Eliz_M's aperiodic postings

Birthmas Presents ........... Birthday Binge (1) ............ Birthday Binge (2)
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I love reading and list-making and book buying (I've crammed 1200+ books in a tiny studio apartment!), but I do not enjoy writing and am perpetually behind on reviews.

For many, many years I have been reading primarily from the 1001-Books-to-Read-Before-You-Die list (the end is in sight!) Other reads are chosen through reading challenge prompts, especially the #ReadingTheAmericas2023 challenge on Litsy and my global challenge. Now that I spend more time on Litsy (https://www.litsy.com/web/user/Liz_M), I am reading more contemporary novels, especially those featured in the Tournament of Books or listed for the International Booker.

Aside from reading, my weekdays are spent working for a large performing arts organization in NYC and my weekends are for eating brunch out, walking around my Brooklyn neighborhood/Prospect Park/Greenwood cemetery, occasionally visiting a museum, and cooking vegetarian meals for myself and/or baking treats for the office.

Currently Reading:

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LT/Litsy adds to the TBR:
Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet (recommended on Litsy by jlhammar and on LT by RidgewayGirl)
Call and Response by Gothataone Moeng (recommended by RidgewayGirl)
The Thing in the Snow by Sean Adams (recommended on Litsy by batsy)
Wilding by Isabella Tree (recommended on Litsy by Naturalitsy)
My Heart by Semezdin Mehmedinović (recommended by AnnieMod)
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (recommended by japaul22)

2022 Stats

Books read: 78
total pages read: 19226 (excludes graphic novels with no page numbers)
ave. # pages: 279

1001-list-books: 9 (12%)
Female Authors: 43 (55%)
In Translation: 25 (32%)
Non-fiction: 6

Pre-1800: 1
1800s: 4
1900-1949: 2
1950-1999: 24
2000s: 47

Libe books: 38 (49%)
Owned-pre-2022: 36 (46%)
Bought & read: 4 (5%)

New-acquisitions in 2022: 51

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2023 Goals

At least 60% of books from the owned-tbr
At least 51% of books published before 2000
At least 33% of books written by women or poc
At least 33% of books translated into English
At least 33% of 1001 list books
Read at least 6 non-fiction books

Greenland: Last Night in Nuuk
Canada
USA: Lessons in Chemistry

Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas: If I Had the Wings
Barbados: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
Bermuda: The Drowned Forest
Cuba: Firefly
Dominica: The Orchid House
Dominican Republic: Tentacle
Grenada: Tell No-One About This
Guadeloupe: The Restless
Haiti: Masters of the Dew
Jamaica: Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories
Martinique: Texaco
Saint Kitts and Nevis: A State of Independence
Saint Lucia: A Room on the Hill
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago: The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

Belize: Beka Lamb
Costa Rica: There Never Was a Once Upon a Time
El Salvador: The She-Devil in the Mirror
Guatemala: The Inhabited Woman
Honduras
Mexico: On Lighthouses
Nicaragua: Family Album
Panama: The Shadow: Thirteen Stories in Opposition

Argentina: Elena Knows, Optic Nerve, Hopscotch
Bolivia: Affectations
Brazil
Chile: Navidad & Matanza
Colombia: Salt Crystals
Ecuador
Guyana: The Guyana Quartet
Paraguay
Peru: Broad and Alien is the World
Suriname
Uruguay: The Ship of Fools
Venezuela

Food and Lit 2023



Possibilities:

Uganda: Kintu, Abyssinian Chronicles, Tropical Fish: Stories Out Of Entebbe
Dominican Republic: Tentacle
Syria: The Silence and the Roar, Roundabout of Death, The Frightened Ones
Thailand: Bright
Paraguay: I, the Supreme (DNF)
Australia: The Tree of Man
Hungary:
Costa Rica:
China:
Nigeria:
Chile:
Sweden:

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Cookbooks:

1920: Women in Love
1921: Life of Christ
1922: Babbitt
1923: Whose Body?, The Fox
1924: The Home-Maker, Skylark
1925: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1926: The Castle
1927: Amerika
1928: Parade's End
1929: The Time of Indifference
1930: Insatiability
1931: Castle Gripsholm, Memories : from Moscow to the Black Sea
1932: The Return of Philip Latinowicz
1933: Testament of Youth
1934: The Bells of Basel, A Handful of Dust
1935: The House in Paris
1936: The Thinking Reed
1937: The Years, Ghosts
1938: After the Death of Don Juan
1939: At Swim-Two-Birds
1940: The Pilgrim Hawk, Mariana
1941: Between the Acts
1942: The Seventh Cross
1943: The Glass Bead Game
1944: Masters of the Dew, Kaputt, Murder After Christmas
1945: The Folded Leaf, Apartment in Athens, Monsieur Monde Vanishes
1946: Temptation, The President
1947: Mood Indigo
1948: All About H. Hatterr
1949: Confessions of a Mask
1950: The Abbot C
1951: The Opposing Shore
1952: All Our Yesterdays, The Price of Salt, Stalingrad
1953: The Hothouse
1954: Death in Rome, The Mandarins
1955: A World of Love
1956: Zama, A Legacy
1957: The Deadbeats
1958: The Bitter Glass
1959: Naked Lunch, Billiards at Half-Past Nine
1960: The Winners
1961: No Fond Return of Love, Totempole
1962: Time of Silence
1963: Dog Years
1964: Sometimes a Great Notion, The Silentiary
1965: August is a Wicked Month
1966: Marks of Identity, The Birds Fall Down, Death and the Dervish
1967: The Manor
1968: Myra Breckinridge, The German Lesson, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
1969: Ada, or Ardor, A Void
1970: Abigail
1971: Group Portrait With Lady
1972: The Mad and the Bad
1973: Gravity's Rainbow
1974: Oreo, Winter in the Blood, The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe
1975: W, or the Memory of Childhood
1976: Patterns of Childhood
1977: The Passion of New Eve
1978: Life: A User's Manual
1979: Fool's Gold
1980: Smell of Sadness
1981: Lanark: A Life in Four Books
1982: Baltasar and Blimunda
1983: Fado Alexandrino, The Sorrow of Belgium
1984: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Larva: Midsummer Night's Babel
1985: Lonesome Dove
1986: Extinction
1987: The Radiant Way, The Enigma of Arrival
1988: English, August: An Indian Story
1989: The Snows of Yesteryear
1990: Stone Junction
1991: The Laws
1992: Triple Mirror of the Self, The Discovery of Heaven
1993: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll
1994: The Life of Insects
1995: The Unconsoled
1996: Ivory Pearl
1997: Bibliolepsy
1998: Another World, The Heretic
1999: The Romantics, Everything You Need, The Ground Beneath Her Feet
2000: Celestial Harmonies
2001: Blonde, Don't Move, Schooling
2002: In the Forest, Bright
2003: The Colour
2004: 2666, The Silence and the Roar
2005: The Icarus Girl
2006: All for Nothing
2007: Elena Knows
2008: Visitation
2009: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Little Reunions
2010: Freedom
2011: Sand
2012: Our Lady of the Nile
2013: A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, The Factory
2014: H is for Hawk
2015: The Story of the Lost Child Tentacle
2016: Where the Wild Ladies Are, The Dry
2017: Home Fire
2018: Saudade
2019: Breasts and Eggs
2020: Interior Chinatown
2021: No One Is Talking About This
2022: Either/Or
2023:
2024:
2025:

52 Reading Prompts
This is a compilation of two different 52-books challenges from two goodreads groups -- Around the Year in 52 Books and The 52 Book Club
I will attempt to fill in about 26 prompts.

