Charl08 reads Voices and Visions in 2025 #5

I'm Charlotte, based in the northwest of England. I work in higher education (although I've handed in my notice, so this will probably change). I'm currently "between jobs". I enjoy reading, going to art galleries and museums and (when funds permit) travelling. Last year I went on a short break to Portugal, but because of the job news I'm probably going to stay closer to home for a bit.

The categories

I went to the Medieval Women: Voices and Visions exhibit at the tail end of last year in the British Library.

The exhibition was fascinating, many of the exhibits were beautiful. As there were lots of connections to books and writers I thought I could use them through this thread, and hopefully look at some of them a bit longer.

Reading my own books
Familiar Faces
New to me
Prizewinners
Women in translation
Graphic novels / manga
African Writers
History / Memoirs

Plus: Cat reads


https://www.artfund.org/explore/get-inspired/features/women-of-the-middle-ages

Ed. Most of the images are my photos of images in the book of the exhibition, Medieval Women (highly recommended btw!)

Reading my own books



"An anchoress entering her cell, from a Pontifical including an order for the enclosure of anchoresses; England, 15th century: Lansdowne MS 451, f. 76v."

Pretty sure anchoresses didn't get to just order stuff on amazon...

Try and read 10 books per month.

Target achieved in January? Yes! (10)
Target achieved in February? 1 short...
Target achieved in March? Yes! 10 read.
Target achieved in April? Yes +1
Target achieved in May? Yes.
Target achieved in June? 11 read
July? 8 read.
August? 12 read.

One Boat*
Misinterpretation*
Disoriental
Impossible Saints
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes (ebook)
About Uncle
The Telegram from Le Touquet*
The Odd Flamingo*
The Odd Woman and the City
Strange Journey*

September? 10 read

Emergency Questions (ebook)
Hidden Hands*
The Heart of Redness
Nevada
Wake Me When I'm Gone (kindle)

October? 5 read (oops)

On a Woman's Madness
Death of an Englishman*
Rescue
The House of Marvellous Books*
Isola
Affinity
Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays
To the Friend Who Did Not Save my Life*
The Revolutionary Temper

November? 9 read

Currently reading my own books: (to different levels from having picked up recently to not having read in months)

Medieval Women: Voices & Visions: The Book of the British Library Exhibition
Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays (James Baldwin Centennial)
American Indians and the American Dream: Policies, Place, and Property in Minnesota
The Revolutionary Temper: Paris, 1748–1789
The Bookseller's Tale
The Girl Who Knew Too Much
The Persian Boy: A Novel of Alexander the Great
And Wrote My Story Anyway
The American Beast: essays
A Woman Is No Man
Wake Me When I'm Gone (kindle)

* Means I only bought them this year. (Don't judge me!)

New to me (authors I've not read before)

I'd not heard of the erotic poetry of Gwerful Mechain, - the exhibition included a modern copy of 'Cywydd y cedor' (Poem to the Vagina) Wales, 18th century

From the notes: "Candid eroticism, audacity and humour characterise the poetry of Gwerful Mechain (d. 1502). She was one of the most extraordinary female voices in medieval Wales, although surviving copies of her works date from a much later period. This, her most popular poem, pokes fun at men who praise all women's body parts except for what she considers the best one...."



........
15. No Country for Girls (crime fiction)
16. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (literary fiction)
17. Picks and Shovels (thriller)
18. Well This is Awkward (comic fiction)


Familiar faces



Witches.
.......
21. Once the Deed is Done (lit fiction)
22. Perspectives (lit fiction)
23. Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (lit fiction)

Prize winners (and nominees)

"In February 1477, at the village of Topcroft in Norfolk, Margery Brews dictated a letter to her suitor John Paston III, calling him her 'right well-beloved valentine' and expressing the depth of her love. While John's reply to Margery does not survive, her words form the oldest known Valentine's letter in English.... "
(From the chapter by Calum Cockburn)

......
11. The South (Booker Longlist)
12. Universality (ditto)
13. What the Wild Sea Can Be (Women's Fiction NF shortlist 2025, Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist – 2024, James Cropper Wainwright Prize Shortlist – Conservation Writing – 2025)
14. Audition Booker longlist
15. One Boat Ditto
16. Misinterpretation Ditto
17. Love Forms Ditto
18. Endling Ditto
19. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Ditto
20. The Rest of Our Lives Ditto

21. Flesh Ditto
22. Question 7 (Baillie Gifford NF winner 2024)

Women in translation


Colophon of Estellina Conat, from her printed edition of Jedaiah Ben Abraham Bedersi's Behinat ha-'Olam; Mantua, 1476-80

The first known female Hebrew printer/ typesetter and one of the first known female printers in any language.
.......

July
1. A Book, Untitled (Armenian)
2. The Women Who Changed Art Forever (Italian)
3. Still Born (Spanish, Mexico)
4. Satisfaction (French)

August
1. Wildcat Dome (Japanese)
2. Supporting Act (Swedish)
3. Daughters (German)
4. Chicanes (French)
5. Shame (French)
6. Dead End Memories (Japanese)

September
1. Disoriental (French)
2. About Uncle (French)

October
Oops

November
1. On a Woman's Madness (Dutch, Suriname)

Graphic novels and manga



Art by Sibilla von Bondorf (d c1524), a nun in the Order of Poor Clares,
Detail from "St Clare and a group of nuns mourning St Francis of Assisi, from The Life and Miracles of St Francis of Assisi; Freiburg, 1478: Add MS 15710, f. 184v."

Reminds me of Lucie Attwell...
.......
11. Everything is Temporary
12. The Last Soviet Artist (travelogue / memoir)
13. Fugitive Days (fiction)
14. Feeding Ghosts (memoir)
15. The Women Who Changed Art Forever (art history)
16. Checked Out (memoir)
17. Florrie: a football love story (Historical fiction)
18. Pearl (Historical fiction)
19. Fierce (fiction)
20. Daybreak (zombies)

21. Hawking (science / biography)
22. Here (fiction)
23. This Slavery (adaptation of radical 19c novel)
24. The novel life of Jane Austen: a graphic biography (biography / literary history)

African writers

Noting this here:
https://brittlepaper.com/100-notable-african-books-of-2024/

January: Green Lion (South Africa)
February: How to be a Revolutionary (South Africa)
Ghostroots (Nigeria)
March: A Soft Landing (South Africa)
April: The Lion's Den (Zambia)
Crooked Seeds (South Africa)
May: Muriel at Metropolitan (South Africa)
June: Sand Roses (Algeria)
Lakiriboto (Nigeria)
July: N/A
August: Jesus is Indian (South Africa)
September: N/A
October: The Heart of Redness (South Africa)
Wake Me When I'm Gone (Nigeria)

History, memoir and other NF categories

"The author Christine de Pizan instructing her son, from 'The Book of the Queen'; Paris, c. 1410-14: Harley MS 4431/2, f. 261v."
......

15. 38 Londres Street (history / law)
16. Free: coming of age at the end of history (memoir)
17. Agrippina (history)
18. Dandelions (memoir)
19. Nine Minds: Inner Lives on the Spectrum (collective biography)
20. Republic: Britain's revolutionary decade (history)

21. Chicanes (art criticism)
22. Shame (memoir)
23. What the Wild Sea Can Be (environment / marine life)
24. The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes (fashion / women's history)
25. Hidden Hands (literary history)

Plans for Colourcategory reading... (aim is to read from my own shelves here)

January - green
The Wind Knows My Name
Lucie Rie

February - Gold
Private Revolutions

March: Pink
Miss Spring Fragrance
The Lark

April: Brown
Nina Hamnett
Le Silence de la Mer

May: – Red
The Little Red Chairs
June: – Yellow
On the Calculation of Volume
July:– White
Dandelions
August:– Grey
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
September:– Silver
Impossible Saints
October:– Black

November: – Blue
Possibles from my own books: Blue Aubergine

December:Purple

Read:

Monthly lists:

September 24 (233)
1. Rebel Yule (familiar faces)
2. What the Wild Sea Can Be (NF / prize nominees)
3. Mere (new to me)
4. Daybreak (GN)
5. Death is a Lonely Business (new to me)
6. One Boat (Prize nominees / reading my own books)
7. Hawking (GN)
8. Misinterpretation (Reading my own books / prize nominees)
9. Love Forms (prize nominees)
10. Disoriental (Women in translation/ reading my own books)

11. Here (GN)
12. Miss Fleming Falls in Love (new to me)
13. The Impossible Thing (familiar faces)
14. Endling (prize nominees)
15. Impossible Saints (colour cat / reading my own books)
16. Memorial Days (NF - Memoir)
17. The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes (NF / reading my own books)
18. Flashlight (Prize nominees)
19. About Uncle (Women in translation)
20. A Telegram from Le Touquet (New to me)

21. The Odd Flamingo (Reading my own books)
22. Feisty (familiar faces)
23 The Odd Woman and the City (Reading my own books)
24. Strange Journey (Reading my own books)

Library books read this month: 11

October 20 (253)

1. Emergency Questions (Reading my own books)
2. It's a Love Story
3. Helm (Familiar faces)
4. Bibliomaniac (NF)
5. Talk Me Down (Familiar faces)
6. Hidden Hands (NF)
7. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (prize winners)
8. The Blonde Identity (?)
9. This Slavery (Graphic novel)
10. Lead Me On (familiar faces)

11. Frankie (familiar faces)
12. The Heart of Redness (African writers)
13. The Rest of Our Lives (prize winners)
14. Nevada (Reading my own books)
15. Bad Boys Do (familiar faces)
16. Un Gros Livre (Reading my own books )
17. The Division Bell Mystery (new to me)
18. Wake Me When I'm Gone (African authors / reading my own books)
19. The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (familiar faces)
20. Jane Austen: a graphic biography (GN)

Library books read this month: 11

November 17 (268)

1. On a Woman's Madness (Women in Translation / reading my own books)
2. Picks and Shovel (New to me)
3. Flesh (Prize winners)
4. Death of an Englishman (Reading my own books)
5. Rescue (Reading my own books)
6. The House of Marvellous Books (Reading my own books)
7. Isola (Reading my own books)
8. Affinity (ditto)
9. Well, This is Awkward (new to me)
10. Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (familiar faces)

11. I'll be Right Here (familiar faces)
12. Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays (Reading my own books)
13. To the Friend Who Did Not Save my Life (Reading my own books)
14. Saltwater Mansions (NF / Memoir)
15. Dating Dr Dil ( new to me/ reading my own books)
16. Question 7 (prize winners)
17. The Revolutionary Temper (Reading my own books/ NF)

Library books read this month: 6

Happy new thread, Charlotte. Nice to see the touchstones are back working on your new thread.

happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Charlotte. I hope the between job-ness isn't too demoralising.

