RidgewayGirl's Categorical Challenge, Part Two

My thread's grown unwieldy, so I'm abandoning it for this one.

One for the Old World
Books set in Europe

1. The Wrong Kind of Blood by Declan Hughes (Dublin, Ireland)
2. A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks (London, England)
3. A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre (Glasgow, Scotland)
4. The Water's Edge by Karin Fossum (Norway)
5. When Gods Die by C.S. Harris (London, England)
6. Haunted Ground by Erin Hart (Co. Galway, Ireland)
7. Stettin Station by David Downing (Berlin, Germany)
8. Faithful Place by Tana French (Dublin, Ireland)
9. Alice's Secret Garden by Rebecca Campbell
10. The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg

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. Invisible Boy by Cornelia Read (Queens, New York)
5. The Boys is the Trees by swanmary::Mary Swan (Ontario, Canada)
6. 9113392::Shadow Tag by erdrichlouise::Louise Erdrich (Minnesota, USA)
7. 9307213::Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle (various locations in the US)
8. The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan (Niagara Falls, Ontario)
9. The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano (Maryland and New Jersey)
10. The Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper (Ross River, Yukon)

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 changjung::Jung Chang
6. Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith
7. Death on the Barrens by George James Grinnell
8. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young
9. Lost at Sea by Patrick Dillon
10. Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

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)
5. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Japan)
6. Teatime for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McColl Smith (Botswana)
7. The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama (India)
8. The Quarry by Damon Galgut (South Africa)
9. Dark Summit by Nick Heil (Tibet and Nepal)
10. The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby (Shanghai)

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
8. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
9. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster
10. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

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. 3782972::Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Winner -- Pulitzer Prize)
4. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (Renaudot -- 2004)
5. Property by Valerie Martin (Winner -- Orange Prize 2003)
6. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt (Shortlisted -- Booker Prize -- 2009)
7. March by Geraldine Brooks (Winner -- Pulitzer Prize -- 2006)
8. Purge by Sofi Oksanen (Winner -- Finlandia Literary Award)
9. Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman (shortlisted -- Man Booker Prize -- 2009)
10. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Winner -- Man Booker Prize -- 2009)

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
5. Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham
6. Elegy for April by Benjamin Black
7. Still Midnight by Denise Mina
8. Black Fly Season by Giles Blunt
9. Arctic Chill by Ardaldur Indridason
10. The Delicate Storm by Giles Blunt

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
4. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
5. Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules by sedarisdavidsedarisa::David
Sedaris
6. So Long at the Fair by Christina Schwarz
7. The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
8. The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber
9. Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman
10. To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman

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

1. The Profiler by Pat Brown
2. Queenpin by Megan Abbott
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. Blackout by Connie Willis
5. Icefields by Thomas Wharton
6. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
7. The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
8. Dogtown by Stefan Bechtel
9. Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue
10. The Wave by Susan Casey

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)
6. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (Atwood in April Group Read)
7. Based Upon Availability by Alix Strauss (Early Reviewers book)
8. Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton (Early Reviewers book)
9. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (Group Read)
10. The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker (Early Reviewers book)

Just dropped by to star the new thread!

After waiting forever (at least 5 seconds) for the old thread to load, I had to laugh when I saw that the only new post was a link over here!

Okay, I was orderly about moving over here.

Looks like you're doing great on this challenge, so far.

Aye, aye, cap'n. Followed instructions, will now proceed to star this thread.

Okalee dokalee neighborino.

"You like reading, don't you?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Why?"
"Dunno. I s'pose it's an escape from the real world."
"But surely it's just the opposite," said Gabriel. "Books explain the real world. They bring you close to it in a way you could never manage in the course of the day."
"How do you mean?"
"People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all."

It took me awhile to get through Sebastian Faulks's A Week in December, but I think the fault was mostly my own. I was in the mood for something emotionally resonant, like Birdsong, Charlotte Gray or On Green Dolphin Street, but A Week in December is a much colder book (Ha! See what I did there?). It's a satire of modern life, well done, but it does carry more than a whiff of old man crankiness. Is it possible to write a social satire with heart? Faulks does give a half-hearted try at the end; he's too good a writer to make every single one of his numerous story-arcs end in despair. And he writes fantastically well, so that his biting jabs at what is presented as the emptiness of modern life all hit their targets with wit and accuracy.

Set in London in 2007, the book follows a large cast of characters through their daily lives. There's a soulless investment banker plotting a big trade and a hopeful Jihadist. Would you like to guess which is the bad guy? There's also a bitter book critic, a disaffected young person, and an up and coming Polish football player, among many others, allowing Faulks to lampoon pretty much every facet of modern British society. The book warms up a bit in the final third, as though Faulks had, in the end, found it impossible to avoid all sympathy for his characters and the plot does heat up, but writing about an entirely irredeemable character in a three dimensional way does ultimately prove beyond even Sebastian Faulks considerable skills.

Just dropping by to say how much I look forward to your reviews, and to star your new thread.

I think you enjoyed the new Faulks book more than I did, alas. I found a bit too cluttered and quasi-Dickensian to click, and sometimes the satire was a tad-heavy handed. Your point about his unwillingness to have all his stories end in despair was very, very on point -- but I did find myself wondering. It's possible to have warmth and sympathy/empathy, and yet still not have all the ends so nicely tied up! But it's still worth reading, if only for the many jabs at well known London personalities and institutions -- oodles of inside jokes and lots of satire (eg The Toad/Private Eye). But where is the Faulks of Birdsong? Or am I just being a curmudgeon??

I think it's Sebastian Faulks who's the curmudgeon. Much of the satire was mean-spirited, with that "kids today" kind of whine. He's much too young and brilliant to descend into the things used to be better-type rant.

After your glowing review I borrowed Olive Kitteridge from the library. Excellent recommendation. Thank you.

Another clever review, another starred thread!

(I was a bit disorderly getting over here. Sorry.)

I found your thread! Now it's starred and I too am getting Olive Kitteridge from the library based on your recommendation.

I will probably read it after I finish devouring the two Megan Abbott books that I have left to read Bury Me Deep and The Song is You.

Cornelia Read's first book, The Field of Darkness, told the story of Madeline Dare, failed debutante, now living with her husband in Syracuse, New York, who stumbles onto an old, unsolved murder in which a relative is mentioned and decides to solve it herself. It reads like a grown-up Nancy Drew mystery, with the heroine grasping for clues, stumbling into dangerous situations she doesn't understand and discovering too late that not everything has a happy ending.

In the sequel, The Crazy School, she and Dean have moved out to a small town where she takes a teaching job at a facility for delinquent youths. She wants to be the cool teacher; she's younger than the other faculty members and she shares cigarettes and trades profanities with her students. But it's unclear whether she's getting through to the kids or is being manipulated by one of them.

What makes Madeline Dare such a good protagonist is that she makes mistakes and misses stuff, but has a good heart. She also seems like she'd be fun to hang out with. She loses some of that approachability in Read's newest novel, Invisible Boy. Madeline's traded her out-spoken nature for brashness and one-up-manship. And since she has the author on her side, she gets all the zingers while her opposition stutters impotently. The story follows Madeline, now living in NYC, as she finds the skeleton of a child in an abandoned cemetery she's helping to clean up. The murdered child is quickly identified, as are the perpetrators. We then follow Madeline as she interacts with her family and old friends, as well as following the case of the little boy as it grinds its way slowly through the criminal justice system.

Invisible Boy is a reasonably good read, I just long for the return of the real Madeline Dare.

Interesting that the character Madealine Dare is living in a different town for each book. I always marvel that the main characters of murder mysteries live in such small towns and still have plenty of murders to solve. :-)

DS

(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Yes. I'd never want to go to Joan Hess's Maggody.

That's what he called himself once, the summer he left for the war, and I'd laughed. Glaciologist. I'd never heard the word before. I'd never considered there might be others like him, scientists who studied only glaciers. I thought he was the one man on earth who bothered that much with them, that this science was his alone, that he had invented it. Arcturology. The science of being distant, and receding a little every year.

Icefields by Thomas Wharton takes place during the first two decades of the last century in what was to become Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. Byrne, a doctor, was exploring the region when he falls into into a crevasse on the Arcturus glacier. In the time it takes his group to notice his absence and haul him out, he sees something in the ice; a pale figure with huge wings. The image haunts him, even as he is rescued, revived and returned to London. Years later he is drawn back to the glacier and the book chronicles his life studying the ice and the other people who live for awhile at the hot springs hotel built at its foot. Evocative, poetic and strange, this is one of the most interesting books I've read this year.

I will admit to a bias; I spent almost every childhood holiday in the area and have been up on the Athabasca glacier. Every place name was resonant with memory. It's a spectacularly beautiful, fragile area and Wharton's descriptions of the first residents of the region and the conditions under which they lived, a peculiar mixture of Victorian gentility and wilderness was fascinating. Alongside Byrne, Icefields tells the story of a poet come west to be a guide, a servant girl who takes charge of the running of a hotel and develops a relationship of sorts with Byrne, an intrepid female explorer and a tracker turned entrepreneur who sees opportunity in the coming railway.

Amazing. I would have never given Icefields a second thought, but after this, I can't live without it!

>27 RidgewayGirl: I have Thomas Whatton's book The Logogryph: A Bibliography Of Imaginary Books on my Amazon wishlist. I couldn't resist it becuase of the name.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

You're the second person to mention that book to me. Incidentally, the other person said it's a fantastic book.

A little later than planned, I joined the Atwood in April Group Read with Oryx and Crake. I've had this book for awhile, but I tend not to read distopian novels. It's just so hopeless and depressing. But I'm glad I got going on this one. It's excellent. Atwood's created a complex and interesting world not that far removed from where we are now. I'm going to read The Year of the Flood, which Atwood has set in the same horrific world, but not for awhile. I have to recover from Oryx and Crake first.

The funny thing about work itself, it was so bearable. The dreariest task was perfectly bearable. It presented challenges to overcome, the distraction provided by a sense of urgency, and the satisfaction of a task's completion - on any given day, those things made work utterly, even harmoniously bearable. What we bitched about, what we couldn't let lie, what drove us to distraction and consumed us with blind fury, was this person or that who rankled and bugged and offended angels in heaven, who wore their clothes all wrong and foisted upon us their unsufferable features, who deserved from a just god nothing but scorn because they were insipid, unpoetic, mercilessly enduring, and lost to the grand gesture. And maybe so, yes, maybe so. But as we stood there, we had a hard time recalling the specific details, because everyone seemed so agreeable.

Joshua Ferris wrote Then We Came to the End in the first person plural, an interesting conceit that should have been exhausted by the end of the first chapter. He pulls it off, though, telling the story of a Chicago advertising firm undergoing an endless series of lay-offs from the point of view of its employees. It does take a long section in the middle of the book in which he uses the more traditional third person to find the heart of the novel, but it's an achievement all the same.

@32 Sounds very interesting! Definitely looking that one up!

Now it begins, the sorting and testing of words. Remember that words are not symbols of other words. There are words which, when tinkered with, become honest representatives of the cresting blood, the fine living net of nerves. Define rain. Or even joy. It can be done.

So, short stories. I do like them, but have trouble reading several by one author as they end up feeling like Faberge eggs. You know, you see one and it's exquisite. And then you see the next one and, hey, it's quite nice too, but by the third or fourth, any elements of surprise are gone and after a half dozen I'm a little bored and looking forward to the cafe. An anthology of some sort is a different matter. Each author spins their perfect little tale and then is finished. I don't become jaded with a dozen instances in a row of subdued disappointment or witty dialogue, but get to be astonished all over again with the next story.

Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories gathered by David Sedaris. There is the expected Dorothy Parker (Song of the Shirt, 1941), but there's also Richard Yates (Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired), Joyce Carol Oates (The Girl with the Blackened Eye) and Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies). Sedaris favors stories with emotional resonance over clever wordplay, and the best two stories in the book were amazing; Revelation by Flannery O'Connor and Cosmopolitan by Akhil Sharma.

I loved rediscovering how a short story can compress all the emotion and heft of a novel into a dozen or so pages. I think I may start reading from all those Collected Stories of I have sitting around, but one at a time, with a few months between each story so that I can be newly astonished with each one.

@34 :: Wow, I'm not usually a big fan of short stories, but this book sounds amazing! "Revelation" is one of my favorite O'Connor stories, too -- what an interesting-sounding collection!

