phebj's 75 Books in 2010 - Part 2

This is my second thread for the year. Thanks for visiting!

My first thread can be found here. It mainly discusses books I read between May and September since I didn't join the 75 Book Challenge until early May.

Read in January (5)

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
2. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
3. Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper
4. A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein
5. American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Read in February (6)

6. Dancing to Almendra by Mayra Montero
7. Mosquito by Roma Tearne
8. Best American Crime Writing 2007 edited by Linda Fairstein
9. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler
10. Felicia's Journey by William Trevor
11. A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee

Read in March (9)

12. Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
13. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
14. The Murderer's Daughters by Randy Sue Meyers
15. Mating by Norman Rush
**. Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (didn't finish)
16. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
17. Best American Crime Writing 2008 edited by Jonathan Kellerman
18. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
19. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
20. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

Read in April (8)

21. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
22. Still Life by Louise Penny
23. Naked by David Sedaris
24. Replay by Ken Grimwood
25. Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead by Frank Meeink
26. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
27. The Whole World by Emily Winslow
28. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford

Read in May (7)

29. Innocent by Scott Turow
30. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
31. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner
32. Best American Crime Reporting 2009 edited by Jeffrey Toobin
33. The Royal Game and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
34. The Trouble with Poetry and other poems by Billy Collins
35. In the Wake by Per Petterson

Read in June (8)

36. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
37. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
38. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
39. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
40. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
41. The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks
42. Blame: A Novel by Michelle Huneven
43. Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

Read in July (11)

44. Four Perfect Pebbles by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan
45. Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins
46. Solar by Ian McEwan
47. The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese
**. Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler (didn't finish)
48. One Day by David Nicholls
49. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
50. How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
51. The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth
52. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz
53. The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America's Richest Silver Mine by Gregg Olsen
54. Chasing Goldman Sachs by Suzanne McGee

Read in August (9)

55. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
56. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
57. Death Comes For the Archbishop by Willa Cather
58. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
**. 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up edited by Julia Eccleshare (skimmed)
59. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
60. Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry by Billy Collins
61. What Narcissim Means to Me by Tony Hoagland
62. A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
63. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

This thread discusses books I've read since September.

Read in September (6)

64. Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin
65. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida
66. Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett
67. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
68. Blindness by Jose Saramago
69. Life Work by Donald Hall
** Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall (children's book)
** The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems edited by Donald Hall

Read in October (7)

70. Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen
71. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
72. The Collector by John Fowles
73. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
74. How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu
75. The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois
76. The White Family by Maggie Gee

I'm currently reading:

A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton (TIOLI)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (for an LT Group Read)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (for a course that starts November 9th)--TIOLI
Best American Short Stories 2009 edited by Alice Sebold (reading with my friend, Juli)

Ongoing (this is a re-read and going very slowly):

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Books for November:

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for a Book Club on December 4th)--TIOLI
Out of Egypt: A Memoir by Andre Aciman--TIOLI
The Waitress was New by Dominique Fabre--TIOLI
The Seige by Helen Dunmore--TIOLI
O Pioneers by Willa Cather--TIOLI

My favorite books of 2010 (in the order I read them) are:

Mosquito by Roma Tearne
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Still Life by Louise Penny
Replay by Kem Grimwood
Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner
The Royal Game and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Life Work by Donald Hall
Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
The White Family by Maggie Gee

I'm also participating in a Scandinavian Book Challenge for 2010 started by BlackSheepDances/Amy. The challenge is to read 6 books by December 31, 2010. I'd love any suggestions that any one has. So far I've read the following books:

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (Finland)
In the Wake by Per Petterson (Norway)
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (Sweden)

Found you again, Pat!

Ha! Ha! Love that Pippi! You can read that one in an hour, so if you read three of hers, you'll make your goal easily. I first thought of suggesting The Twin, but I guess Holland isn't Scandinavia, huh? ;-) He so reminds me of the Scandinavian authors I've read (not many) or just those authors closer to the Arctic Circle (e.g., The Bird Artist). I've read The Summer Book. One of my parents loaned it to me and said it was her absolute favorite book; I just thought it was a nice read. Re: your Ten Best, I've really enjoyed all the books I have read, so will have to check out the rest of them on your list.

Nice review of An Artist of the Floating World. Pat; I'm glad that you enjoyed it, too.

You've read some really good books this year. I'm a fan of Hanff and Sedaris. Looks like you'll reach 75 very soon!

Hi, Stasia, Bonnie, Darryl and Jennifer. Glad you found me! This is the first time I've had to start a second thread so I wasn't sure if I'd just disappear into ether.

Found you and starred you! :)

Okay Pat. I've put the Hall on my 'currently reading' list. And we're off!

Hi, Angela and Lucy.

I probably won't start Life Work until this evening, Lucy. That's when I do most of my reading so any posts I have about it will be later in the day. Looking forward to it!

Hi Pat and Angela -- I took the liberty of making a mini-group (I made that designation up, or should I see I had an onomastic attack) (you'll get it when you get to p. 12.) for reasons I explain in the first post! Hope that is OK! You can find it Life Work

I haven't put together a Best of 2010 list yet Pat. Maybe I should do that but I have read most of what you have on your list except Mosquito which I will add right now. Thanks so much fro contributing to the teetering tower;-)

#15 I loved Mosquito. It's a love story set during the Sri Lankan civil war in the 1990s and one of those books where I learned something about another part of the world while enjoying a well-written, entertaining story. It was recommended by someone who used to lead a book group I was in but I didn't know much about it when I started it and it was a wonderful surprise to discover a new writer I liked but had never heard of. Hope you like it when you get to it. (If I remember correctly, Darryl also loved it.)

Lost you for a day or two!

Hi, Joanne. So happy you found me again!