>11 Familyhistorian: Thanks Meg.

>12 banjo123: Thanks Rhonda.

>13 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie. If anything, I am probably too relaxed about it all.

I've got behind in my reviews.

Disoriental (Women in translation/ reading my own books)

The talkative, sociable child I used to be has turned into a Parisian adult with a face that closes off whenever I leave the house. I have become-as I'm sure everyone does who has left his or her country-someone else. Someone who has translated myself into other cultural codes. Firstly in order to survive, and then to go beyond survival and forge a future for myself. And since it is a generally acknowledged idea that something is lost in translation, it should come as no surprise that we unlearn-at least partially what we used to be, to make room for what we have become.

I've had this on my LT catalogue since 2002, but I suspect I bought my copy a bit more recently. (I don't know if I can see how my individual book record changed somewhere in LT? Something for me to search.) It's a lovely (purple!) Europa edition.

I felt it took a while to really catch my interest, but was glad I stuck with it. The heart of the book is Kimya, an Iranian refugee now living in Paris. Her contemporary narrative is set in an infertility clinic, waiting for appointments. Alongside that is the story of her family in Iran, from romantic stories about ancestors to her father's dangerous/ brave leadership of political protest first against the Shah and then Khomeini.on her father's love of popular culture:

Darius relied on Ramin to handle most things having to do with everyday life: tying shoelaces, understanding math and physics homework, fixing things, inflating bicycle tires. With his love of films and TV, it was mostly in the evenings that Darius spent time with the children. He sat with them in front of the television, watching old American movies from the 1950s-westerns, Columbo, Rich Man, Poor Man and told them anecdotes about the actors, even the most obscure ones, whose filmographies he always knew. Now, I can imagine your surprised expressions: wait, Iranians watched Columbo? Just think about it: from the moment the United States rests one authoritative hand on a country's politics, with the other hand it loads the people with all sorts of military, industrial, cultural, and food products.

Imperialism is no joke! Not only did Iranians watch Columbo, they also watched Bewitched, Little House on the Prairie, Peyton Place (completely unknown to the French), and Days of our Lives (ditto). They also picked up CBS on their TV sets, drank Coca-Cola, ate KFC, drove Chevrolets, and fucked on Simmons Beautyrest mattresses.

Here (GN)
I've been updating my CV etc in the local library, and it seemed silly not to check the GN shelf...

This is a fascinating idea, and a beautiful book: although I'm glad I could pick up a library copy rather than having to buy my own!

Each page has a date on it (sometimes with an inset box showing another year) representing a year - all in the same place. Incredibly wide ranging including the colonial past and the imagined future. Despite there being hardly any words (just reported speech) multiple stories weave through the book. If you can find a copy, I'd recommend it.

I loved the way movement across different times is shown here.

Miss Fleming Falls in Love (new to me)
Historical romance. The author has several others which I will look for.

The Impossible Thing (familiar faces)
Read this on the library's online collection (BorrowBox). Bauer picks up with characters that will be familiar from one of her previous books. A modern narrative around the discovery of an old egg by two young men (and their attempt to work out if it's worth anything) is accompanied by the historical one providing the context of the Victorian mania for collection, and an unsolved murder mystery.

But the real view was beneath their feet, where the edge of England plunged three hundred sheer feet into the indigo depths. To their left and their right. And beyond each little headland, more cliffs as far as their eyes could see in either direction.

And every craggy inch of those cliffs was covered in birds.

Fulmars and gulls and kittiwakes and terns. Puffins whirring past their feet like rainbow bullets, and giant gannets that hung in the sky beside them like airships. But most of all, guillemots. Huddled shoulder to shoulder, they painted the chalky cliffs in glossy chocolate pixels.

Happy new thread Charlotte!

>15 charl08: I will have to look for this one! Thanks for posting about it.

Happy New Thread

Happy New 🧵, Charlotte!

Happy new thread, Charlotte.
>16 charl08: The graphic novel sounds interesting.

>18 humouress: Thanks Nina.

>19 purpleiris: I wondered if you might read it in French?

>20 lowelibrary: Thank you!

>21 vancouverdeb: Thanks Deborah. I'm behind with my Booker reading reviews. I finished Endling.

>22 BLBera: Thanks Beth. It was a very thoughtful book, maybe an interesting one for a book group.

Endling (prize nominees)

Another read from the Booker longlist thanks to my library. A highly topical look at writing in and about a humanitarian crisis.

YURT MAKERS: You are not the first of your ilk who has called us in the middle of the night crying, begging us to sew up your mess. This is regarding that quotation by the writer who is your leader, yes? The mansion-made-of-yurts nonsense? Has he ever laid eyes on a yurt himself? we ask.

U.A.: He builds them. They're exquisite, custom, self-contained.

YURT MAKERS: We are still speaking in symbols, yes?

U.A.: I tried building a different novel-yurt before, that one set in Ukraine, its structure large and sprawling, more mansion-like than my other set of yurts, but the Russians began bombing it. What right do I have to write about the war from my arm-chair? And to keep writing about the mail-order bride industry seems even worse. Dredge up that cliché? In these times? Any-way, am I even a real Ukrainian? I left the country as a child. I speak more Russian than Ukrainian, and neither that well.

The book opens before the war, set amongst three Ukranian women involved in marriage tourism for very different reasons, none of them romantic. Then Russia invades.

It then shifts to a novel within a novel as the "author" debates if her book makes sense after the invasion, the ethics of benefitting from suddenly being "relevant", and of writing reflecting Ukranian interests rather than those of editors. In terms of the last one, a series of letters records her submission of an essay on Ukranian humour in the face of almost unbearable stress. The editors reject her submission asking for a more conventional piece about the effects of the war.

The book made me laugh too:


Recommended.

Happy new thread, Charlotte! I loved to see the bit about Pizzinini in >24 charl08:, I haven’t come across his name before.

>25 MissWatson: Thank you for visiting - re >24 charl08: I think the author made him up!

>23 charl08: Yes, I think I will. Already checked out. Hopefully I get to it before the library wants it back!

(Is there a way to respond to a specific comment in a message, I wonder?)

>27 purpleiris: I've seen people copy the original Q text into their reply message, that sort of thing?

In terms of the original novel, I wondered if some of the sections where she talks about French people commenting on her French accent might be a lot more specific. This kind of query is why I like a translator's note at the end of the book!

Booker update
Read:
Endling by Maria Reva (Virago/Little, Brown)*
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Daunt Books Originals)
Love forms by Claire Adam (Faber)*
The South by Tash Aw (4th Estate).*
Universality by Natasha Brown (Faber)*
Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press) *
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

To read:
Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape)* Have from the library
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)*
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Faber)
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Sceptre)
Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape) * Have from the library
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

>28 charl08: Oooh, what a great question. Now I'm thinking I should check out both the French and the English to see. Might have to be a weekend project. Somehow I don't think I can justify taking time away from my job to do that!

And yes, copying the original Q would probably work.

>26 charl08: Now I am really intrigued...

The Booker Short list is announced on September 23. It will be interesting to see what makes the list. I still have only read two of the books. I am finding the list disappointing, and I am waiting on a couple of books to come in on holds from the library.

>30 purpleiris: I appreciate they're not very fashionable, but I like anything that explains the translator's choices in a book. It's one of the reasons I like Peirene editions, they often add something online or in their emails from.the translator.

>31 MissWatson: My work here is done.

>32 vancouverdeb: I liked Misinterpretation, Endling and Love Forms, and am enjoying Flashlight so far... I wonder if any of the ones I liked will make the shortlist this time.

Impossible Saints (colour cat / reading my own books)

This has been on my shelves for some time, and its also been some time since I read Michèle Roberts.

The floor gave a sudden heave. Barbara looked up. The floor gave a loud crack, a report, and another, like the sound of guns going off. The planks of cedarwood began to buckle and split. Up through the gaps between them thrust slender green shoots, which lengthened, and thickened, and turned into green stems, which sprouted fast and tall and waved with green leaves. Soon branches appeared, and then tree trunks. Green fronds and tendrils swarmed up the bath-house walls. Green buds opened out into scarlet pomegranate blossoms. Red pomegranate fruits fattened then exploded, scattering their seeds across the floor, which was now carpeted with wild anemones, red and purple and blue.

Two of the pomegranate trees pushed so hard against one of the bath-house walls that it collapsed, leaving only a low parapet of masonry. The two trees bent in opposite directions, stretched and flattened out the reach of their branches, as though invisible hands espaliered them, and shaped them-selves around the opening in the tower wall. They formed themselves into a window frame and instead of glass they held the air between them, steady and cool.

Barbara sat at her new window, on her new window-ledge made of pomegranate tree, half in and half out, dangling one leg over the sill....

Roberts doesn't write easy books, and this is no exception. I'm not sure I would have finished it if it wasn't for the colour category challenge this month. One thread is the story of Josephine, a girl who becomes a nun in an unnamed town in an unnamed country and time. Alternating chapters headed by a "saint" name tell narratives of different women's experience. Plenty of magical realism alongside the kind of fairytale macabre that sees awkward women locked or bricked away. Sometimes they rescue themselves, but mostly they live -or die - due to the consequences of their attempts to escape. There are no godly rescues here or glory.

The martyrs, whose stories she had so admired as a child, had contended with different smells: the stink of lions released into the hot sun of the arena, the scent of fresh blood, of wounds and death. What was the smell of the exe-cutioner's axe, of vats of boiling oil? What was the smell of courage? All she knew was the smell of ennui.

Josephine had believed, when she entered, that she was performing an extraordinary act. Leaping into the unknown; giving herself totally to God and no one else; abandoning herself to God's love. She had committed herself, taken an irrevocable step. She had flung herself into the abyss. Yet she was finding, with a shock, that life in the convent was much like life at home, life at boarding school. Other people told you what to do and how to behave and your time was not your own. Her life here was not one of great and glorious adventure, of splendid renunciation. With pain she recognised its ordinariness and dullness, and with shame she acknowledged how bored she was.

The structure is weirdly familiar to me from a book of saints lives I read ans reread with an odd (in retrospect) fascination as a kid.* I wonder how many readers are "reading that in" to the text too.