Yes, I can't think of many places where Joyce Carol Oates could co-exist so near Katherine Mansfield.

I liked the idea of being able to read a writer's (or anybody's) favorite short stories. I've seen lists of books that an author felt influenced their writing, but this felt more intimate than that.

Zadie Smith is a British writer who achieved great fame with her first novel, White Teeth. The book was reasonably good, but the hype concentrated on the fact that it had been written by a young, beautiful black woman who had grown up on a council estate in Willesden. Her second novel did not do well, and Smith gave a few bitter interviews and then disappeared. She spent that time back in her academic comfort zone (she has a degree from Cambridge) and writing things like movie reviews and magazine articles about her family. She has since brought out another book, On Beauty, which was successful on its own merits and now she has had a book of essays published, called Changing My Mind.

Changing My Mind was a very uneven read, and I think she might have been better served by waiting a few years, until there was a better selection of material to chose from. Many of the essays, the ones that discuss authors and books or the ones that talk about her family are amazing. Then there are a few moderately interesting pieces about Liberia and her own writing methods that are worth reading, but not exciting and then there are the bits from when she reviewed movies for a newspaper. Essays about movies, or Hollywood, can be riveting, but Smith has too sharp a mind and, while she seems to like film, isn't a real fan or expert. So this section consists of describing the plots of various movies and there's a sense that she's looking down on the whole endeavor.

The essays on literature, however, are fantastic. She has the ability to delve deeply into a topic without talking down to her audience or making it too difficult to understand. I did have to pay attention, especially to the essay on David Foster Wallace, but I was never lost. She discusses Their Eyes Were Watching God, Middlemarch, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Kafka, Nabokov, E.M. Forster and Barthes and each essay was a revelation (to me, at least).

The David Sedaris is going on my list. Sounds like a really good collection.

I liked White teeth, but was, as you imply, pretty underwhelmed by the Autograph man. Haven't been too tempted by Smith since, but you just sparked an interest in her essays. Thanks!

Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones doesn't fit into my challenge at all, but I thought that I would mention that it's a very good, very imaginative book. I've been reading it to the children, a chapter at a time, and they have both enjoyed it and been disappointed each night when I closed the book.

I've been wanting to read Howl myself. I'm glad you give it good marks!

Icefields sounds fascinating and I'm adding it to my list. I'm considering the Sedaris short story collection, too, even though I don't usually care for short stories. Interesting reading you're doing, as always.

The Boys in the Trees is a beautiful little melancholic book about the way a terrible event - a man kills his family one warm afternoon - sets out ripples into a community (a town in Ontario, Canada in the late 1880s) that affect people for decades. The book is so sorrowful and full of the ways we fail to make connections with those we are most closely associated with and about failing despite one's best efforts.

The book tells the story from multiple points of view, so that you get to know one person and then are seeing them from the outside, by someone you saw differently a few pages ago. It's dizzying, but it ultimately provides such clear portraits.

#43 So, did you like it? It sounds intriguing and I don't know why I'm pretending to wait and carefully consider whether to add it to the wishlist.

I liked it enormously. It just left me feeling bruised. I think that the next time I encounter a book like that, I'll save it for the right moment, like while on a beach vacation. The author's interview in the back was actually helpful--Swan stated that she made parts of the book about as happy as she was able to. Her writing style does make one very aware of the sorrow hidden at the heart of even the happiest moments. She makes her characters into complete, complex individuals in a few brief paragraphs, which is something I love. Don't you hate reading a book and realizing that you don't know even the main character that well at the end of the book?

#45 You've just made the book sound even better. I'm glad I didn't wait to add it to the wishlist!

Don't you hate reading a book and realizing that you don't know even the main character that well at the end of the book? You know, this is kind of how I felt about The Scent of Rain and Lightning. I was totally blindsided by the "truth" simply because none of the characters were well-developed enough to be able to predict or anticipate what they would say or do or think.

>43 RidgewayGirl: - You've made the book sound very interesting - I've added it to my wishlist.

I've only read a few books that I felt the writing was so good that it didn't matter if the story was one I particularly liked or not - where the author, in the space of one sentence, could manage to convey loads of information or feelings. The first that comes to mind is Middlesex. I totally see why the author won a Pulitzer. Another that I thought was well written - although it's been dished a lot on some of the threads here - is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I thought the author's descriptions were excellent.

I look forward to reading this one - might even go purchase!

#37, I am in the middle of On Beauty but I find myself struggling a bit with it. I don't know exactly what it is, I don't hate the book, but I'm not flying through it either. I also have White Teeth to read also, as well as Autograph Man.

Which did you like the best?

I read White Teeth several years ago and remember enjoying it, but not loving it. I haven't read anything else until Changing My Mind, although I've enjoyed reading about her--Smith seems to attract more comments and publicity than one would expect. I do want to read On Beauty at some point, but Autograph Man really got some abysmal reviews and I don't think I like her enough to try it. I look forward to seeing what you think of On Beauty.

My Early Readers book was one of the best books I've read this year. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a historical novel of almost 500 pages and I would have been happy if the author, David Mitchell had written another 500 pages.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a rip-roaring adventure novel written so beautifully that a painful conflict ensues; the need to read faster and faster to discover what will happen next and the desire to go slowly and linger over the words.

The book starts with a dramatic and dangerous birth, moves quickly to a contentious arrest and continues in the same head-long rush. Set on the tiny Dutch trading colony island of Dejima, outside of Nagasaki, Japan at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the book tells the story of Jacob de Zoet, a young man come to gain his fortune so he can marry back home. He's a man of quiet principle, but quickly finds that it's not always easy to determine the right action to take and he makes as many enemies as friends in his first months on Dejima. I don't want to give anything away, except to say that as soon as I thought I knew what was going on and settled happily down to enjoy it, the plot would twist away in another direction. The language is exquisite, with perfect phrases like lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses or anger and self-pity are lodged in his throat like fishbones. Finally, the story is set in such a beautifully rich time and place, Mitchell clearly has researched extensively, but the knowledge feels natural. I was disappointed to turn the final page and find that the book has ended.

>50 RidgewayGirl: Yours is the 2nd ER review, that I've seen, praising this book. Because I thought Cloud Atlas was so outstanding, I'm already a fan of David Mitchell. I think Jacob de Zoet is due to be released soon, and I can't wait to get my hands on it!

It's very different, in that this is a straight forward historical novel. But beautifully written and I agree with the reviewer who thought it would make the Booker long-list at the very least.

I am always in the market for a good historical novel so of course, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet has gone on my wishlist. Thanks for the heads up.

On the list! Thanks!

>52 RidgewayGirl: Mitchell's versatility and outstanding writing ability in Cloud Atlas were what impressed me the most. I'm of the opinion that truly talented authors don't just find a workable formula and keep rewriting the same book (or even the same kind of book). In any case, I love historical fiction.

It took me a week to read Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich. It's a short book, but the subject matter had me taking long breaks and reading only a few pages at a time.

Irene hasn't felt the marriage was working since before the birth of their youngest son, Gil is hoping that if he ignores things and gives everybody really good presents and makes nice dinners then everything will revert to normal. Irene has been steadily drinking instead of making concrete plans to leave and Gil wants things to improve, but not enough to control his hair-trigger temper that has him lashing out, both verbally and physically, at any family member who displeases him. All three children are unhappy.

It's at this point that Irene discovers that Gil has been reading her diary and she determines to use that to manipulate him into agreeing to a divorce. She also begins a second, secret diary, which she keeps in a safety deposit box at a bank.

This is a hard book to read. Unlike the scenarios set out in popular fiction, no one gets to be the good guy. And the three children are complex, interesting people. In the end, the book does feel fragmented, as though the author, in the end, couldn't continue to deal with the subject matter and so let the book go early.

As a breather from the above book, I read A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre. This is a profane, darkly humorous story about a double murder that takes place near a small Scottish town just outside of Glasgow, in which the characters have known each other since kindergarten. The primary school they attend is a rough Catholic one with an angry headmaster, or heid, who likes to single out students as bawd iggs. (A glossary is included for those who need it.) The story goes back and forth between the investigation and current lives of the characters and their schooldays beginning with their first day and on through a final dance. The point of view shifts from person to person. This book was enormously fun, it was funny, dark and had a real feel for the world children grow up in and their tremendous fragility and resilience.

I'll be looking for more books by this author.

Great review! I'll look for that one.

Glad you like your first Brookmyre. He's rapidly become one of my favourite authors over the last year or so. There's a couple of series which need to be read in order to be more fully enjoyed along with a couple-of stand-alones like that one.

A Brookmyre I haven't read! Thank you RidgewayGirl. I've just reserved it at the library.

Love his titles, starting with A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away.

I love Quite Ugly One Morning. I haven't actually 'read' it, I have the audio book read by David Tennant. Bruce & I have listened to it multiple times, it is soo funny even after like the 7th time! Zen & I listened to it while we drove to Milwaukee this past weekend. She loved it too.

DS

(Bruce's evil twin :-))

Not long into Based Upon Availability by Alix Strauss the main character, Morgan, a manager at a ritzy Manhattan hotel, declares that she is "a good girl...loyal and honest," a statement that would have been easier to believe had she not already made a habit of stealing items, primarily prescription medication and sex toys, from guests' rooms, coerced a subordinate into having sex with her and lied to her boyfriend. Morgan is self-involved, full of self-pity and so fragile that a careless remark can send her into a tailspin.

In the second half of the book, the story follows several different women whose lives intersected in some way with Morgan's. It is interesting to see small events seen from another angle, but really, all these women are really Morgan. There's an aging rock star version of Morgan, a frowsy, OCD version, a Morgan with a living sister, etc...each as desperate to be taken care of as the one before. Which may be why the book lost me early on; not one of these characters is the slightest bit resilient and each sees a husband to support her, or a baby or the chance to be a little girl again, as what she needs to be happy. Despite their good careers and financial stability, despite the drug use and the endless smoking, these girls are all the anti-feminist ideal.

Based Upon Availability is written well enough, but there were coincidences and actions that strained credibility. I usually favor unlikeable protagonists, but there was no forward motion in their emotional lives and many of the vignettes ended abruptly and without resolution.

Ooo yeah, I want the Brookmyre, and am interested in a few others you've mentioned. You are such a bad influence.

The Water's Edge by Karin Fossum is one of a series of police procedurals featuring Sejer, a world-weary yet compassionate detective. If that sounds like the protagonist of many a mystery novel, it is, but the series is well done, and the Norwegian setting is interesting. In this installment, a boy's sexually abused body is found in the woods near a lake by a married couple. The wife is unhappy with her partner's reaction to their find; he takes pictures of the corpse on his cell phone and discusses calling the tabloids.

Sejer and his younger partner Skarre set out to find the murderer, which is not as easy as it seems. Fossum also uses the opportunity to explore Norwegian society's reactions to pedophilia and other behaviors outside the norm. This is a short book, but one that leaves plenty to think about.

I have the first of those books, Don't Look Back, pencilled in for my European Mystery Challenge. It's good to get confirmation of a decent series and setting.

The three I've read have all been very good and I will definitely read more of her books.

I got Death on the Barrens by George James Grinnell in the mail yesterday and before I quite knew what was happening, I was a few chapters in. I am fascinated by explorers, especially polar explorers, and mountain climbers, mainly because I can't understand why someone would choose to do that to themselves. The book tells the story of an ill-fated canoe trip along along a series of rivers and lakes from the northern edge of Saskatchewan to an RCMP post on Baker lake in Nunavut, near the northwest edge of Hudson's Bay, taken in 1955 by a singularly ill-prepared group of six men.

George James Grinnell was one of those six men and struggled for half a century to write the story down. It's also the story of his life and his deep dissatisfaction with the wealthy, privileged society he was born into, which was more concerned with amassing even more wealth and power than it was with improving the world. There's a history of mental instability in his family as well, and he was kicked out of Harvard at the same time that his father committed suicide. Searching for meaning, George joins the expedition, led by its oldest member, 36 year old Art Moffat, and they set out weeks later than originally planned. What's more, since their food supplies had not been delivered on time, they purchased what they could find at their departure point.

The arctic summer is short, but the group quickly lost all sense of urgency. Their leader liked to sleep in and then begin the day with a pleasant walk to watch the birds. The weather often deteriorated later in the day, so that the best traveling time was wasted. They also began to take frequent holidays from the arduous task of canoeing and going slowly on the days they did move. George, like most of his fellow adventurers, looked on Art as their spiritual guru, seeking to follow his one with nature style, and as Art lost his momentum, so did they, loitering even as they watched their food supplies dwindle. It was only at the end of August, the beginning of the arctic winter and finding themselves only halfway to their destination, that they began to hurry.

