Lizzie's Third Plunge

Having reached the magic number on Thread 2, and having a new book to record, I thought it wise to start the new thread!

(I get by with a lot of help from my friends.)
Here's a link to thread 1: Lizzie Takes the Plunge.
- and thread 2: Lizzie Plunges a Second Time
MOST SIGNIFICANT from JANUARY through MAY (in the order that I read them)
Wolf Hall
Essays of Elia
40,000 in Gehenna
The Talisman Ring
The Spare Room
The Brontes Went to Woolworth's
The Unknown Ajax
Crossing to Safety
Cutting for Stone*****!
Grand Sophy
The Education of Henry Adams
Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs
(I found a lot to like.)

Reading Continues in June
36. Invader - science fiction, *Foreigner* series ~ Indeed, nadiin, one wishes to plunge rignt into book 3
37. The Gentlewomen* - VMC - quietly disturbing - WWII in an English stately home
38. Bath Tangle - the tangling is overlong, but the untangling is more fun than a rout party
39. Infinite Jest - monumental, funny, incredibly, incredibly sad - I hope to live long enough to reread it in 10 years or so **********!
40. The Hills at Home - WHY didn't I know about this charmer sooner?
41. Burmese Lessons: A True Love Story* - too much love; not enough Burma
42. The Gobi Desert* - Armchair travel to an exotic location in a time long gone

July
43. In the Wood - first mystery in a new series - I liked it
44. Gilead - deeply sweet and joyfully elegiac
45. Death's Half Acre - not the best entry in a favorite mystery series
46. Percival's Planet* - Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto; I discover Michael Byers
47. Transformation - fantasy, first of a trilogy - just what I needed; down with the demons!
48. Sand Sharks - series mystery - better than #45, and set in Wilmington!

August
49. Still Life - first in a mystery series - I liked it, but I'm not committed to love quite yet
50. Shelley: the Pursuit - an exhaustive biography made readable by both the fascinating subject and the excellence of the biographer
51. Small Island - first I disliked it; now I almost love it - deserving of the Orange
52. The City and The City - fantasy, mystery, I'm fascinated and bemused; the setting is everything!
53. The Devil's Eye - scifi series - not the best of not the best; mystery, a death star, Mutes
54. Four Frightened People - horrible book! - but it looks pretty on the shelf
55. *At Mrs Lippincote's - as wonderful as #54 was horrible! - and it looks even prettier on the shelf.

September
56. The Septembers of Shiraz - like, not love - political prisoner in Iran and his family
57. South Riding - love, not like - southeastern Yorkshire in the 1930's as a microcosm
58. Flag in Exile - I love my Honor...twice! - #5 of space opera/military scifi - religious fanatics, politics, treason, sword fight, space battle, perfectly wonderful protagonist, Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington
59. North-west by North - sailing from Brisbane to Singapore, angst, sad poetry - I finished!
60. Absolution Gap - scifi - last of a trilogy - super book! - hard space opera with Brane space and lots of action

(general craziness and not catching on --- I'll get to 250 by messing up before anybody else has a chance to post, assuming that anybody cares to post!)

PERCIVAL'S PLANET by Michael Byers

Please check on the book page for my ER review. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and recommend it and Michael Byers to anybody who is interested in people and a little bit of astronomy! I didn't do justice in the review to his created characters ~ Mary is diagnosed as having Involution Paranoia of Kleist, which makes her "just crazy enough" to require hospitalization from time to time. I won't get started, but it is great summer reading; NOT a beach book, but engrossing and entertaining. I'm also quite taken with Byers's blog in which he includes photos, copies of the notes of the astronomers, his own reflections on writing, and lots more: here.

Hi Peggy! I think I'm actually the first one here. Congrats on the new thread!

And I'm second! I've finished M&S. What a treat that was.

Found you!

Of course we care to post! Glad your ER book was a success - I was really into astronomy and space when I was younger so I am intrigued by the Plutovian theme and will look out for it.

ETA: And just to confuse me, it seems to be published as The Unfixed Stars in the UK

hello

Great review! And another book gets added to the TBR pile...

Wonderful review Peggy! I'm glad this one worked out for you a lot better than the Connelly book which I have yet to get to (bad, bad).

Welcome, friends! Thanks for coming in and being your sweet selves.

Lovely review! I have your new thread starred now!

Woot! My local library has Percival's Planet 'in processing' so I will be able to get my hands on it soon.

I am coming in and being my sour self :)

Hey, Terri and Stasia! I wish I had something even moderately interesting to say this morning, but no..... Ms. AA, I have trouble thinking of you as more than refreshingly tart. That doesn't sound right. I do believe that when I say "sweet," I mean something like "whole, healthful, ripe, like fruit at its peak of perfection......and calling my friends fruit doesn't sound right either. O.K. I'm going now.
(The only thing I've read other than *PP* has been a fantasy by Carol Berg, Transformation that Lucy mentioned somewhere. I'm loving it but won't review it because even a little summary sounds completely dumb. It isn't though. It's fresh and compelling for anybody with a taste for the ultimate escape which fantasy brings.)

I love to look at other people's answers to these. Copied this one from Linda P.

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Mostly not although I often read while I eat meals

What is your favorite drink while reading?
Coffee (hot) or water

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I sometimes make very tiny marks on the page number unless I'm reading to learn and retain. Then I mark like crazy. I also was a bookseller who could borrow and return to the store. Besides, I love my books.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ear? Laying the book flat open?
Dog-ear? Book flat open? Horrors! I have many pages from *Get Fuzzy* calendars for several years that I use over and over. Then, if the book isn't pleasing, I still have something fun to read.

Fiction, non-fiction or Both?
BOTH!!! More fiction than non, though.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?
If I need an excuse to keep reading - as when a pot is boiling over or something - I read to the end of the chapter. Otherwise, I do try to finish a paragraph.

Are you a person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
I've done it about 4 times. I noted those on the books we hate thread here.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
On my Kindle, yes. Otherwise, no, unless it's clear that it's a key word and context gives me no clue.

What are you currently reading?
Transformation, Shelley:the Pursuit, A Small Island, North-west by North by Dora Birtles, Sand Sharks, and picking up the rest on my "Currently Reading" list as time allows. (It hasn't allowed much.)

What is the last book you bought?
Revelation and Restoration to polish off that Carol Berg fantasy trilogy

Are you a person that reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?
See above! (If I can watch on-going TV series, I don't see why I can't manage more than one book.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?
When I'm awake and on the sofa - or just when I'm awake.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Series books in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Rose Tremain!!!!

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author's last name etc)?
Organize?

That looks like a fun quiz...love your answers. And, yes, I need to read some Rose Tremain books. She has been on my wish list forever it seems.

One of the things I had planned for this summer was to organize books. I sent our beloved World Book Encyclopedias home with the grandkids and now have an empty shelf in a prominent place. I have so many books that deserve a permanent home that I'm afraid my shelf will be filled too quickly. Finding the perfect combination sounds like a good project for these hot summer days.

Hello Peggy, found your new thread.

If I need an excuse to keep reading - as when a pot is boiling over or something - I read to the end of the chapter. Very funny! and all too familiar (as the state of most of my pans will testify).

My favorite of your replies -- If I need an excuse to keep reading - as when a pot is boiling over or something - I read to the end of the chapter. Otherwise, I do try to finish a paragraph.

funny! My spouse is a masterful end of chapter reader, plus 'oops, sorry, I kept on reading by mistake'

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Rose Tremain!!!!

And here I sit with Restoration and Music and Silence sitting on my shelf. **sigh** I read The Road Home and loved it.

OH, Bonnie, The Road Home remains my very favorite. Just let me finish 2 things, and I'm going to start another Tremain!

I fell in love with Lev and would have considered marrying him:)

I loved The Road Home too - especially the scenes in the residential home, for some reason.

>23 gennyt:: me, too, gennyt!

I loved the whole thing, and I could easily be president of the Lev Fan Club. What a decent, sweet man! I loved all the food stuff too.

Oops, just found your new thread. Time for another Heyer, don't you think?

found you and starred you.

TRANSFORMATION by Carol Berg

It doesn't do for an adult to try to give a sketch of plot elements in a traditional fantasy, so I won't do it except to say that a slave and a prince become equally dependent on each other. Either you can give yourself to the fantastic or you can't. I could and did and look forward to the next in the series. My thanks to Lucy for the recommendation! I've even finally succumbed and asked for a copy of Still Life from pbs.

#28: Well, I just checked and I already have Transformation in the BlackHole. I will have to get my hands on a copy soon.

I hope you enjoy Still Life when you receive a copy, Peggy!

I'll second that from Stasia, Peggy. I'm really enjoying the book.

I'm just tickled that you liked the Carol Berg The second one is even better.

if I need an excuse to keep reading - as when a pot is boiling over or something - I read to the end of the chapter.

LOL! Sounds just like me.

I don't want to jump the gun but I'd be willing to bet that we'll soon have another rider on the bus to Three Pines. Just sayin'.

Even though I have persevered with Shelley, I haven't reacted to him here. Let me try for about five minutes. In the summer of 1816 the Shelleys and Byron rented neighboring houses on Lake Geneva and Shelley and Byron sailed together daily. (Does anybody know whether anybody called Byron "George"? I've often wondered.) Mary's step-sister Claire was with the Shelleys and pregnant with Byron's baby. Byron was accompanied by William Polidori, a doctor. Polidori's Vampyre and Mary's Frankenstein grew out of discussions during this summer. Shelley always, from childhood on, enjoyed the macabre (to borrow a word) and especially scaring young women. He was rather more envious of Byron's success as a poet than not.
Later that year when the Shelley entourage was back in England, they were shaken by two suicides: Mary's half-sister Fanny (her mother's child by an earlier marriage) and Shelley's first wife, Harriet. In an effort to gain custody of his children by appearing to be a solid, upstanding citizen, Shelley married Mary. They were unsuccessful both because of his reputation as a radical atheist and because he had never visited them after he and their mother were estranged. This is the first time that I begin to have sympathetic feelings for the man. He didn't acknowledge any responsibility for Harriet's desperate condition nor her death, but he was truly upset.
Meanwhile, he finally published his next prose preface (in Holmes's opinion, his first mature work) and poem, The Revolt of Islam. Originally titled, Laon and Cyntha, he had intended the couple to be brother and sister as well as lovers. His publisher insisted that he change this and the lines that reflected his atheism. He agreed in order to get the work published.
O.K. That's more than enough! I'm up to 1817 and need to get them to Italy.