Hi Pat! *waves*

Found you and starred you. I like how you've organized your books read according to months. You are a very steady reader even with the addition of LT to your life. I've been trying to limit myself here to do some other things, and, of course, have more time for reading!

I think I'll buy some Pippi Longstocking books for my oldest granddaughter for Christmas -- and take a sneak peek! I can't believe I haven't read any of them. They were even mentioned in The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Hi, Stephen. Welcome to my thread!

Hi, Donna. I used to love the Pippi Longstocking books when I was a child (probably 10-12 yrs old) and I decided to re-read the first one after reading a NYT article about how Stieg Larsson created the character of Lisbeth Salander to be a grown up version of Pippi. (I keep thinking I'm going to read his trilogy but, other than reading the first 100 pages of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo two years ago, I haven't made much progress.)

Anyhow, my current reading of Pippi Longstocking didn't live up to my fond memories. Obviously, reading it 45 years later was going to be different and this time I was somewhat disturbed that she lived by herself, didn't go to school and sometimes seemed to feel like she didn't fit in. Of course, the NYT article probably influenced that interpretation somewhat.

I have the movie version of TGwtDT on hold at the library so it'll be interesting to see if the character of Lisbeth reminds me of Pippi.

Thanks for stopping by!

#21: I cannot remember the last time I read Pippi Longstocking it has been that long and I fear that it would not stand up to my childhood memories either, Pat. I think I will just leave it be.

Pat

I've read many great books in 2010 thus far. I think a top ten list will be difficult to compile.

Hi Stasia and Linda!

I'm not trying to limit my list of favorites for 2010 to just ten. If I finish a book and loved the experience of reading it, I immediately classify it as a favorite and add it to the list. If I had to pick just ten, that would be hard! Right now, I have 12 books listed but I'm hoping I'll have more to add.

Great idea! I won't limit the list to ten!

I'm about 40 pages from the end of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and, partly because I'm reading a couple of other books at the same time and partly because I don't want it to end, I'm postponing finishing it for a few days.

I'm going to try and finish Blindness this weekend for an LT Group Read and continue on with the Mini Group Read I'm doing with Lucy (sibyx) of Donald Hall's Life Work.

If anyone is interested in what Life Work is about, you can find the discussion thread over here. It's really a great book about the happiness and joy Hall finds in his work as a free-lance writer living on the New Hampshire farm originally owned by his grandfather.

#24: That is why I keep my memorable reads list on a running basis for the year. No way am I trying to limit myself to 10!

Every year I look back at my memorable reads list and say to myself 'You know, that is the start of a great library." This year, I think I have raised the bar very high. It is going to be hard to beat.

Donald Hall is a poet, children's book author, essay writer, editor, and memoir writer. I went to the library today and took out a couple of his children's books and a book he edited called The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems. I'm really enjoying flipping through it, especially coming across old favorites like "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod". Linda and Stasia, I don't know if you've read this, but it has your names written all over it.

One poem that I came across for the first time was "Books Fall Open" by David McCord:

Books fall open,
you fall in,
delighted where
you've never been;
hear voices not once
heard before,
reach world on world
through door on door;
find unexpected
keys to things
locked up beyond
imaginings.
What might you be,
perhaps become,
because one book
is somewhere? Some
wise delver into
wisdom, wit,
and wherewithal
has written it.
True books will venture,
dare you out,
whisper secrets,
maybe shout
across the gloom
to you in need,
who hanker for
a book to read.

Love that poem, Pat! Thanks for sharing it.

It screamed LibraryThing!

Have you read Dickinson's In A Library? It is my favorite:

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.

No, I've never heard of this poem. Thanks for posting it, Stasia. I think I have a new favorite genre--books and poems about books!

#32: One of my favorite genres is books about books :)

Ack! I was hoping for a review of Freedom, after I saw 20 unread messages on your thread. It sounds as if you're enjoying it, so I'm glad about that.

I'm trying to catch up on the threads. This is a good conversation. How about novelists who write novels about writing novels? I love finding those.

Heh, heh, if I ever finish my novel, then you will love it.

Gorgeous poems, what a great way to start the day!

It was years before I associated the Donald Hall of The Ox-cart Man with Donald Hall the poet. Sigh.

Good morning, Stasia, Darryl, Becky and Lucy.

Becky, do you have some examples of novels about novels written by novelists?

Lucy, have you read anything else of Hall's? I never heard of him before Becky recommended Life Work.

Sorry about Freedom, Darryl. It may be a hard book to review well, in the sense that it's so sprawling (that may not even be the word I'm looking for). It's going to be hard to articulate the experience of reading it. But I'm thinking it'll be a 4 1/2 star read for me.

I've got one or two books of poems around (presently in storage, not cataloged, need rereading.) And I read his children's books without knowing he was the same Donald Hall, but I'd have to look them all up to remember! Ox-cart Man is the main one, the big enduring one.

My mind has gone totally blank about writers writing novels about writing novels -- Dodie Smith's novel I Capture the Castle is fun and there is a slighly eccentric but engaging movie of it as well. I have to think! One extremely funny one is East is East by T.C. Boyle which is about a whole writer's colony, truly a nest of vipers. And is Lucky Jim a novelist, or is he only a hapless professor -- Kingsley Amis. I think Waugh has a novel that opens with the character having his novel being confiscated somehow when he crosses the channel into England from France -- But I know there are lots I'm not remembering now.

I love those two poems!

Whew! I had lost you for a bit, but now you're safely starred and I'm enjoying your reviews and your poems. Thanks, Pat!

I also lost you and I know I had you starred so how does that happen. Oh well I'm here now, waiting for the remarks on Freedom:)

Book No. 67 Freedom: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen

This is the first book of Jonathan Franzen's that I've really read and it won't be the last. (I tried The Corrections years ago but could never get into it.)