The amazing thing about their journey is that it took so many blatant errors to get them into a life-threatening situation. In the end, Art dies as a result of a culmination of those many mistakes, but the remaining men manage to reach the RCMP post. Grinnell has spent half a century trying to give meaning to Art's needless death and to understand why they dawdled when they should have hurried. The book ends up being a little self-indulgent as the author tries to convince us that Art's fatal lack of leadership ability was really spiritual maturity and that the mental fog that descended upon them that summer was really enlightenment. But he does try explain the why as well as the how and for that the author should be commended.

Wow, sounds like an intense book, but also like they were early hippies. Have you read Miracle in the Andes?

Now that you mention it, the book does kind of explain why the later hippie movement arose and why boys from affluent white families were drawn to it.

I haven't read Miracle in the Andes, but I did see the movie. They didn't eat Art, but had they done so, there probably would have been a paragraph or two on the nobility of Art's sacrifice.

Lol!
I thought you might like Miracle in the Andes because of your interest in mountain climbing- Parrado gives a good description of what it's like to climb the Andes (without any hiking gear at that). I've read Alive, which pretty much ends with the rescue of the survivors.

Queenpin arrived in the post this morning, and I read this afternoon. Started it and had to keep going. A great recommendation. Thank you.

It's great to hear that a recommendation went well! Much better than finding out how much someone hated a book they only read because I liked it.

The second book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series, When Gods Die, was as good as the first one. These are a mystery series taking place during the English Regency era, set in London and featuring a romance novel-type hero, a member of the nobility who solves crimes. Yep, they're pure escapist reading, but well written and the author is an historian, so the setting feels natural. There's a romance in there too, but one that isn't going to end in blissful wedding bells anytime soon.

In this one, the Regent is found with the body of a young woman and St. Cyr is asked to clear the Regent's name. He sets out, instead, to discover who the murderer is and along the way finds a plot to overthrow the monarchy. Fun stuff. I do have one small complaint. When Gods Die weighed in at a modest 336 pages, yet counted 64 chapters. The breaks were often jarring, unnecessary and interrupted the flow of the novel.

Hi Kay:

I was intrigued by your Norwegian crime series mentioned above and after attending yet another FOL booksale, brought home Don't Look Back and When the Devil Holds the Candle.

I am also admiring your restraint in not reading The Song is You, yet. I had no willpower lol!

In #45 you wrote, " Her writing style does make one very aware of the sorrow hidden at the heart of even the happiest moments. She makes her characters into complete, complex individuals in a few brief paragraphs, which is something I love."

I just finished Crow Lake by the same author and was struck by the same thing. There are no unnecessary words in her writing, only exactly what is needed to beautifully describe her characters and settings. It is one of my favorites this year so far, and I look forward to The Boys in the Trees.

I'm glad to hear the St. Cyr series is worthy. I've had it on my radar for awhile and now I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks!

I thought all your books ended up on my wishlist, but somehow I missed this series, I've added the first book and am looking forward to it!

KAzevedo, Crow Lake is on my TBR pile. I'll move it up.

And the St. Cyr series is a lovely bit of fluff. While well researched, it's not anything substantive. I like to read something that's just fun now and again. This month has been a month for reading lighter stuff.

Scaredy Cat by Mark Billingham was the second in a series of police procedurals featuring the standard rogue loner detective and the standard wily serial killer. It was reasonably well written and plotted, although a sub-plot involving the sole female constable on the team was a bit overdone. Still, I'll keep an eye out for the next installment.

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart is a mystery novel featuring a forensic doctor and an archaeologist who are summoned to a small town on Lough Derg on the eastern edge of Galway when the head of a young woman is found, preserved in a peat bog. At the same time, they become involved in the story of the disappearance a few years earlier of a woman and her young son.

As far a mysteries go, this one is fairly predictable and the culprit even confesses extensively when caught, using the phrase "but that meddling pair ruined everything", which made me wonder where Scooby was. The ending was drawn out, with each earlier clue explained. The story of the bog woman was also much to neatly handled to feel authentic.

But the setting was beautifully described and the author has a real ear for the cadences of Irish speech. She describes the claustrophobic world of an isolated Irish village, the community of Irish musicians and the landscape gorgeously.

The feeling that Scoob and Shaggy could solve this mystery makes it worth the read. Great review!

So Long at the Fair has been sitting on my TBR pile for a year and a half. I'm trying to read some of these older books, unfairly passed over in favor of whatever's newest.

It all takes place on a Saturday in early summer in which a man, upset that his wife has to cancel their plans to go to a summer festival, takes the woman he's having an affair with instead. The story moves back and forth in time, describing bits of both of his relationships and also going back and describing events that took place between his parents and his wife's parents in 1963. It's a slender book, and with a large cast of characters, it falls short of illuminating any of the characters or their motivations. The earlier story, in particular, is so sketchy that it could have been omitted entirely. The premise is an interesting one; explaining infidelity, exploring the nature of marriage, but its brevity works against it since the book ends abruptly and the characters remain vague outlines. Schwartz can write well and until I realized that there were only a few dozen pages left, I thought she was on the track of something meaningful.

I may read her previous book, Drowning Ruth, at some point as I think it may be a much better book.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young is a very funny book about an English journalist who gets a short contract to work for Vanity Fair and heads off to conquer New York. To his dismay, he finds that he is not the success he expected to be. The publishing worlds of New York and London are very different animals and Young describes the cutthroat, superficial world of New York, in which journalists have traded their integrity and independence for access with an ironic eye. This would all feel mean-spirited except that Young aims the most cutting barbs at himself. I enjoyed this book, which describes people like Candace Bushnell, Graydon Carter and Tina Brown, but thought it was a bit long.

Strangely enough, partway through the book I heard a BBC Radio 4 program in which Toby Young took part. The announcer told us that he "had recently come out as a capital C Conservative." I heard the first half of the sentence and thought well, that puts an entirely new slant on things, but was disappointed when the sentence was completed, although what else would a son of privilege become?

I'm enjoying your reviews. Will have to put some of these on my wishlist.

Wasn't that a movie starring Simon Pegg?

Yes, but I didn't see it. I'll have to now though.

Hi Kay,

Nice to drop back in on your thread! I've been MIA for a while (again). Having a hard time keeping up with reading, writing, blogging AND LTing, but I'm doing my best - lol!

I have The Boys in the Trees, and based on your review will be moving it higher up the tbr.

I loved How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young and the sequel (name escapes me). The movie was funny as well but the book(s) had me rolling on the floor.

I've decided that for June, I would concentrate on only reading longer books. I'm tired of one and two night stands and am ready for a relationship.

Suite Francaise was fantastic. While I got the book back when it first came out in English, it languished unread until now. Irene Nemirovsky's own story is so tragic, that of a Russian Jew living through the occupation of France, writing during her last years under enormous pressure and managing to write about the same turbulent time she was experiencing means that the quality of the book is almost beside the point, its very existence makes it important.

And yet, the book is amazing. It is written in two parts (she had planned for five sections), the first telling of the flood of people fleeing Paris ahead of the German Army and the second is set in a village occupied by the Germans. Every scene is pitch perfect and the threads joining the two sections are delicate, but well placed.

I've had that one on the shelf for about a month. Glad you liked it.

I loved Suite Francaise also. June is the month for chunksters huh? It almost makes me want to finish Anna Karenina or A Confederacy of Dunces which have had bookmarks in them for a few months now.

87 - That made me smile!

I had Suite Francaise on my list too, but I never got around to it. I am still hoping to read it, but I am about overwhelmed with WWII books. I will have to come back to it later.

#87 - Sooooo..... I take it short stories are just 'not on' at the moment? ;-P

I was racking my brain trying to figure out why Suite Francaise was twigging for me as I have seen it mentioned recently in other threads but one I saw you mention the author's name the light bulb went on - I had checked the book out months ago from my local library but never got around to reading it before it was due back. I think I need to place a new hold on the book......

@78 Very very funny about the meddling pair. I've often pondered if the writers aren't aware when they write a cliché like that. Early this year I had a villian snarling: Fool! I would have given you everything!

Ha! Now we need to find an amnesiac saying, "Where am I?"

At least #78 got the cliche correct. I'm reading Kittyhawk Down and Garry Disher just described an aggressive cop as "like a bull on heat."

The worst part, for me, of those badly chosen phrases is the way they pull one out of the story. Worse than a typo, because the author is at fault, but just as damaging.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters had no such problems. It was a perfectly crafted tale set in Victorian England that can best be described as Dickensian.

The story concerns Susan Trinder, daughter of an executed murderess, adopted daughter of Mrs. Sucksby, who runs a baby farm, in which she gets infants from unfortunate women and sells them on, keeping them quiet with spoonfuls of gin and her partner, a dealer in stolen goods. Susan lives among criminals, but is nevertheless protected from the dangers of Victorian London. She is drawn into a plot to help an associate marry an heiress and then defraud her of her fortune. What follows is a plot with incredible twists and turns. I read this one in breathless gulps and it did not disappoint.

Fingersmith has one of my favourite gasp moments ever. You know which one I mean.

@94 Ha! "Like a bull on a hot tin roof".

Cool, I have a copy of Fingersmith kicking around and it will count towards my BOTS challenge. Gotta love calculated, methodical reading!

The sign of a good series is that a new reader can pick up the latest one and not feel lost, while the faithful reader is not bored with long descriptions of events he has already witnessed. Stettin Station by David Downing is the third in a series of four books (so far) and I found it excellent, despite having never read the previous books.

Historical fiction, and especially stories that take place in Hitler's Europe as this one does, often fall prey to several common pitfalls. One, the protagonist understands the long-term implications of current events or predicts with startling accuracy what will happen next. Another is the cardboard Nazi. People can be nuanced and complex creatures until they join the Nazi Party and become EEEEEVIL. And, finally, the tremendously noble hero. In contemporary thrillers the protagonist can be flawed, but when it comes to WWII, the main character is often altruistic to the point of idiocy, and that the author allows them to save beautiful Jewish girls from rapacious SS Officers on a regular basis while carrying important secret documents.

Happily, Downing avoids all that. John Russell is an American of convenience, his British passport would no longer allow him to live and work in the Berlin of 1941. His connections and political sympathies lie far to the left and his only concern is getting his son, girlfriend and himself through the war and he's willing to do business with Nazis and to avoid helping the Americans to do so. He's not without principle and is trying to discover where the train loads of Jewish Berliners are going, but knowing who to trust and who is compromised is an impossible task.

Downing weaves a complex story of conflicted loyalties in a vividly rendered wartime Berlin. I'm looking forward to reading the other books in this excellent series.

#98 This does sound like a well-written book. It makes me crazy to read a sequel without reading what has come before if I can help it, so I'm putting the first book, Zoo Station, on the wishlist, and am looking forward to another great series. (Just what I need.)

ETA, thumbs up on the review!

Yeah, I can understand that. Just, authors usually improve over time and I'd rather read one of their newer offerings. I would never have followed the Rebus mysteries had I begun with the lackluster Knots and Crosses. I also enjoy ferreting out the backstories in a non-linear way. Still, now I will go backwards with the story.

>100 RidgewayGirl: My son-in-law and I tried the Ian Rankin books. We thought we should start at the beginning and both read the first 3. They were ok, but only that, and we didn't like them enough to continue. I have also seen elsewhere that they get better, but we weren't sure how many "just oks" that we'd have to go through to get to "good." Maybe we should give them another try?

Try one of the later ones--I really liked Fleshmarket Close.

I think that unless the author starts earning a gazillion dollars and no longer has the time or inclination to put their souls into their work, writers do improve over time. And writing well enough to grab new readers as well as satisfy old ones is a sign of someone worth reading.

Incidentally, once I was well and truly hooked on Rebus, I enjoyed the early books.

>102 RidgewayGirl: I agree. For a real writer, the first book(s) are usually not the best. It's interesting, though, that often the last ones aren't either -- perhaps something to do with putting "their souls into their work."

I'll mention Fleshmarket Close to my son-in-law. At the moment, we're both backed up on books we already have, but he enjoys browsing at the library and choosing books that catch his interest.

