dchaikin part 3 - where will I go after Chaucer?

I've finished The Canterbury Tales which wraps up Chaucer for me. I'm a little sad about this. Of course, I have more medieval plans along the way. But I'll miss Chaucer as much, I think, as I miss Dante, and those classic Greek playwrights. But, here's to moving on.

Currently Reading


Currently Listening to

My themes through the years, including 2024
Themes
2012 - old testament
2013 - old testament and Toni Morrison
2014 - old testament
2015 - old testament, Toni Morrison & Cormac McCarthy
2016 - Homer, Greek mythology, Greek drama, & Thomas Pynchon
2017 - Virgil, Ovid & Thomas Pynchon
2018 - Apocrypha, New Testament & Gabriel García Márquez
2019 - Rome to the Renaissance & James Baldwin & Willa Cather and Shakespeare
2020 – Dante, Nabokov, Willa Cather, Shakespeare
2021 - Petrarch, Vladimir Nabokov, Willa Cather, Shakespeare, the Booker longlists, 2020 & 2021 - added Edith Wharton
2022 – Boccaccio, Robert Musil, Wharton, Shakespeare, Anniversaries, the Booker longlists, 2021 & 2022
2023 – Chaucer, Richard Wright, Wharton, Booker longlists 2022 & 2023, Naturalisty
2024 – Chaucer and medieval stuff, Faulkner, Wharton, Booker longlists

Read in 2024

Part 1 books - links go to the review on my part 1 thread

1. **** Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner (1926) (read Jan 1-7, theme: Faulkner)
2. *** Taft by Ann Patchett, read by J. D. Jackson (listened Dec 18 – Jan 10, theme: random audio)
3. **** How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (read Jan 7-14, theme: Booker 2023)
4. **** The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis, read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen (listened Jan 18-22, theme: random audio)
5. **** Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante (read Jan 14-28, theme: TBR)
6. **** Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim, read by Cindy Kay (listened Jan 17 – Feb 1, theme: random audio)
7. ***½ Mosquitoes by William Faulkner (read Jan 21 – Feb 7, theme: Faulkner)

Part 2 books - links go to the review on my part 2 thread

8. **** The Mother’s Recompense by Edith Wharton (read Feb 7-19, theme: Wharton)
9. **** Pearl by Siân Hughes (read Feb 14-22, theme: Booker 2023)
10. **** Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time edited by Earl Rovit and Arthur Waldhorn (read Feb 18-25, theme: Faulkner)
11. ***** White Teeth by Zadie Smith, read by Lenny Henry, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ray Panthaki & Arya Sagar (listened Feb 1-26, theme: random audio)
12. ***½ Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively (read Feb 23-29; theme: TBR)
13. **** The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge (read Mar 9, theme: Wharton)
14. **** Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner (read Mar 1-15, theme: Faulkner)
15. ****½ How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair, read by the author (listened Feb 26 – Mar 21, theme: random audio)
16. ***½ A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare (read Mar 23-26, theme: Booker 2024)
17. **** The Details by Ia Genberg (read Mar 29-30, theme: Booker 2024)
18. **** Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton (read Mar 16 – Apr 3, theme: Wharton)
19. **** Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, read by Lisa Flanagan (listened Mar 21 – Apr 5, theme: Booker 2024)
20. ***** Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein (read Mar 30 – Apr 6, theme: Booker 2023)
21. ***½ The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov (read Apr 7-13, theme: Booker 2024)
22. ***½ A Brief History of Japan: Samurai, Shogun and Zen: The Extraordinary Story of the Land of the Rising Sun by Jonathan Clements, read by Julian Elfer (listened Apr 7-16, theme: random audio)
23. **** Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (read Apr 13-19, theme: Booker 2024)

Part 3 books - links will go to the review on this thread

24. ***** The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (read Dec 30, 2023 – Apr 27, 2024, theme: Chaucer)
25. ***** The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (read Apr 20-29, theme: Faulkner)
26. ***½ Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo, read by Carlotta Brentan (listened Apr 24-30, theme: Booker 2024)
27. ***** Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (read Apr 29 – May 3, theme: Booker 2023)
28. **** Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (read May 5-8, theme: Booker 2024)
29. *** The Children by Edith Wharton (read Apr 21 – May 14, theme: Wharton)
30. ****½ A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel, narrated by a cast (listened Apr 16 - May 15, Theme: random audio)
31. **** Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle, translated by Sarah Roche-Mahdi (read May 1-17, theme: Chaucer)
32. **** Asphodel by H.D. (read May 3-23, theme: TBR)
33. ****¼ The Years by Annie Ernaux (read May 17-25, theme: TBR)
34. ***** As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (read May 25-27, theme: Faulkner)
35. *** Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (read May 27-31, theme: none)
36. ***** The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, preface by Hermione Lee, Introduction by Candia McWilliam (read Jun 1-5, theme: Booker)
37. *** Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange (read Jun 5-14, theme: none)
38. **** Pearl : A New Verse Translation by Marie Borroff (read Jun 2-15, theme: Chaucer)
39. **** Eric by Terry Pratchett (read Jun 14-16, theme: TBR)
40. **** Sanctuary by William Faulkner (read Jun 16-23, theme: Faulkner)
41. ***½ Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips (read Jun 24-29, theme: none)
42. **** Not a River by Selva Almada (read Jun 29-30, theme: Booker 2024)
43. **** Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage (read Jun 16 – Jul 3, theme: Chaucer)
44. **** Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz (read Jul 4-19)

Read in 2024, listed by year published
(links are touchstones)

~1250 Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle
~1390
Pearl
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
1400 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
1925 The Mother’s Recompense by Edith Wharton
1926
Soldiers' Pay by William Faulkner
Asphodel by H.D. (published 1992)
1927
Mosquitoes by William Faulkner
Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton
1928 The Children by Edith Wharton
1929
Flags in the Dust by William Faulkner (complete version: 1973)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
1930 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
1931 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
1957 Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
1983 The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis
1990 Eric by Terry Pratchett
1994 Taft by Ann Patchett
1995 The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
2000 White Teeth by Zadie Smith
2004 Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan
2005 Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time edited by Earl Rovit and Arthur Waldhorn
2008 The Years by Annie Ernaux
2010 The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
2013 Ammonites and Leaping Fish: A Life in Time by Penelope Lively
2017 A Brief History of Japan by Jonathan Clements
2018 Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior
2020
The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov
Not a River by Selva Almada
2021
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener
2022
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare
The Details by Ia Genberg
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo
Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by Kathryn Schulz
2023
How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
Pearl by Siân Hughes
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
2024
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

my list again, as a quilt

books read this year


books listened to this year

Some stats:

2024
Books read: 44
Pages: 8812 ( 330 hrs )
Audio time: 100 hrs
Formats: paperback 17; hardcover 11; audio 9; ebooks 7;
Subjects in brief: Novels 30; Classic 12; Non-fiction 10; Memoir 8; Autofiction 5; On Literature and Books 3; History 3; Poetry 3; Essays 3; Biography 1; Young Adult 1; Mystery 1; Short Stories 1; Fantasy 1;
Nationalities: United States 17; England 10; Italy 2; France 2; Ireland 1; South Korea 1; Jamaica 1; Albania 1; Sweden 1; Germany 1; Canada 1; Ukraine 1; Brazil 1; Peru 1; India 1; Argentina 1;
Books in translation: 14
Genders, m/f: 16/25, unknown 3;
Owner: books I own 33; Library books 9; audible loan 2;
Re-reads: 0
Year Published: 2020’s 17; 2010’s 4; 2000’s 4; 1990’s 3; 1980’s 1; 1950’s 1; 1930’s 2; 1920’s 8; 1400’s 1; 1300’s 2; 1200’s 1;
TBR numbers: +10 (acquired 41, read from tbr 31)

All stats - since I started keeping track in December of 1990
Books read: 1364
Formats: Paperback 696; Hardcover 280; Audio 224; ebooks 126; Lit magazines 38
Subjects in brief: Non-fiction 523; Novels 463; Biographies/Memoirs 233; Classics 219; History 198; Religion/Mythology/Philosophy 138; Poetry 104; Journalism 98; Science 96; Ancient 76; On Literature and Books 72; Speculative Fiction 70; Nature 68; Essay Collections 55; Short Story Collections 51; Drama 48; Anthologies 47; Graphic 46; Juvenile/YA 35; Visual Arts 28; Mystery/Thriller 16; Interviews 15
Nationalities: US 754; Other English-language countries: 304; Other: 299
Books in translation: 238
Genders, m/f: 840/421
Owner: Books I owned 987; Library books 294; Books I borrowed 72; Online 10;
Re-reads: 27
Year Published: 2020’s 83; 2010's 280; 2000's 294; 1990's 185; 1980's 124; 1970's 62; 1960's 55; 1950's 36; 1900-1949 94; 19th century 21; 16th-18th centuries 38; 13th-15th centuries 17; 0-1199 21; BCE 55
TBR: 662

Recent milestones: 400th book by a female author

links to all my old threads:

2009 Part 1, 2009 Part 2, 2010 Part 1, 2010 Part 2, 2011 Part 1, 2011 Part 2, 2012 Part 1, 2012 Part 2, 2013 Part 1, 2013 Part 2, 2013 Part 3, 2014 Part 1, 2014 Part 2, 2014 Part 3, 2015 Part 1, 2015 Part 2, 2015 Part 3, 2016 Part 1, 2016 Part 2, 2016 Part 3, 2017 Part 1, 2017 Part 2, 2018 part 1, 2018 part 2, 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2, 2019 part 3, 2020 part 1, 2020 part 2, 2020 part 3, 2021 part 1, 2021 part 2, 2021 part 3, 2022 part 1, 2022 part 2, 2022 part 3, 2022 part 4, 2023 part 1, 2023 part 2, 2023 part 3, 2023 part 4, 2024 part 1, 2024 part 2

I adore your stats!

24. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
edition: Broadview Editions, Second Edition, edited by Robert Boenig & Andrew Taylor (2012)
OPD: 1400
format: 503-page large paperback
acquired: April read: Dec 30, 2023 – Apr 27, 2024 time reading: 62:07, 7.4 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Middle English Poetry theme: Chaucer
locations: on the road from London to Canterbury
about the author: Chaucer (~1342 – October 25, 1400) was an English poet and civil servant.

Appendix - short excerpts from each of these
- Saint Jerome, Against Jovinian (ce 400)
- Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (ce 524)
- William Thorpe's Testimony on Pilgrimages (1407)
- Benedict of Canterbury, The Miracles of St. Thomas Becket (1170s)
- The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (1395)
      --> (Recorded by Dominican friar Roger Dymock for Richard II, when writing against them)
- Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose (1275)
      --> False Seeming & The Old Woman
- William Langland, Piers Plowman (1360s-80s)
      --> The Fair Field of Folk & The Friar
- Guillaume de Machaut The Judgment of the King of Navarre (1351)
      --> The Plague
- Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (1353)
      --> The Black Death & Patient Griselda
- Jean Froissart, Chronicles (1400)
      --> The Black Death, Flagellants and Jews (1349), The Campaign of 1359, The Peasants' Revolt in England (1381), The Election of Henry IV (1399)
- The Anonimalle Chronicle, anonymous (1396-99)
      --> The Rising is Suppressed
- A Model Indulgence (1300)
- Rudolph of Schlettstadt, The Host and Libels against the Jews (1303)
- The Remedy against the Troubles of Temptation (late fourteenth century)
      --> An Exemplum about Despair
- The Tale of Beryn (1410-20)
      --> The Pilgrims Arrive at Canterbury and Visit the Shrine

Chaucer is tricky because he’s hard to read and his tales vary so much, they are hard to summarize or classify. There is a Boccaccio element to them, but it’s a very different experience. Like Boccaccio, one thing that stands out is Chaucer’s naughty stories – sex and farts and trickery, money and wealth often playing a central role. The plague also has a role. One of Chaucer's tales is about three youths who hunt for Death because he has killed so many, and tragically find what they’re looking for. But what makes Chaucer most stand out from Boccaccio are the tellers of the tales. In Boccaccio, the ten youths are all of a class and many of them blend together, hard to differentiate. Chaucer’s tale is a social mixture – good and bad, wealthy and common. They are each distinct, wonderfully distinct, so much so that they, the tellers, stand out way more in memory than the tales themselves. These characters come out in the story prologues and there is simply more creativity, more social commentary, more insight into this medieval world than anything the stories themselves can accomplish, no matter how good the stories are. The Merchant’s Tale, my favorite, includes many references and wonderful debate between Hades and Persephone, a battle of the sexes. But it doesn’t touch on the Wife of Bath’s 1000-line prologue on being a wife to five men and all the experiences and judgments and justifications within, it’s not even close. She’s the best, but the Miller comes in early, drunkenly inserting this tale of sex and fart jokes, and bringing the whole level of content down. The Miller says, "I wol now quite the Knightes tale!" The knight has just told a more proper Boccaccio-inspired tale. By "quiting", the Miller means he his giving him some payback, getting back at him. (His tale has thematic consistency, but with common characters, farts and sex.) And the Cook’s tale is so awfully improper that it hasn’t been preserved, or maybe Chaucer only wrote 50 lines. Later, the Cook will throw up and fall off his horse. The Canon’s Yeoman exposes his own canon’s alchemy and trickery, getting fired on the spot before he tells his tale. This is all quite terrific stuff in and of itself, a rowdy uncontrolled mixture of societal levels, and mostly humorous confrontations (notably in a post-plague era of social mobility).

The other thing Chaucer does that Boccaccio doesn’t do in the Decameron, is write in verse. This is special all by itself. If you have read excerpts of Chaucer, there's a fair chance that like me you have been bewildered by it. It’s a weird language, oddly drawn out, then oddly compressed, obscuring the meaning, jamming in a weird accent. It doesn't make for great quotes or easy visits. But if you get deep into it, focus hard on it, something happens. It becomes magical, inimical, and lush in sound and freedom, the random inconsistent spelling as beautiful as the random inconsistent and sometimes heavily obscured phrasing. It also becomes recognizable. The more you read it, the more sense it makes. Although I was never able to scan it. Show me a page of Chaucer, and I’m immediately lost in indecipherable letters. I have to begin to read it and find the flow before it comes to life.

I find it interesting, but not inappropriate, that when Chaucer is discussed, it’s almost always his opening lines that are quoted - Whan that Aprill with hise shoures soote/The droghte of March had perced to the roote/And bathed every veyne in swich liquor/Of which vertu engendered is the flour What’s interesting is that Chaucer really doesn’t write that beautifully anywhere else. His language is generally much tamer and less trying, the rhythm more casual.

Last year I read Troilus and Criseyde and was enraptured in the language. There is no question the language there is better than here. And is drawn out, as he stays with long monologues that go pages and pages, the reader lost in the rhythms. This here is just not quite like that. Yes, he gets carried away a lot. But it’s always a little jerky and bumpy. There are monologues, but these are story telling monologues, with quick-ish plots. While I liked staying in the Merchant’s Tale, the writing clearly elevated and interesting, it was not the same. But T&C is both made and limited by its singular story. The Canterbury Tales expands on its cacophony of voices. The stories for me actually fade. But the prologues leave such lush impressions, they are somehow so real, and charming and Discworld-ish, and uncontained. It’s a much more powerful thing in my head.

