WHAT ARE YOU READING? - Part 1

Do you have your preferred beverage and a comfortable chair? All done with the holidays hustle and bustle? Ready to get back to the book waiting patiently for all the relatives to leave (and/or to stop bugging you at least)? Or maybe you actually managed to read more than usual while everyone else was busy with the holidays?

Whatever the case, sit comfortably, sip your beverage and tell us what you are reading at the start of 2023. Did you finish your last 2022 book before the clock turned or did you start the year with an already started book? And did you notice at what time did you do your first reading for 2023?

And don't forget to come back later when you start (or finish) a book and tell us what you are reading, what you have read, what you plan to read - in some ways, this topic is the reading diary of the group :)

Still on a few books from last year Winter, burning questions, and how to stand up to dictators Planning to start back to the front for the RTT theme WWI, and Haven for the RRT January theme Feathered Friends. Trying to decide which book I want to read for the African Challenge on North Africa, and a book for Cat Challenge: Classics. plus I want to read book of jacob for January's Historic fiction challenge

I am struggling to finish Natasha’s Dance this week. The section on Russian culture “through the Soviet lens,” has diminished my enthusiasm for returning to the book, although I am finding that section’s discussion of film pretty interesting. I think if I stick with it, I’ll be able to finish by the 31st. I want to be free to take up The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee as my slow and steady (hopefully) read at the beginning of the year, a lovely Christmas present from a book-loving friend.

Currently midway through Let's Do It, Bob Stanley's history of popular music in the first half of the 20th century; and I'll Never Be Long Gone, a novel of brothers in conflict by Thomas Christopher Greene.

>3 dianelouise100: I hope you stick with Natasha's Dance. I loved it, though some parts more than others... I read it over a long time, along with War and Peace.

>5 WelshBookworm: I’ll definitely finish this work, it’s been my favorite piece of non fiction in 2022. So informative and such good context for the 19th century Russian classic novels. I’m hoping to read War and Peace in 2023, as well as more Dostoevsky, but for me they would be unmanageable without some background. I think Figes is a fine historian.

I'm currently reading The Thursday Murder Club (print) and Cat's Eyewitness (audio). I hope to finish those in 2022. Waiting in the wings is A Sprinkle of Sabotage aka The Perfect Cornish Murder - #3 in the Nosy Parker series and seems like a fun, light read to start 2023. #4 is A Cornish Christmas Murder and on audio I have Kill One, Knit Two waiting on my Libby app.... I don't normally read that many cozy mysteries, but I guess that is what I am in the mood for lately!

I've got some unfinished books hanging around but I've been diverted by Victoria Goddard - reread In the Realms of Gold and Till Human Voice Wake Us, (re)started The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, then she sent a new short story in her newsletter and I read that (lovely!) - The Saint of the Bookstore (not yet cataloged on LT - I'll get to it). Huh, is there any way to say no to all the choices in the Others list? (all one of them, but it's completely the wrong book).

Women Talking by Miriam Toews. Mennonite women and girls in isolated community have been drugged and raped, and are now told they must forgive the perps or leave the community. They are in a barn talking over what to do.

A quarter into it, and, so far it's hard to follow and dull. Lots of people, all interrelated, plus a narrator with a so-far unrelated back story. Keeps revolving around the same points about forgiveness and community. Hard to see how these women could break out of this endless wheel-spinning since they are a) not encouraged to think, just provide labor, and b) are illiterate and have no experience with any reality beyond the community and its patriarchal theology.

Not sure I'll make it thru.

lmbix (Leslie) Hello all! Thank you for allowing me to join the company of those who read and love all things Books! I live in western NY state near Buffalo (home of the recent big storm some may have heard about). I was a theatre/english major and retained my love of literature.
Worked in bookselling for about a decade in children's books.
Now, enjoy classic and modern literary fiction and some non-fiction, especially environmental, nature-related, medicine.
Currently reading Ali Smith: Autumn First time with this author
Also: Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns

Welcome, Leslie! I love your mix of reading interests. I think you'll fit right in around here ;-)

I enjoyed Autumn, the characters of Daniel and Elisabeth and the humor. Didn't get along with Winter as well.

Welcome to your new rabbbit hole Leslie! we have a lot of reading in common. Like lisa, I loved Autumn, but did not finish Winter. You might like her companion piece as well

Brr I hope you were able to be safe and warm during those storms. really scary

BTW you might want to put your introduction here https://www.librarything.com/topic/346609#n8014532 we are in the process of intro or reintroducing our selves for the coming year

>11 labfs39: Thank you! Look forward to the 'rabbit hole' as Cindy states below!

>12 cindydavid4: Hello, Cindy. Glad to hear you and Lisa enjoyed Autumn though, as it is a quartet of books, I'm disappointed that you weren't fond of Winter. We'll see how it goes....tons to read, of course. Thank you for your concern about the storm. It was truly awful in some areas. I retained power (except for 1 hour) and heat, so very grateful.

>13 cindydavid4: Thank you. I wasnt certain how to connect to the group. I did as you suggested.

>15 lmbix: everyone has a different opinion on this series. Winter was my favourite. It was Spring that I particularly disliked

Welcome, Leslie! I'll definitely follow your reading closely, as it appears that our tastes in books have a significant overlap; I greatly enjoyed Autumn and The Warmth of Other Suns..

I have a little over 100 pages to go in Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, which will probably be my first completed book of 2023.

Ah, seasons. I liked Autumn the best, and thought each succeeding season felt a little underworked - more each time. But i still liked them all. I really enjoy Ali Smith.

In 2022 I’m furiously (🙂) trying to finish Robert Musil’s second book on The Man Without Qualities. I need about 3.5 hours of reading to finish …and have 33 hours left locally in 2022.

>9 nohrt4me2: I read an article in the NYT interviewing each actor and their character, it just doesn't look like a book I want to read, never mind movie to watch,

>15 lmbix: dont let my disappointment stop you from reading it! More than once Ive been in the minority not liking a book that everyone loves. There are parts of the book that are really breataking; her writing is exquisite, but I just tired of the characters and their story. ymmv (your mileage may vary).

All of my current reads are in progress from 2022 - This Much Is True, Hamnet, and The Body.

Well, December was a bit of a reading wash for me (surprise surprise), but I just finished up two really nice lightweight books:

Leave Me Alone with the Recipes: The Life, Art, and Cookbook of Cipe Pineles—a rediscovered artist's cookbook/sketchbook from the 1940s, featuring handed-down Jewish recipes and commentary from contemporary writers and artists, just a beautiful thing even if I'm not going to cook my way through it .

The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri, a short small volume sent to me by @BLBera—it's the text of a talk she gave on her relationship to, and thoughts about, her book cover art (and book jackets in general), and a nice train of thought to end the year with.

I didn't feel like any of my current reads and so started City of Blades while having lunch.

As of New Year’s Day, I’m just over halfway through yet another Deutscher Buchpreis winner, Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969 by Frank Witzel, which is even longer than its own title. Hoping to finish it in a few days…

I'm actively in the middle of a few things and have a couple of other paused books that I want to finish. I couldn't quite managed the 30 pages per day needed to finish Celestial Harmonies last week, but hope to finish it soon. My subway book, The Rainbow is slow going. And I started The Sandman: Vol 11, The Wake yesterday.

I did finish The Man Without Qualities yesterday (well, the part I wanted to finish).

I’ve started the year with Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

I have about 4 hours of driving today (and back tomorrow). I picked up an audio copy of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka this morning for the drive.

I just started one of the books on the Giller Prize shortlist If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga. I am also reading Morgenthau Power, Privilege and The Rise of an American Dynasty by Andrew Meier-this book is over 1000 pages so I am reading it in stages.

I finished Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy, an excellent biography by Ben Macintyre, yesterday with five hours to spare. Phew! This morning I started an e-book for the African Challenge: The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai (Tunisian). The protagonist is a beekeeper.

