RidgewayGirl's 2010 Categorical Challenge

I'm pretty sure that I will try for the full 100 book challenge, especially since I'm not going to try to be done by October 10th. Although I am sure I will change my mind several times beforehand, it is too tempting not to start making lists right now.

Hey, welcome!

Just wanted to reciprocate the post in your challenge thread. Hope you have fun with whichever way you decide to set up your categories.

One for the Old World
Books set in Europe

1. The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes (Dublin, Ireland)
2. Two Murders in My Double Life by Josef Skvorecky
3. Missing by Karin Alvtegen
4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
5. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Two for the New
Books set in North America

1. Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt (Ontario, Canada)
2. Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm (Staten Island, New York)
3. The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty (Kerrville, Kansas)
4. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
5. Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers
6. The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett

Three for the Things We Know
Non-Fiction

1. Words Fail Me by Teresa Monachino
2. Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
3. Cleaving by Julie Powell
4. The Angel of Grozny by Asne Seierstad
5. Wild Swans by Jung Chang

Four for the Winds that Blow
Books set in exotic places, that is, not in Europe or North America, each book set in a different country.

1. Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama (China)
2. The Trade Mission by Andrew Pyper (Brazil)
3. The Dragon Man by Garry Disher (Australia)
4. The Sand Fish by Maha Gargash (Dubai)

Five for My Favorites
Books by favorite authors or rereads of old friends.

1. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
2. The Accidental by Ali Smith
3. The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh
4. The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes
5. Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbott
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
7. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

Six for a Celebration
Books that have won or been shortlisted for prominent awards.

1. Fault Lines by Nancy Huston (Winner -- Prix Femina)
2. A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer (Finalist -- National Book Award)
3. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Winner -- Pulitzer Prize)

Seven for a Secret
Noirish Mysteries, my favorite genre and the easiest to fill.

1. Life Sentences by Laura Lippman
2. Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride
3. The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh
4. Die a Little by Megan Abbott

Eight for the OAPs
Books that have been languishing unread on my shelves for well over a year. OAP stands for old age pensioner.

1. Murder in the Marais by Cara Black
2. Scottish Girls About Town
3. Life in the Air Ocean by Sylvia Foley

Nine for One
Books with one word titles (I may allow the addition of a single "the")

1. Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman
2. Queenpin by Megan Abbott
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. Blackout by Connie Willis
5. The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart

Together for Ten
Tandem and group reads, books recommended by LibraryThingers and Early Reviewer books.

1.Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (recommended by VictoriaPL)
2. Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis (Early Reviewers book)
3. A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (recommended by avaland)
4. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen (group read on the 1010 Challenge)
5. The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard (Early Reviewers book)

I'm setting my categories broadly this time! It will save me having to be creative later.

I heart your category names. :)

#15 me too - can't wait to see the rest of them

@ No 15 and 16: I second and third that! It's like reading a toast!

Oh, you have a category name theme too! I might have to try that.

Actually, to me it seemed like a cheer. You go, girl!

thanks i am so excited i found this website !

I also enjoyed reading your category titles. Nine for .... is missing, can't wait to see what you come up with.

Nine Necessary Novels? No, that doesn't follow the pattern. Hmmm... Nine for...Nincompoops, Noodle Brains? No, that's me. Nine for Necessary Novels?

My ninth category is stumping me. What I should do is find some common theme of a large number of my TBRs. Inspiration will strike. Any day now. Soon, in any case.

I've named my final category and am now ready to go. I'm going to wait a few months before I start adding specific books.

#24
I started adding books to mine, but then I realized I was only doing it so that I could make my current TBR-pile look smaller. "Those books are for next year, so I couldn't possibly start them now..." I'm evidently very good at self-delusion! :)

Yeah! Looking forward to seeing the books you choose for each category.

My fingers are itching to start assigning books to my categories, but I am stating here that I will wait to add any specific titles (except in the group and tandem read category) until December. Besides, adding a book now means that it will instantly become the most desirable book in the entire world, due to it being forbidden until the new year. Case in point, I had put Evil at Heart down to read with VictoriaPL as part of the 1010 and it is already read.

*grins* sorry about that!

Yeah, I so would have waited until January :)

I started adding books to mine, but then I realized I was only doing it so that I could make my current TBR-pile look smaller. "Those books are for next year, so I couldn't possibly start them now..." I'm evidently very good at self-delusion! :)

Actually, I've found that planning out my reading in advance is very good for reducing the TBR pile (or at least, preventing it from growing so quickly). When I see how many good, carefully-selected books I'm already hoping to read next year, I'm less likely to impulse-buy a random book that I see at the bookstore.

>30 _Zoe_: Actually, I've found that planning out my reading in advance is very good for reducing the TBR pile (or at least, preventing it from growing so quickly). When I see how many good, carefully-selected books I'm already hoping to read next year, I'm less likely to impulse-buy a random book that I see at the bookstore.

I'm finding that too. I've got a physical 1010 pile growing on a table on my porch, as well as a group of Kindle books I've left on the Amazon server so I won't read them now. Meanwhile I'm trying to finish a couple and get them off my Kindle, and I've got a Star Wars novel my nephew passed along (he buys them and I get to read them, as long as I return them in pristine condition....).

#30 & #31

LOL! I'm the complete opposite - when the "next year" pile is done, there are "empty" spots that I can fill with new books...

Most of the books for my challenge will hopefully come from my excessive TBR pile. Since a book has no chance of leaving the house until I've actually read it, its presence on any future reading list is an entirely moot point. And books seem to find their way into my house whether or not I am actively seeking them out. I do have ideas about what I'd like to include, but I'd rather have fresh lists when the time comes to begin the challenge.

RidgewayGirl. Glad to 'see a familiar face' from the 999. With the wedding behind us maybe i won't be so far behind on the 1010 challenge. Though really 3-4 books a weej is doable. . .

I have jsut been working updating my wish list for 2010 or 1010(10). I have 11 categories, the one with the fewest books found gets dropped. and have been shopping used bookstores for my books, its a year long scavenger hunt. No buying on-line or new until 2010! the list is heavy on Shakespeare & Renaissance history and quite a few Stephen Hawking books.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Love your categories! Very creative and they look flexible, too. I'll check back in December and see what you add for titles. I always get good ideas for reading from you. :-)

It's December and I can start filling in my categories! Hooray! I had a wretched day today, so I may let myself spend the evening putting books into little piles and rearranging them.

LOL! It probably takes another LT-er to appreciate the satisfaction/pleasure in that task! :-) Have fun!

Sounds heavenly!

I call that and similar activities "patting my books".

Perfect name NeverStopTrying, I am going to be "patting my books' soon as well, getting them organized for the New Year and the new challenge.

Oh, my . . . do we need therapy? I can totally relate. I'm so looking forward to the end of term--not because it means Christmas holidays and all that goes with it--no, what I'm really looking forward to is "patting my books" (great term!). In fact, I may even pull them all out on the floor and roll around on them.

#39 That is a great term! I've done it for years and never had a name for it.

@41 Just make sure you don't dent them or break their spine in the process!

#36--my 101010 books are in piles on my living room floor right now! It is fun to sort them and move them around.

I love the "OAP" term! Some of my books are ready for the nursing home.

I am embarrassed that a quantity of the books on my shelves were purchased in great excitement, brought home, and then left to fend for themselves, occasionally having a finger run down their spines, but to be continually passed over for something else (usually newer).

It was daunting to realize that even if I only read books currently sitting unread on my shelves, with no rereads, library books or new acquisitions, I would not be able to read even half of them in a year. I had this fantasy of every book I owned being a book that I had thoughtfully read and really enjoyed, so that my library was a reflection of my reading history. This does not seem likely to happen. I will try to read some of the older denizens this year, though.

I know EXACTLY what you mean, RidgewayGirl! I'm currently sitting on four years of busy reading with no library loans, borrowed books, etc. My 1010 challenge this year is going to be 90% books I own before Jan 1, 2010. Of course, I'm going book shopping this month!

I have a "Unread for ten years" category in my 1010, so I, of course, relate also... I really enjoy hearing from you and your four year bulk Nickelini, since I've seen a lot of people here going on about fifty books on their TBR as if it was an outrage. I probably have a few SHELVES with fifty unread books...

I love having a lot to choose from on my own shelves (and frequently surprise myself with suddenly grabbing that ten time reject, becuase it's...well, just TIME), but planning ahead like this is somewhat sobering. It's good to be with fellow addicts!

I wonder if there's a correlation between the number of unread books that you own and the amount of time you've been a member of LT? I had very few unread books on my shelves--and no wish list to speak of--until I joined LT. At least it's an addiction that doesn't make you fatter or harm your body. Thank goodness for that!

I really like your category themes! I'm looking forward to following your posts as you add books.

I don't know whether it's even possible for me to read every book I own in my lifetime. Maybe it is, but it'll never happen at the rate I buy new ones.

I would love to turn more attention to 1010 but I'm still trying to finish my second 999.

There is an enormous satisfaction on finishing a book, to simply walk to one's shelves and choose another that appeals. A smaller selection wouldn't allow that. I think that I just need to get my SO to build more shelves. He likes woodworking, so it is a perfect match.

I wonder if there's a correlation between the number of unread books that you own and the amount of time you've been a member of LT?

I never used to have a tbr pile before I started participating here but now I have a whole bookshelf of unread titles. And no matter what I do those shelves don't get any less populated.

I've had a TBR pile for about 20 years.

51: I completely agree! If I only had a few unread books, I would be going to the bookstore all the time anyway because I'm not always in the mood for particular books.