*Bit of a mystery that itself: raised low C of E with no saints at all!

Hi Charlotte, I'm hopelessly behind on the threads, but I still wanted to visit your new one and hope to follow along more regularly from now on! I enjoyed seeing what you read in the last months, especially your list of African books. Also, congratulations on meeting your targets of reading your own books in almost all of the months!

>35 MissBrangwen: I'm not great at keeping up myself, so there will be no checks. I do value the visits so will try and do more myself...

I'm a bit stuck with The Revolutionary Temper from my own books list - I love book history, but this is so much more French history that's new to me it doesn't make for a quick read.

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes (Reading my own books/ non fiction)

This is a beautifully illustrated life history based on a serendipitous discovery of what I would call a scrapbook but the author calls a "dress diary". Dating back to Victorian times, and including beautiful fabrics as well as intriguing ones (see the chapter on pirates!) the book somehow ended up on a marketstall in the 1960s, and then was gifted to the author much more recently. Going on the very scant information recorded in the book, the author tracks down the creator, Anne Sykes.

As most of those who contributed fabric were women, she isn't always able to say much about them, but the information she does uncover is fascinating. The creator's interest in fabrics and her collection of them enables the author to reveal a network of friends and contacts with many special events and occasions. This is including the clip from a sash worn to the Preston Guild "fancy ball", I think my favourite fabric included in the examples at the back of the book.


Anne was relatively wealthy and the fabric collection included her time in Singapore and Malta, as well as adventures in the new fashionable dye discovery - purple.

What is the Preston Guild?
https://www.prestonguildcity.co.uk/the-preston-guild-a-centuries-long-tradition-...

>24 charl08: I will read the note on the type from now on! That is hilarious. I have that one on reserve in the library. It was one that sounded like I would like it.

>29 charl08: Are the Booker nominees listed in the order of your preference?

>38 BLBera: I will be surprised if this one doesn't get shortlisted.
Although I have been surprised before!

>39 BLBera: Yes, in order of preference. Although I have just squeaked another book through before the announcement today. So, fwiw:

Booker update
Read, hope get shortlisted:
Endling by Maria Reva (Virago/Little, Brown)*
Flashlight by Susan Choi (Jonathan Cape)*
Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga (Daunt Books Originals)
Love forms by Claire Adam (Faber)*

Read, not really a fan:
The South by Tash Aw (4th Estate).*
Universality by Natasha Brown (Faber)*
Audition by Katie Kitamura (Fern Press) *
One Boat by Jonathan Buckley (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

To read:
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)*
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits (Faber)
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Sceptre) - just out in paperback, so I have a copy that just arrived.
Flesh by David Szalay (Jonathan Cape) * Have from the library
Seascraper by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

Flashlight
I've not read anything by Susan Choi before, but this has made me want to go and pick up her other books.

The fishmonger on the main shopping street owned a radio and sometimes Hiroshi loitered nearby and watched him tune it, the man's calloused fingers touching the dial so slightly Hiroshi could not even see the dial change position, but something would shift, out of spraying static would resolve spoken language, like a melting in reverse, the puddle lifting into a lace of snowflakes. Something like that happened after Auntie Kim spoke. Hiroshi understood that the incoherent noise that had meant nothing to him was in fact two languages, overlapping and dismantling each other until his realization helped him tease them apart: the language he spoke and wrote at school every day and spoke at play and in the streets of his town; and the language his parents used with each other, mostly late at night when they thought he was asleep. He knew this language also, he understood it when he heard it directed at him, but it rarely left his mouth and he had never learned to write it down. The parade had moved past and the crowd closed in its wake as if trying to decide whether to join. The enormous flag heaved and snapped in the distance like a sail pulling free from its mast. Korea is free! and Long live Korea! and Out of darkness, into light! were all three being uttered in his school language and in his parents' late-night language, both at the same time, so that as his intense concentration on the cacophony flagged, and as it drew farther away, the filigree of clarity collapsed, and all he heard again was meaningless noise.

"But what's Korea?" he asked as they turned to walk home.

"Let me die," Auntie Kim said.

"Korea is the homeland of Koreans," his mother told him.

"But what are Koreans?"

"We are," said his mother. "You are. That's why your name isn't really Hiroshi, it's 석."

"What do you mean my name isn't Hiroshi?" he cried.

"I told you," Auntie Kim said to his mother again.

His mother replied, "But what choice did we have?"

Centred on a family, with sections told by them jumping across time and location. Serk is from a Korean family but after they move seeking work, he is raised in Japan. His family is communist and when the opportunity to return to the new North Korea comes up, they take it, leaving Serk behind. Despite studying hard he is denied university and then job opportunities because he is ethnic Korean. Keeping his family's ties to communism quiet, he gets a scholarship and visa to the US, and then a job.

Anne, his wife, has her own backstory that she keeps from Serk even after they marry. Their daughter Louisa is a source of tension. Serk is over-protective, Anne unable to understand his perspective. And then Serk disappears. The novel spends a long time centred on Serk's assumed death, and Anne's struggles to live with MS. When it is finally revealed that he did not die, but was kidnapped by North Korean secret services to teach their spies Japanese, I felt it as a significant jolt. Choi avoids easy resolutions, made easier by her choice to set the kidnapping in the late 70s, so there was no resolution-by-google possible. It's a long book, but I didn't find myself wishing it was shorter - rather I wanted more on the characters' lives.

Booker shortlist is here (I've read two of them):

Flesh
The Land in Winter
The Rest of Our Lives
Audition
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Flashlight

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/prize-years/2025

Thanks for the update. I might read some of them. Endling and Misinterpretation were the ones that most called to me. Sigh. I suck at predicting prizes.

You read so many from the Booker Longlist, Charlotte. I have only read The Land in Winterfrom the shortlist, which I enjoyed. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is proving to be a good read.

>37 charl08: Thanks for reminding me of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes. I enjoyed that when I read it.

>43 BLBera: I'd love to know what you make of either of those books, Beth.

>44 vancouverdeb: Glad you are enjoying the Desai - or perhaps you have finished it already?

>45 Familyhistorian: Maybe I heard about it from you? I am not sure why I bought it - probably a Kindle deal...

>46 charl08: I am enjoying the Desai, but , not finished. It's 688 pages, or so. I am on about page 425.

I did finish The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and yes, I did enjoy it, Charlotte. Brief review on my thread. I hope you are doing well.

Short trip to France interrupted proceedings. My first trip on Eurostar but I hope it won't be the last. I have ignored my usual attempts to avoid gluten and cheese and walked a lot. (Usually in the wrong direction.)



From L-R then top to bottom.

Walk to the beach in Montpellier.
Lyon bookshop (one of many).

Dostoyevsky lovely covers.
A book I recognised in a wonderful art gallery (and shop).
Another bookshop - this one a travel one - in Montpellier.
Agatha Christies in the hotel in Montpellier.
Being photobombed by a gull on the beach.
Reading (ish) Annie Ernaux on the train.
A lovely sign (but sadly no longer a bookshop) in Lille.
Continental crimes - I left this in a donation pile, as I wasn't that impressed.
A bookshop spotted on a tour of the old town in Lyon.
A lovely poster for an exhibition on a local custom of parading large statues / figures.
A cute ad for a shop in Montpellier.
More BL crime reading (Lille) and a GN I wanted to remember to buy when I got home.

>48 vancouverdeb: I downloaded the kindle sample to make a start, as it's waiting for me at the library. Early days, but interesting so far.

>49 charl08: Walking in the wrong direction would have increased your steps :0)

>51 humouress: It certainly did! Top count 20k...

Looks like a great trip and sounds like a great trip, too, Charlotte. Thanks for the pix. I'm glad you are enjoying the beginning of the book.

>53 vancouverdeb: I did enjoy it. The weather here is a bit of a shock though after Montpellier.

I stopped writing reviews, while I was away, so these will be brief.

About Uncle (Women in translation)

Another Peirene subscription book. Super odd novella told by a Swiss woman about her eccentric uncle. If it hadn't been so short I don't think I would have finished this: the description of his room. Urgh.

A Telegram from Le Touquet (New to me)
I had some time between Euston and KX, and what's between them? The British Library. I did look for a crime novel set in France, but the title makes it sound more French than it is. Even I spotted the hole in the detective's reasoning, so not exactly Roger Ackroyd territory. The period feel made it interesting in other ways though.

The Odd Flamingo (Reading my own books)
Another BL historical crime novel. Nina Bawden was familiar to me from her children's novels, I hadn't realised she'd written crime early in her career.

This was a pretty grimy, seedy story, very far from her work for young people. The narrator is asked for help by a friend. A young woman turns up at her home, claiming to be having her husband's baby, and threatening blackmail. Set just after the second world war, again you get lots of period detail even if the crime itself isn't as interesting. Everyone has some kind of war back story, abortions aren't yet legal and housing is at a premium. The attitudes towards women make for unpleasant reading, and the book includes a note from the BL editors explaining why they believe its important to (re)print texts like this.

I said, "The police are not infallible. And to them it must seem that he is guilty. He has acted as if he were guilty. We know he didn't do it. It gives us a kind of advantage. God knows it's all we've got."

I finished my whisky quickly. It helped me to face the awful knowledge that what I had just said was true.

Piers said, quite gently, "Are you sure about that? Are you a fool, William, or only very stubborn? You haven't been a very good judge of Humphrey up to now, have you? Wouldn't you be better employed in working out some kind of defence for him on the assumption that he did kill this girl, rather than chasing after the other one? Or do you see yourself as one of those engaging but unlikely gentlemen who appear in detective fiction? Really, William, aren't you just a little vain?"

Feisty (familiar faces)
I preferred the first book in this romance series: the main character for this one didn't seem that convincing.

The Odd Woman and the City (Reading my own books)

I thought I'd like this more than I did. The New York-based author reflects on a long friendship largely conducted by weekly meetings to talk and discuss their shared half-empty perspective on life. She uses this as jumping-off point to think about solitude and modern relationships more widely.

.'..how we loved our own aloneness... We were incapable of giving because there was so much within our reach to grab and snatch and gather for our own, our solitary souls'
Isabel Bolton was nearly seventy when she wrote these words.

She had lived long enough to see that modern life, with its unspeakable freedoms mirrored in the gorgeous disconnect of the crowded city, has revealed us to ourselves as has the culture of no other age. She sees what Freud saw - that our loneliness is anguishing and yet, inexplicably, we are loath to give it up. At no period in psychological time are we free of the contradiction: it is the conflict of conflicts. This was Bolton's wisdom, her only wisdom. When she wrote it in the late 1940s it sounded profound to her most literate readers.

