Chatterbox's 75-book Challenge for 2010: The Third Installment

Unbelievable -- but true. Only a month after launching #2, here I am with #3.

For anyone who wants to see what I've been reading so far, in the first 2/3 of this challenge, here are the links:

The first installment is here
The second installment is here







I've pulled all my reading together in two big groups: one for fiction and the other for non-fiction. All the books I've listed that I want to read are new books, or relatively new ones, that I've had sitting around and staring at me reproachfully and that I want to read & get safely on to a shelf ASAP. I divided it (roughly) in half, although the catch-all 5 book category ended up being mostly fiction, and I seem to have been reading that more rapidly. I've given up trying to read these in any order whatsoever...

Best of the 75:

Provenance: How A Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo
Passionate Minds: The Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment by David Bodanis
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin
Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution by Joel Richard Paul
The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World by Paul Collins
If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr
The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw
Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
Mrs. Adams in Winter by Michael O'Brien

The Fiction List:

1. White Nights by Ann Cleeves ****1/2 STARTED 1/2/10, FINISHED 1/5/10
2. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake ***1/2 STARTED 1/5/10, FINISHED 1/8/10
3. The Lotus-Eaters by Tatjana Soli ****1/2 STARTED 3/22/10, FINISHED 3/24/10
4. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald **** STARTED 3/1/10, FINISHED 3/5/10
5. The Man from Saigon by Marti Leimbach **** STARTED 3/6/10, FINISHED 3/13/10
6. Red Bones by Ann Cleeves ****1/2 STARTED 1/11/10, FINISHED 1/18/10
7. The Disappeared by M. R. Hall ***1/2 STARTED 1/8/10, FINISHED 1/10/10
8. Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz *** STARTED 1/24/10, FINISHED 1/26/10
9. Memento Mori by Muriel Spark **** STARTED 1/14/10, FINISHED 1/15/10
10. The Master by Colm Toibin ****1/2 STARTED 2/7/10, FINISHED 2/9/10
11. The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd **** READ 2/26/10
12. The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor ****1/2 READ 1/22/10
13. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid ***** READ 2/6/10
14. Passion by Jude Morgan ****1/2 STARTED 1/29/10, FINISHED 2/5/10
15. The Life You Want by Emily Barr *** 1/2 READ 3/1/10
16. If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr **** 1/2 STARTED 3/19/10, FINISHED 3/21/10
17. The Information Officer by Mark Mills **** 1/2 READ 2/19/10
18. Mud, Muck and Dead Things by Ann Granger **** STARTED 3/2/10, FINISHED 3/4/10
19. The Infinities by John Banville ****1/2 STARTED 2/21/10, FINISHED 2/23/10
20. Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves **** STARTED 2/19/10, FINISHED 2/20/10
21. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde **** STARTED 2/10/10, FINISHED 2/14/10
22. Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers **** STARTED 3/17/10, FINISHED 3/18/10
23. Money to Burn by James Grippando ***1/2 READ 2/26/10
24. The Other Family by Joanna Trollope **** STARTED 3/27/10, FINISHED 3/28/10
25. Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst **** READ 4/26/10
26. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
27. Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier **** 1/2 STARTED 4/13/10, FINISHED 4/14/10
28. An Empty Death by Laura Wilson **** STARTED 4/15/10, FINISHED 4/18/10
29. Map of the Invisible World by Tash Aw **** 1/2 STARTED 4/2/10, FINISHED 4/7/10
30. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson **** STARTED 4/11/10, FINISHED 4/12/10
31. The Imperfectionists By Tom Rachman **** 1/2, STARTED 5/26/10, FINISHED 5/27/10
32. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
33. The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer **** STARTED 4/27/10, FINISHED 4/29/10
34. This Body of Death by Elizabeth George **** STARTED 5/3/10, FINISHED 5/7/10
35. The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw
36. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym **** STARTED 5/27/10, FINISHED 5/28/10
37. The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs *** 1/2 STARTED 4/17/10, FINISHED 4/19/10
38. Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
39. Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

1. Passionate Minds by David Bodanis ***** STARTED 1/16/10, FINISHED 1/18/10
2. The Morland Hours by Katherine Swift ****1/2 STARTED 1/26/10, FINISHED 1/31/10
3. The Book of William by Paul Collins ***** STARTED 1/8/10, FINISHED 1/11/10
4. The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin ***** STARTED 1/1/10, FINISHED 1/2/10
5. On Moving: A Writer's Meditation on New Houses, Old Haunts, and Finding Home Again by Louise deSalvo **** STARTED 1/22/10, FINISHED 1/23/10
6. Americans in Paris by Charles Glass ***1/2 STARTED 1/19/10, FINISHED 1/21/10
7. The Last Empress by Hannah Pakula **** STARTED 2/3/10, FINISHED 2/19/10
8. Unlikely Allies by Joel Richard Paul **** 1/2 STARTED 2/24/10, FINISHED 3/3/10
9. Not Quite Paradise by Adele Barker ***1/2 STARTED 1/28/10, FINISHED 1/29/10
10. For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose *** 1/2 STARTED 3/13/10, FINISHED 3/16/10
11. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre **** STARTED 3/8/10, FINISHED 3/10/10
12. Anne Frank: the Book, the Life, the Afterlife by Francine Prose **** STARTED 3/19/10, FINISHED 3/20/10
13. Varsity Green by Mark Yost ****1/2 STARTED 3/16/10, FINISHED 3/17/10
14. Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen *** 1/2 STARTED 2/24/10, FINISHED 2/26/10
15. The Snow Tourist by Charlie English **** STARTED 2/10/10, FINISHED 2/13/10
16. The Big Short by Michael Lewis ****1/2 STARTED 4/17/10, FINISHED 4/18/10
17. How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Bakewell
18. The Woman Who Fell From the Sky by Jennifer Steil
19. Philanthrocapitalism by Matthew Bishop
20. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple **** 1/2, STARTED 4/23/10, FINISHED 4/25/10
21. The Science of Liberty by Timothy Ferris
22. The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge by Adam Sisman STARTED 5/26/10
23. Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt ***** STARTED 4/29/10, FINISHED 5/4/10
24. Mrs. Adams in Winter by Michael O'Brien ****1/2 STARTED 5/20/10, FINISHED 5/22/10
25. Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson ***** STARTED 4/21/10, FINISHED 4/22/10
26. Where Soldiers Fear to Tread by John Burnett
27. Thucydides: the Reinvention of History by Donald Kagan **** STARTED 3/28/10, FINISHED 4/7/10
28. Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury & Aly Sujo ***** STARTED 4/12/10, FINISHED 4/14/10
29. The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of Little Big Horn by Nathaniel Philbrick
30. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick **** 1/2, STARTED 5/28/10, FINISHED 5/29/10
31. Searching for Order by Anna Pavord
32. Kingmakers by Karl Meyer & Shareen Brysac
33. A Mosque in Munich by Ian Johnson **** 1/2 STARTED 4/9/10, FINISHED 4/11/10
34. The Devil and Sherlock Holmes by David Grann**** STARTED 3/25/10, FINISHED 3/27/10
35. South from Barbary by Justin Marozzi **** STARTED 5/24/10, FINISHED 5/26/10
36. Everything is Broken by Emma Larkin **** STARTED 4/28/10, FINISHED 5/1/10

Found you again!

But Suzanne, we were having such a good time on the old thread :)

Suzanne

I like the fact that you mark when you started and then finished a book!

You party animals...

OK, the first book for the new thread:

#49 for this challenge was The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs. Dobbs made his name writing political mysteries/thrillers involving one of the nastiest antiheroes in British politics, Francis Urquhart, a deliciously evil man. Since then, his heroes have been mostly good guys in the classic British tradition -- slightly past their prime in one way or another (Thomas Goodfellowe, hero of Goodfellowe MP and The Buddha of Brewer Street has to ride a bike to work because he's lost his driver's license), but essentially good and honorable. Harry Jones, a world-weary former SAS type, has saved the world (or, in The Lord's Day, the Queen and Parliament) twice already. This time, he only has to save an American friend, locked in a deeply nasty jail in the quasi-fictional Ta'argistan. (It's a thinly disguised Kyrgyzstan, with its equally nasty leaders offering elements of the former CEO of Turkmenistan and the Uzbek leader.) Needless to say, not everything goes as planned... It's a thriller that kept me turning the pages and wondering how Dobbs was going to extricate his hero, although a couple of the solutions were just a bit too pat and Hollywood. Still, a fun read; I'd give it somewhere between 3.5 and 4 stars. The writing and plotting are pro forma, but the idea is intriguing and the execution compelling enough. Still, I'll end up with 3.5, and suggest you read Dobbs's excellent series of novels featuring Winston Churchill in the run-up to WW2 and during the war -- they are fab.

#7: I will have to see what books of Dobbs (if any) my local library has. Thanks for the recommendations, Suz.

Thanks for letting us have fun and highjack your thread!

OOO F.U.! I loved the "House of Cards" TV series.

It looks like a thread a month will become the new normal for those of us not up in the Stasiasphere. The Darrylverse is making a good run on it, however....

>10 richardderus: "You might very well think so. I, however, could not possibly comment..."

I've actually used that to get indirect confirmations on sensitive stuff from the Brits. "Would that be a denial denial or a Francis Urquhart denial?" Doesn't work as well now as it did in the 90s, however...

The Darrylverse is making a good run on it, however....

Hey! I've noticed that my good name has been dragged through the mud on numerous occasions in the past few months. I am merely a devoted servant to Queen Stasia -- and Princess Suzanne, the heir apparent to the Queen's throne if Stasia's brain begins to short circuit from reading so many books.

I've starred your thread, Suzanne. If the last one lasted a month, I'd give this one no more than three weeks.

Well, I may have to remove my coronet this week, as I've got a mountain of writing. May do a piece for the Washington Post and one for Foreign Policy's website. In addition to the regular weekly Wall St. column, a freelance piece for Barron's and -- oh, yes -- a new forward for the book. *whimper*

Please let us know when these articles are published!

Voracious reader + soon-to-be best-selling author + newspaper/magazine article writer + radio/TV interviewee = person worthy of coronation:

Darryl, don't make my head swell so much that that crown actually fits! That would be truly terrifying. I might become self-important and pompous or summat like that!

The book du jour is The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein. Not as good as I was expecting, given the author's amazing book about the Long-Term Capital Mgt crisis and the fact that his brain is literally three sizes that of any other financial journalist I know. Still, it's a more thorough look at the chronology of the crisis than Sorkin's book, with a broader focus/context, and more analysis. I'd say this would be the best "one stop shopping" book about the crisis, although it's less lively/entertaining than Michael Lewis's. Roger does, however, provide notes on his sources and an index... 4 stars. Logged in my 1010 Challenge.

I've just come tiptoing in because I like what you have to say on other threads (i.e. You agree with me! or is that I agree with you?), and behold! You are reading more than I can get my head around. Too much new stuff to take in, so I'm away to sleep it off! (But I've starred your thread and will be back.)
Peggy

Peggy, don't tiptoe; pull up a chair, have a cup of tea and chat! :-)
(Stasia's thread is FAR more scary; trust me...)

#15: I might become self-important and pompous or summat like that!

Richard is very good at popping self-important and pompous balloons, so I do not think you need to worry about it in this group!

#18: My thread is not scary! (not on purpose anyway)

Today's book du jour is the not-so-good The Mills of God by Deryn Lake. The author has written a rather good series of historical mysteries featuring an 18th century apothecary in London, John Rawlings. Perhaps her flair for describing the historical setting and context masked her rather bad writing, because this was just painful to read, if not actively bad. She ascribes various funny behavioral traits to her hero, "Reverend Nick", the new vicar of an English town, including a quirky little bow. It's just very heavy-handed, and her characters are stereotypes rather than real people, complete with eyes that flash, smoulder or are sullen. I stumbled through to the end, but never really found myself caring much about the rather tissue-thin plot, either. 2.5 stars. If you want an ecclesiastical mystery, try those written by Kate Charles -- there are two series, one featuring a church architect, the other with a young female curate. Or for an English village story, if you're looking for something beyond the usual suspects, try Ann Purser's first books, including New Every Morning and Orphan Lamb. This tries to be a combination of both genres and fails at both. Going to read the new Barbara Cleverly mystery featuring Joe Sandilands to take the taste of this out of my mouth. Belongs in my 50-book overflow challenge.