1. A book set in a location that begins with A, T, or Y: Cold Enough for Snow (Tokyo)
2. A book by an author you read in 2022: The Sandman: Vol. 11, Endless Nights
3. A book with a subtitle
4. A book with an interracial relationship: Future Home of the Living God
5. A book that is under 200 pages: The She-Devil in the Mirror

6. A book where books are important
7. A book with ONE of the five "W" question words in the title
8. An author's debut book Kintu
9. A book nominated for an award beginning with W

10. Takes place during the roaring twenties
11. A book about a person/character with a disability: Elena Knows
12. A book about secrets: A World of Love
13. A city or country name in the title

14. A book by a Caribbean author: Salt Crystals
15. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 1
16. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 2: Dog Years
17. Three books, each of which is set in a different century: Book 3: My Volcano

18. A book related to science: Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm
19. A book related to the arts: The Hidden Palace
20. A book set during a war other than WWI or WWII
21. A book by an Asian diaspora author
22. A book about siblings

23. A book with a body of water in the title
24. A book that has an epilogue
25. A book with a tropical setting: The Restless
26. A book related to pride

27. A book by an author from continental Europe
28. A book that is dark
29. A book that is light
30. A book set in a workplace
31. A book found by inputting a favorite author on https://www.literature-map.com

32. A book set in a UNESCO City of Literature
33. A book by an author with a first name popular in 1923
34. A book you meant to read last year
35. A book with a school subject in the title

36. A book that has been translated from another language
37. A book with the theme of returning home
38. A book that is the final book in a series
39. A banned book

40. A book with a full name in the title
41. A book from the NPR “Books We Love” lists
42. A book with a character who is a refugee
43. A book that involves a murder
44. A book “everyone” has read

45. A book whose author has published more than 7 books
46. A book with a time word in the title
47. A book related to a geometric shape
48. A book featuring mythology

49. A book that doesn’t fit any of the other 51 prompts
50. A second book that fits your favorite prompt
51. A book published in 2023
52. A book with an unusual or surprising title

First Quarter Reading Ideas:

January:
Real-life book club: An Exquisite Corpse
ReadingtheAmericas: The She-Devil in the Mirror*, Navidad & Matanza*, The Silentiary
FoodandLit: Kintu*
LT 1001 Book: Chess Story
BookSpin: An Exquisite Corpse, The She-Devil in the Mirror*
AuldLangSpine: Cold Enough for Snow, The Custom of the Country, Lessons in Chemistry, The Pumpkin Eater*
192025: Dog Years, The Colour, The Story of the Lost Child
Baltic Sea: Dog Years

February:
Real-life book club: The Song of the Cell
ReadingtheAmericas: Navidad & Matanza*, The Silentiary*, Tentacle*
FoodandLit: Tentacle*
LT 1001 Book: The Tin Flute
BookSpin: Nana, W, or the Memory of Childhood
192025: In the Forest, Extinction, The Death of Virgil
Baltic Sea: Dog Years

March:
Real-life book club: Fludd
ReadingtheAmericas: Navidad & Matanza*, The Silentiary*, The House of Broken Angels*
FoodandLit:
LT 1001 Book: The Talented Mr. Ripley
BookSpin: A World of Love, The Silentiary*
192025: A World of Love, Extinction, The Death of Virgil
Baltic Sea: Dog Years, The People of Hemsö, High Tide, The Manor

Second Quarter Reading Ideas:

April:
Real-life book club: Ink From the Pen
ReadingtheAmericas: The House of Broken Angels*, The Restless*
FoodandLit: Bright*
LT 1001 Book: The Year of the Hare
BookSpin: Dog Years, The House of Broken Angels*
192025: The Manor, Billiards at Half-Past Nine

May:
Real-life book club: The Hidden Palace
ReadingtheAmericas: Salt Crystals*, Cantoras*
FoodandLit: I, the Supreme
LT 1001 Book: The Sea
BookSpin: Clarissa, Queer
192025: The Time of Indifference, The Thinking Reed, Abigail

June:
Real-life book club: The Myth of Artificial Intelligence
ReadingtheAmericas: The Restless*, Cantoras*
FoodandLit: The Tree of Man
LT 1001 Book:
BookSpin: The Tree of Man, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
192025: After the Death of Don Juan, All About H. Hatterr, Amerika, The Passion of New Eve, The Romantics

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Key:
strike through book linked - A book I read this year
strike through - A book I have read before and don't plan to reread
book linked - A book I am thinking of reading for the relevant group/challenge/theme
book title - A book that I haven't read and currently don't plan to read
* - A book I own (paper copy)

spare

Happy New Year, Liz. I look forward to following your reading this year. I hope 2023 is a good one for you. You did great reading in translation. I need to go back and look at my stats, but I would say it's probably around 10%.

