RidgewayGirl's Year with Art and Books

Hi, I'm Kay. I live in a small city in Central Illinois after a life spent moving around, in an old house with a husband and assorted cats. I've been a member of the Category Challenge since 2008 and love how you all have provided me plenty of titles to add to my wishlist and tbr shelves. Come in, take a look around and share your opinions about what I've read.

These are the cats:



Homer, Melmoth, Freya, Oliver and Bettina.

Once again, I've waited until the second half of December to start thinking about the next year, and once again, I show up to find the rest of you all settled in and ready to go. My theme this year will be my favorite art from museums I have been lucky enough to get to visit. My categories are largely the same as last year, as it worked well for me.



Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired



Reading Miscellany

Owned Books Read: 13

Library Books Read: 20

Audiobooks:

Netgalley: 9

Borrowed:

Books Acquired: 33

Rereads: 1

Abandoned with Prejudice:

Category One.



The Battle of Lepanto, series of paintings by Cy Twombly
Regular collection at the Brandhorst Museum
Museum: Brandhorst, Munich

It's impossible to explain how overwhelming this series of paintings, depicting the 1571 naval battle is. It's in its own specially designed room and it communicates the carnage and violence of that event more than the many traditionally painted works can.

Reading Around the World


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

1. Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận, translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyen An Lý
2. People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi, translated from the Indonesian by Lara Norgaard
3. The Tokyo Suite by Giovana Madalosso, translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato
4. The Book Censor's Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain
5. We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris

Category Two.



The Sunflowers Quilting Bee at Arles by Faith Ringgold
Exhibition: Faith Ringgold: American People
Museum: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Faith Ringgold had a long and varied career that included her active participation in artists's movements and the push for Civil Rights.

We Need Diverse Books
Books from outside of my wheelhouse.

1. Rejection: Fiction by Tony Tulathimutte
2. Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
3. Woodworking by Emily St. James

Category Three.



Portrait of Alexander Sakaroff by Alexej von Jawlensky
Regular collection at the Lenbachhaus
Museum: Lenbachhaus, Munich

Alexej von Jawlensky was a Russian painter living in Munich when he painted this compelling portrait of Alexander Sakaroff, a Ukrainian dancer and choreographer in 1909. A decade later, arthritis meant he had to hold his paintbrush in both hands, but he continued to paint.

Expats, Immigrants, Works in Translation

1. Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu
2. The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
3. The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning
4. On a Woman's Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott
5. The Harmattan Winds by Sylvain Trudel, translated from the French by Donald Winkler

Category Four.



The Park (1910) by Gustav Klimt
Regular collection of MoMA
Museum: Museum of Modern Art, New York

The paintings that tend to wow me are the ones where reproductions are unable to adequately show how fantastic they are. Naturally, I have chosen to post them as tiny pictures on a computer/phone screen.

Brand New Books
Books published in 2025.

1. Sweet Fury by Sash Bischoff
2. Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky
3. The Antidote by Karen Russell
4. Fireweed by Lauren Haddad

Category Five.



Autoportrait dans la glace du cabinet de toilette
Portrait of the Artist in the Mirror of the Toilet Cabinet (Self-Portrait) by Pierre Bonnard
regular collection of the Musée National D’art Moderne
Museum: Centre Pompidou - Musée National D’art Moderne, Paris

Years ago, I was twenty and living in Paris for a year. This painting fascinated me. Bonnard painted plenty of lovely landscapes and interiors, but this painting, created in 1945, when the artist was 78, holds the gaze in a way his other work doesn't.

Books Off of My Own Shelves
Tackling the tbr.

1. Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson
2. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
3. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Category Six.



Artistin -- Marcella
Artist -- Marcella by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
regular collection at the Brücke-Museum
Museum: Brücke-Museum, Berlin

Who doesn't love a portrait of a girl and her cat? Kirchner is one of my favorite artists -- living in Germany let me discover that the art I most like to look at is German Expressionism and the Brücke-Museum is a sweet gem of a museum in a quiet part of the outskirts of Berlin.

Books by Women

1. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
2. I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro
3. A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir, translated from the French by Patrick O'Brian
4. The Float Test by Lynne Steger Strong

Category Seven.



Untitled (Blue Man on Red Object) by Bill Traylor
Regular collection of the High Museum
Museum: High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Bill Traylor was a field hand in his eighties before he began drawing. This work was made during the last years of the Great Depression in Alabama on cardboard using poster paints. The High Museum is a fantastic museum that has a large collection of outsider art -- art created by people without having attended art school, often people who live on the margins of society.

Reading as a Social Activity
My neighborhood book clubs.

1. Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
2. The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger
3. Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
4. In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes
5. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Category Eight.



Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista (Podría ser Juliana)
Woman Leaving the Psychoanalyst (Could Be Juliana) by Remedios Varo
Exhibition: Remedios Varo: Science Fictions, AIC
Museum: Art Institute, Chicago

The paintings by Catalan surrealist artist Remedios Varo are so imaginative, odd and enchanting that it's impossible to look at them without falling into a daydream.

Books read on my iPad

1. The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon
2. The Book of Love by Kelly Link
3. The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
4. The Red House by Mary Morris

Category Nine.



Self-Portrait by Albrecht Dürer (painted in 1500)
regular collection of the Alte Pinakothek
Museum: Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Just to show you that I can appreciate the old stuff. Dürer was a good-looking guy who could paint.

Support Your Public Library
Library Books.

1. The Favorites by Layne Fargo
2. The History of Sound: Stories by Ben Shattuck
3. Audition by Katie Kitamura
4. Show Don't Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld

Category Ten.



Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjûrokkei) by Katsushika Hokusai
regular collection of the Art Institute, but rarely on display
Museum: Art Institute, Chicago

I went to see this yesterday. Because of its fragility, it is rarely displayed at the Art Institute and I wanted to take the opportunity rather than waiting four years for the next chance.

Bad Things Happen
Crime novels, true crime and general mayhem.

1. Malice by Keigo Higashino, translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith

Category Eleven.



Das Schokoladenmädchen
The Chocolate Girl by Jean-Etienne Liotard
Regular collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Museum: Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Long Live the Rooster!
Books from awards longlists, shortlists and winners.

1. The Book of George by Kate Greathead (Competitor, Tournament of Books 2025)
2. Colored Television by Danzy Senna (Competitor, Tournament of Books 2025)
3. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino (Competitor, Tournament of Books 2025)

Bonus Category.

Absolute Anarchy

Review of my reading in 2024 (to come).

Great to see you here. I'm looking forward to following along!

Glad to see you are here, Kay. I love the art, wish I could see it in reality. The Remedios Varo at >9 RidgewayGirl: is fascinating!

ETA: Your cats look like real characters! What a sweet group!

What lovely kitties. Such a content lot.

Glad to see you've arrived, Kay. And looking forward to the BBs you'll be sending out into the world this year. Klimt is a particular favorite of mine and I like that painting a lot although he's perhaps more well-known for his "gold" works. And, as a quilter, I like that sunflower picture.

What a delight to see all the cats! I enjoy the artwork too, especially the Remedios Varo. I look forward to hearing about what you read this year!

>14 DeltaQueen50: Thanks, Judy. You know I wouldn't miss a year here!

>15 VivienneR: Vivienne, Remedios Veros is fantastic! She also included cats in many of her paintings. I could have easily just used her for this entire challenge.

>16 lowelibrary: LOL, my cats are all full of grievances and can list the many ways they are forced to get by on less than they deserve.

>17 dudes22: Betty, he's more well-known for his portraits, but I love his landscapes so much. And Faith Ringgold moved to quilts late in her career and made several gorgeous ones. A reminder that art comes in many forms and quilting is an under-appreciated one.

>18 Charon07: The cats are beloved and endlessly entertaining, however today I will spend some time vacuuming all the fur off of the furniture in time for Christmas.

So many cute kitties!! Happy reading in 2025, Kay!

>20 Cecilturtle: Merci, Cécile!

The pictures are great. Good reading in 2025.

Good luck with your 2025 reading. I'm sure, per usual, I will get hit with several BB's!

Hope it's all good in 2025! Love the Klimpt but thinking about doing it makes my hand hurt.

>9 RidgewayGirl: Carmella in The Hearing Trumpet is based on Remedios Varo, a great friend of Leonora Carrington, fellow Mexican surrealist. If you haven't read it, it's a real treat. Happy reading in 2025!