>20 Chatterbox: Deryn Lake's publicist is now weeping copiously, I feel sure, for the loss of a future bestselling blurberess of the lady's future mysteries.

Good on ya, mate. Sounds perfectly useless. Elizabeth, ejj1955, once said to me that she'd rather have a review of one of her books indicate real dislike and distaste than indicate indifference. (I'd reviewed something as "perfectly adequate," which started the conversation.) I'm not sure which fence you're sitting on with this review... ;-P

The skeletal structure of this one was fine -- what could have been a good plotline. Hence the fact that it's not a 1.5 star or 0.5 star rating. I think she was trying to write a cozy and it just came off as twee instead. I just found myself so irritated by the style and lack of an interesting character that I was grinding my teeth. Makes Barbara Cleverly (who is no PD James) look like a star in comparison. It's a Severn House book; they are usually authors who have been dropped by their publishers for some reason. Some SH books are great; others are blech. I figured that knowing the author's other work, this one might be a good bet.

> 20 I have had a note-to-self to read another by Kate Charles for awhile. I read Strange Children several years ago; it was one of the strangest books I've ever read but I liked it. I'm not much on ecclesiastical mysteries, though.

>22 Chatterbox: Severn House does have a weird little niche for itself. Someone out there is republishing backlist mysteries that aren't economical for their big-house (in all its connotations) publishers to monkey with...aha! these people, of whom I had never heard until I got interested in Sharan Newman's Le Vendeur mysteries (it was short-lived interest)...but that's slightly different from what Severn is doing.

Not that I'd say no if they offered a contract for my mystery, mind. I ain't no fool.

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Yes, her three stand-alone books were quirky, but good. My faves remain the first series, which include A Drink of Deadly Wine, Appointed to Die and Dead Man Out of Mind. The sleuths are a lawyer and an artist, rather than a vicar; the crimes tend to be set against an ecclesiastical background in English villages.

I love the fact that Severn House exists; I suppose that the reason they are doing it is to capitalize on authors with brand names among hardcore fans who aren't as numerous as the 'big' authors. Which is great; they published Ann Quinton's books, for instance, which I love. But I suspect they make their money by easing up on the editorial work. So shifting to them can really highlight an author able to do all the careful work on editing and plotting from one who can't or can't be bothered. Ann Purser made the leap with her Lois Meade mysteries -- I've grown tired of them, but that's nothing to do with the writing, just the format.

Never a dull moment around here any more...

Got the new Archipelago book today -- White Masks, by Elias Khoury. (no touchstone for it, apparently.)

Came home to find big box of books from Bookcloseouts on my doorstep.

Came back with multiple ARCs and copies of free books from my publishers, including The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Claude and Camille and The King's Mistress. And a bunch of ARCs of my own book.

Oh yes, and the publication date for my own book is being moved up by two weeks, from June 29 to June 15.

My head is spinning, and I haven't had a free second all day to get anything to eat. But at least I've got lots to read!!

I think Severn House targets its books at the library market rather than at bookshop buyers - I know a few writers who've been taken up by them. I've met Deryn Lake, she's quite a character. I've not read her mysteries yet, though I own at least one of the John Rawlings series, but I enjoyed her historical novels written under the name Dinah Lampitt in the 1990s.

Kate Charles is another writer I've bought several books by but not read any yet - I've heard her speak at the St Hilda's Mystery Conference in Oxford, an event I used to go to regularly pre-babies.

I also thought An Empty Death was better than Stratton's War - I've read several of Laura Wilson's other books but not all, but An Empty Death was one of my 2 favourite reads of last year.

I just caught up with all 3 of Emily Barr's most recent books including The Life You Want.

My favourite Tracy Chevalier is The Virgin Blue which was reprinted after Girl with a Pearl Earring became successful - it's probably not the best written but for some reason I just liked it. I was a bit disappointed in Falling Angels because she got some important historical details wrong and that threw me out of the rest of the story. I just bought Remarkable Creatures as it came out in paperback here this month, and I still have Burning Bright to read too.

See, here we are again. I'm a real Kate Charles fan, though less for her stand-alones than for her Joan and David series.....It's been awhile; I'm surprised that I remembered their names if I did get them right. Luci, lucky you to get to St Hilda's Mystery Conference in Oxford. I'm drooling.

Dinah Lampitt - yes, I was trying to remember the other name under which she had written! There about four or five that she wrote under that name that I enjoyed. Some others, not so much. But I don't think contemporary mystery is her forte.

Emily Barr has a new book coming out sometime next month in the UK, I think. I have it down on my "watchlist". I find her books are either great or they just don't work for me. Lizzie -- I think it's actually Lucy and David in that series!!!

Migraine again. Not surprised, given all the tumult around here.

Hope the migraine goes away soon, Suz!

Just catching up. Far out, you are busy. Thanks for the Michael Dobbs rec... I had forgotten about him and haven't even seen the TV series (I know I would love it, but I think it came out when I was in grad school or had a reason to be too busy to watch.)

We got to pick FOUR books from Amazon Vine this week!! Goody.

Last week's picks just arrived:
Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst
Everything is Broken by Emma Larkin

Just requested, and will probably arrive when I get back from Utah:
A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters (listened to Richard on that one)
The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Jennifer Steil
Murder in the High Himalaya by Jonathan Green
Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin (my chunk of mindless reading/brain candy...)

yummy.

I thought of this article when I read the description of Murder in the High Himalaya. If they had any oil the U.S. would have been there to help get the Chinese out!

My copy of White Masks arrived today, Suzanne.

I received White Masks today as well .... and feel relieved that Archipelago didn't lose my subscription. :-)

Went to Carnegie Hall this evening for Frederica von Stade's farewell New York recital... I first saw her perform when I was 11 and a family friend took me to Glyndebourne to see Marriage of Figaro. I was grumpy about going -- and blown away by the concept of opera as fun, thanks to von Stade's Cherubino. So 37 years later... the last concert, a great one, funny and charming, not all serious and Verdi-esque. Samuel Ramey and Richard Stilwell joined her in a trio from Bernstein's "On the Town", which had the entire audience half laughing and half weeping. It was a wonderful break from work, but sad to think that will be the last time I'll see her perform. Reminds me of how fast life moves...

Will update my reading tomorrow... after I return from having my hair de-greyed. If that's not a verb, it should be.

And what is wrong with a little grey hair? (tongue planted firmly in cheek)

LOL! It makes me look like a badger or a skunk. Not like a respected (cough, hack, cough) author and all-around serious person.

I flat refuse to have mine colored. People are just stuck with the fact that I have grey hair - I have been getting grey hair since I was 12!

If I had been doing that since my late 20s, I wouldn't have to worry now. But it would take 2 to 3 years to grow out, during which I would look like some form of wildlife. It is technically impossible to die one's hair grey or white, I'm told.

I've had a strand or two of gray hair since my teenage years too, Stasia. Started coloring it myself in my 30s and went professional in my 40s. Despite my advanced age, I just don't feel old enough to have gray hair -- and then there's the problem Suzanne mentions.

My hair is lucky it gets washed, lol. I have hated it since childhood (naturally curly), so no way am I going to the expense of having it colored, just to have to do it again and again ad infinitum. My hair is just not that big of a deal to me.

ETA: I think part of my resistance to having my hair colored was the fact that my father insisted for years that my mother have hers done because the grey hair made her look 'old,' which it did not.

A good friend of mine did take the plunge recently to grow out the grey/white -- she did look odd for about six weeks, but then it started to look cool.

I've had a Cruella de Ville streak forever and the rest of my hair is only just starting to silver up. People think I faked it, sometimes, (so I'm glad to know you can't -- although I suppose you could wrap a chunk and NOT dye it) but I think it is some gene since I see it occasionally on other women. I otherwise have had unenviable hair my whole life, so fine that it is a pain (even hairdressers admit this is so) and it has been nice to have one sort of decent hair thing. Okay so this was an inexcusable vanity attack but I'll leave it stand.

>30 Chatterbox: (Thanks for the Lucy and David correction! I could have looked, but I'm too lazy.)
I just have to chime in about the hair. It was the bane of my existence for my whole life until I turned 60. That is to say: fine, limp, straight, no movement. Then for no known reason, it picked up some movement, a wave, and now I have actual curls in back especially in the summer's humidity. I continue to be thrilled and incredulous and to fear a return to real hair every time I have it cut. My other story is that at 65 I have very little gray, but that is around my face. I dread the day when I look like I'm wearing a white headband. Rude people ask whether I color it, and I have to restrain myself from being equally rude right back and demanding whether I look stupid enough to color the back and not the front. On second thought, that might not be the way to phrase the question.

#45: I would gladly loan you some of my curls!!

I've refused from the get-go to color my hair. Number one I don't care at all for the idea of having all those chemicals poured all over my hair every 6 weeks. Number two is all that time spent doing it - I'd hate that. And number three, (and most importantly), I am not up for the hideous expense. All that money that could be better spent on books! Coloring hair is most definitely not for me!

I have to confess I am very vain about my hair because I consider it my best feature by a long shot. That's why I spend money on coloring it and getting good haircuts -- it's a lot cheaper than therapy. I have wavy hair and, like LizzieD in #45, it is actually nicer on hot humid "bad hair days" than on the cold dry days of winter.

My hair is very thick and very eccentric -- enough wave to make it difficult to style, but not enough to make it curly. (My mother had ringlets as a child, however...) I don't love coloring my hair, but on the occasions I've started growing it out, even my friends agree that the paler color doesn't really suit me. (I have -- or had -- very dark hair, and very pale skin; Black Irish coloring.) Plus, there is the fact that it's harder to look professional in NYC, bluntly. No one my age in any of my work circles has a trace of grey, that I can find. And especially since I'm now freelancing, why give someone who might think of offering me work/a steady gig a chance to say no? I'm already at least a decade older (and that much more expensive) than many other people competing for the same kind of work. I do think that workwise, it's easier for men -- going grey or even bald doesn't turn them into "grandpa", professionally.

I think it's so sad that we let that be done to us - we can't keep it up forever. What a shame that we cannot be valued for what is in our heads rather than what is on our heads.

I've never dyed my hair mainly because my husband never really cared for me to do it (check out my profile pic if you want to see what my hair looks like). He always liked my hair which has had gray in it since I was in my 20's. But I know I'm in the minority. I have no other friends with gray hair. I'm happy so I guess that's all that matters.

brenzi - it looks like a lovely silver, not just gray. Mine is in transition so it's a mousy color. I don't mind. I believe I've earned every single gray hair.

It seems we can have just as lively a discussion about hair coloring as books!!

One of my aunts has the most marvelous head of white hair. not a strand of gray at all ... really beautiful. I suspect, I'll be more the striped badger when I really start graying.

Caroline, by the time I was 30, I was already a striped badger! I found my first grey hair at the age of 16...

I can't take credit for my mane ... 'tis genetics. My mother had a lovely head of black hair until her late 40s. I've discovered 4 strands thus far, rapidly yanked out, I can assure you .... with fingers crossed that 40 more don't come to their funeral. Could be worse I suppose .. I could also be balding!

New York is cruel that way, no doubt about it, all my friends with NY lives and careers dye their hair.... spend a lot of money on it and stay amazingly thin. Even when they sleep in Brookyn!

Philly is sort of neither here nor there, I'd say more than half the women my age dye their hair but every year there are a few who quit.

Now Vermont, where I'm moving, -- well -- NO ONE dyes their hair. Madeleine Kunin probably did, but I can't think of anyone else. I know more than a few women who barely brush their hair...... and I'm not kidding!