I really enjoyed Optic Nerve and when I saw that my library had another novel by Gainza, I snapped it up. I am enjoying Portrait of an Unknown Lady, also set in the art world.

I'm chipping away at A Few Wise Words by Peter Mukherjee. I might take up a fiction book alongside it - I seem to have read a lot of NF lately.

I'm reading Krakatoa by Simon Winchester which I'm really enjoying. And for fiction, I started my first novel by Miriam Toews, Fight Night.

I saved Pucky, Prince of Bacon to be my first book of the new year. I also plan to start a couple of new (not leftover) books today, perhaps ygerna and/or A Brilliant Night of Ice and Stars.

Didn’t finish my last book in 2022 so it will be first for this year — Shiver by Allie Reynolds. It’s a thriller set in the French Alps

Didn't quite finish my last book of 2022, so it will be the first of 2023, but I am enjoying it--Broken River by J. Robert Lennon. I picked it up because I enjoyed his newest book Subdivision. This one is quite different.

I found Dr. Thorne by Anthony Trollope on my shelves and have begun reading it for January’s Monthly Author Read. I’m about 50 pages in and enjoying revisiting Barsetshire.

Glad to be part of this group. I’m currently reading The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne. Started it just before Christmas and hope to finish it tomorrow.

Welcome, Finn8! Please feel free to stop by the Introductions thread and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you like to read. I'm not sure where you are, but here on the East Coast of the US, I can still wish you a Happy New Year!

ok, the field was my last book of the year and among my favs! Will be starting things fall apart for the African Challenge, and will continue Haven for RTT theme feathered friends and back to the front for RG theme WWI

I finished The Body Falls - 5th in a mystery series that takes place in Donegal Ireland.

I'm nearly finished Believer: My Forty Years in Politics by David Axelrod, and am really enjoying it. A few more hours of being back in 2010 and I'll be done.

I read A Bookshop in Algiers by Kaouther Adimi yesterday, will finish Africa Is Not a Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin later today and started with Tales of Yusuf Tadros by Adel Esmat.

I'm reading Wundbrand by Cilla Börjlind. It's the fifth book of the Rönning & Stilton' series. I stumbled over this series last year and I like it very much.
Currently I'm listening to Lethal White. I heard the last volume more than four years ago. It's funny how quickly you get back into the series. I feel like I read the last book only recently.

My review of Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero, my last book of 2022, is up on my 2022 thread.

well all bets are off. While searching for another book, one fell off the shelf: the waiting room I loved her book of travels nothing to declare and remember buying this because of that book for some reason didn't read it. So I started it last night. Went to bed late and woke up at 3 to read it again. got some sleep. will probably finish this morning. But I suspect will be the first book I read this year! ...anyway im loving it. More later

I'm starting the year off lightly with More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops by Jen Campbell.

I’m enjoying the ever-delightful company of Chief Inspector Gamache (though he’s not in Three Pines for this one) in Louise Penny’s A Beautiful Mystery.

I am starting The Man Who Could Move Clouds, a memoir by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. I loved her novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree and have been looking forward to this one.

Greetings, all! I just got my 2023 CR thread set up. I'm starting off the year with a continuation of my semi-annual Isaac B. Singer project. I'm up to his third novel, The Magician of Lublin. Happy '23 reading to one and all.

I am reading In Five Years and Atomic Habits. The novel has been an easy and predictable read so far. I am enjoying it for the sheer fact I do not have to think too much about it. Have not gotten too far into Atomic Habits yet. The little I have read makes me think it is just your typical self-help.

>49 rocketjk: Not a book by Conrad?

I'm in the middle of several books, haven't finished any yet. I would _like_ to finish a BOMB (Book Off My Bookshelf) first...but I'd have to start one! I may do that anyway, because otherwise my first finish is likely to be a reread (The Tower at the Edge of the World by Victoria Goddard). Also reading To End in Fire by David Weber, and...something else, can't remember (all ebooks, on different devices).

>51 ELiz_M: I finished the Conrad project, reading his final published novel to begin 2021. So last year I moved on to a Singer project, but instead of one per year, I decided on one of Singer's novels to begin each calendar year and then another to begin each July. I'm 67 now, so wanted to give myself a chance to finish Singer and then enjoy one more such project, probably Philip Roth, though that remains to be seen. Thanks for asking!

I'm starting a mini-vacation that has me riding a lot of trains so I expect to be reading a lot. Today I had 5 hours of train and 2 hours of waiting time which I didn't use up to 100% efficiency (due to a noisy family on the first leg, and a bout of sleepiness on the second) but did manage to read the first 120 pages of Uncle Silas by Sheridan le Fanu. I'll consider today as a nice warmup for the rest of the trip. In any case, I'm very excited to be starting the year with a large classic.

I've finished More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops and my review is up on my thread.

While the 3 books I started the year in the middle of are waiting for me to get back to them, I managed to finish 2 books so far: a play (Our Lady of Sligo by Sebastian Barry) which was very good, especially if you had read the earlier plays and the almost companion novel) and a novel (Sight Unseen by Sandra Ireland - a thriller set in an invented small Scottish town which ties together a current and a past crime and which ends up being a bit too busy for its own good but still readable).

Now reading Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World (because it is one of the shiny new books from my last library visit thus it went to the top of my TBR).

Adding to Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet and, on audio, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, I started The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson this morning.

I reviewed Krakatoa on my thread, which was really enjoyable. My next nonfiction is The Gilded Page by Mary Wellesley about medieval manuscripts.

For fiction, I'm continuing with Fight Night which is short, so I think I'll finish in the next couple days.

I finished Africa Is Not a Country: Breaking Stereotypes of Modern Africa by Dipo Faloyin and also Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell that I had started in 2022 but reluctantly finished in 2023. I also started with Baltische zielen (Baltic souls) by Jan Brokken, a non fiction collection of almost 30 personal or family histories from the Baltic countries for my Reading Globally Theme read.

Finished Zarifa: A Woman's Battle in a Man's World which was a bit too... whitewashed. I appreciate learning some of the things the book had to say but I really don't like the "I never could do anything wrong" attitude in memoirs and that's what you get here...

Next: a biography in graphic form: Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television.

>:

Ian Hamilton released a new Ava Lee title on January 3. It is about the release of a film about Tiananmen Square. For some of you this will be history for others closer in age to me (I turned 75 five days ago) it will be a bad memory of a horrific event that had the entire world in an uproar. In June, 1989 Chinese students held a peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square in the capital of China. It ended with tanks running over the students. Within three years the Chinese government had buried the event and it was dangerous for citizens to speak of it. Today many people know nothing about it.

Ian Hamilton, a Canadian mystery

I finished the surprisingly funny Tunisian novel, The Ardent Swarm, and started The Captive Mind, a collection of essays by Czesław Miłosz attempting to explain how he and other East European intellectuals initially found the totalitarian regimes post-WWII alluring.

>61 pmarshall: I was playing D&D, but no one was really playing, we were riveted to the news. Noone really know how many were killed in that slaughter
So horrible

>61 pmarshall: Penny, good to see you.

Needed some fiction, so added Storytellers by Bjørn Larssen.

I finished The Beautiful Mystery and went straight on to Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy, my first CR book bullet of 2023 (that didn’t take long, did it?), which I stayed up way too late reading last night.

I am reading The Candy House by Jennifer Egan- I am really enjoying this book.
I am also reading the biography Morgenthau Power, Privilege and The Rise of an American Dynasty by Andrew Meier

I've finished my first book of the year, All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg, which was all right, but didn't exactly live up to my expectations based on the previous book I'd read by Attenberg.