Freedom is mostly about the marriage of Walter and Patty Berglund and whether or not it can survive the strains put on it by their son, Joey, and Walter's best friend from college, Richard. Walter is an environmental lawyer, a "genuinely nice person" and long-suffering. Patty, who once excelled at collegiate basketball until she blew out her knee, is now a "fresh-faced mom with a dark side." In an effort not to repeat her parents' mistakes in distancing themselves from her, Patty becomes inappropriately close to her son (her "Designated Understander") and inadvertently pushes him away. The first big crisis in the Berglund's marriage is Joey's decision to essentially divorce his parents. The second big crisis is Patty's losing battle in fighting her sexual longing for Richard.

Over the course of 562 pages, Franzen alternately delves into the conflicted interior lives of Patty, Walter, Richard and Joey while also commenting on the absurdities of contemporary life. He can go on for more than a page without inserting a period. I found that when I started a chapter I needed to be sure I wouldn't be interrupted. The lives of these characters became so engrossing and Franzen's writing so entertaining that it was like I was under a spell while I was reading each chapter that I didn't want broken.

The title seems to be about how our freedom of choice in this country only serves to make most of us miserable. "People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. . . . (T)he one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to."

"The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever go sour, to misanthropy and rage." Walter, unfortunately, becomes increasing unhinged as his marriage and his career start to unravel. "How many thousand more times, he wondered, am I going to let this woman stab me in the heart?" His efforts to build a preserve for the Cerulean blue warbler (the bird on the book jacket) in West Virginia are compromised, to the say the least. And he eventually becomes somewhat of a crank going door-to-door trying to convince his neighbors to keep their cats indoors. The birds are "running out of space altogether, because there's more and more development. So it's important that we try to be responsible stewards to this wonderful land that we've taken over." ("Walter had never liked cats. . . They'd seemed to him the sociopaths of the pet world.")

While the story can get intense at times, Franzen's writing is darkly humorous--"The country that minutely followed every phony turn of American Idol while the world went up in flames seemed to Walter fully deserving of whatever nightmare future awaited it"--and there is hope at the end; his characters do learn something from their mistakes.

The only reasons I'm not giving this book 5 stars are (1) because the use of third-person narration in the part of the book which is supposed to be Patty's autobiography didn't really work for me while I was reading it (although it occurred to me that the point was to reinforce that Patty wasn't taking any responsibility for her mistakes), and (2) even though the book was totally absorbing when I read it, I often put it aside and as a result it took me almost 3 weeks to read. Not sure if that was because I was trying to read several other books at the same time or it was just too intense to read all the way through in a few days.

Bottom line: Highly recommended; one of my favorite books this year; 4 1/2 stars.

Well Pat, I guess I will have to try Freedom: A Novel! Great review!

I also tried The Corrections but never got very far in it. (I still have it although it's been moved to the bookshelves in the basement.)

Thanks, Joanne. Hope you like Freedom. I picked up The Corrections in the book store today and after reading the first page still didn't want to buy it. It may be too soon after Freedom; maybe I'll try taking it out of the library in a couple of months.

Pat, what a fine review! (Thumbed) I bought The Corrections from a book club when it came out and have never been able to read more than ten pages of it. Freedom sounds like my kind of thing though. So on to the ridiculous wish list it goes!
(You are concerned if you don't finish a book within 3 weeks???? Welcome to my world, woman!)

Great review, Pat! As I mentioned on my thread I'm reading it now, and I'm enjoying it so far.

I have never read anything by Franzen either, Pat, so I will give Freedom as try. Thanks for the review and recommendation!

Great job on the review Pat. I actually liked The Corrections and am looking forward to reading this one too.

Hi Pat. Thanks for the review of Freedom--I'll give it a try. I know it's silly, but when I hear "Oprah's Book Club," I tend to run the other way.

Oh, I'm so way behind on the threads. All of them. Anyway. . .

>36 sibylline:. Sib, that would be when, not if.

>37 phebj:. Novels about novels. Let's see. . . James Michener wrote one called, appropriately enough, The Novel. I liked it because of the rural Pennsylvania setting. Stephen King's novel, Bag of Bones, has a protagonist who is a novelist with writer's block. I know lots of people wouldn't be caught dead reading either one of those authors, but I liked both of them. I wish I could remember more. I read one not all that long ago that's right on the tip of my brain but I just can't come up with it. Anyway, I guess it's not so surprising that if somebody writes novels long enough, then they seem to eventually get around to creating a writer character at some point.

Oh, I just thought of the one I was trying to remember--John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River. I really liked that book. One of the main characters is a novel writer, and not surprisingly parts of this character are fairly autobiographical.

Great review -- I can't wait to read Freedom. I thought The Corrections was an excellent read in every way, this sounds like another winner.

I was slightly underwhelmed by The Corrections, but for the life of me, I can't remember why now! I've been informed on another thread that it's an age thing. ;-)

I thought Freedom sounded more appealing to me when I first read about it and now, after your excellent review, I know I'll be reading it fairly soon.

I thought that parts of The Corrections were so good that the parts that were less good (which weren't bad, just less good) dragged...... it could have been a bit shorter, iow. Sounds as though maybe this is better managed in Freedom?

I'm trying to figure out "iow":

Idiots on Wheels?

Isle of Wight?

Oh--how about, "in other words." Can you tell I don't text? Nor do I have a teenager who does. Ha.

Thanks Peggy, Darryl, Stasia, Bonnie, Lucy and Donna. Hope you all like Freedom when you get to it.

Becky, thanks for the additional "novels about novels" to add to the list. And thanks for figuring out "iow".

I was at an all day wine tour and tasting yesterday and in no position to try and puzzle that out last night. I have no idea how much I actually drank yesterday but between 3 different wineries, I must have tasted at least 15 wines and I think I'm still feeling the effects this morning. Hope my morning Qigong class clears the cobwebs away!

