant who became part of a militia "enforcing" collectivisation in the 20s, to her great grandmother, a revolutionary who left Russia to study to become a doctor in Paris before WW1. I was really struck by her reflections on what survives (and what doesn't), how we talk about the Dead, and how possible it is to really understand family (and how popular these kind of books exploring family histories have become).

Her reflections on her father's refusal to let her quote from his letters:

I understood my father's objections to be that his reports on life in Kazakhstan were stylizations of a sort, written to please and entertain his family. What I saw as a picaresque novel, adventures against a colonial back drop, was a memory of dirt, depression and desperate drunkenness for him; of barracks and sheds at the end of the world, swearing soldiers and constant and interminable thievery. The tone of his letters was faked, but time had preserved only this stylized bravado. Another sobering realization: if these letters, so detailed in themselves, couldn't be used as witness accounts those little fragments of bone from which the skeleton of the past can be reconstructed - then what hope was there of building anything from scratch, made of letters and handkerchiefs? It was what a psychoanalyst might dismissively term a 'fantasy'. In the place of respectable research, I had been occupied all this time with the Freudian family romance, the sentimentalized past. That is how it must be. We look at the photographs of our ancestors as we might look at a human zoo, wild beasts whose lives lie out of sight...

And this about book hunting:

Once a week Nikolai would take a walk around the book shops to check whether anything new had appeared. Soviet distribution was organized in such a way that going to a bookshop was an adventure, with all the plea sure of the hunt: every shop had a different selection, and some were notably better than others there were books that only very rarely appeared, but the hope of a find, and the occasional successes, kept the hunt alive.

My grandfather collected a huge library over his life time, and there was never any doubt that he had read it all: it was clear from the pencil markings. He would make notes and even corrections, underlining in blue where he didn't agree with the author...

>105 charl08: Oh that sounds great! Onto the wishlist it goes!

>103 FAMeulstee: Yup, ladybirds in the UK.
Still home: testing again tomorrow, then need another one to be clear 24 hours later. It's public health advice rather than law now, but I'd really rather not spread it! Sense of smell and taste seems to be coming back so that's a relief.

>104 Jackie_K: I never used to see any (despite an abundance of aphids) so I'm hoping they are settling in at my place! I'm still squashing a lot of rose eating bugs though, always find that quite cathartic.

>106 Jackie_K: Hope you enjoy it too!

An exhibition I want to go (linked to the theme) see at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2022/may/reframed-...

Just checking in to see how you're feeling!

I hope you're feeling better, Charlotte. The books from the Women's Prize longlist that I've read have been pretty great, at least so far. I'd really like to discuss Creatures of Passage; it is very unusual, at least for me.

>102 charl08: Glad you still have a spotty visitor Charlotte.

>108 charl08: That looks a terrific exhibition! Dulwich Picture Gallery is a great place. One thing I always loved about living in south London was that there were so many brilliant cultural spaces to go to without having to get the train into town. I particularly miss the wonderful Horniman Museum.

>109 katiekrug: Thanks Katie. Feeling much less rubbish, and had a negative test this morning. One more and I can go back to work.
And more importantly, back to the library!

>110 BLBera: I've been quite slow so far Beth. Hoping my reading will pick up again now I'm feeling better. I need to get back to the longlist books.

>112 Jackie_K: Your message made me laugh as a friend with a small child used to make me go with her to the Horniman: her son loved it, but it was always *so busy* when we went that I found it not much fun. I'm sure it's a lovely collection though.

>111 Caroline_McElwee: There are loads, Caroline. Sadly also loads of aphids...

>114 charl08: haha, that's brilliant! I really like the collections there, and they had done up the aquarium bit just before I left London. It's so much more than just the walrus! (although the walrus is excellent)

>116 Jackie_K: I almost always end up going back to the same places (the British Museum, the British Library, the National Gallery) - I'd like to get out of that a bit and visit some of London's smaller places next time I go "down south"!

Went to the library for the first time since I got COVID this morning, picked up:
The Slowworm's Song
This One Sky Day (which has an amazing pattern printed on the edges)
The Old Woman With the Knife (Korean crime)
The Goodbye Coast (Joe Ide's reinvention of Philip Marlow)

>117 charl08: excellent first outing as a free person!

>117 charl08: For something completely different, I heartily recommend a visit to Eltham Palace, which is amazing and bonkers. I also enjoyed my visit, many years ago, to the Red House in Bexleyheath (former home of William Morris).

>118 Helenliz: I was relieved the books were sitting waiting for me!

>119 Jackie_K: Both sound good, thank you.

Great book group discussion at work yesterday of What it feels like for a girl, which we read linked to lgbtq month. As always lots of discussion of areas I hadn't thought of or focused much on.
The book follows Byron, just discovering their trans identity as a young person in a small town outside Nottingham. The book uses a particular style of language to represent their accent, so we discussed books that choose to do this, the challenges of it, and what that means for a possible translation / those reading English as a second or other language. We also discussed how far this was memoir or autofiction (some of the members had watched an interview with Paris talking about her childhood and writing the book). There's a frank discussion of sex work in the book and we discussed how that was mixed with humour to make the book less bleak and relentless (Shuggie Bain was mentioned at this point as a comparison!)
One of our members used to be a social worker, and she talked about how much of the state support (mostly at the end of the book) wouldn't be there now. This also led to a discussion of the comparative experiences of young people discovering their identity and accessing support. We all said how much we'd like to read about the next stage in the character's life, as the book ends with her moving to start at university.

The Woman with the Knife (Women in translation)
The blurb on the inner page is "Hornclaw is a sixty-five-year-old female contract killer who is considering retirement."
Hornclaw's alone, worried about her memory and what will happen to her dog when she dies. She's also haunted by memories of her former boss.
Should she retire? Could she really run a chicken shop instead of working for a "cleaning" agency? And why is a young member of the agency bothering her?