Well, I should move to Vermont!! As it is, since I don't stay amazingly thin (indeed, have never in my life been so) it's kinda incumbent on me to deal with the hair, so at least part of me looks well-groomed and quasi-elegant...

Amazingly thin people don't get to eat amazingly great food. :-)

Neither do I, or I will find myself buying two airplane seats whenever I fly.... Still, I do eat, as opposed to nibble.

Catching up, not on my reading, but on reporting on my reading!!

1. #50 for this challenge, and the best of the bunch, was Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson. It's part travel book, part memoir, part Canadian history lesson in a way that only Ferguson, will his subversive wit, could deliver. If you don't really know what makes Canadians different from Americans, this is a great book to read -- you'll understand by the end that it's about more than the word "eh", being nice and polite, and a strange passion for hockey. It's a world view. And Ferguson explores "Canadian-ness" by looking at the world of polar bears, bootlegging, empire, the prairies, the tobacco farms of SW Ontario and of course, the "French factor" and Newfoundland's famous screech. It's funny -- I never laugh out loud while reading, but this book made me do so at least three times, and on the subway, at that. 5 stars.

2. For my 50-book "overflow" challenge -- Strange Images of Death by Barbara Cleverly. This is the latest in Cleverly's longer-running series featuring Joe Sandilands; in this case, Sandilands is escorting his honorary niece to her father in the south of France, only to find that an assault on a 12th-century tomb is following by an assault on a 20th century woman that leaves her dead. Set in the wake of WW1, this is a very solid addition to a good series. 4 stars.

3. In a logical leap to the 12th century, I read The Queen's Pawn by Christy English, which also will end up in my 50-book overflow challenge. Alas and alack, the author has not only distorted the timeline of the events in this book (the revolt of the sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine against their father, egged on by their mother) but created some laughably unbelievable situations as well. We're supposed to believe not only that Henry seduced his son's betrothed (which is possible, historically), but that he flaunted this relationship publicly in front of both Eleanor and his son, Richard. (which didn't happen and doesn't even pass the plausibility test.) This is nothing more than a claustrophobic menage a trois in novel form; it doesn't really even rise to the description of being a historical "romance", since the princess, Alais, apparently seduces Henry out of pique that Eleanor hijacked a letter Alais had sent to her father. Good grief. 1.5 stars -- it's not badly written, just bizarre.

4. To Begin the World Over by John Hulsman is for my Off-the-Shelf Challenge. It's a brisk and fascinating analysis of T.E. Lawrence's life and specifically his involvement in the Arab revolt. (You know, Lawrence of Arabia...) But he sets this against a broader backdrop: the very contemporary issue of nationbuilding generally, and specifically in the Middle East. The creation of the short-lived kingdom of Iraq was brokered by Lawrence, and marked the end of his idealism about what nations were and how they could be "created" (local legitimacy being key), and his willingness to swap those ideals for a pragmatic solution that would salve his own honor by giving his ally, Feisal, A crown, rather than THE crown of Syria, the one he was probably entitled to but had been denied by the power politics of Versailles. This is a fascinating story about Lawrence's life and his legacy. The one problem is that Hulsman has a tendency to repeat facts and ideas till I was ready to holler "I've got it, already!!" Still, given the apparent unwillingness of our political leaders to learn from past experience, maybe he think's that is necessary. And he never allows the story to get bogged down or side-tracked. Definitely will be reading more on this era and its personalities. 4 stars.

5. Aunt Dimity Down Under by Nancy Atherton, for the overflow challenge. I don't usually like "cozy" mysteries, or the supernatural, so why I was first drawn to this mystery series is beyond me. Lori Willis has featured as the main living character is a series of cozies set in England; the main (well, only) supernatural character is her late mother's late friend, Dimity Westwood. (The series kicked off with a big inheritance from Aunt Dimity; the two find they can communicate via a blank diary that fills up with Dimity's handwriting when Lori talks out loud -- suspend all incredulity, all yet who venture here...) These are very soft cozies indeed -- there's not even a murder at the heart of this one, or any crime, for that matter: rather, Lori has to venture to New Zealand on a quest to find the sole remaining relative of the ancient and dying Miss Pyms, identical twins and fellow residents of the quaint village of Finch. This was a slightly too saccharine tale for me, frankly, even by the standards of this series, so it's only 3 stars. Still, a way to pass a few idle hours without having to think too hard. More tomorrow...

#61: I like the Dimity books just because they require relatively little thought on my part and they are comfort reads for me.

I vow to start the Dimity books soon. I was able to purchase a number of them for .10 each.

I couldn't get into the Dimity books .. tried 2, loathed them and wanted to strangle dear Aunty D.

I do like Joe Sandilands though and must add this latest to my obese wish list.

Aunt Dammit and Agatha Rabbit-Raisin are two prime movers in the "Let's Ban Cozies" recruitment drive. *shudder*

I'm starting Ragtime in Simla next month, I want to know what the fuss about Sandilands is based on.

Richard, I was skeptical about the Sandilands series for eons -- the first two books sat on my TBR shelf for about three years. Then I pulled them down and read them and went out and bought the rest in the series. As with any series there are one or two that don't click as well, but I really liked them. But Aunt Dimity may be toast from hereon. Just getting too twee for me.

You got me with Beauty Tips From Moose Jaw Suzanne. I have a love affair going on with Canadian writers.

>67 brenzi:, Ferguson has a hilarious book, Why I Hate Canadians, and also a very good novel, Happiness, that you might also want to check out. Bonne chance!

I think I've read the first two Barbara Cleverlys, and liked the second better than the first. I'm going to have to seek out The Damascened Blade which is next, though the title sounds familiar and that's making me wonder if I read it too. I can't believe there's 8 in the series already though, I remember when #1 was new!

I read Aunt Dimity's Christmas for a group read discussion years ago, I think 1* might have been generous - this series isn't for me.

Barbara Cleverly writes at the speed of light, I think...

So, here I am in Salt Lake City, with a stack of books, a stack of work, a migraine and without my noise-reduction Bose headphones, which I left on the first plane in a headache-induced stupor. Let's hope someone is honest and turns them in; I'll know tomorrow.

A quick book update. No particular order:

1. #51 for this challenge was Nine Lives by William Dalrymple. Nothing to do with cats; it's the story of nine very different individuals in today's India, each of whom has found that their religious convictions drive them to lead a life that hearkens back to the past rather than being linked to the spirit of the new 'modern' India. There's a Jain nun, a performer who recounts spiritual sagas, a Sufi, a Tibetan-born monk, a woman who makes drinking gourds from skulls... It's the whole panoply of Indian religious traditions, and Dalrymple does a great job of leaving himself in the background (a contrast to the usual travel writer) and letting his characters tell their fascinating and often poignant stories. It sometimes feels a bit too much like oral history, but it's still a 4.5 star book for me. It's particularly intriguing when his characters confront the distance between their society and their lives. Highly recommended.

2. #52 for this challenge: Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst. I got this from Amazon Vine, so I owe them a review. A quick overview: this Furst 'hero' is a policeman in Salonika, circa 1940. Furst does a great job of portraying a community feeling a sense of impending doom (the Germans are coming, probably, but no one knows for sure if or when); the story revolves around Costas's involvement in an escape line for German Jews and ultimately espionage. Furst is better on atmosphere than providing detailed characterizations or plots, but even the sketches of the latter he provides are better than most other authors' epic novels. 4 stars.

3. For the 1010 Challenge, Lovers and Newcomers by Rosie Thomas. This is an escapist chick lit read by an author whose books I've fallen into the habit of buying. Some are better than others; this one intrigued me at first due to the fact that its main characters are sixty or so, and facing the reality that their lives never lived up to their dreams. It's a group of university friends who decide to pool their resources -- of course, this being dramatic chick lit, relationship conflicts ensue. It's good, but not great; sometimes too repetitive. 3.5 stars.

4. For my 50-book overflow challenge -- Strip By Thomas Perry. Some of this author's books I love, especially his Jane Whitefield series. But his stand-alone books are more uneven, and this is one of his weaker efforts. It's the story of a man who is mistakenly believed to have been the guy between the holdup of the owner of some strip clubs and nightclubs -- a convoluted tale of how he gets himself out of trouble and what happens to the club owner. It's intriguing, but not for anyone who isn't a fan of the author; Perry weaves together FAR too many characters and plot lines. Avoid this and go read the Jane Whitefield series instead, which is excellent. This is 3 stars.

Yep, loved Jane Whitefield. Nine Lives looks really interesting to me both because of the sacred and because of India. I wonder why I am so hot to buy new books when I have several thousand wonderful old ones that I haven't read yet. Sad.......
I'm sorry about your migraine and sincerely hope you get your headphones back. Sometimes people do the right thing.

Suzanne, BIG bummer about your earphones! I'm really hoping for honesty in the hoi polloi.

Have fun in Mormonia. It's a very, very interesting place. I suspect the gorgeous scenery will work its magic on you. And I don't know exactly what it is...maybe the Great Salt Lake?...but I've never had a headache of any description in Utah.

Nine Lives Dalrymple looks fascinating!

I've been to Salt Lake City twice - it's so beautiful! Also felt like I stuck out like sore toe when I ordered a gin and tonic on my own in a restaurant. Hope your headphones get returned and the headache goes.

Adding Nine Lives to the BlackHole.

Adding my good thoughts to the others hoping for the return of the headphones and the departure of the headache!

Also adding my crossed fingers that your headphones get handed in. Also, I liked your notes on Nine Lives - I'll be looking for that one.

Can't get thru to DFW lost and found today... Salt Lake City is gorgeous, surrounded by mountains. The theology is ... um interesting. I didn't order booze last night at dinner, but the waitress, from Philadelphia, was very excited to find someone who wasn't from around here. She said, and I quote, "people come here and they don't leave again." Fresh faces are thin on the ground...

Happily, the fresh air is delightful. Alas, I'm stuck indoors working on some stories about -- yes -- Wall Street. You can run, but not hide. The genealogy stuff gets going this evening, and it will be non-stop through to Sat.

I've finally got my MacBook pro up and running, and could grow to love it when I figure out its little behavioral tricks.

#76: I have only been to SLC once, but I remember driving through Utah and admiring the beautiful country out that way.

I hope you get plenty of rest while there breathing the fresh air, before you have to head back east!

Wish we could meet up at DFW on your way through. Too bad.

Apparently the plane wasn't cleaned in DFW, so the headset could have gone back to LaGuardia. Then back to DFW. Then on to SLC. Or stolen. American Airlines doesn't know... Bah humbug.

#78: Sorry Suz.

Oh so sorry about your headphones, not to mention the migraine. I get them too, so I know all about that fog you get and can't think through.

But maybe they will still show up. I had good luck with a library book left on a JetBlue flight last month. The ground crew person I spoke with even returned it to the library for me (a fellow patron, as it happened) so I didn't have to drive up to the airport to pick it up. Library books aren't quite (!) as valuable as the Bose headphones, though, so I know it's a long shot...

#76, I love my MacBook Pro! Are you switching from a PC? I did, and there are a few little tricks I learned about that make some Mac-style things a little more PC-style. For me, it was having one scroll arrow at the top and one at the bottom, instead of both together.

I was briefly in Salt Lake once and enjoyed except for the guy in the Temple who, upon discovering I was Jewish, tried to explain to me the "special connection" between Mormons and Jews.

Yay - caught up!

You'll definitely have to keep us posted on when the BBC interviews you so that we can listen/watch (is it going to be radio or TV?) - how exciting! (Jun 15th publication duly noted...)

#27 "Came back with multiple ARCs and copies of free books from my publishers, including The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" - Pah! Jealous, jealous, jealous!

#37 (Carnegie Hall/Frederica von Stade) - sounds like great fun. I'm going to have to go to Carnegie Hall one of these days - it's one of those venue names that just sounds so exciting (if that makes any sense at all).