Edited to give Polidori his correct first name

34> Mary Wollstonecroft was never married to Fanny's father. But Godwin adopted and raised her along with their daughter, Mary.

Hmmm, wonder if the brother-sister thing was a reflection on Byron?

Thanks, as usual, Deborah! I don't know about the whole brother-sister thing. Shelley tried to fix his closest sister, Elizabeth, up with Hogg when they were younger. Given his penchant for communal living and sharing, I have to wonder whether the idea didn't predate Byron. Holmes doesn't touch this, or I didn't get it.

(Edited to change "young" to "younger" given how short a life he lived.)

Just did a little googling. Byron's affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, apparently began in 1813; the child she bore in the spring of 1814 is rumored to have been his daughter. The scandal was one reason for Byron's going abroad--and probably also one reason why he was sympathetic to Percy and Mary. So if The Revolt of Islam dates from 1817, Shelley could indeed have had the Byron scandal in mind!

(Fixing up one's sister with a friend and communal living . . . well, kinky, maybe, but a little different from brother-sister incest! Even though there were so many marriages of first cousins back then, they at least did know that the mating of siblings could produce deformed children. Supposedly, after seeing Medora, Augusta's daughter, Byron wrote to friend that he was relieved that the child didn't look like an ape!)

I was sort of, kind of, tentatively suggesting maybe (Do I have that covered?) that Shelley might have been willing to go the same route with Elizabeth if Hogg had married her. Nothing but pure speculation on my part! In any event, their father saw to it that they had no further dealings with each other. According to Holmes, the incest theme was to underline the absolute radicalism of revolution in *Islam*.
Byron was apparently another prince. Claire apparently pursued him and knew what she was getting into if she could.

Here's a link to a short but witty bio of Byron. The footnotes are hilarious!

Ex: "After his love Mary Ann married another in 1805, Byron became a very wild sort of person. He enrolled in Cambridge, but did no work, since that was the fashion of the time. He wrote lots of verses, and spent lots of money.* He inevitably spent beyond his income of £500 a year and had to get a relative's signature to obtain a loan, as he was still only seventeen. He turned to his half-sister, Augusta Byron Leigh, child of Mad Jack's first marriage. Augusta's husband was a big spender too, so she understood and signed."**

*He had a mistress to buy things for. He used to dress her in men's clothes and call her his brother... (no comment.)

**I'm afraid Augusta was a flake. She called Byron "Baby" while he called her "Goose."

For an interesting fiction account of those years at Lake Geneva, 49358::The Stress of her Regard by Tim Powers is a fascinating fantastical story.

André Maurois! That's hilarious, Deborah, like 1066 and All That only better. I'll have to see whether there's more when I'm not sleepy!
Roni, two minds with a single thought! I adored The Stress of Her Regard! It was my first Tim Powers.

Edited to spell "acute" and get one to show up!

>39 Cariola: & 41: Yes, very much the same tone as 1066 and very funny.

Click the "British Authors" link on the page for more, such as William "The Interminable" Wordsworth!

I enjoyed that link too! And I've plonked *Regard* into the wishlist.

#28 My only consolation on adding another fantasy series to the wishlist is that the library at least has the whole trilogy

I'm always happy to repay additional books my to Mt. Bookpile, dear Lucy and Heather! (And I expect my copies of the other two of the trilogy in the mail sometime this week. Our local library doesn't do well with science fiction or fantasy. Besides, I'm still hooked on owning what I read. Dumb. Oh well.)
And speaking of dumb, I read the chapter in Shelley about his first few months in Italy which he spent translating Plato. Way over my head! Holmes says, "...it is by these two works {The Banquet Translated from Plato and its introduction, "A Discourse on the Manners of the Ancient Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love"} that one can assess the real value of that essentially gentlemanly classicism. The value is high." Good. Apparently, publishers or censors took out his writing about homosexuality (he was against it) which has led some scholars to think that he had conflicts. If this is meaningful to somebody, I give it to you for free (this is Shelley not Holmes); "The ideas suggested by Catullus, Martial, Juvenal and Suetonius never occur among the Greeks; or even among those Romans, who, like Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, imitated them. The Romans were brutally obscene; the Greeks seem hardly capable of obscenity in a strict sense." Really?
Then it was on to Venice where Shelley went with Claire who was worried about Allegra. He got visiting rights for Claire from Byron, who didn't realize that Claire was there already, and insisted that Mary drag their children and household to a villa in Este which Byron lent them. Mary finally came, but their baby Clara was already sick, and Shelley messed around accommodating Claire so that the baby died before she could get reliable medical care. Mary was devastated, and this marked a change in her relationship with her husband. I guess so!
Now I'm going to finish Sand Sharks.

46> A lot of critics believe that Byron and Shelley had an affair. There's a letter asking Shelley to come to Geneva and specifically NOT to bring Mary. It's also documented that Byron had a very intense 'friendship' with a young Greek servant boy.

Mary really did have a dreadful time of it, trying to take care of everyone else's needs and losing so many babies. (I'm pretty sure only one son survived to adulthood). From what I've read, Shelley's attitude about Clara's death and the earlier ones was pretty much, "Oh, well, get over it. You can have another one."

Interesting! I remember the letter about not taking Mary to Geneva. Holmes does say that Shelley deplores Byron's lifestyle (well, Holmes doesn't say "lifestyle") in Venice, but nothing so far about an affair. I wonder how Polidori came into the mix......

SAND SHARKS by Margaret Maron
This was a good one! Deborah is in Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington, N.C. (about which I know a little - I've eaten at the restaurant that figures so prominently) for the summer conference for district court judges. One of them gets himself murdered, and Deborah is around for all the action.
I wish I were not caught up with the series again, but I trust that MM has another up her sleeve.

You sneaked that Maron right in, barely made it onto your 'currently reading' if at all......

Love the Byron/Shelley stuff. Keep it coming!

ditto what Lucy said in post #49

I agree too!

#48 I wonder how Polidori came into the mix......

As I recall from the book I read, Polidori was Byron's personal physician for a time. Byron seems to have had a touch of an eating disorder -- binge eating and then purging, using strong laxatives. He needed a doctor around to get him out of medical trouble when he overdid it. Apparently the two had personalities that clashed, and Byron eventually found a way to dismiss him.

In The Monsters, Hoobler claims that the Vampire in Polidori's novel was based on Byron; he saw Byron as one who fed off people and then discarded them.

Yes, about Polidori being Byron's physician. I was suggesting (again with no reason at all) that they might have been in a relationship-gone-wrong; I feel like one of my high school juniors ((the one in every class who asked, "Is ____ gay?" Fill in the blank: Nick Carraway, Huck Finn, .....))
Today's puny reading took the family+ to Naples, and making long story short, here's what Holmes thinks happened. Both Claire and Elise, the Swiss nurse for the children, were pregnant by Shelley. (Oh dear. I'm now remembering a paper by a high school senior who had Mary "being pregnant for Percy Belly.") Claire had a miscarriage; Elise had a daughter, Elena Adelaide Shelley, for whom birth, baptism, and death records exist. Maria Padurin, "an Italian mispronunciation of Mary Godwin which Shelley did not bother to correct" was given as mother in the birth registration; Shelley acknowledged himself as the father. The one sure fact is that Mary was not the mother. Another sure fact is that Shelley was depressed and sick for their whole stay in Naples. Following so closely on Clara's death, it's no wonder that Mary's attitude toward her husband changed.
I can totally see why Polidori might have made Byron the vampire. Other 'casting' includes Shelley and his household as the basis for Albion House and Scythrop in Peacock's Nightmare Abbey and Byron and Shelley himself as Maddalo and Julian in "Julian and Maddalo."
I'm glad that I didn't choose to tell the long story if this is the short one! Good Night!

Peggy, I'm getting such a kick out of your posts. Thanks!

Me too -- they were breathtakingly awful. But very entertaining. Everyone was scandalized, I'm sure, but also riveted -- which is my mot du jour, for which I apologize feebly.

Not a lot to add today. One chapter was criticism of Prometheus Unbound, no doubt a great leap forward in Shelley's power but definitely not for me. I got lost in the mythical, psychological, political ramifications and just don't get the poetry at all.
More heartbreak! They left Naples for Rome and their son, "Willmouse" age 4, died also in convulsions like Clara. From Rome they returned to friends in Livorno where Mary pretty much had a nervous breakdown and PBS himself was ill and depressed. It was in that condition that he wrote The Cenci, which Holmes characterizes as a Shakespearean and Jacobean pastiche. The poor fellow was feeling his exile from England and hoping that if he could get *Cenci* published anonymously, the public would be crazy about it. Holmes does quote the funniest thing I've read that PBS wrote, describing Mr. Gisborne, the friend.
"His nose is something quite Slawkenburygian - it weighs on the imagination to look at it, - it is that sort of nose which transforms all the gs its wearer utters into ks. It is a nose once seen never to be forgotten and which requires the utmost stretch of Christian charity to forgive."
Now I'm reading about "The Mask of Anarchy", "the greatest poem of political protest ever written in English --- {with claims to be considered} the most powerfully conceived the most economically executed and the most perfectly sustained piece of poetry of his life." This is one I think I'll actually read along with "Julian and Maddalo."

