BrainFlakes gives it a go

Here are the books I've read since 1/1/08, starting at the bottom and working up (I'm not called BrainFlakes for nothing!).

16. The Reapers, John Connolly
15. Rage, Richard Bachman
14. The Winter King, (The Warlord Chronicles, Book 1), Bernard Cornwell
13. Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë
12. Child 44, Tom Rob Smith
11. The Murder Book, Jonathan Kellerman
10. World Without End, Ken Follett
9. The Last Kingdom, (The Saxon Novels, Book 1), Bernard Cornwell
8. The Silver Swan, Benjamin Black
7. Christine Falls, Benjamin Black
6. Heretic, (The Grail Quest, Book 3), Bernard Cornwell
5. The Innocent Man, John Grisham
4. Vagabond, (The Grail Quest, Book 2), Bernard Cornwell
3. The Archer's Tale, (The Grail Quest, Book 1), Bernard Cornwell
2. Stone Kiss, Faye Kellerman
1. Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov

A lot of mystery and a LOT of Cornwell so far this year, but I have a tendency to get stuck in ruts. I'm presently reading The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Novels, Book 2) and The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie.

The best so far? Rushdie by a mile, Child 44, and the two mysteries by Benjamin Black, pen name for John Banville.

Cornwell is one of those authors people do tend to get "stuck" in---not such a terrible thing! I'm very jealous of your complete Library of America collection. Happy reading. Pop over to the gathering place thread for a chat, if you feel like it.

17. The Unvanquished, William Faulkner

Yes, at the tender age of 61, I read Faulkner for the first time! laytonwoman3rd recommended it as a good intro to WF, and even though it is a cobbling together of several short stories, I was enthralled by it.

Just as Harriet Beecher Stowe left me with several indelible mind-pictures of slavery, I won't forget the "freed" slaves who left the old and weak behind in search of the River Jordan—only to be beaten back or blown-up at the Yankee bridge.

It appears I am a little behind in my quest for 50 books, but never fear: I have four in the works right now and am presently headed to read one.

"enthralled" is a lovely word. Now, for your next assignment...*wink*

18. The Book of Evidence, John Banville
19. The Pale Horseman, (The Saxon Novels, Book 2), Bernard Cornwell

Another Irishman (Banville) who writes very dark mysteries. This book is hardly a mystery, however, since it is a 214-page confession by the murderer. The writing is superb, but it's a rather dull story.

Cornwell, of course, has me up to my ears in Saxons, Danes (Vikings when they're fighting/plundering), Britons, King Alfred, and about fifty place names I cannot pronounce. On to the final installment in the trilogy.

20. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, Horace McCoy

From my Library of America TBR pile. A short 1935 "noir" novel just as disturbing as the 1970 movie.

Glad to see you took the plunge. I enjoy the book journal aspect of the challenge but find it has made me more obsessive, if possible, about my reading.

21. The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie

How to explain this book? A fable on top of a fable on top of a . . .

Rushdie's imagination knows no bounds and his writing is mesmerizing; I believe he is the best writer in the English language today.

22. Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer
23. The Spinoza of Market Street, Isaac Bashevis Singer
24. Athena, John Banville

I've been enjoyably working my way through all of Singer's short stories (translated into English) for more than two years, and these two are his strangest collections: Many involve Satan, Cabala (Singer's spelling), witchcraft, and heavy doses of superstition. They are a joy to read, and sometimes shocking, from a master storyteller.

I mentioned that Banville's The Book of Evidence was dull, and I double that for Athena. I don't argue that his writing is excellent but this book, written in the first person like the first, left me wondering if it was merely a sequence of dreams and fantasies of the narrator.

I'm going to move on to The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and James Lee Burke's new novel out on Tuesday, Swan Peak.

I had never read any of Singer before the LOA editions. I loved the stories in Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories. There was a good dose of weirdness in some of the stories, my favorite is "The Little Shoemakers".

25. Swan Peak, James Lee Burke

The Dave Robicheaux show moves to Montana, a "vacation" for him, Molly, and Clete now that New Orleans has drowned. But Montana sounds awfully familiar: A rich family with a lot of nasty secrets and psycho bodyguards, the Mob, a twisted gunbull, a prison escapee, a child-molesting evangelist, a pyromaniac serial killer, two or three victims of circumstance--am I ringing any bells?