From this discussion, I thought you might be interested in joining the new Group I started--Books off the Shelf Challenge: http://www.librarything.com/groups/booksofftheshelfchal#forums.

Lois

Thanks for that link! I might use that next year.

I love your categories, especially group four! I'm currently trying to branch out and read books by authors from countries other than US and the UK, so I'll be waiting to hear your thoughts on some of those books :)

>45 RidgewayGirl:: I had this fantasy of every book I owned being a book that I had thoughtfully read and really enjoyed, so that my library was a reflection of my reading history.

Bah! You can only have enough books when people don't even bother to ask you whether or not you've read all the books you own because they know it's just not possible ;-)

It's almost time to start the whole thing again! I'm keeping about half of each category open this year, so that I may actually read the books listed there. I'm ready to start, even as I still have two left on my mini-999 after-challenge. See you in the New Year.

My pet peeve is people who ask me whether I've read all the books on my shelves..
With some 6,000 books around here (not all catalogued yet), the answer is almost certainly 'no'. And a 25% (estimated) unread rate is still a very large pile...
Good idea to keep the categories open -- I'm feeling impatient to start reading some of the books on my challenge lists now. Have set myself a Xmas Day start date...

@58 I'm also chewing on the bit here, as I'm determined to start january first and not sooner. I also have a bit of a pacing problem right now, Ideally I will want to finish my last book on 2009 on New Year's Eve, giving me a completely clean sleat for the 1010. So, do I read thin ones, or aim for one fat novel for the nine remaining days? Hmm...

>59 Chatterbox:

I encountered a strange variation on that recently. Our apartment management was doing their annual inspections and when the manager came in and looked at my bookcases, she asked whether they were all mine.

I'm in a group read of Les Miserables, but won't be finished til January. I'm counting that as part of my 1010, even though I started it in 09. Pretty much everything else in my challenge will be started after the first of the year. I, too, an getting very impatient.

ETA--Sorry for the double post--cat jumped on the keyboard at just the right time, and hit just the right key!

My first book of the year has been living with me for some time. It's the first in a mystery series, each set in a different arrondisement of Paris. Murder in the Marais by Cara Black has a lackluster and completely improbable plot and main character which seem based on too many viewings of La Femme Nikita, an excellent movie (the original one), but maybe not the best basis for an entire novel. However, the real star of this book is the city of Paris, which Black describes in infinite and authentic detail. The story takes place in 1993, and Black includes details of France's now defunct Minitel system and the now rarer reek of Galoise cigarettes. So, if you can ignore plot and characterization, and read it solely for the setting, this book is excellent. I will give Black another chance or two, simply because of the setting.

Too bad your first book of the year didn't blow you away, but the description would have lured me too.

Glad to find you; looking forward to your comments and the discussions they prompt!

I've been eager to read Murder in Marais for quite some time and I'm sorry to hear it's disappointing. I think it's pretty long-running so maybe it gets better.

Ha, the description of Murder in the Marais did indeed lure me, and it's sitting on my Kindle pile as part of my TBR challenge!! I'm surprised that if it's not good she has had so many follow-on books published, but then after reading truly grim (grim as in nearly-unreadable, not depressing) books by Charles Finch and Jeri Westerson (sp?) I shouldn't be surprised. They keep publishing. Oh well, at least I will get to it and know!!

I am going to read another Cara Black mystery, after a long break. The descriptions of Paris were perfect and I found the book not a total waste of time because of that. It was odd to read a book by skimming all the actiony bits and slowing down over the long, descriptive paragraphs.

Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt is set in the fictional town of Algonquin Bay, Ontario, located between Sudbury and Mattawa, and takes place during February. The body of a missing girl is found, sending the detective who was convinced that she wasn't just another runaway back to the job of investigating her disappearance. John Cardinal lives alone; his daughter is away at university and his wife is battling depression in an asylum. He is partnered with Delorme, who has just moved to homicide from internal investigations, and Cardinal is pretty sure she's investigating him. The case quickly turns into a search for a serial killer, with many twists and turns along the way.

The novel follows the rules for the modern detective novel, from the lonely cop with a shady past to the atmospheric setting, but the book is so well written and well plotted that it rises above the genre.

Thanks for the review of Forty Words for Sorrow, RidgewayGirl. I've reserved a copy at the library.

I have the first 4 by Giles Blunt on my wishlist. I'm happy to see that at least one is well written. He's been highly recommended.

I love Giles Blunt (and I am not just saying that 'cus I am Canadian :)

My next book was Life Sentences by Laura Lippman.

Cassandra is a writer who made a name for herself with two best-selling memoirs. Her attempt at fiction fell flat so when she discovers that an elementary school classmate spent seven years in prison when her baby disappeared, she is sure she has the makings of another book. In the course of researching what happened, Cassie explores her memories of her own childhood and encounters the different way the girls who went to school with her remembered things. The mystery of what happened to the baby takes a bit of a back seat to an exploration of the limits of memory and an interesting history of Baltimore in the sixties and early seventies, when Martin Luther King was killed and the integration of the school system. Lippman writes with a keen eye for detail and clearly loves her city. I look forward to her next book.

I got Words Fail Me by Teresa Monachino in the mail from BookMooch and found myself reading it in its entirety in somewhat less than a half hour.

This a slight book, but so pleasing to hold. The contents consist of clever typographic illustrations of a variety of word play. I've put my copy in the guest bathroom, as it is exactly the kind of book which invites both a rapid flip through and a close study of a single page. The author is a graphic designer and this book does emphasize design over everything. Which should be a criticism, but in this age of carelessly put together books, with cheap paper and tight margins, it's refreshing to see attention paid.

Sounds fascinating! Reminds me of Appolinaire's graphic poems, organsied to look like birds or fountains - is it anything like that?

(Fitting books in the guest bathroom is essential by the way!)

What a thoughtful hostess you are!

#75 This sounds like an interesting book - it's been added to the wishlist, but my library doesn't own a copy so I may have trouble finding it. I was hoping that it is a new release, but I see that it isn't. Maybe I can get it on an ILL...

It's a slight book. If you find it in a bookstore, you could read through it before the bookstore police even notice you.

I might try that! I did find a copy at a college library here in the state - but not sure whether they'll do an ILL - a private college. I found another copy at a public library across the state line, about 50 miles from here, that might be another option.

Some good crime novels in your lists RidgewayGirl. I'm currently enjoying One Good Turn. Will keep an eye out for Life sentences too.

Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman is a crime novel by a Swedish author, but it's much more than just another dark Scandinavian mystery. The novel centers around a double murder, following the lives of three people affected by the event; the young woman who stumbles across the bodies, a doctor whose wife is in the area at the time, and a teenage boy who runs away the night of the killings. For much of the novel, as the characters go about living their lives, the murders are almost forgotten. Ekman explores the themes of solitude and loneliness, how you can live with someone and still be a stranger to them, environmental destruction and the uncomfortable tension between a nostalgia for days gone by and the harsh reality of life in the middle of Sweden in the past.

The writing is beautiful with lovely descriptions of a part of Sweden between Ostersund and Norway, where nature is lush and fragile, the people hardy but closed to outsiders. The mystery is solved in the end, in a satisfying way. A book well worth reading.

I need to stop reading your threads - I think I get more books from you than anyone else! Blackwater looks interesting and just got added to the wishist. Reading the reviews was an interesting experience - they hardly seem to be describing the same book!

PS - I think it was also you that I got Naoko from. I picked it up at the library yesterday and am already half way through it. The cover blurbs make it sound like a farce of some kind. I'm not finding it a bit funny, but am enjoying the unusual situation and the different ways the characters are reacting to it.

VictoriaPL put Naoko in my hands. I can't take the credit there, but I did like it enormously.

I do like this service we perform for each other--that of making sure none of us ever run out of things to read.

I'm so glad you both enjoyed/are enjoying Naoko!
I have another Japanese book coming up soon, I'll let you know how it is.

>Norway, Finland, etc. frequently make it onto the "happiest countries" lists, and yet books from that area always seem to be about loneliness, sadness, and/or terrible things. Maybe Scandanavians get all their angst and troubles out through literature?

>86 carlym: or maybe they just write those during the winter when they're snowbound?

I have to add the Ekman mystery, Blackwater, to my list.

I'm trying to read more mysteries set outside of the U.S. and England this year.

@86 Swede here. I think we do have a tradition of exploring the darker side of things in our literature. But it should also be noted that with an international hype of dark scandie crime novels going on, a lot of that sort of books are getting tanslated. There are light and funny books from here as well! Check out Popular music from Vittula, about the first pop band in a small village on the swedish/Finnish border for instance, for something very different indeed.

@87 Not to mention getting two hours of bleak daylight a day...

Jostein Gaarder is Norwegian and his stuff is fairly light (albeit heavy on philosophy etc.). He is one of my all-time favourite authors - I loved Sophie's World and The Solitaire Mystery.

VictoriaPL recommended Garden Spells to me some time ago. I don't usually read Water for Chocolate type books as anything involving supernatural forces leaves me rolling my eyes as does anything that might be overly whimsical or involve recipes. So she went out on a limb with her suggestion. Well, I liked it immensely and was forced to read it all in one day.

Garden Spells takes place in a small North Carolinian college town where each established family possesses traits and destinies they cannot avoid. This shapes their behaviors and how they view others. The Waverley house has an apple tree in the backyard, a tree with a personality of its own, whose apples, when eaten, have the ability to show you a vision of the most important moment in your life. The Waverley sisters have never gotten along, so things are set into motion when the younger sister returns to live with the older one. The story is romantic and slight, but charmingly told and the magical elements are not at all annoying. The secondary characters are also charming, especially an aunt who has the gift of anticipation.