>49 charl08: This looks lovely! I often walk in the wrong direction, but that's how I discover new places, so I don't mind too much.

>58 purpleiris: It was my first attempt at French trains, and I was impressed. Puts UK trains in the shade.

How lovely to have a few days in France.

Strange Journey (Reading my own books)

Thought this was great, directly in my wheelhouse. In the 1930s two women swop bodies across classes. Its a very "ordinary" voice, but feels authentic. The author was from an elite family, so presumably knew about the fancy side of things described here, from hosting tea parties to hunting.

>59 charl08: French trains are great. I don't know the UK to compare.

Your France trip sounds like a lot of fun. I have a terrible sense of direction, so walking in the wrong direction is pretty common with me.

Nice, short comments. You seem to be reading a lot of your own books. Kudos.

>62 purpleiris: I would recommend patience and good weather if you do decide to investigate British trains.

>63 BLBera: I do quite enjoy being lost from time to time. I thought the The Odd Woman and the City would more about that kind of discovery and urban walking generally, but it wasn't really...

I'm mostly reading the books I've bought lately. I am enjoying the Robert Darnton which I've had for a while, but only in small chunks, as it is so detailed.

Monthly lists:

(I didn't mean to post this here!)

Some more reviews:

Emergency Questions (Reading my own books)

87. What's the most pretentious book you've ever bought, but never read? Rich: I have some prominently dis-played James Joyce on my bookshelf and have never read a word

I found this one on my kindle as I was trying to do some catchup cataloguing.
I like the idea - questions you can ask when a conversation is flagging with sometimes funny answers also provided. Herring's comedy is a bit hit-or-miss for me, and in places I did find it a bit wearing / repetitive. Might have been better if I'd spaced out the reading a bit more?

It's a Love Story (familiar faces)

I think I saw this on Litsy - romantic fiction about a would-be producer, former child star. The author acknowledges the book is influenced by her reading of I'm glad my mom died. I met someone recently who was in a film as a child, it's a bit like boxing for me, I'm not sure why any intelligent society allows it.

Helm (Familiar faces)
I love Sarah Hall, and this book is again firmly set in Cumbria as many of her books are (although as she says at one point, this is the "other north", not the pretty-pretty tea shop areas or even the levelling up bit the politicians talk about). The book is linked by 'Helm', the only named wind in the UK. The humans that encounter it include a former crusader on some kind of quest, a young woman diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' who believes the wind is her friend, and a scientist investigating the impact of microplastics on the weather. Lots of atmospheric scenery.

I'm hoping to get to hear her talk about the book at an event soon.

The church door is locked; its iron ring turns but the lever does not lift. Open from 12 p.m. until 4 p.m. daily for visitors. On the stone bench in the porch is a wire basket holding parish news pamphlets; she takes one and puts it in her pocket. She browses the messages on the pinboard. Services are every other Sunday (with a curt foot-note: the curate oversees multiple churches in the district). The parish council is asking for donations for fireworks. There's a flyer for a jumble sale. A carlin supper fundraiser for Palestine. Pinned in the corner of the board, on a white file card, is a handwritten passage of scripture: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed. Corinthians 4:8-9. A plastic collection box is padlocked and bolted to the wall. It all seems so - rural.

There is the north, she thinks, where levelling-up means Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, and stops with the BBC effect. And then there's the other north.

>49 charl08: Sounds like a lovely visit Charlotte, love the photo collage.

>67 Caroline_McElwee: Was kind of amazed at how many bookshops I came across. Also want to go back. Such lovely cheese and pastries...

Bit of a sad day today as I went into one of the neighbouring towns to go to the bank (because they closed our branch). Thought I'd pop into a lovely old indy bookshop too, only to find they were closed and with a sign on the door saying it was due to electrical/ fire reg problems.

*However* a guy in another shop told me that actually it's due to the death of the owner, and a lack of someone to take over, which is sad. I didn't know the owner, but I liked the staff and I wonder what this means for them - I assume they've lost their jobs. As well as the loss of the shop itself of course.

>68 charl08: Oh very sad about the owner and the bookshop closure Charlotte. Hard when there is no one to take the reins, as it impacts the livelihoods of others, both for jobs, and for readers who loved to go there.

>69 Caroline_McElwee: Another reader posted on Litsy that the staff had had very little notice of the shop closing permanently. All just so sad. I would have liked to thank them, it was such a nice, welcoming place to visit.

I am having a very geeky time adding all the books on my kindle to my librarything catalogue. I have not been so good at this in the past.

As a result, my total list of books (including wishlist and library loans, so I don't own them all!) has now gone past 9,000.

>49 charl08: Glad to hear you had a great trip. I love Lyon. It's a wonderful, winding city with lots of surprises.

>71 Ameise1: I want to go back!

Some more books...

Bibliomaniac (NF)
If you listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage you'll be aware of Robin Ince as (Professor) Brian Cox's comic foil. He's also made a career from book related comedy. Here he decides to tour over 100 bookshops in the UK, and writes about the process. Given that he loves books and bookshops, this was a no-brainer to pick up from Borrowbox. There are beautiful maps, descriptions of bookshops I want to visit, and segues into the surreal (Ince really loves odd books). I think my favourite bits were when he was mistaken for a bookseller- but rather than correcting the other person, helped them find the book they were after anyway. I also want to pick up a copy of the spoof travelogue Through Darkest Pondelayo.

This afternoon I was browsing chutney before my talk, but tonight I'm able to look at the Soyuz 7K-OK(A) spacecraft. I adore both, but, sadly, only one is coming home with me.

The collection of space-related objects includes something else I covet: a book that has been into space twice, once with Helen Sharman and once with Tim Peake. It is Yuri Gagarin's autobiography, Road to the Stars, signed by Gagarin. Sharman took it to the Mir Space Station with her and then loaned it to Peake when he went to the International Space Station. When I've asked astronauts about reading habits in space, they've told me that they go with good intentions, but it's very hard not to spend all your time looking out of the window.

This is the kind of book that would be good as a commute read, as it did get a bit repetitive. (Travel to bookshop, worry about material, buy books, enjoy giving talk, worry on the way home / in the hotel). That said, in paperback I am tempted to buy it just for the list of bookshops!

The comedian Arthur Smith once summed up the perfect amount to earn as being enough to buy the books you wanted, have a drink in the pub and still be able to afford a taxi home...

I'm sorry to read about the closure of the book shop, and the death of the owner,Charlotte .

>74 vancouverdeb: It seems like I haven't been to visit it for a longer time than I thought, as I found this news article about the closure from last year. Not sure where the time goes!
https://www.lancs.live/news/lancashire-news/owner-explains-reason-closing-north-...

Hidden Hands

This is just a marvellous book, I loved it, and it fits with the theme of my challenge really nicely too (although it's not just about the medieval period, nor is it "just" about women's contribution). It's accessible and the author includes her personal reactions to texts too.

At some point before his death in 1345, Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham (1287-1345) composed his Philobiblon ('Love of Books'), in which he set out to 'clear the love we have had for books from the charge of excess'. I love de Bury's treatise: it is a battle-hymn for the value of books and learning: 'in books we climb mountains and scan the deepest gulfs of the abyss'.

I had the paperback version, which meant I could lug it around and read it travelling around France on the train (she brags?) but that the illustrations of the MS she describes were in black and white. If you can get hold of the full colour hardback though...

I suspect it appeals to many booklovers, especially those (like me) who have not read so much about this period. (Queen Emma, anyone?)*

It makes clear how many people have loved texts over the years, as objects as much as for what they say. From the introduction:

At some point in the sixteenth century a girl named Elisabeth Danes wrote a threat into the pages of her book: 'Thys ys Elisabeth daness boke he that stelyng shall be hanged by a croke' ('This is Elisabeth Danes's book, he that steals it shall be hanged by a crook (ie a hook)'). The note appears at the bottom of the manuscript page: defiant, a little naughty and full of bibliophilic feeling.

There is some lovely stuff about the creation of beautiful illuminated texts, but I wasn't expecting the fascinating detail about how some texts were (re)discovered, others almost lost (usually due to fire) and how detective work has been done to try and work out more about the (usually) anonymous teams of scribes. Of course, more familiar names (Chaucer) pop up, but I really liked her approach mixing this with insight about stories of anonymous and near anonymous people involved in texts - women scribes working in nunneries, for example. Not just medieval figures though: I want to read more about the life of Edith Rickert, who not only worked on medieval MS but was a codebreaker in WW2.

*Kudos if you did!
From the text:

Most people have never heard of Queen Emma, but she was a crucial, if not pivotal figure in early medieval English history.

She was crowned Queen of England twice, was the mother of two English kings, and the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. It was her relationship to William that partially legitimised the invasion in the Conqueror's eyes.

Here's a link to the author's website including a talk by the author:
https://marywellesley.com/

Here's a lovely image of Henry VIII


Public domain via this article on the book https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-unheralded-women-scribes-who-broug...

Hidden Hands sounds wonderful, Charlotte. I will look for it.

>76 charl08: That does sound good!

>77 BLBera: It is lovely Beth. I thought it was a very shrewd move of the British Library shop to include it in their stock. I think it goes by another title in the US, The Gilded Page. (I've combined the records in LT now so this should be easier to see.)

>78 Helenliz: I hit the BL shop before I got to St Pancras, meant to buy one paperback but it was 3 for 2... They had signs up for a new exhibition on about maps now that I want to see. Dangerous place!

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

This was much longer than the books I usually read- over 600 pages, and I'm not sure I would have stuck with it had it not been that I wanted to read all the shortlist for the Booker. The two main characters are young people trying to work out their lives in the US when the story opens. Sunny is a journalist, waiting for his green card. Sonia is finishing a degree, phoning her parents and crying down the phone.

Sonia meets an inappropriate boyfriend. Sonny and his (white) girlfriend argue. A lot.

The novel follows their ups and downs.

The famous authors in the audience, suave and schmoozy, talked over the librarian who had fought a lonely battle against book bans in Nebraska, but they fell into reverent silence when Orfeu Cantu got up to speak about himself.

Male authors, until they migrated to the front seats at the gala, often looked as if they'd crawled out of a garbage can, the head of the prize committee reflected as Sunny slunk onto the stage, yet time and time again she had been surprised: The author may look unkempt or be deceitful, smarmy, and a dreadful human being, but they would nevertheless incite a fervent following of attractive female fans. By this time next year, Sunny might be the Cucaracha Kafka of Jackson Heights, at the table by center stage.