In Swan Peak JLB writes the same story for the sixteenth out of seventeen times but, as always, he is unputdownable.

26. Street Dreams, Faye Kellerman

So it's another Lazarus/Decker mystery. What else can I say, other than Cindy Decker (Peter's daughter by his first wife), is the focus of this one.
Rina and Peter play supporting roles while Cindy solves several crimes, meets a guy, and gets engaged to be married.

I think I'll pass up future Cindy Decker novels because I'm not a fan of romance.

27. Short Friday and Other Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer
28. Jesus Out to Sea: Stories, James Lee Burke

In this 1964 compilation Singer continues the themes of Gimpel and Spinoza (see Message 9). I have a definite favorite here: "A Wedding in Brownsville". A doctor struggles with American Judaism and his own faith, only to find . . . *SPOILER*

Jesus is JLB in read bites, a twelve-pack of previously published short stories. I didn't realize how gritty his writing really is until I read it in condensed form, themes and situations that ended up in a novel—including his new one, Swan Peak. It's difficult to choose a favorite here, but I think "Why Bugsy Siegel Was a Friend of Mine", a tough coming-of-age story, wins my prize. This collection is well worth a second (and a third) reading to appreciate JLB's fine writing.

29. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

I'm not much of a sci-fi reader because I usually get tangled up in theories, technobabble, and gobbledegook. This book has those elements, but I could not put it down. Dick's drug culture of the 70s is hardly fictional--he himself was a big player in the hallucinigenics--and is as relevant today as it was then.

Despite the horrible thought of going on a bad trip and never returning, Dick managed to infuse a lot of humor in this book--sometimes, screamingly funny. I highly recommend reading it.

30. The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch (Audiobook)

I have not seen Pausch's The Last Lecture video filmed at Carnegie Mellon University. I am sorry that, at age 47, he passed away from liver cancer, leaving behind his wife and three tiny children.

That said, I found the book an amalgam of cliches and the ramblings of a man who had a very high opinion of himself. Amazon.com categorizes the book under "Self-Help" and "Motivation"; I was neither helped nor motivated by advice like "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

Hopefully, his young children will appreciate what their Dad has left behind for them and will learn from it.

I, on the other hand, found the material boring and mundane.

31. Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell

Pillaging and plundering, priests and pagans, plotting and revenge—okay, so I'm not the perfect alliterist. This is the third book in Cornwell's Saxon tales that pits Saxons vs. Danes vs. hybrid Saxon-Danes, which makes me wonder if there are any Britons in Great Britain.

This novel is a bit slower than most Cornwell books, with most of the action coming in the final fifty pages. Cornwell isn't done with the Saxons, though, and I'll move on to book four one of these days . . .

32. The Seance and Other Stories. Isaac Bashevis Singer
33. Jar City, Arnaldur Indridason

I have now finished all of Singer's short stories that have been translated into English, approximately 200 of them according to the Library of America. This final collection includes a story that shocked me: Yanna is a woman who found out that she couldn't go home again and, while she is being raped, tells God that her fate could have been worse.

Jump from Singer's Poland to Indridason's Iceland and a sparkling police procedural featuring Detective Inspector Erlendur. At first I thought the plot was rather contrived, until I found out that Icelandic people are all related to each other in one way or another—no one has a surname, and even the phone book only lists given names.

Indridason (son of Indrid) writes sparely and accomplishes a complex mystery in 275 pages that would take Ian Rankin or Jonathan Kellerman at least twice as many more.

This is the first in a series of "Reykjavik Thrillers"; I'm ready to begin number 2, Silence from the Grave, and number 3, Voices, will be released in trade paper on September 2nd.

Indridason has been on my wishlist for a while. The votes are piling up in his favor for my next mystery/suspense/detective read. I'm going to the library later, and I'll see if they have Jar City

An Essay, by Charles Michael Callahan (the name on my birth certificate)

I am not a speed reader, nor am I a fast reader. Similarly, I do not use my right index finger to follow the text, and I do not move my lips to form each word.

I am darn familiar with the English alphabet, including the archaic æ and œ, and I know the meaning of quite a few words. But despite some amount of intelligence, I remain a . . . medium reader. A middle of the roader. Joe Average. You get the idea.

I am not complaining, mind you. I am slower than faster because I love the act of reading—of allowing a few simple written symbols fill my mind with pictures that affect, and sometimes play hell with, my emotions.