#44 sibyx - re grey chunks of hair - it's not that uncommon and is called Poliosis - it just means that that patch of skin below has no pigment. There used to be a French rugby player who had it - I can't for the life of me remember his name, or I'd post a link... I've always been slightly envious of those who have a stylish chunk. My grey hair is all over the place!

Re colouring your hair, I'm one of those who started to go white in my early twenties - strangely, being that young when it started to happen has meant that I seem to care much less about it than mates who are only just starting to go grey (early 30's)...

This said, I did start to have my hair highlighted every now and then a couple of years ago for special occasions (initially my sister's wedding) - it just does make it look so much tidier, which makes me feel good (I'm so slack about my appearance most of the time, it's good to smarten up occasionally!)

Liking the sound of Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw, To Begin the World Over and Nine Lives...

I confess that Salt Lake City made me feel a little uncomfortable when I was there, not sure why, possibly because it felt like I'd stepped into another universe... So the "people come here and they don't leave again" comment amused me quite a lot - I have visions of women in headscarves quietly burying all tourists somewhere in the Outback! (No offence to any Salt Lake City dwellers out there - I know that this is a completely ridiculous vision!). It's certainly set in a very beautiful area though...

ROTFL, Fliss. There are a lot of people wandering around here today with big badges identifying them as Brother so and so, or Sister so and so from the Church of JC of LDS. (what a mouthful...) The upside of it is that people are incredibly polite. The downside? It does feel a bit like Stepford. I have a manic urge to turn cartwheels down a hall or go reeling through the session clutching a bottle of whiskey in my hand, just as a matter of principle... And the idea of retroactively baptizing your ancestors so you can meet up in the afterlife? I admit I struggle with that one on too many levels to mention. Also -- it's interesting that I can get into nearly any church, mosque (except Mecca), Hindu temple, Buddhist temple, etc. etc. I want, even a synagogue. But you have to not only be LDS but have permission to go into the Salt Lake Temple. It's like the Muslims saying it's not enough to be a Muslim to go to Mecca; you have to behave in this prescribed manner and then maybe we'll let you in to the mosque to worship. Sigh, there I go, on my soapbox again.

Spent about seven hours watching the Goldman Sachs hearings yesterday on TV; they went on for nearly 11 hours in total. I felt as if the Senators had actually picked up the ideas in the book -- eerie... Someone even used phrases that I've got in the book!!

I watched Jon Stewart last night. I think that's about as much of the hearings as I could take! Seven hours! And your head didn't explode? ;-0

Who's worse? The grandstanding senators who want to look like they're in charge or the arrogant Goldman Sachs employees who are richer than God? Hmmm.

#85
I think it is Fabulous Fab for allowing people to actually call him that horrible moniker.

>86 jmaloney17:, well, he used the moniker himself in his e-mails! so he was actively encouraging it. But then, that's the Wall Street ethos at work...

>85 brenzi:, the senators were def. grandstanding, but they did get to what is, to me, the crux of the issue: the fact that Wall Street acts in its own interest first and foremost. Very intriguing -- and finally a look beyond the 'what' to the 'why'. Some were embarrassing; but there also were some impressively knowledgeable questions.

>84 mamzel:, if my brain has indeed exploded, that would explain an awful lot of other stuff.

btw, it snowed here overnight... Yesterday was in the 70s; today there is snow on the hilltops (it didn't stick to the ground in the downtown, but there was sleet when i left for the conference...)

I was astounded when the husband of a good friend who is Mormon was not allowed in the temple (not the SLC temple, just an ordinary temple) for their daughter's wedding. He was sort of Mormon, but not always as "pure" as he should have been.

>87 Chatterbox:: Wall Street acts in its own interest first and foremost

What is find difficult to understand is how any government official can be "surprised" about this after all we've been through. In general, I think that people whose job it is to make money playing the system are going to play the system for all it's worth. There was a demand for mortgage securities. They could get very rich satisfying that demand. To think that they're going to forgo that out of some sense of personal civic responsibility seems naïve. Yes, we wish they would...but to expect it, and be surprised when they don't, well...

We have this discussion at work on a much smaller scale all the time. If you provide incentives for an employee to do X at the expense of Y, don't expect Y unless you curb it forcefully. Yet, commission structures still get set up that favor selling only one product and then we wonder why another doesn't get sold. Or, technical support gets measured on how fast they close issues, then we wonder why customers are complaining that they feel pressure to say something is fixed when they're not sure.

The grandstanding of, "I'm shocked! Simply shocked!" annoys me so much.

There...I feel better already. :-)

>88 arubabookwoman:: good friend who is Mormon was not allowed in the temple

Out of curiosity...is anyone here Mormon who could explain why this is so? I'm not criticizing; I'm just curious.

I will ask tomorrow when I meet all the LDS folks!

Tad, I agree re the grandstanding. Nobody was complaining or asking questions when things were going well. But the system has gotten worse over the course of the last 15/20 years. It's hard to be "long-term greedy", as Goldman used to describe its business model, when your investors demand that you be "short term greedy" or they will turf you out of the CEO's office. It's a lesson everyone on Wall Street learned too well.

My story for Foreign Policy is now up on their website -- running under the headline Goldman Envy.

Not getting enough reading done! I did finish one book that will go into my overflow challenge, The Time of Singing by Elizabeth Chadwick. It's a historical novel, set in the era of Henry II and Richard I, but what made it enjoyable (besides its historical accuracy) was the fact that the plot wasn't yet another rehash of The Lion in Winter, but instead revolved around the Earl of Norfolk and his marriage to a former mistress of the king's. It's what I call a reasonable novel -- reasonably well-written, reasonably interesting, etc. Just never transcended the genre or rose to the level of a "thumping good read", so 3.5 stars. Still much better than a lot of the stuff that goes under the heading of historical fiction nowadays, thankfully, and a good airplane book.

> 88 Maybe he doesn't wear his 'garment' all the time.

The NYer had an article about the temple genealogical stuff a few years ago -- one thing I remember is that lots of Jewish folks particularly are incensed that they have been retroactively baptized.

>92 sibylline:: incensed that they have been retroactively baptized

That seems an extreme reaction. I can understand being a trifle insulted at the high-handedness of it. But, if one isn't a Mormon then...almost by definition...isn't it a meaningless ritual to the baptizee?

I think what outraged the Jewish community was that the people being retroactively baptized were folks who had been murdered in the Holocaust -- for being Jewish. I don't know that I would want to be retroactively baptized or baptized in absentia by anyone at all -- I would be offended at the presumption of it. Esp. since it doesn't seem to conform even to LDS theology, which has this retroactive baptism as a way of reuniting families in the afterlife. I suppose it makes sense if a descendant has become a convert, but however successful all those missionaries have been, I don't think that they've done that well. It's odd; I enjoy Salt Lake as a city much more than I expected to, but find myself less and less comfortable with the LDS church. Still -- they have done wonders for genealogy thanks to their theology.

>94 Chatterbox:: I would be offended at the presumption of it

Yes, I think being offended is certainly a valid reaction. But, for me, it would more or less stop at that. Anything beyond a "Yeah, whatever!" would mean I actually gave it some creedence or substance. However, I can somewhat see the point you're making about the Holocaust victims. I don't have the personal history to feel the charged atmosphere that goes with that. However, my father-in-law does; his family was caught in the Holocaust. I'll have to bring this up the next time we're together and get his take.

Seriously schizo weather here. I walked to the conference in a blizzard; then we had some hail. Now the sun is shining and the snow is gone. (tho it's still too cold for me; I didn't pack winter gear...)

But I did get to meet David McCullough at a press event this afternoon.

David McCullough is one of my favorite authors. How fortunate you were to meet him!

He delivered a fascinating speech at a multi-media event this evening. I'll try and post some of the comments he made at the press event when I've had a chance to transcribe the recording.

Finished reading book #53 for this challenge today -- The Nearest Exit by Olen Steinhauer. It's an Amazon Vine book, so I owe them a review (I'm sooo far behind...) so just a few comments here. This is a sequel to his book from last year, The Tourist and it will be out in May. I wouldn't suggest reading this without reading The Tourist first, but that shouldn't be a hardship, as the latter was one of the best spy/suspense thrillers I've read in several years. Steinhauer is a fresh voice and delivers an intriguing plot about a Tourist (capital T) named Milo Weaver; but this Tourist isn't a tourist, he's part of a secret espionage department, CIA black ops. The plot is much more nuanced than that makes it sound, however. After Milo's misadventures in the first book, he's back in the saddle in book #2, but is less than wholehearted in his commitment to his profession. This isn't as strong a book as the first one, thanks to some dangling plot threads and a rather confusing narrative structure (another reason to read the first book) but it's a compelling yarn and still a 4-star book for me. Recommended.

I am also a David McCullough fan. Congratulations on meeting him!

I am reading a book you mentioned on one of your threads, Thirteenth Night, and liking it so far, Suz. Thanks for the recommendation.

I have to confess I was not a fan of The Tourist, but I'm glad you enjoyed it and its sequel so much.

I guess this will be my final book for April, unless I finish Felicia's Journey before midnight local time! It's for my 1010 Challenge, a mystery. The latest book by Susan Hill, and fifth in her Simon Serailler series, The Shadows in the Street is another very good book in which the characters and personalities are given as much attention as the mystery itself. You'll get the most out of this book if you've read its predecessors, for that reason alone. Simon Serailler is a cerebral detective, a bit of a loner, with a close bond with his newly-widowed sister, Cat (a physician), but a more distant relationship with his aging father thanks to some family issues developed in the early books. The family is at the heart of this story -- in different ways they are caught up with the disappearances and murders of several women, at first, prostitutes and later on, 'ordinary' women. While I did suspect who the culprit was, that didn't bother me, as I was curious about the people who inhabit the book and wanted to learn more about them. There are some loose ends involving some of them -- why does Les, the librarian, want to take tea and sandwiches to the prostitutes out on the stroll? Hill hints, but doesn't explain as clearly to readers as she should -- but nothing that interfered with my enjoyment of this book & series, which I'd definitely recommend to fans of P.D. James. 4.5 stars.

I'm not even going to click on the link, because I'm sitting here 6 Philip Kerr books to read thanks to you!!

Very cool that you met David McCullough. Not that I have **read** the 2 books of his that I own...

Suz

I find it interesting that McCullough spoke at a multi-media event. I saw a video clip of him wherein he showed his writing space. He still pulls all his books together via typewriter.

When you have time to post his comments, I'd love to read them. He is a fascinatingly intelligent man!

Linda, should get around to doing that tomorrow -- touch wood. (The headache demons struck again Thurs night and I had to cancel my work interviews and retreat to the B&B; last night felt fine, but woke up this morning with it pounding away again -- argh!!!

Finished Felicia's Journey late last night. It's a bit of a departure for William Trevor, IMO, in that it explores the world of a man who is a 'collector' of young women, and the latest girl he encounters, 17-year-old Felicia who has left Ireland in search of Johnny, the young man who left her pregnant before returning to his job in England. Mr. Hilditch provides 'help' with her quest in order to draw closer to her; the outcome is an astonishing about face. This being William Trevor rather than Val McDermid, any violence is left strictly to the reader's imagination, and the outcome for Hilditch is utterly devastating. This is an astonishing tour de force of a novel, that creeps up on you and smacks you over the head. 5 stars. For my overflow challenge.

That definitely goes on the wish list. Thanks, Suzanne!

I hope that your headache improves soon.

#104: I read Felicia's Journey a couple of years ago. It was my second Trevor novel after The Story of Lucy Gault. I liked it too, although not as much as you did I don't think.

Sorry the headaches are still a problem. I hope they abandon you soon!

*waving to Stacia from Dallas/Ft Worth airport*

will update my reading, such as it has been, when I get home...