Hi, Liz, happy new year. That's a prodigious amount of reading you do.

>10 BLBera: Thanks, Happy New Year to you as well. The fun and challenge is that my main reading goals are opposed -- finish the 100 List (weighted heavily towards English-language, male-authored books) and read more global perspectives.

>11 LolaWalser: Happy New Year and thanks for stopping by. I do like making big plans that I can't possibly complete -- it gives me the freedom to read what I want and still cross items off the lists.

I love, love, love your lists. Whenever you don't want to write a review, just post another list!

Happy 2023! I also struggle to write reviews and therefore put them off and then don't write any at all. This year I am going to start off simply recording my overall impression (hopefully a bit more than loved it/hated it/meh) and see how it goes.

Mmmmm lovely lists! And as I said over on my thread just now, I really hope you post brunch updates and New York pics.

Nice book buying. I have The Women of Troy here to read as well - I loved The Silence of the Girls and her Regeneration trilogy.

Happy New Year! Happy to have found your thread. Let me just add Women of Troy to the wishlist…I too loved The Silence of the Girls and didn’t know about this one.

ETA that when I went to put a library e-book hold, it was available so I borrowed it - thanks for sorting out my next read!

>14 rhian_of_oz: I hope you find a method that works for you!

>15 cushlareads: I'll see what I can do - brunch and NYC are routine for me, so it's hard to think of it as photographic. :)

>16 rachbxl: Happy to help!

>15 cushlareads: >17 ELiz_M: I really enjoyed our brunch at the "soul" restaurant (forget name) when I was in NYC in April. I'm only sorry I didn't have time to visit a bookstore with you!

Happy New Year Liz. 78 is a lot of books. Great year of reading.

>13 labfs39: Whenever you don't want to write a review, just post another list!

Yes, a great plan! (I promised Lisa a thread of lists. It will show up eventually)

>18 arubabookwoman:, >16 rachbxl: Cheryl's Global Soul is still very much in the brunch rotation! If nothing else I keep going back, hoping someday they'll put the apple-brie omelet back on the menu. It was a lovely day and if you had more time I now have a ridiculous 6-hour walking tour of the the 10 nearest bookstores.....(https://www.litsy.com/web/post/2526745)

>13 labfs39: Oops, didn't mean to overlook you! Hmm, a whole thread of lists -- I could probably manage that except >19 dchaikin: is on it! Hahaha

>19 dchaikin: Thanks, 78 doesn't seem like a lot of books, but looking back some years I read 60 books and some years I read 110 books, so it's about right.

The Sandman: Vol. 10, The Wake by Neil Gaiman, pub. 1996
Finished 1-Jan-2023

Dec. 31st was a gloomy day in NYC and I didn't feel like attempting to cram in the last coupe hundred pages of a chunkster (that I still haven't finished), so I sat down with this volume of The Sandman. The first half, the depictions of the mourning rituals for Dream of the endless fit my mood perfectly. It was lovely to see a coda for so many of the characters from the previous chapters and it is visually stunning. The second half has two stories that seemed completely disconnected (on purpose the main character is one is "disguised") and the last story is about Shakespeare's Tempest.

I think what I love about these graphic novels is the messiness of the stories. Instead of a well-constructed novel or tightly plotted more where every sentence has a purpose and either defines a character or moves the plot forward, these stories have odds and ends that don't go anywhere. For example, early in the series, maybe the third story, we briefly meet "Mad Hettie". And then several stories later, she is mentioned in a conversation between Dream and Death and we learn a tiny bit of what makes her unique. She is one of mourners at the Wake and that's it. We never get her full story and I would have loved for there to be an entire issue devoted to her. So, all these unfinished stories keep tugging at me and I revisit the TV series and the comics, hoping to find more connections and other details that complete the stories.

Oh, and I'm sure each of these graphic novels was probably groundbreaking or pushing the boundaries of the genre, but I don't have enough experience with GN's to know that for certain.