Yep -- you pass the test! And I admit I text -- it is my daughter's preferred apres school method of contacting me/or being contacted by me -- phoning is sooooooooo uncool. I'm getting fast at it too.

I really liked The Corrections a lot, and I am really looking forward to reading Freedom - your review has just pushed it even higher up my list. Unfortunately, I need to wait until after Christmas, because there's a good chance my husband, knowing I liked The Corrections, will buy me this one. For each the 30+ years of our life together, we have given each other a new hardbook novel for Christmas (and nothing else - we are not extravagant present-y people) and this one is probably on his radar. No idea what I will get him yet.

Pat

Thanks for the heads up regarding The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems.

Looks like I'm headed to the library today to get a copy.

Hugs to you my friend!

#56 Hi Janet. Glad to see you stop by. I just went over to check out your blog and must say you've been having some pretty interesting encounters with nurses! Happy to see you're feeling better.

Hope you enjoy Freedom when you get to it. Did you see the links on Darryl's thread about them printing the wrong version of the book in England?

Linda, hope you like The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems. I liked it so much, I ordered a copy from Amazon.

#56: Janet, the copy of Freedom I bought last week in the UK is a paperback; I don't know if there is or will be a hardback edition.

Hi Pat,
I really enjoyed your review of Freedom. I haven't read The Corrections, but I will try to read this one soon(ish).

Now that I've found your thread, I have to go and read your last one to see what you thought of Fool's Gold. I haven't read it, but have almost bought it several times.

Hi Cushla, thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, while I have finished Fool's Gold, I am embarrassingly far behind on reviews and probably won't have something posted on it for a few days.

LT has been such a source of great reads for me that I now read 3 to 5 books at a time and then immediately start on something new with the result that there is an increasing lag between the time I finish something and when I post my reviews/comments. I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with this.

Fool's Gold was one of those books I loved and got alot out of so I do want to do a review so I'll remember what I learned from it. Plus it's due back at the library on the 5th--deadlines are always a help.

Anyhow, probably more than you wanted to hear but I would highly recommend the book. Also hope you like Freedom if you get a chance to read it.

No, not more than I wanted to hear! I have read quite a few global financial crisis books and it's good to hear you loved it. I think the Basel library might have it.

I have exactly the same problem with getting comments or reviews done (am about to turn the computer off and go and read half a book...). I've always had a couple of books on the go at once, but these days I am a bit out of control and think I have 5 or 6 at the moment.

#58/60 - hmmm, if there isn't going to be a hardback I should be safe, as, although we have sometimes deviated from the "new novel" rule, for example to go for short stories or a memoir, we NEVER deviate from the hardback rule. So I need to find that out, then make sure I wait until all the old ones have definitely been pulped, then I'll be safe to buy a copy. Since I'm expecting to be in the hospital at least another week or two, that should work nicely.

Finally getting caught up on some overdue reviews. These next couple of books I actually read before Freedom.

Book No. 64 Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

Some of the facts about Fordlandia are pretty interesting. It was a huge plantation (the size of Connecticut) on the Tapajos River in the Amazon jungle that Henry Ford started to build in 1928 to provide a source of rubber for the Ford Motor Company. It was so remote that even today it takes 18 hours by riverboat to get there from the nearest provincial city. In 1934, when the rubber trees refused "to submit to Ford-style regimentation" and succumbed to leaf blight, Ford's response was to build another plantation downstream, called Belterra, and start over. Even though Belterra was slightly more successful, Ford was ultimately forced to sell it, along with Fordlandia, to the Brazilian government in 1945 for $244,200 (for a loss of over $20 million).

What was even more fascinating than Fordlandia, however, was Henry Ford. He wasn't just interested in cultivating rubber "but the rubber gatherers as well." He was in his sixties when he founded Fordlandia and believed something had gone wrong with America. His goal was to recreate the American Midwest in the Amazon. "Ford saw the jungle as a challenge, but it had less to do with overcoming and dominating nature than it did with salvaging a vision of Americana that was slipping out of his grasp at home." The two "American" towns that Ford created in the Amazon had central squares, sidewalks, indoor plumbing, hospitals, manicured lawns, movie theaters, swimming pools and golf courses. Ford even attempted to enforce U.S. Prohibition laws in his Amazon properties.

Ford didn't believe in expert advice and never visited Fordlandia or Belterra. His belief that "he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension, allow capitalists to try their hands with equal success at every other occupation." He thought that the American way of life could be easily transported to the Amazon and would be eagerly welcomed by the Brazilians. He was wrong and, as the Washington Post noted in 1922, Ford's "efforts (generally were) conceived in disregard or ignorance of Ford's limitations." Today, Fordlandia has mostly been abandoned and Belterra has been turned into a tourist attraction.

This book started off being fascinating to me, especially the history of cultivating rubber and Ford's reasons for creating Fordlandia, but by the time it got into the efforts to build the plantation and produce the rubber, it became less compelling and as a result it took me a month to complete. I think it was partly because the whole process was so mismanaged that it became frustrating to read about. The book is very well-written, with lots of photographs, but mostly what I wanted to do while reading it was go find a great biography of Henry Ford. All in all, this was a 3 1/2 star book for me and one I would guardedly recommend (to use Stasia's phrase).

Book No. 65 Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

This is probably a story I'll soon forget but the setting was memorable. It starts out in New York when Clarissa, a 28 year old woman, is burying her father. In going through his papers, she finds her birth certificate and discovers her father is actually someone she's never heard of. Both her mother, who walked out on the family when Clarissa was 14, and her fiance, who she soon discovers knew the secret about her father, never saw fit to tell her about it. Within days, Clarissa decides to try and find her real father who she believes is a Sami from Lapland (which is north of Finland and the Arctic Circle) and by the end of the first chapter she's travelled to Finland to begin her search.