Gees! I can't figure out LT sometimes. (I'm sure it's not *my* fault!) I know that I have completely caught up on all my posted and starred threads several times in the last month alone, and, yet, your thread just popped up today at the top of my home page; and I realized that I haven't read any of your postings since April 18! How can that be? I'm so disappointed because you've been discussing books that I've read and loved. Plus, your reviews are so good, I want to read all the ones I haven't read. This is one of the best/most satisfying threads I've read this year, and I've been missing it! Waaah!

OK, I'm going to slowly go through all the books you've been discussing, so my apologies for being out of sync with your current reading.

First up: Icefields by Thomas Wharton. Well, the atheist in me will chalk up the 'person with wings' image to his fear of dying and being freezing cold, maybe even going in and out of consciousness or a dream state. Besides, I'm always seeing images in natural materials. Case in point: I see Nixon's face (very scowly as usual, and not one I want to look at early in the morning) in one plank of my oak floor in my bathroom. Hope I'm not sounding too flippant; I actually like books in which a character's faith plays a part of the story (e.g., Gilead) if it stimulates me into thinking about what has given value to my life and/or how I might want to change my life to more closely match my values. Also, because I haven't traveled much, I really enjoy well-written books about specific places, especially when they're set in a different time. It sounds like three good books in one--I'll take it!

>32 RidgewayGirl:: Yes, I'm still back there on Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. I've only read one book written in first person, plural; and that was During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase. I think I've read it three times (the last time for book group) and loved both the writing and the story each time. The story is told by two sets of sisters, who are themselves daughters of sisters, who are all living in their grandmother's old Ohio farmhouse. She's the Queen, and it's mostly a Queendom, though I love the father/uncle who lives there too. Another father/uncle who makes an appearance is a great complex character--funny, enticing to the girls, smart, cruel, pathetic... The first-person plural works very well, and makes the poignancy of the story that much sharper. I need to write a review of this book, so that more people read it. Here's a link to a NY Times review by Margaret Atwood, of all people.

eta: The story feels like it's set in the 50's-60's, but maybe that's because it's describing a more rural, small-town life. Now I'm going to go have to read it again.

Well, I didn't think I'd end up adding to the wishlist while reading my own thread! During the Reign of the Queen of Persia sounds very much like something I'll enjoy.

Two wee cents: I started from the beginning with Rankin and got hooked right away. I think I have a review of Knots and Crosses in my review section. Then I started reading them out of order and wasn't crazy about a few of the later ones, not that they had gone Patterson or Cornwell; they were still good, but it was if Rebus had run out gas. He'd gotten to bleak to be strongly interesting. I liked Siobhan in those, tho. Anybody else have this experience? Or not?

I think Rankin was right to end the series. He could easily have continued ad infinitum, but Rebus was getting old and very cranky, you are right. I think the middle books are the best. Still, I like bleak, in my reading at least, and enjoyed the later books.

PD James and Ruth Rendell are two who have become too old and cranky to write well. I didn't get the sense that Rankin had soured on life, but that Rebus certainly had.

@108 I still fondly remember your gentle bashing of Rendell's latest. Fun, even for someone who hasn't read a single one of her books!

Thanks, GingerbreadMan, but shouldn't you be vacationing? Despite my new-for-me laptop being unbelievably light and portable, I am determined not to take it with me to the beach.

So, I've just finished my ER book for last month. It was a good, solid, suspenseful read, very much in the style of Barbara Vine or Simon Beckett. But there were some things that drove me nuts and they're things that drive me nuts in many books:

1. Chapter breaks designed to create an artificial sense of urgency/dread. In this book, there's a section of several very short chapters in which a desperate search is interspersed with a psychiatrist doing research. This short-changes the non-suspenseful bits and the story is exciting enough to stand as a single chapter. The mid-scene chapter-breaks are the crutch of a poor writer who has been watching too many television crime shows, with their strategically placed commercial breaks.

2. Ridiculously short chapters. Chapters breaks are like breathing; giving a natural break to pause or to switch to another plot-line naturally. Chapters should not be a single paragraph long unless the book is so short that the publisher needs to stretch it out. The book I was reading comes in at over 400 pages. If the number of chapters (84! plus epilogue) were cut in half, the page count would still be over 350. And it would have been easier to read.

3. Not revealing the identity of the dead body found so as to create more artificial suspense. Everybody present in the scene knows who's being buried, or pulled from the wreck except the reader. That's not playing fair.

Well, that's my fine display of crankiness.

I couldn't agree with you more - very well said. I too hate short chapters; makes me feel like they ran out of time to write and just decided to stop.

I'm just now getting into Rankin from reading about his books in some of the threads. Managed to snag a couple from BM and am deciding whether to start reading or get a few in order before I do.

Also going to put the Joan Chase on my wishlist.

In Blood Harvest by S.J. Bolton a new vicar arrives in the small Lancashire village of Heptonclough to reopen the closed church. He meets the American family who built an enormous house right in the middle of the village and who are not liked by the traditional villagers. There's something wrong with the town and the family is being menaced, with the focus of the malevolence being the three Fletcher children.

This is a well-written and very suspenseful book, which reminded me of Simon Beckett's or even Ruth Rendell's mysteries. The village, set on the wild moors, is full of atmosphere and foreboding. There are village traditions that appear brutal and bizarre to outsiders. The new vicar is an interesting man, as are the three children and a psychiatrist who also plays a large part in the story. The parents, especially the father, are less well realized and strangely unconcerned at the menace directed at their own children, but this is a quibble--Blood Harvest is a suspenseful and eerie tale.

And another one for the wishlist. Blood Harvest sounds good.

Blood Harvest does sound good. Despite the annoyances you listed in #110 above.

Sounds good so it's on the list.

Happy Canada's Day, everyone.

I picked up a book of short stories, Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Aryn Kyle, at the library. I've been trying to keep the library books to a minimum in favor of actually reading the books I own, but summer vacation, and the necessity of taking the kids there periodically, is challenging this goal. I thought a short story, now and again, would go well with my neverending journey through Foucault's Pendulum. So, naturally, I read it all at once.

Boys and Girls Like You and Me is a group of short stories about young people, from children through young adulthood, whose families have broken down in some way. A few are unbearably sad and a few have moments of hope at the end.
The most poignant tells of a nine-year-old whose mother left and now her father has brought home a girlfriend. The best of the book was a story called Economics, in which a college freshman watches another girl crumble under the weight of familial expectation. It has the most gorgeous and unexpected ending, not happy by any stretch, but hopeful.

Happy Canada Day!

I saw Boys and Girls Like You and Me at my local library. I had too many books at the time and left it on the shelf but I think I will look for it on my next trip there.

@"So, naturally, I read it all at once" Hahaha! Oh, I know the self deception of reading something a little lighter on the side all too well. Kind of the literary equivalent of potatoe chips before a non too inspiring dinner...

I've been hunting down attractive copies of the books I loved as a child, for my own children to discover. Have you noticed how some children's books have jackets and blurbs that are designed to appeal to parents rather than children? I keep finding wonderful books that my daughter would not touch with a stick, let alone read, because the books are so unattractive to kids used to movies and games designed to appeal to them. They're just not so stuck for reading material that they'll be willing to crack open a book with an old-fashioned cover and copy that emphasizes the book's literary merits.

So, I found a pretty copy of Black Beauty and my kids were eager to have me read it to them. I loved this book as a child and it was fascinating to find that scenes that I hold vividly in my memory were much less colorfully described in the book, and that I had entirely forgotten long, exciting segments. And I discovered that Black Beauty is a fine example of Victorian propaganda. Not only is it a sermon on the way to treat your horse, with especial vehemence reserved for something called the curb bit, but there's a lot about the evils of drink and an undertone of class snobbery. My kids loved it.

>37 RidgewayGirl: & 43: I'm current with your thread, but still want to continue working through your reading list. Interesting comments about Zadie Smith. I'm going to read White Teeth this month for Orange July. (Don't suppose you'd consider stopping reading while I catch up?) I normally don't like books that have multiple narrators quite as much as one single one, but that added to the power of Boys in the Trees, and actually seemed a crucial part of the "Big Idea" of that story. It also had a great cover and a really interesting beginning that I kept thinking about as the story unraveled.

bonniebooks, I did stop reading - wait until you get to June, where I managed to read a grand total of four books.

White Teeth is an interesting book and I'd like to hear what you think of it.

#120 A few years ago, I hunted down a copy of my first favorite childhood book Don and Donna Go to Bat (yes, I was a baseball fan even then) so I could read it to my niece. It's about a girl who took her twin brother's place on his Little League team when he was sick.

After I read it, she said "Auntie Linda, that book is silly. Girls can do anything."

A lot has changed in the 40+ years since this was my first favorite book when I was just learning to read. I'm glad to see that something that was shocking to me 40+ years ago is considered normal by my niece now.

And I think that all those well done and exciting animal shows have made my two so much less sensitive than I was. I cried and cried when I found out that a stew I ate had rabbit in it--my nine-year -old has a pet crayfish (she caught it and takes care of it and named it Fergie) but was perfectly willing to eat a pasta dish with crayfish in it. They handled the sensational scenes of horse abuse with a great deal of sang-froid. They aren't hard-hearted, by any stretch, they just don't sentimentalize things like I did at that age.

I remember reading Anne of Green Gables to my daughter many years ago, and I could hardly get through a particular death scene. I was crying so hard that my daughter eventually took the book out of my hands and she read for awhile. I think the books we fell in love with as children ourselves have a powerful impact on us, even years and years later!

>124 RidgewayGirl:: I know what you're saying, and I'm sure that's just one example out of many that leads you to the conclusion that you have a more sensitive personality than your children. We all have our different temperament, unique personalities, and different experiences, but I don't think we, as humans, are programmed to care about crayfish quite the way we might toward a pet like a rabbit, cat, dog, or a horse. It's probably hugely cultural too. Consider the revulsion we feel about eating horseflesh versus the flesh of cows. I remember the one time my mom served rabbit when I was a child and I just couldn't eat it. Back to your first comment; I agree that our children have become desensitized by all that they've seen on TV, in movies, and in video games.

I actually think that children today are a lot more clear-headed than we were. Think about it, we were the generation that didn't grow up thinking of animals primarily as food or a source of labor; we were free to sentimentalize things. Kids today have access to much better nature programming (I watched only Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom).

My daughter has two rabbits, whom she adores and takes marvelous care of, but I'm pretty sure she'd be willing to eat rabbit meat, given the opportunity.

I read Foucault's Pendulum as part of the June Group Read. I would probably have not finished without that impetus, but I'm happy to have reread this provoking book.

I remember finding a copy of The Lost Prince in my Grandfathers barn and loving it. So I had to find a copy for myself. My daughter loved the story, when I read it to her. But she hates reading stuff herself no matter how hard I tried. how could I have given birth to a non-reader?!?!?!

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

So, after spending so much time with this book, I think Foucault's Pendulum is worth more than the two lines I gave it. I did comment expansively in the group read forum, but I'm going to try and put something together here.

There's this:

Proust was right: life is represented better by bad music than by a Missa solemnis. Great Art makes fun of us as it comforts us, because it shows us the world as the artists would like the world to be. The dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the world as it actually is-or at least the world as it will become. Women are a lot more like Milady than they are like Little Nell, Fu Manchu is more real than Nathan the Wise, and History is closer to what Sue narrates than to what Hegel projects. Shakespeare, Melville, Balzac, and Dostoyevski all wrote sensational fiction. What has taken place in the real world was predicted in penny dreadfuls.

The fact is, it's easier for reality to imitate the dime novel than to imitate art. Being a Mona Lisa is hard work...

The book is cram-packed with interesting ideas and while the esoteric bits and the conspiracy theories bore me in any form, there were lots of interesting theories of history and how fiction changes to fact over time to keep me thinking.

I find it helpful to have a dictionary handy when reading Eco. . . I am not sure whether it is because English is not his first language or what.

DS
(Bruce's evil twin :-))

I think he just has a ginormous vocabulary and expects us to know all the words. I found that every character's name had a historical or literary meaning. I found Wikipedia very useful.

I just finished the third book written by John Banville under the name Benjamin Black, Elegy for April. He writes a dark mystery series set in a bleak, rainy 1950's Dublin in which Quirke, a widowed pathologist, wades through lies and silence and alcohol to find the truth. In this case, a friend of his daughter's has disappeared and nobody will even acknowledge that she's missing. This was less about solving a crime than exploring the dark crannies of parochial Ireland and it was very good.