Am loving your summaries of/reactions to the Shelley book - and your speculations about all their relationships. It does sound as if almost anything was possible!

I could weep. I had almost finished a longer-than-needed post about 1819 in the Shelley family when I hit 'Backspace' and it disappeared. I'm not going to do it again. BRIEF summary: they move from Rome to Florence to Pisa. Percy Florence Shelley is born in Florence; his presence helps bring Mary back to the land of the living. PBS writes a lot of good stuff that is not published in England in his lifetime because his friends are personally afraid in the political climate. Lots of women around. Lots of general criticism from R. Holmes. I progress - page 583 and reading.
I'm also enjoying Still Life. I'm not quite in love yet, but certainly in like. Maybe I can stand on the steps of the bus and hold on while I read another couple to see how she improves or my super-critical preferences calm down.
I'm also enjoying The Devil's Eye, a Jack McDevitt scifi offering in his Alex Benedict series. Pure entertainment!
I'm also reading Small Island, which I won't finish in Orange July. I had expected to love it but only like it O.K. On the one hand, the characters are "just folks," so I really shouldn't expect them to be sterling examples of heroism and morality. On the other hand, they are really not attractive in their ordinariness. I most like Queenie who yields to generous impulses from time to time, but who other times is as much a bitch as Hortense is all the time.
That's pretty much all, folks!

I hate it when I lose something that way. There's just no way I can ever recreate something I've done when that happens. But . . . enjoying your comments anyway.

>58 LizzieD: I don't get it Peggy. Were you reading a PDF file or something?

I don't know how far you are in Small Island but I hope you carry on. You described Hortense perfectly but Gilbert Joseph, I thought, was a beautifully drawn character.

>60 brenzi: No, no pdf. I was posting right here; I'm not sure what happened, but I was typing away, hit backspace, and my whole post not only disappeared, but I got kicked back to the 75 Challenge group page. Even the return to previous page put me in the last thread before I had come here. *****weirdness*****
(I'm just about half through *SI* and you're right, Bonnie. Gilbert is a well-drawn character. The writing is good. I just like this maybe the least of any of the Orange nominees that I've read. I think it's purely personal prejudice, having nothing much to do with the book and a lot more to do with me.)

I have to get to Small Island one of these centuries!

Commiserations for your lost post. I have managed to lose long reviews or posts several times while trying to edit, when the cursor slips and highlights the wrong sentence or paragraph when I'm trying to delete a word, and the whole thing is deleted in an instant - and there is no undo button to get it back. Doesn't sound like that is what happened to you, but however it happened, it is hugely frustrating to lose one's carefully crafted thoughts. (Of course the ones we lose are always the carefully crafted ones!)

I read Small Island a couple of years ago and quite liked it but was not bowled over.

waving hello...

I had a lengthy, almost-complete post disappear last weekend, and I'm almost sure it was accidentally hitting the backspace that did it . . .

I feel your pain!

Thank you both. Genny, you are right! That was absolutely the best thing I've ever written, and it's gone! (heh heh heh) I'm not sure what's happening with my time these days, but it isn't going into Shelley. Maybe after today I'll get back on track and finish this doorstop!

>61 LizzieD:: That happens to me occasionally; not even sure which magic key my fat fingers hit to make the post disappear! Why does it happen on the longer and most brilliant posts? :-)

I wouldn't say I love the Three Pines books, but they are a nice respite from the depressing reads that I do seem to love. And they give me something to look forward to as I don't tend to read many series. I'd classify them as Light Reading and, therefore, ineligible for anything above a 4-star rating -- in my world anyway.

Edited to say...Case in point! I "sent" this message earlier and it disappeared; so I reconstructed it, sent it again, now where the heck is Message No. 2? Am I going crazy????

Hey, it happens! I'm not even sure which magic key I accidentally fat finger when I lose my most brilliant posts! But it is maddening.

Peggy, I would classify the Three Pines books as "light reading." I don't love them either, but they do provide a pleasant respite from the heavy-duty books that I gravitate toward. And, because I don't read many series, it gives me someplace to look forward to returning where I "know" the people and always feel welcome! Kind of like LT. :-)

Edited again. Well, evidently "not" is the answer on the crazy business (whew!), but there was a huge lag in posting my message. Sorry about the similarity in posts.

I'm far from an interwebs expert (wow, that's a understatement if I ever heard one!), but the backspace issue has happened to me, and it seems that what happens is this: if your cursor/mouse-arrow-thing is not in a textbox, hitting the backspace key works the same as if you hit the back arrow for your browser and thus takes you back one page. The solution is: a) Don't Panic, and b) simply hit the forward arrow in your browser, which should take you right back to the page you just left, complete with textbox and your text! This works for me, at least.

Thanks, Amber. I'll remember that. I believe that I hit the back arrow instead of the forward which took me to somebody else's thread. I hadn't thought about where I was before I was here - if that makes any sense. I'll try really hard to keep my cursor in the text box!
And now I'm afraid I have to reread Sherri S. Tepper's The Fresco because I was just recommending it yet again. Maybe I can get away with reading a little bit of it.............. Sorry, Shelley.

Surprisingly, I totally agree with my friend Donna about the Three Pines series. Light reading, probably will never get more than 4 stars from me either but when I'm reading the books I'm completely immersed and love the characters.

That's interesting, Donna and Bonnie. I award stars according to how closely any book approaches my ideal of that particular type. I will, therefore, have as many stars as possible for my favorites in science fiction and mystery and theology and literature, but I don't imply by those stars that D.L. Sayers is the equal of Shakespeare. I know I've read this debate in other places. Just so long as everybody knows what a person means by his stars, I think we're good to go.

I'm more or less in the same boat as you Peggy -- I reserve the right, too, to be impenetrable and inconsistent. On the other hand would I award any mystery or a thriller five stars? Probably not, due to the formulaic aspect of the genre. I would if there was something so perfect about the way it was done that I had to. SF - yes, if the content and the writing were/are miraculous, ditto fantasy. The inconsistent piece comes when I have had such a good time or have learned so much or had a truly meaningful experience with the book that it has to get five stars even if no one else might award it that many..... And some books that probably deserve more stars might not get them from me due to some quirk. I go crazy, for some reason, if anybody 'cups' someone's elbow. Can't hardly read the book for puffs of smoke. Too subjective to be tolerated! I've got a couple of other phobias and violent dislikes which for now I will keep to myself.

Too late! You've gotten me started! I don't mind cupped elbows although I can see why you might. I can't read the following two big, bad uglies: "---padded across the floor." "---munched" anything, but especially soft foods. My main objection to Penny (and I realize that this is a first novel) is her moving characters to another place and another time without telling me. I also know that this woman or her editor has to know the difference between "everyday" and "every day," but she consistently uses the first for the second. (Writing takes as much chutzpah as teaching.)
(I must not have been as clear as I thought. I have 5-star mysteries, 4-star, 3-star, etc. They have nothing to do with the criteria I'd use to judge 5-star 19th century novels, 4-star, 3-star, etc. Apples and oranges; also cherries and lemons.) (Shoot. I'm just going to take a shower and read something.)

The worst line I ever read went like this 'his hands hung at the end of his arms' or maybe they 'dangled' who cares!!!!!!!

Yuh, I saw the everyday -- some usage I just give up on and try not to let it bother me after a certain point -- English is nothing if not flexible and 'acceptable' does change whether we like it or not -- and there was a time when none of it mattered ...... the point of 'the rules' is to be sure of clarity, of your meaning being clear..... sigh.

Yes, I know you rate a little differently than me. It's good to be reminded too -- I try to say when I know I am being arbitrary and that it is a very personal judgement......

Trudges off to look busy.

That's good enough to submit to the Bulwer-Lytton Contest!
(I think what is really bothering me about the book more than the 1st-novel stuff is the fact that nobody could have gotten as far in the police as Yvette Nichol has (at least, I trust not) and not know better than to ignore her superior's order to get information, no matter what she thinks about the wisdom of the order.)

I forgot to say, "Happy Shelley's Birthday, everybody!" (If my math is right, this is number 218.) If I had thought about it, I would have pushed a little harder to finish today. As it is, I still have about 70 pages to read. I'm not counting, of course.
Since I last posted about him, he has continued to write and not necessarily be published. He and Mary have had a bad time, and he has spent time and attention on Claire. He has fallen in love with a young Italian woman, Emilia, who eventually married. Mary has been spending a lot of time with a Greek prince. And they have met and become friends with Edward Williams and Jane, and Shelley has bought a boat.

A propos of more or less no import is the fact that today I packed a huge book of Byron's letters...... One of those books I've had for thirty years..... about like the Henry Adams. And now it is going into a storage unit, which seems dangerous.....

I do think Yvette is so badly behaved it is a wonder that she has gotten as far as she has..... I probably shouldn't have gone along with her intransigence except that I was enjoying it too much. And who knows? It does seem part of the genre that the detectives are a very quirky moody lot -- and mysteries are already so improbable I find it hard to know where to stop accepting it all (why I probably like Fforde just fine, I know you can't bear it).......

70 pages to go, the end is in sight!

#75 - I wonder where else his arms should have dangled?

I suppose there were the wrists coming between them?

Ack! That's one of those things like the police dispatchers say that the "suspicious vehicle is blue in color." (What does it suspect? What else would it be blue "in"?) And then there was the time that I asked whether a discount store sold hats. The clerk said, "Hats .... like you wear on your head?" Yep.
Laugh or weep; those are about the only two choices.
Lucy, you keep bad-mouthing mysteries. I have to wonder which you've read that left such a terrible taste. Lots? A few? Oh my.....

Oh, I've missed out on a lot! I flew to Texas on Thursday and have been helping my brother and SIL move from Denton to New Hampshire post-retirement. Just returned home last night.