As many know, I read this every morning beginning with April’s shoures soote on January 1. And, with the exception of the prose tales, the Tale of Melibee and The Pardoner’s Tale, it was always the best part of my day. The same could be said for T&C last year. I’ll miss being lost in this. A really special experience, and special gift to English speakers and the language's history.

>8 janoorani24: thanks 🙂

Chaucer - take 2 - All 24 stories in a very brief descriptions. This might not be readable...

Fragment 1

1. The Knight's Tale: from Boccaccio’s Teseida, which is based on The Thebiad by Statius (40-96). Palamon and Arcite, two Theban brothers imprisoned in Athens, fall for the same Athenian princess and fight over her.

2. The Miller's Tale: He quites the Knight. John, a rich old carpenter of Oxford has a young wife Alisoun (age 18). His clerk, Nicholas, finds an elaborate way to sleep with here. This has the most famous fart joke. I think this is also from Boccaccio. Note the same theme of two men finagling over a young woman.

3. The Reeve Tale: Two students are cheated by a Miller. But when the Miller must board them, then end up sleeping with his wife and daughter and getting all their stuff back. I think this is also based on a Boccaccio story.

4. The Cook's Tale: In 48 lines we get a womanizing, gambling apprentice cook who is dismissed from his job.

Fragment 2

5. The Man of Law's Tale: How one lady, Custance, left adrift in a boat, converted England to Christianity. Has themes on suffering and spirituality.

Fragment 3

6. The Wife of Bath's Tale: A very long prologue, about 100 lines of difficult but wonderful stuff on good and bad aspects of marriage, or many marriages. The story is about a rapist knight who is saved by old maid and forced to marry her. She turns beautiful after the marry.

7. The Friar's Tale: A court Summoner makes a living by taking money by people who don't want to be summoned to court. He meets the devil and tries to show off to him, but ends up going to hell.

8. The Summoner's Tale: Offended, he quites the Friar with tale of bad Friar who searching for a donationg, gets a fart.

Fragment 4

9. The Clerk's Tale: A take on Boccaccio’s patient Griselda

10. The Merchant's Tale: Boccaccio's cuckold story with pear tree, which itself is based on Persian sources. Despite the lowly sex-theme, it's a very ambitiously written story with classical references, and drawn-out debate over the sexes 0between Hades and his captured wife Persephone.

Fragment 5

11. The Squire's Tale: a story from the court of Ghengis Khan, it devolves into a long sad story by a crow told to Ghengis Khan's daughter with crow, until it's cut off (by the Franklin)

12. The Franklin's Tale: A story of a happy marriage. And squire gets a pledge from the happy wife that if he removes all rocks from Brittany she will marry him. He does it, with magical clerk, but lets her off the hook.

Fragment 6

13. The Physician's Tale: A retelling of Livy's story of father who kills his daughter to keep her from a lustful judge.

14. The Pardoner's Tale: Another long prologue where the Pardoner's tells everyone how awful he is, and how he manipulates everyone to sell is indulgences. His story is of three young men who set out to kill death. They do find him. The plague lies under this tale.

Fragment 7

15. The Shipman's Tale: A monk Duan John uses a loan he doesn't have to pay to sleep with his friend's wife.

16. The Prioress's Tale: An elegant prologue to Mary is followed by an ugly story where Jews murder a faithful Christian boy for no reason.

17. The Tale of St. Tropas: Chaucer is the storyteller. Sir Thopas of Flanders is knight loved by maidens. He is chaste but in love with an elf-queen whom he has seen in a dream. Sir Olifaunt, a giant, tells him to ride off, since the elf-queen is nearby. The host cuts Chaucer off, saying the story is awful.

18. The Tale of Melibee: - Chaucer offers a prose tale instead. This is a story of a woman named Prudences who councils her husband on how to respond to the attack on his daughter, using wisdom and classical references. It's long and dull.

19. The Monk's Tale: A collection of short tragedies

20. The Nun's Priest's Tale: This is from Marie de France, the Romance of Renard. It's a fable where a cock Chauntecleer, is captured by fox trying to show off to his favorite hen, Pertelote. (Apparently, it's a lot more complex than that, but I missed all that.)

Fragment 8

21. The Second Nun's Tale: This has a prologue with a translation of Dante's prayer to Mary. The story is the martyrdom of St. Cicilia in Rome.

22. The Canon's Yeoman Tale: Another great prologue. The Yeoman meets Chaucer's party and tells of his boss, a Canon who cons people with false alchemy. The Canon rides up after him, fired him and runs away. Then the Yeomen tells his tales of alchemy.

Fragment 9

23. The Manciple's Tale: Here in the prologue the cook throws up and falls off his horse. The story is from Ovid and tells Apollo. A crow informs Apollo his wife is cheating on him. Apollo curses the crow.

Fragment 10:

24 The Parson's Tale: A prose guide to penance. This was 7.5 hours of dull reading for me, and a downer end. I imagine it made Chaucer feel better.

The tales end with Chaucer's retraction

There are 29 members of Chaucer's pilgrimage, but only 22 give tales, plus the Canon's Yeoman who joins them later. The seven who don't give tales are the Knight's Yeoman, the Haberdasher, the Carpenter, the Webbe (weever), the Dyer, the Tapycer (tapestry maker), and the Plowman.

Wow you should be proud of yourself to acheive this goal. Tho I bet its unsettling to finish....now what? Im sure youll find it

>12 cindydavid4: next, a few days off, then Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle

>11 dchaikin: Happy new thread, and congratulations on completing your reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It's a tremendous project, and I have enjoyed following you on the journey and reading your comments. It has been a special experience for you, certainly, but it is so nice that you shared it with all of us as well.

I recently read about this book and thought of you, especially since you found the Wife of Bath so interesting. Marion Turner, a professor of English at Oxford, has written a book about the Wife of Bath specifically, which was published last year by Princeton University Press. It won several awards, and might be of interest (apologies if you've come across it already).

Marion Turner - The Wife of Bath: A Biography

>9 dchaikin: Thanks for your fantastic review, Dan, and congratulations on passing this milestone. It’s such a testimony to Chaucer’s gift to the world that he should still be so enjoyable 1000+ years later. What to read after Chaucer is a great question. (Have you read Malory’s Morte D’Arthur?)

>14 rasdhar: thanks! I read Marion Turner’s biography of Chaucer but not of The Wife of Bath. I’ve heard of it but been a little hesitant. Maybe it’s time I check it out.

>15 dianelouise100: I have not read Malory! I’ve thought about pursuing and Arhurian theme. It definitely interests me. But i haven’t planned anything yet. By the way, I’m still enjoying The Sound and the Fury, but Benjy’s section was easily my favorite.

>9 dchaikin: Congratulations on completing your quest!

>9 dchaikin: I’ve enjoyed so much reading about your Chaucer reading. Congratulations on finishing it!

>17 rhian_of_oz:, >18 FlorenceArt: thanks guys!

>9 dchaikin: What an achievement! Congratulations. I’ve enjoyed tagging along (and I really enjoyed this post).

Congratulations on your achievement 🙌. Well done 😍.

I'm impressed too! And just think, you'll never have to start a sentence with "Well, I've never read Chaucer, but..."

Congrats on finishing the Chaucer project! I'm always so in awe of your reading projects and themes.

Congrats too on reading your "400th book by a female author"!

>20 rachbxl: >21 Ameise1: >22 lisapeet: >23 mabith: wow, thanks all.

>22 lisapeet: That's funny. Might have been a missed opportunity.

>24 labfs39: ah, someone noticed! #400 was Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante

>1 dchaikin: >9 dchaikin: I'm going to miss your Chaucer too, but given your projects to date, I'm looking forward to whatever comes next.

>26 SassyLassy: thanks. I miss my Chaucer mornings.

25. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
OPD: 1929
format: 348 pages within an ebook anthology: William Faulkner: Novels 1926-1929: Soldiers' Pay / Mosquitoes / Flags in the Dust / The Sound and the Fury
acquired: January 1 read: Apr 20-29 time reading: 12:22, 2.1 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic stream of consciousness novel theme: Faulkner
locations: Mississippi 1928 and near Harvard in Cambridge, MA, 1910
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.
,
I really just want to talk about the opening Benjy section.

I'll hold off a moment for context. This is the story of Caddie Compson, but typically for Faulkner so far, she doesn't get any say. We get the story first through each of her three brothers, in three sections, all stream of conscious, then from a 3rd-person narrator in the last section. Caddie is always off screen, her childhood, pregnancy, divorce, and separation from her daughter. The rest of family, and its five or six black servants, collapse in on themselves and their sense of pride and privilege. It's also a story of a family's dissolution.

That opening section, from Benjy. He's mute and mentally compromised and can only moan. When the book opens, it's his 33rd birthday and he's cared for by a charmingly inept young black servant, Luster, who must constantly manage him, and who feeds him. But Benjy observes everything. He watches and feels and can't interact or even express his feelings. He's like a reader.

Benjy also mixes timelines. When you open this book, you can vaguely sift out golf in the distance, but suddenly Luster is gone and there are other people around and Benjy seems different. It's confusing and can be frustrating. Timelines are changing, but how? What is what? When is when? Confused and intrigued I looked up some guidance online and got this very simple set of guidelines

1. Pay attention to Benjy's caretaker. When Versh is taking care of Benjy, he is around 3 to 5 years old. When it's T.P., Benjy is a teenager. When it's Luster, Benjy is 33
2. There are two Quentins - Benjy's suicidal brother and his promiscuous niece.
3. Bengy is named Maury at birth, after his uncle, but his mother insists that they change it after discovering his mental disability.

So I had read 30 pages, amused and confused. After this, I went back to the beginning, and what I got was magical. Some of the best reading I've ever had. Benjy floats through time, weaving the present and various times in the past in meaningful ways. He catches everything essential, and much that is beautiful and he senses all this. He becomes somehow a warm beautiful character, even though we can't really know his character. But we know his condition.

The rest of this book is fine. Quentin, the boy, wanders around Harvard tortured. Jason is a monster. Dilsey, the main black house servant, is a hero of the book. For all the racism in Faulkner's other books, you can't help but adore all his black characters here. But Dilsey has a resolution and accidental warmth that stands out, notably in contradiction to the overly-proud dissolving family she serves.

This was a nice step into Faulkner's best stuff. I loved the book, and was enraptured by the Benji section.

26. Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo
reader: Carlotta Brentan
OPD: 2022 translation: from Italian by Leah Janeczko (2023)
format: 4:55 Libby audiobook (224 pages in paperback)
acquired: Library loan listened: Apr 24-30
rating: 3½
genre/style: autobiographical fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: contemporary Rome
about the author: An Italian writer, translator, and screenwriter, born in Rome in 1978

My sixth from the internation Booker longlist. I've liked them all, including this one, but oddly haven't really taken to any yet. Add this one to the list. It has its appeal. It's curious and gives us some things to think about, although she certainly doesn't openly acknowledge that.

This is chatty memoir of growing up in Rome and becoming a single writer. It has a surface that I'm uncomfortable with - it might be charming if it weren't so affected. And maybe it is charming. But what's strange to me is the indifferent lying, and unreflective irreverence, almost disdain, for integrity. This is autobiographical. But our narrator makes it a point up front that she lies freely, without any clear reason, without worrying about it. Which means that we should take note that our narrator probably lies to us constantly. We should accept this. Everything is a story with an embellishment or completely made up. Every story she tells us consistently has her lying about something to somebody, sometimes more important than other times.

What does it mean? What is it all for? And if these lies don't mean anything, why does she spend so much time dwelling on them?

We get story of a girl growing up with an older genius brother who sleeps in the upper bunk and reaches down to hold her hand all night so that she can sleep. A girl who sleeps in her grandfather's bed and sees her grandmother as a stranger made up to watch TV alone. A girl who can't answer the question, "What can you do?" in her twenties. A girl who tries to tell us she had years of teenage sex without realizing what it was. Who isn't married, recently split with her long-term boyfriend, aborted her only pregnancy in her mid-30's. And who writes, as does her brother. A grown nearly middle-aged woman, not a girl, living alone, who misses her father and grandfather, both deceased.

So I guess I'm puzzling this. I appreciate the Rome-ish sense of rapid-fire irreverence, and I wonder at that inability for our narrator to look at anything straight. It's always distorted. How can she see anything?

This is a quick fast read, for anyone interested.

>29 dchaikin: This actually interests me despite your slightly negative review, and especially as it’s on audio. I hadn’t noticed this on the international Booker longlist, possibly because I have difficulty reading lists now. It’s only $8 on Audible so I’ll probably just buy it. There’s a 16 week wait at my NYPL. We can only have three holds there as well and I don’t want to knock any off.

>30 kjuliff: well, my post may exhibit a misguided confidence. Right after posting i read the othet LT review which observes “ Vero … use(s) storytelling and lies as an escape”. I hadn’t really understood that. Makes sense. And demands some rethinking.

I hope you get a chance to try it out. I’m curious on other takes.

>31 dchaikin: After your last post I read the other review. I’ll definitely be reading the book now and I’ll be in a better position perhaps to understand it. It’s often hard to understand humor in a different culture.

I'm so glad you were so taken with The Sound and the Fury--I think it's my favorite Faulkner. Tales of the Compton family continue in Absalom, Absalom.

I'm also glad you loved The Sound and the Fury. It was my first Faulkner novel and I read it in high school! I had zero idea what was going on during Benjy's section - no internet to look anything up! I was so confused by the male and female Quentins.

Like you, I love Benjy's section (especially upon rereading - I think I've read it 3 or 4 times now), but I'm also a Quentin fan. If/when you read Absalom, Absalom his story is continued.

>28 dchaikin: Well, nuts. I have actively resisted reading Faulkner for my entire life and, based on your review, I went and bought a copy of The Sound and the Fury today.

>32 kjuliff: i did think about the humor while listening to Lost on Me. It’s mainly in her tone, how she says it. So it’s always there, just didn’t quite work for me (in translation).

>33 arubabookwoman: wow. Your favorite. But… then it’s all downhill the rest of the way?! I’ll get to Absalom! Absalom!

>34 japaul22: I had no idea you were such a Faulkner reader. 3 or 4 times is impressive and sounds interesting. I think I could see reading Bengy over and over. And I’ll be happy to spend more time with Quentin.

>35 RidgewayGirl: I have such mixed feelings. I’m so flattered by that, really, thanks. But, goodness, what if you hate it? But, more seriously, give Bengy two tries. One to stumble and then one to just experience it.

>28 dchaikin: I’ve been meaning to read Faulkner for a while, and The Sound and the Fury sounds really tempting now. Thanks for the great review.

>29 dchaikin: Interesting review. I put it on my library list.

I'm no Faulkner expert, but reading him in high school really opened up my eyes to inventive formats in literature. I've only read about five of his novels, and I've read most of the Blotner biography and one other nonfiction work about him. But almost all of that happened before I joined LT. I still have a few of his novels on my shelf that I haven't read yet. Maybe soon.