@130 Been eyeing Focault's pendulum a few times, but have been intimidated away so far. Maybe in, say...2012?

I've got all three of Benjamin Black's Quirke Series on my wishlist, have you read the others?

@133 & 135, I think I'll have to add them to mine as well.

Yes, I've read all three. I usually think that you should be able to start a series at any point, but with the Quirke books, it's best to start with Christine Falls. I think it's the best one.

But they are dark and Dublin is not a fun place.

@137, Have you read any of Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor series that you have in your library yet? The Quirke books sound along similar lines though set in Galway.

They are similar, although the Quirke books are really historical novels--Ireland (and the world) has changed immensely in the last fifty years.

I've returned from a week at the beach to find a satisfyingly large number of threads to catch up on, but I thought I should at least get started posting what I've read before I forget the details.

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton was recommended by several people on LT and without their positive comments, I would not have gotten to enjoy this excellent book. The language used is odd, highly stylized and nothing an actual person would use, which put me off, but the reason for this is clear by the end and, really, the book could not have been written any other way. It's the story of a sex scandal that grips a private girls' school and how the aftermath affected some of the tangential players. It's also the story of a highly regarded drama school, whose freshman class decides to put on a play based on the events at the nearby school.

Lost at Sea by Patrick Dillon is an account of two fishing boats, up on the Bering Sea for the short crab fishing season. One is found capsized and the other disappeared entirely. Both boats were crewed by men from the Washington town of Anacortes. The book also talks about the lack of regulation in the commercial fishing industry and the relatives fight for more protection for fishermen. It reads a little like A Perfect Storm and was a good book to read while sitting on a beach staring into the ocean.

Still Midnight is the newest book by my favorite noir writer, Denise Mina. In it, a prickly detective, Morrow, seeks to find a kidnapped man, while those around her play politics. She's difficult and moody but she's dedicated to discovering the truth. The story follows her and one of the kidnappers and the bewildered old man who has a pillowcase jammed over his head and is sent in his memory back to Uganda, where as a young boy, he witnessed bad things. This is not the best book Mina has written, but it's still better than most of what's out there, with a vibrant picture of the Glasgow underworld and a real empathy for her often unlikeable characters.

Dogtown is set in a well-funded animal sanctuary in Utah. There's a National Geographic channel show from which the stories in this book are drawn, but I haven't seen it. One doesn't read this kind of book for elegant prose, and that's certainly not present here, the language veering wildly between the matter-of-fact and luridly purple. The stories, though, are well chosen and heart-rending. They've taken in some of Micheal Vick's fighting dogs, hurricane Katrina refugees as well as dogs from war zones and dogs other rescue groups were unequipped to handle. I have a rescue dog myself, a sweet natured cattledog/pit bull mix who was removed, starving and covered in cigarette burns, from a drug dealer's house when he was arrested, so I am filled with gratitude and admiration for the kind of person who can put the kind of effort and emotion needed to rehabilitate these dogs and then let them go off with strangers.

In a final push to unpack the last few boxes from our move three years ago, I found a stack of books that I'd left behind when I'd left for university way back when. Among them was Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. It's always interesting to reread a childhood favorite--I found the story simpler than I'd remembered, but still wonderfully told.

Jerusha Abbott had spent her entire life at the John Grier Home, an orphanage that raises children efficiently, but coldly. She is given the chance to go to college by one of the trustees. She is required to write to him about her progress. She has never met him, but sees his shadow, elogated on a wall as he's leaving and so she addresses all her letters to Daddy-Long-Legs. The book is a collection of those letters, drawings and all and it's a sweet, delightful tale. I remember vastly preferring the sequel, Dear Enemy, in which one of Jerusha's college roommates takes on the running of an orphanage, in which there is a lot of discussion of cutting edge theories about raising orphans, most of which are truly shocking.

I loved Daddy Long-Legs as a teenager. I haven't read it in years. I ought to have a copy somewhere. Maybe it's in a box in the basement that I haven't entered in my catalog yet. I'll have to see if I can dig it up.

You've had some really good reads. I've got The Rehearsal and Still Midnight on the list now.

I just finished Teatime for the Traditionally Built and wondered whether it's fair to count it for this challenge. It's not really like reading. This series goes down so effortlessly and they are so very pleasant.

This one is exactly like all of the others, which is what one wants with a cozy mystery. I left it feeling refreshed and ready to read something of substance.

Hi! Just catching up on your thread. You've done lots of good reading.

I just made sure I had Lost at Sea on my list. Blood Harvest was already there, but I may bump it up in priority. Death on the Barrens sounds fascinating.

I had a hard time with the beginning of Property, which quickly shows the evils of slavery and how it taints everyone involved. Valerie Martin's novel doesn't pull any punches; Manon is trapped in an unhappy marriage, where her husband parades his illegitimate offspring in front of her, but her own enslavement does nothing to soften her attitude towards the house slaves under her control. I can see why Property won the Orange Prize and why I can't say I enjoyed reading it, I did have a hard time putting it down once I got past the first part.

Glad you enjoyed The Rehearsal. This was an ER catch for me and I really liked it too. Am also enjoying your other reviews!

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan was a good book to follow Property. It's a historical novel set in Niagara Falls between 1915 and 1924, full of detail about the time and place. It's also a melodrama with whiskey-soaked ruin, perilous rescues, dramatic suicides and a very satisfying love story.

I liked Property because it was written from a European-American woman's point of view during a time and place where women had so few legal rights. I wanted to empathize with her because of her own circumstances, but then reading how she was plotting so determinedly to get her "property" back made the reality of slavery in some ways worse than if we were reading the story from the usual point of view. Even in more recent times, you hear/read some people from the South justifying slavery, and the Civil War, in terms of "states rights." Having a slave owner acknowledge her real thoughts and feelings in Property (even though, I know, it's fiction) felt "satisfying" to me in a weird kind of way.

@148 :: Whiskey-soaked ruin, you say? Sounds like a good book! :)

I've been reading The Children's Book for months now, in bursts, picking it up and reading a hundred pages or so and then setting it aside for a few weeks, only to pick it up again. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was written by A.S. Byatt, who also wrote Possession: A Romance, another book that took me awhile to read.

The Children's Book is what is generally described as "sweeping". It covers twenty years in the lives of the members of a large family, the Wellwoods, as well as various other friends and relations, from a few years before the turn of the last century to the end of WWI. It opens with two boys discovering a third, who has been camping out in the museum that will become the V&A. How cool is that? The trespasser is Phillip Warren, who is fleeing the poverty and hopelessness of the lower working classes. He has a passion for pottery and the Wellwood family takes him under their distractedly benevolent wing as they prepare for their annual Midsummer's party. This party is lovingly, exhaustively, described by Byatt, from the preparations and arrivals through every conversation and event. The author jumps about, telling in detail of some events, skimming over others, with plenty of the historical detail, both political and artistic, added as the years progress.

The Arts and Crafts movement is beautifully detailed here, both in the setting up of the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the pottery and literature of the time. Charles, a son of the London branch of the Wellwoods, goes to Munich and experiences the vibrant artistic and political life in Schwabing. Another daughter involves herself in the suffragette movement. If the social history of the Edwardian era interests you, then you'll love this book. If William Morris and the Suffragette movement make you yawn, you might not want to read this one.

Thanks for the review of The Children's Book. I've put it on my wishlist. I visited the V&A when I vacationed in England a few years ago, and the book and its setting sound intriguing!

The Children's Book keeps moving on and off my wishlist. Thanks to your review it's definitely on the list. I didn't know about the V&A connection. It's one of my favorite museums.

Really good review- I would have never guessed a book called The Children's Book would be about art.

Slammerkin, like Sex and the City, is less about sex than it is about clothes, and the desire to have something pretty to wear. Mary is a girl living with her family in a two-room flat near Charing Cross in 18th century London when she is kicked out because of the allure of a bright red ribbon. Her path is never easy, but she remembers the three rules laid down by a friend; Never give up your liberty, clothes make the woman and clothes are the greatest lie ever told.

Mary's story is never boring. She may not have any material advantages or anyone to look out for her, but she's resilient and resourceful, quick and tough enough to survive anything. She's learned that compassion and pity are weaknesses to be both feared and exploited. Slammerkin reminded me of Fingersmith. It lacks Fingersmith's twists and turns, but both vividly evoke an England where only the strong survive.

It used to be that a good mystery was a good mystery and literary fiction and it's attendant awards were another world. Then authors like John Banville and Kate Atkinson wrote mystery novels and a new creature was born; the literary mystery. Of course, they've always existed. What else is Crime and Punishment or Murder in the Rue Morgue or any number of classics with a hint of suspense or crime? There have always been mysteries that had something out of the ordinary to say, or told the story in a different way, but now marketing's on to them and the possibilities of additional sales to book clubs or the promise of the publicity of awards.

As someone who loves a good mystery and relies on the shortlists provided by various awards to find new authors doing interesting things, I'm a likely target for the literary mystery label. It sucks me in every time.

The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker begins in a very promising way. A group of bodies are discovered by hunters in the snow. They've arranged themselves in a semi-circle, with their dead children at their feet, all poisoned except for the central figure who was shot, the weapon nowhere to be found. A French commissaire and a judge who specializes in hunting down cults are called out. There had been a similar incident in Switzerland, but the authorities there had hushed it up, but this murder/suicide happened in France and Schweigen, the cop, and Carpentier, the judge, are determined to bring the guilty to justice.

This was a solid beginning, with characters who could be complex and interesting and a story that could be exciting and involved. All that potential is wasted, however. Schweigen is a direct descendant of Larry, Curly or Moe, only without the nuance. He messes up every interrogation he takes part in and reacts to everything without regard for appropriate behavioral norms. Carpentier is absolutely perfect. She's stunningly beautiful, charismatic, intelligent, tiny and every character in this book falls madly in love with her, from her administrative assistant, to the commissaire, to the people she investigates for murder. It's boring. At one point it's mentioned that she doesn't like music and I grasped this as the sole indication that the judge was human. Of course, she then is then moved to tears by Wagner.

The writing is also problematic. No one walks or drinks; instead they ooze and guzzle. The judge, we are often reminded, is wee. Everyone she speaks with looms or towers or bends over her. The simpler verbs are ignored. Here is a sample:

He bulged into the entire space between the freezer and the door, like the gigantic symbol of the Macrocosm. She found herself smiling back at his candour and impertinence. The Judge knew, she always knew, when a man was lying; she had a nose for perjury, and this man was made of truth.

Oh, and that intriguing beginning? We only ever learn anything about one of the dead bodies. The rest are forgotten. As is the plot. At the very end things are tied up briefly and in passing.

Definitely sounds like one to skip. Great review!

Too bad, that premise did sound good. At least you had the tenacity to stick with it til the end.

Good review on Slammerkin. I read it last year and really loved it. Having read Fingersmith recently I can certainly see the similarities between these two books, I would find it hard to choose which one I liked best.

Have you ever gotten a bit of a crush on an author after reading a few of his books? Have you ever thought that someone who write with such insight and compassion must be a truly kind person? And have you then, having attended a lecture or read an interview of the author, found out he was really kind of a pretentious jackass? The opposite thing happened to me as I read Manhood for Amateurs. I've read a few of Michael Chabon's books and formed an image of him, not of a pretentious jackass, but of being a guy's guy and somewhat testosterone-fueled. Not quite Hunter S. Thompson, but moving in that direction. Which, it turns out, is utterly the wrong impression.

Manhood for Amateurs is a collection of Chabon's personal essays, in which he talks about childhood and marriage and having children of his own. In Willam and I he talks about his reaction to being commended on his parenting skills by a stranger:

I don't know what a woman needs to do to impel a perfect stranger to inform her in the grocery store that she is a really good mom. Perhaps perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic pen on her eldest child with simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks' worth of healthy but appealing breaktime snacks for the entire cast of Lion King, Jr.. In a grocery store, no mother is good or bad; she is just a mother, shopping for her family. If she wipes her kid's nose or tear-stained cheeks, if she holds her kids tight, entertains her kid's nonsensical claims, buys her kid the organic non-GMO whole-grain version of Honey Nut Cheerios, it adds no useful data to our assessment of her. Such an act is statistically insignificant. Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby's gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair. Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself.