Lucy, I don't read mysteries either, mainly b/c I find them too formulaic. I'm a character fanatic, and I find that mysteries too frequently ignore character and focus mainly on plot.

Oh no, I don't mean to do that! It is a writerly observation. I just meant that the writer knows in advance how things have to go throughout the whole book. They are heavily plotted. They aren't written questingly, organically ..... I have a bias in that direction, like the feeling that the writer 'found' his or her way. Most novels in most other (excluding thrillers also) genres are not planned out as fully -- although I am sure there is some room for serendipity, particularly character development-- Penny, more than most, does give one that feeling, that she is discovering things about her characters as she goes along. Tony Hillerman who I adore, does too. Alson Tana French does it well doo. Does that make sense? I love that Italian mystery writer -based in Sicily. I like the Swedish one too, though he got darker and darker.

Well, Daniel Silva says he writes his books "organically"--his very word. He says he never knows where he's going with them ("thrillers"), except in this last one, where he says he developed the ending last and then didn't know how to get there--ha. John Iriving says that he does just the opposite, making meticulous outlines of his books before he starts writing, including his need to know the ending before he begins. I think how a writer approaches his or her project has more to do with personality than it does with genre. Just my 2 cents.

I have to agree with Becky. There are mystery hacks just as there are other hacks, and there are real writers of mysteries who are willing to let their characters take them where they will. Perhaps you dears need to read somebody like Susan Hill to abuse yourself of the formula notion. (Can I really mean "abuse"? So what word do I mean instead - "to forcefully rid oneself of"?) Then, of course, I enjoy the formula and what a writer is able to accomplish with characters within it. It's an idea analogous to a poet using a strict form. A favorite is Margaret Maron, who writes lately about a woman judge in rural N.C. not far from the Triangle. She can create round characters in as few words as anybody I can think of although she doesn't always. Also a mystery series can provide a good writer the opportunity to give her characters depth. I have always maintained that mystery writers provide more cultural information than any number of sociology textbooks. Therefore, I love mysteries! That said, I haven't been reading them as often as I used to. Since retirement I don't need quite as much brain candy, and I'll agree that most mysteries are certainly that.
I started out with a thesis in the back of my mind: I'm not as carried away with Penny as some of you because I've read more in the genre, and she doesn't seem so extraordinary to me. I'm not sure that holds up. Anyway, I'm still reading Still Life when I'm not reading Shelley or rereading The Fresco, and I am enjoying it.
*Welcome back, Deborah!!! You are a good, good sister! Ask Lucy, who's in the throes of moving herself.

#86 "Disabuse"?

I agree that mysteries are like any other genre, in that there are some excellent writers and some that are not so good. And some that are better at plots, some that are better at characters.

I love your comment about the formulae of genre fiction being like the strict form of poetry: I've often thought how much skill it must take to use a formula and make something interesting and fresh out of it, but I've never thought of it quite like that before.

Peggy, I had the same response to the Louise Penny book, Still Life--it was good but I wasn't as enamored with it as most people responding to it seemed to be, and I also thought that was probably because I've read so many mysteries. I guess I also consider them in the main to be brain candy, as you say, or comfort food for the brain, or whatever.

What's the Margaret Maron book? I haven't read her.

I also like your analogy of formula-writing to writing in a strict poetic form. That's nice.

Thank you for "disabuse," Caty! Connections do come and go in the older brain!
OOOO! Margaret Maron is very prolific, Becky! Her current series began with Bootlegger's Daughter in 1992 and has continued for 18 books or so. Some are better than others, but all move the main characters ahead. A caveat: I'm not sure that in my community a bootlegger (and we know who they are) would ever, ever be even marginally accepted by the "nice" people. But then, Deborah (our heroine), is his last child by his second wife, so he is coming from Depression era standards. She also has stuck with a little formula that strikes me as too cutesy: Deborah hears 2 voices, the preacher and the pragmatist that make short comments in her head. Otherwise, I think she deserved the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards that she won for *B'sD*. (Her older series features a NYC policewoman, Sigrid Harald, and I actually preferred her character.) Try one!

Thanks Peggy, I will. I'm always looking for a good series.

Louise Penny's mysteries are the first of the cozy type that I've read in years. Maybe that's why they are so appealing to me. I'll admit it, I'm completly hooked. They're just so different than what I usually read that I'm really enjoying them.

I can't resist these things. Here are my answers from my current reading.....

Describe yourself: Learning the World

How do you feel: Innocent

Describe where you currently live: Gilead

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Elsewhere

Your favorite form of transportation: Eight Feet in the Andes

Your best friend is: The Grand Sophy

You and your friends are: The Gentlewomen

What’s the weather like: The Gobi Desert

You fear: Sand Sharks

What is the best advice you have to give: For Love Alone

Thought for the day: Cheerfulness Breaks In

How I would like to die: Crossing to Safety

My soul’s present condition: Transformation

love your answers to the questions!

#92: I think that one is my favorite of the quizzes that go around. Nice answers, Peggy!

well I enjoyed the last of your previous thread. Feared that going away for almost three weeks would put me seriously behind... well it was only 100+ msgs. Could have been worse! LOL

>17 Donna828: Do you have a favorite time/place to read? When I'm awake and on the sofa - or just when I'm awake. * Do you prefer series books or stand-alones? Series books in science fiction, fantasy, and mystery * Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over? Rose Tremain!!!! * How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author's last name etc)? Organize?

LOL You're cracking me up! I don't know Rose Tremain... hope I can remedy that soon!!

re: lost posts. It happens to me when I hit "submit" so I've developed the habit of copy what I'm posting. Trouble is last time I did it, my computer also shut down before I was able to paste to a note!!!

I don't think I could answer that quiz with my book titles... even with 150-some to choose from. Delightful :)

ETA something and then realized there was no need! LOL

Welcome back, Susan! I've visited you off and on through your vacation and envied your new acquisitions. In truth, I shouldn't have. I bought way too many books online in July and must seriously cut back in ------- August 2050, maybe. No! Now!!
(I didn't think I could do that meme with the books I had read either, but when I tried, they fell into place. Give it a shot!) (By all means, read Rose Tremain! She is a glory and a wonder!)

STILL LIFE by Louise Penny
I've said enough about this one. I liked it but was not swept away by it. I'll certainly read her again because I admire a lot about her writing. To name one place, I especially enjoyed the short conversation between Gamache and Yolande, the disgusting niece - both of whom talk in very sincere real estate agents' voices.
(Back to Shelley) (And I've copied this to be sure.)

Well, that quiz looks like fun, so I'll give it a try. I'm just looking at my TBR stacks and current reads.

Describe yourself: The Captive Queen (She's in there somewhere!)

How do you feel: Wild Mind

Describe where you currently live: Wolf Hall

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Stuart Britain, 1603-1714

Your favorite form of transportation: The Road Home

Your best friend is: Gifted

You and your friends are: The Commitments

What’s the weather like: Cloud Howe

You fear: The Idea of Perfection (because I'm a perfectionist)

What is the best advice you have to give: I Cannot Tell a Lie, Exactly

Thought for the day: If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

How I would like to die: Consuming Splendor

My soul’s present condition: Keeping the World Away

Great, Deborah! I wish I had considered living in Wolf Hall too.

SHELLEY: THE PURSUIT by Richard Holmes
I cannot tell you how excited I am to have persevered to the end. This was massive! I chose to read it because I knew only Shelley's more famous lyrics and liked them least of the Romantics. I hoped that I would be inspired to read more Shelley and instructed to appreciate him. Alas. I doubt that I will ever read anything more unless my taste changes again.
I am grateful to Holmes for quoting Shelley liberally and for his analysis and criticism. I could almost have an intelligent conversation with a Shelley-lover, I think. I don't feel the need to post anything more about the life because I commented in progress. A final note that I didn't realize: H. James based his story/novella The Aspern Papers on Claire Clairmont's late experience when a Harvard graduate came prowling around hoping to find PBS's love letters to her.
And now I'm free to start something else, and contrary to earlier plans, it may not be Mary Shelley yet.

Gobi Desert, Sand Sharks, snort!

What a great factoid about The Aspern Papers (a James gem).

Enjoy your new found freedom!

Hi LizzieD! Just letting you know that I miss you here at LT. Hope all is well.

What Becky said.

Thank you Becky and Bonnie! I had a very happy overnight at the beach with mother, aunts, uncle, and cousins. We laughed and ate and talked and played bridge (#*@(*#^(!!!) to our hearts' content, but I am glad, Glad, GLAD to be home.
Thank you for the good wish for my freedom, Lucy. I'm actually trying to finish something else before I dive into one of my new, wonderful books: Cloud Atlas (on the Kindle), The Kill Artist (thanks for the nudge, Becky), Country of the Blind and Boiling a Frog (thanks, Kokipy) and The Getting of Wisdom. I have another 2 used ones on the way and an ER ARC, Body Work by Sara Paretsky, an old favorite. Lucky me!

Wow! Lucky you indeed, Peggy!

Lucky you re the new Sara Paretsky on ER indeed, I hope it's a good one. And I really must get back to Christopher Brookmyre. Perhaps a TIOLI challenge to read books with Frog in the title....

Sounds like a wonderful time. Lucky you, the new Paretsky. Hooray. Happy reading.

Welcome back, welcome back. Good timing too (for me anyhow!), as I have wrestled the home internet into functioning again.

Wow, I really fell behind on this thread... well, here's a drive-by wave for you and a promise that I will try harder to visit more often!

*waves*

I am reading The Kill Artist right now, and so far it has been very good. I read The Secret Servant, not really knowing it was the seventh in the Gabriel Allon series, but I enjoyed it enough to start the series from the beginning now.

Nice little haul there Peggy.