Happy New Year! I can always count on you for some book bullets. Looking forward to it!

Hi Kay! Happy New Year! I can’t wait to see what interesting reads you’ll have.

>22 mnleona: Thanks, Leona.

>23 Tess_W: Likewise, Tess. The Category Challenge is a danger to my book budget.

>24 clue: Klimt does use an amazing amount of detail in his work. The leaves in that painting vibrate when you look at it in person.

>25 pamelad: Yes, Carrington, Varos and Kahlo are often mentioned together. Carrington is the one I know the least about. I've made note of the book, thanks!

>26 sturlington: I look forward to following your reading, Shannon!

>27 lsh63: Here's to another good reading year, Lisa!

Happy new year!

Looking forward to following along and getting plenty of recommendations for new books in 2025.

Just dropping my star and looking forward to your insightful reviews!

I hope you have a wonderful reading year and I'm looking forward to your reviews!

Happy New Year! I hope it"s filled with good books!

I've dropped my star here for another year, and I've already enjoyed your pictures (hello kitties!). Happy new year when it comes!

>29 charl08: Likewise, Charlotte.

>30 christina_reads: Thanks, Christina. I hope we'll both have good reading years next year.

>31 MissBrangwen: Happy New Year! You'll be in 2025 hours before me.

>32 cbl_tn: I hope so, too, but I've got a lot (a lot!) of good reading on my tbr.

>33 Jackie_K: Hi, Jackie! You'll see plenty more pictures of the cats this year.

Happy New Year and good luck with your reading.

>35 lowelibrary: Thanks, April. My goal to finish off all the reviews for the books finished in 2024 did not happen, but I'm going to write them anyway. Hope your new year isn't starting off behind like mine is!

Happy New Year! You have a beautiful thread - I love seeing the kitties and the artwork.

Great categories! Love your cats. I'm actually having trouble getting around to threads because my three keep demanding I take petting breaks!

Thank you for the browse through your favorite artworks. I'll look forward ot your thread this year and know I will take a number of BB's as I usually do.

>37 Crazymamie: Thanks, Mamie. I thought I should just go ahead and make my thread about what I like.

>38 thornton37814: Lori, there are three cats and you only have two hands. More breaks to pat those good boys!

>39 beebeereads: Barb, the category challenge is a dangerous place if you're hoping not to add to the tbr!

>40 RidgewayGirl: It took me an hour to get a single thread in a cross-stitch project (about 60 stitches on the count fabric I was stitching on and the length of thread) because the little orange and white tabby kept jumping on my lap and down, but when I would hold and cuddle him, he had the purr machine going full speed--until he was ready to get down. The thing was, he would get down and immediately start head butting me to pick him up again.

January 7th, and I'm already behind on reviews!



"That's my car," Jenny said, remembering what she was doing here. She explained the situation.

"I'm in a pickle," she added.

George's expression conveyed sympathy, but he did not offer to help. Not George. It wouldn't even occur to him.

The Book of George by Kate Greathead follows George from his childhood into his thirties. George is affable and bright. He's also lazy and undecided and prefers to have other people take care of him. We've all known a guy like this, who somehow never lives up to his promise, who isn't great at keeping promises or of showing up when he's said he would. This is a hard book to describe, since it's just the life of a guy, and while George isn't the kind of guy who is usually the subject of novels, it all makes for a great reading experience, strangely enough.

George is a frustrating character to follow, from the inertia, to the way he is given endless second chances from everyone around him, but especially his cynicism and self-pity. He receives an expensive private education, his college is paid for, his relatives are willing to give him the kinds of jobs only available to the well-connected, and yet he feels hard done by. His mom endlessly lets him move back in, his girlfriend, a kind and intelligent woman, gets back together with him far more often than is understandable, and all of that makes for surprisingly good reading. Greathead does a fantastic job rejuvenating the WMFuN*, something I didn't think was possible.

* White Male F***-up Novel

Those are amazing pictures, Kay. Happy reading in 2025!

>43 MissWatson: Thanks, German Expressionism is far less popular than the Impressionists or really anything else, but it has a way of getting under my skin and I end up thinking about the painting afterwards and going back to see them again if I can. When I was lucky enough to live in Munich, I went to the Lenbachhaus a few times a month just to look at their excellent collection.

Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận and translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý begins with the death of the narrator's mother. She'd come to Saigon to see her son's new house, a fancy place that includes an elevator, one where she will fall down the elevator shaft in the middle of the night. The narrator travels back to Vietnam from Paris, where she works in a shop and teaches a class in Vietnamese on Monday evenings. The funeral awakens in her a need to investigate her mother's past, a search that will take her back to Paris, looking for an elusive man she believes to be her father.

The summary does a disservice to this book. It's a short book, but filled with different lives and countries and histories. There's the narrator's own life, the interpersonal relationships of her students, her mother's life as a faithful party member, and the lives of both the man she's searching for and assorted others, from a refugee from Vietnam who lives the shadow life of a person without connections or documents to the aging Parisienne living is squalor along with the feral cats she tricks into entering her apartment. It's an odd and fascinating journey, full of history and human nature.

>44 RidgewayGirl: I was thinking much the same when we went to see a selection from the Gerhard Schneider collection recently which is on show at a small museum near my sister’s, the Sauerland Museum. I wish we had known about this earlier, it was the last of three shows.

I'm late to visit this year and say happy new year (Happy New Year!), but oh, those cats! I love that you've got three who look like they're posing for the camera, and two looking like they just woke up after a wild party!

>46 MissWatson: There's so much more impact when you see the art in person, rather than a reproduction. Germany is a great country for art museums.

>47 whitewavedarling: All of the cats are often ridiculous, which makes for great entertainment.

>45 RidgewayGirl: That one sounds intriguing, and I've added it to the wishlist!

>45 RidgewayGirl: This sounds good. Lovely review. Adding it to The List.

>49 cbl_tn: & >50 Crazymamie: I look forward to finding out what you think of it. I'm really enjoying how there is more translated fiction available than ever before.

The Accomplice by Joseph Kanon is a thriller involving a reluctant Nazi hunter whose link to the man he's hunting, an associate of Mengele's who ran his own inhumane experiments at Auschwitz, is the man's beautiful daughter. It's 1962 and Aaron is visiting his uncle in Germany, whose work finding Nazis has landed him on the covers of magazines, when the elderly man spots Otto Schramm walking down a busy street. Since he is not able to, he asks Aaron, who works for the CIA, albeit as an analyst, to take on the job. Schramm was reported dead in Argentina years ago, but the key lies with his daughter, who lives in Buenos Aires. So Aaron goes to Argentina, and gets to know Schramm's daughter very well and very quickly. He doesn't have any experience at this, but he has the help of a German journalist and a few Mossad agents, as well as his own connections at the Buenos Aires field office of the CIA. But the guys helping him each have goals of their own and his own motivations are being influenced by the woman he's become involved with.

There's a lot going on in this thriller, with a look at the politics around the high-profile Nazis who fled accountability after the war and a lengthy set up to explain why Aaron, whose mother died in the camps, is canoodling with the daughter of a notorious Nazi, and to put the representatives of the various groups (Mossad, the CIA, etc...) interested in Schramm in position, which means that the real action doesn't start until the final third of the book. Of the books by this author that I've read, this is the least interesting, although it was still a fine diversion.

Let me start by saying that I can't think of anyone I'd recommend this book to, not even anyone in my generally game book club. The most adventurous reader I know texted me to say she was setting it aside. I think it's both pretty good and also so entirely located within a subculture -- young people who exist primarily on social media -- that it's not a book written with longevity in mind. Just like Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This, there's a specificity to this book that means it might well feel like it's written in a foreign language a decade from now.

Rejections: Fiction is a collection of short stories written by Tony Tulathimutte in which the characters from other stories all exist in the same world and interact in various ways. The title here is important; each story follows someone who is rejected and for very good reasons. There's the nice guy who is always respectful of everyone, who somehow can't find a woman willing to date him, the woman who is unable to get over anything, the guy who has honed his own taste in pornography until he's unable to form a functional relationship, each character ending up in situations that will make even the most detached of readers cringe inside. All the stories lead to an ending in which the author's own motivations are examined and found wanting. Tulathimutte writes well and he certainly doesn't treat any of his characters kindly. In the stories in which they are not the main character, they appear fine and reasonably normal, but when the spotlight focuses on them, their personal failings are taken to the most extreme point possible. And if all that has not put you off this book, you may well find it both as off-putting and strangely compelling as I did. Just be aware that the author is willing to be explicit in bizarre and stomach-churning ways.