So I'm not sure how I'll view the next novel of his that I read. I'm sure it will be just as full of male protagonists behaving like guys and engaging in manly adventures, but I wonder if I'll be reading it a bit differently, knowing that the author is a guy who cooks the meals and loves his family. Then again, maybe I'll run into an interview with him on Larry King or npr and discover that he actually is a bit full of himself. I hope not.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple is a dark crime novel set in a small coastal town near Victoria, Australia. But this book is more than a very well plotted mystery; it's also a picture of Australian society, with a lot about how the aboriginal peoples are viewed and treated. And it has cracking good dialogue. This book did very well in Australia and it's clearly written by an Aussie for Aussies, so the slang and dialect are not carefully explained for outsiders, but most can be gleaned from context. I enjoyed it.

Chabon's wife published a book about parenting right before his came out, which is a pretty unique occurrence, I suspect. Interesting opportunity to get both perspectives.

I'm feeling a little mean, here, what with me giving every other book I read an emphatic thumbs down. I picked up The Girl She Used to Be, the first novel by David Cristofano, from the new releases shelf at my local library because of the ecstatic blurbs on the back, the mention of he having a short story published in McSweeney's, and the plot summary.

The book is about a young woman who has spent her life from the age of six living in the Federal Witness Protection Program because of a mob murder witnessed by her family twenty years earlier. Her parents having been found and murdered, she lives her live both bored and afraid. She longs for relationships, but how can she connect with another person when she can't tell them the truth. Then she meets the son of the mob boss who had her parents killed and she is drawn to him, mainly because he knows who she is. I was intrigued, but in this case the whole adds up to much less than that idea.

Melody, who has also been known as Michelle, May and Anne, has a good sense of how unfair life is. She's hard to get to know, beyond her constantly renewed sense of grievance. In the course of being relocated, once again, by seriously the most incompetent federal agent not played by Chevy Chase, she encounters Jonathan and thus begins a trite, chick-lit style story that takes over anything interesting that had been developing. It's full of new clothes, which are miraculously a size smaller than she previously wore, and a carefully detailed day at a spa. Oh, and she falls in love with the violent man who nabbed her. Oh, and despite her desperate need to connect with anyone and her habit of parading naked in front of whoever's in charge of her, she's still a virgin. This is chick-lit written by a man and, boy, did it bring out my inner feminist. Jonathan is violent, but he has good reasons and he (and every other guy in the book) thinks she's really beautiful. She also needs a lot of rescuing. The emphasis on her "purity" really bothered me, especially when the sexual lives of the men around her are never an issue. And while I know that this is fiction and willing suspense of disbelief and all that, but every government agent as well as the entire government in general, is so incompetent as to boggle the mind. My cat could do a better job. There was a sub-text here that I really felt uncomfortable with. At the end Spoiler Alert she is still safely a virgin, and now she's wearing a purity ring, which is much more important in the world of this book, than believable plot, original sentences or a strong woman leading her own life. Blech.

Wow, think I'll skip that one. Thanks for the review.

You've read so many interesting books this year!

@163 Sounds very very stupid indeed. Then again, when bad literature leads to funny reviews like this, it almost seems worth it.

160: Enjoyed your post on Michael Chabon. I haven't read any of his stuff yet, but now I feel even more inclined to do so.

I was on vacation over the weekend--we did a family vacation to Williamsburg. It was fantastic; not so much the heat and crowds, but the kids went wild over the history. My daughter's already excited (ever since a trip to Cowpens during an anniversary reenactment), but my six-year-old son spent the weekend running from place to place at full speed. He loved the ships at Jamestown Settlement and wore a tricorn hat and carried a wooden musket all day at Williamsburg (I'm not in love with the romance of weaponry, but I am willing to go with it if it lets him into the secret that history's a series of adventure stories).

I took along Faithful Place, the third novel by Tana French and was not disappointed. Her first two books are more closely entwined. Here, Cassie's boss from when she worked undercover in The Likeness, Frank Mackey, is the focus. He'd left home as soon as he could. He'd planned to go with his girlfriend to London, but she didn't show up at their meeting place, so he left alone. Twenty-two years later, her suitcase is found in an abandoned house and Frank finds himself back with in the abusive family he'd so decisively left.

Frank isn't as easily likable as the protagonists of French's earlier books were, but given his upbringing, it's no wonder. Faithful Place is about Frank's search for his girlfriend's murderer, but it's also a fantastically nuanced portrait of a dysfunctional family. French's writing improves with each book she writes and I can't wait to read what she gives us next.

I'd love to go to Williamsburg; there's nothing like that on the west coast. Sounds like a good weekend.

I am hearing really good things about Tana French's books...looks like I'll have to cave and read In the Woods!

I was waiting anxiously to see if you liked Faithful Place. What I am really liking about Tana French, is that so far her books can be read in any order, and we're not seeing the same major characters each time. Although you know what I am waiting for with the next book....

You just reminded me that I haven't been to Williamsburg in many years, that miight be a good fall getaway.

Glad you liked The Broken Shore. If you need any translating done, give me a hoy.

Actually, Temple migrated to Australia from South Africa. I've read a few of his books this year and can see how his grasp of the vernacular improves with every book.

You know, with The Broken Shore, as with A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil, the language enhanced the book immeasurably. I could figure out what a word meant because of the context, although there were a few words that that took the third mention to become clear. When reading about an unfamiliar place, the cadences of the spoken language are an important part of the experience.

Thankfully, Tana French is young and has a long career ahead of her. I wish she would write faster. Do you think the next book is Scorcher or Stephen? I'm still hoping for Sam.

When another author's books get mentioned alongside a Brookmyre then it immediately piques my interest. I don't yet have an Australian entry on my reading globally challenge so onto the wishlist goes The Broken Shore.

For me at least, it's harder to write a review for a book I really liked than for one I hated. What's interesting about someone going on and on about how really great a book is and how they really, really love it a lot? So, please take it as given that I really, really liked The Marriage Bureau for Rich People and add superlatives as appropriate.

Mr. Ali is retired and bored. His wife is frustrated with his continual presence disrupting her long-standing routine. So Mr. Ali sets up a small business as a marriage arranger to keep himself busy. He's soon busy and his wife finds him an assistant to help him. The story line is pleasant to read, but not slight. While the emphasis is on the light-hearted joys and tribulations of finding the right matches for his clients, Farahad Zama doesn't shy away from the more difficult aspects of Indian society. Mr. Ali's son is involved in protests around a planned industrial park and his assistant, Aruna, as well as his maid, have problems produced by poverty. Mr. Ali is a stubborn man, more so when he knows he is in the wrong.

The best thing about this book is the effortless way that it gives the reader a peak at daily life and marriage customs in India. Zama is Indian, but has lived for sixteen years in Britain. He understands what benefits from a brief description and writes well enough that those explanations flow naturally within the story. He writes vividly of the what, adding bits of why as needed. From a trip to shop for a new sari, to attending both a muslim and a hindi wedding, the reader is given a valuable and entertaining glimpse into another culture.

The Wave by Susan Casey is about, well, ocean waves. Until recently, it was thought that a wave could not be 100 feet tall; that the laws of physics have it collapsing when it is much, much smaller. Until two events proved their existence and scientists had to move into quantum physics, but also had to admit that they really don't know much about waves in the real world. During a storm, or in the aftermath of a storm, or because of a complex series of conditions that are only partially understood, the ocean will occasionally throw up a wave that is double or even triple the size of the waves around it. So in a storm, a boat can be battling sixty foot waves only to lose to a 120 foot behemoth. Enormous cargo ships disappear, oil rigs sustain damage over a hundred feet above the ocean surface and people watching waves from a supposedly safe distance are plucked away. It's very scary and convincing and I'm pleased to live well inland.

I tremendously enjoyed the various nautical near-misses and disasters, and the scientists and salvage operators working to minimize risk and to save people and the environment. I enjoyed much less the other half of the book, which was about surfing king Laird Hamilton and his life of jetting around the world to ride the enormous waves generated by storms, accompanied by photographers and supported by corporate sponsorships. There are two different books here, a sports biography and a non-fiction book about wave science and disaster lore.

Casey wrote an excellent and entertaining book about the Farallons, a small cluster of islands west of San Francisco called The Devil's Teeth, which combined a history of the islands with descriptions of what the scientists living there were doing (birds and sharks) into a very successful book. The Wave's combination of topics meshes less well together and, while Casey remains an able writer, is less carefully written. In one place, she repeats an Irishman's complaint that describing waves as "big as houses" is next to useless: what kind of warning is that? Is that great muckle skyscraping houses, or wee tottie tattie-pickers' houses? and yet, in her own impressions of series of waves north of Kauai, describes them as They were everywhere, the size of houses, rising from the left and right. Which pulled me right out of the gripping event to wonder hmm, bungalow, or Victorian?

Interesting reveiw, RidgewayGirl! I'll look for that one at the library.

This is just the book I need to read at the beach next week! (kidding)

I got this book soon after returning from the beach and had I gotten it beforehand I would have brought it. And I would have freaked myself out. So not a good book for anyone within several miles of an ocean. Also, not one to bring on that cruise. I'm not even sure if it's appropriate bathtub reading.

Sounds like a really interesting book on a subject I wouldn't have picked as that interesting. Good review.

What was it, Andrew often wondered, about book people that made them so neglect personal hygiene? Other types of obsessive managed to change their underwear, brush their teeth, and utilise modern, effective deodorants, so why not book collectors? Books themselves, of course, could often smell so perhaps there was some semi-conscious attempt at empathy? A brotherhood of mustiness and sticky crevices?

Alice's Secret Garden by Rebecca Campbell begins like a fairy tale. Although set in a failing auction house in contemporary London, the main character, Alice, falls under a spell. She was already somewhat passive; now she sleepwalks through her days barely acknowledging the people in her path. Her co-worker, Andrew, has a crush on her, but he wouldn't mind shagging the office beauty, a mean girl named Ophelia. Andrew also has a friend, Leo, an odd looking professor who hides his loneliness behind belligerence and a quick wit. Alice, surprisingly, also has friends, especially Odette, who works in the City. A minor member of the nobility has a first edition of Audubon and Alice and Andrew are sent out to appraise it. If it's authentic, it could save the auction house. The book and its owner live in a modern glass house in the middle of the countryside, miles from anywhere and strangely gothic despite its clean lines and bright spaces. The owner is a brooding, Heathcliff-like guy who is drawn to Alice.

The story keeps its distance for the first half, sounding more like a tale than a novel. It eventually picks up, although the central story is never quite the most interesting thing. The characters are interesting, even Alice warms up as things get going, but it's the secondary characters who shine in this odd book. There's one quite unfair moment when the author hides the true state of things from only the reader, a cheap stunt to artificially create suspense, but on the whole, I liked it.

@Sounds quite intriguing. I bounced a little when going to the work page and seeing the most common tag to it was "chic lit"!

That's one that going on the list!

It is an odd book, and while I can see that chick-lit is the closest genre to it, it doesn't really satisfy many of chick-lit's requirements--no spa treatments or designer clothes and the love interests are not wealthy and glamorous. I can see it disappointing that audience, and being an unusual read for the rest of us.

I'll first admit that Geraldine Brooks is not one of my favorite authors. People of the Book was a perfectly nice book, but it felt slight and insubstantial to me and I disliked Year of Wonders since it did the unforgivable for me in historical fiction; the good guys were modern people of liberal tendencies, just dressed in medieval garb and the bad guys were the ones who reflected a bit of how a person of that time would actually think and react.

March, on the other hand, was pitch perfect. It tells the story of the father in Little Women who goes off to the Civil War at the beginning of that book.

How often it is that an idea that seems bright bossed and gleaming in its clarity when examined in a church, or argued over with a friend in a frosty garden, becomes clouded and murk-stained when dragged out into the field of actual endeavor.

March is a man of high principle, living in Concord, Massachusetts, among such other idealists as Emerson and Thoreau. He's a vegetarian and an abolitionist and when the young men gather to march off to war, he feels morally bound to accompany them. War is not a place to keep one's principles and beliefs unsullied and March struggles with the task of behaving morally in a place where the right thing to do is not always clear or possible. March also delves into the stress that a war-time experience places on a marriage in which the two people once sought to share everything, and how we misconstrue the actions and motivations of our partners.

This is one of my favorite books of the year, thus far, and I'm grateful to the Reading Through Time group for creating the impetus for me to read it.