It's so warming to have visitors, and even when it's 97° for days on end, that's a good feeling! Thank you for dropping by, old friends and new!
I can't read The Kill Artist yet although I read a little to see how I'd like it --- a lot, I think. I want to jump on my Paretsky when she comes so that I have even ¼ of a chance at the Rose Tremain being offered at ER. *sigh*
As for current reading, I've finally made some real progress in The City & the City. I like Mieville so much! I know that many people prefer this one to his earlier books, but Perdido Street Station is still my Mieville gold standard. I adore New Crobuzon; it is as various and bursting with energy as that whole book. The cities keep me a little at arm's length. Taste!

Just dropping through to say hi, Peggy.

(Hi, Roni!)

SMALL ISLAND by Andrea Levy
I realize that this one is old enough to be out of the loop for most readers here. I started it for Orange July, disliked it, but kept on until now when I am glad to have read it. My review is on the book page, of course, and here's how it starts:

I really disliked the first 200 or so pages, but I'm glad that I persevered. The characters are limited, damaged people who clutch their limited, damaged lives so closely that they choke on them. They can't see beyond their own need and their casual cruelty is disgusting and scary. These are not noble pariahs, as for instance those in A Fine Balance for whom one desperately wishes good things. These people are petty and mean, and depressingly average....

112> I rather liked Small World, and I recently watched the British TV production, which was quite good. Didn't you find Gilbert an admirable character? I would agree that the others are all flawed, but a lot of it has to do with either misperceptions of the way the world works (like Hortense) or being afraid of social criticism (like Bernard). And of course, the war has changed everything . . .

Hey, Deborah. I found Gilbert admirable in the end. Earlier, for me he was just a guy. I guess I'm thinking mostly about his treatment of Celia. Men just don't have a clue, apparently, when a woman is investing heavily in a relationship. He certainly had the best home life as a child and was a better person for it. I should have excepted him in my little review, I think.

#112: I have not read that one yet, Peggy, although I do own it. I imagine I will get to it one of these centuries. Nice review.

I also ended up really liking Small Island although it took me a while to get into it. I can't remember exactly what I thought while I was reading it but I ended up liking most of the characters, even Hortense. I taped the Masterpiece Theater production on PBS and have watched the first half, which was quite good. I'd recommend it if it's out on DVD.

Thank you, Stasia, and thanks for the tip, Pat. I missed the PBS showing, but if I find it, I'll watch. The more I think about the book, the more I like it. Curious.

116> Yep, it's out on DVD; I got it from Netflix last week.

Just stopped by to say hello! Glad you finished Shelley: the pursuit.

Just saying Hello!

Hi Peggy, I love your description of those noble pariahs in A Fine Balance. Oh how I loved those characters.

Thank you, Bonnie. I loved that whole experience. I thought a lot about some of my wonderful high school students through the years who had so little and were still such dear and valuable human beings.
(Hello right back to Terri and Angela. I appreciate the greetings.)

A Fine Balance is another one of those books I need to get to one of these years!

I've put it on my wishlist........

Both of you should probably put it next on your list. It's incredible.

#125: It for sure will not be this month for me - too many TIOLI book commitments!

#112 I'm actually one of those who still hasn't read Small Island! Glad you enjoyed it in the end, well done for persevering!

(Heather, the more I think about it, the more I liked it, so take heart and keep Small Island on your list. It's worth your time!)

THE CITY and THE CITY by China Mieville

I am a China Mieville fan, and this is a very worthy addition to his growing list of fantastic titles. He doesn't write run-of-the-mill fantasy though. The common thread is a unique setting which dominates the development of his novels. In Perdido Street Station the setting was New Crobuzon, an ancient city providing a home to many species who lived more or less in accommodation with the others. In The Scar it was a floating city; in Iron Council, a city on a train. The City and The City is set in two hostile cities that occupy the same space. Citizens of each learn as children to unsee the other. Accept this premise, and the story unrolls logically and inexorably.
*C&C* is a noir mystery, narrated by a hard-boiled police inspector investigating what appears to be the straightforward murder of a young woman. Mieville makes no concessions to newcomers, and the reader learns the intricacies of life in Beszel or Ul Qoma by being there. Being there is the appeal of the book, which will stay with me for quite a while!

As always I'm in awe of your ability to capture the essence of a book in so few words!!! Hub loves the Mievilles and I keep eyeing them..... maybe it's time. What would be the best to start with?

Boy Peggy I've had that one up and down the TBR pile, depending on who's reviewing it. Now up it goes.

#128: I wish I could be a Mieville fan, I tried, I just cannot. Sorry, Peggy. I am glad you enjoy his books though!

I'm not sure that you can acquire a taste for Mieville, Stasia. Friend Kokipy disliked *PerdidoStreet* (which continues to be my favorite; haven't gotten Kraken yet though), but really enjoyed *City/City*. It's hard to tell. Lucy (with thanks for kind words) and Bonnie, I guess I don't actually recommend them except for people who are willing to take a risk. He's wildly inventive; his language mirrors his subject (a good thing: in this case, very direct and cool for a hardboiled cop); he takes risks, so sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't. I could read him on at least a couple of levels. For example, the gift of "unseeing" what's right in your face is a gift we have for ignoring poverty and its effects in our cities and towns. I don't think he's a message man, but the conclusion is inescapable.

I haven't read Small Island yet though I own it, and I have the TV dramatisation taking up space on my V+ box (similar to a SkyPlus, a cable TV receiving box with a recording function on it). I read her first 3 books years ago.

I'm going to sit down and give Mieville a patient try -- although I have an Atwood and a Tremain and and and and.... waiting on the run-way ahead of him. those multi-layered writers do require time to get used to --

#128 Ok, Small Island is staying on the list!

Glad you enjoyed the Mieville - that's also on the list although I might read the rest of the Bas-Lag books first.

(Heather, you say "rest of" Bas-Lag, so I assume you've read *PSS*? *City/City* is completely different! And I'm glad that you're not cutting *Island*.

THE DEVIL'S EYE by Jack McDevitt

McDevitt always entertains, and this one was fun. It's in the Alex Delaware series that I enjoy less than the Hutch series. It was a little overlong. Quickly, Alex and Chase (his assistant and pilot) receive a cryptic message for help ("They're all dead.") and a hefty payment from a writer of horror novels who has a complete brain wipe before they can get in touch with her. They set off across the galaxy to the world she last visited to see whether they can discover what was wrong. McDevitt is working an alien race, the Mutes (huge bipedal insect-looking empaths with fangs - attractive, no?) into the books in this series just as he did the Omego Clouds into his other series. I think this is probably one for readers who are already in love with Alex and Chase.

I REALLY liked the first book in this series, A Talent for War. I read it and skipped the second, since reviews weren't that good, to read the 3rd, Seeker, for a book group. I didn't like it nearly as much--already it was looking a little formulaic, so I haven't continued the series. But I haven't read any of his other books. What would you recommend? The Engines of God? Or one of the stand-alones?

Roni, I really, really, really enjoyed The Engines of God, Deepsix (maybe my favorite of all), Chindi, and then these sort of deteriorated too - and I may be leaving one out before they got very Omega-cloudy and Hutch took a desk job. The stand-alones are good if a bit uneven. I liked Ancient Shores but wasn't all that crazy about Eternity Road. You can tell I'm a McDevitt fan. These are basically just fun when it's time for a break. He'll have to get a lot worse than he is now for me to stop giving him another chance.

I don't care for science fiction series, but I've read several of McDevitt's stand-alone novels (including Ancient Shores and Eternity Road), and he's a sci-fi writer I enjoy.

I have never read anything by McDevitt. I will have to give him a try.

I'm currently reading (and loving) The City and the City. I've also read PSS and loved it--although it was hard going sometimes. It is so weird because I tend to not be interested in fantasy generally but like the Mieville's. I think it is because you are just "thrust" into the worlds he creates and thereby into the story itself rather than forced to endure a lot of world-building before the story even starts.

Glad to see someone else who liked them. I never would have tried them at all if it wasn't for LT!

FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE by E. Arnot Robertson

I read this because it is a Virago Modern Classic. In fact, it was a best-seller in England in the early 30's when it was published. It is a terrible book! Horrible! Very bad, no good. For example, Judy is a doctor on a ship going up the Malay Peninsula toward Singapore who dismisses her Hippocratic Oath in less than a page of musing so that she can get off a boat that has bubonic plague aboard. Robertson is noted for her frank portrayal of woman's sexuality, but she is so clearly sexist herself that no feeling of liberation exists for the reader. Sha. Stop writing about it except to say, "Do not bother with this one. If you are one of the 17 on LT who owns it, leave it on the shelf."

Well, at least you are done!

At last a Virago--but too bad it was a stinker. (It's on my shelf.)

>142 LizzieD: But other than that, how did you like the book Peggy??;-)

142: I don't have that one but I have another book by her which is a VMC though my copy's an old orange and white Penguin. Have you read any of the others?

I haven't, Luci, although I also own Cullum. Romain has, and had something of the same reaction. Liz1564 just read *4People* too (in fact, she was the reason that I got it), and is writing a review that I can hardly wait to see.
(Ha. Ha. Bonnie. I didn't much like it.)

I was looking over your current list -- I know I read and enjoyed something by Dora Birtles. I'll have to think -- I don't think it's listed in here yet. I have quite a stash of books in storage up here and some lists too that I found from the 80's I haven't even attempted to start putting in.

What do you think of the Muriel Spark on Mary Shelley?

There was a box with several Merediths in it near the SF books I was working on at the library and I was tempted to to bring one home -- but then I found the Reynolds, thank goodness!

I'm not sure what Birtles wrote besides Northwest by North and The Overlanders (owned, not read). It dawned on me that this was the place to check. One person here owns something about Australia in Colour. She's quite a pleasant 30-ish writer. *NWxN* is entertaining enough but not particularly compelling. It's easy to put down and pick up later, being more about the relationships of the people on board the sailboat than about what they're seeing. Of course, I haven't gotten them up the east coast of Australia yet, so that may change.
I haven't read much of Spark on Shelley yet. The most interesting thing to me so far is that Mary Wollstonecraft proposed that she and Fanny live with Fanny's father and his current mistress after he left her. Shades of PBS and his invitation to Harriet to join him and Mary and Claire!