Most of the book is set in Lapland during the winter months and it's cold and bleak and dark but in some strange way also haunting and magical. For some reason, I'm drawn to books that do a good job describing extremes of climate, which in real life I avoid at all costs. The setting mirrors Clarissa's feelings of abandonment and isolation and the writing is often very good. The story was unusual enough to keep me interested (Lapland, the Sami people, reindeer herding, ice hotels and a twist towards the end that I didn't see coming) but I just never loved the book.

I'm giving this book 3 stars. I liked the writer enough to try something else she's written but I don't think I'm going to be recommending it.

Nice reviews of both books, Pat; I'll probably pass on them, though.

Thanks, Darryl. I don't know if you remember it or not but a couple of months ago on your thread Richard "recommended" Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name to you because you were someone who liked depressing books. I, of course, thought it sounded great. I probably should have followed Richard's advice!

Great job on the reviews Pat and for not increasing my teetering tower. However, you did make me want to find a biography of Henry Ford too. :)

Thanks, Bonnie. Happy to steer you away from those books although Fordlandia really wasn't bad. It's just that a book like Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time makes me realize how good a non-fiction book can be.

I already have both Fordlandia and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name in the BlackHole. Guess there is no rush to read them though, lol.

You never know, you may like them more than I did (and I didn't dislike them). Hope that turns out to be the case!

I read the Vida too -- and just like you was oddly disappointed. Everything about it was intriguing, except the writing was somehow pedestrian....

#73 In general, I actually liked the writing but every once and a while it seemed contrived and put me off. Just too uneven a book to recommend

Wow! Ford's arrogance, his willingness to destroy an environment, with no regard for the existing culture, and without even visiting there seems almost unbelievable, doesn't it? I don't think I would want to read the whole book, but it's a fascinating/scary story. Thanks for the review.

I know, Bonnie, that's why I'm interested in reading more about Ford. I'd like to get a better handle on how he thought about things. The other thing that was interesting to me, and not really explained in the book, is why he had such a bad relationship with his only child, his son Edsel. They worked together at the Ford Motor Company and it sounds like Ford actually took pleasure in undermining him.

I think Fordlandia would have made a better magazine article than a book. But it is a fascinating story and I'm glad I read about it.

I'm glad you did too! ;-)

The attitude you describe in the Fords fits right in with the attitude Bowen describes in that chapter in Family Portrait when the family travels around the world. This incredible confidence that American/British might and know-how were simply THE BEST -- and the trust in the new technology -- Herbert Marcuse and all them deep- thinking folks write some good stuff about that. It is something we aren't still quite over, that technology will solve all of our problems......

Hi Pat, I'm doing reciprocal visits to people who visit my new home, er, I mean thread. I wonder how long that will last?

I've been curious about Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. What a catchy title. I also share your interest in reading about extreme climates, but since you didn't love this one, I probably won't either. I'm only adding books that get outstanding recommendations to my wish list or I'll be drowning in books here. Thanks for helping me stay afloat!

# 78 Lucy, what made Ford so interesting is that he had such faith in technology (Grandin calls it his "technological optimism") but he was tortured by what was happening to the country and the world because of it (e.g., the demise of small towns to make way for roads; the increasingly deadly weapons of war). It wasn't clear to me from this book whether Ford made the connection between technology and what he hated about the trends of his times. I assume so but need to find a good bio on him to learn more.

I don't think I've read anything by Marcuse. Will have to check my library for what they have.

Hi Donna. One book I loved, which described the extremes of a hot climate, was White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway. It takes place in Hong Kong in the 1970s and tells the story of two sisters coming of age there while their father is mostly away in Vietnam (as a photographer rather than a soldier). The author's father was actually a photographer for Time magazine (I think) during the Vietnam War.

Anyway, I loved the book (it's one of my favorites) and it's not too long if you ever get a chance to try it.

I don't know if anyone reads Marcuse any more! I had to for a Poli Sci course in college a million years ago - So we read Hannah Arendt, and the over-population guy, oh gosh, Gunter-something, Veblen, and many others who have fallen entirely out of my head ...... a very heavy duty roster of thinkers, but a great course that I still think about and draw from all the time.

Catching up on another review.

Book No. 68 Blindness by Jose Saramago

This is a book that demands your attention--you have to struggle at times to understand what is going on. It’s the story of people in an unnamed city that mysteriously start to go blind until all but one person succumbs. The characters are never named, just described, and the narrative purposely makes it difficult to know who is speaking. The result is a sense of confusion and frustration that mimics what the characters are experiencing. This to me was the genius of the book.

The blurb on the back cover describes it as a “parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century.” I was so focused on the plight of the seven main characters (who have to deal with the complete breakdown of their society) that it wasn’t until towards the end of the book that I started to look at the bigger picture.

In fact, it was actually while listening to an NPR interview with Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times reporter, who was talking about “compassion fatigue,” that a larger interpretation of the book came into focus for me (i.e. people being “blind” to the horrors of the 20th century). Kristof talked about how most people become overwhelmed at the idea of helping more than one person at a time with the result that events like the Darfur crisis are seemingly ignored by many people (i.e. they become “blind” to what is happening). Kristof also talked about how many of the people who lived during the 1930s and 40s said they didn’t know about the Holocaust. Research suggests, however, that even if more people had known about it, it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Blindness can be an unsettling book to read. With few exceptions, people revert to their baser instincts and it is “every man for himself.” If not for a leader who can see, the main characters would be lost. There is alot that is not explained but the ambiguity forces you to think about what the story means and as a result you find yourself thinking about it long after you’ve finished. 4 stars.

Fine review, Pat. Thank you! So far I'm not tempted although I pretty much enjoyed the only Saramago I've read --- Baltasar and Blimunda.

Thanks, Peggy. I have Baltasar and Blimunda sitting on my shelf along with All the Names but haven't read either. Mark's Group Read was a big help in getting me to read my first Saramago.

edited to fix typo

#83: Great review of, what was to me as well, a disturbing book and certainly not an easily forgettable one, Pat.