I have a tendency, then, to occasionally dawdle when I read. I re-read sentences or paragraphs or pages that please me, as well as those I have trouble understanding. I use a dictionary (which I believe is becoming as archaic as æ and œ); I attempt to translate foreign phrases when the author doesn't do it for me; and I love reading accents ala Dickens out loud (Yorkshire accents are a killer, by the way).

So I will stay happy being medium because I am a happy reader. But will I hit 50 books this year? I will be putting up #34 and #35 this weekend, which gives me four months to read 15 more books. If I make it, fine. If I do not, who cares?

34. Silence of the Grave, Arnaldur Indridason

I'm back to reading and Indridason's second effort is an uncomfortable stunner: he deftly interweaves a murder investigation with backstories of Detective Erlendur and a wife-beater named Grimur. Indridason goes way beyond the PC "domestic violence", not so much with graphic detail but rather with the life-long psychological and emotional damage experienced by the entire family.

Like Jar City, Indridason covers a lot of ground in 279 pages. He writes tightly and sparingly, which seems to be a trait of the Icelandic lifestyle.

Even though this book touched certain aspects of my own life, I recommend it and gave it five stars.

35. The Hamlet, William Faulkner

This was my second Faulkner book, which was recommended to me by my Faulkner mentor and coach, laytonwoman3rd.

Although the book was pieced together from short stories, it revolves around an extended family named Snopes—people with first names like Ab, Flem, Lump, and Mink, and with children named St. Elmo and Wallstreet Panic. Humorous, yes, but hardly a funny clan.

This isn't the place for a long review, but I found Flem Snopes to be one of the most despicable characters in fiction: The Uriah Heep of turn-of-the-century Mississippi. He is an ultra-shrewd con man who capitalizes on human greed—or, during Reconstruction, is it human need?

I loved this book, and the other night my wife told me to turn off the damn light and go to sleep. Just wait until she finds out what laytonwoman3rd has for me next!

So now it's on to a mystery by Scottish author Denise Mina . . .

the Uriah Heep of turn-of-the-century Mississippi Oh, I like that. And if you think Flem is despicable now, wait 'til you see what else he's capable of. If you want more of the Snopes tribe, the logical next book for you to read is The Town. Important to remember that although Faulkner had the whole Snopes trilogy in mind as early as the mid 1920's when some of the stories were written, the second installment didn't come out until 1957, and as Faulkner noted himself, he was more concerned with verities than with facts, so some inconsistencies are apparent. If you'd like to switch gears a little, I recommend Intruder in the Dust, which is at least partly a mystery/detective story, and was the next Faulkner book to be published after The Hamlet. This one does have an overarching story line, and is more truly a novel than The Hamlet.
(One of my only gripes about LT is that the touchstones for The Town and The Hamlet always have to be corrected, because the first thing to come up for The Town is Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the default for The Hamlet is, of course, Shakespeare.)
BTW, my husband is always muttering at me to turn off the light and go to sleep. Tell your wife to get herself a sleep mask, or a book of her own!

#18 I guess I'm going to have to buy Jar City. Neither our county library system nor our University library have Idridason in their catalogs.

36. The Dead Hour, Denise Mina

From Reykjavik, Iceland, to another weather garden spot, Glasgow, Scotland. I think rain and sleet and snow and frigid winds have something to do with me living in the desert: I mean, I hate desert stories.

This is an A-1 mystery, and I doubt you will find another protaganist like Paddy Meehan. Paddy, you see, is a twenty-one-year-old working class female, overweight, and with the vocabulary of a sailor. She is the night crime stringer for a failing newspaper—in 1984 Glasgow, everything is failing—and she is the sole support of her family, all of whom are workingmen out of work.

Not much happens in Glasgow after the pubs close and the drunks have stumbled home, but this is a mystery: A suicide follows closely on the heels of a brutal murder, and we're off to the races.

I loved Mina's writing: taut, brutal, and funny as hell. I couldn't help but love Paddy too: irreverent, outrageous, and a girl with a heart of gold.

Another author to put on my list.

37. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, Anthology edited by John Joseph Adams

Stephen King is not the author of this twenty-two story anthology, but rather a contributor of the dumbest story he has ever written. I mean D-U-M-B. (Sorry I yelled.)