The Quarry by Damon Galgut. Somewhere near the South African coast, a man is walking. He's dusty and carries a soda bottle full of murky water to drink. Eventually, he catches a ride with a minister on his way out to a mission in a township. The man is a fugitive, but we never discover what he's done. He eats a meal that the minister buys him, but when the minister pulls off the road at a disused quarry near the township and proposes a payment for the meal, the man kills him. The man takes the identity of the minister for himself, not particularly well, but since no one knew the minister, he gets away with it after a fashion and for awhile.

This is a bleak little book, full of unhappy or angry people trapped in a desolate place. It was extremely well-written, in a way that manages to be both terse and poetic, but nothing is good here and anything of worth or beauty is either quickly vandalized or slowly eroded. I'll have to read another book by this author, but not for awhile.

The Wildfire Season by Andrew Pyper is set in the isolated community of Ross River, Yukon, just north of the St. Cyr mountains, where Miles McEwan has gone to hide after his actions while fighting a wildfire in BC were called into question. It's been a dry summer, but one devoid of forest fires, at least up north. Miles is in charge of a group of four firefighters stationed here, but they'll be out of jobs and the town will lose out economically if no fires appear to justify their paychecks. Instead of a fire, his ex-girlfriend and their daughter show up and intensify the already simmering cauldron of resentments and anger. Pyper keeps several threads going at once, only to draw them together in the end, when a deliberately set fire threatens Ross River and its inhabitants.

This isn't one of Pyper's best books--those are both set in Ontario--but it vividly describes life in an isolated community in the far northwest of the Canadian wilderness.

Remember what an amazing book Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer was? Yes, that book, the one about the disastrous climbing season on Everest in 1996. So Dark Summit by Nick Heil is about the disastrous climbing season on Everest in 2006. Things have changed on the highest mountain on earth, but not for the better. For one thing, it's become really big business, with tons of money to be made ferrying aging cardiologists and hedge fund managers to the top. Base camp now features enormous pavilions that, while temporary, feature things like large screen TVs and jacuzzis. 2006 saw about 400 climbers on each side of the mountain. The south side, in Nepal, is the one where Krakauer set his book, but the north side, in Tibet, was mentioned, remember? That's where a team of Japanese climbers walked by three dying Indian climbers, despite having been asked for help. And it was shocking because although events on the other side were dreadful, no one thought that getting to the summit was worth more than the lives of three guys.

So times have changed and Everest is big business and your profits next year have everything to do with how many of your clients summit this year. In a nutshell, if you stop and help that guy, you might not be in business next year. Besides, that guy's someone else's responsibility and there are dozens of other climbers in front of you and behind you. It's not like if you don't act, this guy is certain to die. Also, the special challenges faced by your clients are getting larger every year. Among the climbers in 2006 were a double amputee, a fifteen year old boy and a technically blind guy as well as lots of clients who are simply not mountaineers at all, but reasonably fit middle-aged guys who could afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars and expected value for money.

I'm not saying that the romance is gone, it just takes a break for most of the month of May around Everest. With so few days where the weather allows climbers to summit and so many climbers, people are held up all along the mountain as inexperienced climbers struggle through the more difficult bits of the climb. Time at the summit is limited and there's a line at the top waiting their turn at the top of the world. Also, since bodies don't decay in that cold, dry world, the number of corpses each climber passes increases each year.

Dark Summit was interesting, in its way, but sad and depressing too.

I absolutely loved Into Thin Air, and this sounds interesting too. On to the ol' wish list it goes. Thanks for helping keep my list well fed.

My brother went to one of the base camps this past spring. Of all his pictures, the one that amazed me the most was taken in the very last small, remote village on the way up the mountain. He was standing in front of a Starbucks.

I just visited your thread for the first time. Love the categories, and your comments, and see that a couple of your completed books are on my to-read list (Suite Francaise and Manhood for Amateurs). I admire your pace - don't think I'll match it, but I'm definitely going to be following your thread for inspiration!

Nickelini, did he have a blast? I imagine (thanks to the help of Google Earth pictures) that the scenery was amazing. Did the Starbucks have yak butter tea on the menu?

Dark Summit is nowhere near the book Into Thin Air is, but if you loved the Krakauer book, Dark Summit is an interesting follow up.

lalbro, thanks for commenting! There are sooo many threads and they have now all grown so long that I'm glad you weren't intimidated away.

Dark Summit does look very interesting, and surprising. You know how the morning talk shows always have those interviews with the unlikely Everest climbers, like the young boy? I had no idea that there were people who would make sure you got to the top if the price was right. A little disheartening.

Nickelini, did he have a blast? I imagine (thanks to the help of Google Earth pictures) that the scenery was amazing. Did the Starbucks have yak butter tea on the menu?

I think so--he lives in Calgary and I live in Vancouver, so I haven't talked to him. He doesn't "do" computers so his wife just posted the pictures on the Internet.

Purge by Sofi Oksanen is set in Estonia between 1939 and 1992, a time span in which Estonia was occupied first by the Soviets, then by the Nazis, then, for a much longer time, by the Soviets again, to eventually achieve independence that brought with it the emergence of criminal gangs. Aliide has lived in a village in western Estonia throughout those turbulent times and she's survived horrible things, things which have made her a survivor. Now she's hanging on, hated by her neighbors and hoping to get her family's land back. Zara shows up one morning in her yard, filthy and frightened. Aliide is worried that Zara's been sent by a criminal gang, but she takes her in nonetheless and a guarded friendship builds between the women. They both have a lot to hide and things to hide from and as their relationship develops, the story moves back and forth between their present and the pasts that they're trying to bury.

Purge is an excellent and nuanced story of a place and time that would challenge anyone. Oksanen writes eloquently of rural Estonian life among the birch trees and cows and fear, where what a family member did can destroy your life unless you do what you need to do to preserve it. This wasn't always an easy book to read; Oksanen doesn't linger over the atrocities, but neither does she brush over them, but it was a compelling and important book about a place and time I know too little about.

Glad you enjoyed it too :)

Back at the beginning of the year (and this challenge), I read Giles Blunt's Forty Words for Sorrow, the beginning of his series of dark crime novels set in the fictional city of Algonquin Bay, Ontario. It was excellent. I've now read the third installment, Black Fly Season. It was also excellent and I do like that there's a Canadian version of Kurt Wallender in struggling detective John Cardinal.

I read Blunt's Breaking Lorca last year - my book notes state it was hauntingly graphic but I did enjoy the story and the writing so I will be adding his crime novel set to the TBR pile, possibly for next year's reading.

I haven't heard of that one. I put it on my wishlist right away. He writes well and I like mysteries with a darker tinge.

I have the first two of Giles Blunt sitting on my shelves, I had planned to read at least one of his this year but side tracked by something else. I will really have to try and fit Forty Words For Sorrow in soon.

I checked The Profiler by Pat Brown because it had the subtitle My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths and I love that stuff. Not true crime, but books about how crimes are solved and what is possible. This book was a total dud I soon discovered and the only thing that kept me reading was the idea that I could write down my dissatisfaction here.

Pat Brown was an ordinary home-schooling stay-at-home mom when a woman was murdered in her neighborhood and just four weeks earlier her family had rented a room to an odd man. Coincidence? She thought not and "investigated" her boarder, bringing the police a box of evidence along with her request that they question him about the murder. The police were strangely unimpressed and declined to follow up. She was surprised, but undaunted. How could it be, she thought, that I can find murderers so much better than the police? Her husband thought she should forget about their now ex-boarder, so she divorced him and carried bravely on. When she discovered that to become the sort of profiler recognized by law enforcement would take too long and involve boring years of work, she taught herself how to profile and set herself up as an Investigative Criminal Profiler. Despite not charging the families of the victims who ask for her help a single dime, not even expenses, she's managed to make a nice living. The key, of course, is television.

The first half also features a little too much information. I'm not sure how the fact that she breastfed each of her children for two years, for example, ties into criminal profiling at all.

The second half of the book is a collection of her accounts of her best work, and where the whole thing breaks down, credibility-wise. Does it not seem odd that when she has her long and illustrious career to look back on, that in all the profiles she put together not one led to an arrest? I may be nit-picking here, but how can she be sure that she's found the true culprit in all of these cases when her conclusions are never tested and the police don't agree with her? She believes that powerful people have vested interests that they're protecting. Maybe, but every time? Also, she admits that she receives very little cooperation from law enforcement and so bases her profiles on much less than an examination of all of the evidence. She does talk to family members and the witnesses willing to talk to her and she does visit crime scenes (thus accounting for the "investigative" in her job title), but often years after the crime. The reader is only privy to her thoughts and reasoning on any case, so it always sounds plausible, but plausible in the way that any viewpoint sounds good when it's the only one you've heard. In high school I had a wacky history teacher who showed us the Zapruder film several times while explaining that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone. We all believed him. We were a group of Canadian high school students who had never given it any thought at all, so we swallowed his point of view. That's what this book felt like. With nothing to judge her conclusions against, they sound perfectly plausible. But if she's so good, shouldn't at least one of her suspects been arrested? Why couldn't she get a single member of law enforcement to believe her?

I've had The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber on hand for a year without reading it. So, I pulled it off of the shelf and read it and it was wonderful. It's a convoluted thriller about art and forgery and the nature of identity that's well-written and juggles so many threads that it should all end in a tangle, but Gruber pulls it all off beautifully.

#200- Guess I'll skip that one. I'm also a fan of true crime casebooks. As a kid I read everything about Scotland Yard I could find. It does seem strange that her work hasn't led to any arrests. Not a track record to brag about.

Baltimore Blues by Laura Lippman was an above average debut for a mystery series. I've loved her stand-alone novels, but have been wary about trying her series following private investigator Tess Monaghan. I plan to continue with this series. The characters seem less like characters than like actual people and the city of Baltimore came to life in this mystery involving lawyers, journalists, a death row inmate, an odd victim's group and some serious scullers.

I already have Baltimore Blues on my wishlist but it's always good to get confirmation that it deserves to be there.

#200- that does seem strange that she even got a book deal I think it would be way more interesting if she actually caught and convicted a bad guy but she just "knows" she found the right guy? Well no not if they won't prosecute.
I'll be skipping that one.

#201- I've wondered about that one will maybe give it a try

So many people have read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and hundreds of them have written a review, but having been immersed in its world for several days, I feel compelled to go on awhile...

To begin, I wasn't eager to read Wolf Hall. Yeah, Mantel won the Booker with it, but I don't have the slightest interest in that whole Tudor thing. I did think A Place of Greater Safety looked interesting, however, since it's impossible to overdose on the French Revolution. But I did get a copy of Wolf Hall and stuck it on a shelf and forgot about it until the Reading Through Time group chose monarchs for this month's TIOLI challenge. Guess what? It's not just the Tudors. I didn't have any other fiction on my TBR with royalty in it. So Wolf Hall was reluctantly opened one night and I was hooked with the first paragraphs.

Wolf Hall is one of those books that, while of a reasonably length, leaves the reader wishing for more. It tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, from when he leaves home to get away from an abusive father, through his rise to become one of the most powerful men in the English Court from when Henry VIII decides to set aside his wife, Katherine, through the struggles and political machinations of his courtship of and marriage to Anne Boleyn and up until the execution of Sir Thomas More. Cromwell is a fascinating man and Mantel tells the story from a very close proximity. The characters of which we know so much, are interesting individuals in their own right, from the prickly and calculating Anne to the self-righteous Thomas More. Mantel's writing is never clunky or overly historical and she breathes life into an overdone era.

I can't wait for the sequel.

Great review! I do like history about this time period and especially about Henry and Boleyn. Sounds like I need to get this one.

Wolf Hall was an option for my wolf category this year but other titles have filled up the gaps instead. Your review makes me glad that I do have it sitting on the tbr shelves though.

I just recieved Wolf Hall from August ER looking forward to reading it!

Enjoyed your review of Wolf Hall. I also liked it very much myself and am eager for the sequel.

Surely one for my wife, the anglophile lover of historical novels, this. Making note of it, thanks!

I have a great fondness for noirish crime novels set in the north, so when I snagged Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason from the Early Reviewers program I was enormously pleased. Indridason is an Icelandic author and this book, one of a series of police procedurals, is set in Reykjavik in the winter. In Arctic Chill, the body of a boy is found near the apartment building in which he and his mother and brother live. His mother is Thai and although his father is Icelandic, the suspicion of the police is that this was a racially motivated murder.