As he accepted the check, Sunny was glad Ulla wasn't around to witness his hypocrisy. Then he thought he should write about his hy-pocrisy. But if he did so, he wouldn't win any more prizes.

Some great moments, but mostly I felt disconnected from the main characters, and wanted the story to spend more time with some of the characters we meet in passing or more briefly, e.g. two "maids" Sonny's mum employs convincing herself it's a charitable act or Sonia's mum and her decision to go back to her original home in the mountains.

I do think acknowledging a criticism (trope of predatory older artist) within the narrative doesn't "fix" the issue, either!

The book did make me laugh in places but just wasn't a favourite, and I suspect if I I hadn't felt I *had* to I wouldn't have finished.

(Obviously, your mileage may vary!)

. When he told Sunny the ingredients in what he'd brought-perhaps he had been influenced by the Hallmark vocabulary transported by gringos-he always added at the end: y amor!

"Huauzontles y amor! Frijoles, epazote y amor! Tomatillo, serrano y amor!"

Ulla would say, "The love is in the sauce," which had always irritated Sunny. He wanted only sauce in his sauce. Or, if anything, a touch of irony in his sauce, or the devil in his sauce, or sauciness in his sauce.

"Please leave amor out! I'm allergic to it," begged Sunny. "I need to stay away from amor-it's what has made me so ill in the first place."

Booker shortlist in order of preference

Flashlight
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
Audition

Still to read:
Flesh
The Land in Winter
The Rest of Our Lives

Went to hear Sarah Hall speak.

I visited your thread yesterday and then suddenly " cloudflare " showed up and my message was lost, so here I am again, Charlotte. How exciting to hear Sarah Hall speak and get her autograph! You are doing well with your Booker Long List reading. I have only read The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia and The Land in Winter both of which I enjoyed. I read a small portion of Flashlight and Flesh but DNF'd them quite quickly. Maybe some day I'llhave another look at them.

I visited your thread yesterday and then suddenly " cloudflare " showed up and my message was lost, so here I am again, Charlotte. How exciting to hear Sarah Hall speak and get her autograph! You are doing well with your Booker Long List reading. I have only read The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia and The Land in Winter both of which I enjoyed. I read a small portion of Flashlight and Flesh but DNF'd them quite quickly. Maybe some day I'llhave another look at them.

Oh, now a double post!Sorry, Charlotte.

>83 vancouverdeb: >84 vancouverdeb: >85 vancouverdeb: Thank you for persevering to post despite the technology, Deborah. I've started The Rest of Our Lives, hope to read before the announcement of the winner.

>82 charl08: Nice! How was it?

Great comments on The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Not sure...It is a long one.
.

I'm glad that you liked Flashlight It seems to have gotten a mixed reception, but I've liked the other books by Choi that I have read. She has an interesting way of exploring uncomfortable topics.

>87 BLBera: Really good, she was very impressive. She said she has an article coming out in the Guardian about environmental fiction, so some of what she said will be online shortly.

I did think about my mum, as Sarah Hall talked a lot about growing up in part of Cumbria and its significance for her writing. I think I've got it right that the named wind that is central to her new book is only found on one hill - and she grew up being able to see it from the hill behind her family's cottage. When I opened the book the endpapers have a lovely map of the area - and one of the places my mum lived in is marked on the map.

>88 banjo123: I would like to read more of her writing (but too many books!)

Trying to write something about other books I've finished. I wanted something a bit different so picked up The Blonde Identity, kind of romance / thriller with a nod to The Bourne Identity. I wasn't blown away but it was a pacey enough read so a nice change.

Every so often I check the library catalogue for new graphic novels, and I requested This Slavery after having found it there. It's a graphic novel by two sisters, adapted from an original novel by an author who (they explain in the afterword) was highly popular 100 years ago, but has slipped into obscurity. Radical at the time it was published, they stress that the author (clearly influenced by communism) was speaking of wage and gender "slavery" rather than any appropriation or diminishing of Atlantic slavery. The graphic novel centres on a family, two daughters, mum and gran, living together. Gran is frail but all the others work in a mill at the start of the book in (what I think) is an non-specific northern town. Their lives are precarious, affected by bad conditions at work, attempts at unionisation and a lack of decent health care. What was most interesting for me was how explicitly they focus on women's limited choices dealing with sexual exploitation by the bosses as well as in terms of their marriage choices for economic stability (or not).

Just makes you think as a reader about changes in fashion in books, and how some authors just get forgotten.


Lead Me On (familiar faces)
I've been going back through my digital book collection on kindle. Lots of books I bought on a whim and didn't catalogue. This was the third of a series of three. In some ways they're showing their age, but I enjoy her writing style.

Frankie (familiar faces)
Graham Norton also writes novels. I enjoyed this one, an elderly Irish lady telling her carer about her surprising life in New York.

She knew that she should look for a job but the enormity of the task was so daunting that she convinced herself she should wait and ask the other girls for help in focusing her search. The only thing she had even approaching a qualification was a few weeks on a cookery course in Cork, and she very much doubted that would be enough for her to secure a job in a London restaurant. Instead, she spent several hours in the Tate Gallery. It seemed like such a luxury to just sit on a polished wooden bench and stare at the enormous canvases. It took some time before she realised that no one was looking at her or judging her for spending so much time in each room. She was no longer the canon's wife, and her newfound anonymity made her feel quite giddy.

The Heart of Redness
Do you have books on your bookshelf that have been there for so long you've almost forgotten you *still* haven't actually read them? If so, you'll know just how pleased I am (relieved?) to be able to say I can put a big tick next to this one. The setting is a fascinating one: the home of Xhosa Prophet Nongqawuse, credited with inspiring the killing of thousands of cattle in the late 1800s in a belief that the dead would rise and overturn the colonial government. Alongside this is a "modern" story post-apartheid of the rural Xhosa community, still actively divided between "Believers" and "Non-Believers".

You cannot stop the people from believing in their own salvation!' shouted Twin. A black race across the sea, newly resurrected from the dead, is surely coming to save us from the white man. Even the armies of The Man Who Named Ten Rivers cannot stand against it! You saw what happened to Cathcart!'

The Man Who Named Ten Rivers was Sir George Grey, the man who had taken over as governor of the Cape Colony after Cathcart's death. He had arrived with great enthusiasm with a mission to civilise the natives. Those amaXhosa who had become amaGqobhoka - the Christian converts, that is believed in Grey. People like Ned who were on good terms with white people came back with stories of Grey's greatness.

He had been a governor in Australia and New Zealand, they said, where his civilising mission did many wonderful things for the natives of those countries. Of course he had to take their land in return for civilisation. Civilisation is not cheap.

He had written extensively about the native people of those countries, and about their plants. He had even given names to ten of their rivers, and to their mountain ranges. It did not matter that the forebears of those natives had named those rivers and mountains from time immemorial.

The library's digital collection had a copy of Ben Markovits' shortlisted book, and it's a quick read. I'm not sure what to think of this one. Not helped by the large amount of sportsing talk, either. I think the term is a white male middle aged F-up novel?

I tried to write a little, at about two in the morning. I figured I should write up my game with Frank at East Liberty Park if I was going to do a book about pickup basketball ... but I didn't have anything to write with, except the hotel stationary. And nothing came anyway. The pad was about as big as my hand, I stared at it for five minutes trying to come up with a good first line. "People reveal themselves on the basketball court ..." That obviously wasn't it. "They don't just come to play, they come to talk." Which is just untrue. It was like grad school again, when I tried to churn out my dissertation on Updike and realized, I don't want to write about other people's experiences or ideas of the world, I want to have my own; but I didn't really want to do that either. I just wanted to sit around and read books for the rest of my life.

That said, Booker shortlist in order of preference

Flashlight
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny
The Rest of Our Lives
Audition

Still to read:
Flesh
The Land in Winter

Nevada
I picked this up last night, a gripping novel from the perspective of a trans woman in the midst of major changes in her life. Lots of drug abuse, swearing and gender theory.

The more she tries to think about it, whittle it down to how she feels about their relationship, the slipperier it gets. Thinking about Steph is like trying to squeeze a fish. She's getting confused and lost and then she's, like, way the hell downtown, in Chinatown, and she really should go back to work. Opportunity number two for an odyssey of city exploration as a metaphor for self-exploration: poof, down the tube. Whatever. She does have this feeling for a moment though of what it would be like not to be tied to Steph, to their apartment, to her job, but then she thinks: that's some straight dude bullshit, the self-sufficient loner. She felt liberated for a second, though.

>93 charl08: You are doing well with the Booker list. I still haven't read any. I will get to some of them...Someday. Eventually.

>95 BLBera: I have rather lost steam. Maybe 2026 will be my year?

Just seen a trailer for a Zoe Boëhm series starring Emma Thompson. Woo!

I'm still waiting for The Rest of Our Lives to come in at the library, Charlotte, It's still on order. Drat!

>97 vancouverdeb: Sounds frustrating, Deborah.

I keep going to post and getting distracted!
Not helped I think by back problems over the weekend that meant I was struggling a bit. The weather is pretty perfect for sitting inside and reading.

Bad Boys Do (familiar faces)
I think I am going to move on to her more recent novels, as was conscious of the way attitudes have changed a lot. Not sure why I can cope with this in a Victorian novel but not one from the 2000s...

Un Gros Livre (Reading my own books )
I picked this up in an art gallery in Lille. Palm sized hardback series of line drawn cartoons with maybe one or two lines of text at most. Thanks to Google Translate's camera feature, it was a lot quicker to read than my previous reading-in-French attempts. I am going to look at how I can build in reading more in French into my challenges for 2026, my recent trip reminded me I enjoy it but that it's all a bit rusty.


The Division Bell Mystery (new to me)
This was just fascinating to me, although advance warning, as a crime novel I'm not sure it would be worth your time. One of the British library's crime republications, it was written by one of the small cohort of women in parliament before WW2. Ellen Wilkinson, or "Red" Ellen, was voted out in the 1930s and turned her hand to fiction before regaining a parliamentary seat (ending up as minister for education before her premature death in the late 1940s).

In the novel, whilst the protagonist is a Tory male MP, she gives him female friends, a love interest as well as the plausible (male) career going places as the key political support to the home secretary. There's all sorts of detail about weird British parliamentary traditions (some of which I would imagine survive).