*waving right back*

Book #54 for this challenge: Everything is Broken by Emma Larkin is the second book by Larkin about life in contemporary Burma, and unfortunately isn't nearly as good as the (5 star) Finding George Orwell in Burma. It's choppy, with the first and third parts of the book about Cyclone Nargis and its aftermath, and the middle chunk devoted to the brutally-suppressed monks' protest of only six months previously. Larkin's extensive trips to the region (she writes under a pseudonym, but I"m amazed that the Burmese haven't yet figured out who she is and banned her) mean that she can tell stories that no one else can report, and this book is valuable on that level alone. Her conclusions are chilling -- just check out the book's title -- and sometimes this feels too much like straight reportage. But it's a must-read for anyone interested in the region, on the impact of China's growing power in regions that have dismal human rights records (China is a major trading partner, keeping Burma and some rather nasty African dictatorships afloat), or human rights/humanitarian issues. Larkin is understandably harshly critical of the military dictatorship, but in her first book, she weaves that criticism into a more careful structure. I'd suggest Finding George Orwell in Burma as a marvellous book; this one's contribution is as a kind of update.

I think I was following your first thread but lost track--so many good books to catch up on! I'm putting Finding George Orwell on the wishlist.

Well I think I'll add Finding George Orwell in Burma based on your non-review of it :)

ROTFL -- Finding George Orwell in Burma is a more classic kind of journalist politico-travel memoir; Larkin goes in search of the Burma that Orwell wrote about in Burmese Days and relates that to what she finds and still exists, and links the colonial regime to Burma's troubled postwar political scene, in particular the military rule of the last half-century or so. It was a very eloquent and carefully written book. For anyone interested in Burma, From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe is a stunningly good memoir by a young Burmese -- ethnically Padaung, raised Catholic and whose affection for English literature helps him forge a connection with a Cambridge don in Mandalay, who later helps him escape a refugee camp and arrive in Cambridge to study after the failed student-led revolt of 1988. It's one of those "happy ending" and uplifting memoirs that also manages to be nuanced, reflective and mesmerizing.

I'm adding Finding George Orwell in Burma to my wish list.

I am adding Finding George Orwell in Burma to the BlackHole, too.

#104 I've got Felicia's Journey somewhere, I really must root it out!

...and I think I must go in search of From the Land of Green Ghosts too...

Playing catch-up here...

Book #55 for this challenge is a must-read book -- Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt is a passionate but impeccably reasoned argument against rampant individualism and in favor of us recognizing that we do have communal interests that can only be exercised via state-owned institutions. No, this is not a hymn of praise to socialism, but rather social democracy. As with most books of this ilk, Judt is better at observing the flaws of the world we inhabit today and diagnosing the reasons for those flaws than at developing a detailed plan of action, but then part of his argument is that this can never be proscriptive. His arguments and analysis are timely and thought-provoking, and SHOULD be read even by those tempted to dismiss them out of hand. It's clear that the path we have been on for the last few decades has been a destructive one. What is intriguing is that Judt's even-handed analysis points to the flaws in the 'left' as well as the 'right' -- it was the 1960s emphasis on the individual that laid the way for the rise to dominance of Hayek and other free market absolutists in the 1980s and 1990s. Now we're dealing with the fallout. 5 stars.

For my off-the-shelf challenge, read The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman. I'm impressed by this author's two books set in Italy; she knows her stuff (ancient Pompeii and classical Rome in the first book; the world of the sonnet, from Dante to Shakespeare in this one) which helps transform this from a standard chick lit/suspense combo into something that's an intriguing read. Yes, there's the standard quotient of romance and intrigue, but set against the backdrop of an interesting and well-thought-out literary mystery -- who was Shakespeare's Dark Lady? That's the mystery that Rose Asher is trying to uncover when she returns to the Italian villa that is still home to the Italian scholar who was her mentor and her lover 20 years ago. Predictable -- more or less -- outcome, and a few plot twists that are uniquely the domain of "woman in peril" fiction, but it's a well-crafted "thumping good read". 3.9 stars out of 5.

Well, Suzanne, I almost bought Ill Fares the Land when I was in a bookstore an hour or so ago -- and now I realize I should have!

Rebecca, it's the single best book of political thought that I have read since Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter. And Hofstadter's been dead for four decades...

Suz

So sorry about the migrane returning...Are they becoming more and more frequent? Certainly, I can sympathize. I hope the latest one is short-term...

I'm adding Felicia's Journey to the tbr pile. Thanks for your great review.

feel better...SOON!

Sigh. I'm trying to be disciplined and only buy books I have a reasonable chance of reading in the not to distant future. Usually I break down and buy them anyway, but I guess I was strong-willed today. I also didn't buy several other books, including Flannery by Brad Gooch, new novels by Jane Smiley and Louise Erdrich, and a book I never heard of that sounded fascinating called The Eitingons by Mary-Kay Wilmers about her family, which included a Stalinist assassin, a colleague of Freud, and a New York furrier. Ah well, I'll probably end up buying several of these the next time I'm in a bookstore.

Linda, thanks, the headache has been better for the last few days, happily. Perhaps it was the wonky weather in Salt Lake City, and juggling too many different assignments. I find if I go a week to ten days without a migraine, I feel very lucky. I did hate having to have intelligent conversations/interviews with people while wishing I were dead!

Rebecca, well, we've all got different priorities when it comes to what we must read next, as well. Although you are very strong-willed if you only buy what you stand a chance of reading soon! I just snapped up a copy of Sarah Ellison's book about the Wall Street Journal (well, after working there for so long, and knowing so many of the players, figured I should...)

I was only strong-willed today, Suzanne. I will likely be weak-willed as usual the next time I'm in a bookstore. I'm just feeling a little daunted by the towering piles of books I've bought recently (no more room on the shelves) and by all the ones I want to read right away.

I have book stalagmites on my floor. Too many of them to count, now. They keep multiplying, like rabbits left unatttended...

Rebecca, it's the single best book of political thought that I have read since Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter.

Ooh! I'll definitely read Ill Fares the Land soon, probably next week. Thanks for that enticing review!

I have book stalagmites on my floor. Too many of them to count, now. They keep multiplying, like rabbits left unatttended...

Amen, sister.

Darryl, I was wondering which of us would get to it first! :-)

Right. I have it, of course, but it wasn't amongst my planned reads for May. I think I'll have to make room for it, based on your review.

Oh, the responsibility!! *quails*

Well, my local library does not have Ill Fares the Land, but it does have Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, so I will give that one a shot.

I have book stalagmites on my floor. Too many of them to count, now. They keep multiplying, like rabbits left unatttended...
me too!
I have one of those Carol Goodman books in a stalagmite somewhere.

It's when they turn in to stalactites that you need to start worrying... ;o)

I think I'm going to be near one of my regular bookstores later today . . . and I don't think my self-discipline of yesterday will hold . . . .

I wish I had a regular bookstore.....
Books multiplying like rabbits ........ Over at VMC group I once fantasized about putting books together whose off-spring I'd like to read. For example, if *Dance to the Music of Time* mated with *The Raj Quartet*, I'd have *Dancing to the Raj Quartet*, and I'd really like to read that!

#131 -- well, if I succumbed to too many Belgian beers last night, which is much less good for me than too many books, I think you have carte blanche to hunt down Tony Judt and whatever else you choose.

I'm obsessively replaying a Ned Rorem song today, "Early in the Morning", as sung by Susan Graham. Heaven knows how it got stuck in my brain, but there it is... and seems intent on staying.

I was thinking of tribbles.....

#132 Score again, Peg! Funny!

#132 -- Or "The Music of Raj Time"...

Succumbed to Ill Fares the Land today, as well as to Operation Mincemeat, which I think you also recommened, Suzanne, but Ben Macintyre, the author of the wonderful Agent Zigzag, which I read on the recommendation of Chris/cabegley.

Rebecca, I feel soooo much better about the Geuze and the Lambic now... :-)

Ha! And since they didn't have The Eitingons at the bookstore I was at yesterday, and I decided I really want it, I may go back to the first one over the weekend and buy it too. So I've definitely fallen off the wagon.

Which bookstore did you go to, Rebecca?

BTW, did you receive the e-mail about the 20% off sale at Book Culture later this month? I think it runs from May 14-16.

Yes, about the e-mail, but I think we're going to be away that weekend. The bookstore where I resisted buying was Book Culture; the one where I bought was Crawford Doyle.

I figured as much. For the umpteenth time: Book Culture is a dangerous place!

One of these days I'll get to Crawford Doyle. I probably won't be back in the city until June or July, though. I usually visit my parents every 2-3 months, and it's a very easy trip into the city from there.

It is a very small bookstore, Darryl, so it doesn't have the depth or breadth of a Book Culture or St. Marks Books, but it usually has very enticing tables of new releases, both fiction and nonfiction, and has a good memoir/biography section too. The highlights for me are that it is very convenient (just across town from me, and I am often on the east side for various reasons anyway) and that it has that real bookstore feeling, with extremely knowledgeable and helpful staff.

Oh dear, I'm succumbing to an advanced case of spring fever -- giddy, silly, etc. This is having a deleterious effect on my reading, both volume and nature. Anyway, here's the update, such as it is:

#56 for this challenge was This Body of Death by Elizabeth George. After two rather uneven books, George is back in form in this mystery, along with her protagonist, Insp. Lynley, still recovering from the murder of his wife. It's a rattling good story that moves from the New Forest and the lives of those occupied in centuries-old pursuits of caring for its ponies and thatching cottage roofs, to the rooming houses of south London -- and the main story is interspersed with the chilling, quasi-academic tale of a toddler's murder by three older child, the relevance of which isn't completely clear until the final chapters, leaving the reader to wonder just which of the book's characters may not be who they seem to be... 4.2 stars. Recommended.

For my 1010 Challenge, an escapist read, Catherine Alliott's One Day in May, which is a rather good chick lit book (or else I was just in the mood for this book.) Hattie is a single mother with a teenage son, an interior design business and a secret in her past. Usual chick lit fare, questions about men, etc. etc. A few improbable dei ex machinae, including an exploding shotgun, but still a quite good book that I'd label a 'thumping good read' and the author's best since her first book. 4 stars. Recommended as fluff.

The book marketing machine is gearing up, and so is EVERYTHING else in my life, so what do I do? I plan to go to St. Croix. A friend has a condo there, and their tenants for the week of the 16th have dropped out, leaving it empty and me with a free place to stay. God bless air miles, say I. The day after I get back I'm assembling a posse to help me hunt down appropriate clothes to be interviewed in. Oh, and then there is media training. And maybe even a book party. *eyes roll*

xoxo Suzanne

Have a lovely time in St. Croix, Suz! The rest will take care of itself, I have no doubt :)

Glad to hear about This Body of Death -- I've read all of George's Lynley series but haven't gotten to reading the one about the person who murdered his wife -- I may skip it and wait for this one in paperback.

Have fun in St. Croix and -- if possible -- with the book marketing madness!

Have a great holiday! Is it this week? (hmmm I guess we'll know by your silence...)

I'm not even going to click on Elizabeth George or This Body of Death. Really.

Rebecca, I would avoid the one from the pov of the kid who murdered Lynley's wife; it really didn't work for me. The next one (previous to this) was set in Cornwall (my fave place!!) and was a decent mystery, but just not quite in the same league or as focused as her better efforts.

Cushla, I'm leaving this coming Saturday (the 16th? the 15th? whatever...) and returning the following Sat. Btw, your book is still unmailed; it's the long wait in the lines to mail something that requires customs forms... *eyes roll*

Went shopping today and NOT FOR BOOKS. Bought two DKNY skirts and a pair of shoes. Have to find something respectable to wear. This week involves a benefit cocktail things for a village in Rwanda and a benefit breakfast (the Hunt sisters) for women's philanthropy; plus meeting a source and his wife for a seminar and then dinner. Plus drinks with another friend. This is all very unusual; I'm very much not a social animal, particularly in crowds. I'm going to need St. Croix.

Good luck with your benefit breakfast. And, I hope you have a lovely time next week in St. Croix.