I enjoyed this, it felt like it would make a brilliant action film with an unusual protagonist.

>121 charl08: I found it interesting to hear about your book group discussion at work. My workplace has a book club as well, and one of our choices a couple of years ago was Amanda Knox's Love Lives Here, the memoirs of a woman whose child and spouse are both transgender. The discussion was really good, and it made us think about the biases that might exist at our own workplace.

>123 mathgirl40: I think that's an interesting point: we're quite time-limited in our discussions (we meet during lunch) so I always feel like there is more we could cover! The lead is keen to have a wider ranging discussion looking at books the uni has promoted over lgbtq month, so looking forward to that too.

The Dead Girls' Class Trip

On each end of the seesaw rode a girl, my two best friends from school. Leni pushed off heftily, her big feet encased in square-toed button-up shoes. I remembered that she had always worn the hand me-down shoes of an older brother. But her brother had already died in the autumn of 1914 in the First World War. At the same time I wondered that there was no trace in Leni's face of the grim events that had spoiled her life. Her face was as clear and smooth as a fresh apple, and it showed not the slightest sign, not the slightest scar, from the blows the Gestapo rained down on her when they arrested her for refusing to inform on her husband. Her thick French braid swung out from her neck during the seesawing. The heavy, frowning eyebrows gave her round face that determined, severe expression she'd had ever since she was little when faced with difficult tasks. I knew that crease in her forehead, in her otherwise mirror-smooth, round-as-an-apple face, from all sorts of occasions, from challenging ball games, competitive swimming, essay writing in class, and, later, also from stormy political meetings and while distributing handbills.

I finished it! Finally!
A real mix of her work, I have no idea how representative of her overall body of work this is - most stories were dated in the 1940s. One of the reasons I found this a bit of a marathon read was the length of some of the stories, almost novellas. I really did not enjoy those focussed on poverty: one story centres on a family's terrible living conditions due to industrial change, another the effects of the death of a child. Both seemed very long winded and didn't seem to go anywhere. I wondered if this was linked to her politics, but it didn't work for me.

The ones that stuck out for me were rooted in her experience of Nazi oppression, from the beautiful story about a son who writes to his father even after his death, to the title story which mixes a pre-war class trip with an account of how each girl's life changed with Hitler. As well as looking at Hitler's victims, the choices made by those who protested as well as those who worked with the state. The shock is that as children they walked arm in arm.

Kingdom of Characters
This was fascinating, a look at how the question of how Chinese is written has been dealt with over the past 200 years, from how to telegram to how computers recognise different language texts. The book also includes tales of librarians' heroism, rescuing thousands of books during the war with Japan, and those who faced imprisonment during the cultural revolution.
Some of the technical detail was beyond me, but I loved the discussion of dialects and approaches to translation.

After losing the mainland to the Communists and retreating to Taiwan, the Nationalists appointed themselves the true guardians of traditional culture and have kept the traditional written characters intact to this day. By distancing themselves from character simplification, they left room for the Communists to claim it as a central platform for New China.... Proponents and opponents of simplification continue to hurl jabs and insults at one an other. The character for "love"... is a favorite example.
The simplified version replaces the component for "heart" with "friend".
What is love, the champions of traditional characters ask, with no heart?

Well, the first quarter is over, so I thought I would review my categories and see what I want to do differently for the next quarter.

If my stats are right (always a big if) I've read 34 library books, which seems OK.

My own books
I've read 7 of my own books (ie those of my own that have been on the shelf before January 2022) which shows how much my reading is 'mood' reading, I think.

Book group reads
I've mostly done OK here, but I've slipped behind with Night Haunts. I blame COVID.

History & politics
I enjoyed all three I've finished, but I'd like to finish more of the ones I have ongoing. I'm looking at you three:
Women in the Picture: Women, Art and the Power of Looking
lThe Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery
lWelcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System

GNs
Probably too much here, I might go easy for the next couple of months.
I thought The Roles We Play was really good, a fascinating look at British-Asian identity.

Women in translation
I loved In Memory of Memory a Russian look at family history with lots of digressions, in the style of Sebald. The references to political oppression felt particularly relevant given all that is going on at the moment in the world. I've not always doubled up my books so (eg) The Dead Girls' Class Trip could have been included here too.

Prize nominees
This category will get busier if I read all the Women's Prize longlist - but again, I've been a bit sidetracked by Covid. Currently reading Salt Lick, and have The book of form and emptiness out from the library and copies ofThe Bread The Devil Knead, This One Sky Day and Creatures of Passage in the TBR stack.

Books with links to Africa
This category is a bit woolly, as I feel uncomfortable being too picky over someone's nationality / heritage but is surprisingly South Africa and Nigeria free at the moment. Not sure why this is, but I have the new Zoe Wicomb to read, so hopefully will get to that one soon and fill in the gap for Cape Town at least. I also have the new Library of the Dead book to read out from the library, so delighted about that.

1. Library of the Dead (Author is Zimbabwean)
2. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Author is Somali, born in Kenya, lives in London)
3. Ancestor Stones (Sierrra Leone / UK)
4. A Blood Condition (Author born in Zambia, now UK)

Categories for new to me / authors I've read before
I found this surprising, how many of the books I read are known to me authors. Not sure if this reflects being skewed by my reading Murderbot (6 books) and the Lady Violet series (also 6 books!)

Overall I want to read more books with links to Africa, more women in translation, and more new to me authors. I also would like to finish some of the history & politics books that have been sat there for a while, and (perhaps in combo) clear some of my older piles of my books.
Lets see!

Great comments, Charlotte. It's a good idea of evaluate as the year goes on, I think.

>128 BLBera: Definitely worth me doing this look back now, as I can barely remember most of January's reading.