I’m glad The Sound and the Fury worked for you! It’s the first of his “great” novels, at least 4 or 5 outstanding works. So not downhill at all! (Not all uphill, either, though…remember the Snopes trilogy)

Just checking in on your new thread. Goodness you've been busy, both with your reading, your great in-depth reviews and the conversations they've inspired. Great going! My reading this year has been mostly either rather obscure or pretty lowbrow: baseball histories and 1940s murder mysteries and such. See ya around the bookstall!

Sorry all, traveling. Saw my daughter this weekend and even made City Lights (in San Francisco)…than had dim sum around the corner.

>37 FlorenceArt: Ts&tF should work as well in French. Thanks.

>38 Ameise1: oh good. 🙂

>39 japaul22: funny how invisible pre-LT is. The all sounds rewarding. Which have you read? What’s calling you?

>40 dianelouise100: good good good. 🙂 Looking forward to As I Lay Dying

>41 rocketjk: tis the season to read baseball books. (Unless, perhaps, your team opens 12-22)

>No, not all downhill from here. You've got several more that I love to look forward to (besides Absalom, Absalom which is also a favorite along with Sound and Fury). These include Light in August, Intruder in the Dust, and As I Lay Dying. While I liked The Snopes Trilogy, I liked all of these better.

>43 arubabookwoman: That looks like a good short-list. As I Lay Dying will be next. And thanks for the encouragement.

April



Those are the 18 books I've bought on or since my birthday, thoroughly destroying my buy-to-read balance. Not A River finally arrived last week, at its US release day. Simpatia was actually bought in May, but I'll leave it in there. I bought it at City Lights in San Francisco. :) Up until these, I've been trying to buy only as many books as I read, for, I think, four years now... well 3 years and 3 months. Some of these are for the 2024 Booker International longlist, several are from talking about Booker books on the Booker Prize run facebook group. The Blue Flower is there because it infamously did not make the Booker long or short lists. Booker listed books include Not A River, Undiscovered, Simpatia, Master George, Hotel Du Lac, Midnight's Children, and, I think, There but for the. Also my themes - Faulker and Chaucer contemporaries.

I also read some books in April - actually it was a terrific reading month. I finally finished Canterbury Tales and now miss it. And I gave five stars to two other books - Study for Obedience and the unexpectedly fantastic classic, The Sound and the Fury. For the month I read 54 hours (not bad), listened to 27 hours (also good), and finished 9 books, 3 on audio.

May plans are...well, it's already May 11... But anyway, I will finish The Children by Edith Wharton. I've already read Western Lane by Chetna Maroo (another five stars!) and Undiscovered by Peruvian author Gabriela Wiener. I'm in the early part of Roman de Silence, a 13th-century Arthurian romance written in Old French verse. I'm reading in translation, and it's quick and charming, much like the lais of Mary de France. And I'm in the early part of Asphodel by H.D. This is written such that a "paragraph" is a block of text filled with all sorts of stuff, including entire conversations, 1st and 3rd person narrative (of the same person), commentary, and playful lazy classical references. It's fun, but slow. I'm trying to adapt. Hopefully I will also get to The Years by Annie Ernaux and my next Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

>45 dchaikin: I'm glad you loved Western Lane. It's a quiet book and with so much being unspoken, it sometimes is dismissed as trifling and I'm still thinking about it despite having read it a year ago.

And that is a very nice stack of books!

27. Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
OPD: 2023
format: 151-page hardcover
acquired: December read: Apr 29 – May 3 time reading: 3:48, 1.5 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Contemporary Fiction theme: Booker 2023
locations: contemporary London and Edinburgh
about the author: A British Indian author born in Kenya, who lives in London.

A novel of wonderful rhythmic hypnotic prose. It took me a few sittings, but I found myself swept up in Gopi's world of grief and squash.

This is an unassuming novel on a grieving family of Jains in England. Jainism is an Indian religion akin to Hinduism, Sikhism, and even Buddhism. Their religious emphasis is non-violence and vegetarianism, none of which plays a direct role in the story. But the father takes pains to let his Pakistani friend know they are Jains, and so, different.

Sorry, where was I? The family is a dad and three very close sisters grieving over the recent loss of their mother. Her death hit the whole family hard and they try to make do. Dad is an electrician, so he has an income but not a big one. The older girls pick up some chores. And then Dad gets them into squash, more and more, eventually several hours a day. But while the older girls slowly back out of this training, the youngest daughter, Gopi, embraces it, taking to the sounds and rhythms of the play and the game flow and its strategies. She and her father watch the best squash players on a video cassette and discuss them. She is 11.

The entire book revolves around her world of squash, and her family's grieving. And while i knew to look for the rhythm, I didn't find it at first. For a bit it was just a regular book, and I set it aside a few days. Then I picked it up a four-hour flight and found myself deeply into it before I noticed the prose rhythms behind it. Yes, it's a nice story. But the telling is captivating. I got emotional in all the emotional spots. I fully bought in, sometimes slowing myself down so I could remember the reading, instead of the rush to finish. I was sad to finish.

>46 RidgewayGirl: ha, you posted that as I was finishing my review. I have seen some of those dismissive comments about Western Lane and they made me anxious they were right. But I don't think those readers appreciated what Maroo was able to do with this text, how well she works in the rhythm and flow, changes it, redirects, really carries the reader along with a rich text. As a story, of course, it's very simple and straightforward. But I loved reading it. And I'm glad you're still thinking about it.

So, Western Lane finishes the 2023 Booker longlist for me. I've been reading the longlist since 2019 and this was a really good year in the small window. Nothing terrible, no weird or questionable entries. I gave five stars to four different books. I really liked that there was a lot of value given to poetic prose, not purple, but poetic and rhythmic and reflection-generating. Many of the authors are also published poets, and it shows.

Here's my Booker 2023 summary.

My five-star reads
1. Study for Obedience** by Sarah Bernstein (Canada)
2. Prophet Song** by Paul Lynch (Ireland)
3. In Ascension* by Martin Macinness (Scotland)
4. Western Lane** by Chetna Maroo (England - Kenya-born British Indian)

Other fantastic reads - still highly recommended
5. The House of Doors* by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)
6. All the Little Bird-Hearts* by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (England)
7. How to Build a Boat** by Elaine Feeney (Ireland)
8. Pearl** by Siân Hughes (Wales)

Great reads - still recommended
9. This Other Eden** by Paul Harding (USA)
10. A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Nigeria)
11. Old God's Time* by Sebastian Barry (Ireland)

Good, but mixed - YMMV
12. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Ireland)
13. If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (USA - Jamaican descent)

-----
* means I really liked the prose style and it has a really nice rhythm to it
** means I thought the prose was poetic in spirit

So many enticing titles! I thought I wouldn't enjoy Western Lane because of the sports theme and so didn't dig any further, but it looks like it might be worth a try.

>45 dchaikin: What an interesting stack of books. Never mind the ratio.

>47 dchaikin: A lovely review. I've had my eye on this book, I'm glad you liked it.

>45 dchaikin: Hooray for supporting book publishing!

So many great books on your thread, both read and to-be-read. I'm glad the International Booker treated you well this year.

>50 Dilara86: i can recommend Western Lane. I don’t know anything about squash and it didn’t hinder me at all. It’s about reading other people.

>51 rasdhar: thanks for your blessing on damning my ratio. 🙂 i hope you get to and enjoy Western Lane

>52 labfs39: yes, i know, my limits are counter to helping writers. 😕 So I’m happy to help a little. I’m mixed on the international booker this year but i’ve read only about half the longlist. The main Booker list was fantastic. I don’t imagine 2024 will be able to compete. (In case anyone is confused: The Booker prize are for books for living authors who publish in original English in the UK over a specified year. The living author part probably eliminates Paul Auster’s and Cormac McCarthy’s latest from 2024. The International Booker is for translation to English. For books translated into English and published in the UK over a specified year.)

>53 dchaikin: Sorry, I meant I was glad the Booker treated you well this year, but wrote the International Booker.

>54 labfs39: I thought maybe that was it. But was afraid to assume. :)

Nice review of Western Lane, Dan. Congratulations on finishing the 2023 Booker Prize longlist!

>56 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl!

Dan, you've reminded me that I've intended for a couple of years now to read some Faulkner. All I've read of his is a few short stories. Do you (or any of the other Faulkner readers) have a recommended novel to start with?

I am in awe of your Chaucer project. We read two tales in senior year English. One was the Nun's Priest's tale, and I don't even remember which was the other. It was very much a process of puzzled decipherment; I never got to appreciating or enjoying.

Day 3 without power. 😕 Houston powergrid taken down Thursday by (un-forecasted) 100 mph winds during a thunderstorm and a tornado that selected to set down amongst our local power transit towers. We had no storm damage. And keep expecting service any moment because it shouldn’t be hard to fix our area. But as there are many areas days away from power still, we must be far down the priority list.

I’ve beed reading, but miss my a/c, home brewed coffee and, well, lights.

>58 Jim53: i don’t have Faulkner recommendations yet, other than I loved The Sound and the Fury. Ask me again in a year. 🙂

As for Chaucer, I wouldn’t have handled him well at 18. But maybe try again. Have good notes and patience. And he comes alive.

>59 dchaikin: Yikes. I finally caved and turned on the AC in the house today and given that Houston is the same temperature as Bloomington, you have all my sympathy. Is there a nearby pool at least?

>59 dchaikin: Ouch! I hope your power comes back soon.

>59 dchaikin: Ugh. Hopefully you get power back soonish.

I'm sorry that you're still without power, Dan. I keep meaning to check on my mother's youngest sister, who lives in Pearland. Fortunately the son of my mother's (late) oldest sister also lives in Pearland (my younger aunt moved there to take care of her oldest sister in the remaining years of her life), so I am certain that he is providing for his family, and our aunt.

>58 Jim53: Beginning at the beginning of the Yoknawpatawpha County novels is a good idea with Faulkner, so that you start to become familiar with his characters — that would be Flags in the Dust or its first published version Sartoris (heavily cut by his editor, whose judgment was excellent, I think). The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying would be next; they begin his spate of outstanding novels. I think I would begin with As I Lay Dying. I hope you’ll be giving Faulkner a try.

>59 dchaikin: Hoping your power comes back on soon, Dan! Three days is just too long.

>64 kidzdoc: i think Pearland is fine. Northwest and downtown got hit the hardest. Regionally the issue was flooding, not wind damage. (Although, interestingly, the damage extended from NW Houston across the southern coast and into northern Florida. A derecho.)

>59 dchaikin: oh my! so hope things get calm soon hang in there

Ugh, being without power so long is horrid, especially when the temps are low or high. When we lost it for three days this winter, at least the temps were above freezing, so no one's pipes burst. Small favors. I bought a big generator this spring so I'll be prepared for next winter. Our power company said that with climate change we can expect more and longer outages in the years to come. One of the unforeseen benefits to my e-reader is that I can read in the dark!

>68 labfs39: I have a phone for reading in the dark...but I don't want to start yet another book. :) And, yeah, might be time for a generator. I delayed...for years.

>67 cindydavid4: thanks. I managed to sleep last night with a baggie of ice on my chest. I'm a wimp. Tonight, I have a hotel.

Oh dear, that's quite a long time to be without power. The content of everyone's fridges and freezers must be ruined. Fingers crossed it comes back soon.

>71 Dilara86: yeah, fridge and freezer contents are all lost.

>72 dchaikin: You might check with your insurance company, the contents of your fridge might be covered under your homeowners. Hope you sleep well in the hotel air conditioning tonight.

Just dropping in to say how much I enjoy your reviews!

Hooray for getting power back!

>61 RidgewayGirl: >62 FlorenceArt: >63 AnnieMod: >67 cindydavid4: thanks all

>65 dianelouise100: thanks for answering Jim. And that answer is encouraging

>73 labfs39: hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s not a huge expense.

>75 labfs39: i know. Phew! Exhausting. I’m so relieved

>74 janoorani24: hi. Thank you for saying so.

so did you write a review of the childrenon Litsy? have a devil of a time finding where discusion goes, and I didnt answer your question, sorry, could you post the review here, And Iam very interested in the Books of Jacob, curious what you think

>78 cindydavid4: not yet. I still need to review Undiscovered. I need my brain to settle a bit before i write anything here.

Interesting side note - I was driving home from downtown Thursday evening listening to early part of The Books of Jacob when the weather turner and I stopped the book to focus on the road. It got really dark, a deep green color, then really windy, and then I couldn’t see anything. Cars had emergency blinkers on and I was following those, but I couldn’t see the road or the dividing lines. And i was really high up because of the highway intersection. Then traffic came to a stop. When my prius started rocking in the wind, i got nervous. But it passed after some shortish/forever amount of time. We didn’t move for 90 minutes. Not sure if it was an accident or downed power lines across the five lane highway. It turns out that’s about where the 127 mph winds were. Anyway, I haven’t started the book again yet. Maybe tomorrow.

oh how scary! glad everyone was ok! and there's no rush at all. Youve had quitehe week hang in there

>79 dchaikin: Yikes, that must have been nerve-wracking. And a Prius isn't the heaviest car in the world. Can you imagine if you had been in a bus?

May be of interest https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/chaucer-here-and-now-marion-turner-editor-boo...

>80 cindydavid4: thanks
>81 labfs39: no, i’m not imagining this bus. 🙂
>82 dianeham: paywall. 🙁 But I’m interested

>83 dchaikin: my sub just renewed but I can’t get it to work.

>84 dianeham: well, that's frustrating. I've always been curious about TLS. I guess you like it?

>85 dchaikin: someone posts links to articles there a lot so I subscribed to be able read them. It’s like $5 for 3 months - which isn’t so great if it doesn’t work.

>85 dchaikin: >86 dianeham: I used to read it when I was in the UK but can’t afford it now and probably couldn’t read the articles. Now I listen to their poscast TLS whicvh is free.

>86 dianeham: no, definitely not. Hope that gets resolved.

>87 kjuliff: how is the podcast?

28. Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener
translation: from Spanish by Julia Sanches, 2023
OPD: 2021
format: 183-page hardcover
acquired: April read: May 5-8 time reading: 4:29, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary autofiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Spain and Lima, Peru
about the author: Peruvian writer, chronicler, poet and journalist, born in Lima, Peru in 1975. She has lived in Spain since 2003.

My 7th from the International Booker longlist and another that I liked a lot but didn't love. (The award was given to Kairos on Tuesday.) What I especially liked, personally, was the touch of Jewish history, the autofiction (a theme in the longlist) and the nature of the overall structure - namely that it's a little random. What I didn't like was the shocking lines she puts in there, although I seem to see some of its purpose.

Weiner is not a typical Peruvian name, especially for an ethnically Peruvian family. They trace their name to an Austrian-born Jewish explorer trying to become French. He explored Peru for France in the 19th-century, and returned with thousands of pillaged artefacts, many apparently currently displayed in a neglected Paris museum. But what he is most famous for is failing to discover Manchu Picchu. He searched but went off course in the mountains. So, as reflected in the title, it went undiscovered. He also left behind a pregnant Peruvian woman.

Gabriella Weiner is the also the daughter of prominent Peruvian activists. Weiner explores her ancestor, her father and his long-time extra-marital affair and her own polygamous marriage - to a Peruvian man and also a Spanish woman. And she uses herself, her personal failures to shock. If you like, a section is a very traditional and interesting exploration, then it's wrapped with some shocking thing she does or thinks. End of section. So, you're reading relaxed, and then momentarily uncomfortable you have to decide to continue, or set the book down. Readers are generally not going to like this narrator when we're done. We aren't going to like what she does.