Hope your next book is much better!

I read The Overlanders. I'll have to go look at a blurb to jog my memory though.

What friendly lot with boundary issues, perhaps? Of course, we have a different view of these matters, too. And often larger abodes with more 'help'.....

Finally found and starred you! My navigational skills here are a bit weak.

Lookig forward to the exploring your mystery lists. I've a madpash for them, as anyone who has seen my library or reviews know. Of course, you've brought to my attnention some I've not heard of...uh-oh...I sense the lurking presence of a steadily growing book pile.

The LT hazard...... the book pile gets bigger and bigger and threatens to take over.

Popping up to say I loved The Engines of God. Sadly I only have 2 of his works, but his Slow Lightning is the other and it too remains on the shelves (meaning I liked and want to read it again). The touchstone keeps bringing up Infinity Beach...

Susan, *Slow Lightning* must be the same book as Infinity Beach --- ancient, alien sailing vessel discovered in mid-western Canada (I think)? It's one of my favorites. Do try to get your hands on Deepsix and Chindi, which I liked even better than *Engines*.....

Doggone it! The cereus bloomed last night, and I missed it. We talked about it yesterday morning, but I didn't think about it again. It was our only bud too, so there may be no more until next year. On a happier horticultural note, the ginger lilies are blooming and as fragrant as they are lovely to look at.
About my reading - I've grown more and more unhappy with Dora Birtles's casual racism in North-West by North, but her discussion of the hapless Aborigenes in a mission school left me with an upset stomach. I was cutting her some slack for her time (more than I was willing to cut E.A. Robertson for her sexism because Birtles was never a minority and Robertson was a woman {at least, I think that's the reason}) when she called black women "gins" or their children "pickaninnies." But her comments on the mixed races, her distaste at their living conditions, her objections to what they were being forced to learn, and then her shrugging the whole thing off - all of that left me decidedly uncomfortable. I think her readers were supposed to be impressed with her sensitivity and liberality: I wasn't. So am I going to have to forego everything but mysteries and novels of manners written in the 30's?
I am also not impressed with her poetry - at least I guess that's what it is because of the layout on the page. It's bad enough to be funny, but it's so dull that it's not even that.
"Till a fellow in a red sulu
shakes himself rigid
from the toes
through the bent knees
to the thighs
over and over and over again."
I ask you!
ETA: I don't have the code savvy to reproduce the "poem" as it is laid out in the book.

Thx I will. Our Hibiscus blooms with different colors. Right now there is a pink and a white in bloom at the same time. Usually the flowers are huge but these are rather small -- maybe because there are two at once?

So sorry you missed your cereus. I've had the pleasure of witnessing that once or twice and it's magical.

You are having one of those bad spells with your picks, lately, my dear. It's amazing to me how some writers don't get dated -- their compassion runs deep enough or something -- it's a test of vision, something Forster would have something to say about.

#156...drat that you missed the blooming of your plant.

One of the happy moments of today was the fact that the butterfly bushes in my garden are incredibly fragrant. Today they were filled with many beautiful butterflies...yellow, orange...

#136 Yep, I've read PSS. I know The City and the City is separate but for some reason I was thinking I should read his older books first. I don't know why.

Sorry your last read was less than enjoyable - at least it's over!

*sigh* Oh, Heather, but it's not over. I'm still reading the Birtles and hoping that it will improve. I guess that I should report on something that I'm liking, but I'm on a pick it up/put it down/pick it up tear with several so that it's hard to have anything concrete to say about any of them except, "I like this book."
I have figured that I can reread War and Peace (in a more congenial translation this time than the Modern Library one that I read 40 or so years ago) by the end of the year by reading a minimum of 10 pages a day. I'm in *War* (very early *War*) right now, and I am still not finding it a chore. My edition by the Maudes has very thorough footnotes which I'm appreciating. Then, I have Earth Abides that Lucy reviewed so well a month or so ago and Absolution Gap, the Alastair Reynolds that follows Redemption Ark which she is currently reading. My women's books are At Mrs Lippincotes by that wonderful Elizabeth Taylor, The Septembers of Shiraz which somebody else here read lately, and Mary Shelley by Muriel Spark. That should be enough to keep anybody happy, but I'm also browsing along in The Country of the Blind by Christopher Brookmyre. This is, I guess, classified as a mystery, set in Glasgow with lots of over-the-top Glaswegian jargon and hilariously funny left-wing commentary. I haven't put it on my "currently reading" list, but I really should. At any rate, this is the reason that I typically don't finish something and report in for great long stretches.
-----and, Heather, I think that you should read Mieville in any order that you choose.

Trying to catch up here Peggy. You're always reading such interesting books. I'm wondering what congenial translation of War and Peace you're reading?? I'll be interested in your thoughts on The Septembers of Shiraz which is patiently waiting on my shelf.

OH! I meant to say that it's a translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude done in 1943. It's formal enough that it retains some of the flavor of the original, I suspect (like I'd know!) but without the circumlocutions and pedantries that made the Constance Garnett edition so burdensome.
Bonnie, I think that *Shiraz* was Sofer's first book, and I agree that it's good enough to have been on the Orange longlist rather than the first novel list - assuming that they were doing a separate prize in 2008, and I think that they were. (I'm delighted that we each find the other's reading interesting.)

Good luck with War and Peace. I found that strategy, reading "x" number of pages a day, to work very well with Proust. I've read W&P once, and I'm always threatening to read it again. The next time I'm going to keep track of all the names and different versions of names.

I read War and Peace last year and thoroughly enjoyed it, although I read a different translation - the Pevear/Volokonsky one. I am glad you are enjoying your read of it, Peggy.

Now you have me wondering which translation I have. OK, I have the Maude translation. Mine is a Norton critical edition, edited and "revised" translation by George Gibian. But I think it's basically the Maude translation.

Gibian says that in his opinion, the Maude translation is "the closest yet produced in English to both the letter and spirit of Tolstoy's Russian original."

Although Stasia, I'm very intrigued by the excellent reivews of Pevear/Volokhonsky. I might have to snag that one.

What I remember is that I found W&P very compelling and readable. I really ought to read it again before the year is out. Thanks, Peggy, and I'll be interested to read anything you feel like posting about it.

"Before the year is out"--good grief, it's almost September!

I haven't read War and Peace since late teen early adulthood but I remember it vividly. I loved Anna Karenina... read that in my 30's. I don't feel the need to reread, but perhaps I'm simply a dummy.

spffffFFF - you a dummy? Bite your tongue or slap your fingers.
So far the thing that has impressed me most is the cavalier fun-and-games attitude of the young Russian officers as they catch sight of the French army for the first time. I am, however, not far enough into it to really have anything at all to say.

(Keeping this for when I have a few more titles...)

In school I was:
People might be surprised I’m:
I will never be:
My fantasy job is:
At the end of a long day I need:
I hate it when:
Wish I had:
My family reunions are:
At a party you’d find me with:
I’ve never been to:
A happy day includes:
Motto I live by:
On my bucket list:
In my next life, I want to be:

AND stolen from Stasia who stole it from Charlotte:
1. The last book you gave five-stars to. - Cutting for Stone

2. The last book you were unable to finish. - I have a number of unfinished ones that I mean to get back to --- the last one that I put on the shelf with a bang and no promise was The Egoist

3. The last book you bought. - Quite Ugly One Morning

4. The last book that made you cry. - Infinite Jest

5. The last book you borrowed. - Earth Abides

6. The last book you received as a gift. - The Executor

7. The last book you found disturbing. - Infinite Jest

8. The last book you read that made you laugh. - Country of the Blind - still in progress

9. The last book you really felt you got lost in (the good kind of lost): - Percival's Planet

10. The last book you reread - Flag in Exile - also in progress

Just dropping by to say hello! My, you've done some interesting reading!

Four Frightened People sounds positively horrible! Thanks for the warning! I don't think I'd care for the Birtles, either.

A partial dummy then -- in that I think it is highly unlikely I will revisit the big Tolstoy novels.

#166: I have read 3 of the P/V translations now and found them all to be excellent. I hope you will give them a try, Becky.

I think War and Peace has the dubious honour of being the book that has languished longest on my shelves waiting to be read...

LT has been very helpful to me for getting some of those 'lifers' off the TBR shelves, that in itself has been such a morale boost! Of course, the new problem is that my TBR shelves are exploding!

>174 sibylline: Yes for every book I read off my shelves I add about ten more from the recs on this site. I'm not getting ahead.

I confess that for years I've been buying books and squirreling them away against the day when I won't have $ to buy books. Now that I realize I'll never read them all, it's too late to stop the greed. I don't think I much want to anyway.

Ditto #175 and #176!

The sad thing is, now is really the time when I don't have the moola to buy books, and yet somehow my shelves are full to bursting! Who needs groceries when there are cheap books to be had?!?

As one who would occasionally skip one meal (never more than one) to buy a book, I'm in complete agreement, Laura!

I can't really count it as a book, but I read The Yellow Wallpaper this morning waiting for a regular check-up in the doctor's office. WHAT a "creepy" story!!!

Hi Peggy, still catching up on threads. I'm so sorry you missed your chance to see your bloom on the night-blooming cereus. I will never own one of those. Way too much pressure. Better luck next year. At least you have a boatload of good books to comfort you.

I also read the P/V translation of War and Peace a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was surprised to find out how accessible it was to a regular reader like me. Like Bonnie, I also have Septembers of Shiraz waiting for me. I can't decide if I want to read it in September or wait until Orange January. I'm guessing the latter as September is looking like a very busy month for me.