Now I'm reading The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. Which may take me a while, as it's quite a chunkster. (I'll let you in on a secret: the fact that it's a chunkster is the main reason why I'm reading it now. If I hadn't plucked it off the TBR shelves, I wouldn't have been able to fit the books I got for Christmas on there.)

>68 bragan: If I hadn't plucked it off the TBR shelves, I wouldn't have been able to fit the books I got for Christmas on there.

That's a book selection method I hadn't considered before.

I finished Cold Enough for Snow, a lovely moody novella that matched well the gray rainy weather we've been having. And after more than a year of (mostly not) reading it, I finally finished Blonde. My feelings are complicated. Next up, a bookclub book: An Exquisite Corpse.

I've started The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon.

>70 ELiz_M: My eye was just caught by Cold Enough for Snow in a list of top Australian books from 2022 that I saw earlier today. I like the sound of it.

I returned some books to the library and managed to walk out with only three new ones. The Deadly Daylight is the one I chose to start first.

I finished my first full-length book of the year, continuing my "First of the year/first of July" Isaac B. Singer read-through with Singer's third novel, The Magician of Lublin. You can find my full review on my new 2023 CR thread.

Next up for me will be If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery. This is the book my wife gave me to read as her favorite book read in 2022. That's a tradition we began a few years back. The book I gave her was The Sellout by Paul Beatty.

I decided to put aside all my January reading for a book Ive been waiting for: these precious days Ive read and enjoyed Patchett since bel canto and have enjoyed her ever since I read the first of these collected essay in the NYer and knew I had to read this. Give me a day or so Ill get back in gear!

>69 labfs39: They do say necessity is the mother of invention. :)

Finished my first book of the year! Managed to read all 450 pages of Uncle Silas in just four days thanks to all the train travel I’m doing on vacation. What a great way to start the year!

>77 lilisin: Congrats! Fun way to travel

>9 nohrt4me2: Read Toews’ A Complicated Kindness for a book club and was unimpressed. But saw movie version of Women Talking at behest of a friend and enjoyed it. Less time invested than reading the book. I gather the male school teacher is the book’s narrator. He came across as pretty lame in the movie——struck me a dystopian vision of what men would be like if women were in charge.

I’m still enjoying The Women of Troy by Pat Barker, but last night I also started Laura Zigman’s Separation Anxiety and I’m looking forward to sitting down with it again later today.

>9 nohrt4me2: >79 booksaplenty1949: I just finished my first Miriam Toews book and I also wasn't a fan. I'll review it on my thread this weekend, but it felt overdone. Too many exclamation marks . . .

I'm reading Anne by Constance Fenimore Woolson - I can't find a touchstone for this! I read a biography of Woolson last year and wanted to try out one of her books.

And I'm halfway through The Gilded Page, a nonfiction book about medieval manuscripts that is like walking through a museum with an incredibly knowledgable curator.

>81 japaul22: my copy is supposed to be here today, a perfect birthday present!

I've finished Wundbrand and have started Fräulein Gold: Schatten und Licht.

I finished my first two books of the year, Pucky, Prince of Bacon and Cat's Eyewitness.

Still reading The Thursday Murder Club and Ygerna.

Despite that, I checked out a third book today that sounded good, a children's book The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. Next up on audio is The Month of Borrowed Dreams which is a next in series book, fits the January cover challenge, and A Good Yarn book set in a location that starts with I (Ireland.) After that will be my bookclub book Murder on the Orient Express.

>81 japaul22: I really liked The Gilded Page!

I zipped through a small book of poetry by Joseph Brodsky called Nativity Poems and started a Holocaust memoir by children's book illustrator Anita Lobel. It's called No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War and is a book bullet from Kerry/avatiakh.

Last night I started Rabbit Hutch but today I got Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I had a hold on it at overdrive and it just came through so I’m reading this instead.

I'm still going for cozy, familiar writing - nothing appealed, so I started Mrs Miniver. Again. I have no idea how many times I've read this, I _love_ these little story bits...

Today is my birthday so decided to take a moment and read something completely different: mel brooks: all about me Picked this up at my indie New Year sale, decided it could be fun. This man wrote or produced Get Smart, the 2000 year old man, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstien, High Anxiety Space Balls and Silent Movie (there are more but thats what Ive seen The chapters on how each of these is the highlight of the book, and really quite interesting, and funny. Other sections were more about the movie business and I really wasnt all that interested, or lots of name droppng of all his best friends. And some of his corny jokes got old. But if you are a fan of his comedy its definitely worth reading (and I learned something - Had no idea he was m arried to Anne Bancroft, one of my fav actors as a kid esp her role in The Miracle Worker

Happy birthday, Cindy!

Yeah, Brooks and Bancroft--I think they remade To be or not to be together too (haven't seen that version).

>90 LolaWalser: yes they did but I never saw it, will have to soon

This morning I began So Vast the Prison by Algerian author Assia Djebar.

>90 LolaWalser: fwiw, I thought the Brooks/Bancroft remake of To Be or Not to Be was great. It was fun watching them knowing they were a married couple.

I've been reading a lot this year so 5 more books since the last update:
- a biography in graphic format (The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television) (very good)
- a memoir of a Japanese/Korean man who had to spend most of his life in North Korea: A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea (very good but ignore the subtitle)
- another memoir of a young woman who struggled with a mental illness and her path to a diagnosis and getting help (I'm Telling the Truth, but I'm Lying: Essays) - also very good
- Stephen King's latest (Fairy Tale which has his usual style although this time it is fantasy (of a type - there is a fantasy story in there but it is also a love letter to fairy tales and their descendants)
- a novella/short novel set in Israel (by an Israeli author) I am still not sure what to think about (And the Bride Closed the Door) but I lean towards liking it (it is interesting either way). Reviews on my main thread. :)

Now reading Double Blind, Edward St. Aubyn's latest novel. My only issue with it so far is that it is the last one of his I had not read and he is not a 1 novel (or more) per year kind of writer... :(

Current fiction I am reading is Lydia Millet's new novel Dinosaurs: A Novel

>94 AnnieMod: I looked up those two names: Penina means precious gem, Peninit means pearl, so not sure what signifigance is has. the suffix it is plural, Will have to look for this book tho

I finished The Gilded Page which was a wonderful book about Medieval manuscripts.

Now I'm reading Anne by Constance Fenimore Woolson.

I also decided that I would take on a reading project this year, and I'm reading Clarissa by Samuel Richardson with a Litsy group read. The plan is to read each letter on the date in the book. It begins today, Jan 10 and goes through Dec 18. Hopefully reading in this way will work for me and I will make it through all 1533 pages of tiny type . . .

Started the less chunky of my library books Legends of the Lost Lilies.

>97 japaul22: Thanks for the reminder on Clarissa. I'm going to start it, but I don't promise that I will stick with it.... And I'm not on Litsy, but it sounded like a fun idea to read in "real time."

Back to the Front review is here

I finished Doctor Thorne this morning and loved it. My review is on my thread.

I am reading Wintering for my book club. I really liked Safe from the Sea and have high hopes for this one.

>99 WelshBookworm: I'm hoping to stick with Clarissa, but I'm not always good at "reading slow". I'm wondering if it will be hard to get into the flow of the book. We shall see! I'm also awful at keeping up with Litsy, but maybe this book will prompt me to check in more often.

>103 japaul22: Try reading it through the Serial Reader app. The free version gives you a manageable chunk every day but doesn't let you read ahead. I find that it's a great way to read the older chunksters, especially ones that were originally released in episodic form like Dickens.