*beams* I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

I am glad you liked Garden Spells. Her second book, The Sugar Queen is fantastic as well.

Garden Spells sounds so intriguing, and like you, I don't usually read the romantic fantasy stuff. I'll look for this one.

I loved both of Sarah Addison Allen's books,I can't wait for her new one!You should read the Sugar Queen its really good too!

So. I picked up Fault Lines by Nancy Huston knowing nothing about it except that it was a bestseller in France, where it won the Prix Femina. The idea is intriguing; the book is divided into four parts, each subsequent section following a parent of the six-year-old child in the previous chapter, explaining their odd behaviors as parents as caused by events occurring when they were young. Each child is profoundly affected by the wars fought at the time of each story although none are in war zones. Huston writes with ease and beauty.

All the other girls are smug and competent and quick. They calmly snip away at paper snowflakes while I sweat and fret because my scissors are too dull. In the locker room they change smoothly into and out of their gym clothes while I struggle and blush. Their clothes are cooperative and neat, mine are rebellious: buttons jump off, stains blossom and hems surreptitiously unstitch themselves.

However, the first section is really bad. It proceeds with an angry cleverness but no heart. It's a parody that pokes fun at the characters without understanding them. The mother is a bundle of contradictions, simultaneously over-protective and oddly negligent, conflicted and stubborn, but we never discover why because the next segment concerns the passive husband. The structure means that this is really a collection of four novellas, each (except for the first) which could have been a compelling book, but remained too short, each chapter closed as I became involved in their story. Too much remained unrevealed, unspoken, unresolved.

I didn't like or dislike this book. I suspect that it won't stay with me long, despite the agile writing and the many shocking revelations.

Excellent review of Fault Lines; you've really managed to capture your reactions to the book in very elegant prose of your own! It doesn't sound like a book I would enjoy reading, even with beautiful prose.

@86/87/89; it isn't just Scandinavian prose, it's the drama as well! Ibsen, Strindberg... Although I'm going to have to look up Popular Music from Vittula, just to be proven wrong!!

Vienna Secrets by Frank Tallis is the fourth book in a mystery series set in fin-de-siecle Vienna featuring Max Liebermann, a Jewish Psychologist and Oskar Rheinhardt, a police inspector.

A decapitated body of a well-loved priest is found next to a plague column in the center of Vienna. The head was seemingly removed by sheer force, yet there are few indications that the victim resisted what had to have been a particularly brutal way to die. Rheinhardt and Liebermann search for the murderer even as more bodies are found and the clues lead Liebermann into Jewish mysticism, an area of study he, as a modern Viennese Jew, had never encountered.

I had not read any of the previous books, but happily don't think that it affected my enjoyment of this book. For enjoy it I did, the setting is magnificent and Tallis draws a stunning picture of Vienna in its heyday. The characters are all firmly a part of the time the book takes place, but remain sympathetic and multi-faceted all the same. The mystery was suitably mysterious and well plotted.

My mom gave me Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper for Christmas. It's not really my usual kind of book, being the uplifting tale of a kitten who was found at two weeks old with a massive infection that necessitated the removal of his eyes, and the woman who adopted him and how they both lived life from when he came to stay with her until she got married (don't worry, they kept Homer and her other two cats, too).

It's a slight tale, but genuinely nice. She's a bit neurotic, but she loves her cats and enjoys her life and the story was a pleasant and life affirming one. Having had a lame cat and now having a dog who was horrifically abused before coming to live with us and who, two and a half years later, is finally reasonably rehabilitated, I understand the emotional importance such a pet plays in one's life. Ultimately, though, it's kinda like talking about your kids--more interesting for you than anyone else.

I recommend this book as a good read if you like heartwarming stories of brave animals--if you were inspired by Dewey, you'll like this one. Speaking of which, I bet my mom would like Dewey...

Ultimately, though, it's kinda like talking about your kids--more interesting for you than anyone else.

Lol! I remember getting together with friends BK (before kids) and we would share stories about our dogs and cats in much the same way we later told stories about our children.

nice reviews!

Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm

John Sanders, Jr. hated his violent, hard drinking father whose quick temper was matched by the speed of his fists, so much so that when he is told that his father has been murdered his first reaction is to be glad. He'd written his father off years ago and the only reason to drive across Staten Island to the neighborhood he grew up in is to help his sister. She asks him to stay a few days, until the funeral's over and he finds himself forced to confront his feelings for his father and to re-examine the influence that relationship still has on his life. He sets out on a haphazard quest to find his father's killer, but that is very much not the focus of the story, which concentrates on chronicling one man's attempt to fix his own life without destroying the few relationships he has left.

This is a powerful book about grief and hate and family ties. The New York borough of Staten Island is richly drawn and colors the story, from the close-knit neighborhoods to the famous landfill that gives this novel its name and whose odor overpowers the scent of the ocean. This is also a story about growing up and wanting to escape a place, only to stay within a few miles of your childhood home.

Fresh Kills reminded me of a book I read last year about a daughter's relationship with her mother, The Last Bridge, but this was definitely a masculine book. The writing reminded me a little of Dennis Lehane's, especially in the ability to make the setting an integral part of the story.

Enjoyed Forty Words for Sorrow, and will check out more of Giles Blunts books.

I'm glad you liked it! It's hard not to feel responsible for how someone likes a book I've recommended, so thank you for not telling me ahead of time! I have a copy of the third book in the series, Blackfly Season, which I plan to read soon.

I read Case Histories a few years ago and loved it. I loved it so much that I have been unable to read the second book in the series, One Good Turn, despite having bought it in hardcover, for fear that it wouldn't be as wonderful as the first book. I purchased a copy of the third book and thought enough is enough and finally pulled One Good Turn down from my bookshelves.

And it was perfect.

Jackson Brodie, the private detective from Case Histories, is in Edinburgh while his girlfriend, Julia, performs in a play at the Festival. Standing in line to see a comic perform, he witnesses a senseless act of violence, but slips away before the police can question him. The story then diverges as Atkinson follows the lives of several people involved in or witnesses to the incident before joining the stories together again into a well-knit plot. Atkinson's strength is in her ability to create interesting and fully realized characters, from the harried detective inspector to the insecure mystery writer to the careworn and competent Jackson Brody.

This was my first five star read of the year.

I'm so glad to hear about Case Histories and One Good Turn. I have both on my shelf, having loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum. I hadn't yet read them for the same reason - fear they wouldn't be as good. Now I'm going to bump them up the pile.

The downside of reading a really, really good book is that nothing quite measures up for a day or two. I decided to finally finish up a book of short stories that I've been working my way through slowly for a long time. Scottish Girls About Town is an uneven collection of short stories by Scottish women authors. It leans heavily toward revenge fantasies and wish fulfillment stories, some seem to be first drafts, but there are a few worthwhile tales. The stories by Morag Joss, Tania Kindersley and Julia Hamilton are the rare standouts, but even those feel like rather less than the best these writers could do.

@107 Are they contemporary stories, or a selction from a broader time span?

Contemporary. The definition of Scottish was pretty loose, from new residents to people who'd left Scotland years ago, but the selection should have led to good stories. I've read a few of the authors and found them good. I think the weakness was in the "donate a story to the collection for charity". There was no selection.

Ah. Those things never quite work out, do they? Which is a shame really. Numerous are the records packed with artists I like, playing for a good cause, I've bought over the years. Only to discover them brimfilled with sloppy one-take covers that never made it to the single's B-sides...

Hennessy's had always been Bayview's little secret. Never mind the drugs and the underage drinking. Hennessy's was simply where you came if you didn't fit in. Daddy's little princess never came here, but her sister did, and she came with something to prove. It was the one place guaranteed to be free of rugby, golf, of competitive sport of any kind, and of the people who played it. Hennessy's clientele was pretty ambivalent about basic functioning, let alone competition.

Declan Hughes's The Wrong Kind of Blood is a classic noir. A smart talking private eye with a grudge and a tragic past: check. A beautiful dame with troubles and secrets of her own: check. A sidekick who just can't function in the real world: check. Corrupt politicians, policemen on the take, drugs and booze: check, check and check. Throw in a gritty, decaying version of Dublin and you get a fast paced, hardboiled rocket of a book. The mystery extends into the past and echoes up into the bloody present of a Dublin rife with new money and new development built with the results of back room dealings and love turned sour.

The Wrong Kind of Blood is set in the Dublin of five years ago, when the celtic tiger was roaring, but the story could have just as well occupied the mean streets of Los Angeles or New York in a film starring Faye Dunaway and Robert Mitchum.

Definitely want to read that one!

#111, 112 It does look interesting...

OK, the Frank Tallis books are going to HAVE to come down off the shelf now... Tks for the great review!

I just finished Cleaving by Julie Powell, who wrote the hugely popular Julie & Julia. In this book, as stated clearly in the blurb, she writes about learning the art of butchery and also about the obsessive love affair she carries on while married. This book is going to have a hard time, not because of its flaws, but because of reader disapproval of her behavior. The reviews I've read so far have all given the book low ratings, based on what the author does. I don't think this is fair; it's like hating a prison memoir because the person in the book had committed a crime. On the other hand, Powell carved a huge readership for herself out of precisely the kind of reader who would dislike her actions. I'll be honest, I disliked her actions, but I think that that is a separate issue from what I think about her book.