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au, pub. 2022
Finished 2-Jan-2023

This spare novella purportedly details a mother and daughter's week-long vacation in Japan. The trip is meticulously planned by the daughter and she narrates the details of the day interspersed with stories she tells her mother and stories she tells herself. It is autumn, at the edge of typhoon season, and the cool light rain of the setting matches the narration; it all seems underwater somehow.

It is carefully constructed and the stories/memories seem prompted by events of the travel, but each touches on the daughters desire for connection, to be known as who she really is. The daughter muses on cultural heritage and inherited traits -- how one is not entirely themselves. But it also about how completely unknowable another person is. Her mother, an emigrant from Hong Kong to Australia, whose first language is Cantonese while the daughter's first language is English.

It felt like a novel that should lend itself to quotes, but the writing is so fluid that I am not sure I could have taken a single sentence or thought out of the context of the whole. Also, the narration was too cold and told with too much distance to make an emotional impact. Another book that fit a quiet mood induced by rainy weather.

I love that idea of reading a book from each year back to 1920! How did the person who set it up pick that date range (1920-2025), do you know?

Thinking about trying something similar.

>22 ELiz_M: great review. New title to me. I peaked at the work page and saw it won the “Novel” prize - a new prize i hadn’t heard of. ( https://www.thenovelprize.com/ )

Happy New Year! I look forward to following your thread this year :-)

>25 dchaikin: well, it is a novel (ha!) prize -- CEfS was the inaugural winner.

>26 Dilara86: thank you for stopping by!

>27 ELiz_M: Seems like a terrible and confusing prize name. 🙂

>23 japaul22: So, the problem with reading on the phone is I hate typing on it and then when I have a proper keyboard, the post isn't new so I forget to respond to it...

I believe the 192025 challenge is an extension of her previous year's challenge to read a book for each of her 40 years (19822022). And, this is conjecture, but I suspect 1920 was chosen because it ends in 20 and 2025 because she expects it to take three years to complete. :)

>28 dchaikin: Quite.

>29 ELiz_M: I have the exact same problem! Thanks for the explanation.

ETA - I think it would be really neat to have a spreadsheet of my favorite book from each publication year. I think I'll work on that. Different parameters than above, but definitely sparked the idea.

Happy new year, Liz!

I've starred your thread and look forward to following your reading for another year (and maybe meeting up again?!?!).

>22 ELiz_M: I've been wanting to read Cold Enough for Snow, since the description made me think of the trips my mom and I used to take together. Sounds like a real specific-mood book, from your review, so I'll take that into account.

>22 ELiz_M: Interesting comments, Liz. This sounds like one I might like.

Just dropping a star, Liz. I’ll be following along.

Hi Liz, following you anywhere :-)

Well, back at work and therefore having trouble keeping up.

>31 katiekrug: Hello! And thanks for stopping by!

>32 lisapeet: I hope you find a moment of quiet in which to read and enjoy CEfS!

>33 BLBera: Thanks!

>34 NanaCC: It's nice to see you!

>35 Simone2: :)

>22 ELiz_M: I read this one last year, agree with your thoughts. It's more meditation than novel, not that that's a bad thing.

Happy New Year, Liz. Still crawling my way around all the new threads...

>37 ursula: >38 AlisonY: Hello! Thanks for stopping by.

Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, pub. 2001
Finished 5-Jan-2023

This is a book where the review needs a preface, caveats.

I Knew very little about Norma Jean/Marilyn Monroe, other than what has percolated through popular culture. I haven;t seen any of her movies, haven't read anything about her or her contemporaries, didn't know most of the characters (especially the Hollywood ones) referred to by letter. Basically, I went into this book about as blind as one could. And throughout the very long time it took to read this, I decided I didn't want to google anything. Bit I also read it over a long period of time, in chunks with many months between, so my comprehension was a little disjointed.

It is a brilliant, impossible work. It is obvious that a lot of research went into this and not necessarily in a bad way. I was impressed how JCO probably took a moment, an event, that was briefly mentioned elsewhere and turned it into an entire chapter of Norma Jean's life. It is a richly detailed creation of her life, focusing on select events shown both through NJ's perspective and also through a chorus of other voices -- sometimes showing the reaction of "the public", sometimes narrating through another figure in NJ's life. The prose is thick, molasses or quicksand thick.