I usually try to keep at least three books going on at the same time. I have come to the conclusion that reading three books at the same time suits me quite well. But even if it's so it doesn't stop me from adding yet another book to my reading if I find a book so interesting that I just can't wait to start reading it.Therefore as of this moment I'm currently reading nine books. As I'm from Sweden, most of my reading is in Swedish. Here's what I'm currently reading:
1. En flickas memoarer by Annie Ernaux
2. Vinterrecept från kollektivet by Louise Gluck
3. En bland eder by Jan Fridegård
4. Sommaren med Monika by Per Anders Fogelström
5. Martin Kellermans Rocky by Martin Kellerman
6. En kort historik om jämlikhet by Thomas Piketty
7. Vers och varia by Hjalmar Söderberg
8. Samlade skrifter 1: lyriska dikter till 1818 by Erik Johan Stagnelius
9. Bara en mor by Ivar Lo-Johansson

Within two to four days two or more of these books will be read and maybe replaced by others or not, I don't know for sure.

>104 Yells: I like the idea of trying a book through Serial Reader. For Clarissa, though, I'm attempting to read each letter on the date it was written. Just need to keep up with it!

I was hoping to read less books at once this year, but I started a new book today - The Marne, a novel written and published during WWI, by Edith Wharton. So I’m currently reading or listening to five books.

>104 Yells: what is Serial Reader App?

>108 dianeham: It’s a neat little free app that I have on my phone. I use it to read older novels (copyright free stuff). Each book is broken up into 10-15 minute chunks and each day, a new chunk is available to you. I find it a great way to work through really large classics. It doesn’t give you hints or anything like that, but I find it slows me down so I absorb more.

I've tried to do the A Night in the Lonesome October reading - one chapter a day each day in October. I almost managed it one year, pulling myself away by the scruff of my neck - that was my first read. I read the first three or four in one sitting then refused to read until the correct day. But since then, every time I start I just have to read the next bit and I always read it in a day (or two at most). It's no chunkster - a slim little book.

I finished a book. 1st one. Case Study, which is begging me to start over and reread, but I’m trying not to listen.

Finished Double Blind, the latest Edward St. Aubyn novel a few days ago. I liked it (kinda expected, I like his style) - he is back to his usual ways (not that he ever fully moved away from them but the last 2 before this one were probably his weakest). Now he needs to go and write something new. Review in my thread (and in the work page plus 3 extra reviews for 3 of his other novels which I read last year (On the Edgе, A Clue to the Exit and Lost for Words) are in their respective work pages). Not only had I read everything by him but I had also reviewed them all (something is wrong, I am never that organized...)

Now reading two books: a speculative novel (The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (which was called "The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle" on its initial UK publication but acquired a 1/2 when published in the States) and a non-fiction book Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds. I still need to return to the books I was reading when the year started :)

Currently reading:The Song of the Cell by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner, and Faulkner: A Biography by Joseph Blottner. I’m reading the first very slowly, trying to absorb as much as I can of this fascinating discussion of cell biology, and the Faulkner biography will be slow as well because of its length. I’m hoping to get to another Faulkner novel this month as well.

>113 dianelouise100: I'm interested in that Faulkner biography.

I started Hyperion for bookclub. I have 26 days to read it and I think I'm going to need them.

>114 dchaikin: I’m finding it very informative, very readable, and not so very slow, after all. It’s been sitting on the shelf next to the novels forever, so I’m glad to be getting around to actually reading it.

>112 AnnieMod: Nice review of Double Blind.

>117 avaland: Thanks :)

Finished The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. I still cannot tell you if it is SF or fantasy but it does not really matter. Very well done, especially for a debut novel. It is very unconventional though. Review in my thread and on the work page.

Next on the fiction side: back to the Suspense novels of the 40s omnibus with The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis.

I started Uncle Tom's Children this morning, Richard Wright's first published book, a collection of novellas.

I've finished The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon. I really enjoyed it and rated it four stars. My review is up on my thread.

>113 dianelouise100: Are you reading the two volume or the one volume bio of Faulkner? I gather the latter contains material Blotner swept under the carpet in his original book.

>121 booksaplenty1949: Mine is the one-volume edition. The blurb on back cover claims that Blotner “made extensive revisions and emendations and incorporated a wealth of previously unpublished Faulkneriana.” Sounds promising…and I’m liking it.

Review of these precious days is here

>122 dianelouise100: Yes. Sounds the better choice. Blotner knew Faulkner personally but perhaps needed more time to get perspective on his life. BTW one of his first actions after Faulkner died was to go to his house and record the title of every book there, later published as William Faulkner’s Library: A Catalogue A LibraryThing kindred spirit.

I recently finished a wonderful and little-known book, Anne, by Constance Fenimore Woolson. This was published in 1881. Recommended for those who enjoy the era - review on my thread.

And now I'm reading a new nonfiction book called The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family that flips the common narrative of how admirable the Grimke sisters were in the fight for abolition and instead delves into their family's rise to wealth on the backs of the people they enslaved.

For fiction I'm reading a lighter selection - the second mystery in a series set in 1920s India, The Satapur Moonstone.

I recently finished two "lighter" reads - An Exquisite Corpse and Lessons in Chemistry - and should get back to one of the books I paused, mostly likely The She-Devil in the Mirror, but will also continue on with The Sandman: Vol. 11, Endless Nights.

It didn't take me long to read How Sleeps the Beast by Don Tracy, an obscure novel about.a lynching in Maryland in the period between the World Wars. I'll put a review up here and there when I get back from my family visit in a couple of days.

I'm now reading Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson. Hamer began life as the youngest of 20 children in a Mississippi share cropping family and in adulthood became a very important figure in the Civil Rights Movement.

Still reading Annie Ernaux's The Years—my reading life sucks a little right now, not because of any reading blockage so much as long, long days, both on the work and domestic fronts. So I tend to get in bed with the book and just pass out. But I'm really enjoying it, even though I have to stop and look things up often to get up to speed on 20th-c. French politics and culture. This is why I love reading on the iPad.

I’m processing the flawed but incredibly powerful collection of stories, Uncle Tom’s Children by Richard Wright. >127 rocketjk: Wright includes a chilling lynching.

So that was my first non-electronic book of the year, and I picked it up only Friday. Next I need to go find my copy of A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark, my next planned book, an attempt to address my TBR pile.

I FINALLY finished Tales of Burning Love. It wasn't bad, just way longer than it needed to be, and I kept veering off into other books and activities. I'm wokrking on The Cloisters now. Not sure if it's really my cuppa, but I will stick with it a while longer.

>129 dchaikin: Ive read several of Muriel Spark, not that one tho. Curious to hear what you think

I started Hamnet (again) today. Cushla (cushlareads) and I are doing a buddy read and you are very welcome to join us here.

finished hope and other dangerous pursuits. My review is here

https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#8037333

Another day, another library request comes in so I've added A Scandal in Scarlet to my currently reading pile.

I'm starting A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul today.

I've also started the Holmes short story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" as part of Letters from Watson. (The email actually came yesterday, but I only got round to reading it today).

Finally finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and I should have dnf’d it last week. Really thought it might redeem itself before the end but it did not.

I got 2 books about Windows 11 from the library yesterday. Not that I’ll read them but will probably look stuff up. I ran a computer system as my job and it was all windows but as soon as I retired - 11 years ago - I switched to Apple. Now we got hubby a windows 11 laptop and windows has changed a bit in 11 years.

What to read next?

I finished Edith Wharton The Marne last night. Took me all of 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I’ll wait for our discussion Saturday before I review. The short review is read anything else by Wharton, but skip this.

>131 cindydavid4: A Far Cry from Kensington has a wonderful opening chapter. Spark…

I just finished the sad, horrifying, moving memoir of Masaji Ishikawa, A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea. Although I own the book, I had a long drive yesterday and today and listened to almost all of The Double Helix on audio. It's my book club book for next week.

>137 dchaikin: Oh good, will need to look for it

haven is so well written,love her descriptions of all the nature and beauty around the monks on their journey. but I can feel the tension starting and things do not bode well.

>139 cindydavid4: I’m so glad you’re loving it, it was one of my favorites for 2022. Looking forward to your review!