Too late to stop the greed? I don't even try anymore. I'm hopeless when it comes to books, especially those cheap library sale books.

>176 LizzieD:. Peggy, I've been doing the same thing for years myself, putting books away for a rainy day. And yes, I would skip a meal to buy a book, if that's what it took.

Sorry you missed your cereus blooming---but I did read a very good book a few years ago called Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo. Maybe reading it will help. lol.

Thanks for the tip, ma'am!

AT MRS LIPPINCOTE'S by Elizabeth Taylor

I rediscovered why I hold E. Taylor in such high esteem. I have now written a review of this one that gives a potential reader a more concrete idea of what to expect.....or that, at least, was my aim. (Do check it out on the book page if you care to!)
(And my weekend with the high school friends was wonderful as always. What a blessing to have known each other and loved each other going on 50 years now!)

#183: I look forward to your review of the Taylor book, Peggy. She has been on my radar for a while now.

Have a great time at the reunion!

Have fun, Peggy!

#174 & 175 Completely!

#176 I think I'm acquiring books just in case there's a future world book shortage.... This of course explains why even when there are piles of unread books at home, I will still get books out of the library to read!

Have a great night away!

#186: I think I'm acquiring books just in case there's a future world book shortage.... This of course explains why even when there are piles of unread books at home, I will still get books out of the library to read!

Exactly my point and my hubby just does not get it. I mean what if the library burns down or something - then I have my books to fall back on, right?

Plus, if the library does burn down, you've saved the ones you have out on loan.

Makes perfect sense to me! And since I normally have out between 75-90 at any given time, the local library should appreciate my sacrifice in reading only its books instead of my own :)

It's so refreshing to be here among those like myself, who envision the coming World Book Shortage and simply want to be prepared...

>190 Matke: It's so refreshing to be here among those like myself, who envision the coming World Book Shortage and simply want to be prepared...

Exactly. Why it's so hard in RL to find others who appreciate the sight of bookshelves over-filled teetering groaning causing structural damage with a fair number of books on them, I will never know.

Hey, Gail and Stasia and Caty and Heather! Every single point makes perfect sense to me. It is good to be among kindred spirits since I don't find much sympathy anywhere else! I fear though, that my husband would point his finger at all of us and shout, "Enablers!"
Meanwhile, I did write a sort of review of At Mrs Lippincote's - not so much analysis as description of what you can expect from her if you decide to pick it up. Pick it up!!!!
And, Deborah, thank you for bringing the Cereus book to my attention. My wish list was getting a little thin.

#192: You can always borrow from the BlackHole, Peggy, if your wish list is thin. I am glad to share and there is plenty in the BlackHole to spare :)

Excellent, now I'm equipped with further arguments to defend my book acquisitions!

#192 "My wish list was getting a little thin.

Really? How is that possible? Mine has hit 600 which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And that doesn't even include later books in series i have started because I don't bother adding those.

At Mrs Lippincote's has become book #601 (grumble, grumble) and in payment I've added a thumb to your review.

Thank you kindly, Heather! I don't think you can go wrong with E. Taylor! And thanks for access to the black hole, Stasia........If my wishlist is thinning out, it's only because things are becoming available on pbs and because I can't resist used books at amp. I got 4 in the mail today, 1 Saturday, --- you realize that we're living on early retirement benefits and trying to stay out of our savings. It's not as though I have extra $ to be throwing around! ----but I'd just rather throw it at books than anywhere else.

Ah! The Imminent, Looming, and much Vaunted World Book Shortage. I will be sure to bring it up next time my family members start teasing me!

#195: I understand about PBS. Quite frequently I find titles there that I throw into the BlackHole :) Catey and I love to go book shopping at the local Goodwill too, where we find all kinds of books we just cannot do without!

#196: Also be sure to tell them that you have plenty of witnesses for the World Book Shortage who will be sure and back you up!

You can add me to the list! I think I have a 4 year supply for the World Book Shortage. However, since I'm in my 30's, that really is not enough of a backlog to work through. Oh well - looks like I shouldn't feel too guilty about placing that order with Amazon yesterday!

JOY!!! YIPEEEEE!!! HOT DOG!!!!
I got a copy of Trespass from the August ER list. I am so excited that I did the happy dance right here in my own little room. Did I mention that Rose Tremain was my great find of this decade? She is. She is.

Congratulations, Peggy! I've still not read any Rose Tremain books yet although I own The Road Home. Have you read that one and, if so, what did you think of it? It's longer than I thought it would be (I ordered it from Amazon) and I always shy away from starting a long book unless I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it.

Can't wait to see your thoghts on Trespass, Peggy. I had my eye on it but opted for something else instead, which I actually got---of course I can't remember the title right this very second.

Btw, have you read any of Jo Walton's work? I just finished Farthing, and a most chilling and sobering little mystery/alternate reality it is, too. If you've not tried it, I highly recommend it.

#199 Congratulations! The selection is a lot more limited outside of the US but there were a couple of books that looked interesting this time and I got one!

>199 LizzieD:: me too! And besides you, I've "heard" squeals of delight from brenzi and laytonwoman3rd. Fun times ahead!

Congratulations, one and all, faithful ER readers and reviewers that we are!!!!! I'll be looking forward to what everybody thinks of what she got.
Pat, please read The Road Home right away! It was my book of the decade even though the decade isn't quite finished....... I've also read and enjoyed Music and Silence and The Colour, so I think Tremain is my writer of the decade too. I can't recommend her highly enough! Beautiful writing! Serious content without sexual perversion or any of the other nasties that seem to be necessary for a book to be taken seriously these days. Did I say that I love Rose Tremain? I do!
Gail, I don't know Jo Walton, but I am on my way to check Farthing out. "Mystery" and "alternate reality" --- that's pulling two of my chains!

#199: Congratulations, Peggy!

>199 LizzieD:. That's wonderful, Peggy.

I love this place! Husband and mother are happy for me because I'm happy, but you all know what acquiring a much-desired book means.

THE SEPTEMBERS OF SHIRAZ
This is a fictionalization of Dalia Sofer's own family history. Shortly after the Shah of Iran is deposed, Isaac Amin, both wealthy and Jewish, is arrested on suspicion of being a spy for Israel. The book recounts his imprisonment and torture and the life his family leads without him. There are enough reviews to give you an idea of whether this is a book for you. I found the writing very restrained and tasteful, which I realize is an odd way to describe torture and fear. Occasionally, there is a brilliant turn of phrase, and this is a first novel, so I expect Sofer to improve.
I was bothered by a couple of points. First, the son Parviz is studying architecture in New York. After his father is arrested, the money stops coming so that he is forced to take a job. The mother and daughter have plenty of money to live on and there are plenty of savings in the bank, so I'm not sure why she doesn't send him support. He also talks on the phone to his little sister. Maybe I missed something.
The little sister is a larger problem for me. She's nine, and Sofer has her thinking like this throughout the book - and I'll quote a couple of places....
:"Why should a person be forced to go out into the world covered up in dark colors - gray, navy, black - as if prepared for eventual mourning? We all know what the end is, the clothes were saying. So why pretend?" or "Planning an escape. What kind of escape, Shirin wonders - like Papillon, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, or something more leisurely and altogether bucolic, like the Trapp family?" Do your 9 year-olds know about Papillon? Do they use words like "bucolic"? I was antsy every time Shirin appeared.
All in all, I'm glad I gave the book my time. I do think it deserved a nomination for the Orange Prize; as a first novel, it might have fared better in the first novel category if they were doing that in 2008.

>204 LizzieD:: Peggy, thank you for your exuberant recommendation of Rose Tremain's books. They sound like books I need to own so I will be on the lookout for some nice used copies. Our local library book sale is coming up later next month, and I will be scouring the tables for The Road Home and other Tremain titles. Congrats on snagging an ER book that you are sure to enjoy!

Oh, Donna, you do need Tremain; you do! I'm tickled to have been the one to introduce her to you.

I concur, I concur -- she's one of my 'new authors'!

204> I guess you haven't read The Way I Found Her, which reads more like an early Ian McEwan novel than one by Rose Tremain. I love everything else I've read by her. I don't know what she was trying to do in this one.

Sadly, I did not snag Trespass, but I will be happy with Serious Men by Manu Joseph.

You're right, Deborah, I haven't read The Way I Found Her although I bought it. I haven't read any McEwan of any vintage, so I don't know what you're telling me, but it doesn't sound great.

Peggy

Simply stopping by to wave hello.

Peggy, glad you liked The Road Home so much. I'll have to get to it soon. I also have a copy of Septembers of Shiraz I need to get to.

I love the later McEwan; the earlier kinky sex things, not so much.

>204 LizzieD:: Hmmm ... I came across The Way I Found Her in a bookshop last night but after reading the blurb I thought, "that doesn't sound like the Rose Tremain I know," and put it back on the shelf !

still here :)

I win the dummy prize, I was IN the Harvard Coop yesterday and did not get meself a copy of Trespass. I bought other things, but not the Tremain.

Just popping in to say hello!

Dear, you have to post something, anything! We miss you too much. Sib

>220 sibylline:. What she said.

I take that as being very kind from both of you. Thank you! I'm more or less brain dead and not reading much - or with opportunity to read much until Monday.
Still in *War* in War and Peace
About to leave Australia at last in North-west by North
Loving both Absolution Gap and South Riding! (And that's a good thing because I have both entered in TIOLI for September.)
Not reading Mary Shelley at all

(Edited to fix a Touchstone which actually worked!)

Hang in there! This too shall pass. Glad you are reading a couple of books you love.

Hope the rest of the weekend is refreshing even if you can't read!!