And it is, for the most part, quite good. It reads like a sub-titled film, starring Isabelle Huppert or Jean Paul Belmondo. Powell is carries on a love affair in front of her hurt and angry husband. When she's dumped by the object of her affection, she is sent into a tailspin of misery and cyberstalking. She's not a very nice person, but neither are the other two people involved. She decides to become an apprentice butcher and Powell has a talent for describing the art of dismemberment, tying her actions in the butcher shop to her feelings about her unravelled life. The book loses a lot of its narrative strength when she completes her apprenticeship and, finding that she still doesn't know what she wants out of her marriage, travels around in an aimless way. This part is really not very good, becoming the sort of travel memoir written by a person with plenty of money to spend, and so her solo adventure becomes one in which she has someone hired at every stage to protect her, guide her and handle all the language and cultural barriers. I'm not sure that this kind of travel has any value to the person doing it; it certainly is not worth writing about.

I'll probably skip this one, but your review is good, so thanks!

#115 I myself really disliked Julie and Julia because I found Julie Powell to be self-indulgent, whiny, and obnoxious--Cleaving sounds like it confirms my opinion.

I'm interested, though, by your perspective that the reader's opinion of the writer ought to be different from their opinion of the book. On a certain level I agree--the quality of writing and storytelling can certainly be evaluated differently from the likability of the content. But isn't a memoirist to a large extent selling himself? I would personally count the ability of the memoirist to gain some sort of sympathy from the reader as part of the overall quality of the book. This is particularly true in the case of a second book in which the readers aren't so much buying this individual story as they are buying the author.

Well, Cleaving was compared to the new book by the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, which garnered a similar fan base. Gilbert's new book continued in the same vein as her first and while it will please her fans, it sounds unutterably boring. I think I would rather be shocked and annoyed (and forced to think about why I felt the way I did) than read something self-congratulatory and dull. With the notable exception of the Wooster and Jeeves books, who wants to read the same thing over and over? The part of the book that lost me was the travel bit, which would have been interesting only if she hadn't hadn't bought herself guides to cushion her against any unpleasantness. It was too much the wealthy American is enriched through contact with the poor, yet noble, savages she encounters.

#118 That is fair enough. I think I may just be opposite in that I don't mind reading books in the same vein over and over! For instance, I haven't read Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed yet, but I do intend to.

It definitely sounds like a 'skip' to me, so thanks for the review.

I remember (from your thread last year) admiring your toleration of unsympathetic narrators, and I do understand and respect why a writer might use them.

But unsympathetic memoirists? Very difficult for me, especially if combined with un-insightful. I only got through "eat" in Eat, Pray, Love and I never did get to Julie Powell until (coincidentally, last night) the DVD of Julie & Julia and only then because I'm enjoying Julia Child's My Life in France.

Hmm.. well what about Heartbreaking work of staggering genius?? I wound up liking that book overall, though about half of it was fairly solipsistic and he didnt turn out to be all that great a guy, even if as orphans he was taking care of his younger brother. There was a lot of whining and self-indulgence and the humor ran out about halfway through. Same thing apply?

I didn't read the Julie and Julia book, just saw the movie, and I also thought Julie was not really a sympathetic character. 90% of the movie went by before even learning what her husband did for a living. I wasn't particularly entranced by the whole thing, and the ending was fairly anti-climactic. It just sorta... stopped. Julie didn't learn much (except how to cook with a lot of butter) about life and didn't really change or progress over the year. Julia Child on the other hand went from being somewhat aimless to having a purpose. I thought the acting was good enough and so can appreciate the quality of the medium, but the story and the characters fell short for me. I think one can appreciate the three separately.

>122 GoofyOcean110: I agree with your comments about the film and lay some of that on Nora Ephron, whose writing I used to love but whose films feel superficial. But I was never drawn to look at Powell's blog or book, so there must have been something about her that I picked up on.

btw I read (in The Happiness Project) a great term for those "spend a year doing something" memoirs -- "stunt nonfiction." Love the term but am growing to hate the genre ... they tend to be narcissistic reports not insightful memoirs.

I loved A Heartbreaking Work... in retrospect and liked it while reading. Totally original, though it required persistence. I found Eggers sympathetic -- what stays with me (not a *spoiler*, I don't think) is that each section was a hundred pages of smoke-and-mirrors to distract himself from his grief over his mother's death. I felt a clench of sympathy each time and that recommitted me.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an interesting pick. I left that book with the feeling that it had been written by the doppelganger of a college housemate. It colored the book for me, since the housemate had had moments, but was generally a pain to live with. Now I do love what Eggers has done since with the McSweeney thing, but I did find that an narrator who reminds me of someone in my own life I found unsympathetic is more difficult to read than a straight forward unsympathetic narrator.

There are too many stunt-memoirs out there, in my opinion. It's what bloggers do when they want to make money. I think Julie and Julia sort of began the trend, does anyone know of earlier instances?

What I find even more irritating than the stunt-memoir is the travel narrative that features Wealthy Westerners Learning Valuable Life Lessons From the Natives. This is especially irksome because I love adventure travel books, but I fear that the genuine article (Rory Nugent, Redmond O'Hanlon or Eric Hansen) has been replaced with the Eco-travel with a guide and sanitation and deep spiritual moments and special visits to orphanages or the Dalai Lama books. This is an off-topic rant, I think, except in Cleaving she goes off traveling and that's when she lost me. And a lot of the stunt-memoirs seem to feature people who seek to finance their self-indulgent travel by writing a book about it. This trend began with the wretched Travels by Michael Crichton in which he did things like complain that his Nepalese guide did not fully explain how important the gorge was that they hiked to, and if the guide had been doing his job, Crichton would have looked at it instead of whining about how hard the hike had been or pull his brand new hiking boots out of their box and put them on just before climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (with many guides to carry everything) and getting blisters. That was the death of the Travel Narrative--can you see Bruce Chatwin pulling that crap?

I think the first A.J. Jacobs -- The Know-It-All -- predates Julie and Julia.

"Wealthy Westerners Learning Valuable Life Lessons From the Natives". Oh, amen!

I love dark crime novels and have already read several this year. I'm glad I set up my categories to allow these favorite escapes to fit almost anywhere. This latest one was Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride, a debut novel set in Aberdeen, Scotland with winter setting in. Logan MacRae is a detective just returning to work after a long absence recovering from a stabbing. He's not back on the job a day when the decayed body of a missing boy is discovered. A few days later, another child goes missing and Aberdeen is convulsed with fear of a serial killer.

Cold Granite is an excellent beginning to a series of crime novels. The action is non-stop from beginning to end, so much so that I think I got a bit of action fatigue toward the end, reading the first 3/4ths in a breathless rush, but taking a few days to complete the novel. Still, a promising beginning and I plan to read the second installment soon.

Stuart MacBride is writing a great series. I am just about to read the fourth one, and all three previous ones were excellent!

I have Cold Granite on my tbr shelves. I guess I could fit it into my recommends category now. Thanks go to the both of you.

#127, 128 I get too many recommendations from each one of you - not sure how I feel about you ganging up on me like this!

You know that I am loving your crime reading so far this year, I have seen several in your thread that have interested me, as well as your recommendation of Kate Atkinson.

123 - "stunt nonfiction" !!! I love that term! But agreed, it's fairly narcissistic. And in the case of the Julie and Julia, hard to identify what really is gained by the experience or in sharing it.

I thought I remembered somewhere when online shopping was starting to pick there was a tv show or challenge or something for a person or group of people to live in a house as shuts ins for a year to see if they could survive on the internet. I don't really recall the details - at the time I thought it was a dumb idea for a show and so didn't watch it. Actually, I still think its a dumb idea.

Re the discussion about likeable narrators. I think, for me, a distinction is in order. I have no problem with an irritating, annoying, flawed or downright evil main character, if that is a conscious choice from the author. I DO have a problem with an irritating, annoying, flawed or downright evil main character, if he or she is meant to be a likeable hero. A few examples of the latter that pop up in my (subjective) mind are the two women from Astrid and Veronika, Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci code and Aragorn from Lord of the rings.

I'm guessing that the self-righteousness of many "stunt-memoires" (love the term!) make them fall into category two?

I just recently got a copy of Julie and Julia. I may have to bump it up in the queue.

LOL! So glad that someone else has glommed onto this stunt-book phenomenon. There are the stunt nonfiction books, where someone reads Proust or something; stunt travel (as discussed above); stunt memoir (more in depth than general stunt nonfiction) and then stunt fiction (which involves an improbable premise -- The Time Traveler's Wife and The Lucky Bones would be two examples of cases where that has worked, at least commercially.)

Someone I interviewed for a story on philanthropy coined this phrase, which I love so much that I might make it a big part of my next book: "philanthropic colonialism". It's what happens when the donor gets all worked up about what he or she is doing, without stopping to think whether it meets the needs of the recipients, will be welcome, is appropriate, is really high-priority or sustainable, etc. Wonder if there's an equally pithy way to come up with a phrase like that to describe all those books written about allegedly life transforming experiences that must happen in exotic locales to be truly transformative?? (Deeply irritating, really, since one of the truisms about moving or traveling is that you take yourself along.)