Very good review, Pat. I haven't read any Saramago as yet, but I see that I need to. There are a number of books written this way -- Paul Auster has one (can't remember title) and I know I've encountered a couple of others, where you never know the name of the character, there isn't really a story, exactly, the city is unclear, the situation is opaque..... I like your analysis.

Thanks, Stasia and Lucy. I didn't know Paul Auster wrote this way as well. I've never read any of his books but keep seeing his name here on LT. Something else to put on the list!

I'm going to be traveling for the next couple of days so probably will be on LT less although as of right now we're planning to take the laptop. I'm afraid of all the threads I'll need to catch up with when I get back!

Pat, that was a great review of Blindness. If I hadn't already read it, I would have wanted to after reading your comments about the NPR interview. That explains a lot, and I do see quite a bit of truth in it. I think we just become overwhelmed by too much trauma and block it out as best we can.

By all means take your laptop on your trip. Reading threads (even if you don't post) is a good way to unwind. Safe travels.

have a great trip, Pat. And *nice* review of Blindness! That is such a great point regarding how we respond to a group vs. an individual with problems. In Blindness, you see that close connection between fear and hate/hostility.

It's just one of his books that is written like that. I'm thinking..... Anna Kavan is also someone who wrote a book somewhat like this???? Someone help me out here?

Pat, excellent job on the review of Blindness. I guess I'm one of a very few who still haven't read it although I do have a copy. I'll get to it eventually but your review has ratcheted it up my pile.

Catching up on your thread. Thanks for the excellent reviews!

Thanks, Donna, Bonnie (x 2) and Linda.

We're staying at this great, relatively new, Inn overlooking the Columbia River in Washington. It's part of a winery and called the Cave B Inn. We found it mentioned in a guide book and decided to give it a try. Pretty isolated but the scenery is breathtaking. Had a wonderful dinner with wine, of course, and then sat outside our room and watched all the stars come out. Because it's so isolated, I'm going to forgo reading The Collector before going to bed--might be too scary! But I am really enjoying the book and would never had heard of it if not for the Halloween thread here on LT.

Beautiful view of the gorge and the surrounding hills--so expansive and serene. Are you there for the harvest festival, Pat? Even though I live in Washington, my first image of the Columbia is the one I grew up with in Portland, so I pictured you surrounded by trees and cold and wet--my favorite kind of weather when I can be inside, curled up with a good book.

Nice review of Blindness, Pat! I'm glad that you enjoyed it, too. The inn sounds wonderful; I'd love to see photos of it.

#95 Bonnie, we made our reservations about a month ago and they were all booked up for the Harvest Festival this coming weekend. So we're just here for two nights and tomorrow we drive back to Spokane via the Grand Coulee Dam. Not too many trees, except for the apple orchard. But I love the high desert landscape.

#96 Darryl, how do you post pictures to your thread????

Some pictures follow. My husband showed me how to do it. (I "stole" these off of the web)

Cave B Inn (background). Cliffhouse rooms (foreground).

Cave B Inn, Quincy, Washington

Long view of vineyards, Inn and Columbia River gorge.

Thanks for posting the pictures, Pat! Beautiful.

Hi Pat, just popping in to say hey and to tell you that at my local pta thrift shop bag sale this past weekend I found Yankee from Olympus by CDB and A Garden in Your House by Ernesta Drinker Ballard. I bought them both since I could fill my bag for a buck.

#101 Hi, Stasia. I must say I'm thrilled that I've mastered how to post pictures.

#102 Hi, Yolana. That must have been a thrill to find two books related to Catherine Drinker Bowen. And being able to fill your bag for a buck. What a great sale. Congratulations.

Isolated, wine, stars...sounds good...and looks great! Thanks for sharing with those of us left behind.

Beautiful pictures Pat. What a lovely time of year for a little getaway:)

Looks like a beautiful place...

Thanks for those great pictures, Pat! It looks as though you've already learned how to post pictures; for me, if I take photos on my BlackBerry I uploaded them directly to my Facebook account, then log onto Facebook on my laptop or netbook, and select the appropriate image to post.

Hi Donna, Bonnie, Angela and Darryl.

Darryl, I actually linked to some pictures of the Inn on their Facebook page. In the future, if I have pictures of my own I want to post, I'll do what you do--upload to Facebook and then link to them. Thanks!

Have a great trip--it's beautiful country.

Oh, what beautiful pictures, Pat. Have a wonderful time!!

Thanks, Becky and Joanne. We are having a wonderful time.

We took this very scenic drive yesterday up to the Grand Coulee Dam and then over to Spokane. My husband's knee is bothering him today (I think we're talking knee replacement pretty soon--he's only been putting it off for about 10 years) so I spent the whole morning in this fantastic bookstore (Auntie's) connected to an equally fantastic restaurant (Sante's) in downtown Spokane. I'm going to try and post a few more pictures, so keep tuned!

Picture of Highway 155 in Washington in the Grand Coulee (which basically means dry riverbed) which now contains a lake backed up behind the Grand Coulee Dam. This was a good part of our drive yesterday.

Inside of Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane, Washington:

This was my haul today from Auntie's Bookstore. I had these books sent so I don't have some of the author's names and the touchstones aren't working too well:

Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker
A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton (heard about this from Darryl)
Winter Range: A Novel by Claire Davis
Vinegar Flats (a book of poems about the Pacific Northwest; need to find poet's name)
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (a very good quality used hardcover for a course I'm taking in November)
Frozen Tracks: An Inspector Erik Winter Novel by Ake Edwardson (used)
Enter Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Restless Northwest (a non-fiction book about the geology of the Pacific Northwest)

Nice photos and book haul, Pat! That bookstore looks very appealing, too.

Auntie has a wonderful looking store!

I've read a couple of Mildred Walker's books, including Winter Wheat, and remember really enjoying them.