The book du jour was Reckless by Andrew Gross. He used to co-write with James Patterson, and these days writes much better (!!) This was a book to take my mind off real life for a while, but it turned out to be more fun than I had imagined -- Gross said "what if?" the financial crisis was really a giant global conspiracy, and ran with a compelling yarn that flowed from that assumption. The book starts with what appears to be a home invasion leaving death in its wake in quiet Greenwich, Connecticut, and ends sending its protagonist, intrepid investigator Ty Hauck, all over, from Bosnia to London. Pure formula, of course, but still a great way to pass a few hours. 3.3 stars.

>150 Chatterbox: Was the Catholic Church involved? Did the Pope authorize the meltdown to get pedophile priests off the front page? O_o

Ahhh, fluff! It's a great thing, fluff! I'm so not in the mood to read unfluffy stuff right now. I am perfectly happy that way, too.

I like to "barbell" my reading, combining fluff with something more meaty. (Woman cannot live on a diet of cotton candy alone... ) But this fluff proved more entertaining than I had anticipated, to my pleasure.

But no Papal involvement this time around... :-)

Actually, it's quite a clever parody of the Goldman Sachs conspiracy theory advanced by Taibbi in his Rolling Stone articles of last summer.

But no Papal involvement this time around

Pfui! What use is this Gross person anyway? :-+

Suz, just wishing you the best of luck with your social engagements over the next few weeks. I completely empathize with not being a social animal. You will have earned your trip to St. Croix, I have no doubt!

#150 It is not difficult to write better than James Patterson, who is perhaps the single worst author I have ever read. If anyone is wondering why I read him at all, it was because someone who was a friend of a friend highly recommended him. I did see a movie (on TV) of the book I read and it was MUCH better, because I didn't have to read those really short sentences and paragraphs that were so irritating. I am not against fluff in general, but Patterson drove me crazy!

OK, off soapbox.

>156 rebeccanyc: --- You obviously have never picked up Sidney Sheldon! (Don't. Be satisfied with J. Patterson as the worst.)
(Back to E. George a minute, I am vastly relieved that this latest is back to her old standard. I agree about the two before.)
And I echo good wishes for the people-crowded days ahead and the lure of St. Croix!

You know I'm going utterly insane when I pick up a James Patterson book. Which I did yesterday, because my brain simply can't process anything heavier. (Well, except for Sarah Ellison's new book about the Murdoch takeover of the WSJ, which I'm ripping through at a tremendous rate.)

I have two stories to report, write and file this week on top of all the social stuff, plus a third that will be due early next week. Plus book marketing people want a list of talking points re the opus maximus. My mind is buzzing around like a bee shut into a small room that keeps hitting the window panes. Too much to do; too little time; how to focus?? Gah.

Have fun in St. Croix. I remember reading that Robert Ludlum lived there for a while but couldn't concentrate on his work and moved back to the mainland. Try to find some good conch fritters.

I grew up in St. Thomas and will be visiting my dad this July with my daughter. I would wave at you across the water if you were still there.

I will def. be hunting for conch fritters!

OK, here's a book that everyone should read. Seriously, it's six stars. It's one of the best business books I've read in years. It's War at the Wall Street Journal and it's by Sarah Ellison, a former colleague of mine at the newspaper in question. How good is it? You know how, normally you're irritated when you miss your stop on the subway because you're too busy reading? Well, in this case, I didn't care, because going an extra stop on the EXPRESS line (!!) and turning around and coming back just gave me an extra 40 minutes to read more of this book.

My full review is posted on the book's page. Sorry, I'm trying to link it but the link isn't working. Or else my brain isn't. (It's a tossup).

I saw that here last night and was going to ask more...is it out yet? Great review. I've been on his plane!

#161: War at the Wall Street Journal is a book I would normally avoid like the plague, but I cannot resist a book that you are recommending that highly. I hope my local library gets a copy of it soon.

I'll have to look for it too .

Thanks for that review -- it's very good. I think maybe some of it was published in the NYer??? Mainly about the Bancrofts and the decision to let WSJ go?

Ooooh, Cushla -- then you'll love the chapter where he flies back from DC to NY with Marcus Brauchli, the managing editor whom he's just fired (and whose firing leaked out during a speech Murdoch gave in DC while Brauchli was in the audience....)
The book's official publication date is tomorrow; for some reason, my Kindle delivered it to me last week.
#165 -- Vanity Fair just published that chapter in the current issue -- the chapter not about the Bancrofts, but about Marcus's ouster.

Yep, the book wasn't at Bider and Tanner this morning. Probably a good thing - it's 20 euros on Book Dep.

He wasn't on his plane when I was on it, and I was very stressed out about work, qutie pregnant, and not really in the mood to appreciate a flash aeroplane, but I remember at the end (in Sydney) the customs guys came onto the plane... no queuing if you've got a private jet.

I knew there had to be SOME reason to own a private jet... Although I suspect that being quite pregnant on a private plane is much better than being quite pregnant in economy class...

I don't think it's necessary to be pregnant to appreciate the perks of a private jet!

But oh, the headaches -- hire pilot, be sure it's where you want it when you want it, financing, tax issues, maintenance, cost of jet fuel... *eyes roll*
Not on my shopping list. Even in daydreams.

Today's book du jour: The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell, for my overflow challenge. I think this is the last of this series that I'll read; she has fallen in love with her own characters and their increasingly and exceedingly improbable and bizarre alternate universe, and underneath that, there is little in the way of a plot that makes a mystery rewarding. It's all about how the evil people in the world gang up on Kay Scarpetta, Benton Wesley, Lucy, Marino, et al. And frankly, the formula is tired. There are also some improbable plot twists, and a lot of technological jargon. (e.g., Lucy's comment -- "Obviously a combination acitgraphy data logger with a highly sensitive accelerometer or biomorph element in a two-layer pizoelectric sensor that basically measures gross motor activity." And nobody asks her what she means, not does she explain WTF that means.) Basically, I found this book annoying; Cornwell's last was a DNF, and that means she's so over. Pity, because her first Scarpetta books were great. She forgot what it was that made them so, I suspect, or chooses not to remember because she's having more fun and people will still buy them out of reflex. Glad I borrowed this. 2.5 stars.

#171: I agree - the first several Scarpetta books were great and then the series took a nosedive. I read one of hers a couple of years ago that was my 'clunker' for the year and have not read another one since.

Yep, I used to love the Scarpetta books - so chilling and so good. I think I read the first 6. I stopped when I read a dreadful non-Scarpetta one of hers, I think Hornet's Nest. I just couldn't be bothered.

I was also a Scarpetta fan for the first 6 or so books. I stopped when her niece started flying helicopters or something like that - it all seemed to fall apart.

My husband likes the Raiders and has always stuck with them even though their record .....well, I feel the same with the Scarpetta books. To me they are familiar and I'm too addicted at this point to quit. I guess I'm her fan to the bitter end. I have read worse books.

You know, that's a great analogy for some of my reading. If I can claim the Orioles with the lousy record they've had the last few years, surely I can give an old favorite author some slack...Janet Evanovich comes to mind. 8^}

I just started Evanovich this year. Since I'm from NJ, they have a certain, special zest to them...I'm enjoying them.

"I have read worse books" -- well, to me, that's the kiss of death. Yes, there are authors to whom I have a certain sentimental attraction that can compensate for one or two bad books scattered here and there across their oeuvre. But not a string of stinkers (even though they are reasonably well-written) that are just about how dysfunctional Lucy and Marino are in their different ways, how clever Kay is, and how evil and sadistic the Chandonne family are. It behooves an author to ring some changes now and again. I admired Elizabeth George's courage to bump off a main character -- it helped the Lynley series not get stale, however traumatic it was at the time I read the book! I'd rather spend the time discovering new stuff than just be able to say that a book was marginally better than other worse books. Besides, I figure if I'm buying a book I expect to be at best lukewarm about, I'm enabling the author.

I'm glad the latest Elizabeth George is back up to standards. I was extremely disappointed with Careless in Red. I didn't mind What Came Before He Shot Her, once I got over the disappointment that it didn't pick up with the aftermath of With No One as Witness. I'm putting the new book on Kindle asap.

Also adding War at the Wall Street Journal.

Have fun in St. Croix.

Nothing to report on the reading front, but I'm getting a delivery of ARCs of my own book tomorrow. One is on its way to Cushla, but I'll have maybe three extras, so PM me if you want an early version of Chasing Goldman Sachs. Yes, it's non-fiction and about finance and Wall Street... :-)

Reading along here...just can't think of a thing to say.

#180: I've already pre-ordered it from Amazon. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Darryl, I thank you, Random House/Crown thanks you, my agent thanks you... :-)

Stasia, one will be in the mail to you as soon as I get my act together. They were delivered 5 mins ago.

#183: No worries, Suz. I am positive I will not run out of reading material in the meantime!

Suzanne, getting ARCs of your book has to be one of the high points in the writing-publishing cycle, right? Do they look good? Are you jumping up and down on your sofa?

I'd be scared witless, as in "crikey, it's real, it's here, and someone might read it".

161, I enjoyed the hell out of Barbarians at the Gate, Den of Thieves, and The Predator's Ball so I'll have to read War at the Wall Street Journal. Does anybody else remember Robert Maxwell? I always think of him and Murdoch as peas in a pod.

What Tui said! (It must be the Canadian gene...)

Not only that, but I must encourage other people to read it, so that my publisher makes money...

The "real" books arrive sometime next week -- hardcover editions. I won't have as many of those, but that's the version that has the author photo, the corrected/updated text, the acknowledgments, etc. etc.

>186 tiffin:, 188: I totally understand this! My God, how must a whale feel when the flensing knives come out? Or an Inquisitee when the Inquisitor brings out the hot poker, a small smile on his face? Or a...hmmm, I suspect I'm not helping here....

Not in the least, Richard... *grimace*

ETA -- and yes, I remember Maxwell vividly. I met him at some event thrown by Conrad Black in Toronto, only about a year before his 'accidental' drowning. Larger than life, in every sense of the word. Very different personality from Murdoch, however, by all accounts.

OK -- the reading update. Which is, after all, the point of the exercise... All of the below fall into the overflow, 50-book challenge, and only one of them was really that good. In the order that I enjoyed them:

1. The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear. This is the seventh in the series of Maisie Dobbs mysteries, and it's much better than the last two, partly because there's a feeling of forward momentum, not just the same old stuff with different protagonists. Yes, Maisie has to solve a mystery with its roots in the Great War (aka WW1, 1914-1918), but it's more intriguing than some others, and there are also some major developments in her own life. I'm more encouraged about the future of this series now. 4.2 stars.

2. Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton. This is the kind of book that the phrase 'pulp fiction' was created to describe. That said, it's a rollicking good read (I picked it up to read before heading to the Caribbean myself tomorrow) about privateers (rather than pirates), with everything from damsels in distress, deads of derring do, and Donnish devilry in the 17th century Caribbean. Pure formula, no meat, nothing to think about - the ideal beach read. 3.3 stars.

3. Impact by Douglas Preston. Since I enjoyed the true-life The Monster of Florence, I thought I'd give one of Preston's novels a go. I won't do it again... Something like a meteor hits earth, and then there's a plot involving the Khmer Rouge and strange radioactive gemstones, and an adopted African American girl living in Maine who wants to be an astronomer and whose father is a lobster fisherman, and a dark ops CIA dude who's really a good guy, and a guy who's mapping Mars, and it's all connected. Really. Well, Preston thinks it is... Let's just say you might like this if you are really into astronomy, and you also happen to believe in aliens. 2.5 stars.

I'm taking mostly similarly mindless stuff to St Croix with me, so brace yourselves...

>191 Chatterbox: 1. Another series to avoid! I wonder how I'll ever be able to walk in the mystery section.

2. Whee!

3. Ewww.

>190 Chatterbox: *evil chortle*

#191: I love the Maisie Dobbs series, so I will definitely be looking for The Mapping of Love and Death. Thanks for the recommendation, Suz!