>53 RidgewayGirl: Thank you for reading (& reviewing) this so I don’t have to!

>54 Charon07: There is usually at least one book in the Tournament of Books that leans into gore, or body horror, or something along those lines. I often skip them, but I did not know the wonders I would behold in the third story ahead of time.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I skipped Brainwyrms last year—did you read that one?

>56 Charon07: No, after struggling through half of Manhunt the year before, I decided to not to worry so much about reading every single book in the competition and to give myself permission to skip the ones I really didn't want to read. One of the people involved, who is lovely and moderates the discussions with tact and grace, is also a huge fan of body horror, which it turns out I do not love, but there is always at least one on the list each year.

I'm not sorry I read this one. Tulathimutte writes well and has interesting ideas, but I do think this book needs to be approached with an awareness of what is inside.

It's only January, and I'm already behind on reviews. I'd had this idea that I'd write them right after finishing each book, but that hasn't worked out so well. Let me catch up -- with a long and very cold weekend, in which I have mainly stayed inside, I've gotten quite a bit of reading done. Cats have been very supportive and there are two laying on my legs right now.

I was book-shamed into reading this book. In a thriller I read, a character needs a made-up backstory and simply steals it from this book. Because the person she's lying to is a writer of literary novels, she feels contemptuous of this supposedly well-read man not noticing she stole her life story from one of the most well-known literary novels in the US. Since I read literary fiction and consider myself reasonable well-read, I felt personally attacked.



Ruth and Lucille are children when their mother drops them off at their grandmother's house, in a small town in the wilds of Idaho, and drives off. They will never see her again. They live with their grandmother and are each other's only friend, living in a ramshackle house where the family stories are always present in the lake next to the town and the surrounding mountains. Eventually, the grandmother dies and everything changes between the sisters.

The thing about Housekeeping is that it is beautifully written and Marilynn Robinson knows how to tell a quiet story in ways that don't feel quiet. The novel looks at people who don't fit in and how they figure out how to live in the world. The book feels timeless, it could have taken place a few years ago or a hundred, yet the entire book is rooted in a very specific place, an isolated town in the mountains, at the edge of a lake that rises in the Spring to overtake their cellars and ground floors, a place with a high school and officials who are willing to give a lot of leeway to the odd pair living on the edge of town, until they aren't. And even with her first novel, Robinson looks into people's hearts and motivations in a deep and caring way.

She'd never understood so profoundly how much being a novelist was at odds with domestic life, with sanity. But now she saw it clearly. To be a novelist was to be a dreadful parent. To be a novelist was to be a monstrous marriage partner. That kind of writing had no beginning and no end. It just crept around the house, infecting every element of family life. You couldn't live with it, you couldn't live without it.

Jane married for love, but an assistant writing professor whose chances at tenure and security rely on her completing her second novel, a book she's been working on for close to a decade and now, on sabbatical and living in a friend's fancy house, this is her last opportunity. Her husband is supportive of her writing but as he is an artist, she's the one who is supporting their family. Their kids need stability and she dreams of a craftsman house in a multicultural neighborhood, while he dreams of moving the family to Japan. They still love each other, but the strain is showing. When Jane's novel, an enormous, sweeping book about mulattos throughout American history, a mix of history and fiction, is rejected, she's sent into a tailspin, which leads her to trying to get a gig writing for television, an attempt that will strain her marriage yet further, but maybe save her dreams of home-ownership and financial security.

Colored Television by Danzy Senna is both sharp-edged and easy to read, a combination that sometimes softens the very points Senna is making. There's a complexity behind the Hollywood show runner excitement, about belonging and identity and how to raise kids in the world as it is. Jane is a great protagonist, she's confident and sure of her talent, but also prone to worry and to feeling like she's failing. No one gets off lightly, and no one is short-changed. Senna makes even the tertiary characters feel real. There are neither easy solutions nor easy targets in this book I will be thinking about for awhile.

>60 RidgewayGirl: This is on my TBR and I'm waiting for it on Libby. Love your review.

>61 beebeereads: I look forward to finding out what you think about it!

>59 RidgewayGirl: Haha, I love the backstory behind your choosing that book! I've never heard of Housekeeping, though I am familiar with the name Marilynne Robinson.

>63 christina_reads: The thing about a big tbr is that someone always says something that brings one of those books to my attention.

Sweet Fury is the story of the filming of a cinematic reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night with a feminist twist. Lily Crayne is an up and coming actress slated to star in the movie and she's married to the older and more established Kurt Royall, who will direct. They have the backing and the expectation that it will be a blockbuster. As she prepares for her starring role, Lily begins work with a therapist, who encourages her to reexamine her relationships and her memories. Perhaps something dark lurks behind the glamour.

Novels about wealthy and privileged people begin at a disadvantage with me. Sure, they have some of the same conflicts and sorrows as the rest of us, but there are so many things they never have to worry about. So a book about them is going to have to be better than a book about ordinary people. But while I never managed to care much about any of the characters, Sash Bischoff knows how to tell a story and I was happy enough reading the increasingly dramatic events depicted in this novel. The ways in which Bischoff plays with the Fitzgerald novel are clever and interesting, while the book itself doesn't require the reader to have read the source material.

>65 RidgewayGirl: You got me with this one. Great review.

>66 Crazymamie: Thanks, you're in for glamorous parties, gorgeous gowns and people behaving very badly.

I'm taking BB's for >60 RidgewayGirl: and >65 RidgewayGirl:. I read a short story collection by Danzy Senna, You are Free, which was pretty good.

>68 lsh63: I didn't know she had a short story collection! I'll look for that.

...Wade went alone, took a seat at the bar. He had a scotch and water, his first drink in sixteen months. He closed his eyes as he drank it. His counselor at Geiger had once asked him if booze wasn't perhaps "the first knot in your life." How to answer something like that? It was knots all the way down.

We Live in Water is a collection of short stories by Jess Walter, who has, in recent years, become one of my favorite authors. While he's most well-known for his novels, his short stories are where he is at his best and that's apparent even in this early collection. The stories here are all set in Spokane, Washington, a small and somewhat isolated city in the eastern part of that state. In these stories, men are struggling to get by, to get their next fix, or they're holding on and trying to be better men. There's a melancholy tone to most of these stories, with an awareness that life will continue to require effort and luck, and that some won't make it.

In The Brakes, a divorced dad takes his son with him to work, where he finds the garage once again performing work that doesn't need to be done for an elderly racist lady. In The Wolf and the Wild, a guy works off his community service hours helping elementary school kids with their reading. And in the story that gives its name to this collection, a man tries to find out what happened to his father, a man he hasn't seen since he was six.

Each story in this collection is perfectly formed, whether it's a page long, or twenty. Walter never lets the reader forget what life is like for many people, and that their lives are as real and important as anyone else's.

>70 RidgewayGirl: I’m intrigued by this one, but I’m leery of short stories. Is there a novel of his you’d recommend?

>71 Charon07: I'm happy you asked! Depending on what you're in the mood for, Beautiful Ruins is set in Italy in 1962 against the backdrop of Burton and Taylor's filming Cleopatra, and The Cold Millions is about two brothers trying to survive in Spokane in the early 20th century, amid Vaudeville acts and labor unrest.

>70 RidgewayGirl: - I've been waiting to see what you had to say about this ever since I saw the cover in your "currently reading" above. I have 3 of his books on my TBR and am determined to get to at least one this year. I also need to try harder to read some short stories. I'll be adding this one to the list.

>72 RidgewayGirl: Added The Cold Millions to my TBR—I’m definitely more attuned to labor unrest than the rich and glamorous right now.

>73 dudes22: I started out putting a short story collection on my book pile and reading one story whenever I finished a book.

You can't go wrong with Jess Walter. Enjoy discovering his work!

>74 Charon07: There's a wonderful character in The Cold Millions -- a woman who is a labor organizer. You'll enjoy reading about her.

This one was billed as Wuthering Heights meets The Cutting Edge and I don't know how anyone can resist that, certainly not me. In reality, while The Favorites by Layne Fargo does use the characters from Wuthering Heights as a kind of beginning point, and it is set in the world of athletes competing in ice dancing competitions and hoping to make it to the Olympics, the similarities to either the book or the movie end there.