The back cover blurb says these stories "explore the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon."

No zombies, no creatures from outer space--hmm, the book sounded interesting. But despite the number of heavy-hitters of speculative SF in this collection, perhaps two or three came close to the mark. The rest were marginally interesting, some completely off the mark, and one was really dumb.

38. Voices: A Reykjavik Thriller, Arnaldur Indridason

Okay, so I have myself in an Icelandic rut. This time around, a hotel's Santa Claus is murdered in his basement room. Actually he's the doorman who plays Santa for the guests' children, and the poor things had the party cancelled because of his untimely death.

What is unique about Indridason's books is there is no squabbling within the police hierarchy; DI Erlendur and his two assistants just set out and solve the crime in whatever manner they see fit.

What does irk me, however, is Erlendur's penchant for interrupting people when they are talking--and he does it often. He also has a propensity for stating the obvious: "Is that you, then?" he will ask when "you" is standing right in front of him. Perhaps these are ploys Indridason uses to remind the reader that Erlendur is somewhat eccentric--and always has something else on his mind.

The fourth Reykjavik mystery, The Draining Lake, has just been released in hardcover, but I think I'll take a break for a while and finish Intruder in the Dust . . . but I'll be back, Mr. Indridason.

39. Intruder in the Dust, William Faulkner

This, my third Faulkner in as many months, is a murder mystery: a black man is accused of shooting a white man in the back. Needless to say, that did not bode well for a black man in Mississippi in the late 1940s when lynchings were still in high vogue.

Faulkner used this opportunity to describe the plight of the Negro Race as a whole, which after eighty years since emancipation was still neither free nor equal. It will come, one of the characters says, but only when the South is ready for it and without interference from the North or Washington.

Before I jump on a soapbox and make a mess of this, I have to mention that reading this book took some concentration and fortitude. Written in the third person, the narrator is the sixteen-year-old protaganist Charles Mallison, and he refers to himself throughout the book as "he." If I'm not all wet (hand towel, please), this style of writing is called stream of consciousness and may account for Faulkner's strange punctuation, long l-o-n-g sentences, made-up words, etc.

IMO, the people who nay-say Faulkner as a genius are the ones who do not take the time to read more than three pages before giving up. Personally, I found Intruder mesmerizing, the characters unforgettable, and the town of Jefferson a place I want to revisit.

Did I mention The Town and my "friend" Flem Snopes?

40. Garnethill, Denise Mina

This is the Scottish writer of #14, and this is her first murder mystery--expanded to a trilogy (Exile and Resolution the other two) featuring a wonderful character, Maureen O'Donnell. Maureen is a survivor: a victim of incest as a child and a subsequent meltdown that lands her in a psychiatric hospital, she works as a theater ticket seller and owns a small "tenement" in Garnethill--a residential section of Glasgow.

Life takes another ugly turn, however, when she returns home one evening to find her lover's grisly body in her livingroom. Maureen is the prime suspect, of course, and she sets off to find the real killer. Maureen is not only a survivor, she is also a fighter.

Mina is a master of characterization. The majority of this four-hundred pager is dialogue-driven rather than descriptive, allowing the characters to reveal their personalities and quirks through their own words.

I loved this book, but a couple of caveats. Mina is graphic and extremely profane, which doesn't bother me because so am I. Her language may turn some people off, though, so be warned.

The other thing is bone up on your Scot's English. After reading all of Ian Rankin I thought I had a good handle on it, but Mina can confuse with a steady stream of slang, euphemisms, and just plain names of things.

41. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski

I realize that I'm bucking its popularity, including Oprah's asinine comparison of Wroblewski (DW) to Harper Lee, but I've been struggling through Edgar since its publication on June 10 and finished it about fifteen minutes ago.

The story revolves around the Sawtelle family and their breeding and training of a fictional dog breed called a . . . Sawtelle. The problem I had was with the first 300 pages of this 562 page tome: almost endless descriptions of training dogs to "stay", "sit", "down", and the like. For me, the story did not become interesting until Part IV on page 331, which for me included the only interesting character in the book.

And that was my major problem with DW's undeniably fine writing: his characters all seemed as flat as the paper they were written on. If I can't relate to the characters or care about any of them, then the story and its outcome do very little for me.