I finished Salt Lick, so have another book to add from the Women's prize longlist. I'm not usually much of a fan of dystopia (although notable exceptions include Station Eleven and Atwood) but I liked this a lot. And I thought the cows' chorus sounded mad, but by about half way through I was convinced by their reflections.

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Read (and would be happy if all of them were shortlisted)
✅️Great Circle
✅️Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
✅️The Sentence
✅️Build Your House Around My Body

Not (yet) read: (shortlist announced 27th April)
The Bread the Devil Knead - have a copy
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
The Book of Form and Emptiness have started... from the library
This One Sky Day out from the library
The Island of Missing Trees waiting for the paperback!
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev started, borrowed from library
Creatures of Passage bought my own copy. There was a discount (Blackwells)

>129 charl08: Salt Lick sounds exactly my sort of thing.

>130 SandDune: I really struggled with it at first, but the characters drew me in, and her vision of future Britain was horribly easy to imagine.

I do love dystopian fiction and Salt Lick has been calling to me since the longlist was announced.

>132 BLBera: As I've not read much in the genre, I'm not sure how it would compare to others.
I'm also not feeling like writing a review, so I haven't. Maybe I'll circle back to it. I'm now reading The Bread the Devil Knead from the longlist.

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Read (and would be happy if all of them were shortlisted)
✅️Great Circle
✅️Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
✅️The Sentence
✅️Build Your House Around My Body
✅️The Bread the Devil Knead

Not (yet) read: (shortlist announced 27th April)
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
The Book of Form and Emptiness have started... from the library
This One Sky Day out from the library
The Island of Missing Trees waiting for the paperback (which has now been published)
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev started, borrowed from library
Creatures of Passage bought my own copy. There was a discount (Blackwells)

Next up probably The Final Revival as Allen-Agostini was not a light book and the first chapters I read reminded me of another multi-voice fictional "rockumentary" book about the 60s (title currently escapes me).

The Bread the Devil Knead

The book I was reading wasn't Tolstoy, just some murder mystery I borrow from the library. The detective was a woman who had a bookshop in London. This is how I does see the world: by reading books. I does go to London, Hong Kong, Siberia, even, when I read a book. I does meet all kind of people. Learn all kinds of words. Live all kinds of lives.

Thank God for books.

Alethea manages a clothing store in Trinidad, is having an affair with her boss, and is a victim of domestic violence at home. She reads to escape, keeps herself to herself, acknowledging that as her partner is so controlling it's easier. Two old friends return to the island, prompting change.
I thought this was a gripping read, but found the flashbacks to Alethea's childhood particularly hard to read, but as they are interwoven with her adult life there is some relief.
Pretty much all the trigger warnings I can think of. If I'm going to be picky, the neat way that Leo is disposed of seemed too neat and convenient, given the difficulties many women have escaping their abusers. But that said, I was glad the character got her chance at hope!

Great evaluation of your category reads and what you want to read more of going forward! I'm trying to read more books from around the world (ie., not US and UK which makes up the bulk of my reading every year), and it is interesting how quickly it becomes difficult to define (was the book originally published outside of the US? If the author moved out of their home country, when did they do so, and does it still "count"?).

I haven't read any of the Women's Prize longlist yet, but it's encouraging to see how many you've enjoyed in your reading. Looks like it's a strong list of books this year!

You are zipping through the longlist, Charlotte, as always. I plan to read the Ozeki when I am done with two library books that have to go back.

I hope you are soon feeling better, Charlotte. You are doing so well with the Women's Fiction Longlist. I came to see what you have read and what you thought. I have only read one book, and that was Careless by Kirsty Capes. It's a short read and it really moved me. It's a very accessible read, but it had a very strong story and voice, I thought. I was quite moved by it. I put just a few brief thoughts as a review , because no one else has done so yet. There is link to a favourable review on from the Guardian on the main page. I have a copy of The Sentence and I hope to get to it. Well, i hope to get to more of the Women's fiction list, but I am reading so little lately. Sigh .

Thanks for your thoughts on the books in the longlist.

>136 bell7: I agree Mary, these kind of stats not final or definitive. And if an author chooses not to share them on their bio blurb, I tend not to dig too much. I'm not someone who thinks that the place you are born defines a person in the rest of my life, so why would I think it here. But I'm also very aware of the argument for keeping diversity stats : I think a key difference to those stats to me keeping author stats though is how individuals in a lot of diversity monitoring are asked to complete that info about themselves, rather than it being determined by me.

I hope your library will have some of the longlist so that you can read them (if you want to!)

>137 BLBera: Thanks Beth. It feels slow. I thought I got away with COVID pretty lightly, but Monday fell asleep on my bed at 7pm with a book open on my chest and a light shining straight in my eyes. So maybe less energy than usual? I tested again for COVID today as my sinuses are driving me mad, but still negative. Phew.

>138 vancouverdeb: I haven't seen much about Careless Deborah, so thank you so much for highlighting your review. Tempting! I forgot to say that I have also ordered a copy of Sorrow and Bliss after someone raved about it on Litsy.

>139 charl08: But I'm also very aware of the argument for keeping diversity stats : I think a key difference to those stats to me keeping author stats though is how individuals in a lot of diversity monitoring are asked to complete that info about themselves, rather than it being determined by me.

Yes, exactly this! I want to be reading more diversely, thus my goal to read 50% or more books by non-white authors. But then I find myself trying to be the arbiter of "race" (is Middle Eastern white? Yes, according to the US census... no according to some people in that category) when it can be unclear - and does an author really owe me the explanation that they are 1/4 Chinese so that I can count them as a statistic? No. So it's imperfect to count race or national origin, but important all the same to try to read widely and I won't be too cut up if I don't quite reach that 50% marker, knowing that I was successful in reading a lot of authors that I may not have if I didn't seek them out beyond the bestsellers and highly-publicized.