But how could anything be kept a secret from the staff of the House of Commons? ....A highly intelligent trained staff with long years' experience of the ebb and flow of the tide of Members who drift through their hands could not be expected to be blind and deaf when it suited the authorities that they should be.

"We are not dining there to enjoy ourselves," said Robert.

"We are going to consider what might have happened that night. We rather don't want it talked about. Perhaps you would mention that to your staff."

"Oh, yes, sir. My staff never talk." ("Don't they!" thought Robert.) "But, sir, I've often wondered why more people don't get murdered in this place when you think of the opportunities."

>98 charl08: I read The Division Bell Mystery a few years ago - I was thinking it was a year or two but it was actually June 2021. I can't even remember the mystery aspect, and was more curious about the cross party interactions portrayed. I prefer her previous novel Clash about the General Strike of 1926, although this might be harder to find than DBM I have a Virago Modern Classics edition of Clash - I found a secondhand copy of a small press paperback reprint from 2018 in a charity shop but I gave that and a paperback of DBM to my dad - I have the Kindle edition and I think a friend had passed on the paperback to me.

My dad's mother's father., Frank Wise, was also a Labour MP in the 1929-31 parliament, and had a relationship with another MP Jennie Lee, who was a little bit younger than Wilkinson - I did wonder when reading Clash which real life people her characters might have been based on. Frank Wise and Nye Bevan were friends and political allies, and s year after my great grandfather's sudden death in 1933 aged only 48, Jennie Lee married Nye (one of the few Labour MPs to hold on to his seat in the 30s - the other 3 were all elected in 1929 and lost in 1931, and Ellen Wilkinson and Jennie Lee then returned to Parliament in 1935/1945 respectively).

>98 charl08: That reminds me of the Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister TV series. They've been showing on one of the golden oldie cable channels here and my husband loves them. They are funny.

>99 elkiedee: So interesting!
The introduction mentions Wilkinson's own relationships, and reminded me I have her biography on the shelf (unread). Too many books.

>100 humouress: They are so well written. I was tempted to quote Sir Humphrey in my PhD (there were some rather snakey administrators in the papers I looked at). At this distance I can't remember if I did!

>96 charl08: I didn't know this was based on a book. I watched the first episode last night. Emma Thompson is great. Now, the question is, should I read the book first, or should I continue watching??

>102 BLBera: Oh, I just saw a trailer for this last night (we're watching the latest season of Slow Horses) and I made note of it, but didn't realize it was based on another series by Mick Herron.

>102 BLBera: I like Zoe more than the slow horses, partly because in the Slough House books at least, hardly anyone gets out alive! I prefer my thrillers with unrealistic rates of survival.

>103 RidgewayGirl: I recommend them.

Morw mini reviews:

Wake Me When I'm Gone
(African authors / reading my own books)

This was an ebook I found when trying to do a clean up of my kindle. (Project is ongoing, but I now have the full books I own on LT at least). I didn't really get on with this one - it's written in quite a "flat", folktale style. The narrator lives in an unnamed Nigerian village at an unspecified time, after the arrival of missionaries but before cars and travel is common in rural areas. The book centres on the power of "traditional" laws and taboos, around widows and orphans, but there isn't a lot of nuance. I think I've read more interesting novels on the same subject.

We were seated by the lantern. A moth circled, disappeared from view and then flickered back again.
‘I want to know why they ran away from home,’ he said, then reached out to slap the moth away.
‘Don’t worry about the moth,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s playing with fire.’ A brief smiled passed across his face. He knew the consequence of playing with fire. When he was five he had stuck his finger in the lantern when I was not looking. He had screamed in pain, causing me to jump in fear. He never tried it again.
‘Why did they run away from home?’ he asked, looking expectantly at me. I leaned back and fixed my eyes on the lantern.
‘In the tradition of our village,’ I began, ‘young orphans are believed to be evil children responsible for their parents’ deaths. By tradition, they’re taken into care by their maternal family and are treated as taboo.

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer (familiar faces)
Continuing the series, in this second book, Helgi the Icelandic historian turned police detective, is asked to investigate the disappearance of a famous writer, who (of course) turns out to have had many secrets. Lots of golden age crime references.

This damned rain.

He couldn't concentrate. It was still pouring outside, the rhythmic pattering of the raindrops distracting him from Brat Farrar, the novel he was trying to read. The author, Josephine Tey, hadn't published many books, but, in his opinion, each novel had been better than its pre-decessor, and Brat Farrar was one of the only two books by her that he hadn't yet read. Tey's twists almost always took him by surprise and he was looking forward to seeing how she would pull the rug out from under his feet this time.

Yet he wasn't making any headway.

The Novel Life of Jane Austen
A lovely biographical graphic novel for anyone interested in Austen.



The introduction explains that the authors chose to show the imaginative links to Austen's novels in bright colours, her day to day in more muted tones.

I really enjoyed The Mysterious Case of the Missing Crime Writer earlier this month, Charlotte. I'm glad you enjoyed it too. The GN of Jane Austen looks good. I'm not sure how many my library carries.

>107 vancouverdeb: I think I must have got it from you then Deborah? It was a nice change from some of the heavier books I am taking ages with. Er, or to be more positive, taking my time with. e.g. I've got so slow reading the Robert Darnton historical chunkster I've started noting the chapters I've read next to it on the list of my TBR!

I have an interview (wish me luck! I'll need it after a long break from interviews) and with prep for that and a lot of other things have had quite a busy week. Finally got the guys in from a local accessibility organisation to stick an extra handrail on the stairs. Delivery of a new bathroom cupboard. Signed up for some volunteering with the lovely staff at a day centre for people with memory issues. Went to a local archive to look at some documents for a personal project I am excited about (and got to sit and have a nice time reading old papers). Going to keep that under my hat a bit as not sure if it will pan out.* Oh, and tried two pilates classes in my area (with and without the fancy bit of kit...) which was unexpectedly fun (both what I would call "proper" beginner, gentle and relaxed).

*ETA lovely mixed metaphors here... How can something pan out from under a hat?

>108 charl08: It sounds like life is busy. Good luck for the interview and for the personal project.

>108 charl08: Best of luck with the interview, keeping everything crossed for you!

>108 charl08: Crossing everything for your interview Charlotte. You are a busy bee.

>109 humouress: >110 Jackie_K: >111 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Nina, Jackie and Caroline. Lots of new stuff, hope it calms down a bit!

Finished several books yesterday, probably would have normally been finished in October.

On a Woman's Madness
I think this is the only book I've read by an author from Suriname. Translated from the Dutch (it's taken a while to make it into English), it made me think of lovely Anita, whose reading nudged me about how little I'd read in the language. It's largely stream of consciousness as the main protagonist struggles with her abusive husband, "moral" pressures from the church who runs the school where she teaches, and her family relationships, all affected by the relics of colonialism.

Picks and Shovels
I don't think I've ever read Cory Doctorow's books before, but I was surprised to find he was an editor of Boing Boing, a tech website I used to follow for their light/ fun stories. (I've just been back and there's a lot more politics than I remember, unsurprisingly.)

Anyway, the book.
A thriller set in the early days of the tech boom in SF. The narrator Marty also features in other novels by the author (I realised belatedly, this is a prequel). After an inauspicious time studying at MIT, Marty and his friend Art head to SF. Enthusiastic about computing but training as an accountant, he is called in to a large computing company which markets exclusively to religious groups. Three of their lead workers have left to form a rival company, and the "Reverend Sirs" want Marty to find evidence in the accounts to "convince" them to come back to the company. Then he receives a call from one of the women, inviting him to their factory.

I'm no techie, and there were some acronyms I had to look up (not all of them related to tech: VC anyone?) but this worked for me as a gripping thriller despite having to take the author's word for the excitement inherent in coding...

I loved the nod to Sherlock Holmes in the name of the MIT informal tech group

There had been some turnover among the Newbury Street Irregulars since we'd come west. Some of them had gone west as well, and we'd run into them in bars or even at Dead Kennedys shows. Some had graduated and gone to work up and down Route 128, too busy with grown-up love and jobs and even kids to keep showing up at the old clubhouse. But computers kept getting faster, cheaper, and more interesting, and the Irregulars didn't lack for members.

In fact, it was so crowded some nights that there was talk of closing off membership and starting a waiting list. The diehards hated this idea, because they had spent their whole lives being picked last for sports teams and being passed over by bouncers behind velvet ropes.

Flesh (Booker shortlist)
I liked one of Szalay's earlier books, but this one just didn't seem to get going for me. I wonder if the flat tone of the writing is supposed to echo the main character's apparent lack of emotional range? The protagonist István, is a teenager when the book opens, and in the first section he is seduced by a much older woman. Later on, unable to find work, he is rejected by a potential girlfriend and shortly after joins the army. He is sent to the Middle East where he witnesses a friend being killed. Moving to London for a "fresh start" comes with complications too. I'm sure there are deep interpretations possible here about toxic masculinity and one of the final scenes where he weeps uncontrollably for his dead son should be incredibly moving, but somehow missed the mark for me.

'Nice arse,' he says, after looking at the picture for a few moments. He knows it's not the sort of answer she was looking for, and he's vaguely aware that he was afraid of saying something stupid by accident, so he said something stupid on purpose.
She laughs in a way that's difficult to interpret. 'That's all you have to say?' she says.
'It's true isn't it?'
'Yes,' she says. 'It's true.'
'What am I supposed to say?' he asks.
'What you see.'
"That is what I see.'
'Okay.'
'Sorry,' he says.
'It's okay,' she says. "There's no point talking about these things without honesty. About anything.'
He points out that quite a few of the pictures seem almost pornographic.
'That's true,' she says.
She seems to think for a minute, and then she says, 'Most of the things here are either devotional objects, or more or less pornographic, or social trophies, or some combination of those things.'
'Okay,' he says.
'What they all have in common is that they're interesting to look at in some way. Or that's the idea anyway.'
'Sure.'
They move on to the next room.
Pictures of eighteenth-century people.
Horses, dogs.
Houses and fields.
The people look proudly out at them as they walk past.
'Social trophies?' István suggests.
'Very much so, she says.

Good luck with your interview, Charlotte.

>116 BLBera: Thanks Beth. Definitely lots to learn, but glad it's done.