Heath is an orphan who joins Katarina in learning figure skating. She has the goal of making it to the Olympics and becoming a star like her hero, an ice dancing legend. Their relationship is very close, even closer once Katarina's father adopts Heath. As they move to LA to train at an exclusive figure skating school, their relationship grows ever more tempestuous as Katarina's drive and Heath's stubbornness clash. As the years go by, they work with other partners, but they keep returning to each other.

So it wasn't good, by any stretch, but there was plenty of drama and angst and emotion, which made it a quick and fun read. I will note that the cover was created with the help of AI, and I would not have read this book if I had known that before reading the book, this is published by Random House, which is able to pay for human work.

>77 RidgewayGirl: AI is just insidious. You just have no idea where it's going to turn up--it creeps into everything. But once you pointed that out, I could look at that cover and see it fell into some kind of uncanny valley. There's just something off about it and it feels that way with all AI-generated things, as far as I can tell.

>78 sturlington: It drives me nuts because it's everywhere and, at first glance, it looks fine, but a minute's attention shows it isn't anything human. I really despair about how art will progress because no one is going to be able to make a living off of creating art and all we'll be left with are pictures where the staircases lead to nowhere and people with odd proportions and extra fingers. And don't get me started on authors using AI to write the parts they don't want to.

>70 RidgewayGirl: Great review - adding this one to The List.

>77 RidgewayGirl: Ugh to the AI cover. That makes me so sad.

>79 RidgewayGirl: How did you learn the cover was generated using AI? I think they need to start putting AI-free stickers on books.

>77 RidgewayGirl: Wuthering Heights plus The Cutting Edge would 100% be my jam! Too bad the actual book is not that.

>80 Crazymamie: I hope you love it as much as I did when you do finally get to that book on your list! If your list is as long as mine, though, I will not hold my breath.

>81 sturlington: I was reading it with VictoriaPL, who texted me to say that her hardback had a note on the bottom of the back flap that the cover was "generated assisted by AI." My ebook copy made no mention of that.

>82 christina_reads: Yes, any mention of The Cutting Edge works on me, lol.

I'm going to Tucson for the book festival in mid-March. If anyone is going to be there, let me know!

>84 RidgewayGirl: - Oh- we're going to be there in a couple of weeks. I would have loved to meet up with you.

>52 RidgewayGirl: I've read The Good German by Kanon and really liked it. Will put this one as well as Housekeeping on my WL!

Wow, the Tucson programme looks amazing. Please report back on your visit!

>85 dudes22: What a close call! Enjoy the desert ahead of me.

>86 Tess_W: Kanon does a great job writing about the aftermath of the war, especially in Germany. I think that Leaving Berlin is a better novel than The Accomplice.

>87 charl08: It does, doesn't it? I wasn't sure when my BFF suggested it, as I've always thought of Tucson as a small city, but this book festival is jam-packed with authors I want to see. I'm going to have to make some decisions!

"Yes. Let's say he returns home to Ethiopia. It's been forty years since he was last in the country. What do you thing happens to him next?"

"I don't know."

"Let me tell you. When he gets off the plane, he realizes he has no idea where he is. He's afraid to leave the airport. When he left, Addis was like a village....He's at home nowhere in the world. It's better not to know that. It's better to imagine that someday you will return home and that when you do, everything will be better than it was when you left."

Mamush returns to the US to see his mother, but he gets lost on the way. He's been living in Paris with his wife and son, but somehow he's always had one foot out the door and his once promising journalism career has faded. He returns to see his mother's friend, Samuel, a man he realizes is his father, a cab driver living in the DC suburbs and part of the Ethiopian community there. As he travels toward, or fails to travel toward, his father's funeral, he returns to the places in Chicago that marked him, and searches for the man he never really knew.

Someone Like Us is a bittersweet story that moves through time in a non-linear way, with Mamush's memories frequently taking him from the present moment. It should be confusing, but Dinaw Mengestu controls the narrative in such an assured way, that each digression makes sense and serves to build the story he is telling. As Mamush and Samuel navigate their lives, there is the constant presence of the absent country, a country they can't return to, or in Mamush's case, have never seen, but which is ever present, often more than the country in which they have lived most of their lives. And as Mamush looks at his father's life, he is also looking at his own, and in doing so may find what he needs to move forward.

I gave myself a subscription to Archipelago Books a few weeks ago under the strict guideline that I must read each book right when it arrives. So far this is working out for me.



People from Oetimu by Felix Nesi is set on the island of Timor, moving back and forth through time from when the Japanese occupied the island during WWII to the unrest during East Timor's fight for independence from Indonesia. The story begins with the men of the town gathering in Oetimu's tiny police station in 1998 to watch a soccer match between France and Brazil. It's an evening that will end in tragedy, but first the story will move back and forth through time to tell the stories of some of the people living in the small town located on the border between the east and west halves of the island. There's the young police sergeant who is raised by a foster father after the death of his mother and who falls in love with the beautiful Silvy, a brilliant young woman who studied at an exclusive boarding school and who has some secrets of her own. There's the young Portuguese daughter of an official whose family fails to make it out before the Portuguese are overthrown. There's a priest whose life is connected to that of a girl he knew years ago, before she married and he took orders. And as the story moves around in time and between characters, a picture of how life is lived in a small town, on a small colonized island, and how people make lives for themselves despite the violence and uncertainty that surrounds them.

I really enjoyed this book. I was pleased at the thought of learning about a place I know very little about, but what surprised me is how much fun this book was to read, despite the ever-present violence. Nesi is a storyteller and he knows how to make a story compelling and how to circle round to stories told earlier, and how to tie them together into a narrative.

>90 RidgewayGirl: I hadn’t heard of Archipelago Books—what a lovely gift to give yourself! Their covers are lovely, and it sounds like a good way to both support an indie publisher and read more books in translation.

>91 Charon07: Archipelago Books are lovely objects. They are square and have French flaps and gorgeous, quality paper. And they publish novels in translation, often from places we don't get books translated into English. My worry with a subscription is that I'd just be adding books to the tbr, but hopefully prioritizing starting the books the day I get them will work.

In The Tokyo Suite by Giovana Madalosso and translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato, two women in Sao Paolo follow very different, but intertwined paths. Fernanda is given a promotion, but one that will require her to work and travel more than before. Since she's the sole breadwinner and her husband doesn't work, she feels compelled to take the job, but in order to do so, she has to get her nanny to agree to reduce her free time to one day a month. As a sweetener, she turns the maid's room into what she calls "the Tokyo Suite," painting it and adding a small refrigerator. Maju, the nanny, is trying to start a family with her husband. Every weekend, they reunite and enjoy being together, but the additional money offered and the threat of losing her job if she says no means that she agrees to the new schedule, one that will cost her not only the chance of having children herself, but also her marriage. Maju puts all of herself into raising the young girl she cares for, while Fernanda spends most of her time away from home, where she meets an alluring co-worker. Eventually, Maju takes the step of running away with her young charge.

The beauty of this book is that Madalosso has the reader sympathizing with both a wealthy woman coercing a woman into working 24 hours a day, everyday, and with a woman who abducts a toddler. It's also a look at the pressures put on women to do everything. Fernanda may be working all the time, but she's still the one in charge of making sure the household runs smoothly and is the one who is responsible for organizing everything her daughter needs while her husband can control his own schedule. That she eventually looks for a relationship not based on obligation isn't surprising. And Maju has spent her life doing what is expected of her and being a conscientious employee, none of which makes her continued employment more secure when she can be homeless whenever her employer decides she no longer wants to employ her. The power differential is enormous and unjust. But does that justify her walking out with another woman's child? There's a lot to think about in this novel and it's one that will stick with me for some time.

Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy is comprised of the first three books in Olivia Manning's six book series about a newly married English couple living through the war. I have an omnibus edition, but thought it would make more sense to review each book separately.

The Great Fortune begins with Guy and Harriet Pringle on the train journey to Bucharest, Romania, where Guy teaches English. He had met and married Harriet after a short courtship in England and she is eager for this new stage of her life, throwing herself into finding an apartment and adjusting to life as an expat. But she and Guy are very different. Guy loves people and is constantly finding new people to befriend, bringing a host of colorful characters into their life, while Harriet likes constraint and not mixing too much with people she has little understanding of.