The more I read, the harder it was to read. At first, identifying with NJ, it was difficult to read about the horrific events portrayed, especially knowing the eventual outcome; the wishful thinking of "if only x had been different". But the more I read, the more I struggled with the characterization. The naivete and unworldliness is painful enough when portrayed in a a young woman, but the inner voice remains almost unchanged for the entire book -- through dozens of movies, a relocation to NYC and back, 3-4 major failed relationships, a miscarriage -- throughout it all, this NJ remains naive and increasingly unconnected to reality.

As hinted at above, the book is not straight-forward. While it is a mostly chronological tale of selected/rearranged/invented/conflated events, it does open with a scene from August 1962, shortly before her death. This scene is repeated, probably word-for-word near the end of the book (which, for me, reading almost a year later was a weird déjà vu moment!). Realistic moments are interspersed with passages in italics -- sometimes representing the reactions of strangers, the public, or the inner voice of NJ or another character. This structure begins to break down as the end of approaches. It is no longer clear if the narration is depicting reality or NJ/MM's hallucinations.

JCO did such an excellent job re-mythicizing Marilyn Monroe, that she never seemed real. And maybe that was the point.

That's a great review!, but omg HOW did you not see any of Marilyn's movies? How does that happen?? No Some Like It Hot, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Seven Year Itch, The Misfits...? WOW. Do you not like cinema generally? Sorry if it's too inquisitive!

I'm guessing you did see clips or images of her--no one can escape that--but I don't know whether one can understand what people saw in her without seeing what they saw of her.

I just watched Some like it hot again recently (the Criterion edition, for the extras), and I don't count myself a fan (although definitely not a hater), but there's just no missing her charm, truly the sheer magic she projected.

I had to quit listening to the commentary (recorded in 1989 and way too awful for our times).

I'm pretty sure I've never seen a MM movie either. Just clips and, well, Warhol.

Terrific review Liz. Sound like it took some perseverance.

>40 ELiz_M: What I've heard of the book fascinates and turns me off in equal measure. I may give it a shot someday, though, because the fascinating part sounds really different from a lot of other biographical historical fiction (I feel like there's an actual term for that but I'm all out of words at the moment).

>41 LolaWalser: I'm a heathen and don't often enjoy watching movies/TV made prior to the 1980s. I can't get past the outdated technology and the different acting techniques. The book did raise my interest in Bus Stop and The Misfits though. I suppose I prefer movies to cinema -- I watch movies as a form of "comfort food", where I know the outcome: they live happily ever after, good triumphs over evil, etc.

>42 dchaikin: Thank you.

>43 lisapeet: It is a magnetic book -- fascinating and repelling in equal measures.

>42 dchaikin:

Wha!

>44 ELiz_M:

I wish I could have you guys over for dinner and a viewing seminar on Marilyn. :)

Well, Liz, I suspect knowing about her life casts a shadow on everything (I couldn't help picking up bits of info but never cared to really delve), but fwiw she starred mostly in light comedies with happy ends. If I had to pick one film only to recommend, it would be Some like it hot--everybody talks about how difficult she was on that production, but you'd never guess it from the result.

Regarding datedness, yeah, I guess if you're not used to old movies lots of things could grate. Oh well! Books are better anyway!

>40 ELiz_M: Enjoyed your excellent review of Blonde a book that I struggled to read.

>40 ELiz_M: Excellent review, Liz. I read Blonde after reading Marilyn by Gloria Steinem. Steinem’s book was factual and in my review I said that she had handled Marilyn with kid gloves, whereas JCO showed her spinning out of control and let everything hang out. I’ve seen a few of her movies, but long long ago.

>45 LolaWalser: That would be entertaining; I can almost always be bribed with a promise of good food! :)

>46 baswood:, >47 NanaCC: Thank you! It's a pleasure seeing you both here.