Let's be clear. What she does is no worse than what her colonial ancestor did, or what her father did, but we, the reader, are really only deeply bothered when she does it. And this I think this part of her point - not that the past justifies her present issues, even if she does argue that on the surface, but how different we react to and how different we judge, intuitively, these two things. We tolerate the men, and the ancestral men, overlooking the women, but we condemn the wayward women deeply.

The novel is a reflection on family and cultural history, on historical uncertainties and crimes and the colonization of Peru, on racism, legacies, and on variations of unfaithfulness. Much remains undiscovered. An interesting work and, really, a nice addition to the International Booker longlist.

>89 dchaikin: Excellent, thorough description and reflection. Sounds fascinating. Probably not something I'm up for in the near term.

>89 dchaikin: excellent review. I have long read about the theifts of treasure by the colonial*, and the lack of any patriation of them.and yes there has always been a gender problem when it comes to blaming. unfortunatlly that doesnt look like it will be solved anytie soon

*africa is not a country has a long chapter on this target and the outrageous reasons for the taking of artifacts, the whole book is good, but this chapter particulaly strong

an adjacent topic One of my grandparents was shipped back to europe from Ellis Island because he had TB. He somehow made it to Peru and was very active in the jewish community. One of his granddaughters met my cousin, married and came back to the states to live. love how actions connect with each other over time!

>89 dchaikin: You've intrigued me. I'll look for a copy.

>89 dchaikin: I was about to get this but read a few more reviews and a few said there were overlong details of sex. I usually skip such descriptions as I find them boring. Would I miss a large proportion of the book if I did so?

>90 Jim53: thanks! Only 5 or so hours of reading, if you want to try. :)

>91 cindydavid4: love that about your connection to the Peruvian Jewish community. Fascinating. Africa is not a Country has a really nice discussion about captured artefacts. I was thinking about that book while reading this one.

>92 RidgewayGirl: yay 🙂

>93 kjuliff: nothing in the book is overly long. :) The sex is an important part of the book, but it's, I think, small in terms of word count.

>95 dchaikin: Thank, that’s all I needed to know. It’s a short book anyway and I didn’t want to use an Audible credit on it if I was going to be skipping large parts. I’m trying to read more books from South American countries as I’ve neglected them in the past.

The International Booker longlist didn’t grab me as much this year, so I feel I need to read a larger sample.

>89 dchaikin: Great review as always. Undiscovered sounds really intriguing, but I’m not sure I would be up to it.

>96 kjuliff: since it's the 1st year I'm reading through the longlist, I don't know how it compares to other years. But, I would have liked some more reward in these books. I'm disappointed overall.

>97 FlorenceArt: Thanks. Undiscovered is definitely not any kind of must-read. :)

29. The Children by Edith Wharton
OPD: 1928
format: 266-page ebook
acquired: April 21 read: Apr 21 – May 14 time reading: 10:25, 2.3 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: Classic theme: Wharton
locations: mainly Venice and Dolomites
about the author: 1862-1937. Born Edith Newbold Jones on West 23rd Street, New York City. Relocated permanently to France after 1911.

I adore Wharton, but this was not my favorite. Actually I felt the last two, this and Twilight Sleep, were good but lesser than most of her previous work. A little too much light jokey cute stuff for me. Martin is weird, Judith is a child and Rose is only a side character...

This is a story where single and approaching-middle-age Martin Boyne meets a group of seven children without their parents on a liner in the Mediterranean. He's headed to meet his new probable-fiancé in the Italian Dolomites. But he gets caught up in these wealthy but very neglected children and finds himself helping them, to his seeming detriment.

As readers, we spend this book waiting to see how Martin will manage his unacknowledged attraction to the eldest child, 15-yr-old Judith. He acts appropriately to her every way, but there is so much in his own head that he isn't able to acknowledge that we can't say how he will end up, which is a lot creepy. It's also clear this Judith is using him, but she seems in such need and so innocent.

Martin's Wharton-like fiancé, Rose Sellars, has a problem to manage in her distracted partner. We never see inside Rose's mind, or see her sweat, so to speak. Instead we meet an almost goddess-like steady and always practical woman, quietly maintaining her dignity. Her feelings show through in a painfully quiet manner. She adds a needed dimension to an otherwise flighty book. But she's a side character.

On closing the book, I found myself rethinking on how much Judith may have been managing Martin. That's maybe interesting or maybe silly. But I had to spend a lot of time with silly children and their sillier parents, switching partners with the seasons. Light stuff, kind of cute, kind of funny.

I wouldn't call this one a miss. It has its interesting parts. But I'm hoping the (500-plus-page) Hudson River Bracketed has more to offer.

Sorry you didnt like it as well as I; Its such a perfect send up on these kind of parents. I had a problem with the ending, that really left us without hope. but it was realistic

>100 cindydavid4: I appreciated the ending. I had trouble believing there are or were these kinds of parents. Maybe I’m naive.

30. A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel
readers: Anne Enright, Aurora Dawson Hunte, Ben Miles, Bill Hamilton, Jane Wymark, Lydia Leonard, Nicholas Pearson, and Sarah Waters
OPD: 2023
format: 16:21 audible audiobook (432 pages in hardcover)
acquired: April 16 listened: Apr 16 – May 15
rating: 4½
genre/style: essays theme: random audio
locations: England, Saudi Arabia,
about the author: 1952-2022. A British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. She was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, and raised in the area.

I was a little worried about listening a bunch of essays I might not be interested in, but this turns out to be captivating stuff. These are a bit random, various things she wrote and published in different mediums through her life. The most mundane are probably her movie reviews, especially when I haven't seen the movie. But then her movie reviews are quite fun. Mantel on Robocop can be found within! Imagine that. It's better than you just imagined. She also reviews Wilt Stillman's Metropolitan, the first of three Stillman movies that I adore, and these are a little obscure.

But, to the point, there are simply some lightning essays in here. Many are about the Tudors and the Wolf Hall trilogy. Some about her other books, especially A Place of Greater Safety, where she talks about the missing historical pieces in the French Revolution. Gaps in the record. Some are on overlooked women authors, really great stuff. She was an excellent writer, able to make her essays playful in a writerly way. She loved her sentences. Often she would write be very humbly, but with such sharp wit. Other times she comes across so starkly assured and confident, as if presenting proclamations from on high. I found that a little strange. But overall, I loved the collection and its richness. I really want to read A Place of Greater Safety now.

31. Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance by Heldris de Cornuälle
translation: from Old French by Sarah Roche-Mahdi (1992)
OPD: 1200’s
format: 359-page facing-page translation paperback with original Old French and English translation on facing pages
acquired: April 2023 read: May 1-17 time reading: 7:33, 1.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Medieval French Roman theme: Chaucer
locations: mythical dark ages England and France
about the author: Heldris de Cornuälle is a fictional Arthurian character. The true author is unknown. The editor is active on Facebook, but has no bio pages online.

This is a delightful Arthurian romance about the female knight Silence. It was discovered in 1911 - one manuscript in 13th-century French verse in a box labeled, "Old papers - no value". (The box also contained letters from Henry VIII)

The style, here in English prose translation, read to me a lot like the Lais of Mary de France. It's quick and light with a fairy-tale feel. In the story Silence is the only child, and a daughter, of a large landowner in a time when women could not inherit in England. To save her inheritance, her parents presented her as a man, and she does all the male things, including becoming a prominent and admired knight. Her problems begin when the English queen tries to seduce her and then tries to punish for saying no, evening claiming rape, like Joseph experienced in Egypt. Within dragons are slain, Merlin makes an appearance as wild old man with a wild laughter. And there are long debates between Nature and Nurture. Some seriously disturbing misogynistic language doesn't sit well on modern ears, but we are talking about a 700-yr-old work.

Anyway, fun and easy read in translation. I enjoyed it a lot.

>102 dchaikin: A Place of Greater Safety is my favorite Mantel, despite a few inaccuracies done for story purposes.

32. Asphodel by H.D.
publication: written 1921-22, modified 1926-1929, 1st published 1992 (Edited by Robert Spoo)
format: 230-page paperback
acquired: April 2023 read: May 3-23 time reading: 13:48, 3.6 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: Classic autofiction theme: TBR
locations: Paris and England 1912-1919
about the author: H.D. is Hilda Doolittle (1886 –1961), an American modernist poet, novelist, and memoirist. She was born in Bethlehem, PA, attended Bryn Mawr college in Philadelphia for a year, dating Ezra Pound, and moved to England permanently about 1912.

A gem, but one that requires some reader commitment. japaul22's 2022 review got me interested. (Thanks!)

H.D. was an American poet from Pennsylvania who moved permanently to England where she made her name as a writer associated with Ezra Pound. This 1920's novel is from a single manuscript marked "Destroy" by H.D. and found after her death in 1961. It was a known but unpublished text for some 30 years, a ghost text cited by writers and scholars both for its style and its insight into the literary world of its in London, until it was published here in 1992.

It's all stream of consciousness, with a lot of repetition with individual "paragraphs", seeming to emphasize the writer's constant own bewilderment. It's a roman à clef or, a kind of autobiography but with fictional names, of her years around and during WWI, when she first arrived in Europe and went through several relationships, a marriage, and had a child from an extramarital affair. A lot happened to this poet and literary-world presence. She was engaged and then not to a young Ezra Pound, who she met in Philadelphia at age 15. She came to Europe with a women lover, the author Frances Josepha Gregg, and Gregg's mom, settling in London. Then Gregg got married. Then H.D. got married and then WWI happened. Her husband enlisted and openly had affairs, saying he wanted to keep multiple relationships. While her husband was in France, she moved in with her own lover, and got pregnant. Then broke off this relationship. Her husband came home and there was some confusion before her daughter was born and she and her husband eventually separated. A young admirer of her poetry, the author Annie Winifred "Bryher" Ellerman, became her next lesbian lover and helped her with her pregnancy and baby. (After the book, this relationship got rocky too).

This is an interesting work. Wonderfully playful here, deeply pained there. In the broken stream of conscious, it seems Hermione Gart, fictional H.D., is always searching and never settling. Tormented by bedbugs, swept away by the Louve (I can kind of imagine), deeply attracted to her men (it's strange seeing Ezra Pound described in such sexually attractive lights). She is deeply selfish without ever meaning to be, blind to obvious, but captures her own pains of the moment. The reader must latch on or put the book away. You have to engage in the text emotionally, go into your reader trance and be there with her, sometimes in a rush. Otherwise it's torture. The book becomes an experience, demands it of your brain.

I enjoyed this weird thing, this relic, this messy meaningful word soup by this poet whose poetry I haven't read. I can't recommend it, as you won't like it unless you already want to read it. But it rewards some commitment.

>104 RidgewayGirl: She has such great things to say about it (A Place of Greater Safety). It was her first work, but not her first publication. And she put years into it. I'm fascinated. But, goodness, better than Wolf Hall?

>106 dchaikin: For me, yes, but I have so much more interest in the French Revolution than I do in the tiresome Tudors.

>107 RidgewayGirl: tiresome Tudors. :) Fair enough.

33. The Years by Annie Ernaux
Translation: from French by Alison L. Strayer (2017)
OPD: 2008
format: 282-page paperback
acquired: April 2023 read: May 17-25 time reading: 7:24, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4¼
genre/style: 3rd-person, sometimes collective, autobiography theme: TBR
locations: France 1941-2008
about the author: French writer and 2022 Nobel Prize winner, born in Lillebonne, France, 1940.

"She feels herself in several different moments of her life that float on top of each other. Time of an unknown nature takes hold of her consciousness and her body too. It is a time in which past and present overlap, without bleeding into each other, and where, it seems, she flickers in and out of all the shapes of being she has been."

This seems to be the feeling she had at one point when she was conceiving this as an autobiography. But Ernaux's thinking evolved over time, over several years. What finally came out in 2008 was a collective "we" autobiography. It's easy reading, but I had trouble at first really getting into it. I even put it down for a few days and focused on the more difficult Asphodel. When I picked up again, in the mid-1980‘s, suddenly I was suddenly really into everything. Part of the impact depends on the reader’s own personal sense of these historical events, on how we connect to the events mentioned. I guess the mid-80's are when I began to be aware of world events and so that is where I could begin to truly relate. Anyway, after that I was all in, deeply in.

The translator's note sneaks in a review of the prose, and I think it's worth quoting:

"The Years is at least twice as long as all but one of AE's previous books and in other ways, too, is a departure from her other work. There are many different atmospheres and registers, styles and rhythms. It is a book with a vast, sweeping scope (from microcosm to macrocosm and back), lots of movement and many different "speeds”. "

This is a terrific translation and terrific personal trip through time. I really enjoyed and can recommend it.

>109 dchaikin: Interesting review Dan. I was waiting for this review, as I read and reviewed The. Years several months ago, and was interested in your take.

The “we” - I took it as a collective group of people who thought as Ernaux did - as an assumption that all “right-thinking” people thought the same way, such as in “We opposed the war in Vietnam”. So as a personal group “we”. I didn’t take it as the false “we” still used by nurses, as in , “How are we doing today?”, or as the purely personal “we”.

>111 kjuliff: hmm. I wasn’t clear. I definitely saw it as a collective “we”, although without the “us right thinking people” insinuation. I was trying to emphasize that the nature of the history relies on our personal associations with these events, because it doesn’t provide any explanation, but only references the events. So, we don’t “learn” history here so much as recall it. I might edit my review for clarity.

>111 kjuliff: i tried to make it more clear

>113 dchaikin: >112 dchaikin: It’s probably me - I am not very well right now, but I don’t understand how it can be a “collective we”. Who are the people in the collection? I assumed it was her generation of French people who were left-wing in the old sense of that term.

>101 dchaikin: But I had to spend a lot of time with silly children and their sillier parents, switching partners with the seasons. Light stuff, kind of cute, kind of funny.

my profession is being around silly kids. I liked that and was able to related to them and was impressesd how Wharton, who didnt have kids, drew them with complexity and honesty. And yeah she is going over the top with the parents, but I can tell you Ive seen those behaviors in some parents,not all at once, but enough that you can see the damage done to the kids

There were parts that were so funny I laughed so much I scared the cats, But there was plenty of serious stuff going on ; the neglect(cant think of the name, but the story of the girl who commited suicide, in front of her friend that her mother barely acknowledg) the total cluelessness of adults, the way adults treated each other, I found it sad that adults could act just like children-egotistical,selfish,and stubborn

I guess the ending was realistic. But even as much as I kid about hell and good intentions, I think Martins heart deserved some rewards, not total loneliness

it was an interested discussion thats for including me!

>102 dchaikin: Oh I want to read this!!!

I did like APGS, i knew some of the history in the french revolution but never got who the main players were. Once I got to where I wasnt confused, I couldnt put it down. I do think it could have been edited, but it worked

>108 dchaikin: I was more than tired of the Tudors, really loving the Plangenets. But my sister started reading it and said I just had to. glad I did.I found the history so interesting and the writing, well...hard to beat that

>79 dchaikin: It sounds like you had a difficult few days: I hope things are much better now.