As they passed among the peasants, Guy and Harriet smiled to reassure them, but their smiles grew strained as they breathed-in the peasant stench. Harriet thought: "The trouble with prejudice is, there's usually a reason for it," but she now knew better than to say this to Guy.

They arrive in Bucharest in the summer of 1939, a time of both upheaval and of tense waiting. Polish refugees, mostly Jewish, are seeking shelter in Bucharest, but other than that, and tense arguments over who might invade Romania first, the Germans or the Soviets, life proceeds much as usual. During that first year, Harriet grapples with how Guy's expansive personality leaves her alone more than she likes, but finds a friend of sorts in his colleague, Clarence. Guy brings Yakimov into their lives and eventually into living in their apartment. Yakimov is an odd man, he was married to a wealthy English woman but now he is alone and reliant on the largesse of the people around him. He's able to "borrow" ample sums to live, but he spends it all immediately in expensive restaurants.

This book ends as the news of Paris being occupied by the Nazis reaches Bucharest. I'm eager to find out what happens next to the Pringles and their friends.

She remembered her arrival in Rumania, and her first long days of sunlight. That had been a difficult time, yet she thought of it nostalgically because the war had barely begun. She saw herself as she had been, nervous, suspicious and isolated among strangers; jealous of Guy's friends and of his belief that he owed his chief allegiance to the outside world. Unmarried, she had been a personality in her own right. Married, she saw herself coming in, if at all, somewhere in Guy's wake.

Anne Tyler has made a career writing about socially awkward and shy people living in Baltimore, Maryland, whose lives are, for the most part, quiet and constrained. Three Days in June is a perfect example of her writing and was, for me, an excellent and relaxing read.

Gail is 61 and an assistant to the headmistress of a private school, when she's called into the headmistress's office to be told that the headmistress would be retiring, but that Gail would not be considered for the job. She's told she should consider a career change as "social interactions have never been her strong point." So Gail walks out, away from her career, but not from stewing about the encounter. It's an important weekend, with her only daughter's wedding to take place the next day, the rehearsal dinner that evening. Coming home, she finds that her daughter has dropped off her ex-husband to stay with her as he has brought the cat he's fostering with him and her fiancé is allergic.

What follows is three days in which Gail is pressed from every direction, even as she continues to think over how her boss sees her. She spends a lot of time thinking things and then keeping those thoughts to herself, kind of if Olive Kitteridge were sensitive to the feelings of those around her. As the weekend goes on, between the usual drama of a wedding and the presence of the man she divorced over twenty years ago, Gail comes to terms with how she wants her life to look like going forward.

Gail is a wonderful and opinionated character and this is a novel about character development and how, even at 61, a not particularly flexible person might find it in themselves to bend in a new direction. I like how Tyler writes and how fully realized her characters are and this small book was exactly what I was in the mood for. I'm glad she's still writing, and with the same compassion and humor.

Good Morning Kay, I'm glad to see that you enjoyed the latest from Anne Tyler, I'm glad to see that she is still writing, and I find her books with quirky characters so comforting. I hope to read it very soon.

>95 RidgewayGirl: Nice review, it's a BB for me. I like Anne Tyler's writing.

>95 RidgewayGirl: I've added it to the wishlist too. I'd missed that she had a new one out.

>96 lsh63: It's a good one, Lisa. It makes me want to immediately start another by Tyler.

>97 VivienneR: Yes, she really is a great writer, in the kind of understated way that means it never gets in the way of the story.

>98 charl08: She seems to reliably publish a book every two years, which is impressive given that she is 84.

>99 RidgewayGirl: After reading Redhead by the Side of the Road I was a fan of Anne Tyler. French Braid confirmed it.

In The Book Censor's Library, by Kuwati author Bothayna Al-Essa and translated by Sawad Hussain, a man, long unemployed, finds work as a book censor. It's not long before he falls in love with books, a love affair begun while censoring Zorba the Greek. He's desperate for more books to read, sneaking them out of work and reading them at night, until his wife is bitten by the books in the bed. His daughter is an imaginative girl and it's her need for stories that puts them all into danger, most of all herself.

This novel is written with the feel of a fable, so that fantastic things occur and the characters remain undeveloped by intention. Al-Essa has a vivid and dark imagination which she uses to craft an Orwellian nightmare coached in the cheerful tone of a fairy tale. It's both impressive and effective. My only issue with this book is that it might have been better as a short story, but I suspect that most readers will not tire of the deliberately simple tone and structure, with its somewhat heavy-handed lessons as I did.

Gillian McAllister is a hugely popular thriller writer and I decided to see what the fuss was about by reading Wrong Place Wrong Time and, friends, I still do not know why this author is popular.

Jen, a very anxious mother, is up waiting for her technically adult, yet still teenage son to get home and so manages to watch him murder a man. The next hours are horrible, as she and her husband wait in the police station for news. The next morning she wakes up and it's not the day after her son killed a man, it's the day before he commits the crime. What follows is Jen waking up a day, or several days earlier, and she tries to find out what happened and why as she travels the wrong way through time.

McAllister writes serviceably well and she certainly knows how to keep a plot moving along and how to dole out clues and twists at a steady interval. That the story makes no sense, even ignoring the time travel aspect, which is well handled by essentially ignoring how it would work and just getting a scientist to say that it's possible at one point to cover that part of the story. The entire premise of the story would be nullified by a conversation between two married people, which left me wondering why I had to work my way through four hundred-some pages to find out that out. I get it, thriller writers have to produce exciting and surprising plots at a breakneck pace, but this one was laughably bad, and made worse by the author's note at the end of the book, explaining where she'd found her ideas.

>102 RidgewayGirl: Whoo, boy, I saw that one recommended somewhere. Thanks for warning me off!

>103 sturlington: It's even a Reece's book club, which said to me that this is one of the author's finest. I would like to find a new Ruth Rendell or at least a Minette Walters, but that seems to be an impossible request. I will keep trying, but I suspect that I'm getting pickier with every year.

>101 RidgewayGirl: Sounds similar to Fahrenheit 451. I'll take the BB! A Kuwaiti author is a plus!

>102 RidgewayGirl: I liked that one. I don't usually read time-travel books so my ability to judge is limited but I enjoyed the plot device of moving backwards - even though it's impossible for this realistic reader to get my head around it.

>105 Tess_W: Yes, I was happy to have read a book by a Kuwaiti author! And my dislike of the author's choices does not at all mean that other people will not love this book. It is charming and at the same time, does not pull any punches.

>106 VivienneR: Judy, this world would be a much poorer place if we all liked the same books. I don't mind a thriller that doesn't make any sense if you think about it for a minute, but I took against this one pretty quickly. On the other hand, most people in the book club I read this with liked it fine.

"If Noah or Kyoko would just tell me the truth, I could help them, I know I could," Charlie said.

"Too afraid, I'm guessing. And with good reason. You know how big the human heart is?" Graff balled his hand into a fist. "About that size. I continue to be amazed at how much hate such a small thing can hold, even in people who think of themselves as decent and Christian. There are a lot of folks in this country with a lot of hate stored up, and those hearts of theirs are just ready to burst from it. You can work miracles with a jury, Charlie. I've seen you do it. But I'm afraid you'd have to be God himself to get a fair hearing for Noah Bluestone. And he knows it."

In The River We Remember, a small town sheriff and WWII veteran faces a tough situation when a disliked, yet prominent landowner and farmer is found drowned. Brody is eager to see the death ruled accidental, but the small midwestern town is eager to blame the one Native American farming near where the death occurred. As the investigation progresses, tensions are high.

William Kent Krueger tells a good story, and this one, set in the late 1950s, in a small midwestern farming community where many of the men bear the scars, both physical and mental, of having fought in the war. He takes the stock character, the stalwart small town sheriff who seems determined to do the right thing in the face of community disapproval, and makes the character complex and less trustworthy than is usual in this kind of mystery novel. Krueger is respecting the norms and demands of this genre, he's just making sure that the motives of everyone are not necessarily what they appear to be. And then he changes directions and focuses the second half of the novel on a more unusual character, a retired lawyer roped in to be the arrested man's public defender. Charlie is a woman who prefers to live alone and yet, because she was born and raised here, is still an insider of sorts. And she's the one able to talk to people and figure out what really happened.

The mystery of what really happened is disclosed slowly, and made sense, which is appreciated. What I most liked is Krueger's exploration of the history driving the story, and how the secondary and even tertiary characters had complex backgrounds and motivations. The writing is solid, if unspectacular and the story was constructed with care.