OK, folks, I'm off to St Croix tomorrow and gone for a week!!! Those who requested ARCs should find them in their mailboxes next week (they went out media mail today.) I may try to keep up with threads & posting about my books, but since I plan to indulge in completely mindless/witless/brainless airplane/beach reads, I can't promise to deliver much inspiration. Oh yeah, and I'll be working. Must file 3 or 4 stories while I'm gone. *hollow laugh* I just figured out that the last time I was on holiday and did NOT check in at least once daily was 1998. That was also the holiday during which I bumped into my editor on holiday -- at a temple complex in Bali. Really. I have no idea which of us was the more horrified & dismayed. I do know we said hello & goodbye in about 3 minutes.

Hi & goodbye! Have a lovely trip.

Have a great trip!

have a relaxing time apart from the work commitments.

Have a great time, Suzanne!

Have fun, Suzanne! You deserve it!

Aww... now that I come back, you're leaving, Suz? At least you're heading out to a beautiful island for some R&R .... have a wonderful time.

Have been reading and working and cleaning the condo since my arrival, not enough sun and R&R yet!!!

4 books to update quickly:

1. 9th Judgment by James Patterson. Yeah, I know, but this is a series that is OK and good to read on airplanes. Mildly amusing, albeit slightly improbable thriller. 3 stars, for 50-book overflow challenge.

2. Murder in the High Himalaya by Jonathan Green. Fascinating Amazon Vine book, out soon, I think. It's the story of the collision of Western climbers in the vicinity of K2 and Everest, and the efforts by Tibetans to flee Chinese rule across the glacier-frozen passes. In this chilling story, climbers watch as secret police gun down a 17-year-old Buddhist nun, and one of them breaks ranks to shelter another escapee in a tent. It's a fascinating tell of what happens when our selfish needs/wants collide with humanitarian demands that we can choose to ignore. Recommended; the writing is OK, the story is important. 4 stars, for the 50-book overflow challenge.

3. A Loyal Character Dancer by Qiu Xiaolong. The second book in the Inspector Chen series, and just as good as the first!! Loved this story, which revolves around snakeheads, triads, and other skulduggery, and included an American character without ever detracting from the atmosphere of a China struggling to come to grips with the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. 4.5 stars, for my 50-book overflow category.

4. Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard. Intriguing story of a woman whose father was murdered and whose mother disappeared when she was a toddler. Now the man responsible is being released from prison, still claiming his innocence. I generally liked this, despite the predictable plot and the fact that the structure was too chunky (about 40% is all set in the past; necessary, but over-written). 3.7 stars, also for the 50-book category.

#201: I have not read 9th Judgment yet. I will have to get to that one some time as I do like the Women's Murder Club series by Patterson.

Murder in the High Himalaya is definitely one I will have to watch out for. Thanks for the recommendation, Suz.

Now go get some sun and sand!

I giggled a bit of the introduction when reading a book of short stories set in my hometown last week, naming famous writers who come from Leeds. Alan Bennett, Keith Waterhouse - I haven't read them, but suspect they're a bit better than - Barbara Taylor Bradford. I really enjoyed her A Woman of Substance and a couple of sequels when I'm young, but she's not a good writer. I did buy a remaindered copy of a book about her life and work a few months ago because it just seemed like such a ludicrous book to have published (it was only £2). Other bad writers I used to enjoy but haven't bothered with in a long time include Jackie Collins.

I gave up reading Patricia Cornwell with Black Notice I think - I bought The Last Precinct but totally lack motivation to pick it up. I didn't like the constant paranoid conspiracy theories or the right wing politcal slant.

A good crime writer I do like is Qiu Xiaolong - I've only read the first 2 but must get to the rest, if I can find no 3 in the shed.

I'm baa-aack.

Will catch up on my posting & others' posts tomorrow. (later today?) It's the fact that some of these threads now boast hundreds of unread posts that is seriously perturbing.

So, I went snorkeling early this morning (Sat morning) and stared down a baby barracuda. I'm now prepared for absolutely anything that book promotion can throw at me. I think.

Welcome back, Suz!

Welcome back!! Hope the holiday was relaxing. The snorkelling bit sounded it, but not the barracuda...

Snorkeling means putting your face under water, doesn't it? Oh no no no. And barracuda have attacked precisely two people in recorded history, so they're really just scary, eleven-foot-long tooth factories.

*flees screaming*

Oh...I got a package...what should I do with it? ;-)

Quick update!

1. #57 for this challenge: Mrs. Adams in Winter, a wonderful book that is at once biography, history, travelogue, etc. and succeeds in forging a new genre. Ostensibly it chronicles Mrs Louisa Adams's journey from St Petersburg to Paris in 1815 to rejoin her husband, John Quincy Adams. When she sets out on a kibitka sled, Europe is at peace; approaching the border of France and Germany, news arrives that Napoleon has left Elba and her path collides with that of the Grande Armee. It's not a straightforward chronicle, however, since O'Brien makes frequent segues into Louisa's history, her previous life with John Quincy, their marriage, etc. What appealed to me was that the story was of a woman who spent most of her life on the move, with no real "home"; she was also a diplomatic wife, like my mother was for decades. But this is an excellent and fascinating book, about travel in the early 19th century, about the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, etc. Highly recommended. 4.8 stars. (it helps to have a background in the period, or be willing to jump to Wikipedia occasionally.)

2. For the 1010 challenge, an escapist read, Midnight Girls by Lulu Taylor. I thought Taylor's first chick lit book was a fun romp; this one was just silly. Three schoolfriends, followed for a decade as they grow up, go shopping, seek husbands, blah blah blah. 3 stars. Mindless entertainment for a holiday.

3. From the simply silly to the dreadful: Silk by Rupert James. Picked this up in a second hand store in St Croix, and even $3 was too much to pay. Sex and shopping, like Penny Vincenzi's book, but without the characters or the underlying plot. Pointless. 1.5 stars. For my overflow (50-book) challenge.

4. Also for the overflow challenge -- I finally started reading the series that begins with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. Yes, it's ridiculous, silly, completely out of historic character, but it's funny if you suspend all your critical faculties. And I just started reading the second book, so something obviously resonated! (It helps that I accumulated them all free via PBS). 3.4 stars.

5. The Botticelli Secret by Marina Fiorato, was also free and far more forgettable. It's heresy, in my book, to make a historical mystery book dull, but ultimately I just didn't care what secrets lay in Botticelli's 'Primavera'. I'm a dedicated historical fiction reader, and I struggled to finish this. 2.3 stars. For the overflow category.

6. The Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff. Another chick lit book, about to come out in the US. I really enjoyed this one, to my surprise, despite the relatively predictable plot. The characters were fun and convincing, the plot intriguing, the heroine's business (running a vintage clothing shop) was interesting. Recommended for chick lit fans as a v. good summer beach read. 3.7 stars.

Richard -- two options: treat it with tender loving care or use it as BBQ fuel. Your call... ;-)

#208: I already own The Vintage Affair (although I think Catey has it in her room somewhere), so the only one I am going to add is Mrs. Adams in Winter. Thanks for the recommendation of that one, Suz!

(Borrowed from Stasia's thread -- and thus from whoever she borrowed it from)

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack?
Occasionally. If so, usually SmartFood (white cheddar flavored popcorn).

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Diet Pepsi. Zero-cal Vitamin Water. Or tea (mint or Earl Grey).

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
It doesn't horrify me, but I keep a notebook to hand and tend to jot ideas down in that rather than in book margins. More space. I will sometimes underline stuff, in pencil.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ear? Laying the book flat open?
Dog ear, too often. When I'm being good (or when it's a borrowed book, or a particularly nice hardcover), I'll use the book jacket flap or a bookmark (if I can locate one) or a spare envelope. Never lay it flat open -- breaks the spine.

Fiction, non-fiction or Both?
Both, definitely.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?
Since many chapters end as cliffhangers, that can be hard. I tend not to put a book down until I'm actually tired of reading it or something requires my immediate attention (like a ringing phone).

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
I have been known to carry an offending book delicately between two fingers and drop it into the garbage. The kitchen garbage, amongst the food refuse.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Not really, though I don't come across too many. Usually I just puzzle it out, unless it's a phrase in a language I don't speak.

What are you currently reading?
A book about Montaigne and his essays; a frivolous "Pink Carnation" series book, the first Flavia de Luce mystery, the first Cara Black mystery and a book about Wordsworth and Coleridge.

What is the last book you bought?
War at the Wall Street Journal by Sarah Ellison.

Are you the type of person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?
Well, I don't have three books open in front of me at the same time, and read one page in each sequentially. But I'm usually reading at least three books at the same point in time.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
Office sofa, living room sofa, bed. Any time. Subway. Waiting in line to pay for groceries, etc.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Series can disappoint over time, or the novelty fade. I'm agnostic, but probably a great stand-alone is preferable.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Several.

How do you organise your books? (by genre, title, author's last name etc)
I try hard... The older paperback fiction is more or less sorted by last name, although the Js come before the Cs, and the Bs are in the final row of the last bookcase. The non-fiction is more or less sorted by type. I keep my collections of essays in one place; my first world war books on the same 2 shelves, my 'literary' fiction in a separate bookshelf; poetry in one of my grandfather's glass-fronted bookshelves.

Book du jour: The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig. Book #2 in this series, which is anachronistic, silly and deficient in various other ways, but still fun to read. My normal critical skills seem to have abandoned me. The focus of the action shifts to Henrietta Selwick, sister of the Purple Gentian, who becomes the target of the Black Tulip's machinations. Yes, it's really easy to see who the "bad guy" is, but it's fun & frothy. 3.4 stars; for the overflow challenge.

Book du jour: Murder in the Marais by Cara Black. This is for my 1010 Challenge, and ended up being a big disappointment. A potentially intriguing plot, involving the Jewish community in the Marais area of Paris, the events of 1942 and 1943, and a private investigator probing those and the resurgence of a neo-Nazi movement 50 years later. But the choppy writing and lackluster characterization (we get very spotty details of what Aimee Leduc wears or what she does and doesn't like, in lieu of real character development) makes this a not very enjoyable first book. Who is the dwarf that she works with and why does she work with him? The very peripheral love interest is downright bizarre. Basically, an annoying book. 2.8 stars, because there were points when it all clicked together and worked -- perhaps 20% of the time; the core plot, once revealed, was also intriguing (even though I instantly realized who the culprit was...)

I enjoyed The Secret History of the Pink Carnation well enough--silly vacation fun--but I couldn't take The Masque of the Black Tulip.

A very belated welcome back from holiday! (I'm still catching up...)

...sounds like I shall have to buy War at the Wall Street Journal for my Dad I think - right up his street...

Stopping by to wave hi.

#213: Too bad about that one. I think I will give it a pass.

Ok, I missed 123 posts, and I'm not very good at catching up. But school is out for the summer, so it's time for me to settle back in to LT. So hello!

*Waving back to Linda & Lux & Fliss*

Books du jour:

#58 for this challenge: South from Barbary by Justin Marozzi. This is the first book by this author, but I read his second book first. (Travels with Herodotus). I preferred the latter, because his trip seemed to have more of a point to it -- I'm a bit averse to adventurous narratives of people who do things simply because they can, as in the case of Marozzi's debut, crossing the Libyan Sahara by camel in imitation of the great caravan trade that ended a century ago. But it was still a fascinating and intriguing read for anyone interested in the desert, in desert exploration, in Libya and in camels. I admit that my feeling for those animals has gone from dislike (I had my knee bitten by one in Morocco a few years ago, after he had nearly succeeded in tossing me off onto my head from 8 feet in the air) to amusement and even affection, based on Marozzi's anecdotes about the five camels who accompanied him, his Dorset farmer friend and their guides for 2 months. (The homesick Gobber, who, shunned by the elite white Mehari camels, kept trying to determinedly strike out for home, weeks away across sand dunes, was particularly appealing -- more so than many of the humans in the book.) And who knew that you could read Trollope and Homer while riding a camel?? 4 stars.