>117 charl08: I have been on your thread ( lurking )and wished you well on the interview. I'm glad it's done. You have been busy with so many things. How fortunate are the people who have you volunteering with the memory issues. Good for you with the Pilates, I have never tried that. I hope the second stair rail is helpful for your dad. I don't think Flesh will be for me , even if if wins. I read about 20 pages and DNF'd it. Good on your for reading it.

Death of an Englishman (Reading my own books)

Fun, short crime novel set in Florence written by an English author. A retired english civil servant settled in Florence has been killed: ot turns out he has connections so two Scotland Yard police officers are dispatched to "unofficially" support the investigation. Lots of poking fun at English people abroad, from the lady running a museum in her flat to the older policeman, terribly worried about what he's going to be able to eat...

'And what else has your mother made for us?' asked the Captain respectfully.

'Cotechino and lentils,' announced Paolo promptly. 'Specially for Christmas. But will they like it? No. English, aren't they? I'll bring them calf's liver in butter and sage and some roast potatoes. All English people like potatoes. Green salad? Green salad. A litre of red. Water? Litre should do you. Fizzy or flat? Flat, the other's bad for you. I'll bring your bread.' The pencil disappeared behind the brown curls and he was gone from them, bellowing their order as he rolled along the aisle between the unlaid tables with their checked oilcloth undercovers.

When he returned with a basket of rough country bread and a jug of wine, he slapped both on to the table and bent to look in the Chief Inspector's face. 'Don't worry so much!' he admonished the Chief severely. 'You'll eat well here!' He dropped into his bit of restaurant English: 'Many English customers! All eat well! Potatoes! Good red wine for the cold weather! All right?' He patted the astonished Chief's shoulder and poured him out a tumbler of wine and pushed the bread towards him. 'Eatl' was his final command before he rolled cheerily away again to the kitchen.

'Well,' said the red-faced Chief, 'he seems to know his job. I wasn't sure about having any more wine but I'd better do as ordered.'

Hoping for good news from the interview.

Hope your interview went well, Charlotte!

>119 charl08: I love Marshal Guarnaccia series. I read most of the volumes before my LT days, so I didn't include them in my LT library 🫣.

Finished Rescue one of the lovely Penguin Archive collection, this one a slim collection of Czeslaw Milosz's poetry.

This is an extract from one of the history poems.

III. The Spirit of History

Warsaw, 1939-1945

When gold paint flakes from the arms of sculptures,
When the letter falls out of the book of laws, Then consciousness is naked as an eye.

When the pages of books fall in fiery scraps
Onto smashed leaves and twisted metal,
The tree of good and evil is stripped bare.

When a wing made of canvas is extinguished
In a potato patch, when steel disintegrates,
Nothing is left but straw huts and cow dung.

>120 Helenliz: >121 bell7: Sadly not good news for me, but hopefully for the successful candidate.

>122 Ameise1: Sounds good Barbara. I'd pick up another if I can.

Went to a funeral today for an old friend of my mum's, a truly wonderful lady. I wish I'd known her better.

>123 charl08: That's a lovely poem; thanks for sharing it.

I'm sorry you missed out. But, I was thinking; there's a bookshop near you that needs someone to run it ...

The House of Marvellous Books (Reading my own books)

I'm beginning to think (fiction) books about books are hit and miss. This one is set in a British publishing house that specialises in religious / spiritual books. Founded hundreds of years ago, it has an ancient library attached and a rumour of a priceless book that may or may not exist, maybe even hidden somewhere in the cavernous building. Told as a diary over a year, Mortimer is a junior, fairly clueless, employee, mostly responding to author complaints and not really working particularly hard (he often escapes to read). He's also writing a novel about a seagoing monk, inspired by Cavafy's Ithaca. This is every bit as pretentious as it sounds, and the reader is also treated to extracts.

There's lots of religious/ spirituality humour too:

Another weird report in the news that a posse of booksellers has stormed the House and gutted the basement of its bookly contents, taking all the latest publications in a bid to make good the monies owing to them. Like Jesus overthrowing the tables in the Temple, (Matthew 21:12-13) they overthrew all the bookcases, and unlike Jesus took all the stock.

The publishing house has no money and the director is clueless. In one of the recurring jokes, Mortimer and the other staff try to work out the latest employee aptitude test, each one more irrelevant than the next. Inept employees are never fired, Accounting are terrifying, and the commissioning editors are larger than life, with the kind of travel-to-meet-author stories that sounded like book ideas in themselves.

For me, the book seemed to veer between wanting to be an office politics book and a mystery/ thriller, and for me this seemed a bit of a unhappy marriage. e.g. very near the end two characters are killed off, one from brain tumour when I'd thought we were supposed to read her unwellness as hypochondria, the other literally run over by a bus. In terms of the mystery, it didn't really take much to work out where the book was headed. The reason for the odd plot point that Mortimer has a friend in jail for stealing valuable books from libraries was to offer a "neat" solution to recover a priceless missing book.
So one I'd have been quite happy to return to the library.

>123 charl08: Great poem. Sorry about the job.

>125 charl08: Thanks for your comments. You've saved me from a book that I might have picked up. You are right about bookstore books being hit or miss.

>126 BLBera: First one down, definitely lots to reflect on. Trying to stay positive...

I was going to offer to share it, but I think probably better to the local charity shop...

Isola
This was wonderful, a re-imagining of the life of Marguerite de la Roque de Roberval, a real Renaissance woman who was abandoned on an island off Canada. Accounts differ as to why she was abandoned. Here, Allegra Goodman imagines Marguerite's privileged but penned-in life. Her parents died when she was very young and her guardian's interest in her is limited. Her world expands when she is given a tutor, a widowed woman and her daughter who know to seek out news of the guardian's plans. From the blurb and if you've read anything about the book, you know that she was abandoned on the island, and yet I found the book really suspenseful.

They read the Book of the City of Ladies, which I still haven't read.

Here we read of Griselda, who obeyed without complaint. Hypsicratea, who fought alongside her lord in battle and then followed him to live in wilderness. Zenobia, the huntress. Camilla, raised in wilderness by her exiled father. Deborah, the judge. Dido, the Queen. Julia, Caesar's daughter. And here we read of wives brave as well as good. Daughters wise as well as chaste. We learned of queens and saints, inventors and sorceresses. Each day we talked together of these women and their city and sometimes, we pre-tended that our own tower was a citadel of ladies. "You are Reason," I told Claire. "And your mother will be Rectitude. And Damienne can be Justice."

"Then who will you be?" Claire asked.

She smiled at my answer. "None of those, so I must be the authoress."

Alas, these stories could not delight us always. Words could not warm our bodies or restore me to my former place. Our book's best examples were difficult to follow. How was it possible to live like Circe without magic? Or triumph like Thamaris without an army?

I was googling for a picture for a Litsy post, and came across this site, which claims that the house (small castle!) Marguerite lived in on her return is now for sale. No idea if this is accurate.
http://chateaudelamothe.fr/marguerite-de-la-rocque-16th-century-noblewoman-who-l...

Thanks to Kay who recommended this book.

>128 charl08: I'm glad you enjoyed Isola. It was Mark that sent me the BB for that one earlier this year. Well, the Booker Prize announcement tomorrow!

I have heard only good things about Isola. One of these days...

Nice that a trip to France can be considered short, Charlotte, almost like going to Washington State used to be from this side of the border.

Sorry the interview didn't result in a position. Next one!

>129 vancouverdeb: I was lucky Deborah: because I'd read Kay's review, I had the book on my wishlist. Isola only came out here in June, but I'd added it to my list back in January (? I think...) when Waterstones had a deal for pre-ordering books at a discount.

>130 BLBera: I think you would like it. I wish I could send you my copy.

>131 Familyhistorian: In many ways I wondered what had taken me so long to get round to doing it. Although the last day of travel was long and I was super glad I didn’t have to go straight back to the desk.

>124 humouress: I missed you: sorry! I wish @humoress it was such a cosy bookshop, it even had a proper fireplace and a fire on cold days. Apparently there is a whole saga about the book stock and what's going to happen to it (they had a large second hand collection).

Well, This is Awkward

First novel, with more than a nod to Baby Boom (the Diane Keaton film).Mairead is living her best life as an adviser to influencers, when her sister has an accident and there is no one to take care of her tween daughter. There's been an estrangement (Lenny is at the extreme end of the environmental protest movement: think Extinction Rebellion and then keep going) so Mairead's not seen her niece since she was two.

Sunshine (Sunny) is wonderfully odd, with her nose permanently in a book. Despite the realisation that London working life and any kind of childcare don't easily mix, Mairead is relieved to drop her back to her mother and self-sufficient life in a logcabin in rural Wales when her injuries heal.

But then she realises that Sunny has left her comfort blanket behind at her flat, but her mum hasn't called, and Hard Choices are required.

Some usual first novel issues (so much content!) but a lovely read.

Currently 99p on UK kindle...

Roxana is the uber-capable lodger of Mairéad's mother:

Roxana insisted on a barbecue that evening and had, that morning, brought with her the ingredients.

'I love the English so much but you cannot cook outside for any of all the money. You must start the fire very early, like 5 p.m. Then you burn, burn, burn and cook when you have this just-breathing charcoal. I don't know how you say it.'

'Embers?'

'I don't know,' said Roxana. 'When it is grey, and breathing in and out with fire.'

Roxana deftly built a fire in Lenny's outdoor kitchen barbecue pit – which Mairéad had dis-missed as a grubby old bit of blackened mess waited until she had fiercely hot embers, and then cooked some steaks.

'So that's how you barbecue,' said Mairéad. The steaks were not chewy, or burnt.

'Yes. I will show this to every English per-son on this island, one by one,' said Roxana.

This made me laugh, as my dad says the same thing about "people in this country not knowing how to bbq/ braai"

* It's conscious as one of the characters references it.

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Jeez, wth? This novel felt like some kind of joke on the reader. How patient are you? Can you get these references? How about these ones?

If you've read I Capture the Castle and remember the pages Cassandra finds of her dad's book, you'll have some idea of what to expect.**

At points there are glimpses of more conventional story-telling, as "the author" talks to his dad about memories, "the father" organises a revolt in his care facility, and a mathematician discusses her memories of her work. Other fictionalised, grim anecdotes of racism in American history including "Nat Turner" trying to convince MLK to include a bit more threat into his "I have a dream" speech, bound up in a confusion of narrators.