And thanks, my library definitely has Great Circle and The Sentence, off the top of my head, and I may try to read the latter at some point this year.

I've heard that people are tired for a while after COVID, Charlotte. Take care.

>140 bell7: Yup the goal is definitely reading more widely. I think £ has a role here to help too: the first longlist books I bought (because I happened to think about it, I don't always) were from small publishers on the list. In the UK (I'm not sure if this is the same publisher internationally). The Bread the Devil Knead by Myriad
https://myriadeditions.com/about/background-and-mission-copy/
And Salt Lick by Unbound
https://myriadeditions.com/about/background-and-mission-copy/
On the other hand my copy of The Island of Missing Trees turned up yesterday which is published by Penguin, clearly not a small publisher!

>141 BLBera: Thanks Beth. I think it feels less guilt making thinking that it's due to the covid rather than just being lazy!

New addition to my penguin classics collection (read: pile)

Finished Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments, the second in a fantasy series set in a dystopian version of Edinburgh. I really like how the author has bent the architecture and history of Edinburgh to his will, taking the enlightenment and making it more about magic than philosophy or natural science. But I found Ropa, the lead character, a bit too clever clever here, given that she's supposed to be under sixteen. I think this probably was more about my mood as a reader than any dramatic change between book one and two (and I really liked book one).

I can't help but notice how easy the leap from magic to high finance seems for a former student of the Edinburgh School.
'Kids join gangs all the time. You just happened to be in a posh one, that's all.'
'At least they weren't the sort to go about trashing restaurants,' says Priya with a laugh.

>144 charl08: ooh, fantasy dystopia. Sounds interesting.

>143 charl08: Nice. Love the cover.

>143 charl08: That cover is gorgeous!
>144 charl08: OK, it's not my type of book, but the end of that quote did make me laugh\1

>145 BLBera: I think you might like this series, Beth.

>146 Jackie_K: Nobody mention BJ. Or Cameron...

Listening to Andrey Kurkov, the author of Death and the Penguin, reading "Letters from Ukraine". https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m0015hx4

>143 charl08: Adding to my list. Love the cover Charlotte.

>143 charl08: That looks quite lovely - and intriguing.

>148 Caroline_McElwee: >149 Helenliz: Yes, it's a lovely thing.
Not much reading today: trying to get back into the swing of the garden. Will the second lot of sweetpea seeds do better than the first? (Clue: they can't do worse).

>150 charl08: Hopefully. I planted out my tomatoes and cucumbers today. But I cheat every year and buy baby plants. I like the different varieties and that gets rather expensive if buying seeds. I did use mostly my own compost. I want to move one of the compost bins later this year (once the shed has been moved and replaced), so I figured emptying it and using it was the obvious solution.

>151 Helenliz: Sounds like you have been busy Helen. I have put in a lot of beans and have my fingers crossed. But I may resort to small plants if nothing happens! I am wanting a fancy hot box composter. I love the idea of not having to buy compost, and we're not exactly talking about lots of space to store additional compost piles/ bins whilst a normal compost bin does its stuff. Maybe next year.

Read for the Asian challenge over on the 75ers group

The ground gives out from under my feet. Miss Gelin screams. Bobak runs up the stairs two by two. Maman stands at the top of the stairs and screams. The crystal chandelier jingles and jangles. The news anchor tries to keep his balance. The camera pans on the sky. The image cuts out.

My copy of In Case of Emergency came from the US and took a while to reach me. Published by The Feminist Press, it includes a relatively long "Translator's note" which explains some of the choices the translator, Mariam Rahmani, made. The novella (149 pages) originally published in Iran in 2008, imagines an earthquake striking Tehran. The narrator, Shadi, is addicted to opium. The book follows her over a day. She tries to track down her dealers as the city panics and the roads fill up with traffic jams. She's dressed as a boy (although I missed this until the last section of the book). The author imagines the response of political opposition, of young people and in turn of the police and the army. But for Shadi this all takes a back seat to her desperation for a fix. I think I would have found the style more annoying if it had been a longer book: in places I wasn't sure who was talking, and Shadi meets many different characters who I found a little difficult to track. But definitely glad I read it.

From the translator's note:

...the novel was celebrated for shamelessly portraying an uncouth patois and subculture not typically permitted on the page, whether censored by author- and reader inscribed rules of respectability or by the Ministry of Culture. It's a marvel it ever got a permit for publica tion, but it did; and in the decade since, it has been on and off the shelves, a dozen or so print runs bleeding through a start-and-stop game of censorship.

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Read (and still would be happy if all of them were shortlisted)
✅️Great Circle
✅️Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
✅️The Sentence
✅️Build Your House Around My Body
✅️The Bread the Devil Knead
✅️The Book of Form and Emptiness

Not (yet) read: (shortlist announced 27th April)
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
This One Sky Day out from the library
The Island of Missing Trees bought the paperback, have just started.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev started, borrowed from library
Creatures of Passage bought my own copy. Have started!

I'm reading The Book of Form and Emptiness now and so far it is very good.

>155 BLBera: I think this year is going to be a hard one to call, all the ones I've read so far I really liked.