I am going to have to visit Auntie some time soon! What a great looking store.

Thanks for sharing the pics, Pat. Congratulations on your haul!

Great photos, and what a lovely looking bookshop!

Pat- This might be my first visit, I'm not sure but you have a terrific thread here and I LOVE the photos! Strong best of the year list too!

Wonderful photos, Pat. Those of us who live not anywhere much appreciate your sharing.

Pat, You're taking a course that you need For Whom the Bell Tolls for?? Spill please!

#115-120: Hi Darryl, Joanne, Stasia, Cushla, Mark and Peggy.

One of the great things about Auntie's bookstore is that it shares a building with a restaurant, a toy store (named Uncle's) and a handmade pottery store. I didn't realize this at first. We were having breakfast at the restaurant and all of a sudden they start drawing back this green velvet curtain along one of the "walls" and there, lo and behold, is the bookstore--they're connected! I was beside myself. While you're browsing in the bookstore you can wander into the toystore, the pottery store or sit at a coffee bar connected to the restaurant. Anyhow, if you ever have a couple of hours to kill in Spokane . . . .

#121 Bonnie, it's a course called "Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls and the Spanish Civil War" taught by a Hemingway scholar at the Extended Studies School of Boise State University. It's 4 Tuesday mornings in November and I thought we were reading it throughout the month of November but I just found out I need to read it before the class starts so as soon as my package gets here from Auntie's bookstore, I'm going to need to get to it.

That sounds absolutely wonderful. I've got to look for something like that at the local universities here. I hope you post about it when it gets going.

Bonnie, I'm thinking I will post about it just to help me remember what I've learned.

I should have been more accurate about the school--it's actually called The Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning and is associated with the Extended Studies School of BSU. I don't know if it's just in the West but they have Osher Institutes at other universities. You become a member (you just have to be 50 or older) and then can take courses for a relatively small fee. They usually have one or two literature courses a semester. It's a great way to meet people and they're very receptive to ideas from their students for courses. I recently took an all day wine tour with them that was great and have taken art and local food courses as well.

Pat, I lost you for awhile! What an interesting course you're taking -- I can't wait to hear more. Looks like you had a great trip, too. Lovely photos.

Thanks for finding me again and stopping by, Anne. I'm really looking forward to this course. The only Hemingway I have a dim memory of reading is The Old Man and the Sea from high school. Now that I live in Idaho it would be nice to develop a greater appreciation of his work.

I'm throwing in the towel on writing a coherent review of this next book. Some comments on it follow.


Book No. 66 Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett

Fool's Gold is a story of unintended consequences. It's a largely sympathetic account of a small group of J.P. Morgan traders who perfected the idea of credit derivatives in the mid-1990s and then convinced Congress they shouldn't be regulated. By using something called a credit default swap, they could separate the default risk from commerical loans (one of the biggest sources of risk in banking) and sell it to someone else. The institution guaranteeing the risk was paid a steady stream of relatively small fees for assuming a risk they basically didn't think would happen. J.P. Morgan convinced the regulators that this "innovation" meant banks should be able to lower their capital reserves. The dream was that the capital thus freed up would "turbocharge not only banking but the economy as a whole."

Tett portrays the Morgan traders as careful not to engage in deals with unknown or unquantifiable risk--their goal was to control risk not increase it. The problem developed when Morgan's competitors started using credit default swaps with subprime mortgage-backed securities with little or no understanding of their actual default risk and misplaced reliance on self-serving computer models and agency ratings. As one of the Morgan traders said, "Really this crisis is not to do with derivatives. It is about bad mortgage lending, bad risk managment policies, how the innovation was used."

As Tett points out, this disaster was self-inflicted. "Unlike many banking crises, this one was not triggered by a war, a widespread recession, or any external economic shock. The financial system collapsed on itself, seemingly out of the blue, as far as many observers were concerned." After taking the reader on a journey to the outer reaches of cyberfinance, Tett concludes that "If there is one element, above all, that is needed to restore sanity to banking, it is that policy makers, bankers, and politicians must adopt a more holistic vision of finance. In essence, what is needed is a return to the seemingly dull virtues of prudence, moderation, balance, and common sense." Amen to that!

Probably the main thing this book made me aware of is what's called "the shadow banking system." I wish I could succinctly and intelligently describe the shadow banking system but I just don't understand it well enough. What I got out of the book is that it's a vast, unregulated network of institutions that borrow and lend large amounts of money to each other that has developed over the last 20 to 30 years. It includes all the off-balance sheet shell companies that were created to hold investments such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) backed by subprime mortgages. When people started to default on their mortgages, the institutions making up the shadow banking system lost confidence in each other and credit seized up. The result was a bank run, or panic, by institutions (rather than individuals).

Tett's self-proclaimed purpose in this book is to explain why the crisis happened. Overall, she did a good job of doing that but there was still enough that I was confused about in the end that I'm deducting 1 star. Nevertheless, this is a well-written, informative and very interesting look behind the scenes of the current practice of banking and how it's changed radically over the last 30 years. Recommended--4 stars.

Pat- You did a fine job with this review! Don't short-change yourself! See you at the next coherent review!

Thanks, Mark. My brain just didn't seem to be able to articulate what I wanted to about this book. As a result, I just rambled on. I thought I understood most of what went on in the book but struggled to write it down. Oh well, on to the next one.

I admire your ability to explain these finance books so that I can understand what they're about Pat. This kind of reading is foreign to me. Great job on the review.

Thanks, Bonnie!

Even attempting to review and formulate coherent thoughts on such a complicated subject would be quite a stretch for me. Nice work!

I really enjoyed your review too! The book's already on my list.

Thanks, Joanne and Cushla. I'm just glad I got it done. I'd been struggling with it too long.