The investigation is led by the dour and unfriendly Erlender, a man who is less lonely and wounded than asocial. He's an interesting variation on the usual loner detective and although his behavior is partially explained by events in his childhood, he is an unpleasant guy. He is haunted by an earlier missing woman case and can't let it go.

The novel's setting is an integral part of the story and, in the course of the investigation, Indridason explores the impact of immigrants, primarily from Asia, on the small Icelandic population. In comparison to events in the United States (where I am) the racism is mild and calmly addressed, but what really struck me about Indridason's Iceland is the isolation in which people choose to live. Marriages break up with very little thought and children are abandoned by their fathers who leave without having to support their offspring in any way and people live next to neighbors they never get to know. All this is amplified by the early dark and relentless cold of the Icelandic winter.

That sounds like a really interesting one so it goes on the list.

I originally read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen back when it first came out and loved it then. Now Franzen, who seems to attract controversy and strong opinions with an enviable effortlessness, has a new book, Freedom and new debate. He's being anointed the new Great American Novelist, with a Time magazine cover and countless excited reviews. Of course, there's a corresponding backlash, which has pretty much nothing to do with Franzen himself, about how sexist the publishing industry actually is, despite most readers and writers being women and despite female authors out-selling male writers.

Which I agree with. Look at how a book written by a woman is marketed compared with a book authored by a man. It'll have a cover illustration of part of a woman's body, but never her whole face, as though to emphasize the femaleness and the limited scope of the novel inside. These books are also marketed differently; as light, escapist fare, even if they deal with the same themes and subjects as books written by male authors. High praise and laudatory reviews are substantially saved for male authors and their important books.

Jonathan Franzen's simply not a good target. Yes, he does come across a bit of a pretentious jerk. Yes, his new book is being lauded as the Great American Novel (as was The Corrections) and yes, his books do have a domestic setting that makes one suspect that his book wouldn't get the same amount of attention had it been written by a woman. But Franzen writes about women with empathy and understanding, he complained in an essay about male being the "default position", and when asked who influenced him as a writer, he came up with a list of five author, two of whom were women (Jane Smiley and Edith Wharton.

So I had this argument last week with an old friend, the result of which is that we then read The Corrections together. I'm glad I got to reread it. I loved this book the first time and I loved it just as much the second time, although I noticed different things this time through. It's definitely a book that rewards a second look.

I only read a couple of chapters of Corrections, then put it aside--not because it wasn't good writing, but because the narrator/son seemed so hard on his parents. Have to admit, though, that I haven't forgotten the description of his father holed up in the basement. Anyway, I've always been meaning to take up that book again. Just trying to decide which one to read first.

Franzen is hard on everyone in The Corrections and it takes much of the book to realize that he loves them too. The book also begins with Chip's point of view, the son who is the most resentful of his parents.

Here's a different view of Enid:

It was true that Al had asked her to move the jars and magazines, and there was probably a word for the way she'd stepped around those jars and magazines for the last eleven days, often nearly stumbling on them; maybe a psychiatric word with many syllables or maybe a simple word like "spite". But it seemed to her that he'd asked her to do more than "one thing" while he was gone. He'd also asked her to make the boys three meals a day, and clothe them and read to them and nurse them in sickness, and scrub the kitchen floor and wash the sheets and iron his shirts, and do it all without a husband's kisses or kind words. If she tried to get credit for these labors of hers, however, Al simply asked he whose labors had paid for the house and food and linens? Never mind that his work so satisfied him that he didn't need her love, while her chores so bored her that she needed his love doubly. In any rational accounting, his work canceled her work.

or this:

What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive.

And this is about Alfred:

She'd never really known her father. Probably nobody had. With his shyness and his formality and his tyrannical rages he protected his interior so ferociously that if you loved him, as she did, you learned that you could do him no greater kindness than to respect his privacy.

The Corrections is not an easy book to fall into. The Lambert family is not sympathetic. I just stand in awe of Franzen's ability to show us the very worst people, at their pettiest moments and then making us understand them.

Thanks for the interesting comments! I haven't read Franzen, and may have to investigate!

I'll second that, ivyd. A nice commentary on Franzen, an author whom I've never read. Sure, I bought The Corrections when it was first in trade paperback, but have I read it? Nope. I just recently bought Freedom, right before Oprah announced it, and am going to try to follow her book club time schedule, despite the fact that I'm already woefully behind. I figure I might as well give it a shot since it could be my last time to do so and I haven't before. (Read along with Oprah, that is.) I'll have to check back here once I'm into Freedom and can have something more interesting to say.

Thanks again!

I look forward to seeing what your reaction is to Freedom. I have 14 people ahead of me in the line at the library, so I'll be excited for the preview!

I have his How to be Alone:Essays. Not sure where I got it ( I'm thinking library sale) but I'm putting on my list to read next year.

I already had Freedom on my list, and this discussion makes me want to reread The Corrections.

I like Laura Lippman's books, almost as much as I like Laura Lippman. I heard an interview she did and she was well-spoken, knowledgeable and funny. Her books are a cut above the usuall mass market paperback mysteries, and To the Power of Three was one of her better ones. Her stand alone books feature the same detectives and attorneys, but she keeps them in the background, putting the focus on the story she's telling. To the Power of Three concerns a school shooting in which one girl is killed, the shooter is in a coma and the remaining witness isn't saying much. By the time I'd read three quarters of the book, Lippman had me anxious and compelled to find out what really happened as quickly as possible. A good escapist read.

3 more to go!

Hi Kay: I do enjoy reading your reviews except when they pique my interest and add to my TBR. But what else is new, we all add to our TBR don't we?

I just got Freedom and am saving it for next year's challenge. Now I want to read Corrections.

I have also been amassing Laura Lippman's books, both the stand alones and the Tess Monaghan series.

And you're almost done yeah!!!!

I'm surprised at how well my categories matched my reading, although much of that is due to their broadness. The "Books with Titles"-like categories are easy to fill! I'm not going to think about next year for a few more books now...

>225 RidgewayGirl: Not even a teensy bit of thinking about it?

Congrats on being so close to finishing!

Giles Blunt writes a mystery series set in the fictional city of Algonquin Bay, Ontario, which has a dark, northern feel to it. Cardinal, a detective, is basically a good guy with a bipolar wife and an estranged daughter. In The Delicate Storm, body parts are found in the woods during an unseasonable winter thaw. There are signs that bears have been chewing on the body parts, but also that the person was murdered. Even as Cardinal and his partner Delorme search for the victim's identity, another body is found in the forest and in a city as small as Algonquin Bay, that means that a common thread joins the bodies. The investigation leads to the CIA, French-Canadian separatists, and the conservative party.

@214 Thanks for giving a peek into what looks like an interesting discussion! Coming down hard on the wrong target is, sadly, an efficient way of undermining one's position. Looking at the publishing industry through feminist glasses is too important a task to fumble away by pointing out easy enemies.

I started The Master of Rain by Tom Bradby a few weeks ago expecting a good noir-style mystery set in an exotic place. I got so much more. The Master of Rain does read like it could be filmed in black and white; it's filled with men in suits wearing fedoras and smoking, there's a beautiful woman with secrets and a hero feeling his way through treachery and intrigue, but at heart it's a dense historic novel.

It took me only a few pages in to realize how very little I knew about Shanghai in the 1920s. It was a big Chinese city, but at the centre lay an area controlled by American and British Commercial interests, called the International Settlement, bordered on one side by the French Settlement and surrounded by a China in turmoil as Mao's forces destabilize the country and leave plenty of room for criminal forces to take control of the Chinese parts of Shanghai. The city is also flooded with Russian refugees in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

Into this comes Field, a Yorkshireman hired as a policeman and assigned to the special forces, that is, to the political branch of the police. Immediately, he is called out, with an American cop, to the scene of a murder; a Russian woman found brutally slain in an apartment block owned by the Chinese mob boss who controls much of the city. And so begins a fast-paced and complex story that swings from the upper echelons of expat society to the desperate world of emigre Russians trying to survive in a hostile city.

I have this one by Tom Bradby and, I think, four more on my wishlist. I will have to try a little harder to get to one of his books, The Master of Rain sounds really good.

I hadn't realized how deeply into the world of The Master of Rain I'd fallen. I'm now having trouble settling down with another book. It isn't that it was the best book ever written, but the setting, Shanghai in 1926, was so vividly rendered and Bradby gave the book the feel of an old movie.

So I'm contenting myself with back issues of the NYT Book Review for now. I did get a book out of the library called The Devil's Rooming House, which is worth reading just for the title.

Just recently I saw the excellent Centre Stage, a Stanley Kwan film starring Maggie Cheung. It's the tragic story of Ruan Lingyu, a silent film star of the thirties, and is set partly in Shanghai. Worth having a look if it comes your way.

I've finished my hundredth book today, but it was a dud. So, on the count of three, a qualified Hooray!

Few books are ever translated into English, so for years I've been enjoying the increased number of dark Scandinavian crime novels translated into English thanks first to Henning Mankell and more recently to Stieg Larsson. From Karin Fossum, to Karin Alvtegen to Hakan Nesser and on and on, they've all been very good. So it was inevitable that those northern European countries would eventually run out of amazing writers of crime fiction and the not-so-talented authors would get there chance at the American book buying public.

The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg is not a terrible book. Erica, the author of a series of biographies of Swedish women, returns to her hometown, a small coastal village, upon the sudden deaths of her parents. She's going through their things and working on her latest book, when she finds the body of a childhood friend. The mystery of Alex's death, who killed her and the unraveling of her final hours interests Erica, who sees a book in it. Did Alex really have a romantic relationship with the town drunk? And how is the most powerful family in town involved?

Spoiler Alert
There could be a good crime novel here, but the book is let down by the sloppiness of the writing. In one scene, the police officer realizes that he's been wearing the same clothes for three days, because he has just started a steamy relationship with Erica (and, seriously? Five times a night?). In the following scene, Erica sends her sister up to her room and then is embarrassed because her new lover has left his clothes scattered everywhere. It's things like that that make me think I'm reading a first draft and to wonder why I should take the time to read the damn thing when it's clear the author didn't.

There's an alarming veer over into chick-lit when Erica meets Officer Patrik and begins to worry a lot about what underwear to wear and how many weight watchers points are in any given food. Oddly, her new love echoes her concerns and spends loads of time choosing outfits and bemoaning the size of his ass.

The secondary characters are paper-thin caricatures with women often portrayed as ice-cold bitches or gold-digging tramps and the men as abusers or careless philanderers.

And, finally, the mystery is held together by a series of documents whose contents the people in the book are privy to long before the reader. If the mystery could be cleared up using knowledge held by the main characters, I call cheating. I was surprised to read on the flap that Lackberg is a ginormous bestselling author in Sweden, but then again, I'm often surprised by what makes the lists here.

Yay! Congratulations!

Congratulations! I hope you'll be staying around for the rest of the year -- I really enjoy reading your comments and reviews!

Congrats!!! So, when will you start 1111?

Congratulations on fiinishing the 100!

->233 RidgewayGirl:

When I read The Ice Princess, I was wondering if the translation would work. A huge part of its charm is that Läckberg has caught the language perfectly (there are some particular language-quirks that just won't work in another language) and some of the characters are spot on for that part of Sweden. I realize that they translated it to feed into the current market, but I think maybe they should have left Läckberg alone... :)

It did annoy me too that the characters would find out clues and then not tell the reader - absolutely cheating!

I'll post a summary of my 1010 reading tonight. I plan to loiter here until the end of the year. I'll start my 1111 on January first, but will be happy to read any threads starting earlier. Since there are so many posts here, I'll probably do a short challenge in a new thread here, I'll let you know.

Yahoo! Congratulations! A big big goal to be proud of for sure, even if you did go out with more of a whimper than a bang. Glad you're sticking around here for the rest of the year too!

Congratulations! :)

Congratulations and I am very happy to hear that you will be continuing to let us follow your reading here till the end of the year. My wish list thanks you for helping it continue to grow and flourish!

Congratulations!

Congrats! As I was scrolling down through your lists, I was thinking that all those strike-throughs must be pretty satisfying. Filling up specific categories is much more challenging than reading just any old thing. Are you feeling really free about your book choices for the rest of the year? Oh, wait, I just remembered that you're starting a new challenge. Know what it's going to be yet?

A great challenge, congratulations on finishing.

Congrats on finishing!

I'm closing up shop here and moving on to a new thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/100391&newpost=1#top