As I've said in earlier blurbs in this thread, I've loved reading Faulkner and Denise Mina (#29) this summer because their characters make the story. Not so, unfortunately, for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I'm curious as to what your motivation to keep reading was, especially if it took over 300 pages for you to find something interesting in the book. I have a tough time giving up on a book, unless it's so bad I just want to throw it across the room. But I don't think I could stick 300 pages of dull!

Linda:

My first reaction to your question is, "I'm slightly touched." There were hints here and there that something was going to happen, so I hung on. Call me hopeful, then.

Taken in read-bites of thirty pages or so at a time didn't seem like 300 pages, especially over a three month period.

And I seldom, if ever, give up on a book. I guess I'm slightly touched.

42. Exile, Denise Mina

I had planned on finishing Dennis Lehane's new novel first, but this one ended up taking precedence when I just had to know whodunit.

This is the second of Mina's Garnethill trilogy and is just as realistic as it's predecessor in its depiction of child sexual abuse, spousal abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse, mental illness, and graphic violence.

So why read a mystery that doesn't end with "the butler did it"? Because Maureen O'Donnell, a victim herself, bumbles her way through solving another murder. Because Mina knows the dark side and can write about it without the "poor me" syndrome—in fact, she uses frequent humor, describing Maureen as "cheeky." And even if Maureen hasn't realized it yet, victims are by far the best helpers of other victims.

Maureen solves the murder so this book can stand alone, but several threads are left open for the final installment, appropriately titled Resolution.

So far, I give this book and Garnethill 5 stars each.

43. The Given Day, Dennis Lehane

One would think that 704 pages would be plenty of room to tell a whale of a tale (me being the one), but not so for Lehane. He tells tale after tale in the aforementioned number of pages, all of them taking place in Boston shortly after WWI. Tales about Luther Laurence, a black man; the Irish Coughlin family, Danny a police officer and his father a long-time, graft-rich police Captain; a murderous police lieutenant; racism, not only against blacks but all immigrants; rampant poverty; the Spanish influenza; labor woes and the rise of the unions; the beginnings of the NAACP; Communists and anarchists; the explosion of the molasses factory; and peppered throughout the book, stories involving the Babe himself.

I left out a few things, but the point is that all of these tales are support for the main act: the Boston Police Department strike of 1919 and the mayhem that followed it.

Book before last (#30, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), I groused because the book to me went nowhere fast. I would sound contrarian, then, if I said this book goes way too fast. It does speed right along and I enjoyed it. It has its faults—the dialogue is often stilted and most of the major characters are resistant to personal change—but then again, this is entertainment and not great literature.

44. Death of a Cad, M.C. Beaton
45. Death of a Perfect Wife, M.C. Beaton

Perhaps it's age. Maybe I'm eccentric. I know for certain that my brain is a bit mushy. Whatever it is, I enjoyed these two Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M.C. Beaton, who I think is Marion Chesney in real life—or it could be the other way round.

There is nothing pretentious or ground-breaking about these mysteries: Beaton writes straightforward drawingroom whodunits in the small, picturesque town of Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands. Her descriptions of the town and its surroundings is worth the price of admission alone.

Beaton has fun with her characters—every one of them is nutty in one way or another, including town constable Hamish—and she writes with great humor. Oftentimes LOL humor, which seems in short supply nowadays.

46. Dewey, Vicki Myron

(The full name of the book is Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, but only the short title works with the Touchstone.)

I am not a cat person, in that I don't care to have one as a pet or a climber of draperies. I have a cat lady friend in St. Louis, however, and when she sent me the book I felt obliged to read it (and to prepare myself for a possible test).

Since this is not a review I am not going to spend any time recapping the story: the title pretty much says it all. Dewey was a smart animal and he had a lot of people-pleasing antics up his furry sleeve. Reading about them got tiresome, but I did like the affect he had on children—especially children who were disabled or had other handicaps like Down Syndrome.

More interesting to me was the history of Spencer, Iowa in the NW corner of the state. While a lot of small towns have succumbed to corporate farming, Spencer is a throwback to the early twentieth century thanks to modern thinking. Having always lived in large cities, I found myself wanting to live in and be a part of Spencer—serene, friendly, and a town with its own WalMart.

Any true-life animal story is bound to cause a tear or two, and Dewey didn't let me down. Overall, though, I give the book 2½ stars; it is neither a great book nor a bad one.

47. Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora, Pierre Berg with Brian Brock

Okay, enough of the fluffy stuff; when I'm not feeling well, I have a tendency to read no-brainers. Not so with this book.

My Review Here

BrainFlakes -

I am really enjoying your list and your observations! I think we have the same taste to some degree, but it is so interesting to read what others think. I'm moving the Denise Mina up my TBR pile, I think.

-Nancy

48. Resolution, Denise Mina

This is the end of the Garnethill trilogy (see #29 & 33), and I am really sorry to see Maureen O'Donnell and Mina's cast of quirky characters go. Having read 1,200 pages in a little over 5 weeks, I feel like I'm losing a lot of good friends in Glasgow.

This installment is darker than the other two as Maureen attempts to resolve the myriad of problems weighing on her soul. I hesitate to describe them (spoilage, you know), but Maureen is isolating, drinking herself into oblivion, and giving or throwing her possessions away—classic behavior of a potential suicide.

There is also a murder to solve, but this time around it plays second fiddle to Maureen. I think that was a good move on Mina's part because there are no long passages of police procedures and their harassment of Maureen.

So, is resolution accomplished as the book title suggests? You don't really expect me to say, do you?

I will say that Mina, for a rookie writer, has done a masterful job with this trilogy. And once again, I will warn that it must be read in sequence to make sense.

I give all 3 books 5 stars each and, if I have time, I will read them again.

49. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

There is a white tiger born once every generation and Balram Halwai—servant, chauffeur, and entrepreneur—believes he is it. Through a series of seven letters to the Premier of China in anticipation of the Premier's visit to India, Balram describes the state of his country today—political (corrupt), the police (doubly corrupt), economic (outsourcing to the U.S.), family—and the reduction of the caste system to two: the haves and the have-nots.

Balram is a good servant until his boss makes him his driver in New Delhi. Balram is astonished by the riches he sees there, and he hatches a plot to become one of the haves: he murders his boss (not a spoiler). He has become the White Tiger, crossing the uncrossable caste boundary.

I enjoyed this Man Booker prize-winner immensely, but my jury is still out on Balram: does murder, and the affect it will have on his family, justify his transformation? I think not.

50. Sharpe's Tiger, Bernard Cornwell

What can I say? Cornwell. Historical fiction. India, 1799. The first of fifteen or so novels featuring Richard Sharpe, too much of a superman for me.

But sadly, I'm addicted.

So. I have met the 50 Book Challenge for 2008. But there is something that bothers me about it.

I reported that I read four books of short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer (book #22, 23, 27, and 32), but in fact I read them in one Library of America volume, Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to the Letter Writer totaling about 750 pages.

I prefer, then, to adjust my book count from 4 to 1, which means I still have 3 books to read for the year. My next book will be numbered 48, The Town by William Faulkner.

There. I feel better now.

Hi, BrainFlakes,
I have also been pondering the Library of America multibook volumes. My kids say to count them individually, but I was not sure because it is all in one book. However, they say, each was published individually. So, although I think that I would do what you did, I really do think that either way is ok.

Congratulations on reaching your 50 book goal the first way and almost reaching it the second way. :)
--BJ

Seriously, Brain...you don't need to make excuses so you can CONTINUE reading! And I agree with Billiejean's kids. For instance, I have a single volume Modern Library edition of Snopes, which contains The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion. You're going to read The Town now, and count it as a book. If I pick up the omnibus and only read The Town from it, don't I get to count it? Sure. But we all make our own rules. ;D

billiejean and Linda: I hate it when people use logic on me—it messes up "my own rules." LOL

The reason I made the decision I did was because Singer's individual books seemed so short to me. I guess that's pretty silly, since The Little Engine That Could is short too, but it is a legitimate book to be counted.

To muddy my waters further, both The Town and The Mansion are in one LoA volume, and I'm counting them separately—just as you would, Linda, with your omnibus.

"My own rules," then, are not really rules at all, but rather a sense of fair play to all the other challengers.

Whew.

48. The Town, William Faulkner

This is the second volume of the Snopes family trilogy, a true novel unlike The Hamlet, which was an amalgam of short stories. It is told from three POVs, none of them Snopes, so everything I learned about Flem Snopes, the Grand Master of Antagonists, is derived from hearsay and conjecture. I think Faulkner employed the POV device just to drive me crazy—or rather, to derive my own conclusions about Flem and his motivations.