An Exquisite Corpse by Helen A. Harrison, pub. 2016
Finished 7-Jan-2023

This novel takes place in 1940s NYC, on the cusp of it's becoming the art center of the world, no small thanks in part to the many Surrealist artists fleeing Nazism and the war in Europe. The title, and some crucial events of the novel, derive from a game played by Surrealists in which each participant takes turns writing or drawing on a sheet of paper, folding it to conceal his or her contribution, and then passing it to the next player, creating a bizarre composition.

The victim was a real-life well-know Black Cuban/Chinese artist (whose name I no longer remember) chosen because he was not in NYC at the time and because it allowed the author to "explore" distinct parts of the city -- to take some characters up to Spanish Harlem and also to Chinatown, where she could provide cardboard cutouts as local color.

The various plot lines of this 300-page book:
1) The artist that found the body
2) an illegal money-making scheme of some of the artists
3) the original killer
4) the romance between the downtown Irish cop and the Uptown Puerto Rican cop
5) a visit to a Santería practitioner
6) a visit to the head of a Spanish Harlem gang
7) a visit to the head of a Chinese tong
8) a friend of the victim that becomes a prime suspect
9) the tacked on twist suggested by the publisher

I an not a fan of "whodunit" books and I suspect this is an even more plodding example than usual. In many places the author mistakes a list of facts/directions as plot: I had to go see so-and-so. I left ## Street took a right on XY Street walked two blocks, then turned left on # Ave....

It was a chosen by my bookclub because a member is friends with the author. She wrote it over many years as a series of anecdotes and at some point realized she had a mystery. It was originally self-published, but after getting a book deal it was republished with a different ending.

Despite all of the above, it's not an entirely bad book. I did enjoy the setting, the name checking of the many artists, the multi-narrator structure of the story, and the central mystery/original murder.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, pub. 2022
Finished 14-Jan-2023

I saw many positive reviews of this book on Litsy and some lovely book design associated with it. I was looking forward to reading it. But being contrarian (and apparently in grumpy review mode) this is an Oreo book. Utterly artificial and over-processed junk food that I love while eating but generally end up with a stomach ache afterwards.

It is a witty and engaging book, snappy dialogue. At first it is fabulous to have an incredibly intelligent woman that doesn't take crap from anyone as a narrator. Except, of course, as a female chemist in the 1960s she is getting crap from everyone and no amount of sass or smartness is going to solve those problems.The situations in which Elizabeth Zott finds herself in, while all too present in the world, seem ridiculous and exaggerated due to the simplistic representation. Everything is supposed to be light! and funny!

At first glance, it is enjoyable to share in the other character's flabbergasted and ineffectual reaction to Zott's emotionless response to misogyny and tragedy, but after a while it gets boring. And of course the family dog is also one of the narrators. And of course it is a very intelligent dog whose inner narration is almost exactly the same voice as all the other narrators. Also there are a decades-worth of soap opera coincidences that have both led the main character into her untenable existence and the untangling of which lead to the absurd conclusion.

It is wish-fulfillemt, with a touch of magical realism, on an undercurrent of absurd events. This was basically a terrible mismatch of expectations. I wanted Stand and Deliver but I was reading Legally Blonde.

>49 ELiz_M: Only two stars - that might prove a problem when you discuss it at your book club.

>50 ELiz_M: fun review and love your oreo book characterization. This gets good reviews from literary readers and professional reviewers. It’s on the NYTimes 100 books of 2022 list. So i’ve been toying with maybe reading it too. But I don’t want an oreo book that checks off issue of the moment.

>51 baswood: Or might make it more fun

>51 baswood: >53 labfs39: I'm with Labs. A discussion where everyone agrees and loves the book is boring! Not to mention pretty short. :)

>51 baswood:, >53 labfs39:, >54 Julie_in_the_Library: Our bookclub meetings are now hybrid zoom/in-person and the author was on zoom, so I kept mostly quiet. I did ask if she preferred writing the real people, with all the constraints that implies, or the fictional characters.

>52 dchaikin: I know I'm in the minority, and like I said I mostly enjoyed reading it. But when thinking about it afterwards I wasn't comfortable with the mismatch between the light tone and the many misogynistic events.