Started 2 books yesterday: Hamnet and Noopiming. I really got sucked into the second one so will go back to Hamnet after.

>141 dianeham:. I’d love to know your thoughts on Noopiming - I planned to read that soon.

I’m reading The Candy House by Egan and This Much is True by Margolyes.

>142 Yells: I think I may have read about it on your thread? I am loving it. One of the things I love about it is that it’s funny. The people are so real and believable. Every individual in it so far is referred to with the pronoun they. That was a little off putting but I’m getting used to it. There is one character who is just crazy about sales and what they call "bargoons" - just love them. It’s not written with a clear plot-line but you follow the same people and they all interact. I feel like I met them last night more than I just read about them.

I've just started Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver - I think it's going to be a good one.

Nothing like a long weekend with a lot of rain outside (why? couldn't it do it in days when I am stuck at home with work anyway?) to get some reading done: a play (Hinterland by Sebastian Barry (I am working through all his drama and fiction), a non-fiction book (Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds) and a a graphic novel: It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken by Seth. All of them very enjoyable - reviews in my thread.

I also finished the second novel in the Suspense omnibus: The Horizontal Man by Helen Eustis. Enjoyable, somewhat cliched but I am not sure it was in the 40s. More about it when I finish the two remaining novels in that book.

And now I am back to Middlemarch - I was planning to just read a book and go read something else but the story sucked me in so I am staying with it at least for a bit.

Will be browsing through the Best of Australian Poems 2022 which showed up in my mailbox very recently. Will pick up another fiction, just haven't decided which one....

OMG I just finished haven. Going out tonight I'll post review tomorrow morning. In the meantime This is her best book ever

I'm reading The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Lovely vignettes about a single summer largely between a little girl whose mother recently died and her curmudgeonly but wonderful grandmother. The island where they are spending their summer is the third primary character in the book as they are spending a great deal of time exploring it. I'm eager to continue spending time with them over the next few days.

>149 nancyewhite: I love that one.

>149 nancyewhite:, >150 labfs39: Me too! Just reading your description makes me want to go and dig it out again.

I’ve been happily confined to my sofa these last few days as I’m not well (feeling really quite grotty, but miraculously enough my head is clear so I can read) - perfect timing to start on the exciting haul I brought back from the UK at the weekend. I’ve already finished Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic (unsettling, troubling but very readable) and Claire Keegan’s novella Foster, which I read in a single sitting this afternoon (not one superfluous word, sublime), and I’m over halfway through the highly entertaining Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain (originally published in 1949 and recently resuscitated by Virago Modern Classics). Last night I also finished a library book I was already half-way through but which was looking distinctly less appealing next to my new books, April in Spain by John Banville.

Needed something short yesterday while I was cooking and waiting for something to get ready so read the latest issue of One Story - a literary magazine which prints a single story per issue. This one was The Eclipse (One Story 296) by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated from Yiddish by David Stromberg. An almost Christmas story not set at Christmas or mentioning Christmas at all. Review and notes in my thread :)

review of Haven here https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8039455

I needed a pick-me-up, so I chose Love's Shadow by Ada Leverson.

I'm 100 pages away from finishing Zola's Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, the second book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. Starting the new year with some major classics! Need to start my Japanese book club January pick this weekend though!

babel I may be some time

>145 japaul22: Same here! Just started Demon Copperfield last night. It's going to be much better than my last read, The Cloisters.

I finished A Far Cry from Kensington, which was both evocative of a time and place, and oddly funny.

I’m looking at Marion Turner’s Chaucer: A European Life. I haven’t exactly picked it up yet, but it’s right here next to me, about ~600 pages if it.

>155 lilisin: Only eight more in the series to go until you get to Au bonheur des dames which I read with great enjoyment in 2021. The department store is a wonderful showcase for Zola’s descriptive gifts.

>158 dchaikin: Received a copy of A Far Cry from Kensington for Santa Thing a *few* years ago (whoops—2017, it says here) and while I have admired the cover that’s as far as I’ve got with it. But its wait will be officially over once I get Humdrum back to the library.

I'm reading Normal People for anthropological reasons -- can anyone explain to me why this is so revered?

I picked The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Selma Lagerlöf off the shelf today, but quickly had questions about the translation. I went to Project Gutenberg and found a free ebook copy and am enjoying it much more. I'm still referring to the paper book for the illustrations and map. Being able to compare translations is a surprise bonus of having an e-reader.

>159 booksaplenty1949:
I actually have already read that one! I read a few of the famous ones and only recently have decided to read them in order. But I look forward to getting back to it because I plan on rereading the ones I've already read, including La Curee which is next, as the third book. Which is good because I remember nothing about it!

>163 lilisin: I’m impressed! I look forward to your assessment of the series as an integrated whole.

>161 slimeboy: I certainly cant. this was a DNF for m e

>161 slimeboy: Afraid not. I didn't care for it much.

>166 WelshBookworm: , did you finish it? I might have to go the path of >165 cindydavid4: -- it's just utter crap.

>167 slimeboy: I did finish it, since it was for my book club... In my review I said I did think there was an audience for this book, but I wasn't it.

I just finished my first book of 2023, Annie Ernaux's The Years. Really fascinating memoir technique, and I have a lot of thoughts that I'll get to eventually. It definitely wasn't a simple read, and since I'm not up on French cultural and political life I had to look a lot of things up—plus a lot of 12-hour workdays this month meant that I was just reading a few pages at a shot at night before falling asleep with my iPad open.

Now reading O Caledonia at the suggestion of a book club friend.

>169 lisapeet: I'm very excited for her book on grocery stores to come out in translation later this year.

>170 slimeboy: Definitely. I loved finding out in The Years that in France "supermarkets" are (at least in this translation) called "hypermarkets."

I finished Walk with Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson. This is an excellent and compelling biography of a woman who began life as a share cropper's daughter in Jim Crow Mississippi and eventually because one of the leading voices of the Civil Rights Movement. You'll find a more in-depth review on my CR thread.

I've now started American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild. This history about the period of American history during and just after World War I that is broadly known as the Red Scare but encompasses all sorts of other unpleasantries, including Jim Crow, violent labor movement surppression, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. This lovely ditty was a Hanukkah present from my wife. After Walk with Me and American Midnight, I'm going to need something lighter!

Finished burning question Review is here https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8046277

Half way through Babel and gotta say, its pure genius. Helps that I love anything about how language works,this is so fascinating. I like how she is referencing real life research in her footnotes (but I wish the mark for footnotes was bigger!) And Im still astounded that this is the same author of the poppy war, because this book couldn't be more different (well, the latter did start in a type of boarding school but still....)

I'm currently reading A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul. So far it's both very interesting and well written.

I just finished an excellent nonfiction book, The Grimkes: the Legacy of Slavery in an American Family by Kerri K. Greenidge. If you know about the famous abolitionist sister, Sarah and Angelina, this book will open your eyes to their entire family and a more complete picture of their lives, including the lives of their Black family members.

I read There's a Murder Afoot in one day and have started Cloud Cuckoo Land despite having other reading commitments. I really need to stop borrowing books from the library.

On audio I finished The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, based on the Sri Lanka civil war. It took me time but ultimately I got attached to it and now appreciate the overall structure.

So, what to listen to next? I couldn’t decide and went with an Audible Great Courses freebie - Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer, lectures by Seth Lerer.

My review of Babel is here https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8048284

I’m reading This Other Eden by Paul Harding and Before the Big Bang. Have to get back to Hamnet too.

ETA; FIX TOUCHSTONE

Next read for Baltic Sea RTT theme summer book which hopefully will be a lot llighter than my previous read!

>181 dianeham: i’m interested in Harding’s new novel.