>108 RidgewayGirl: - I've liked each of the stand-alone books that he's written. Maybe better than his series writing.

>109 dudes22: I read the first of his mystery series years ago and it was fine, but not a series I wanted to keep reading, but VictoriaPL and I once got to sit next to him at an author lunch and he was lovely and I've had a signed copy of Ordinary Grace on my tbr for years, even though my Dad borrowed it and loved it. I read this one because my mystery book club chose it and I'm glad they did. I've mentally moved Ordinary Grace higher up my tbr as a result.

>110 RidgewayGirl: - I recently saw someone on here say they didn't like it in their review, but I liked it the best of his stand-alones. Although I still need to find his first one.

Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy is comprised of the first three books in Olivia Manning's six book series about a newly married English couple living through the war. I have an omnibus edition, but thought it would make more sense to review each book separately.

The second book in the trilogy is The Spoilt City, in which things grow ever more precarious for the British living in Romania, as the king abdicates and the Iron Guard, who are pro-German, take over. There are ever more Germans on the street and they take over the places British people gathered. Guy Pringle is still busy teaching, even running a summer school at the university that is mainly attended by Jewish students hoping to find their way to the safety of an English-speaking country. Romania isn't at war, isn't occupied, but Jewish people are not being treated well, and the Pringles end up hiding a young Jewish man in a storage shed on the roof of their apartment building. And Harriet, paying attention to the news, knows they need to be ready to leave, but she's determined to find a way to get Sasha out with them. The news, though, also makes her uncertain that there will be an England to return to. Meanwhile, some of the Brits are oblivious to the dangers. Yakimov has blithely gone to visit an acquaintance who is now a Nazi in charge of a district in Romania, and the others feel that they can probably just ride things out.

". . . One has to respect the existing régime, whatever it may happen to be. And you have to learn to live with it."

Harriet asked: "You think we can learn to live with the Iron Guard?"

"Why not? It's all a matter of personality. If you can adjust yourself, you can live with anyone or anything. It's the people who can't adjust themselves who get into trouble."

Pinkrose nodded vehemently. "I do agree. And, you know, once things have settled down, the world's much the same whoever's running it."

But that sanguine attitude dissipates as British citizens are named as enemies on the German radio station and British citizens are killed. People are leaving, but Guy, uncertain as to finding a new job elsewhere and determined to be there for his ever smaller numbers of students refuses to leave, even after he is named by the Germans as an enemy. And Harriet is determined to stay with him, no matter what, even as she realizes that her marriage isn't a good one.

At one time, she had been indignant when others were critical of him. Now, she realized, she was criticising him herself. Even more surprising, she could feel bored in his company.

And yet, watching him as he sat there, unsuspecting of criticism or boredom, an open-handed man of infinite good nature, her heart was touched. Reflecting on the process of involvement and disenchantment which was marriage, she thought that one entered it unsuspecting and, unsuspecting, found one was trapped in it.

I am thoroughly enjoying these books, with their look at life in Romania for a group of British ex-pats, their view of the war engulfing Europe, and where their sense of security is being steadily eroded, and the examination of a marriage between two very different people. I'm glad to have four more books to go.

I read The Balkan Trilogy years ago (in the 90s, I think) and the main thing I remember is how irritating I found Yakimov. I really should dig it out again.

>113 Jackie_K: Yaki is frustrating. There's no malice in him, but he'd sell anyone out for a good dinner, and does. I'm on the third book and it's interesting how quickly events are moving compared to the first book, which was all watching a waiting.

I'm giving the new feature a try, let's see how this goes.

>115 RidgewayGirl: I love that quotation. I think I will have to check out this book.

>116 sturlington: Adina has an unusual point of view that is fun to experience. It was an interesting book and I think that the discussion in the Tournament of Books will be lively.

So I have been very good this year and have brought only one new book into the house. Not only that, I have read every single new book I brought home so far this year. I need to state this right now because there are two books on their way to me and I've preordered another three. And I'm going to a book festival in mid-March. . .

>118 RidgewayGirl: I will praise your restraint! My book buying this year has been out of control, though to be fair many of them have been cheap e-books.

>118 RidgewayGirl: Luckily, it’s still early in the year, so if you clear your calendar now, you still have a chance to read all the books you’ll bring home this year.

>119 christina_reads: Christina, I do not count ebooks. They take up no space at all and aren't bothering anyone.

>120 Charon07: LOL, there are so many books that I want to read that already live here! But maybe?

>118 RidgewayGirl: Impressive.

I found an offer for 25% off books published later in the year. Fortunately, they only charge me when the book(s) are on the way...

>122 charl08: Yes, Barnes & Noble had preordered books at 25% off, and I had a gift card, so what else was there to do?

I'm reading my way through the books that will be competing in the Tournament of Books and am down to just a few, which is a good thing as the competition kicks off on March 6th. Of course, this also means that the last few books are the ones that I'm not that excited about. Sometimes that means that I discover something great I would otherwise never have read, and sometimes that means I read a book I don't particularly like or am able to appreciate. Let's see how those last few books play out.

https://www.tournamentofbooks.com/the-2025-shortlist

>124 RidgewayGirl: I liked this more than you (maybe because my taste is still childish!) but I agree that I’ve liked her short stories more than this novel, which felt way longer than it needed to be.

>124 RidgewayGirl: Great review! I love the quote, and am quite tempted. What do you make of the ToB list this year?

>125 Charon07: Not childish! I explained that wrong. We all have genres and styles that we are drawn to, and themes and genres that don't resonate with us. I like novels that are less plot-oriented and more introspective and full of character development, which puts me at a disadvantage with a book like this, which is not my or the book's fault, just a basic mismatch. But I didn't dislike my time with this book and it's always good for me to stretch my reading.

>126 charl08: The list this year is excellent, in my opinion. Last year's was dire, and they seem to have recalibrated away from genre novels and body horror, while keeping the list a combination of expected and off-beat. I've got the two books to finish and should have them completed by the time they show up on the schedule. Looking forward to March 6th!

I'm down to just two books to go for the Tournament of Books and I should finish them before they come up in the competition. Great Expectations had been relegated to the end because who wants to read about a hopeful time in politics at this moment in time? And yet this is one of my favorites from that list.

>128 RidgewayGirl: I don’t think I could bear to read about that election right now. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to read the ToB discussion. I’m reading Martyr! right now, which will be the last I plan to read unless the ToB changes my mind about any of the rest. Martyr! is about my speed right now, with its depressed main character.

Do you usually read all the books before the Tournament begins?

>129 Charon07: I love sad sack Cyrus. I really liked Martyr!.

Yes, I started out just reading along with the judgements, but it's so much more fun to do that when I've read all the books and the discussions tend to be lively. That said, there's often a book or two I just do not want to read and so skip. This year there aren't any books like that, so I am on track to have read the books at least before they enter the competition.

I visit your thread and get hit by not one, but four, book bullets.

>70 RidgewayGirl: Short stories aren't usually my thing, but these sound interesting.

>90 RidgewayGirl: I've never heard of this publisher, but I'm in the mood to read about life in other cultures.

>95 RidgewayGirl: I've enjoyed Anne Tyler in the past. This one sounds interesting--and as you mentioned, it is short.

>108 RidgewayGirl: I love William Kent Krueger's series. I think this stand-alone sounds good.

>131 thornton37814: Good to see you here, Lori. Fair is fair, you've sent more than your share of book bullets my way.

I've got one more book to go in the Tournament of Books reading after this one.

Hi Kay, I have The History of Sound on my soon to read list. I started it but put it aside because a bunch of library holds all came in at once. I'm glad to see that you liked it.

>134 lsh63: It's fantastic, Lisa. Another good book pushed into my hands by the Tournament of Books.

I'm off tomorrow for Tucson, Arizona for the book festival and general fun times, which pushed me to get my review for We Do Not Part finished before I left. What do you say when a book is both superbly written and almost unreadable?

>136 RidgewayGirl: Have fun in Tucson! I just peeked at the presenting authors—that’s quite a crowd! If you’re flying, remember you’ll have to haul all those books back home in your luggage.

>137 Charon07: I am up for the challenge!

The Tucson Book Festival was a blast. So many great authors and the panels were very interesting. Among the authors I saw and got books signed by were Eowyn Ivey, Daniel Lavery, R.O. Kwon, Samantha Harvey, Willy Vlautin (who was exactly like you might imagine him to be), Julia Phillips (utterly delightful and visibly pleased to be there), and Mateo Askaripour.