So many wonderful reviews to catch up on here and I've only been away for a week or so! I am really enjoying these Booker list reviews, and I agree with you about A Place of Greater Safety which is on my list too, and is currently sitting on my desk at work and distracting me from things I should be doing.

>102 dchaikin: This sounds really good. I've been looking at a copy of Wolf Hall that I rescued from a library giveaway shelf. Will the memoir make sense without having read her fiction?

I’ll respond more to the above later

>119 Jim53: Two part answer. It’s not memoir. The misleading title is the title of one essay. It’s an essay collection. But yes, it makes sense without having read her books. I hope you can give Wolf Hall a chance. It’s a difficult prose but works once it works. It’s such a rich strikingly extraordinary thing.

>118 rasdhar: Now i think I’m staring at that book on your desk too. I can see it from here, or it seems so. I need to get a copy…

>118 rasdhar: I have APlace of Greater Safety on my list too. There’s no way it can’t be good.

Also, welcome back. You’ve been missed.

>102 dchaikin: A Place of Greater Safety was the first Mantel book I read, and I've been reading her ever since.

>107 RidgewayGirl: Those "tiresome Tudors" (great expression) become positively engaging in the Wolf Hall trilogy, possibly because they become so real you forget they are "historical" characters.

>119 Jim53: Agreeing with Dan - give it a go.

>122 SassyLassy: Those "tiresome Tudors" (great expression) become positively engaging in the Wolf Hall trilogy, possibly because they become so real you forget they are "historical" character

completely agree!

I knew very little about the Tudors or British history in general, so I started Wolf Hall with some trepidation. I was blown away, and I thought the second book, Bring Up the Bodies was even better, a rare five star read for me. I have Mantel's memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, her novel Place of Greater Safety, and short story collection, Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, all on my shelves awaiting some attention. Such a loss that she passed.

Have you read the last of the trilogy the mirror and the light Its good, tho could have used some editing esp at the end when Cromwell is executed. I dont think she wanted to lose him. But its a worthy conclusion

BTW the book is going to be adapted by PBS as a series like Wolf Hall was, with many of the same original cast. Cant wait till it comes out

>115 cindydavid4: Glad you enjoyed The Children. I thought she did a good job capturing kids. I'm not sure what Martin deserved. He maybe did get what he deserved. Just a thought. Maybe Wharton was tired of neglectful men playing false heroes. :)

>116 cindydavid4: >118 rasdhar: >121 kjuliff: >122 SassyLassy: Mantels essays are terrific. And, yeah, wow, I'm further encouraged on A Place of Greater Safety

>117 cindydavid4: >122 SassyLassy: >123 cindydavid4: - tired Tudors. I agree with all this :)

>118 rasdhar: I'm starting to feel normal again, thanks.

>124 labfs39: yeah, Lisa, Mantel's loss is big and it was unexpected (although I don't know the details). Giving up the Ghost was part of my birthday splurge. I hope to read it next year (or this year...)

>125 cindydavid4: editing The Mirror and the Light down would have been tricky. The main problem was the real history. I've watched a few episodes of Wolf Hall. Entertaining.

You all make me want to read Mantel despite my bias against novels about historical people. A Place of Greater Safety was already on my LT wishlist and I also added it to Kobo. I’ve wanted for a long time to read a biography of Robespierre. Though of course I was thinking of non-fiction by a French historian, not a novel written in English.

Catching up (again) and enjoyed your reviews as always. Intrigued by Silence: a thirteenth-century french romance. I am encouraged by your review of Asphodel,H.D. Often wondered just what her writing was like.
Glad you enjoyed Annie Enaux's The Years, Annie Ernaux

I'm so glad you gave Asphodel a shot and enjoyed it! Different book, for sure. I'm also interested in reading The Years, but hesitating, because I'm not sure I'll connect to the time period.

>125 cindydavid4: Personally, I didn't like The Mirror and the Light quite as much as the first two. Hard to sustain the high level of writing for so long perhaps.

>127 FlorenceArt: You all make me want to read Mantel despite my bias against novels about historical people.

This is a case where my ignorance was a help. Because I knew so little about the time period, I was able to read it as a novel. Only a couple of times did I feel compelled to google a person.

>130 labfs39: Good point. In that case I might be better off reading Wolf Hall, because I know nothing about the Tudors.

>131 FlorenceArt: I preferred A Place of Greater Safety because I'd read a fair amount about the French Revolution and enjoyed seeing where she'd kept closely to the historic record and where she diverged. But the Cromwell trilogy is also excellent -- so good that I've read it twice.

>131 FlorenceArt: if you “know nothing of the Tudors” I would commend Wolf Hall. It’s about an important period in European history because it changed the status of the Catholic Church in Britain. This had a profound effect on later political disruptions. England had a civil war and the loss of Ireland as part of Great Britain was also partly due to the UK becoming Protestant. Has the UK remained Catholic the course of European history would have been different.

Plus of course it’s a god book - an entertaining read..

>127 FlorenceArt: >130 labfs39: >131 FlorenceArt: >132 RidgewayGirl: >133 kjuliff: - when I find a book I'm really seriously about wanted to pursue, I write it down, and I write down who got me interested in it. So, for A Place of Greater Safety I think I can put down "all of Club Read"

Personally, I would like to know some history of the French Revolution, more than I know now, before reading it. Because it's really complicated, and I always seem to only get confused coming across it.

>128 baswood: thanks Bas. You're a good fit for Asphodel, and, of course, the Roman de Silence will seem like regular reading for you...maybe a break.

>129 japaul22: yes, thanks on Asphodel. Great experience. The France and Louve part were just so charming. The Years is an easy read, but I'm not the only one that had trouble connecting. But i did somehow connect, and it was really enjoyable after that.

>130 labfs39: goodness, I was googling everyone in WH etc. Every minor character has a long wikipedia entry. Every Cromwell servant had a long successful career in court across several monarchs. I was fascinated by that. And no question about the TMaTL. I think it was tough on Mantel and the reader. But I'm really glad I read it.

>132 RidgewayGirl: the Cromwell books are worth rereading! (I read WH twice...but 10 yrs apart)

>133 kjuliff: there are lots of lessons in this Cromwell bio. I like that in the essays she talks about how no one liked Cromwell when she picked him as a subject.

I'm wondering if it's not better to read the Wolf Hall books without resorting to Google. Had you been reading them twenty years ago, it would have been that way. Without googling constantly interrupting the flow of the writing, the characters are revealed better, some of their history will fall into place naturally, and Mantel's method of having Cromwell as two people (the internal Cromwell, and the Cromwell seen by others) will make more sense.

After each book is done, you can go back and look up whatever seems necessary then, or even better, get some more books about it all.

>135 SassyLassy: I totally agree. If you just read Wolf Hall as a story it will make sense. And you can look up any questions later .

>135 SassyLassy: I cant imagine using google to look up things in a HF while reading a book I didnt realize this was a thing. I read pretty much the same 20 years ago Unless is place names and locations. I also found picking up the history flowed pretty well, tho I already knew lots about henry and anne, not so much about cromwell himself, except that he was considered a monster, in fact when we were in britan looking at cathedrals, he was blamed for much of the destruction during the reformation and I in turn was horrified. So reading about this Cromwell through different eyes was fascinating and eye opening. I do tell people to pay attention to the cheat sheet: tells you the locations in the book and where you can expect people to be. I found that an interesting way of organizing I think the hardest part is dealing with all the Thomases and Marys, and a characters name v the title. I think If I would have read it now, id rely somewhat on google, but I felt I could trust this author to make it all make sense to me

Interesting reading the Mantel discussion. I loved all 3 books in the Wolf Hall trilogy (although agree the third was slightly weaker).

I've convinced myself I don't want to read A Place of Greater Safety as I'm not sure the French Revolution is a subject I'm interested enough in to devote myself to over 800 pages. But, I didn't think I was interested in reading historical fiction on Tudor England and I love it. So am I wrong on APoGS?

>134 dchaikin: One of the books I've read that best detangles all the factions of the French Revolution is Giant of the French Revolution: Danton by David Lawday. It's also remarkably compact for what it is (histories of the French Revolution can be lengthy).

>138 AlisonY: I am so actively bored by anything to do with the Tudors and I loved the Cromwell trilogy. There's a good chance you'd love APoGS. But committing to a long book reluctantly is a big ask and there are so many other books out there, including a bunch more by Mantel.

>138 AlisonY: I've convinced myself I don't want to read A Place of Greater Safety as I'm not sure the French Revolution is a subject I'm interested enough in to devote myself to over 800 pages. But, I didn't think I was interested in reading historical fiction on Tudor England and I love it. So am I wrong on APoGS?

Short answer - Yup!

Next thought - would you think you had to know about the French Revolution to read A Tale of Two Cities? Probably not.

I think A Place of Greater Safety is the same; just knowing the Revolution happened is probably enough, as like Cromwell in Mantel's work, this is a character study, which happens to be against a revolutionary background. It is an excellent book, the one that started me reading Mantel.

>140 SassyLassy: >138 AlisonY: I’ve started reading aPoGS and my knowledge of the French Revolution is scant. I’m hoping to learn more about the main players as I always get them confused. I’m only at the part where Danton and Robespierre are still at school and I’m still confused! I’m putting this down to me listening - Audible. It’s well written and I’ll persevere for a while.Mantel has an annoying habit of referring to them by their given and last names depending on contexts. I’m not sure which is the stutterer, and which had the stepfather for example.

I doubt I’d have this problem if reading in print but I’m unsure. I just wish she had used the one name for each person. I’ll give it another hour but it is confusing so far. I find not being able to read print SO depressing and frustrating.

We've been chatting a lot about place of greater safety the RTT challenge for July is France; anyone interested in doing a group read? Ive read it already but Im sure there was much that I missed. whats ya think?

>142 cindydavid4: Delurking here...I would be interested in participating in a group read of A Place of Greater Safety, as the French Revolution became a topic of interest to me after I saw the play "Danton's Death" in the National Theatre in 2010. I should have it and Giant of the French Revolution: Danton in my relocated library.

>135 SassyLassy: error 404: does not compute 🙂 I’m so attached to google and Wikipedia. Maybe that’s why I read so much better on airplanes.

>136 kjuliff: error 40… etc see 👆

>137 cindydavid4: error 40… etc see 👆

But. Cindy - a side note. I listened to an excellent biography of Cromwell while reading The Mirror and the Light (or maybe just before…don’t remember). What’s interesting is that Mantel got an important aspect of Cromwell wrong. She framed him as a practical maneuverer. But he was more of a backhanded religious reformer. He was very religious and very discreet about his true motivations. Although he was the face of official reform and condemned for that. His true, much deeper and long lasting reform was discreet. Hidden from Henry! It was when Henry was informed of his secret reforms that he was tossed out of power and executed. I think part of the issue with TM&tL is that a lot of the historical record she covers doesn’t blend with her Cromwell. And she struggled to force them to blend. Or, more concisely, she had trouble when her Machiavelli turned out to be a religious fanatic.

>138 AlisonY: 800 pages is a lot…

>139 RidgewayGirl: thanks. I’ve noted this down

>140 SassyLassy: appreciate this answer. Thanks

>141 kjuliff: Mantel’s fiction is tough on audio. My advice is to start over again. But that’s easy to say from here

>142 cindydavid4: oh. I want. Can’t. 🙁 I’ve committed July to a group read of Possession by A.S. Byatt. (Which I’m really excited about)

>143 kidzdoc: 👍 glad to know you were lurking. 🙂

>144 dchaikin: oh I loved Possession! gosh its been forever...What, you cant read two doorstoppers in one month? :)

>144 dchaikin: Or, more concisely, she had trouble when her Machiavelli turned out to be a religious fanatic.

Ha! thanks for that, interesting observation. so after he was executed, did Henry stop the reform and say move along nothing to see here.....

>144 dchaikin: How in the world are you just coming to Possession? That book single-handily moved me from Scottish mysteries over to literary mysteries around 2000!

>145 cindydavid4: No. Henry could not stop it. !! Cromwell had put all his people in all the key places all playing same reform. And the hard parts that Henry was most interested - about getting the Catholic money and property and cleaning out the overly loyal catholic leadership, was largely done. His reforms are part of the Church of England now. 🙂

>146 JoeB1934: yeah, it’s about time. 🙂🙁

>144 dchaikin: ‘a side note’ I’m betting that this biography is the one by Diarmid McCullough (sp?) If so and you reviewed it, could you link me to the review? And thanks for reminding me to include in my May list the 1000+ page tome of his I’ve spent the year reading for my EFM (Education for Ministry) seminar.

>148 dianelouise100: Yes! That’s the one. It’s excellent.

Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Thread link: https://www.librarything.com/topic/330945#7529156

>144 dchaikin: Dan I’m not sure what “error 40” refers to. I think you mean the typo. I’m actually thinking of giving up writing as I can’t read what I type. I only see every second letter in a word and then have to tilt. my head to see the other, and then the first one disappears. It’s getting so frustrating and takes so much time. I can mostly find the errors as the software usually underlines them and I go back and edit them by magnifying the word even more.

I imagine it will eventually become unfeasible. But hopefully I can go on a little longer.

>149 dchaikin: I did read that and thought it quite excellent. re your review " Instead of a cerebral, problem solver, the historical Cromwell seems to have been an obsessive control freak with an uncontainable anger. He badgered everyone verbally and harshly and with an almost angry gusto. " but but I liked him that way (so did mantel obviously given how long his actual death took) excellent review

>150 kjuliff: sorry, Kate, it was just humor. The error is in my brain trying to process the idea of waiting to look stuff up later. I’m a little obsessive about looking stuff up while reading.

>151 cindydavid4: thank you!

>152 dchaikin: So what does “error 40” mean? I haven’t come across that term? I took it to mean I’d made a typo as there was no context, and on re-reading the post that you referred to - >136 kjuliff: - there *was* a typo (now fixed). Does it just use it to mean “I don’t agree”? In that case why the thumbs up emoji?

>153 kjuliff: it’s a common error message that offers the user no explanation, leaving the user a bit frustrated. I was kidding you guys by responding as if I could only provide a useless error message to your question/comments/(input?)

It’s not a thumb. Sorry. It’s a finger, pointing up towards my previous response.

>154 dchaikin: Oh I see. I can’t read emojis very well.

As to my point about looking up details later - I do it all the time. Best explained by example. I recently read Homeland set in Spain at the end of the Basque terror campaign. It’s about two Basque families, once close friends, but now divided. One is pro ETA - the revolutionary independence movement, the other, Nationalist, wanting a unified Spain but still being culturally Basque.

Now I know very little of the details of the Basque movement, but I read the story through. I had trouble with the audio, understanding the Basque names which are different than what we think of as Spanish ones. So I switched to the Spanish version and still had problems with identifying the people with names like Txato and Joxe which were pronounced in a way I couldn’t work out.

I after finishing the book - I just plowed through and got the hang of it, but still not fully understanding the ETA philosophy or its history. So I googled because the book piqued my interest in Basque issues. I now know what I needed to know about ETA and have some more understandings of the Basque culture.