This is a haunting novel—tragic, emotional to the point where I uttered two or three expletives, and one that I will never truly forget.

After I take some nerve pills and settle down, I'll move on to the last of the trilogy, The Mansion.

The multiple point of view device is one of Faulkner's favorites, and it does leave many things open to interpretation. I've heard other people accuse him of deliberately driving his readers crazy...I think he was a kinder, gentler man than that! I'll address the question you posted on my profile tomorrow, the universe willing.

49. Deception, Denise Mina

After writing the excellent Garnethill trilogy, Mina wrote this stand-alone clunker about Lachlan Harriot, a househusband, who attempts to find evidence of his psychiatrist/wife's innocence for the murder of a serial killer. Lachlan is the narrator in diarist style, and he repeats the same information, mostly from public records, over and over again. The duplication is not only boring, but I found it almost embarassing: where, I wondered, are the twists and turns and red herrings the book jacket promised me?

The "action", if you will, picks up about twenty pages before book's end. Has Lachlan finally found the truth and the true killer? I'm not going to say, other than nope. Even the ending is boring, if in fact it can be called an ending.

I suggest that you skip this one and read something . . . well . . . interesting.

50. Just After Sunset: Stories, Stephen King

I'm back to 50 books again, so I have finally completed the 2008 Challenge. I'm not going to stop reading until 1/1/09, though: I just received Wally Lamb's new book, The Hour I First Believed, the author of one of my all-time favorites, I Know This Much is True. I also have Faulkner's The Mansion to read, so my dance card still has a few dances left on it for the year.

As far as King's book of short stories, it is his fifth mainstream compilation and I think it's his best. There are 13 tales altogether, four of which are near-novellas. The story I liked most was "N.", an encounter between a psychiatrist and his patient N. The theme is a Kingly familiar one: the "thin fabric" which separates our reality/universe with another reality/universe inhabited by grotesque monsters.

After reading 12 of the stories I was thinking how King's writing has matured (he's six months younger than I am and I'm mature as hell). King, for me, has always had a tendency to screech, repeat stupid phrases over and over, and to generally grate on my nerves. Not so in this collection, I thought.

Well shame on me. The last story in the book, "A Very Tight Place", is pure unadulterated gross-out. King, in his afterword of sorts, admitted he grossed himself out with this one.

I should have known that one of the grand masters of horror couldn't help being horrible, but I still give him four stars for entertaining me through page 306.

Congrats, again! :)
--BJ

Congrats, I have one to go.
WB

Thanks, BJ and WB. I realize that this challenge is not a contest with statuettes or a lot of prize money, but I'm going to give a speech anyway.

"I owe the following people a debt of gratitude for helping me finish the 50 Book Challenge for 2008: my Mom, who read to me from toddlerhood onward; my reading teachers at school, who were bears dressed as nuns; the librarian at the Brooks Ave. branch who allowed me to check out YA books long before I was a YA; and especially all of the authors who have written such wonderful and amazing books."

Thanks, too, to the friends I've made on LT who have led me in new directions and to new authors.

Now, if we could have a 58 Book Challenge for 2009 . . .

That's very moving, Brain. But....wait....what do you mean, there's no statuette....no prize money....what?
(You can have a 58 Book Challenge, if you want. Personally, I have a 72 Book Challenge, but I do it on the 50 Book Challenge Thread, so I always look good!)

Brain—that's rich. Brainiac. Son of Brainiac. Freddie & Jason Meet the Brain.

Yes, LW3, there is no Nobel Prize for Reading. You will just have to be satisfied with nothing other than your books. And your husband and daughter.

And my dog...don't forget my dog.

And your dog.

A touching speech for a memorable event. Applause! Applause!

#56 My man-eating, 24-pound Sheltie, to be more exact. Ain't she fierce?

#57 Thanks for the ovation, Bill, but do not encourage me: once I get speechifyin' it's almost impossible to turn me off.

#58 That is one mean-looking critter, Linda. Just look how she hates sitting on the front seat soaking up some rays.

You really have to guard against her snuggling you to death...

51. The Mansion, William Faulkner

And so ends for me the last (and longest) of The Snopes Trilogy, perhaps the technically-best written of the three. Except for two or three chapters that use POV, the book is written in the third person by an unknown narrator.