Sorry, longwinded post, when want I meant to say was: I don't care how likeable or not a narrator is, in fiction or memoir. I don't want a smug or self-satisfied narrator in memoir, because that's no way to end up with an interesting narrative. But I think an unsympathetic narrator, in either fact or fiction, can be just as important to a reader who wants to think about what they are reading. Indeed, the only reason I might read Cleaving is just that: that of all the common experiences people have, infidelity is one that is a big taboo, and she is willing to break it and write about what that meant. Now, if by reading it I feel she's kind of patting herself on the back for being a taboo-breaker, well, that's simply dull and tedious. But I'd be equally harsh on someone who dismisses the book out of hand because of this. As a reader, I'd much prefer a flawed but thoughtful or thought-provoking narrator than one who is a saint. Similarly, I don't care if a novel I'm reading doesn't include a character that I can identify with. That's not why I read. (And anyway, I'm flawed myself; I may not like a character, but someone unsympathetic may even be someone I can relate to more closely because of their flaws...)

Here endeth the rant!

Great discussions! So much so, that I find myself arguing--with myself!

How have I never found this thread before? It's delicious! Well, finding new treasures is one of the benefits of the Librarything Labyrinth.

Love the categories. Now I want to start a categorical challenge. Such a copycat. I think you might be something like my reading twin. Is that too weird? But everything on your list I've read, want to read, or sounds like something that I'm going to want to read once I find out what it is.

See you soon.....

#136; absolutely -- as long as you don't do it out loud. That is, unless your idea of high fashion includes the latest strait jacket.... :-D

I loved Julie & Julia both the movie and the book.

Really how many people have tried to make any of the recipes in Mastering the Art of French cooking let alone every recipe in a year? And she had never eaten an egg before let alone cooked one.

She went outside of outside of her comfort zone and told people about it. And really, don’t you think that a lot of people are whiny, self-centered, insecure and whatever on the inside and we just manage not to let everyone know that? Letting some of that ‘out’ for others to see is what makes it entertaining. Of course it has been awhile since I read the book.

Does anyone care to try making 9-10 recipes in a week using techniques & ingrediants that you need to get from obscure locations while still trying to live your life as normally as possible and write about it everyday? And get back to us? It would be very interesting to see the results. Imagine it 10-20 people trying to master recipes with techniques and ingrediants that they are unfamiliar with and then compare how they chronicled it. . .

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I loved Julie and Julia, too, for many of the same reasons. In Cleaving she's gotten over any food phobias she may have had, chowing down on parts of cows and pigs that are generally quietly discarded.

I do agree with Chatterbox, that an unsympathetic narrator or main character is not a reason to dislike a book. It can be harder to read, but in the end, I find myself thinking about it more.

I liked Julie and Julia as well but I did find that she was somewhat unlikeable at times. I didn't really find her whiny but I did think that she could be very disagreeable when stressed out. And working a dead end job and taking on a huge project like this is certainly enough to stress anyone out.

I will read Cleaving with an open mind and see if it changes my opinion any. The cheating part puts me on edge a little though.

I picked up The Secret of Lost Things off of a remainder stack based on the cover, which shows the spines of old books. I do like books about books, which is pretty navel-gazing I suspect.

Rosemary has lived all of her eighteen years in a small town in Tasmania. When her mother dies, a family friend sends her off to New York armed with three hundred dollars and her mother's ashes in a small pine box. Rosemary finds a job in an enormous used and rare bookstore where the employees are about as colorful as you could hope to find in the NYC of 1980. Rosemary learns to negotiate relationships, although the man she decides to fall in love with is about as unsuitable as possible.

There is a mystery, too. A manuscript, presumed lost, by Herman Melville is hinted at and she, as well as a few others at the bookstore, begin searching for clues to its nature. This book is beautifully written, in a slightly old-fashioned way, reminiscent of The Thirteenth Tale. Rosemary is naive, in the way of a sheltered eighteen-year-old, but she isn't stupid. The book explores Melville's friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and how his career as a writer ended with the publication of Moby Dick. The parts about Melville are eloquent and have me eager to dig into Moby Dick.

You're really sailing along on 1010. Sixteen so far is very impressive.

I suspect that I am going to be falling behind, temporarily, due to the Winter Olympics.

>143 lindapanzo:. Oh yeah, THE OLYMPICS! I've bought my first widescreen TV just for this, and it'll be here by Weds so I can start with the opening ceremony. I'm so excited!!!

I'm a little surprised at the number of books I've read so far this year. I am neglecting much. The weather has helped--no one wants to spend time out in that cold, cold rain, even the dogs are reluctant. I know the snow farther north is wreaking havoc, but the rain is depressing.

The Olympics! My Canadian upbringing means I will have to stay up late to watch the hockey and I will confess that I like watching the curling. It's very calming, which is not something that can be said about many competitive sports.

>145 RidgewayGirl:
Maybe it's my Canadian heritage, but I love the curling too. Did you see Stephen Colbert try out for the U.S. team? Priceless - he challenged the captain using a remote-controlled stone.

I did not see that. I'll have to trot off to YouTube later. I wonder if the curling audience is entirely composed of Canadians.

I am not even sure what curling is...

Picture a large area of ice, a rock with a handle, a couple of brooms and someone who likes to yell. Yup. I am definitely not your typical Canadian as a hate curling and really hate hockey (hides head in shame). I will, however, be watching the Olympics in rapt interest (except for those parts). :)

At the risk of dipping back into the "stunt nonfiction" discussion, one thing I have to say in defense of these authors is that most of them don't start out with the idea of writing a book about themselves. They start by creating a blog and writing in it on a daily basis, which does tend to lead one into the navel-gazing mode. If the blog gains a wide following, publishers - sensing a sure-thing - start swooping down with book deal offers. Suddenly these bloggers have to take this material that was written for a one-day read and turn it into a "message" story with a beginning, middle and end. Sometimes shoe-horning the writing into a book format works and sometimes it doesn't.

That said, I never did read Julie and Julia, but I saw and loved the movie mostly because of the Julia Child segments. Then I read My Life in France which I loved. I probably never would have read that book were it not for the whole J&J phenomenon, so I'm glad she got the book deal. I think it certainly got more people talking about Julia Child, a worthy subject.

What bothers me about her new book (admittedly having not read it nor planning to) is that she is still married. It seems awfully mean to expose the sordid details of your obsessive love affair in order to make a buck and cash in on your celebrity. I find it hard to believe that is helpful toward repairing the problems they were having in the marriage. It's not the infidelity so much as her own handling of it.

Sorry - back to the regularly scheduled programming in this wonderful thread. I just had to put my two cents in. :-)

I have no Canadian heritage but I still love to watch curling. In 2006, I remember watching it at 3 am (though I had the flu and couldn't sleep anyway).

Hockey, speedskating, skiing, figure skating, bobsled, luge, curling--name a Winter Olympic sport and I love it though I'm not as fond of the skiing/shooting one.

URGH!!!

#142

Hello, my name is Dianne (Bruce's evil twin) and I am an Amazonaholic!

You (Ridgeway Girl) always read such good books! So I just HAD to go see if I could find the Secret of Lost Things and then of course I couldn't just buy ONE book! I did manage to keep it down to 6 (mainly because one was a fairly spendy cookbook - Turquoise: A Chef's Travels in Turkey, which will hopefully whpe out all the bad vibes from the whole Julie & Julia thing, although it's more of a cookbook then story), but considering that I still have 6 books not yet delivered from my last orders. . . oh well I need something to offset those 'heavy hitters' that I have for many of my categories and I still have to fill up the 75 book challege with the extras. . . and at least I know it won't be a dud!

What you all can't read & watch the Olympics? Isn't that what commercials are for? Canadian's who don't like hockey? Is it possible? What is the world coming too?

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

By all means, please comment on anything mentioned previously. I'm not sure how good the blog-turned-book will be for the memoir, but if it could survive the era of the celebrity tell-all, I guess it will survive this too.

I'm looking forward to introducing the kids to the winter olympics. They aren't big on spectator sports, so we'll see how it goes.

I had thought to read Life in the Air Ocean by Sylvia Foley one story at a time as a way to move from one book to another. I gave up after the first story and devoured it. Life in the Air Ocean was mentioned in Book Lust and I can see why Pearl recommended it. It's a series of inter-connected stories about the Mowry family as they move from Tennessee to Bogota, Colombia and back again. It's not like there's a lot of action, but the stories focus on relationships and how they fail us but we keep hoping. Beautiful, but not cheerful.

#150 -- JHedlund, absolutely -- I know people who've turned blogs into books (or magazine stories into books) thanks to agents who are constantly looking for authors to turn into a stream of income at a rate of 15%. (Exempting my own agent from this libel, natch!!) The flip side, too, is that when you're writing a memoir-ish or other generic kind of book, publishers want to be shown that you have a ready-made audience -- people who will show up and buy it. Establishing followers via a blog is one way to show a potential publisher that you have what they call a 'platform'. So if someone wants to write a book about something, for various reasons, the best thing they can do is blog away first.

Re Cleaving, I understand the discomfort with cheating. But it's like any other memoir -- from overeating to murder, it's not really endorsing the behavior to read the book. Ultimately, I feel it's a matter for their conscience, not my judgment. I do worry more about JHedlund's point, using celebrity status as a way to work out what should/could be very personal issues v. publicly, but that's a general problem I have with memoir (and, for that matter, with much of reality TV.) It's as if the entire society has decided that the more people know how big your problems or issues were, and how you dealt with them, you're somehow more important? significant? validated? I don't know -- but it bugs me. I have very consciously chosen to avoid reading anything about the Duggars for instance, as I've got real problems with the fact that they have 18 or 19 children and see no issues at all with that -- had they not been promoting themselves for the last year or two, I would have shrugged my shoulders, but now they are imposing themselves on the public eye, I feel I get to have an opinion. :-/

Oh, and I'm really looking forward to trying to spot a friend in the opening ceremonies (wearing a red toque on the floor, cheer-leading, is the only clue I've been given!!) and to watching short-track speedskating which is -- wow -- just so exciting, even at home.