Finished The Strangling on the Stage, a Simon Brett mystery which ended very much not with a (big) bang but a whimper. Now concentrating on Labels, Evelyn Waugh’s first travel book. Trip, a Mediterranean cruise undertaken to take his mind off the breakup of his first marriage, is fairly free of sights or events of intrinsic interest but Waugh manages to squeeze a paragraph or two out of being short-changed in a monastery gift-shop or fending off shoe-shine boys in Port Said. Hoping pace will pick up in his next travel book in my collected volume, Waugh Abroad, which takes him to Haile Selassie’s coronation in Ethiopia.

Welcome back! Sometimes we all need a break to read our comfort books. How are you enjoying the WUBC? It was the first Murakami that I read, and to be honest I got lost at times. Or maybe it was the cats that led me astray... LOL

>187 Bamf102: Have you read anything else by him? My favorite was one I read last month, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It was straightforward and wonderful. 1Q84 was not straightforward, but fun.

I recently finished Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman, a collection of fascinating and surreal short stories, and many kudos to my SantaThing Santa for picking that one, because I loved it.

Now reading Head On by John Scalzi, a sequel to his science fiction mystery novel Lock In.

I've started reading Women Writing Africa: The Northern Region. Although it's arranged chronologically, I'm reading the selections country by country, starting with Tunisia.

I’ve finished Faulkner’s Flags in the Dust and put my review on my thread. Still reading the Blotner biography. I’ve just been to the library and checked out Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly. I’m wanting a book for the WWI thread of RTT and also something less challenging than Faulkner, hopefully this is it. I understand it deals with events in Russia at that period.

>191 labfs39: oh Id like to read that!

two books came in that I hope to read for this month or at least make a dent

the coffeehouse and Leo Africanus Tho I wonder if this book would count for the African Challenge, the author is from Lebanon, but he travels throughut the continent

Now reading Murder on the Orient Express for book club tomorrow. I'm familiar with the story and have seen at least two movie versions of it... Also just checked out The Books of Jacob from the library. Online group read for Feb/Mar and maybe longer. I don't have the schedule yet.

About two thirds of the way through Chemical Pink (on the recommendation of Alissa Nutting) and I'm not really sure why this is has been dragged so hard online -- perhaps Arnoldi was a victim of being way ahead of her time? It certainly veers into cartoonishness at points (which I enjoy but I could understand someone not liking), but the perspectives on bodybuilding and fetish open up curious tracts for inquiry in the contemporary post-MRA/post-incel/post-broadband-connection-internet-porn world.

>196 Bamf102: I read Ninth House a couple years ago for a book group, so DNF was not an option. I thought it became sillier and sillier, and would rather not have spent the time on it.

I returned one book to the library and came home with two, one of which A Curious Incident I read in one sitting.

I finished American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hoshschild. This is an excellent but horrifying (again!) history about an extremely violent and repressive, but mostly (as per the title) forgotten 4-year period in American history, from 1917, when the U.S. entered WW I, to 1920. Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913 as a liberal reformer. At first he was opposed to U.S. involvement in WW I, running for reelection under the slogan, "He kept us out of war." But as the war progressed, and the allies became hard pressed, they turned to the U.S. for armaments and other supplies, going into huge debt to the U.S government and munitions companies, among others, to the extent that an Allied defeat in the war would have occasioned massive defaults and extensive losses to U.S. creditors. Well, that couldn't be allowed. That's not the only cause that Hochschild provides for the U.S. entry into the war, but it is an extremely significant one, and something I'd never realized.

Once the U.S. was involved, Wilson's Attorney General and other high-ranking figures went to town, using the war effort as an excuse for furious and violent repression. The so-called Espionage Act of 1917 made it a crime punishable by long prison terms to criticize the war effort or the government, or to complain about war profiteering. A nationwide civilian vigilante organization called the American Protective League was organized and given carte blanche for violent and even often deadly activities. People got lynched for refusing to buy War Bonds. Massive, coordinated, roundups of draft-aged men took place, and woe betide anyone who couldn't show a draft card. This was all a cover for nativist, rightwing politicians who wanted to hound immigrants, the labor movement, conscientious objectors, socialists, Jews, Catholics and, it goes without saying, Blacks. You can find my longer review on the book's work page or on my own CR thread.

For some reason I have been, and for the moment remain, in a U.S. history reading groove. I'll shortly be taking up Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America a biography written by William E. Gienapp and first published in 2001.

>183 dchaikin: Dan, there is a review in today’s nyt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/books/review/this-other-eden-paul-harding.htm...

It’s hard to read a run-of-the-mill novel after reading some excellent ones, and after reading Audrey Magee’s The Colony and two novels by Leïla Slimani, I couldn’t settle into anything on my to-read list. Usually I’ll easily find a crime -genre novel, so I decided on a work by Laura Lippman. I’ve really enjoyed her short stories - e.g. Seasonal Work as like Jennifer Eagan’s, they have a dryness to them that appeals. But will I like Laura Lippman’s novels? She’s so prolific she scares me off.

I’ve started Sunburn - so far it’s OK but somehow I don’t think I’ll become an avid fan. Any fans of Lippman’s novels out there?

>192 dianelouise100: Having, like you, read Sartoris back in the day I am interested in your observation that Flags in the Dust probably benefited from being shortened, although with an author of Faulkner’s status we are of course interested in seeing everything he wrote, for scholarly reasons if for no others. But it is my observation that a lot of authors, if they attain a certain level of best-sellerdom, become resistant to serious editing and can basically bypass anything beyond proof-reading. Rereading Gaudy Night recently it became pretty clear to me that Sayers had lost interest in the mystery genre and was pursuing more congenial themes in sections of so-called dialogue that were actually the author haranguing the reader. She wouldn’t have gotten away with that earlier.

I started my other library book today A Sunlit Weapon. So far (about halfway through) I feel like Ms Winspear has returned to what I liked about the first few books of the series.

review for the summer book here

https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8049634

>201 rocketjk: interesting. I always assumed American sympathies in wwi were somehow naturally with France and England (excepting those of German-descent). Wharton’s The Marne reinforces that (but it’s a propaganda text).

>202 dianeham: paywall blocked me.

>203 kjuliff: i can see that issue after reading The Colony. I’m not familiar with Lippman

I finished The She-Devil in the Mirror, which I thoroughly enjoyed and also Future Home of the Living God. I've started Kintu for the African read thread.

>208 dchaikin: "I always assumed American sympathies in wwi were somehow naturally with France and England (excepting those of German-descent)."

Well, sure, most Americans' sympathies were with France and, especially, England. Whether they actually wanted to go over and fight and die for whatever the hell it was they were fighting about over there in Europe was another issue. After all, American troops had never fought on European soil before. And isolationism was certainly common and vocal. But that's until the propaganda machine started ginning up, laws against free speech started getting passed, and people started going to jail or getting tarred and feathered or lynched. But things were beginning to look grim for the Allies, especially after Lenin took the Russian army out of the war, and there was going to be a whole ton of American industrialists' loans going up in smoke. That was simply not on. Also, I think the idea that the German speaking population of the U.S. was naturally sympathetic to the Kaiser's army might have been part of the propaganda component of Wharton's book. There was a reason that they had gotten out from under that system to come to the U.S., after all.

>211 rocketjk: on German Americans and wwi: Wharton has an interesting context for it, wealthy Americans leaving Europe on ocean liners discussing the war. Her German Americans were plainly pro-German (and she makes a point to say her main character thought they were mistaken)

Willa Cather touches on this in a few of her books, including one memorable side story in, I believe, One of Ours. There a German American is disciplined in court for making pro-German comments socially. What’s clear is that her German American has German sympathies, but that these were mild, and not remarkable without the context of war-time fears.

Wharton was writing propaganda during the war from France. Cather had no clear political agenda. She was writing just after the war (i don’t from where, but probably from the US east coast. She did visit war sites in France as part of her research, and interviewed American veterans, maybe some from Nebraska.)