Had I interrupted the story of the two families as I read, it would have spoiled the flow. After all, it’s fiction based on imagined families in a particular place in history. Had I wanted to understand Basque culture - had that been my aim - I would have bought a non-fiction book. But I wanted to read some fiction. Same with Sri Lanka and the Tamil movement novels. And of course the Mantel one we are discussing.

>149 dchaikin: A fine review, Dan, thanks for the link. You’ve raised my opinion of MacCulloch. I expect he does better with organizing all that overwhelming detail when he is dealing with a man’s lifetime—as opposed to Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.

>144 dchaikin: That was funny (but not unexpected). Maybe that's why I can hardly read at all on an airplane!

>148 dianelouise100: I remember your review. Like you, I had bought it while reading the Mantel trilogy, but unlike you, I haven't read the MacCulloch as yet. Must correct that.

>142 cindydavid4: A Place of Greater Safety is a tempting reread for July, but I'll know better as we get closer. >144 dchaikin: Possession is another great book.

I'd possibly do a group read of A Place of Greater Safety. I'm on holiday in late July - I'd want to read it before then as I don't like bringing doorstopper books away with me.

I'd do a group read of A Place of Greater Safety, too. Good idea!

34. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
OPD: 1930
format: 182-page hardcover (no ISBN or publication date, but maybe 1960's?)
acquired: 2006 read: May 25-27 time reading: 6:42, 2.2 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: Classic theme: Faulkner
locations: 1920’s Mississippi
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

I cannot capture or adequately post on this one. It's bigger than my ability to express. It's just doing a whole lot of stuff, from many different approaches, and it all works. I was absorbed. I was reading at a crawl, slowly wading through words that were demanding to me that I slow down and wade through them, and experience them, think of their sound. Meanwhile they were doing other things. This book isn't exactly a wow, but it has a presence, once you begin, that fills a lot of your mind, that hangs out there as some big thing. And I can't tell you what that big thing even is. But I have something like an awe there. In some non-emotional but deep way I find myself very attached to this.

It's all voices, in 1 to 4 or so page chapters titled by the speaker/thinker. Vardaman tells us, "My Mother is a fish." That's a whole capture. Here's his mother, Addie, speaking about her husband, Anse:

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; lover or Anse: It didn't matter."

The story is about the death of Addie Bundren on her husband's poor farm isolated in rural Mississippi. She has made her husband promise to take her body to the town she came from, Jefferson, MS, about 40 miles away. They don't have a car, so this would by animal cart. When she dies, the weather breaks and the local river swells and tears down all the old bridges. But Anse is a weird guy, and a promise is a promise. He takes his three sons, his daughter, Dewey Dell, and a friend to help transport her. So, in a sense the book has two parts, the anticipation of Addie's death, where she looks out a window to watch her son make her coffin, the sounds of his sawing and hammering running through the text, and then a journey, their own odyssey.

But, it's the voices. That's everything here. From the opening line. They are just so distinct, that as a reader, my mind melded with their southern rural slang. Somehow, they take on their own reality, and they are the book. It's a kind of stream of conscious, with a repetition that should be irritating, but works, giving us a variety minds, sometimes compromised, sometimes religious, sometimes so coldly or even silently practical. It's almost doesn't matter what they say (or how funny it might be. The humor is superb). They have a rhythm and experience, that, itself, lingers.

This is a non-overrated wonderful classic. Recommended to the Faulkner curious.

35. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
OPD: 2024
format: 209-page hardcover
acquired: April read: May 27-31 time reading: 5:56, 1.7 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: memoir theme: TBR
locations: Chautauqua, NY, Eerie, PA and NYC.
about the author: Indian-born British-American novelist, born in Bombay in 1947

This was important for Rushdie to write, and, I feel, meaningful for me to buy and read. It's not the best thing I've ever read, but it serves its purpose. Rushdie's response to this attack here is to process the experience, healing and scars, review the good things in his life, especially his family, and to take advantage of his second chance at life. Having survived, he has the feeling that this is, in a way, gravy.

He mostly disregards his attacker, explaining how his attacker became less and less important to him, as he healed and wanted to move on. There is no forgiveness. He maybe danced in front of the prison, which is kind of beautiful. But he claims the attacker has no meaning for him and doesn't feel the need to confront him. But he still could, in court, I think.

A lot of readers praise this as a really powerful book. My brain just finds that a little odd. I have no complaints about it. But it's very simple, very direct, not surprising, and not particularly enlightening except as insight into Rushdie's nonfiction voice - which I did appreciate. I do want to read some of Rushdie's novels. But it certainly is a book of the moment. And this attack on Rushdie struck many of us deeply. So it may simply be that readers need the same catharsis in reading this that Rushdie did in writing it. For that kind of reader, I can recommend this.

Fantastic review of As I Lay Dying, Dan. Your comments make me want to drop everything and start reading it right away!

I'm sorry that Knife wasn't a more rewarding read. Did you read Joseph Anton, his memoir about living with the constant fear of death due to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini? I'm still very curious to learn what his mental state is, i.e. does he feel more vulnerable now than he did then? Has he been giving public lectures or reading since the attack? Does he have more protection if so?

For five years he was a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta (2007-2012, I think), where I completed my residency in Pediatrics. I attended one of his talks at the Carter Presidential Center, where he spoke about and read from The Enchantress of Florence. I think the fatwa was still in effect at that time, but there were no security measures in place, although the audience members could purchase signed copies of the book and not have them signed individually.

I'll still read Knife this summer.

>162 kidzdoc: That’s great that you were able to attend a talk. I have not read Joseph Anton. Knife is not a book about fear. He talks about nightmares, but not about conscious fear. There is a lot of medical detail. He has several specialists working in him. That was interesting…and sometimes cringe-worthy

>160 dchaikin: I just started this today (a reread), so will come back to your review once I have finished it. It's my pick for this month's book club read, so it will be interesting!

I do love the way I just sort of fell right back into the style of it.

>161 dchaikin: A book I want to read - really interesting your thoughts about the need on the part of readers for catharsis.

>162 kidzdoc: Another book I mean to read. I did read The Enchantress of Florence though. There are others I prefer, but it was definitely worth reading. It would be wonderful to hear him speak in person.

>162 kidzdoc: Thanks for this informative review. It was an important review for me as I don’t think I could read the book. I want to remember the Rushdie I used to see enjoying himself in restaurants with his friends in Manhattan. I suspect he won’t be doing this anymore. I was very upset about the attack. I don’t know why I was so upset in the days after - I’m not a fan of his books. But I did want to know about Knife.

In what way was Knife “cringe-worthy”?

>165 kjuliff: some of the medical stuff… just… eek. Tough on me to read about. And I think we were all upset in August 2022, across the globe. It just strikes the collective metaphorical heart to attack an artist for an unreflective religious extremism.

>164 SassyLassy: glad you’re reading Faulkner!

So May...

I finished nine books in a May, and got in 57 hours of reading. I'm pretty happy with that. Only 15.5 hours of listening for various reasons. One reason is that The Book of Jacob is tough on audio. I need to pay attention and remember names by sounds, non-English names. My best books was clearly As I Lay Dying. The only other book I gave a full five stars to was the terrific and short Western Lane, where I got lost in the prose. But Asphodel by H.D. was a great experience, as was The Years by Annie Ernaux, and the Roman de Silence. And I liked Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener. The audiobook I finished, the Hilary Mantel essay collection, was really rewarding. So, all-in-all a great month in many ways.

And I enjoyed all the comments here. I think, maybe, a lot more than I'm used to. I do hope a group read of A Place of Greater Safety happens, even if I can't take part...or come in rather very very late.

My June plans begin with The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, which I'm already quite attached to. I'm reading it with a group on the Booker Award Book Club Facebook group - and we are reading it specifically because there are so many complaints it didn't make the 1995 short list. Then I checked out a local group, Inprint Houston, and they hold monthly online book discussions. June is Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange. I have a library copy here, waiting for me so I can try that out. Other books planned include Pearl, the medieval poem, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both supposedly by the same unknown poet (in the same very local dialect). I'm eyeing another Discwold novel, Eric, even though I'm not really in a Discworld mentality. My next Faulkner is Sanctuary. And I'm hoping to read Not a River by Selva Almada, which made the International Booker Prize shortlist this year.

>164 SassyLassy: It was great and unforgettable to see and hear Salman Rushdie speak, Sassy. He is a gifted public speaker, and an even better reader of his work. He read two excerpts from The Enchantress of Florence, which had recently been released, and both I and the friend from work who came with me felt as if we had been transported back to our early childhoods, when we would sit on the floor and listen to a teacher or other adult read a book to us. What was even more interesting was the response of former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn from Georgia, who arrived late and sat two seats down from me in the same row; I recognized him because he apologetically excused himself as we stood up to let him pass. As Rushdie read Senator Nunn rocked and hummed quietly but still audibly in his seat, as if he was listening a Southern Baptist minister preach!

>160 dchaikin: ‘This is a non-overrated wonderful classic’… Yes, it is!! Great review, Dan, I’m so glad that you’ve reached this part of Faulkner’s oeuvre, and that you are being so caught up, breathing the air of Yoknapatawpha County. I’ll definitely be looking forward to your review of Sanctuary, which I’ve read only once, decades ago. I may want to reread it—actually your reviews are making me want to reread all the novels of this period.

>168 kidzdoc: good story. Strange senator. 🙂

>169 dianelouise100: thank you. So kind and encouraging.

>170 dchaikin: Ha! That isn't strange behavior for someone brought up in a Baptist church in the Deep South, Dan.

>171 kidzdoc: it would make my work meetings much more interesting

>172 dchaikin: Let the Church say "Amen!"

Catching up on this really good discussion, though too distracted (pesky work) to go back and address everything in an orderly fashion. I'm sorry for your weather-related woes—when we had no power for six days after Hurricane Sandy, State Farm did indeed cover the food in our kitchen refrigerator and basement freezer. The adjuster said, "You must have had a lot of meat frozen for your family," and I, a vegetarian, said, "Yes." So if your State Farm rates have gone up in the past dozen years, folks, it's MY FAULT.

Ah, Hilary Mantel. I have that essay collection and definitely am looking forward to it, and even more so A Place of Greater Safety, which I've had forever. (Ditto Possession, so you're not alone there, Dan.) Wolf Hall is one of the few books I've reread.

I always look stuff up when reading history or historical fiction. I like to be able to visualize stuff, and I like knowing what words and events refer to. Not so constantly as to throw me out of the story, but it's easy to do on the iPad, which is my e-reader, and it's easy for me to get into that rhythm if there's a lot I don't know (cf Dorothy Dunnett), and it takes none of the enjoyment out of the experience for me. Probably a journalist thing, but that's OK.

ive always done it; usually it doesnt mess with a story, Ill jot a note for me to read later if it does which is why I often follow a fiction with a non fiction of the same theme and vice versa. Makes for a fun chain of stories

I think we are reading POGS in July which is when we are reading about france. should we think about when to start, where well meet etc etc ?Or just wait till July and figure it out

I am thrilled about July because we are readinglords and ladies probably my fav witchbook before shepards crown

>174 lisapeet: thanks for stopping by and leaving this nice comment. Wolf Hall is a rare book I've reread too, and it was rewarding.

>175 cindydavid4: I hope the PoGS group read takes off. I haven't read Lords and Ladies! hmm. I did start Eric today, but that she be it for Discworld this year.

>160 dchaikin: This is such a great review. Like others on this thread, it made me want to re-read it. It sounds like May was a very good month in books for you.

>177 rasdhar: thank you Rasdhar!

36. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
Introduction: Candia McWilliam (2013); Preface:: Hermione Lee (2013)
OPD: 1995
format: 292-page paperback from 2013
acquired: May 1 read: Jun 1-5 time reading: 9:00, 1.9 mpp
rating: 5
genre/style: historical fiction theme: Booker
locations: Jena, Germany and surrounding area, 1790’s
about the author: 1916 –2000: A Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. She was the daughter of Edmund Knox, later an editor of Punch, and Christina, née Hicks, daughter of Edward Hicks, Bishop of Lincoln, and one of the first women students at Oxford. She was a niece of the theologian and crime writer Ronald Knox, the cryptographer Dillwyn Knox, the Bible scholar Wilfred Knox, and the novelist and biographer Winifred Peck.

A novel about Novalis, a German romantic poet who died young around the year 1800. This is a book I hadn't heard of until it came in Booker posts on Facebook. One judge from every year was quoted, from 1969 through 2022. (I don't recall the source article.) Three separate judges expressed surprise/disappointment that The Blue Flower was overlooked in 1995. It didn't make the short list. It did win the National Critics Circle Award, an American award that first opened up to non-American novels that year. Anyway, I was curious, and it helped lead to a group read in the Booker Facebook group. And, well, it's about time I read something from Penelope Fitzgerald.

So the novel. It's quite wonderful. Historical fiction, a model for Hilary Mantel, who was an admirer for Fitzgerald. We're in the German romantic movement, with Goethe and other famous German authors, many of whom clustered in Jena, a sort of bohemian university town. This is not easy world to capture. Fitzgerald does it with the lightest touch, and, to play on the title, it blooms. (or it did for me.)

She did some things I can pick up on. She somehow conveys a massive amount of much information in a very condensed a fashion... and yet keeps her reader. You don't notice as you're reading how much accumulates so fast. And it's brief. Characters get two-word descriptions and that sticks. She also created an atmosphere. She doesn't go too far. She leaves things unexplained, and in doings so, she opens the windows to the reader’s imagination. Our minds fill in, and then keep going. In a way, each chapter, there are 55 of them, is a thought piece, an inspirational idea left for reader reflection. She also ties everything together. For what it’s worth, I think every single character introduced is revisited at some point. And, lastly, she's also charmingly humorous in many ways. Her characters are lovable.

So, we get a finger on this mind of this young inspired German poet, his odd love-life, his family, the world of Jenna, and really of 1790's Germany. We are filled with detail, and filled with ideas to pursue, and left without conclusion. Nothing goes too deep, except maybe the reader. Reader, pursue on your own.

I finished this feeling a bit muted. My next books felt wordy, and slow. In the opening scene in The Blue Flower it's washday, and blankets and clothes are blowing in the wind. Their owners, appropriately left as ghosts, missing. The free blowing linens left as an image we can apply in our mind to our thoughts... unlike the actual blue flower, which I never could understand.

Not every reader liked the book. But, if you like Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, I highly recommend Fitzgerald's Novalis.

>179 dchaikin: You've left me intrigued and I'll look for a copy.

>180 RidgewayGirl: I hope you can read it. I had you and these APoGS posts in mind when reviewing.

37. Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
OPD: 2024
format: 317-page hardcover
acquired: Library loan read: Jun 5-14 time reading: 10:17, 1.9 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: Contemporary fiction theme: Inprint Houston
locations: 1800’s Colorado & Florida, then 2018 Oakland
about the author: an American novelist and writer from Oakland, California, born 1982.

I was really mixed on this and kind of wish I hadn't read it. I really enjoyed his previous novel, There There (2018), because it was all so new to me. Oakland, urban natives of Cheyenne descent trying to find a purpose. I read this because I'm thinking about getting involved in Inprint Houston, a local organization that supports writers, invites fairly major writers for readings, and runs a zoom-based book club. They discuss this on June 23.