Finally, a doctor's appointment this morning (I'm so healthy that I should live forever ---- not a thing that sounds quite as pleasant as it used to when I recall my aunt's last year, but quite reassuring for the present) that allowed me to sit for a full 30 minutes and read! It felt wonderful!
I took South Riding, and I realize that I want to go ahead and read Tui's review now. This is a completely absorbing book - Yorkshire in the early '30's. It puts me back in like with that particular era. Once again, I don't see why Holtby is not a better-known writer. Somebody here or at VMC group posted a link to "Middle Brow" writers where she is included. I guess in a way that description fits, but she is so much more! Dare I say that had she been a man with equal talent, her reputation would be stronger? I think I just said it.
North-west by North has picked up a little since they have arrived at New Guinea. But really! After almost half the book spent going up the eastern coast of Australia, she does not spare one word - not one - for their voyage into deep water. And I'm irritated (soon almost to the point of chewing the bedpost) by the name of the leader of the expedition: he's "Henery." I don't know why I can't get past it, but it puts my teeth on edge every single time I read it. (Diagnosis, please.)
Absolution Gap rockets along - and it's a good thing since it's my TIOLI chunkster. Reynolds took a class or something between this one and its predecessors. He's much less allusive and elusive, and I'm following and enjoying this book best of the trilogy + Chasm City. (Lucy, you will want to go back to read *CC* - it was a favorite!)
Then, even though I haven't listed it as current, I'm rereading Flag in Exile, about #4 in the Honor Harrington series. I need to finish it so that it will be available to our nephew when he catches up. "I Love My Honor!"

I am so happy to hear from you here! I didn't care for North by Northwest that much when it came out -- I think she is just such a vivid figure that you want it to be good.

I so agree about AG -- I almost can't believe how different it is -- the characters are so much more vivid, some of them downright round!!! And the Captain! Ola, what a character he is! (He is a man who has been absorbed into the body of a ship, has in a sense become the ship because of this virus that gets into machines or any human with any machine implants......

Hello, Peggy! Glad to hear that the doctor's report was a good one!

Thank you, Stasia!

SOUTH RIDING by Winifred Holtby

Holtby is an international treasure! Here's the beginning of my review, which turned into a collection of favorite quotations .... and I apologize for being too lazy to find out how to indent for paragraphs.

The person who wrote the blurb on the back cover of my VMC got this one right. She quotes Sarah Burton, the 40-ish headmistress of the girls' high school as saying, "'Take what you want,' says God. 'Take it and pay for it.' 'Ah,' said Mrs Beddows quietly. 'But who pays?'" South Riding is a book about choices - in love, business, politics - and about the price and the debtor...... (Go to the book page to read the rest if you care to.)

#228: I already have that one in the BlackHole. I am glad you enjoyed it, Peggy. I hope I get my hands on it one of these centuries :)

Peggy, I just read and thumbed your review of South Riding and wishlisted the book. Your review had me laughing out loud in a couple of places. Great job.

FLAG IN EXILE by David Weber

I can hardly believe it! This is the first book that I've reread this year! That's certainly a change in my reading habits that I attribute to LT.
I'm a sucker for escapist military scifi with a strong woman protagonist. I suppose that I might eventually top out with the superdreadnoughts and the grasers and KPSsquared, but it hasn't happened yet. In this one Honor is in disgrace with some of the powers of Manticore and has taken up residence on Grayson. She and Nimitz are courageous and sensitive, and everything is exciting and action-packed.
(ETA: I recommend South Riding without hesitation, Stasia and Pat. Pat, if you liked the review (and I thank you), you'll love the book!)

YAY!!! My copy of Trespass, last month's ARC from ER, has finally arrived! I'm going to start reading right now!!!!!

Awesome! if I do say so myself. I had bought books at the local library sale to put on PBS, but when I got them home, I found that I couldn't part with them, so I've catalogued them..... These last four came out of the dollar bag!!! (Sex in History, C.S. Lewis: Images of His World, Women's Life in Greece & Rome: A Source Book in Translation, and volume 1 of A History of Their Own: Women in Europe)

#232: I am beyond jealous of that!

#233: Congratulations on the haul, Peggy! My library book sale is tomorrow, so I hope I do as well.

I'm looking forward to your comments about Trespass, Peggy!

I've had to cut back big-time on my reading due to some projects around the house that "require" my attention. Sigh. My husband's sister & her husband are coming for a visit from Colorado--first time in 25 years. I don't quite understand their hurry--ha.

Anywho, enjoy the book.

Envy envy about Trespass oozing out of every pore. But I am in a library right this second and am going to see if they have a David Weber for me to try.

Peggy, I was going to create a group read thread for Trespass but was (arbitrarily) waiting til October since I thought it would take a while for folks to receive their books. However, I know of a few who have received their book (including me), and if you're really starting to read it now, I'll create the thread. What say you?

OK, here's the group read thread !

*Sulking* about Trespass. But I'll live. It's not like I don't have enough to read.....

Yes, Sib, I'm with you, since we mere mortals can't even get a copy of Trespass until I guess about Oct 18. So I think I'm going to avoid the group thread and just continue with my sulk.

Ed. for a small "us vs. we" grammar issue.

Awww..... I'm sorry, but my glee still chuckles.....

NORTH-WEST BY NORTH by Dora Birtles

I guess I'll write a review of this since nobody else has bothered. I gave it three stars in charity, but it has been the albatross hanging from my "currently reading" pile, and I am glad, Glad, GLAD to have finished it at last!. More tomorrow~

Congratulations! Having just finished a book I was reading for three months, as good as it was, I know how you are feeling. Unburdened!

I know what you mean Peggy. I just grudgingly gave my latest read 2 stars. Why do we plod through these books??

Unburdened for sure!!!
Since money flows more out than in, Bonnie, I figure that I bought it and I should read it. And really, it was more interesting than not. Only the "not" was so much stronger in quality than the "interesting." I reviewed it here if anybody cares to read about it. Really, the review turned out to be a rehash of what I had already said here and elsewhere. Back to Absolution Gap and then Earth Abides (which I do like, Lucy....it just gets displaced) and then I can get into the things that are calling my name most loudly!
Edited to fix tag

Don't let either of those to AG or EA be a burden! They are too much fun for that!

Oh no! They aren't burdens at all. I was just saying to Kokipy what a nice experience it is to be forced to go ahead and finish something relatively quickly because of TIOLI. I have fewer books on my "currently reading" list than usual because of that commitment.

The only time I let a book become a burden is when I commit to reading it for a face-to-face book group. And then the discussion itself becomes a burden because I'm usually the only one who disliked it, and sometimes my need to be polite overcomes my need to vent. *(thank goodness for LT)* It happened to me last night at a discussion of Same Kind of Different As Me...although there truly were some redeeming points to the book.

ABSOLUTION GAP by Alastair Reynolds

Oh, this one was so good that I feel sorry for people who don't read science fiction! As Lucy and I have mentioned here and other places, Reynolds seemed to find himself as a writer with this one. Characters are fuller and rounder than in the previous two of the series (I continue to like Scorpio, the hyperpig. Given the titles of the trilogy, I don't think I'm imagining too much to suggest that Scorpio is something of a Christ figure. The shortest sentence in the book is "Scorpio wept."), and he gives plot reminders to keep the average reader like me clear about what's happening over its 756 pages.
This is not a stand-alone novel. I can't imagine trying it without having read its predecessors, Revelation Space and Redemption Ark. It is a well-realized piece of speculative fiction, and I recommend it enthusiastically.

#248: I have read and enjoyed Revelation Space so I will have to see if the local library has Redemption Ark - although it has been a while since I read RS so I may give it a re-read. Off to check. . .

Stasia, I didn't reread either of the first two and had enough left to make the next in the series worthwhile. I also think that *RS* was the weakest of the three, so you're in for a treat - and don't forget Chasm City!

And Stasia - if you don't want to reread there is a decent wiki entry that will bring the story of the first one back to you. The link is somewhere not all that far back I think on this thread? My thread? Sometime when I was starting Redemption Ark which was only back in August..... I have yet to read Chasm City..... but I am taking a break from Reynolds.

Oh! I had forgotten that! I think I may have it. Thanks, Lucy! (I'll get it to you, Ms. Acre.)

Unfortunately, my local library has only the first book in the series. I am going to have to look further afield for the series.

Bummer! I could do an informal Interlibrary loan and send you the copy from our little library -- we gave it to them so I feel entitled! And I could send the next one too since I haven't donated it yet! That would be a combined amount of pages pushing around 1600! OW!

#254: 1600 pages might take a bit to go through. I have no idea how you ILL works, but they might frown on you shipping books from VT to TX. Not that I don't appreciate the offer, Lucy!

255> Do you use Paperback Swap? They have copies available of Revelation Space, Absolution Gap, Century Rain and Pushing Ice. BookMooch has only Revelation Space and a copy of Chasm City that the swapper in England might or might not be willing to send to the US (have to ask first).

#256: Yes, I do use PBS, Deborah. Chasm City is the next one in the series that I need to get hold of and it is not posted there right now.

Actually, Chasm City is not one of the series. It's set earlier than *RS*. I too read it second, and it firmed up my intention to finish the trilogy just because the writing was clearer than in *RS*. I guess I'm saying that when you read it doesn't make much difference to the ongoing story - you could easily go on to *RA* without any lack of info.
(Hi, Deborah!)

I haven't read Chasm City yet -- for just that reason, it's a stand-alone right?

My library would never know! I would take it out and send it to you and you would send it back. I shouldn't tell you, but we don't even bother with fines .

It is a stand-alone, Lucy. I'm trying to remember whether any of the characters are the same. You get a good look at the Mulch where Scorpio flourished and just a general enrichment of other places mentioned - and a pretty decent plot, as I recall.

Well done for finishing Northwest by North (I keep wanting to call it North by Northwest after the Hitchcock film). And hooray for Absolution Gap. I will work my way through that series at some point.

I was about to forget to direct my friends here for the next installment of plunging. (Heather, if you like hard scifi, you owe it to yourself to read Reynolds!)