We have a remarkable amount of stunt nonfiction at our library and I think the most out-there so far is Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States. Which is exactly what it sounds like.

One interesting angle, however, is that he started the project long ago enough that he was originally publishing updates in a zine rather than a blog.

I don't like reality TV, and also avoid stunt nonfiction books (I love that term!). Both just have too much of the 4-year old mentality of "look at me! look at me!" to be interesting in an adult.

I love the Olympics - and offhand can't think of an event that I won't watch. I love curling, and I am not Canadian!

edit for spelling

One of the Early Reviewer books is by a woman who was on Project Runway (she didn't win). I guess the logical next step after appearing on a reality show is to write a book.

#158 stunt nonfiction AND reality TV -- together at last! Utterly terrifying...

Where is my desert island?

Years ago I was given Hotel World by Ali Smith by a good friend. It looked a bit experimental, and it took me awhile to read it, but when I did I was blown away. Smith is an author who can do things with words that shouldn't work, but somehow do. She also writes with great understanding and compassion of her characters.

I picked up The Accidental a few years ago and like her first book, it was set aside for others. I finally picked it up a few days ago, looking for something good that wasn't a mystery or historical (a mood thing). The Accidental tells the story of a family spending the summer in a vacation home in Norfolk. They are distanced from each other, each with their own problems that don't allow them to see the suffering (large and small) of the people they love. One day a woman shows up and without anyone being too clear as to how or why, she's moved in with them and changed the family dynamic utterly.

Smith writes each chapter from the point of view of a different character. She writes stream of consciousness extremely well and while that sounds like it would be dreadful and self-indulgent, it really isn't.

I've finished The Cutting Room and it was excellent, but I need to gather my thoughts.

I was fed up with my life. Fed up of working and never having anything. Tired of searching my pockets for the price of my next pint. I'd sat next to Death that afternoon. Why not take the risk? The only people who might get hurt were us, and weren't we used to that? I wanted something good for a change. And if the money was going begging, well, why shouldn't we have it? From what Anderson had said, it was dirty money anyway, ill-gotten gains that could do us some good. I should have known better. Dirty money contaminates. It never goes begging and there's always someone else who can be hurt.

The Cutting Room is a dark, sharp-edged story, following Rilke, the cadaverous 43 year old gay employee of a failing auction house whose behavior defines risky. He is called to evaluate the contents of a house, a house whose contents are richer than the auction house has ever seen. He is given the job on the condition that the auction be completed in a week's time and that he clear out the contents of an attic office personally. In the attic he finds a collection of first edition erotic books and, in a cardboard box, a handful of pictures taken in Paris in the 1950s, two of which seem to show the murder of a young woman. Rilke sets out to discover what happened and in the process discovers more sleaze and criminal behavior than he had ever expected.

The Cutting Room is noir fiction at its finest. The characters are beautifully drawn, complex and interesting. The pace of the novel is fast, with a well thought out plot. I enjoyed every moment of this book, although I am relieved not to have met any of its shady characters in real life.

I was too old to call it love at first sight, but I had all the symptoms. People have died for love, they have lied and cheated and parted from those who loved them in turn. Love has slammed doors on fortunes, made bad men from heroes and heroes from libertines. Love has corrupted, cured, depraved and perverted. It is the remedy, the melody, the poison and the pain. The appetite, the antidote, the fever and the flavour. Love Kills. Love Cures. Love is a bloody menace. Oh, but it's fun while it lasts. The world faltered on its axis, then resumed its customary gyration, a place of improved possibilities.

My next book was Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama which tells the story of Pei, a young girl who is sent to work in the silk factories in the decades leading up to the Japanese invasion of China. Written for Westerners, this book was nice enough, but not particularly memorable.

I've been on the occasional lookout for a Gail Tsukiyama book to try. I guess that one shouldn't be the one. Have you read any others by her? I was thinking of trying The Samurai's Garden.

No, I've only read that one. It was her debut novel, so I'm sure she has improved over time. Also, her LT readers have rated the book highly. You might love it--I thought it was fine, it just wasn't a stand-out. I've had a run of exceptional books this month, so my standards might be overly high.

Women of Silk felt like a YA level book to me. I liked The Samurai's Garden better, but not all that much better.

Thank you, bonniebooks, that's exactly what it read like. I thought it felt in places like Tsukiyama was telling a folk tale, but the YA designation fits it better.

Not a bad book but one that didn't delve too deeply into secondary characters and their motivations.

I'd better start by saying that I am not a fan of Joyce Carol Oates's writing. She's a bit of a snob, at least in the books of hers that I've read, of which A Fair Maiden is the third. Given that she's written truckloads full, that's like basing one's views of Americans on a two day visit to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break. I might be entirely wrong.

A Fair Maiden is a sort of fairy tale about a poor girl from the pine barrens of New Jersey who is toiling as a summer nanny to a new-rich family in a snooty seaside town. She encounters an old man who seeks a relationship with her, the nature of which is uncertain. He's old-money wealthy and used to getting what he wants. Katya is hampered by her limited circumstances, her wretched history and her terrible Jersey accent. Oates makes sure that the reader is never given a chance to forget that horrible, ignorant accent as she repeats her comments about it every twenty pages. Katya is wary of the old man, Marcus Kidder, who has a weird habit of referring to himself in the third person. (I think that I would find that much more irritating than someone's accent), but she is first drawn by the offers of money and then the hope of love. There is a feeling throughout the book that things are bound to go horribly wrong, and they do, but in interesting ways. Is Marcus Kidder a savior or a seducer? Is Katya his soul mate or his complicit victim?

Given that she's written truckloads full, that's like basing one's views of Americans on a two day visit to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break.

Hee.

I am ambivalent towards JCO myself. I mean you gotta give her props for output, and output of quality. This is not Danielle Steel. I've found that I've very much enjoyed her shorter novels, but end up putzing out on the longer ones even as I marvel at her writing. But, similar to your remark, I've probably only read 10% (or less) of what's out there. And there are probably new ones being born as we speak. I think at some point, in order for anyone to get their mind around her work, universities are going to have to start offering master's programs in it. JCO: Yeah, she's a problem.

You either love her or you hate her. I have read a couple of hers and while I absolutely loved Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, I was indifferent about We Were the Mulvaneys. The latter was good but it didn't wow me and I found it slow going.

I have quite a few of her others kicking around but keep putting off read them. I think it comes down to the fact that although they look good (The Falls and Gravedigger's Daughter in particular), I just don't want to waste my time reading something meh.

The sheer quantity is an issue with me. I know I'll never be able to get a handle on her or feel any sense of understanding her work without giving up all other authors, which I am not going to do. But she is an important figure in American Literature and an important woman writer. Oh well. My heart just hasn't warmed to her.

She had me at Blonde. That being said, I find the handful of titles i've read by her pretty uneven.

I envision an experiment: The Year of Joyce Carol Oates. Unfortunately, we're not going to find anyone to undertake it. Not I.

Can you believe the woman actually has pseudonyms?

Like bucketyell, I have a bunch sitting around that I never seem to get around to. I would like to read Blonde, tho.

I have Blonde, We Were the Mulvaneys, The Gravedigger's Daughter and The Falls. I will get to them eventually, I'm sure.

Elizabeth Crossman has a doctorate, but hasn't been able to find a teaching job, even at a second or third tier university. She finds herself living in a basement apartment in Toronto getting by on translating jobs; she speaks Portuguese. In The Trade Mission she is hired by a software company to accompany them to Brazil as part of a trade delegation from Canada. After the show, she goes with the four founders of the company on an eco-tour, first to the Amazonas city of Manaus, then on a five-day boat trip up the Rio Negro. It is on the Rio Negro that things go horribly wrong; they are kidnapped, the boat's crew murdered.

There's a lot going on in this book. Andrew Pyper is known for writing genuinely frightening stuff and the lawless heart of the Amazon rain forest up where the borders between the countries blur and where illegal activity is almost a given is a great setting. There's a mix of Western eco-tourists, anthropologists, illegal gold miners, indigenous peoples, pirates and criminals as well as the honest people just trying to get by. Crossman is about as well prepared to survive in a jungle environment as anyone who has spent her life living in the world of academe. That said, the final pages of the novel don't quite hang together as well as they might.

In The Dragon Man, Hal Challis is a detective working on a peninsula outside of Melboure where girls have started going missing, their bodies found a few days after each abduction. There's not a lot to go on and the search for the killer is interspersed with the daily police work of catching petty burglars and arsonists. It's hot and dry in this part of Australia in the weeks before Christmas and the police are no more honest than the crooks they catch. While the central mystery is too easily solved, the intertwined stories and complex characters made the story hard to put down.

The Australian setting was a fun change from the usual noir crime novel, which is normally set in Northern Europe or North America. The writer is telling the story to an Australian audience so that I felt that I had spent a little time "down under".

I haven't read any crime novels with an Australian setting and since I love this genre The Dragon Man sounds like a nice fit. Thanks.

Yes, and it's the first in a series. I am now looking for the others.

Glad you liked The Dragon Man. After starting with Chain of Evidence, which is the third in the series, I'm going to read the others.

Not so exotic for me though, an hour away from home!

I'll pass on The Trade Mission, but you've hooked me with The Dragon Man. And, of course it's a series!

I know what you mean Sandy, almost every book I have added to my wishlist lately is the first in a series! Last time I counted I was following over 50 series, and I know I have added lots more since then.

Well, Judy, at least we don't have to worry about what to read next!