At some points punctuation becomes optional:

...a howling wind with no hugeness of loss looming we counted our weapons one of us anyway and aligned with our comrades and lined the halls with maps of our plans and stretched all things to their limits the budding disleafing and felling of trees notwithstanding my skull a great blue vault with eyebrows and anger in its large awkward gianthood rustling like some human noise in a forest with a clumsy ham-fisted gait pretended to seek refuge place to go a Brobdingnagian while raising a hammer stood in a doorway prepared to fight in rude corridors and terrible closets and on beaches from which south extended until it stopped left unexplained left untouched left strange like a glance through a glass pane without a frame without an agent for beauty is a witch and did not we feel it so that the wretched made for lousy company not cheerful at all while hell and purgatory and paradise blended like clay on one spinning table upon which also rested my peaceable disposition until rough and then far rougher weather upset that temperament and forced me into that perplexing jungle that deep root-riddled tangle of wilderness that was myself

In similar fashion he came to some comprehension of the whole ballet, language being a small window through which very little passed and became helpful, the dance being nearly everything.

** Given that this is my frame of reference, I will concede I am not the ideal reader for this book.

I have a copy of Isola, Charlotte. Thanks. I wish there was a media rate for postage outside of the States.

Well, This is Awkward looks like fun.

>135 BLBera:.Good stuff, glad you have a copy. I found it a very speedy read, usually a sign I am enjoying the plot.

I'll be Right Here (familiar faces)

I've enjoyed Amy Bloom's work before, including her historical fiction. This is a lovely, inclusive story about a growing "found family" over decades and international borders. Told mostly in flashback, with the now elderly "stone hedges" of the family looking back over their lives, from wartime Paris to Poughkeepsie.

And my mothers, whose coming absence will be bearable, of course, because it must be, but I do not approve. And I am not resigned, as old Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of Honey's favorites, would say.

Lily says to Gazala; Grief is such a stalwart, sturdy companion, maybe it just wrings the neck of pettiness for us all. Gazala opens her eyes and lifts her head to look right at Lily, She nods. Oh, leave the pettiness, she says, if you can.
Try.

>137 charl08: I'm reading and enjoying I'll Be Right Here too.

>138 elkiedee: I really enjoyed that one!

Sun is shining here (although it's getting much more chilly) and the washing is out on the line. I had plans for an outing today but that hasn't panned out. Here's some short reviews instead.

Everybody's Protest Novel: Essays(Reading my own books)
A beautiful edition of a classic, reissued for the 100 years anniversary. I haven't read Native Son or seen the version of Carmen discussed here as a way of talking about Black identity and American politics.

It is not a question of memory. Oedipus did not remember the thongs that bound his feet; nevertheless the marks they left testified to that doom toward which his feet were leading him. The man does not remember the hand that struck him, the darkness that frightened him, as a child; nevertheless, the hand and the darkness remain with him, indivisible from himself forever, part of the passion that drives him wherever he thinks to take flight...

To the Friend Who Did Not Save my Life(Reading my own books)

Jules pointed out to me that they've installed a new carpet at the Institut Alfred-Fournier, which had been in something of a decline since the days of syphilis, but was suddenly as prosperous as a condom factory, enriched by the blood of seropositive patients, who must have a blood checkup every three months, and the HIV virus blood analysis costs five hundred and twelve francs and fifty centimes, which can now be paid with VISA. With semisheer stockings and flats, straight skirts, and tasteful necklaces worn over their white smocks, the nurses look very chic, more like piano teachers or bank officers. They slip on their latex gloves as though they were velvet gloves for a gala evening at the opera. The nurse who drew my blood had a marvelously delicate touch, and was discreetly attentive to the precise degree of pallor suddenly visible in one's face. She watches this infected blood flow for days on end, and despite her translucent gloves she passes right next to the source of this poison, she strips off her gloves with a snap to place the bandage on the wound with her bare fingers, and she talks about something else entirely, she says, "Your perfume-it's Habit Rouge, isn't it? I recognized it right away. Of course, it's not much, but I do like that perfume, and to catch a whiff of it on this gray morning, well, you know it's really a little treat for me."

I picked this up in a local Oxfam Books, having never heard of it. The blurb describes how it was a bestseller when published, shortly before the author died. Diagnosed with HIV before there was any kind of efficacious treatment, Guibert's book is described as autofiction. Several characters mentioned in the book have been identified as real, some of them famous (Foucault, Isabelle Adjani).

Regardless of the gap between the auto and the fiction, the pain he felt feels very authentic, the terror and struggle for any information, any hope of medical relief. I wonder if it would be published now, or with extensive trigger warnings? the descriptions of sexual relationships between older, powerful men and teenagers I found difficult to read. Given the prevalence of Epstein in the news, a description of a man sitting down at a table and offering a teenager he's just met (Guibert) a flight to a different country just seems to have a neon "grooming" sign hanging over it.... Different times?

My edition has a foreword by Maggie Nelson, and she sums up one of the issues I had with reading the book (although she remains a fan):

To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life is not a perfect book.

Each time I read it, I find myself riveted by its first half, then growing somewhat irritated and distracted by the second, which perseverates on the eponymous, unctuous friend "Bill" who fails to deliver the drug that might keep the narrator alive. Because we know how the story ends, and because we know how it ended for so many others, it's painful and maddening to watch Guibert chase the idiot doctor, the fraudulent cure. Now that there's an internet, I find myself drifting away from the text and into deep Google holes about the various figures here fictionalized, from Isabelle Adjani ("Marine") to Daniel Defert ("Stéphane") to Thierry Journo ("Jules"), all the while trying to remind myself-mostly in vain-that it's a novel, one that Defert, Foucault's surviving companion, termed "a vicious fantasy."

Saltwater Mansions (NF / memoir)

I thought this book was true crime, but it really isn't. The author describes his fascination with a missing person case in his own town, Margate. Caroline was a woman who seemed to just disappear from her flat, but her bills were paid, and no one seemed to miss her.

When I think about this moment, I remember one of my favourite lines from The Simpsons, when Chief Wiggum catches his son Ralph and Bart trying to get into a locked cupboard in his attic: 'What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?' But if I was to tell you that mere curiosity is what drove me up the esplanade that day, it would be a lie. Curiosity - strong, persistent, writerly or otherwise - is only a part of why I fell down the rabbit hole of Caroline Lane.

In the course of trying to uncover Caroline's story, Whitehouse explores the change in his home town, Margate, and the pressures of gentrification. In failing to find out much about Caroline, Whitehouse opens space for the lives of the other people wondering about Caroline, and their losses. And his own.

>141 charl08: This sounds both sad and powerful.

>142 charl08: This memoir sounds interesting; I kind of like it when writers start in one place and end up going in an unexpected direction. I will look for this one.

>141 charl08: This sounded familiar, and I was happy to find when I looked it up that I bought a copy (Kindle) in September.

More than two years ago you mentioned a book you'd read, Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal. I'm currently reading a different book by her spotted in a list of new books bought by Islington Libraries - Her First American is wonderful, so thank you for the mention back in June 2023. I'm definitely going to be seeking out her other books.

>143 BLBera: It wasn't what I was expecting, but I liked how thoughtful he was about amateur enthusiasm about crime cases (and grief).

>144 elkiedee: >145 elkiedee: You reminded me I'd like to read more by Lore Segal myself! Rebounding book recommendations...

Dating Dr Dil
Romance, set in the Indian emigrant community in New Jersey. The conceit for this series is around Shakespeare but I should confess I only realised this when reading the acknowledgements! Two characters have good reasons to get together in a "fake" relationship - what could possibly go wrong? I thought some of the migrant identity stuff was a bit Basil Exposition. But YMMV.

>147 charl08: So was this a take on Much Ado About Nothing? Embarrassingly, I don't really know the play but I've read a novel about the second couple in it.

Question 7 (Baillie Gifford prize for NF - winner 2024)

There was a great remembering that was also a great forgetting, one hundred years of silence that sounded like a scream the closer you listened. You couldn't be with a girl or the girl with you without being told gossip about their great-grandmother or a distant cousin a century before, and yet of the convicts and Aboriginal people little was ever said. Of a slave system and a genocide nothing. What remained was either silence or lies. Such as: the convicts and their children had all fled to the mainland during the gold rushes...

I wasn't sure what to expect of this one, a book I picked up on a visit to a different library. I kept taking photos of different pages to quote, he writes so beautifully about such difficult subjects, from his father's experiences as a POW on the death railway to his own near-death experience as a river guide. He writes powerfully about a lost Tasmania, both in terms of indigenous knowledge and the environment, irreplaceable rainforest cleared by colonisers searching for profit. He contrasts this relentless search for profit with his parents' frugality, their quiet aspirations for their children. He recounts the end of their lives and the gaps they have left.

Of a night our mother read to me and my little sister. Books had an odd place in our home, both revered and absent. We had perhaps a shelf of them on a bookcase as small and plain as a kitchen cupboard. My father's mother and father-my grandparents- were, as I earlier mentioned, illiterate. My father had, I suspect in consequence, a sense of the magic of words that never left him, an awareness that those twenty-six abstract symbols could liberate if you understood them and oppress if you didn't. He told me the written word was the first beautiful thing he ever knew, a line I stole and used elsewhere. What is a writer but a robber and what is the history of literature but a milky way of theft?

Charlotte, I recall you liking the Maigret series of books , or at least some of the books. I didn't care for the one I tried , but I recently watched the Maigret series on Britbox and I really enjoyed it! It's a up to date version. I maybe I have to look at the book series again. The guy who plays Maigret is quite a hunk and that is not usually something that I notice.

>150 vancouverdeb: Thanks Deborah. I went and had a look at the trailer on imdb. I was quite surprised it seems to be set now rather than fifty years ago, I would guess that that must need quite a lot of adaptation from the books.

>148 elkiedee: Sorry I missed you there! It was Taming of the Shrew but the similarities weren't exactly the focus of the plot (I thought).

I *finally* finished The Revolutionary Temper!

>153 charl08: Hooray! I see the author’s name popping up again and again as a luminary on all things French Revolution. What’s your impression?

>154 MissWatson: I read another book by him a while back, and loved the stories of smuggling books over mountain passes. This one was more "straight" history, interested in who was arguing what in the piles of political documents published in the run up to the revolution. I did find it a bit of a slog, as I didn’t have much of a frame to hang all the detail on. It did, however, make sense of a plot in "Dogtanian", a children's version of the Three Musketeers, which always struck me as super odd, but apparently drew on a "real" intrigue involving a wealthy supporter of Marie Antoinette and some unscrupulous conmen willing to forge her signature.

Thinking I'll start a new thread to finish up...