>201 rocketjk: that looks like a fascinating and depressing read. I also thought Wilson was a peace maker, but maybe not.. Had no idea about the repression of free speech and the violence against anyone against the war. will need to read this.

>213 cindydavid4: Fascinating and depressing is right. I would be very interested to read your reactions to the book.

Wilson, as per Hochschild, was a mixed bag. He was born in Georgia in 1856, so he was nine when the Civil War ended. He was a very firm racist and, when he became president, went about resegregating the parts of the Federal government that had begun to be integrated. None of the progressive ideals that got him elected president included Blacks. And those progressive ideals essentially vanished when he became convinced that the country needed to get involved in the war. While he didn't expressly create the repressive measures that were soon rampant, he essentially turned a blind eye to them. Occasionally he would send bland messages to his Attorney General about maybe taking it easy on the arrests and beatings. The AG would ignore these messages and the repression would continue.

A lot of people were genuinely impressed by the 14 Points Wilson came up with to explain why the U.S. was involved in the fighting and what the war aims should be. When it came to the actual post-war negotiations, however, many of these points went up in smoke. Wilson did genuinely try to get the English and French to let up some on the punitive measures (reparations in particular) that they were determined to burden Germany with, foreseeing that they would lead to resentment and most likely another war sooner rather than later. But he was outmaneuvered by Lloyd George and Clemenceau during the negotiations, and his stroke midway through certainly didn't help anything. By the time he got back from Europe, he was much too ill and weak to convince a hostile America to ratify the treaty and, thereby, become a member of the League of Nations that he'd championed and worked so hard for.

>211 rocketjk: And “those of German descent” constituted a very large percentage of Americans at the time.

>205 booksaplenty1949: I should reread Sartoris to see how they compare. I know that much of the cutting of Flags was to the Narcissa/Horace sections, and reading them more or less as Faulkner first submitted the novel, I do think those parts should be edited, shortened. It’s a shame that Faulkner did not get to revise that original typescript himself before it was published in 1973, he had died in the ‘60’s. What seems remarkable to me also is that his next novel was The Sound and the Fury, is a much more complex and stylistically demanding novel, and it’s also calling to me now just to be reminded of how quickly he was growing into the Yoknapatawpha setting.

>215 booksaplenty1949: i didn’t think so. So i googled. It seems that around 9% of Americans were German born or had German born parents in 1910. It varied regionally.

Source with maps by state: https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/documents/percentage-of-americans-of-g...

>208 dchaikin: I think this link will work. It said I get 10 gift articles a month.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/books/review/this-other-eden-paul-harding.htm...

>218 dianeham: wow. Cool that you can do that, and thank you for sharing. Are you enjoying as much as the reviewer? It sounds terrific. (on This Other Eden by Paul Harding, which is recently published and which Diane mentioned she is reading in >181 dianeham: )

>158 dchaikin: Finished A Far Cry from Kensington and thoroughly enjoyed the first person narrative voice, which had an authentic autobiographical feel. Plot was less satisfying; couldn’t Hector Bartlett just have been a bad writer with unmerited professional influence? Making him a con man and, morally at least, a murderer seemed a bit OTT. Plot twists right to the last page all a bit random. But definitely want to read more of my Muriel Spark collection, accumulated in the first instance because of their cover photographs by Van Pariser.

>219 dchaikin: I keep reading it with dread of what is going to happen so not enjoying it as much as I’d like.

>220 booksaplenty1949: oh, cool. I’m glad you enjoyed Nancy’s voice and have now read Spark. (Spark has a wide range and this only shows some aspects of her writing.)

I enjoyed your comments. Now that you mention it, Barlett‘s villainy is a little simplistic, and definitely over the top. Of course he has a purpose - he is male-manipulative potential, while representing a timeless extreme author sensitivity.

Leo Africanus is next, for the African challenge, As well as the Historic Fiction theme. Good so far but missing maps and some sort of character gallery to refer to when confused

>223 dchaikin: Read Memento Mori last year and certainly had no “yes, but” reaction there. It was a small gem. Unlike other Spark novels acquired for their covers, it was a leftover from my parents’ Time-Life Reading Program collection, preserved for sentimental reasons. Always happy for these vols when they are plucked off the shelves and actually !Read!

Spent yesterday with the foot up and reading Paul Harding's new novel This Other Eden. It's set in 1912 and isconnected to his previous two small novels, regarding the small multi-race colony on Maine''s Malaga Island that existed for over a 100 years. 5 stars from me.

So, that being read, I have returned to Mia Couto's novel... Confession of the Lioness.

I'm also done (is anyone ever 'done' with a poetry volume?) with the Best of Australian Poems, 2022. Oh dear, I'm way behind with reviews....

>225 booksaplenty1949: agree about Memento Mori, and cool copy

>226 avaland: nice about Harding

I'm now reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. I may be the last person on Earth who's even remotely interested in this one to get to it. It's been sitting on my TBR shelves for a decade waiting for me to pick it up Any Minute Now.

>228 bragan: oh, yay! Enjoy

I decided I was in need of something Irish so I’ve started Butcher’s Blessing by Ruth Gilligan, narrated by Heather McNeil in full Irish brogue. It seems to be a tale told by an Irish photographer in Manhattan in 2020, about a happening in Ireland in the 1990’s. Something about an Irish tradition involving eight cows, slaughter, green hills, secrecy and low mists.

>231 kjuliff: Something about an Irish tradition involving eight cows...

sounds like the start of a joke, lol

>232 labfs39: Yeah. Eight cows walk into a pub …

>232 labfs39: it’s from an Irish curse.
An ancient curse warns that if eight men do not touch every cow in Ireland as it dies, pestilence will fall upon the land.

>234 kjuliff: Interesting

>68 bragan: The Priory of the Orange Tree is super worth it! I'll try and keep up with your reviews if you post more on it.
>174 cindydavid4: I've just started on Babel and I really like it so far! I'm very early in, I'm already hooked.

>236 liz4444: I did post a review of The Priory of the Orange Tree; you can find it on my thread! Admittedly, it's not a very detailed one, but the upshot is that I enjoyed it.

As well as my Irish novel, I’m reading Dream Girl, Laura Lippman. I only opened it to get a feel for the narrator, as bad narration can put me off, but I was immediately hooked. This novel’s MC is a novelist, and comments on other novelists, sometimes with a dry dig. My Irish yarn about eight but hers has to be put aside. I am so taken by the formidable Ms Lippman’s dry humor and her take on the West’s 2020’s zeitgeist.

>237 bragan: can you click on your thread;s address so we can link to the review? thanks

>239 cindydavid4: Sorry, not sure what you're asking for here. I linked to the review post on my thread. Did you want a link to somewhere else instead?

sorry, didn't see that at first, Ill follow the link, thanks!

>241 cindydavid4: No problem! Glad it wasn't that I messed it up somehow. :)

I finished Abraham Lincoln and Civil War America: A Biography by William E. Gienapp. This is a very enjoyable, well written and relatively brief (200 pages) biography of Abraham Lincoln. The title infers that the book describes only Lincoln's term as president, but in fact it is neatly divided, pretty much in half. The first 100 pages provide a description of Lincoln's childhood and then his career in law and politics leading up to his Civil War administration. The second half of the book covers Lincoln's presidency and the war years. I already mostly knew the details of the progression of the war and Lincoln's struggles to get the commanders of the Army of the Potomac (from McClellan onward) to go on the offensive against the Confederate armies in the east, but Gienapp also did a fine job of filling in the political details of Lincoln's presidency, as he strove just as hard to hold together the coalition of extreme and moderate Republicans and Democrats. My longer review is up on the book's work page and on my Club Read thread.

Next up for me will be this month's book group selection, Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. I'm happy to be getting back to fiction after a run of (very good) biography/history.

>244 rocketjk: Lincoln in the Bardo was a fictional treatment of this era that I found unexpectedly gripping.