Have you ever heard about a book, read a review and thought you'd love to read it, but when you pick up a copy in the bookstore or library and read the blurb, you wonder why you were attracted to it in the first place? The last book I read, The Dragon Man is a dark story, where the police are not always the good guys, and the good guys sometimes cut ethical corners, yet the jacket description had it sounding like a cozy, using words like quirky. Thankfully, I get most of my books through BookMooch, so I don't get to hold the book in my hands until it's already mine.

I next read The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty, which was recommended by someone here on LT. I'm glad I owned it before I had a chance to look at it because the descriptions printed on the cover put me off reading it for quite awhile. It's compared to both To Kill a Mockingbird and The Lovely Bones, which, really? Except for the commonality of a young female narrator, no. It was packaged for book groups, but I'm not sure it did the book any favors, because the book itself is charming and interesting and its own thing.

Set in the middle of Kansas during the Reagan years, Evelyn is roughly the same age I was at that time and it was interesting reading another child's view of the same events I lived through. Evelyn is being raised by a single mother, a group being singled out for particular venom at that point in time. Evelyn herself refers to her mother as a Welfare Queen, laughable when you see that that means being the sole caretaker for a severely handicapped child and she can't afford any car, let alone a Cadillac. The story follows Evelyn's life as she looks for a way out of the run-down apartment complex on the highway outside of town. It's well told and Evelyn is a wonderful character, prickly and full of the judgments and values she hears on tv or from church and school.

I confess I never read those sections in the back for book groups. They bring to mind some of my college lit classes and I've been trying to forget some of those...

I added a global reading category this year since most of my books are set in N. America or Europe. I thought it would be a difficult category to fill, but I've already read four books in that category.

I picked up the latest one from the library's new releases shelf solely because it was set in Dubai and written by a native of Dubai (a Dubaier?). For a book chosen completely at random, it was good.

The Sand Fish is set in the UAE during the 1950s, a time when the traditional cultures had not yet been transformed into the modern world of skyscrapers and artificial islands. Noora is a mountain girl who is pressured into marriage by her worried brother who things that the hard scrabble life in the desolate mountains is no place for a woman. Noora is taken to a village near the city of Dubai and has to adjust to being the third wife of a wealthy but stingy older man. That's about it, but there's a lot about the culture and values of the region and Noora is, refreshingly, not a modern Westerner dressed up in a burka. The world described here no longer exists but this book provides valuable insight into a part of the world I know much too little about.

Sounds interesting - in a general sort of way.

I've been very lucky this year in discovering new authors of dark crime novels. I'm currently reading my second book by Louise Welsh, the author of The Cutting Room. This one is called The Bullet Trick and follows a down on his luck magician as he takes a job as part of an Erotische Cabaret in Berlin.

And I recently finished Queenpin by Megan Abbott. Abbott has received several Edgar awards, including for Queenpin, which is a hard-boiled, pulp fiction style story with a twist; the protagonists are women. Gloria Denton is the Queenpin of the title, a woman who is legend in certain circles and who has carved a place for herself among the hard men and gangsters. She takes a young woman under her wing who had been going to business school, taking care of her widowed father and working part-time cooking the books of a run-down nightclub for its small time owners. With the help of her mentor, the woman learns the ropes, cultivating the arts of deception and distraction. Everything is going well when she notices a charming and sexy gambler, which is when things get sticky for our heroine as she seeks to not lose her edge even as she falls in with him. Queenpin is a short book, one that doesn't waste a word or pull a single punch. If you like your crime novels dark and relentless, this is the book for you.

That's a great recap of Queenpin. Now I have to write mine! I really enjoyed it and I'll be reading more of Megan Abbott.

Off the recommendations pile and onto the wishlist Queenpin goes. Especially now that you've both endorsed it.

Yes, I am also adding Queenpin to my wishlist. Sounds good.

Oh, me too. Sounds great.

I want Queenpin too! Honestly, I think I read more than enough mystery and crime novels, but this sounds like it's perfect for me.

It was very, very good. Abbott has written a non-fiction book about the hard-boiled genre called When the Street was Ours. She's both intelligent and clearly a fan of classic noir.

Incidentally, my trade paperback copy of the book features an illustration straight off of a 1950s detective magazine. It took me longer than it could have to read the book as there were public places I was unwilling to be seen with the book.

I think it sounds grand too! And I loved the little anecdote about being ashamed of being seen in public with it :) (I remember reading Blood and guts in high school and suddenly needing to get off the tram very quickly as sone of the illustrations unfolded...)

Ditto re wishlist.

I have recently discovered how easy it is to request books from the library online, much to the dismay of my towering TBR pile.

A few weeks ago I discovered Louise Welsh, author of The Cutting Room. She is really very good, writing the kind of dark, twisted crime novel that I love. I just read another of her books, The Bullet Trick, and was not disappointed.

William is a conjurer, making a living off of the occasional gigs his agent finds him. One of these is as the opening act for a retirement party at a strip club, where he's paid to steal an envelope from a jacket. The events that then occur send him fleeing to a steady job in Berlin, one act among many at an Erotische Cabaret.

Welsh has a talent for creating ragged, care-worn protagonists. William is drinking to forget, determined not to spend ill-gotten money, but somehow frittering it away nonetheless. He doesn't want anything to do with the envelope he took, but decides to find out what it means. This was a well-written, fast-paced book about sins of the past and redemption, where, like in a magician's show, there were plenty of diversions and surprises.

So then I went for something completely different...

Marian Keyes has been one of my favorite authors ever since a friend gave me a copy of Rachel's Holiday. She writes chick-lit, but she writes intelligently and with a lot of substance. Lately, she's been writing with multiple story-lines and sometimes this really doesn't work. I just finished The Brightest Star in the Sky, and while it's not one of my favorites, I think it may be one of her most accessible books. There's a touch of magic to the story, something that usually has me throwing a book across the room with some force, but in Keyes' hands it was well handled. She can do charming without making things sugary or fey.

A spirit has come to 66 Star Street, in the middle of Dublin, a house made over into four apartments. It has a job to do, although what that job is remains unclear. We learn about the residents as the spirit spies on them, from the career woman on the top floor, who has finally realized her boyfriend's limitations to the brash, prickly taxi driver to the mentally disturbed dog on the second floor, the residents are all interesting without veering over into whimsy. There's a bit of to and fro-ing as the spirit discovers their pasts even as they move forward with their lives.

I read Briar Rose because there was a group read of the book here. It's not my usual type of book; I'm not very good with magical elements or fairy tales, despite having loved them as a child. I'm all cynical now.

Briar Rose tells a story of the holocaust, wrapped in a fairy tale. Becca's grandmother used to tell her and her sisters the story of Briar Rose, or The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. When her Grandmother dies she leaves behind a box of items; a signet ring, some pictures and documents, but no stories about her past. Becca, who works as a journalist at a small alternative newspaper, determines to discover her Grandmother's story, a task that takes her into Poland and a truly wrenching tale. The sad tale, however, is only coincidentally her Grandmother's.

Reading anything about the camps is almost unbearable. Yolen does a good job of avoiding softening what happened while still keeping us from despair. This book is aimed at a young adult adult audience and I think Yolen does a good job.

I had to read another book by Megan Abbott as soon as I'd finished Queenpin, so I picked up a copy of her new novel, Bury Me Deep. This book is loosely based on an actual double murder that took place in Phoenix, Arizona in 1932 in which two bodies are discovered dismembered in trunks in storage at a Los Angeles train station. Abbott takes the bare bones of the story and the setting and creates a vivid, fast-paced novel in which a good wife, left in Phoenix when her husband takes a job in Mexico, falls in with loose women and powerful men. She's seduced and tricked, but she's a willing victim who is not entirely without inner resources. Abbott creates a vivid picture of a southwestern boom town during the depression and characters who are multi-dimensional.

I've had really good luck with the Early Reviewers books I've been fortunate enough to get. So far, only two have been duds and in each case I would have picked up the books elsewhere -- one being by a formerly favorite author and the other being literary fiction set in Paris. So this one is my third lemon. Not bad, and it was readable, but it was billed as "suspense meets literary fiction", which it wasn't. So here's the review I wrote for The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard, in which I was as nice as I could be, but this was a run of the mill mystery novel of the kind you'd pick up in an airport when you were stuck with time to kill and no book at hand.

Jody's parents were murdered when she was three. Twenty-three years later she's a teacher living in the house her father died in, when she hears that the man who went to prison for the murders has had his conviction overturned and will be released pending a new trial. Pickard then returns to 1986 and tells the story leading up to the killings before returning to Jody and her quest to discover why people in her small town think the wrong man was sent to prison. There is a bit of a romance here and quite a bit of atmosphere. Life in a dying town in Western Kansas is vividly described.

Pickard writes ably enough. The people in the book sometimes felt as though they had been pulled from a collection of stock characters but the location was a living, breathing entity. The story had a lot of potential, but in the end it never strayed from its comfortable path, making it an excellent choice for a vacation read.

I don't think that I've ever read a book that has made me so aware about how little I know as The Angel of Grozny. I'm a bit of a news junkie, so I'd read whatever showed up in the papers about Chechnya, but that didn't even touch what is going on now and what has happened in Chechnya's bloody past. For example, did you know that Stalin deported the whole damn country to Khazakhstan? A half million mountain people were sent to live on the plains of Khazakhstan with no means of support. Twenty-five percent died on the journey or in the first few months.