I kind of expected it, but this doesn’t add much new to There There. A big problem for me was that the prose is always the same, no matter who is speaking, or whether it's 1st, 2nd or 3rd person. It's a distinct style, but I felt it only worked for one character, Orvil. I liked Orvil a lot. I just didn't feel it was appropriate to use that style for every character. The novel was almost always ok (except that one 2nd-person chapter which was awful), sometimes it was very good.

I recommend There There. If you want more, then check this out.

38. Pearl : A New Verse Translation by Marie Borroff
OPD: 1977, Pearl is a late-14th-century poem
format: 56-page paperback
acquired: January read: Jun 2-15 time reading: 3:09, 3.4 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Middle English Dream poem theme: Chaucer
about the author: The Pearl poet is unknown, but wrote in a North-West Midlands dialect of Middle English. Mary Borroff (1923-2019) was an American poet, translator, and the Sterling Professor of English emerita at Yale University, born in New York City.

Pearl is a medieval Old English poem found on only one manuscript, along with Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Purity (sometimes named Cleanness). The author or authors are unknown, but the poems use the same local dialect, a 14th-century northwest Midlands dialect, and they are thematically consistent and Christian.

I can't comment on the dialect, because I read this in translation. It's an interesting high-end translation. The translator was deeply into the poem and its rhythms. She replicated both the cadence and the rhymes, and it makes for easy reading. And she has nice afterward explaining some of this. It's an admirable effort and I feel very impressed by it. Of course, she changed the wording, and this means something is lost. A lot actually. If I read this again, I would like the original with notes.

Although the whole book took me three hours, I read the poem itself in an hour total. It reads quick. It's about a parent who lost a daughter and has a dream vision where he meets his daughter again. She stands across an uncrossable river, in her Christian paradise afterlife, one of 144,000 brides of the lamb Christ. She is happy. He questions the girl, and she explains paradise to him and then sends to where he can view it. It's described in the poetry. When the parent tries to cross the stream, he awakes.

The Revelations-based Christian message doesn't do much for me. Everything good to an extreme in a way that seems painfully relentless. The meeting of a lost child is, however, very meaningful. We all lose our children eventually, hopefully to their own independence. And, of course, we all fear any alternative.

Another meaning pertains to the recent novel, Pearl by Sian Hughes, which references the poem gently. You can enjoy that book without reading this. (I loved it!) But having now read this, I can relate it to the book and the relationship adds much to both works.

But at the bottom this was an hour of reading a poem in translation. Unless I read it again, it will just slip by. I'll barely remember.

Interesting set of reviews, Dan. I was particularly interested in your review of Penelope Fitzgerald's book. I read her novel The Bookshop several years ago and was not impressed enough to try anything else by her. Perhaps that's a mistake.

I'm on record as having loved The Blue Flower. Definitely like nothing else I've read, in a good way.

Fitzgerald is one of those writers who has come up on lists of the “overlooked” or “underrated” so often that you almost feel she was overhyped for being underhyped, but she is very good, and amazingly economical. I loved the indirectness of The blue flower, the way we are always made to see Novalis as a trainee mine inspector and never as a future poet. I really liked Offshore and The bookshop too, but they are both quite different from The blue flower.

Enjoyed your review of The Blue Flower

Pearl: A new verse translation sounds interesting, but having got to the turn of the 16th century in my reading I'm not inclined to go back to the 14th

Penelope Fitzgerald sounds like someone I should read. I have one of her books on my wishlist, The Golden Child, though I don’t remember why.

>184 labfs39: I hear The Bookshop is very different from The Blue Flower, but that also comes from readers who liked it. :) ( See >186 thorold: )

>185 lisapeet: I'm happy to now join you as a fan.

>186 thorold: I'm definitely interested in reading more by Fitzgerald. I'll use the underrated/overlooked descriptions as motivators.

>187 baswood: Thanks and understand. I'm anxiously awaiting your 17th-century reading. :)

>188 FlorenceArt: The Golden Child was her first novel, published, I believe, in her sixties. You might just really take to The Blue Flower.

Loved The Blue Flower too. It was interesting to read Novalis' poem about the girl afterwards. Great novel.

>183 dchaikin: Glad to see your comment on the relationship of the medieval poem to one of the Booker novels. The medieval Pearl is, like Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess, a consolation poem in genre, and the novel is a contemporary work about grief and consolation. I was very interested in how different were the types of consolation offered in each work, but both were effective in encouraging the protagonists to get on with their lives. I think Hughes deserves much credit for bringing together a medieval genre with her contemporary themes. I feel like rereading the novel now.

>183 dchaikin: back in HS the book the pearl was frequently used as a reading in National Forensic League's tournaments. I know this is by Steinbeck, but wonder if his work was influenced by this work?

>179 dchaikin: A great review, and I'm fascinated, not just by the book, but her background - just imagine the dinner table conversations!

Definitely taking a book bullet on The Blue Flower. I've been meaning to read something by Fitzgerald, and actually thought I had but the list says no. Great review!

>179 dchaikin: Great review of The Blue Flower. The only Penelope Fitzgerald book I've read was Human Voices and it didn't have any real impact on me, but I've been meaning to try another in case I just picked a bad book to start with, so I might give this one a go.

>182 dchaikin: I remember liking There There and I've been meaning to reread it before trying this one. A pity it's not better.

sorry for the slow replies

>190 AlisonY: another fan! I should look up Novalis now

>191 dianelouise100: Hughes wrote a really beautiful book. Her Pearl is a life's work. Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess is weird consolation book, since it's full of humor. :) By the way, I just finished Sanctuary. What the heck to make of this book?

>192 cindydavid4: Steinbeck's The Pearl is a much different theme. If he throws a shade at the medieval poem, it doesn't make the summaries I read. (I may have read the Pearl in my tween years.... not sure). The poem is about consolation in heaven.

>193 rasdhar: isn't Fitzgerald's childhood world fascinating? And yet she wasn't a writer until well past all that.

>194 mabith: thanks. Be patient with Fritz. The book itself is fast...too fast.

>195 valkyrdeath: thanks. I hope you give The Blue Flower a try. See my note to "mabith" one line up. I loved There There. Wandering Stars didn't work for me (And Penelope Fitzgerald did not help. I was really taken up by her book and the next book was doomed to disappoint). It works for other readers.

>196 dchaikin: thanks, it has been a while since I read it and couldnt remember what it was about

>196 dchaikin: In medieval poetry, a “consolation poem” was meant, not to sympathize with the one grieving, but to encourage him to get over his excessive grief and get back to his responsibilities. In the Pearl the griever must quit wishing for the impossible—to be with his daughter— and pay attention to the state of his own soul. I don’t remember BD well enough to comment specifically, back on the TBR it goes.

And as for Sanctuary, I read it once and have never had any desire to reread. Some of Faulkner’s most unsympathetic characters! I’ve been looking forward to your review—I think some critics place it among his best works, others think it was just meant to sell widely, thus the potboiler effect. I just remember it as a particularly painful novel to get through.

Sanctuary was the one Faulkner I've read that I intensely disliked.

>198 dianelouise100: that's a better description of the Pearl poem. I'm thinking over Sanctuary. It has awful aspects. But it wasn't a waste of time. It has a lot of interesting aspects too. But... you know...

>199 arubabookwoman: I think I can understand if Sanctuary turned you off Faulkner. I can't defend his treatment of Temple, nor do I want to. But it's nothing like The Sound and the Fury or As I lay Dying. If you just need good unique prose and perspectives, try out As I Lay Dying.

39. Eric by Terry Pratchett
OPD: 1990
format: 148-page mass market paperback
acquired: library loan read: Jun 14-dd time reading: 3:38, 1.5 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Fantasy/humor theme: TBR
locations: Discworld
about the author: 1948-2015. An English author, humorist, and satirist, best known for his 41 comic fantasy novels set on the Discworld, and for the apocalyptic comedy novel Good Omens, which he wrote with Neil Gaiman. Born in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, England.

This is a short book and a nice quick reminder that I still like this stuff. Part of the Rincewind series, the magician finds himself pre-pubescent Eric's conjured demon, doing Eric's wishes. The demons themselves are very upset about this, at least the head demon is. The Luggage isn't too happy either. Pratchett takes on Dante, Goethe, Aztecs, Homer, and the beginning and end of time, care of Rincewind and the Luggage. Fun stuff.

40. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
OPD: 1931
format: 326-page paperback
acquired: April read: Jun 16-23 time reading: 9:06, 1.7 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Classic novel theme: Faulkner
locations: Yoknapatawpha county Mississippi
about the author: 1897-1962. American Noble Laureate who was born in New Albany, MS, and lived most of his life in Oxford, MS.

I would call this a problem book. It's interesting but also disturbing in a way that's hard to justify. I think Faulkner felt bad enough that he wrote his own defense. The 1932 edition has an introduction by Faulkner with several factual inaccuracies in which is claims he wrote this for money. And it did sell.

But the book has its attractions. Faulkner is playing with Mississippi contrasts. His city college graduates mix with rural Mississippi rum runners. This was written and published during American prohibition. The cultural clash is kind of fantastic; and it's strange, giving the book a lovely, spooky weirdness. City boys showing off to drunken desperate men with loaded guns, one mentally compromised, another a hard woman with a baby. This weirdness is Cormac McCarthy territory, long before McCarthy. (And I can imagine him studying this book.) But Faulkner doesn't stop there. He digs into these characters. They're opaque, but we see this opacity from several different angles. We readers, if we want, can gawk. It's maybe worth noting everyone seems to equalize in Memphis, TN.

But Faulkner's claim that he wrote this for money is both revealing and misleading. It's an odd novel in several ways. First, it's a throwback, and step back from two inventive (and literary world changing) works - The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. Unlike those works, this is plot and drama and a more regular prose. As a plot-based work, the narrative momentum starts, stops and sputtering (much like his second novel Mosquitoes). His 1932 introduction claims it was an earlier work that we rewrote drastically to try to save it. That might be true.

But the main crime is the way he handles Temple Drake, a town high school beauty. He's cruel. And he doesn't let up but drags it out. Faulkner leaves us feeling that he is not only not empathizing with her, but almost jealous of the men around her. This is well outside our current ethical norms.

This is not a book I would recommend to anyone interested in trying Faulkner. You have to let some things go to appreciate the good parts. But I think forgiving Faulkner fans will find some reward.

Sounds like May was a great month for reading. I'm delighted to hear it. And it's good for me to see the reminders about Faulkner and Mantel, both of whom I hope to tackle as my brain clears up.

Wonderful review of Sanctuary! I’m glad to see you enjoying Faulkner so much.

>203 Jim53: goodness, I hope you're ok. Yes, two rewarding authors.

>204 dianelouise100: thank you! I'm happy I'm enjoying him to. :) Next is Light in August, the one I was most looking forward to when I started this.

>200 dchaikin: Yes I've read As I Lay Dying , as well as The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, Intruder in the Dust, Light in August and The Snopes Trilogy. I loved all of these, read some of them multiple times, and rated them highly (reviewed some here on LT too). But I thoroughly detested Sanctuary, maybe because the bits about the drunken frat boys, southern belles and college football weekends reminded me too much of such weekends at Tulane (though nothing so dangerous as being kidnapped and held by rum runners). And maybe when I read it my expectations were that it would be more like the other Faulkners I had read. At this point I don't have a detailed memory of the book, and though your great review makes me think I missed a lot of what went on in the book, I know it's one I will never reread.

I've missed so much in the last couple of months, reading (and posting) on LT kept getting pushed into the background. Anyway I wanted to say

1. I've been here!
2. I enjoyed your thoughts on Kairos on your last thread, and totally agree.
3. Also agree with your comments on Wandering Stars, it was a letdown for me.

>206 arubabookwoman: somehow I understood your >199 arubabookwoman: post as saying Sanctuary was the only Faulkner you have read. Now I see I misread that. What you remember is ... well, about right. Drunken frat boys and southern bells play big roles.

>207 ursula: thanks for stopping by here. And glad you agree with me on Kairos. The FB Booker group is really divided on it. And, well, I'm sorry you agree with me on Wandering Stars...

41. Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
OPD: 2023
format: 276-page hardcover
acquired: library loan read: Jun 24-29 time reading: 11:23, 2.5 mpp
rating: 3½
genre/style: historical fiction theme: none
locations: Civil War and post-Civil War West Virginia
about the author: an American novelist and short story writer born in Buckhannon, West Virginia in 1952.

This was intriguing as a kind of dark horse Pulitzer winner by a veteran but largely unknown author who has published a lot of books and been on numerous short lists. Consistent with my current mindset, I started this thinking about the prose. It was nice. It gets more complicated and I found myself reading very slow and unable to speed up. But, I always liked it. She creates a nice rhythm, she manages plot pacing and feeling and situation. I definitely felt like I was reading a veteran author.

But it's not a novel I should have read. It's just not for me, and that's on a sort of literary metaphysical level. To put it bluntly, I don't like how witch-like characters are handled in most contemporary fiction. These are women with somehow with nearly magical secret knowledge of medicine and psychology, and sometimes with purely magical stuff - none of which prevents really bad stuff from happening. When a magical character in a non-magical world fails to prevent, or at least reasonable manage catastrophic stuff, that, to me, is a plot hole. It's also really common in contemporary literature, especially historical fiction. (If you've read the book, I'm talking about Dearbhla, the Irish herb specialist)

So, that aside, this is the story of Eliza and her daughter living hidden away in the West Virginia hills who lose their husband/father during the Civil War. He just disappears. Later Eliza is abused by a southern Civil War veteran until he, for unclear reasons, drops Eliza, now mute, and her daughter off at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, WV and instructs the daughter to hide her origin and relationship with her mother. The 12-yr-old girls follows this instruction - this is where the book opens. It's one of the better aspects of the book.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, WV is real. And, according to Phillips, for its 1st 50-years was run with a remarkably compassionate philosophy. Patients were treated humanely and well. Much of the novel hovers on this facility and it's quite interesting, giving some real factual flavor.

Another interesting aspect of the book worth mentioning it that Phillips seems to like to tell her story through voyeurs, characters learning by peeking out windows, or listening through openings or thin walls (or through unexplained feelings of distant happenings). It works, and creates some atmosphere, although it can be awkward.

Overall, for me this novel has some good aspects, but also, for me, a lot of problems. I liked the slightly difficult prose, and the various aspects of history and place. The plot seemed really flawed to me, full of aspects that I couldn't make sense of. I feel it's a flawed book by veteran skilled author. I can't recommend it, but I do know many readers did enjoy it a lot.

Catching up on your thread after a while and really enjoying your reviews, as usual. I don't recall Eric being one of my favourites, but my experience of Pratchett is that they tend to hold up to re-reading, as you show. Your comments on Sanctuary are superb. It's one of Faulkner's that I haven't read, and I don't think I'm going to, but I enjoyed reading your review. It's interesting that he felt the need to defend the work; I'd imagine that even by the standards of the time it was published, it was not considered de rigeur to take those (literary) stances.

>209 dchaikin: I do agree with what you're saying about how witches are written in a lot of modern literature. There's a sort of Potterization happening there: it's pure wish fulfillment, which is what enables some readers to ignore the glaring plot holes.

>210 rasdhar: “Potterization”. - love it!