The other book will fall into my 50-book "overflow" challenge -- The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the debut mystery by 70-year-old author Alan Bradley. I wanted to be blown away by Flavia de Luce, but it didn't quite happen. I think the problem was that everyone in this book was highly eccentric -- Flavia, her father, their gardener, even her sisters and the local yokels. True, that kind of background produces a Flavia, but I would have found her more appealing if her eccentricities had been set against a more accessible background. Flavia's a chemical whiz kid, fascinated by poisons (she brews up something nasty and combines it with her sister's lipstick) and with a cool, dispassionate view of the world around her. But even that coolness is "too much", in a way, at least for me. So while this was an amusing book, with very accomplished writing, I won't be rushing to read the next in the series. 3.8 stars.

Oh good - a mystery series that can wait!

About Cara Black...I can say, having read that Marais one, I was never tempted to pick up the second one. I was put out by that, since I like mysteries that explore corners of history that are fleeting to the future eye, but were all and all to the people of the day. I think Susanne Alleyn's French Revolution series, featuring Aristide Ravel, are excellent examples of this.

Okay, not sure how to make this a link, but check out www.forgottenbookmarks.com. It's a website put together by a used bookseller about the odd things that people leave in the books they sell; from love letters to grocery receipts.

I received a book some time back from someone on Bookmooch and when I finally got around to reading it, I found a torn black & white photo of a kid in it in just her undies, probably about 8 or 9 years old .... it creeped me out and I ripped it into little pieces and threw it away.

>222 Chatterbox:: What a cool idea for a website. I've found several things in used books over the years, but nothing worthy of keeping...just run of the mill receipts, business cards, grocery lists, etc.

I borrowed Middlesex from a friend, and found her ultrasounds from when she was expecting her son (who is just two days older than my firstborn). It was very unexpected, and my friend just laughed and said, "Huh, I wondered where those went."

I've found medical prescriptions, bank statements, baseball cards vintage postcards and lots of bookmarks, some from exotic places. It's like a treasure hunt! :)

Speaking of treasure hunts -- spent a few hours at BookExpo here in NYC today and landed a bunch of ARCs. Most from authors I'd never heard of before, so there may be some fun discoveries to be made!

Lots don't have touchstones yet, but the loot includes:

Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman
Panopticon by David Bajo
Rivers of Gold by Adam Dunn
Bound by Antonya Nelson
American Terroir by Rowan Jacobsen
Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter
Waking Up by Joe Traum
The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman
A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell
The Bells by Richard Harvell
Soccernomics by Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski
Great House by Nicole Krauss
The Company Town by Hardy Green
The Obelisk by Howard Gordon
Mr. Toppit by Charles Elton
Safe from the Sea by Peter Geye
The Reversal by Michael Connelly
Bliss, Remembered by Frank Delford
Half Empty by David Rakoff
The Witness House by Christiane Kohl
Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza

ETA: Together, they make up a stack 21 inches tall. Exactly what I needed to decorate my home office...

The book du jour: The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin. It took me longer to get into this two-track novel (one part set in 1819/1820; the other in 1976) than it did to delve into her previous book, A Secret Alchemy, but I ended up liking it just as much, despite the fact that the two narratives are only very tenuously linked by themes. There's a lot of very beautiful writing and some intriguing reflections on attempts to capture reality, on suitable/unsuitable love, etc. The 20th century narrative is told through the eyes of a teenager effectively left by her mother to spend the summer at an empty school that had been run by an uncle she doesn't know well; she discovers a fascination for photography (and two local photographers, in very different ways) and reads a cache of letters left by a previous inhabitant of the manor house-turned-school, an officer who had lost his leg in the aftermath of Waterloo, and who had fought his way through Spain in the Napoleonic Wars. The other narrative is told by that officer, as he struggles to rebuild his life. Both characters are 'displaced', in a way, and while the connections between the two narratives aren't overt, part of the fun was identifying the similar themes. This isn't a novel for every reader, but I loved it. 4.5 stars, for my "off the shelf" challenge.

Nice haul, Suzanne!

Looks like you made out like a bandit there, Suz. I'm looking forward to your reviews. ;-)

Whoa, that's a HAUL! The Mathematics of Love sounds very good so I'm adding it.

I have no excuse for buying a single book in the next six months, I confess... I don't think I've ever had such a giant physical TBR stack in my life, what with all those $2 book closeout books, Amazon Vine, etc. etc.

Great haul, Suz!

I am adding both of the Emma Darwin titles you mentioned to the BlackHole.

Interesting haul, I've moved my horde of unread books into my bedroom while I tidy up some space elsewhere and it's scary seeing them all together in one place.

YOWSER that's a big pile of new books!

If you're taking votes on what you should read first (when all the book hoo-haa is quiet, which might be in 6 months!) I vote for the FDR supreme court book.

I don't think you have the smallest excuse to book-shop for the remainder (pun optional) of 2010.

Not that I imagine this will stop you....

Richard, almost certainly not. Especially as today's mail brought with it: two Vine books, the new Archipelago offering and a new release from Amazon.co.uk. :-) Oh, and I found one more ARC at the bottom of my book bag -- The Brave by Nicholas Evans. (no touchstone).

Books du jour are #59 and #60 for this challenge, bringing my year-to-date total to 167! (I won't make my 500-book target for the year, I know.)

#59: Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. I finally succumbed and read this. Finishing, I was very grateful to have been born in the second half of this century, when I wouldn't have become an "excellent woman" or a wife, but could have an independent life. I'm not sure that I loved the Pym book, but I enjoyed it a great deal, and found lots to think about. It intrigued me the way that Mildred manages to have enough independent thought to think ironically about her own role and that of others, but not enough to break free in any way -- she ultimately is her own captor. There are wonderful insights/thoughts, as when Mildred muses to herself that "life was like that for most of us -- the small unpleasantnesses rather than the great tragedies; the little useless longings rather than the great renunciations and dramatic love affairs of history or fiction." Even the names reflect the characters' relative status: the 'excellent women' boast names like Mildred, Dora and Winifred, while the ones that can't sew or cook have non-utilitarian names like Allegra and Helena. This is a novel very much of its time, however -- the world Pym describes, that of the early 1950s, is as long-vanished as that of Jane Austen, and I think that realization intruded on my reading pleasure. 4.1 stars.

#60: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. This will go on my list of memorable reads for the year. It's the story of an international newspaper based in Rome (it seems to be loosely modeled on an independent version of the International Herald Tribune, but is always called, simply, "the paper") told in a series of stories featuring its employees that are loosely linked and separated in the book by brief vignettes that capture the paper's history. That history seems to be ending, as the paper is losing money and its employees are losing morale and, in some cases, their sanity. Other than the paper itself, there is no really satisfactory resolution to the lives of Rachman's characters, but I found them VERY true to life (having spend my life battling with really bizarre copy editors as well as some extraordinarily good ones, I can testify to this...) I admit that part of my enjoyment stems from the fact that this is a book about people I know (indeed, an editor I know who once worked in Italy recommended this to me in downright ferocious terms as one of the best books she had read.) The story featuring the business reporter has her musing that “basically, financial reporting is this sinkhole at the center of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can’t fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.” Indeed, that's what I've sometimes felt myself, after 20-plus years doing this! I feel like I know five people who could be Menzies, the news editor who has nothing in his life but the news, or the editor who discovers a place where "arcane knowledge and pedantry came in handy." The writing is crisp and precise; the characterizations sometimes chilling but always spot on. Rachman never takes the easy or comfortable way out and the result is a fabulous book. Recommended.

ok, looking for Book 60 now. Already read 59 this year, but your comments are what I really meant to say!!

Cushla, I need something light & not demanding much thought to offset the weighty but good book about Wordsworth & Coleridge that I've been reading this week, so I may make a detour into mystery or chick lit, and save Noah Feldman's book (which does look excellent!) for later.

Sigh . . . I've now read so many good things about The Imperfectionists that I'm afraid I'm going to have to buy it.

Rebecca, consider this the gun to your head... :-D

Well, Richard was right. I lasted LESS THAN 24 HOURS before adding more books. Finish two and add six? Sigh... Went into Barnes & Noble in search of the Farrell books, so it's all Darryl's fault...

Here they are:

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky (A Europa editions book; I've had good luck with these)
Memoirs of an Egotist by Stendhal (new edition)
A Tale Told by Moonlight by Leonard Woolf (after reading about Sri Lanka earlier this year)
The Rule of Empires by Timothy Parsons (because it looked fascinating)
The Singapore Grip by JG Farrell
The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell.

Troubles was sold out, but that's OK; I'm going to read them in reverse chronological order, starting with The Singapore Grip.

Hey! Why does my name get splattered through the mud so much around here? I'm as innocent as a newborn babe.

Besides, it's all Rebecca's fault...

I just started The Imperfectionists about a half hour ago so I'm glad to know you considered it a memorable read:)

Adding The Imperfectionists to the BlackHole. I have already read (and will probably at some point, re-read) Pym's Excellent Women. If you are ready for more Pym at some point, I would recommend her Quartet in Autumn, which Deborah recommended to me last year.

I loved Troubles and just got in a copy of The Siege of Krishnapur yesterday, so I am hoping to get to it in June. I will be looking for your thoughts on The Singapore Grip, Suz.

I've added The Imperfectionists to my library requests and will have to get to the Farrell books as well at some stage, not this year though.

Excellent Women sounds like something I'd like so I'm going to keep an eye out for a copy.

More books, Suz? You lucky thing! Interesting new additions you have there.

Caro, yes, more books are quite literally the last thing I need in this house right now.

Still, two more to add to the list on the "read" side of the balance sheet.

#61 for this challenge, Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. This is an astonishing & remarkable book that transcends its flaws (occasional repetitiveness) by the sheer magnitude of what Demick has accomplished, building a compelling story of daily lives of North Koreans through detailed interviews with a handful of exiles from the same region of the northern part of the country. She has a knack for the telling detail; at the beginning she slips from a discussion of the literal darkness of N. Korea from space (where it looks like a giant void, in contrast to the bright lights shining from Seoul and the rest of S. Korea) to the way that darkness permits a kind of illicit romance between two of the people she profiles, a teenager whose father was a former prisoner of war and the relatively privileged young man, a university student who can at least aspire to rise within N. Korea's totalitarian world -- if only he can force himself to cry with his fellow students when Kim Il-Sung dies. She weaves together the story of six lives, with varying degrees of success, with those of Mi-ran and her boyfriend and Mrs Song the most successful. The story follows their lives from the late 1980s, when N. Korea could still rely on help from its communist Allies, to the mass starvation and complete economic collapse that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall as N. Korea became more isolated. A true "Hermit Kingdom"... Highly recommended to anyone who wants to get a glimpse of one of the most enigmatic and unknown countries in the world; all the better because it's told through the eyes of those who lived the story, instead of the journalist-as-observer. 4.7 stars.

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. This was for my 1010 Challenge, and I remain ambivalent about it. Parts blew me away, including the sheer imaginative power it took to create the plot(s). If most mystery novel plots resemble a game of checkers, this is chess at a world-class level. Perez-Reverte plays with the line between 'fact' and 'fiction', multiple plots that may or may not be linked, characters who are (or may not be) what they seem. I wish I'd thought of reading The Three Musketeers before this; still, that wouldn't have addressed my only gripe about the book, the same occult elements that I found annoying when I tried to read The Da Vinci Code. This is a much more erudite book by a far more accomplished novelist, needless to say, but I tend to get exasperated by people trying to summon devils. It always feels like a bit of a cop-out, when there are plenty of real-life demons surrounding us (hey, think of the N. Korean leadership...) A cover blurb describes this as "a beach book for intellectuals", and I'd have to agree. Anyone who isn't a bibliomaniac and reasonably familiar with the authors and ideas Perez-Reverte describes may well be frustrated by the book; I nearly gave up as it takes so long for the plot to really get moving. So, a mixed response; 4.2 stars.

Rats! The local library does not have the Demick book. Oh well, I will have to look further afield for it. I appreciate the recommendation on that one, Suz.

I read The Club Dumas several years ago. I think a re-read may be in order, especially since I just enjoyed his The Painter of Battles recently.

Time to move again -- ya'll are welcome to drop by the new thread here