Seierstad wrote The Bookseller of Kabul, in which she lived with a family in Afghanistan. The Angel of Grozny is much more far-reaching in scope. She first went to Chechnya during the first Chechen war soon after she'd gotten a job working for a Norwegian newspaper as the correspondent for Russia, based entirely on her knowledge of Russian. She talked herself onto a Russian military plane and was dropped off at the Grozny airport. She chose to trust people and, in turn, random people invited her into their homes and told their stories.

Seierstad must be an easy person to talk to. She speaks with everyone from the leader of Chechnya to orphaned children, disabled Russian veterans and a man who killed his sister in an honor killing. This was not an easy book to read; the violence in Chechnya has no easy solutions, nor even difficult ones. Were the Russians to leave, civil war would erupt, the Chechens themselves divided between traditional Muslims and the more extreme Wahabists, as well as divisions along tribal lines.

Wow, that sounds like an amazing book. I'll have to check it out.

OK, it's been a week since I've been here. You already talked me into Queenpin and Bookseller of Kabul, but now you're making Bury Me Deep and Angel of Grozny sound too good to miss, too. Although AoG may be more than I can handle once I actually get it in my hands - will have to wait and see.

I'd noticed The Scent of Rain and Lightning on the forthcoming books list at the library and thought it sounded interesting so I added it to my wishlist. Then, just a day or two later, was notified that I had won it from the ER program and was pretty excited. Now I see that you were underwhelmed, so I'll really have to push myself to pick it up and read. Please tell me that it at least reads quickly...

I would really like to hear what you think of it, since I respect your opinion. Maybe it's great and I was just cranky at the time. Don't worry too much--it's a fast read.

#204 I won't worry too much about it - I'll be reading it regardless, since it's from the ER program. I suspect that your analysis will turn out to be correct - not bad but not as good as it could have been. Glad to hear that the place was well-done, though, since the reason that Nancy Pickard first came to my attention was for her settings in Kansas.

I don't usually like audiobooks very much. I listen to them sometimes when I'm driving but my attention wanders and then I have to rewind and it's a big pain. Besides, I'd usually sing along loudly and badly in the only place where people won't grab at their ears in agony.

But the exception has been To Kill a Mockingbird, read by Sissy Spacek. She has the perfect voice for this book and I found myself getting new things out of a book I've read dozens of times. I highly recommend this unabridged audiobook.

Die a Little is the third book I've read by Megan Abbott in a very short span of time. She's just very good at writing hard-boiled novels in the style of Ellroy or Chandler, but with strong female protagonists.

This one follows the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher who has lived happily with her policeman brother in a small house in Pasadena in the 1950s. Then her brother meets and marries Alice, a vivacious woman with a past. Alice pulls them both into a life of parties and fun, but Lora discovers a dark edge to things and can't help delving into the very things that may well wreck her brother's chance at happiness.

I just added Die a Little to my library earlier this week. Found it in a local charity shop. Good to hear it's up to scratch with her other books as I'll be using it as a taster of Megan Abbott's work to see if I like it. When I get around to reading it, that is.

I got Queenpin in the mail this week (cuz you talked it up), and I'll be starting it as soon as I finish this other mystery I'm reading, The Snow Garden by Christopher Rice. I can hardly wait! I love the cover.

And as for Kate: she is suffering, but how can he protect her from it, how can he even soothe her when he himself is misery's messenger? The unmentionable truth is that he has moved on. No. Worse. He has moved up. He has entered a higher plane of feeling, a higher plane of devotion, and a higher plane of pleasure. How can he make Kate understand this? He is not only leaving her, he is leaving himself, leaving everything familiar behind, he is slipping over the border with only the clothes on his back.

A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer concerns Daniel, a lawyer in a small town a hundred miles north of New York city, who meets and grows infatuated with Iris, the mother of his step-daughter's best friend. She's the only black woman in town and Daniel is fascinated by her. His wife, Kate, knows he's interested in Iris, but trusts him. Iris's husband is too involved in his own life to notice anything.

A Ship Made of Paper tells the story of an affair, how Daniel is willing to throw away everything to be with Iris. It's also a story about race, how we haven't come quite as far as we think we have. Set against the backdrop of the O.J. Simpson trial, Spencer shows how different people framed the story in completely different ways and how those differences fell almost entirely along color lines.

The book is very well-written and I can see why it was a contender for the National Book Award, but it isn't a comfortable read. How does a person justify hurting the people they love?

"You know, Kate says, pouring herself more wine, less judiciously this time, "people think that love is what's best in each of us, our capacity to love, our need for love. They think love is like God, and they worship their own feelings of love, which is really just narcissism masquerading as spirituality. You understand? If we say that God is love, then we can say that love is God, and that gives us the right to all these chaotic, needy, lusting, insane feelings inside of ourselves. We can call it love, and from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump to calling it God. But here's a thought. What if God isn't love? And love isn't God? What if all those emotions we call love turn out to be what's really worst in us, what is it's all the firings of the foulest, most primitive part of the back brain, what if it's just as savage and selfish as rage or greed or lust?"

On the list it goes. You are not helping my book budget at all.

I agree, that sounds like a must-buy.

I just finished Wild Swans by Jung Chang, which is a memoir of the author, her mother and her grandmother combined with a history of China from just before the Japanese invasion to just after Mao's death. It was a substantial book and very, very good. Chang intersperses personal history and events with a clearly written account of the events going on in China at the time. I can now, for example, differentiate between The Great Leap Forward and The Cultural Revolution. Without the history, the personal story would have been hard to follow, and without the memoir, the history might have been hard going. The combination was inspired and impossible to put down.

We read Wild Swans a few years ago and also enjoyed it. Bruce has recommended it to several people. I liked it becuase I have never done any reading on China and am pretty ignorant on that part of the world, so it helped broaden my world very so to speak. I usually stick to Elizabethan England or Islamic studies.

DS

(Bruce's evil twin :-)

I just read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I'm not going to review it since there are well over 250 reviews up on LT. I loved this book. Really loved it. It's set up as a series of short stories, some of which have Olive as a main character and some in which she is mentioned only in passing. All of the stories hold up well on their own; together they paint a portrait of a complex, prickly woman.

I did look for the negative reviews and I did agree with most of them; this book is not overly cheerful, Olive is not always kind (although she sometimes shows great understanding and empathy) and the characters' lives are not all smoothed out at the end of the book. I think these things made for a better book, but if you need tidy resolutions, you may want to skip this one.

In a year of, so far, great books, Olive Kitteridge is a stand out.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett, was another excellent book. I'm not going to review it, since there are currently 261 reviews already up on LT. It was really good and deserves being long-listed for the Orange Prize (which celebrates fiction written by women), although I don't think it will win.

I'd managed to have never heard of Olive Kitteridge, but really like the sound of it. I tend to enjoy that kind of polyphonic storytelling a lot. Thanks!

A lot of good reading going on here. Wild Swan is at the top of my tbr pile--glad to hear another positive review of it. Loved The Help and want to read it again.

Great comments about Olive Kitteridge. I may have to read it -- I keep eying it on the shelves and musing about it. I have no problem with unsympathetic "heroes" -- hey, most people are unsympathetic individuals when seen through the eyes of some others in the world, and a perfectly amiable hero/heroine is unrealistic, IMO. I don't need to like someone to empathize with them, and it sounds as if this falls into that category. I've already got The Help on my 1010 challenge list, and fully expect to read it even though I've got it there as a "bonus book".

"Just because something bad happened to her once doesn't mean it's happened again," Louise said to Reggie.
"No," Reggie said. "You're wrong. Just because something bad happened to her once doesn't mean it won't happen again. Believe me, bad things happen to me all the time."
"Me too," said Jackson.

I couldn't wait and ended up devouring When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. It's the third book she's written that features ex-private detective Jackson Brodie. If you've read the first two, I can only say that this one is just as complicated and well-done as the others. If you haven't, then I highly recommend Case Histories. They don't need to be read in order, but it does enhance the story to know the backgrounds of a few of the characters. A great strength of Atkinson's is that her characters, from the main characters to the smallest walk-on bits, all have lives of their own, which interfere with the main story at every turn.

Ah, I am anxiously awaiting When Will There Be Good News. Whatever I am reading will be dropped the day it arrives. What a great writer!

This one will go on my list too!

I read Doomsday Book a long time ago and loved it, and so I jumped on Blackout by Connie Willis when I saw it at the library. It takes place five years after the events of Doomsday Book. Time travel has been discovered and by the time the book begins history students are using it non-stop. So much so that scheduling is becoming a nightmare and historians are having their trips postponed or rearranged. Four history students go back to WWII era England, to different times and places, during this time and the book follows their experiences.

The time-travel issues the book raises are fascinating, but the real strength of this novel is its depiction of England, and especially London, at war. The day-to-day chores of getting to work or contacting someone are immensely different in a world where tube lines are closed and roads are impassable because of bombing damage.

This was a hard book to put down. My only complaint is that when I turned breathlessly to the last page, I found that this is a two-parter, the second book coming out in the Fall.

Hmm... I was one of the few people that liked, but didn't love, Olive Kitteridge. I did love Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson though, and keep meaning to move the Case Histories series higher up the tbr pile. Meanwhile I'll have to add Briar Rose and The Angel of Grozny to the wishlist.

Loved The Help too, by the way.

Phew, I finally found and caught up with this thread! Some great-looking books here...I was glad to see your review of Blackout since I love Connie Willis but hate cliffhanger endings! Sounds like I should wait until the fall to check this one out!

This seems a good place to end this thread and begin a new, faster one. Please proceed in an orderly fashion over to http://www.librarything.com/topic/89072&newpost=1#top