She'd seen the boy there once or twice when she was subbing upstairs. sitting in a carrel, barricaded in behind a fortress of books. He looked so serious, shoulders hunched around his ears, rocking back and forth as he studied the open book in front of him. Once, when he stepped away. she went over to see what he was reading and was surprised at what she found: books on medieval armaments, on German film, on surrealist art, on Walter Benjamin, as well as a collection of fairy tales. There were others. too, but those were the ones she remembered. Sitting at a neighboring carrel was another regular patron, a writer, who looked up from her typing when she saw Cory.
"Last week it was Argentinian fiction and raising ferrets," the woman had offered. "Jorge Luis Borges. Can you believe it? What kind of kid reads Borges?"
*
"The job is impossible. You will have no time to be meticulous. That is why it is perfect for you. You will never finish. Life will go on. You will be cured of your afflictions in no time!"
Kimi thought she heard a hint of laughter in her teacher's firm voice.
"Okay," she said. "I will try."
"But please don't try too hard. You must take care of your heart." Kimi looked down at the names she had written in her notebook. "Should I respond to the emails, too? And to Twitter?"
"The Buddha said that responding to email and Twitter is like sweeping the sands from the banks of the Ganges River."
"The Buddha said that?"
"Well, maybe not. But the point remains the same. Some tasks are impossible, even if you are a Buddha. Even if you have eleven heads and a thousand arms."

Another strong contender for the Women's Prize from their longlist.
Benny and his mum are living in a chronically overcrowded flat, his mum having reacted to his dad's tragic death by hoarding.
The book approached psychotic episodes as magical realism, alongside the more lunatic fringes of RL, showing how mental health professionals can easily get lost in the borders. At one point Benny appears to be aggressively and pointlessly attacking a wall in a library. Unpacked, he's got the floor wrong and it seemed to support his magical thinking around barriers and obstacles. Ozeki packs the novel with compassionate people, from the library janitors who listen to a homeless man's poetry to a security guard who doesn't judge Benny for his (I think?) psychotic episodes. I liked how we weren't sure as readers quite what was going on with Benny, just as he wasn't quite sure himself. And how could he be?
The book is also full of discussions of the wishes and desires of books as independent things: I enjoyed the way Ozeki used the Book as narrator to reflect on writing and reading, including some of the theories about readers creating and recreating the story each time.
If I'm being picky, it was a bit long. And the ending was a bit too neat and sudden, despite some added caveats. And I wanted more of Slavoj, the homeless poet.

Online bookclub is back, so I better get reading. Meetings are free and open to all.
Details here: https://borderlessbookclub.com/programme

Thursday April 21st, 8pm UK time
Fitzcarraldo Editions | Strangers I Know

Join Fitzcarraldo Editions and translator Elizabeth Harris to discuss Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti.

Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudia’s mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldn’t be more different. Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City.

Thursday May 19th, 8pm UK time
And Other Stories | Phenotypes

Join And Other Stories and translator Daniel Hahn to discuss Phenotypes by Paulo Scott.

Federico and Lourenço are brothers. Their father is black, a famed forensic pathologist for the police; their mother is white. Federico – distant, angry, analytical – has light skin, which means he’s always been able to avoid the worst of the racism that Brazilian culture has to offer. He can ‘pass’ as white, and yet, because of this, he has devoted his life to racial justice. Lourenço, on the other hand, is dark-skinned, easy-going, and well-liked in the brothers’ hometown of Porto Alegre – and has become a father himself.

Thursday June 16th, 8pm UK time
Bitter Lemon Press | Kalmann

Join Bitter Lemon Press, author Joachim B. Schmidt and translator Jamie Lee Searle to discuss Kalmann.

Kalmann is the self-appointed Sheriff of Raufarhöfn. Day by day, he treks the wide plains which surround the almost deserted village, hunts Arctic foxes and lays bait in the sea — to catch the gigantic Greenland sharks he turns into the Icelandic fermented delicacy, hákarl. There is nothing anyone needs to worry about. Kalmann has everything under control.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/apr/13/top-10-novels-about-postwar-german...

I do love a list when I have read half of them!

Read Incredible Doom last night: sections of it told in epistolary format. This took me back! My uni ran this system alongside (?) Netscape.

The Master Key
A fabulous looking book in the Vertigo crime series from Pushkin, that republishes translated fiction. This Japanese crime novel is set in a block of flats for single women in the 1950s. Previously quite fancy, the place is now run down. In retirement some of the residents have financial troubles: some have secrets they are trying to keep hidden from their neighbours. The master key goes missing, and a series of unexplained injuries and deaths take place. But how is this linked to the kidnapping of a small child seven years earlier? The mystery is interesting, but the setting really makes this book, one of those crime novels where you feel like you've visited a different place.

As I came to the end of the book I found myself hoping Netflix Japan might pick this up for a series. I would watch it.

After supper, the corridors echoed for a while with the sound of people walking up and down, the clatter of dishes and the splash of running water in the communal wash place. Then silence fell upon the building, to occupy it. usually, for the rest of the night.

Sometimes, one would hear the sound of a radio or the muffled tones of someone practising on the trumpet. But these noises also subsided after a little while, until it became so quiet that one could hear the switches, one by one, being turned off for the night.

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Read (and still would be happy if all of them were shortlisted)
✅️Great Circle
✅️Salt Lick by Lulu Allison
✅️The Sentence
✅️Build Your House Around My Body
✅️The Bread the Devil Knead
✅️The Book of Form and Emptiness
✅️Creatures of Passage

Not (yet) read: (shortlist announced 27th April)
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
Sorrow and Bliss
The Exhibitionist
This One Sky Day due back at the library as someone else has requested it: I need to get reading.
The Island of Missing Trees bought the paperback, have just started, but will save for a train journey I've got coming up.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev started, borrowed from library

>160 charl08: I'd love to read this one! I actually had it out from the library a while ago but ran out of time to read it. One of these days I will learn not to request a dozen books at once :)

I"m just about to polish off The Island of Missing Trees and enjoying it! It's a good story and she's a good writer.

>162 rabbitprincess: Well, if you work that out let me know how it's done. I am quite jealous of those who can "pause" reservations. My system does not allow for it, but it would be so handy.

>163 mdoris: I'm on a train on Tuesday for about four hours, so hoping that Shafak will keep me good company.

I baked a cake for Easter lunch dessert. Now I've just got to find some kind of icing that will make it a bit less bland. Nutella to the rescue I think.