That's too bad about Night Watch. I think that issue with the perfect knowledge yet not making a difference would bother me as well. I keep meaning to read something by Phillips, since there aren't that many West Virginia novelists who gain any sort of recognition, but I imagine I'll stick with her best known one (Quiet Dell).

Reminds me slightly of that one I read for book club recently, Spells for Forgetting. Set where magic is *apparently* such a huge part of the island that every family has a spell book, but the murder under very mysterious circumstances - woman found dead in the woods who died by drowning in salt water but with no salt water on her clothing, apparently no one remotely considered magic might have been involved. Including the person in the book who was supposed to be very sensitive to noticing others using magic.

>210 rasdhar: Eric goes by too quickly and lightly to remember. :) I'll try to remember the entertaining phrase "Potterization".

>211 kjuliff: me too. :)

>212 mabith: I thought about you while reading Night Watch. It is a local color book by a West Virginian author. I think you would appreciate that aspect. But, as for your example... oye. Authors tangled up in their own hyper-ideas.

PS - I'm 21 pages into Possession and kind of in love.

>213 dchaikin: Your PS reminds me of myself and I ended totally in love.

>209 dchaikin: Thanks for that review. I have Lark and Termite on my tbr and I'll read that before I decide whether to try Night Watch.

>213 dchaikin: It is lovely to read about your home area written by someone else local who loves it, and I do find I have to avoid non-West Virginians writing about the place (unless they've lived here for at least 15 years in which case we've likely colonized their hearts already).

>209 dchaikin: One of the oddities of my book stash is that I try to collect books on West Virginia, or by West Virginians. Too bad about this one.

>216 mabith: It can colonize my heart (well a good part of it) anytime. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

I read and loved Possession a number of years ago. Right now I am working my way through Byatt's novels about the Potter family (particularly Fredricka) having finished The Virgin in the Garden and well into the second in the series. She is a very erudite writer, and I am finding her to be a difficult, but rewarding read. Her sister, Margaret Drabble, who I also like, writes books that are much more accessible.

>214 JoeB1934: nice to hear. And actually maybe it really is your kind of book. A lot of careful research, and all just laid out there for you. That's just so...easy? pleasant? All I have to do is read it to get that research done.

>215 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a good plan

>216 mabith: It's so interesting to me that West Virginia has so much its own character. It's a state I have never been to.

>217 SassyLassy: And had no idea you also had a W.Va thing. Cool

>218 arubabookwoman: Sounds fun! Possession is my first by Byatt. This is just terrific reading. I'm going slow, over 3 minutes a page, and it's fantastic. I haven't been this excited to be in a book in a while.

>218 arubabookwoman: I had no idea Drabble and Byatt were sisters.

>219 dchaikin: As per usual, as you do in your reviews, you exactly analyzed my reading when you said, "maybe it really is your kind of book". Possession was THE turning point for my understanding about what stories are at my core.

Before that book I was cruising along finding classical murder mysteries that appealed to me. After the book I understood that any book of high literary content and an associated mystery/suspense was really for me. A few years later I found out that I had read about half of the top 100 ranked literary mysteries without knowing they existed.

Thanks for your comment.

I also need to commend you and @labfs39 for uncovering the beauty of books which don't meet my literary mystery preference. I am reading more books all the time for the literary content you have reveled for me. Your reviews are spectacular and they draw me to some and away from some.

>219 dchaikin: It's the misunderstandings really. WV is not culturally southern, other than in a few very limited areas maybe. Appalachian culture is a different thing and WV is really pure Appalachia and the independence of spirit that entails. People conflate the politicians with the people and even then they only look at the political situation starting in 1999 and decide that's always the way it's been (which is not the case). My parents moved here with the back-to-the-land hippies and it's interesting how immediately accepted those groups were in WV, on the whole compared to other places in the US. I've never looked very mainstream, and I've gotten a lot of harassment about it in other states, but never here, not even once, not even pointed looks, and that says a lot to me.

>217 SassyLassy: That makes me so happy! I do think it's one of the prettiest places, and I've been around a lot of the US. I recently took the train from Charleston to Staunton VA just for the scenery and it was glorious. If you don't have The Voices of Glory by Davis Grubb in your collection, I highly recommend it. It's my favorite WV novel (partly because it's set around where I grew up so really speaks to my personal experience more than all the books about the southern coal fields).

>220 labfs39: They're sisters and engaged in a notorious literary feud.

>5 dchaikin: How in the world did you obtain this beautiful quilt representation of the books you have read? I have used covers to do a similar thing, but my html knowledge failed me. So, I took the easy way out and used screenshots.

>218 arubabookwoman: Also love Possession but have to confess that I could not get through the Victorian poetry. so skimmed those and always said id go back to them but never had. Still the book really blew me away. The movie adaptation wasnt half bad. Also loved The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye
I tried reading the childrens book but didn't care for it. should probably read more of her

>220 labfs39: yeah, cool. Except I only know Drabble by name.

>221 JoeB1934: goodness, thank you for that last comment. That's wonderful. And I hope Lisa sees that last comment too! A token to CR. And that's a terrific story about you and Possession.

>222 mabith: thanks for that lovely post on W.VA. I remember comparing Lawrence KS and Florida. My favorite example is talking with another geology grad student who was little older than me, and her telling me all the fashion stuff she used to do when she lived in Florida, red nails and make-up etc...stuff that would be so out of place in Lawrence. Fashion can be oddly local.

>223 arubabookwoman: I didn't know about this feud. I need to google...

>224 JoeB1934: ok... next post...

>225 cindydavid4: Thanks. I'm enjoying the poetry. I'm interested in The Djinn in the Nightgale's Eye, which I didn't even know existed before your post. I've thought about The Children's Book, but went with Possession first as it seems to generate more affection.

>224 JoeB1934: I create an img-src code for each cover as a picture, and then add accumulate all the codes in that one post. Nothing very clever, I'm afraid.

The img src code you probably also use, but here it is. replace the {} with what's inside.

{open carrot}a href="{link to work in LT}"{close carrot}{open carrot}img src="{link to an image over the cover}" HEIGHT = "200"/{close carrot}{open carrot}/a{close carrot}

or, more simply
{open carrot}img src="{link to image}" HEIGHT = "200"/{close carrot}

>227 dchaikin: I think Joe may be referring to the fact that in your display, each book cover links to the LT book description.

>228 kjuliff: I was truly wondering how he achieved that beautiful edge-to-edge display. His solution is elegantly simple, rather than html hocus-pocus. A very important by-product is that those links exist also!

>222 mabith: Title noted and added to my list - thanks.

I've never looked very mainstream, and I've gotten a lot of harassment about it in other states, but never here, not even once, not even pointed looks, and that says a lot to me
You might find that same freedom in Vermont- it always feels very individualistic to me.

>213 dchaikin: Possession and just about all her novels are excellent.

>227 dchaikin: Thanks so much for this. It has opened my eyes to a broader use, which I will use in future descriptions of where I am going.

So often in life the simplest solution to a problem is the most elegant one.

Great to hear Possession is going well. Every time I've picked up that novel I've been out off by the amount of poetry in it, but so many people seem to love it.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Children's Book, so I'm prepared to be wrong.

Sorry all, traveling. I was supposed to be home today, dealing with hurricane Beryl, but our flight was cancelled and I'm away from home and anxious - for many things.

>228 kjuliff: ( >227 dchaikin: ) >229 JoeB1934: >231 JoeB1934: - I'm so happy you found this useful, Joe, and have already applied it! Good stuff.

>230 SassyLassy: I've heard things about Vermont, fiercely local, maybe. And beautiful. And, there will be more Byatt coming my way.

>232 AlisonY: I'm looking forward to the Children's Book. I wouldn't beat yourself up over the poetry, which Byatt may have whipped out in a zone of writing. Apparently, the writing process was quick, as she had all her ideas down and just wrote it up. If so, it would explain some of the book's feeling of completeness, of all the variety of parts linking well together.

42. Not a River by Selva Almada
translation: from Spanish by Annie McDermott (2024)
OPD: 2020
format: 87-page paperback
acquired: May read: Jun 29-30 time reading: 2:24, 1.7 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary novella theme: Booker 2024
locations: an island on the River Paraná
about the author: An Argentine writer of poetry, short stories, novels and nonfiction. She was born in Villa Elisa, Entre Ríos. She lived in Paraná to study from 1991 to 1999. Since 2000 she has lived in Buenos Aires.

A confrontation between vacationing fisherman and locals in machismo overdrive, in poetic prose. Two men, friends, from childhood, bring the son of a deceased 3rd friend on a fishing trip on a river island, and they catch a stingray. It's their treatment of the stingray that causes tensions with the local islanders to detonate. We imagine lots of alcohol and not a lot of hygiene. And yet a complicated and thought-provoking novella comes out of this. This is a book open to interpretations, and to rereading. I quite enjoyed it.

I hope you are doing okay and managed to get home. After living through Hurricane Michael, I get stressed about hurricanes even from 2000 miles away. Gotta love climate change. Maine is sweltering once again.

Hope you and your household are secure and dry, Daniel. It doesn't seem that long since the last hurricane hit Houston.

>235 labfs39: thanks

>236 RidgewayGirl: no, not that long. The derecho was, what, May? We had the TX power system failure freeze in 2021, Hugo flooding in 2016 and the tax-day flood in 2015. Fun town. 2.5 million without power yesterday.

house and cat have been checked and are ok. Dog still boarded. It’s still all very far away.

Oh man, nothing worse than not being able to get home during an emergency. I hope you get there soon, Dan, and that everyone's OK.

I was going to say that I've had Possession on the shelf for ages and haven't read it, but after a quick look-around I don't think I do have it, unless it's just... somewhere else. I have a pretty good handle on what's where, considering none of it follows any kind of system, so I might just have been dreaming that I own it. And now, of course, even though I have piles and piles of books, I want to borrow it from the library THIS INSTANT. But I won't, yet.

I feel like I've probably told my funny second-hand Possession story here before, but if I haven't let me know.

>238 lisapeet: Wait, what? You don't have a system for shelving your books? I'm not sure whether to be impressed or appalled.

I hope you're getting home OK, Dan, and finding that you haven't suffered much if any damage. I was relieved that my sister in Nacogdoches fared OK.

I’m home. No power. Possibly for days, but it’s kind of a crap shoot who gets it back when. 2.5 million people to restore

>238 lisapeet: ok, not that instant, but how about now? (My highlight today was reading Possession on my flight at 4-minutes a page.) And - I would love your secondhand Possession story.

>239 RidgewayGirl: lol!

>240 Jim53: I’m also glad your sister did ok.

I didnt realize you were in Texas, yikes you guys have had your share of weather! hoping you dont have any damage and the power is turned on soonest Hang in there

No power during heat, especially the hot nights, is so awful. Hope it comes back on for you soon.

I had no idea that the power outages in the Houston metropolitan area were so extensive, Dan. I hope your power returns soon. I'll have to check on my mother's younger sister and a close cousin of mine, who both live in Pearland, TX.

Having been through power outages( in the winter!), I hope that power does get restored soon.

Here's hoping you get your power going soon. I was just visiting your CR thread from 2014, where existed the only touchstoned "mention" on LT of the biography Anzia Yezierska: A Writer's Life, a biography by Louise Levitas Henriksen. (Well, now I've created two more, though.)

>247 rocketjk: wow. I’ll have to revisit that list. Here is a link https://www.librarything.com/topic/163456#4493120

My mom lost power for a few hours last night, but fortunately had a generator so didn't suffer too badly from the heat. How are you staying cool? I hope you get power back soon.

Sounds dreadful Dan. Glad to hear you and yours are doing OK, despite the annoyance of the lack of power.

This wouldn't normally have been storm season, would it? Global warming is so sadly a living reality. In our corner of the world we seem to be increasingly having coolish, temperate weather all year round. Winters aren't particularly harsh, and our summers seem to now be a wash-out on a regular basis, with temperatures in the low teens. My husband and I were just discussing today whether we're now in an era where our children don't get warm sunny days anymore. It's a dreadfully depressing thought, but I get that many of you in the boiling zones of the planet might readily swap.

>251 dchaikin: it is hurricane Season, and the “B” is Beryl tells us it’s Hurricane number 2 for the year. What is unique about it the impact of warmer ocean water to drive it, and that it was the earliest record storm to reach category 5 (catastrophic level). It hit hovering around category 1. 30 mph sustained winds with 80 mph gusts - supposedly.

I want to know who decided that power-lines should be above ground along the hurricane-prone Texas Gulf coast…

>250 AlisonY: wow that is depressing, its bad all around the world. so crazy that more isnt being done; the new climate will affect flora and fauna around the world as well as farming seasons and Im not sure people realize how much this will change their lives

>242 dchaikin: ok, not that instant, but how about now? Or... now? NOW? Not for a while, actually, since I just had two library holds come in at once and had to let one go because I'm already reading the doorstop Babel. AND I just brought back a dozen ARCs from a conference... Eyes > stomach, though I guess that's a poor metaphor because it's all eyes.

Possession story: My friend Meridith, who is not a fan of the book, walked into a conversation at some city event where a bunch of folks were talking about the film version. 'I HATED the book it was based on," she declared. "What bunch of crap." They blanched. Turns out they were talking about the movie The Passion, as in ... of the Christ, which is based on the New Testament. Well, it was funny when she told it.

>239 RidgewayGirl: Be appalled. Be very appalled. I generally know exactly where a book is on my many shelves, but I'm the only one.

Hope you have power back soon, Dan. That's miserable, and sounds like the city didn't do a good job all around. (As opposed to NYC, which safeguards the grid by very efficiently sending text messages to every resident warning them not to run extra appliances between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. I have a lot of laundry piled up.) The climate situation is terrible, and depressing.

Dan, have you gotten your power back? It really is too hot there to do without for any extended period.

I hope that your electricity is working again! I've been following the news about this, it really is a difficult situation. Take care!

We got our power back yesterday! I just had a normal night’s sleep. A few more of these and I might start to feel normal…🙂

Good news for you! The heat index in Maine was 102F yesterday, so we are still sweltering. My mom lost power in a thunderstorm for a few hours, and that was bad enough, days without power in this heat must have been unbearable.

Meanwhile in Western Europe, this July feels more like a late October, with drizzle and 14°C this morning...

Glad you got your power back though :-)

>256 dchaikin: So glad you and your family are safe and have power again!

Glad you're cool again. We've been getting up around 105 in the afternoons almost everyday for close to two weeks now here in Northern California. Almost nobody has AC in our valley because since forever, the hottest it's ever gotten here is maybe four or five days in the 90s once or twice a summer. Window screens and ceiling fans is about the extent of what's been needed. We got a small, efficient window AC for the bedroom so at least we can get some sleep. We have another month here. Then it's back to the NYC heat waves.

>260 rocketjk: 105 up in the north? thats insane! I think the only ones happy about this situation are the AC manufacturers

>261 cindydavid4: Agreed. I missed my calling.

Glad your power is back! Losing it in the heat of summer is such a problem.

>262 kjuliff: yeah but then youd have to go up roofs to repair them in 126 like David did!

>234 dchaikin: This goes directly to my library list.
I'm glad to hear that you and your family are safe.

>265 Ameise1: Terrific, about Not a River. And thank you.