>245 booksaplenty1949: Thanks. My wife read that book for her book group and I think found it a mixed bag. I've never read Saunders but expect (hope) to get to his work sometime soon.

>246 Bamf102: I read non-fiction, clearly. So that's one of us. :)

>246 Bamf102: I read about 40% nonfiction, mainly memoirs and history.

ETA: it's an interesting question whether poetry is fiction or nonfiction (by default)

>248 Bamf102: "Do you read {non-fiction} more than fiction?"

I would guess that overall my ratio breaks down to about two-thirds fiction and one-third non-fiction, but I haven't done any sort of count lately. I enjoy both.

>249 labfs39: "It's an interesting question whether poetry is fiction or nonfiction."

I wouldn't break it down that way. Some poems are fiction and some aren't. A poem tells a story or describes a scene or emotion. The question I would ask is, "If this writer decided to render this as prose instead of as poetry, what would it be then?" The answer might be "a short story" or "an episode of a memoir" or even "an historic event." Those answers will tell us whether the poem is fiction or non-fiction. The form of narration (poetry or prose) isn't the deciding factor for me. That's my two cents and worth every penny.

I started The Madwoman of Serrano by Dina Salustio of Cape Verde for the African Novel Challenge. Fantastic magical realism. She has a way with words too, and I'm marking lots of passages to quote.

Lifetime numbers :)

Non-fiction 491
Novels 397

You would think 55%/45% but that doesn’t account for 365 books which I classified differently. So 39% nf, 32% novels and 29 % neither?

>246 Bamf102: I do, usually histories, biographies,travel narratives popular science, all dependent on my interest, and usually started after reading a fictional account of the topic. For a while it was 1/3 of my total reading, but as I havve gotten older Im reading less. Maybe because . Im happy to escape into fiction,

>177 japaul22: I'm very interested in that one! The Grimkes were main figures in a novel I read a few years ago, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. I've read reviews that feel this new biography puts the family in an entirely different light.

BTW, I DNFed Demon Copperhead after reading about 350 pages. Initially interesting, but it dropped into stereotypes, was full of annoying anachronisms, and I just got plain sick of reading about high school football.

I have a review of the Grimkes family bio up on my thread. I thought it was excellent.
And I almost quit on Demon Copperhead, but I stuck it out. I agree with a lot of your comments.

>257 japaul22: After 350 pages, I really didn't care what happened to him or how it ended.

>249 labfs39: I would say that poetry is its own genre: poetry. It does come in “narrative” and “lyric”: the former with a plot and the latter not. But that’s not the same distinction as fiction/non-fiction. Whether Wordsworth did or didn’t actually wander lonely as a cloud, say, is irrelevant.

I've stalled out on an ER book, Dragon in the Rough - not sure if it's the book or just my mood, but it's not catching me. I'm going to read Sweep of the Heart, latest in a lovely fantasy series - I believe it's a rather short book (and I tend to get swept up (pun not intended) in the Innkeeper Chronicles anyway). Tomorrow I'll start Mort for the Terry Pratchett Death arc group read.

>249 labfs39: I wrote a poem about whether poetry is fiction or nonfiction. I’ll have to look for it.

I am totally stalled out. Haven’t finished a book in a week.

>261 dianeham: That's perfect, lol

>246 Bamf102: I read both fiction and nonfiction. In fact, I'm reading nonfiction right now. I know I read more fiction than non, but I don't know percentages.

The Lily Hand by one of my fave HF writers. (loved Caedfael) Recognized the first story a grain of mustard seed before, didn't realize she wrote it tho Ive heard it in different reads

Also startingn horse for the RTT Feb Theme "Lions and tigers and bears oh my"

and rereading mort for the Death books of Disc World

and Elvin Kingdom for Author of the month

>238 kjuliff: I just finished Lippman’s Dream Girl and it was the worst of stories and the best of stories. This crime novel is more a canvas for the sharp-eyed Ms Lippman to have a go at fellow novelists and to reflect on our times. The best parts of Dream Girl are the inner ramblings of Gerry Anderson, the novel’s main character, a sixty-one year old novelist.

Being laid up in bed for weeks due to a severe injury due to falling down a staircase, and being unable to use his laptop, Gerry has ample time to reflect on a past, littered with sexual conquests and failed marriages. Her ponders on cancel culture. Thoughts such as the possibility of someone digging up the dirt on Shakespeare and the possible consequences. Could the Bard be cancelled?

Being that it was an audiobook I couldn’t easily bookmark what interested me, as though possible it’s not easy to look back and find the memorable bits.

I did manage to clip one of Gerry’s self-questions.

“In his aging body and his aging mind can he allow himself the thoughts and metaphors and pronouns that were permissible when he was young? Is that too much to ask?” he asks.

Just finished Sweep of the Heart - as usual, one _amazing_ story. Not short, though, don't know where I got that idea. They do come up with fascinating aliens - and fascinating, complex cultures, whether alien or human(oid). I want to go reread some of the previous books, especially Sweep of the Blade because there's a lot of cross-references...but first I'm going to read Mort.

Just received a far cry from kensington and already reading it! so im juggling a few books at a time! what else is new!

>246 Bamf102: I read a fair amount of non-fiction, tend toward science/nature and biography/memoir.

I just finished reading The Butchers’s Blessing and it wasn’t at all what I expected - which was a family drama set against an Ireland of poverty and misery. It’s more about moral issues such as integrity in art, and how disease and corruption can come when humans and animals mingle in unsafe ways.There is a lesson or two in it from Mad Cows’ Disease which many readers here will not be familiar with.

What’s strange is I can’t remember why I chose this book, or even heard of it. I’m pretty knowledgeable on Irish writers but hadn’t heard of Ruth Gilligan. It’s annoying me that I can’t remember the source as it’s a good read.

>271 kjuliff: I think the book you are referring to is The Butchers aka The Butchers’ Blessing. I was confused because Butcher’s Crossing is a book by an author who was “rediscovered” recently—John Williams. I have read his two other novels—-not life-changing, I have to say—-and own Butcher’s Crossing. Mostly for the cover art, but have thought of reading it. More likely now that I know it’s not about Mad Cow Disease.

Almost done with the lily hand and other stories Really liking it, review soon

>272 booksaplenty1949: sorry for the typo. I meant to type Butchers Blessing and have now edited. It is partly about Mad Cows Disease. It’s a good read. Now I’ve researched it a bit more, I see it won the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize, and possible I discovered it from that.

I'm rereading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. What a fantastic novel.

I'm also considering reading Devil in the Grove, a nonfiction book that I've had on my kindle for several years. It's about Thurgood Marshall and a case in Florida where he defended several black men who were accused of rape. It won the Pulitzer and sounds fascinating, but I need to try a bit of it to see if I'm in the right frame of mind.

>275 Bamf102: I got sober in 1979 and I went to a place where most of the men really hated women. They were white working class trade unionists - roofers, brick layers, iron workers.

I’m reading Poseidon’s Steed by Helen Scales, a sort of popular science book on seahorses

On audio, I finished the Great Course lecture, The Life and Writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. But I haven’t picked my next audio book. Indecisive.

I’m reading a book set in the Peak District, UK. And no it’s not Pride and Prejudice; I took this photo of Lyme House when I was lucky enough to be driven all over Derbyshire. The indents from the narrow strips of pre-enclosure farmland can still be seen, and I’m reminded of my stay in the Peak District whenever I read a novel set in that enchanting piece of our planet.

So I’m enjoying the very slow start of Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor as the writer meanders around the streets of a small village and its surrounding Peak District countryside. A slow but enjoyable build-up so far.

Review of the lily hand and other stories is here:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/347243#n8055811

I'm currently reading Arrowood.

>281 Bamf102: I read the intro last night on kindle but that was enough for me.