>164 charl08: Happy Easter, Charlotte, enjoy your cake.

I can't "pause" reservations either, and have a max. of 8 reservations. So I rarely request populair books, as they take their place on my reservations list for way too long. I put those on my library wish list, and wait until the queue is gone.

Sorry for being absent here. I do like most of your reads, but they are not (yet) available in Dutch translation.

>159 charl08: Oh my goodness! I never saw a message looking like that, but it looks an awful lot like the first library catalog we used when I was 10 or so. What a way we've come since.

Happy Easter!

Enjoy your cake, Charlotte. I made two cakes to take to the family dinner.

>165 FAMeulstee: That makes sense Anita. We have 20 spaces for reservations, but it's never that clear when a book will actually enter the library system when it's new. As there are so many libraries in the county system (60+) the popular lit fiction books usually cover their reservations. Not the same for the big name books: I'm 8th in the queue for The Maid but there are 30 reservations on 16 copies, so hopefully noone has to wait too long.

>166 bell7: Things have definitely moved on a lot.

>167 BLBera: Two cakes! Lucky family. Mine was too dry. Perils of gluten free cooking.

Dien Cai Dau (Prize nominees)
Collection of poetry published in the 90s exploring the author's time in Vietnam as a reporter/editor with the Southern Cross. I picked this up as an English teacher on Litsy highlighted one of the poems. I hadn't come across the author at all. There's so much here, from the experience of a patrol to coming home and living with the memories.
Here's a link to his poem Thanks (in this collection).
https://poets.org/poem/thanks-0

These Days (Prize nominees)
Set over a number of nights in 1941 when Belfast was heavily bombed, this novel was a winner for me. The author has won awards for her short stories and she manages to create a fully believable picture of a middle class family faced with new opportunities as well as challenges by the war. I especially liked the way that the mother of the family was given her own private tragedy, not an unusual one, by any means, but one that made sense of some of her choices.

It hasn't surprised her, over the years, she sometimes secretly thinks, that the city around her should periodically erupt into barricades and flames, doesn't surprise her that it should be obliterated now from above, because that, sometimes, is how a cold small part of her feels - just take it, take all of it, I want none of it, none of this, because none of it - how can it? - none of it matters.

But as they all file down the aisle and the rector shakes her hand and they step outside, the soft damp air, the hills, the people milling, she is Mrs Bell again, and the wild extravagance of such longing seems ridiculous once more.

I've borrowed Whatever Gets You Through the Night but I'm not in the mood for a "crime novel with a thrillingly dark heart", it turns out, so returning it unread after 16 pages.

>164 charl08: Well I didn't want it to end so I think that's a good sign. Enjoy your train reading. Hope you can do it in peace!

I can do unlimited reserves (very lucky me!). It used to max out at 50 but they recently changed that but I often have a very long wait for books but of course never at a loss for what to read.

Just took chocolate biscotti out of the oven that have almonds and choc. chips and cornmeal so extra crunchy. They are very good! The recipe is from Dorie Greenspan's most recent cookbook Everyday Dorie. Any of her cookbooks are a wonder!

Happy Easter to you and hope your cake is very yummy!

Update re Longlist for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Read (and still would be happy if all of them were shortlisted but now in a kind of order of preference) First three = I think. For now!

✅️Great Circle
I loved the sweeping scope of this, both in terms of the history and the flights described.
✅️This One Sky Day
This one gets points for creating a unique magic world, and for the humour.
✅️Build Your House Around My Body
I loved how the author took a pretty standard (foreign) fish out of water story, mixed it with true crime and beliefs about haunting and created something completely unpredictable.

All these were great too, but just not quite caught my imagination as much.
✅️The Sentence
✅️The Book of Form and Emptiness
✅️Creatures of Passage
✅️The Bread the Devil Knead
✅️Salt Lick by Lulu Allison

Not (yet) read: (shortlist announced 27th April, so probably not going to read many more)
Careless by Kirsty Capes
Remote Sympathy
The Paper Palace
Flamingo
Sorrow and Bliss) ordered but it hasn't arrived yet...
The Exhibitionist
The Island of Missing Trees bought the paperback, have just started, but will save for a train journey I've got coming up.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev started, borrowed from library

When everything collapses, love remains. But is it a true story?

I took a break from the Women's Prize over the past few days and instead read my Borderless book group book Strangers I Know. I liked this a lot, but I am a bit ambivalent (again) about the whole novel / autofiction/ memoir debate which this book seems to fall solidly into. The author grew up as the child of deaf parents, and this is the case in her most recent novel, also featuring a protagonist called 'Claudia' which is newly translated into English by Fitzcarraldo. The 'novel' follows the narrator as she attempts to make sense, as an adult, of a chaotic childhood with her parents, both of whom pretty much resisted any kind of 'conventional' life. A messy divorce drew in the narrator and her brother as peacemakers, as well as attempting to perform 'normal' to try and get their neighbours and schoolfriends not to notice their home life.

On leaving Italy and emigrating to the UK, Claudia reflects on her experiences as a migrant in a time of Brexit and terrorist attacks, as well as the child of parents who chose their own way to communicate (or not communicate: neither spoke conventional sign language). She finds lots of parallels in the breakdown of communication, the lost opportunities to come together. She also mentions one of my favourite films Before Sunrise, which I was surprised to see had travelled outside the anglophone world (but shouldn't have been because Julie Delpy).

I used to believe that to talk about human beings meant you had to talk about buildings collapsing... but when I think of certain lives, all that comes to mind are old-fasihioned geopolitics, classic versions of Risk! left to molder, with nations ravaged by pain, but still with impregnable strongholds, condemned to resist, convinced the siege will pass, until they alone are left standing...

I'm wondering what the book group will make of this tonight - we've had a few autofiction debates before, so we'll see. I think the book mentions Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy and I can see the parallels.