A red haze descended near the beginning of the weekend, with trips to two bookstores (Antigone Books and Bookmans, a large used bookstore) and did not lift until there I was trying to fit eighteen books into an overnight bag.

Nicely done! Hope the bag was big enough.

>139 RidgewayGirl: I’m glad you enjoyed yourself! And don’t say I didn’t warn you about the luggage!

>140 charl08: They did, although I had to check the bag, since I needed to use another bag for my clothes.

>141 Charon07: My bag weighed 38 pounds! Now to find space on the shelves.

We just met up with a friend here in Mexico where we're on vacation who lives in Minneapolis and just came from the book festival. We just finished having our "book club meeting" where we talk about what we've read that the other might like. We have friends in Tucson and next year I'm going to plan to visit them so I can go to the book festival. Nan mentioned she went to the Antigone bookstore too. Looks like you got some great books. I just heard that Eowyn Ivey had a new book out. How great you got to see her.

>139 RidgewayGirl: Great haul, I love getting signed books. I have thought about going to a book festival here, but have not done that yet.

>143 dudes22: Betty, it's an excellent festival, so if you do get a chance to go, you should take it.

>144 lowelibrary: Book festivals are so much fun. Full of other book lovers and lots of books and authors talking about books. And it's fun to tell an author how much you enjoy their books. Sunday, T. Kingfisher was signing at a nearby table and I was able to pop over and tell her how her books for children helped get my son reading.

>137 Charon07: I learned a long time ago to mail them to myself before I leave! Costs for sure but I plan on it ahead and the trip home is so much better!

Eowyn Ivey! I'm surprised she does festivals. Does she have a new one coming out (I hope!).

>146 clue: That's smart. My friend offered to mail me the books, but as I could get them to fit, I was fine. Another few books, and I might have chosen differently.

>147 clue: Yes! Black Woods Blue Sky is out and it looks fantastic. And if you lived in Alaska, wouldn't a weekend in Tucson in mid-March appeal?

Hard Rain Falling was a choice of my book club and one I suggested because it's been sitting on my tbr shelf for months. It was kind of a hard book for this group, but half the group in attendance really liked it (it was a smaller than usual group though). I'd say that if you're in the mood for a comforting read, steer well clear.

Marcy Dermansky is an author I will read knowing nothing about the book ahead of time, but still be confident I will enjoy whatever she throws at me. This one was fun.

This was the final book I read for the Tournament of Books. It was the one I was looking forward to the least (hence it being the last book read) but I ended up liking it and while it wasn't a book that grabbed me by the heart or the throat, I admired its cleverness.

Those last two sound - for want of (my) better word - bonkers, Kay. Glad you enjoyed reading them. I think I'll pass though!

I'm still reading the women's prize longlists: current one is Dream Hotel. I'm only about 50 pages in and I'm already finding it terrifying (re personal data being aggregated and used by private companies).

>152 charl08: I look forward to your review of Dream Hotel. That subject scares me, so I don't know if I'd want to read it. I'm dipping into the International Booker longlist myself.

He followed her and took his meal without saying much. She had hoped that, alone here, dependent on each other, they would be closer than they had ever been. Now it seemed to her she had been nearer to him when he was not here; nearest, probably, when she had imagined him in the Lufthansa above the Aegean. He had only to arrive to take a step away from her.

Friends and Heroes is the final book in The Balkan Trilogy, and here, first Harriet, and soon Guy, are out of Belgrade, having flown to Athens, where they feel they will surely be safe. But once in Athens, they discover that two men that Guy had helped by hiring them for teaching jobs in Belgrade that they weren't technically eligible for have taken over the running of the Academy and have done their best to make sure Guy will not be hired. Their shady behavior completely throws Guy for a loop and he mopes, while Harriet tries to figure out how they will get by in this new city that grows more crowed with refugees by the day. It's a role reversal for the normally exuberant Guy and cautious Harriet, and it frays their marriage further. There's also the ever present threat of invasion, either from the Italians moving east through Albania or the Germans themselves, but with Cairo full of British expats, Guy feels he has a better chance of employment in Athens and so they don't board the last boat out to Cairo.

In Friends and Heroes, many of the people they knew in Belgrade have also fled to Athens, among them Yakimov and Lord Pinkrose, and they meet many new people, some who have lived in Athens for years, some as new as the Pringles, with the British and Australian military have present. And that's where Harriet meets Charles, a British officer, and they begin a flirtation that turns serious, Harriet justifying it as fair because Guy is so often absent on his own projects, and even when physically with her, preoccupied. And, as Harriet and Guy pursue their own projects and diversions, as they enter into the fraught politics of the local British expats, the threat of invasion grows ever louder, the war moving far more quickly than it did when they first arrived in Belgrade.

I started reading The Balkan Trilogy in late January, on the advice of a very good friend, who told me to read something enormous, immersive and historical. And it did the thing I didn't think it could do -- pull me out of the present moment and into another time and place so completely that even when I wasn't reading, I was often thinking about Harriet and Guy and the people they knew. I'm glad to have The Levant Trilogy ahead of me, as I'm not ready to part with the Pringles.

Waiting for the quiches I made to bake, I'm catching up on reviews. This is called multi-tasking, and you should all be very impressed.

>154 RidgewayGirl: How fortunate to have The Levant Trilogy still to go! I really enjoyed it, and The Balkan Trilogy.

>156 pamelad: It really is superlatively good. And having the next trilogy to look forward to made finishing The Balkan Trilogy painless.

I struggled with this review. I like the author and most of the book was very good! But when the "good" people started lecturing the other people using language and ideas that are only a few years old, it ruined the book for me.

This book was a stretch for me as I prefer more solidity in my storytelling, but the setting was amazing. I know next to nothing about Suriname, and while this wasn't a book that was an instructional guide by any stretch, it did paint a picture of a diverse and fascinating country.

I'm stuck home with a late season flu, and wasn't reading anything for a few days. I did watch a Belgian courtroom drama called The Twelve, which was diverting and the characters all had the worst hair, like hair I would have been embarrassed to take out the trash in, let alone give testimony in court. And a British four part series called Adolescence was very well done. But I'm reading again, thank goodness, and even reviewing again. Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express was a good pick to get me back in the habit.

>160 RidgewayGirl: I heard her speak about this on the radio and have meant to pick it up. Hope I'm not too far behind in the queue at the library.

I've always avoided Room because of the subject matter but have enjoyed some of her other books - I think from the tags on your recommendation, so belated thanks for that!

I love the idea of the romance of long train journeys. My only attempts at the overnight version (Edinburgh to London) I found disappointingly difficult to sleep! I imagine continental Europe has better options though.

>160 RidgewayGirl: - I took a BB for another of her books from you (although I haven't read it yet - it's still on the list) and I think I'll take a BB for this one too. And try to get to it sooner - I like the sound of this.

I hope you feel better soon Kay! I had The Paris Express but I returned it to the library when I couldn’t seem to concentrate and keep track of the various characters being introduced. I hope to try again.

>161 charl08: Charlotte, I have had a copy of Room on my bookshelf since 2011 and still haven't been able to pick it up. Someday.

>162 dudes22: Betty, how sad and short would our wishlists be if we didn't get recommendations from each other? Mine would be nearly empty!

>163 lsh63: Lisa, this was the book that got me back reading after the flu. The switching between characters worked well with my diminished ability to concentrate.

>164 RidgewayGirl: - I frequently think about the books I was reading before and how probably boring my reading would be now if I hadn't joined LT.

This was a reread for me, of one of the best classic American Noirs written. In a Lonely Place is written in the third person, but it so closely follows the protagonist Dix Steele's point of view and does not deviate from that, it feels as though it's written in Dix's voice. The reader learns in the first few pages that Dix is a very bad man, and following a violent misogynist may not sound like a good time, but Dorothy B. Hughes knows how to pace a novel and how to create a repellant character who you can't look away from. It was just as good the second time through.

I grabbed this book because it is set in Prince George, British Colombia and as someone who spent a large part of her childhood living in Edmonton, Alberta, I have a fascination for the Canadian North (which is, frankly, most of the country). It was also promoted as for the readers of Tana French--I've learned that marketing for debut novels can be a little hyperbolic, but I figured that between a thriller plot and the setting, I'd have a good time. My friends, I did not.