What fascinates me about Faulkner is his ability to draw me hook, line, and sinker into the goings-on and folks of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. There is the Snopes clan, a collection of human misfits devoid of morals and headed by the Evil (Faulkner's word) Flem Snopes, and a cast of town characters wondering what Flem or one of his relatives is up to next since it is bound to be bad.

All of this "wondering" is just that: hearsay, guessing, and conjecture far outweigh fact and definitive conclusions. It is the latter that I find most fascinating about Faulkner: do I dare trust his obfuscating conclusions, or must I spend hours conjecturing like one of the characters in the book to reach my own?

I haven't said much about The Mansion in this bloated blurb, but that is because of spoilage. And besides, I have some conjecturing to do . . .

52. The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb

It took Wally nine years to write these 723 pages of story, or story intertwined with story intertwined with story . . .

Is it about Caelum Quirk, the protaganist, and his adulterous wife Maureen? Is it about Maureen, a school nurse at Columbine High School, who was there during the massacre? How about 9/11, "Bush's and Cheney's war" in Iraqistan, and a returned vet with a prosthetic hand? Does New Orleans and Katrina make an appearance? Is it about chemical addiction? Suicides galore? PTSD? Female prison reform?

Yes.

The overriding theme of the book is Caelum's search for himself: in a nutshell, his struggles with faith, hope, and love. There is one line I liked in particular: "Suffering can bring about redemption."

Lamb admits he had a hell of a time writing this book, but I think his hard work over the years paid off; I really liked it. I even liked the seventy-five or so pages of a "doctoral thesis" sprinkled throughout the second half of the book, which many reviewers and readers found distracting and boring.

Edited to delete final paragraph.

53. Sharpe's Triumph, Bernard Cornwell

What can I say? Cornwell. Historical fiction. India, 1803, the second book in his India trilogy. The second of fifteen or so novels featuring Richard Sharpe, too much of a superman for me.

But sadly, I'm addicted.

(See #41. Remarkably alike, aren't they.)

I thought that sounded familiar...

54. The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri

I loved this book and Lahiri's writing. It tells the story of Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli, immigrants from India, and their acculturation into the American way of life, which they never fully accept.

Ashima births two children, Gogol and Sonia, who are American to the outside world but Bengali at home. This "dual" life is probably experienced by most second-generation children who crave acceptance by their American peers, but at the same time are steeped in the values, morals, and traditions of their parents'.

The story focuses on Gogol, who asks the ultimate question, "Who am I?" with mixed results. He asserts his independence, only to be drawn back to the parents he loves.

What was off-putting to me was Gogol's experience with women. He has a long affair with Maxine, whose wealthy parents give new meaning to the concept of liberal. He has a short affair with a married woman that seems superfluous to the story. And he meets a woman he knew vaguely when she was a girl and, in my opinion, is a slut.

So here I am with another windy blurb and there are some wonderful lines I would like to quote (one of which broke my heart), but I will simply recommend that this book be added to your reading list.

Gee, maybe I should do a windy review!

55. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri

Her first book. Nine short stories. Wins the Pulitzer Prize. Need I say more about the goodness of this book? Yes, knowing me.

The first sentence from the story, "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar":

"For the greater number of her twenty-nine years, Bibi Haldar suffered from an ailment that baffled family, friends, priests, palmists, spinsters, gem therapists, prophets, and fools."

When a sentence as good as that one grabs me it is impossible to stop reading. Five big ones for this gem of a book.

* * * * *

And so I am done for 2008. Except for a couple of stinkies, it was a wonderful reading year. Here's wishing all of my LT friends and acquaintances a GREAT 2009!

You're calling it a year with three whole days left????

#67: Yes, 2008 is history. I've started Faulkner's Collected Short Stories, and I cannot read 900 pages as fast as you can.

And shouldn't you be finishing your 75th for 2008 instead of bothering us slower people?

See, if I finish that one, I'll have to start something else. And knowing me, I'd expect myself to finish IT by midnight Wednesday. I'm back to work this week, and have a house guest (eventually to be my son-in-law) who keeps challenging me to games of Parcheesi, gin rummy and such, so there isn't a lot of reading going on.

If anyone is looking for me, my 2009 is here:

The Brain

Hi, BrainFlakes!
I wanted to wish you a Happy New Year! You write such wonderful book reviews. I really enjoy reading them. See you in 2009 in your new thread. :)
--BJ