>173 charl08: Charlotte that one sounds interesting.

>174 mdoris: I liked it. Although apparently nothing else of hers has been translated, which is annoying.

Listening to the discussion. This is the first Italian book Fitzcarraldo have published. It was a big seller in Italian which apparently makes it easier to sell.
The translator was a Prof first. "There's an awful lot of work out there that's just great but has not been translated." She claims to be a slow translator, but since she left teaching has done more. She also translates Antonio Tabucci (who I have on the shelf). She was asked to "try out" before being given the job.

Our host jumps straight into the autofiction - not least the colour of the cover. The publisher says the author jokes that it should be "light blue" as somewhere in between.

The translator says that the instinct that drives her work is to clarify: dangerous when the author has deliberately left so many spaces.

Discussion of how the translator dealt with the original novel's bits in English, the author's (deliberately) "bad" Italian reflecting her migration as a kid.
The translator is a big fan of the author!

Can you choose five of your recent favourite poetry collections? (I found this so hard!)
I've included:
Kae Tempest
U A Fanthorpe
Claudia Rankine
Vikram Seth
Billy Collins

https://www.librarything.com/list/43565/all/Favorite-Recent-Poetry-1980-2022

>176 charl08: I don't read that many collections, I've just read individual poems as I come across them. I'm definitely thinking about getting some more work by Raymond Antrobus though, I've loved the poems of his I've read.

>177 Jackie_K: Looking at all the collections posted that I've never come across, I don't think I read many either!

Memories from Límon
Gentle GN in which a expat goes home to Costa Rica to find out more about his family history. Gradually he uncovers some hidden stories. Nothing earth shattering, but pleasant reading.

Adding all the crime from the NY T crime fiction newsletter even though most of it probably won't be out here yet.
Harini Nagendra The Bangalore Detectives Club
Ron Corbett The Sweet Goodbye
Samantha Jayne Allen Pay Dirt Road
David Gordon The Wild life

My link should give you free access: NY Times crime fiction article

>175 charl08: The discussion sounds interesting, Charlotte. I especially liked the comments from the translator - how not to clarify when the author has left spaces? I will look for this.

It's so hard to narrow down favorites:
How to Love a Country
The Woman I Kept to Myself
Bright Dead Things
A Thousand Mornings

>179 charl08: Thanks

>180 BLBera: I've only read Bright Dead Things: I'll see if I can get hold of the other three. Thanks Beth.

The Island of Missing Trees
I really loved this book, and wished it was longer.
Shafak weaves together two stories: in the 2010s, Ada and her dad, Kostas, are reeling in the aftermath of her mum's death the year before. In the 1970s, we hear Defne and Kostas' story, including via the fig tree that used to grow in the centre of a bar in Nicosia. There's so much to enjoy about this book, I found the setting new to me, despite having vague awareness of Cyprus (as mentioned in the book, its a popular tourist destination for many Brits). The beautiful, rich environment and the food is described in loving detail, which makes the tragedy of the war feel even more shocking when everything suddenly falls apart.

The same journalist explained to his tablemates that over there in England, in the House of Commons where all important decisions were made, members of parliament were discussing the 'Cyprus problem'. He said that, in his experience, it never bode well for a country, or a community, once it was branded as a problem and that was what our island had become now in the eyes of the entire world, an 'international crisis'.
Even so, back then, experts believed it was just 'paper agitation', the tension and violence that seized our land; they said it was a storm in a teacup and it would be over soon. There was no need to fear mayhem and bloodshed because how could there be a civil war on such a pretty, picturesque island of blooming flowers and rolling hills?

>182 charl08: If The Island of Missing Trees wasn't already on the list, I would put it there now, Charlotte. Love your review, it really makes me want to read it soon.

>183 FAMeulstee: I think the book is definitely worth reading Anita. I'm not surprised it's on your list: I've seen so many positive comments about it. I hope it's available for you soon.
I will add Cyprus to my list of subjects I really should read more about.

The Women's Prize shortlist is announced on Wednesday. I hope The Island of Missing Trees is among them.

>176 charl08:

Amanda Gorman
Andrea Gibson
Carolyn Forché
Frieda Hughes
Louise Glück

All women, have read fewer men recently.

>176 charl08: This is on my list for very soon Charlotte.

>185 Caroline_McElwee:.Oh, I have Carolyn Forché's memoir on the shelf to read Caroline. Thanks for the nudge!

Oh dear, further proof of my poor memory (as if any was needed). I read Lena Finkle's Magic Barrel, which apparently I first read back in 2014 when it was first published. I have no memory of this whatsoever!
In 2014 I gave it four stars, but I really wasn't that keen this time. In places it felt like it was a novel trying to break out, lots (too much for me) of text. Perhaps this is just because over the past eight years I've read a lot of GNs to compare styles.

Interesting to see the shortlist announced today. Can recommend all except * which I've not read yet.
The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini (Myriad)
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (Corsair)
Sorrow and Bliss* by Meg Mason (Weidenfeld)
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (Viking)
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (Doubleday)

The Slowworm's Song

Have I mentioned my love and loyalty for Andrew Miller? Just once or twice? His first book Ingenious Pain was one of the first "modern" fiction novels I can remember reading and just being swept away by. This is completely different to that book, a contemporary character looking back at his wreckage of a life, and maybe, just maybe, clawing back a relationship with his daughter. Underneath a very plain, newly teetotal life, something from his past is eating away at his peace, something stirred up by an official letter from Belfast.

At the Saville they were keeping track of scores of soldiers and hundreds of civilians, of comings and goings all over the Bogside. Lines of command, lines of sight. Hundreds of pages of testimony from people who couldn't remember and people who couldn't forget. They were dealing with crowds, with folk memory. They had expert witnesses - men I imagine bowing to each other when they met in the corridors - who talked of the limits of what could be said, the behaviour of rounds, the nature of wounds, who had examined the hands of the dead for signs that they had fired a gun or carried explosives.