Katie Kitamura is a writer who I really like. She has a unique voice -- at once intimate and held at a distance -- that appeals to me. Her new book is slender and ambiguous, and while I'm not sure what happened, I was deeply invested as I read and am still mulling it over.

>168 RidgewayGirl: This sounds interesting. I have Kitamura’s Intimacies in my TBR; if I take to that one, I’ll add this to the TBR too.

>169 Charon07: I loved Intimacies. It has that same slight distancing from within a very close first person narrative.

>167 RidgewayGirl: What a strange background story for author and novel. Thank you for the review, I'll take a pass on this one.

>171 VivienneR: I was so disappointed, Vivienne! I hadn't run across a book set in northern BC before. Someone recommended The Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway, although it's set in northern Manitoba instead of BC, so I'm looking for a copy of that. I do intend to read more Canadian Lit this year. Don't forget to vote!

So my second book from my Archipelago subscription was an odd one, a French Canadian novel originally published in 1986.

I took three books to the local independent bookstore and traded them and $6 for another book. Still, that's two books down, so I'm calling it a win. I was going to leave without a book, but the clerk told me she had a book I'd like, based on the ones I brought in. I am a sucker for a bookstore clerk hand-selling me a book. I will buy it every single time.

>172 RidgewayGirl: It is not easy to find books in northern BC. Here is a list that might help. Eden Robinson is the only one I've met when she came for an event at the university where I worked (U of Victoria). She's lovely. Her sister was a newsreader at CBC at the time so Eden had a head start on her renown.

Sarah Louise Butler: The Wild Heavens
R.M. Greenaway: Cold Girl
Roy Innes: Murder in the Chilcotin
R.J. McMillen: Green River Falling
Donna Milner: Somewhere in-between
Eden Robinson: Monkey Beach
Chevy Stevens: Dark Roads

Thanks for the reminder. We voted today. It's almost certain that my party will win federally but the local candidate will not be my choice. That's ok.

I have a little book that I think you'll enjoy. I'll mail it on Tuesday.

ETA: I haven't read any of these - no guarantees.

>175 VivienneR: Thank you for that list! I'll see which of these I can track down. I've heard of Monkey Beach. And I'm excited about book mail. Thank you!

While I don't like dystopian novels that lean into the idea that the world is ending, I'm also allergic to overly heartwarming stories that make my teeth ache. Imagine my surprise when the book I thought would be a hard, but informative slog ends up charming me with its hopefulness.

I'm not going to make my book club meeting next week, as we're off to Florida for my son's graduation, including a day in Atlanta on the drive down, but I read the book before I realized we wouldn't be back in time and I'm happy I did.

A good week involving a joyful graduation and bookended by a long drive have ended and I'm glad to be home. Hotels, no matter their proximity to the beach or the High Museum of Art, are not as nice as my own home. And I was earnestly greeted on our return.



Melmoth hides from unfamiliar people, which includes the pet sitter who has taken care of the cats when we're away for a few years now. The pet sitter has never seen her.

I returned home to book mail!

>179 RidgewayGirl: Melmoth because she wandered into your household?

Congrats to the new grad! Did he come back to Central Illinois with you?

>180 Charon07: Melmoth because she was found on the side of the I-85. Someone had tossed her from a moving vehicle onto the freeway and that's how she lost the eye and most of the ear. You're the first person to get the reference and not just wonder at the odd name.

And yes, the graduate has a job waiting for him in Bloomington, so he'll even be moving home, at least until he wants to have his own space. He's following us here in a week as he was headed to Clemson to see his best friend graduate. It was fun to meet his friends and girlfriend and to see the ocean.

>181 RidgewayGirl: Poor little Melmoth! No wonder she’s so mistrustful. I’m glad she found a happy home with you!

>179 RidgewayGirl: I can't think of a more beautiful welcome home!!

>182 Charon07: I'd say she trusts us, but we have to have the vet administer any pills that she needs to take.

>183 Cecilturtle: It was heartwarming, but she has been clingy since we returned and I do sleep less well with 15 pounds of cat on top of me.

I'll say now that novels set in Europe during WWII are not my favorite -- the market is glutted! I picked up The Red House by Mary Morris primarily because decades ago she wrote a marvelous travel memoir called Nothing to Declare, which fired my youthful wanderlust. I should go and reread that book.

This wasn't a book I liked very much, but it did keep me reading.

And now for the book I suggested for my book club. I am relieved to have liked it. It's quite a risk to suggest a book I haven't read first.

>187 RidgewayGirl: I’m almost tempted to try Keigo Higashino, but I’ve been put off Japanese old-school murder mysteries by the audiobook of The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji.

>187 RidgewayGirl: - I have one of his books on my TBR pile which was a BB from you last year. I agree that it can be intimidating to pick a book for book club that you haven't read. We've had a couple of people already this year apologize for the book they chose and yet, they both resulted in some good discussion. You just never know.

>188 Charon07: Ha, The Decagon House Murders is on my tbr. Try Higashino, he's marvelous.

>189 dudes22: It's so hard. I carefully chose my favorites for consideration the first year and none were chosen. This year, I picked books off of my tbr and all of them were picked. I think I'm better at describing books I don't have a relationship with.

>190 RidgewayGirl: BB accepted! Which I think disproves your theory about convincing others to read books you’ve liked.

>187 RidgewayGirl: Hi Kay, thank you for the reminder about this series. I enjoyed Malice when I read it also.

>197 RidgewayGirl: I'll give this series a try, my library has all four.

>191 Charon07: I hope you like it!

>192 lsh63: I grab any books by Higashino I come across and I have yet to be disappointed. I really like Japanese crime novels, though. They tend to emphasize procedure over lone wolves breaking the rules and drinking heavily.

>193 clue: I do hope you end up as happy with the series as I am.

And may I present to you the first sploof of the season?

>194 RidgewayGirl: What great form! An almost entirely casual pose, but the back toe poised for action if needed!

I recently had the opportunity to read an unpublished short story collection by John Warner, who writes about education issues for the Chicago Tribune and has written books on the subject, like Why They Can't Write. Anyway, it was excellent but I'm not sure how to review an unpublished manuscript, since it's not like anyone can go check a copy out of the library. It's called Good White People and continues my unintentional project in reading books about wealthy people and their inability to take responsibility for their own actions or even their own life decisions.

Good White People is a collection of interconnected short stories, which is a format I will always pick up. The book (can I call it a book?) begins with Bob, a guy in his late middle-age with the biggest house in their expensive Charleston development, a guy who considers himself quite the catch and decides to share a picture of his penis with the ladies of the neighborhood, which goes over about as well as one would expect and culminates with him collapsing in his driveway during a confrontation with an angry husband. What follows is the aftermath of a catastrophic stroke, and the seismic change of going from a respected high-earning success, into someone who needs full-time care. The next story continues with his wife Janine, as her husband is eventually allowed to go home, albeit to a hospital bed in a ground floor room with a full-time caregiver, then the adult son, who returns home when his father is in the hospital and then stays, since he's never really managed to do anything with his life, followed by the man who confronted Bob about the picture, who is having his own crisis, this one entirely, yet still catastrophically, financial; then Bob and Janine's daughter; the woman hired to care for Bob and even the family dog. It's a remarkably effective collection, each character appearing to those around them in a way that is at odds with what they reveal when their own stories are told. And with each story picking up where the last leaves off, it feels more like a novel than a bunch of short stories.

So, obviously, these comments are pretty much entirely for myself as I tend to remember a book I've taken the time to write a bit about and forget those I don't review. And this one is worth remembering and rereading, I don't want to forget it.

>195 Charon07: Absolutely no action planned. She's been taking notes from Homer, our 17 year old, whose favorite pastime when the weather is good, is sleeping in the sun on the front porch, requiring the mail carrier to step over him.

>196 RidgewayGirl:, Is there any plan of it being published? Also, on a personal note, I just have to say John is a really cool, smart person, and I love his writing. I had the pleasure of sharing an office with him for a few years at Clemson while we were both there, and I learned so much from hearing him work with students one-on-one and talking with him about writing/teaching!

And, what a sploof!

>198 whitewavedarling: He said that he's given up on that, but it's very good. How wonderful to have gotten to share an office--he's one of the best parts of the Tournament of Books.

I read this book for a book club and then we ended up not meeting this month, so at least I won't have to find ways to be nice about a book I didn't like much.

Two reviews for lackluster books in a row. But the next two are much better, I promise.