The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya , pub. 2000
Finished 19-Jan-2023

The narrator's best friend, Olga María, was found dead on the living room floor, supposedly killed during a robbery. The subsequent events a presented through a series of monologues delivered by the narrator, another member of San Salvador's wealthy elite.

It is an impressive authorial feat -- the voice is perfectly crafted. I loved her tirades about the police investigation attempting to besmirch Olga Maria's impeccable reputation all the while telling her listen that she would never tarnish her friend's name by revealing the Olga María's extramarital affairs, all the while exposing the exact details, interspersed with barbed comments about Olga María's husband, lovers, family members and occasional snotty remarks about the improprieties at the wake, funeral, whatever bar/restaurant she happens to be in....

Given the title and the structure of the narrative, I was of course expecting, and hoping for, a particular twist. Instead, the author provided an even more unsettling one.

>56 ELiz_M: This sounds great, Liz.

Great comments on Blonde; like Lisa, I've never been attracted to the book, but your comments make it sound intriguing.

I enjoyed Lessons in Chemistry more than you did, but I am closer in age than you are to the protagonist, and I was in the mood for a lighter book when I read it.

>56 ELiz_M: I read and liked Senselessness by Castellanos Moya several years ago, and shortly after purchased She Devil in the Mirror. Sounds like I should get to it sooner rather than later.

>57 BLBera:, >58 arubabookwoman: You'll know within a few pages if it's a book for you. If you don't like the narrator's sly, gossipy voice you probably won't like the book.

>57 BLBera: Most people liked LiC better than me! :)

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich, pub. 2017
Finished 24-Jan-2023

In Minnesota in the near future, 26 year old Cedar Hawk Songwriter is pregnant. It is the tail end of a personal crises as she is throwing off her adoptive parents' white liberalism, hasn't had the nerve to contact her native family, and instead took up Catholicism in order to find a place of belonging. Her pregnancy and the beginnings of a rather sudden impending genetic catastrophe requires her to draw on all three of these spheres in order to survive.

The novel is structured as a journal with entries addressed tot he unborn child, restricting our knowledge of the world to only what Cedar knows and experiences. The result is an undefined apocalypse. Post Covid, it thought the vagueness and the confusion around events was realistic. The sudden "reversal of evolution" was a little harder to accept. In any case, society quickly falls apart and quasi government/militia/religious organizations form, controlling distribution of resources, including (of course) pregnant women and eventually women of child-bearing age.

The pacing is a bit odd. The first section is understandably a little slower, establishing the apocalyptic scenario as Cedars world diminishes to what is seen from the window and rumors brought home by her lover. Tension is slow to build as it trickles through these outside sources. The second section, with a more limited setting, is focused on one main thread and much better paced. It also allows for a little more character building an d allows Erdrich to ratchet up the tension to a vivid climax. This leaves the third section to be anti-climatic. An odd interlude that feels a little disjointed, requiring Cedar to marvel at how much a character introduced in the first section has radically changed character. And while the conclusion does feel inevitable, the description of how Cedar gets there seems to contradict the description of the place she was in.

The above is mostly a long, vague preamble to the problem of this novel, as acknowledged by Erdrich in interviews. The story was begun in 2002 and then set aside for many years. Around the 2016 election, Erdrich returned to the manuscript, reworking it and cutting 200 pages. According to the NY Times, "Erdrich said she feels “shock” at the speed with which it was rushed into print..." I wish she had been allowed to take a little more time with it.

January review

I read 9 books:

6 (67%) = At least 60% of books from the owned-tbr
1 (11%) = At least 51% of books published before 2000
6 (67%) = At least 33% of books written by women or poc
1 (11%) = At least 33% of books translated into English
1 (11%) = At least 33% of 1001 list books
1 = Read at least 6 non-fiction books

Clearly, I need to read a bunch of older 1001-books not originally written in English.

Challenge accepted, next up: W, or The Memory of Childhood and Nana.

>40 ELiz_M: >41 LolaWalser: omg HOW did you not see any of Marilyn's movies?
I'm almost certain I've never seen any either. I expect I'd remember? Maybe now that everything's streamable I'll remedy this gap in my cultural education.