I haven't read The Bread the Devil Knead yet, Charlotte. I thought Creatures of Passage was more deserving than Sorrow and Bliss, which is the least favorite of those I've read, so it is probably guaranteed a win. ;)

>190 BLBera: I'm yet to read Sorrow and Bliss Beth. There's some positive reviews on Litsy so I'm wondering what I'll make of it!
I have been talking about the women's prize on our book group e-list at work, so my copy of the Shafak is off on travels around our offices. I'm hoping the library might want to buy the shortlist for their new fiction collection.
I liked all the ones that I read, but hope that of those not shortlisted, Build Your House Around My Body finds lots of readers, because I thought it was original by a new (to me) author. I'm going to look for her first book which I think is short stories (not sure).

I really like this post by Susan Straight but it has added to my wishlist by Quite a Lot.

I wrote Mecca still loving the form of the polyphonic, still loving the woven arcs of novel-in-story form. It is my ninth novel, and I look at the stacks of page I wrote longhand, hearing a man I drank whiskey with last week in a warehouse where classic 1950s trucks and cars are restored, a man just turned 70 who said to me, “I always hated to write, but I can even write joined. Nobody writes joined now. You still write like that?” Cursive. I do. I write in cursive, my narratives braided with people I still love, as I learned from Louise Erdrich’s devotion to her characters, her ideas of voice and history and the ultimate honoring of people like ours.

https://lithub.com/susan-straight-on-louise-erdrich-and-the-characters-who-haven...

>192 charl08: Great quote.

>188 charl08: I've read two of those and they were good, but not great. I am interested in reading the top two books in that stack.

>193 BLBera: I think that post was the best thing about my day. Thank you Ms Straight.

>194 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad I read (the five that I read from) the list. They all made me think which I like.

I have three days off (a bank holiday weekend!) Although I probably can't clear all my library loans.

What should I pick up first? Choices choices...

How high we go in the dark (New to me authors)
The long song of Tchaikovsky Street : a Russian adventure New to me authors
His only wife Authors linked to Africa
When we were birds Ditto
No one round here reads Tolstoy New to me authors
Listening still New to me authors
Violeta Previously read authors
Fugitive pedagogy : Carter G. Woodson and the art of black teaching History
A swim in a pond in the rain authors I've read before
The dark side of love For the Asia challenge
Kim Jiyoung, born 1982 in translation
Olga dies dreaming new to me authors
The Doves Necklace Asia challenge
The final revival of Opal & Nev Women's Prize longlist
The love songs of W.E.B. Du Bois new to me authors
Peach blossom spring new to me authors
Concerning my daughter in translation

It might be time for a spot of ip dip...
Bank holidays come think and fast in April/May.

>197 Helenliz: My time will probably be limited by gardening too. It's time for the runner beans to brave the outdoors!

>196 charl08: Can't help, not yet read any of them, though have the chunkster The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy, both might be read in my second week of annual leave in May, as I will be loafing at home that week.

>199 Caroline_McElwee: I wondered if it would be any easier to wait for the paperback of "Love songs" but I rather suspect that will have to be pretty bulky too!

>196 charl08: I can't help either, most are not even translated in Dutch.

>200 charl08: LOL!
My limit is 20 books and 10 e-books. Usually I am at the limit of e-books, as they can't be returned early. At the moment only 10 library books at home, 2 are done, and waiting for 3 to pick up next week.

>200 charl08: Love it!!
I don't know what our lending limit is, I've certainly never hit it.

>200 charl08: hahaha that's great. My library limit is also 50 and many patrons are shocked when I tell them that.

>201 FAMeulstee: That sounds very similar to mine: less ebooks though (or do I mean fewer?)

>202 Helenliz: That's very restrained Helen.

>203 bell7: 50? Wow. I'd run out of space!

Concerning my daughter - Women in translation
This novella by a prize-winning South Korean author takes on homophobia from the perspective of a widowed mother of a lesbian activist lecturer. She's not happy her daughter's in a relationship: she's in complete denial and thinks if her daughter's partner would only leave everything would be "normal". And by normal, she's thinking settle down and get married and have a kid (I assume there's no equal right to marriage in SK?). Things come to a head when she offers space to the couple when they are desperate for somewhere to live. She can't keep pretending to her neighbours she doesn't know about her daughter's partner.
At the same time, she's also working, poorly paid, with no security, as a carer for a woman in a nursing home, who has no family to intercede when the nursing home wants her moved. Her patient's deterioration, abandoned with no family, seems to stir up all her beliefs about life choices, keeping quiet, respecting authority, getting married.
It's a short book but there's a lot taking place here.

'Way of the world?' Everything that has nothing to do with her is all the way of the world' that she can put away in some place where she doesn't have to see it. I don't like her tone. She probably talks like that all the time wherever she goes. She's probably constantly telling her children that too. And her children will say that to their children. And in that way, things that can be labeled 'the way of the world' and put out of sight are created one after the other. And they become something large, solid, overwhelming, and terrifying that cannot be changed through the efforts of just one or two people.

>200 charl08: Mine is paperback Charlotte, maybe an American edition, but yes, still a chunkster.

It is actually surprising how heavy a dozen books are....

>200 charl08: Love it.

I'm not sure what my library check-out limit is, which is probably a good thing, right? I know the limit for reserves is 30.

>205 charl08: This does sound good.

Not getting much read, but lots of green things going on in the garden.


>206 Caroline_McElwee: I'm not looking forward to moving my books for this very reason!

>207 BLBera: I'm under the limit (right now) but yes, I am impressed you don't know the total.

I'm going to start a new thread for May...