Book No. 69 Life Work by Donald Hall

Donald Hall is a poet, essayist, editor, and a writer of children’s books and memoirs. Life Work is a series of essays about the pure joy he gets out of doing this work. It’s the process of working more than the final product that thrills him. He’s so eager to start his day playing with words that he has to restrain himself from leaping out of bed before 4:30 in the morning.

Since 1975, Hall has been a free-lance writer, working at home, which is on the farm of his maternal great-grandparents in New Hampshire. Throughout these essays, he ruminates on the connection between his love of writing and his grandfather’s love of farming. “It is the family farm . . . that provides a model for my own work; one task after another, all day all year, and every task different.”

Hall loves to redraft the things he writes. With one poem, “Another Elergy,” he talks about doing 600 drafts of it over a number of years. "I am swept away: I am happy; I am manic. . . . Who else counts the number of drafts?" Later he talks about helping his grandfather with scythe mowing on the farm. “Finding a meter, one abandons oneself to the swing of it; one surrenders oneself to the guidance of object and task, where worker and work are one: There is something ecstatic about mowing with a scythe.”

For Hall, "contentment is work so engrossing that you do not know that you are working." He regrets that his own father hated his work doing the bookkeeping for his father’s dairy business. He wanted to teach but succumbed to the pressure to join the family business. “It pains me to think of my father's work. . . . He always loathed his work at the dairy. . . . He detested what he did.”

Fortunately, for Hall his father made sure this would never happen to him. “He hated what he did and I love what I do. Opposites are never accidental. He shook his fist over my cradle, I was always told, saying, ‘He'll do what he wants to do’--and he stuck to it years later even when it turned out to be poetry that I wanted to do.”

This is an outstanding book and the only reason I’m not giving it 5 stars is because the second half is not as good as the first. This is understandable--Hall finds out his cancer has returned and isn’t sure how long he has to live. Luckily, for us, he is still here 17 years later. Highly recommended--4 1/2 stars--and one of my favorite books of 2010.

_____________

Thanks to Becky (labwriter) for recommending this book and Lucy (sibyx) for helping me get more out of it by doing a Mini Group Read of it here on LT.

Pat, thank you for reviewing Fool's Gold in such detail so I don't have to try and absorb all that information on my own. I married a CPA so he could tell me what I need to know before my eyes turn glassy! Life Work looks more like my cuppa tea; in fact I put it on the wishlist after reading some of the comments on the Mini GR. Are you joining us for Middlemarch next month?

Hi, Donna. I'm planning on giving Middlemarch a go but I'm a little apprehensive about it. I've recently tried and failed to get into Silas Marner, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. For some reason, I found the way these books were written hard to understand. But I have a copy of Middlemarch and have even "cheated" by taking the Cliff Notes out of the library to use as a crutch if I need to.

Life Work is a great book and a short one (only 124 pages). Hope you like it when you get to it.

I thought Middlemarch was a bit of a slog but I was glad that I read it, Pat. I had to read Return of the Native for school and hated it and I found Jude the Obscure ..er... very obscure, but I did like The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess and Far from the Maddening Crowd. So on the whole, I'd have to weigh in favor of Thomas Hardy's writings.

Thanks for the encouragement, Caroline. I think the group read will be helpful. Usually, I start one of these books, think "I'm not getting into this" and quit. But so many people love them, I'm curious as to what I'm missing.

I am glad you enjoyed Life Work, Pat! It is one of my favorite reads of the year too, although I agree with you, the second half is not as good as the first.

Wonderful reviews you have written!

Hi Pat!
I'm heeeeeeerrrre! This could be a dangerous thread for me! Your reads and reviews look dang good!

Hi Pat. I'm enjoying your posts here. I hope you will join us for Middlemarch and I hope you won't be too put off by it. I first read Middlemarch in a class after we had read Dickens' Bleak House. Bleak House was published in 1852 or so; Middlemarch came out in 1870. I found it very helpful to already have my ear tuned up to the way novelists were writing around that time before I started Middlemarch. The sentences and paragraphs tend to be longer than what we're used to, and even just the look of the dense text on the page can be sort of daunting. I think you do get used to the style if you're patient with it. Right now I'm reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, published in 1860. It's a good one to read to get the language and the sentence structure into your ear. I'm not saying that Collins and Eliot are the same; I'm only saying that reading one thing written at a particular time can help with reading other books written in the same period. The other element that helps with reading these things is context--understanding the allusions that writer assumes a typical reader of the time would understand. I think the strategy of using Cliff Notes to help with context is a good one. Anywho, blah, blah--I'm on my soapbox because I love British literature of the mid-to-late 19th century and I want to share that. I love the dead white writers--haha, so sue me, right?

Hi Stasia, Claudia and Becky. Glad to see you here!

I'm going to make a stop at the bookstore today and will pick up a copy of The Woman in White to get ready for the Middlemarch read. I love having *excuses* to buy books.

(I actually have an LT question: what are the stars around words supposed to mean as opposed to using quotes?????)

Hmmm well I have The Woman in White waiting on my shelf. Maybe I should read it next, (right after I finish Dracula written in 1897) and be all set for Middlemarch next. I'll consider that for a bit.

Went to my local Borders Books today which I haven't been to in ages. It was a better bookstore than I remembered. I was looking for The Woman in White but they didn't have it. But I did come home with the following:

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer (recommended by Caroline and Cushla)

From the Buy 1, Get 1 50% off table:

Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis (this will be a re-read)
Methland by Nick Reding (I've been wanting to read this one)
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (this one is about the Great Depression and apparently got lots of accolades)
Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz (I remember reading a favorable review of this in the NYT--so we'll see. It got only average ratings on LT)

Pat- I've had Methland on the WL, for a long time! It looks terrific! Lords of Finance also sounds good!
BTW- Loved your review of "Blindness". It was perfect!

Thanks, Mark. If not for your group read of Blindness I probably never would have read it.

Ooh boy, I've had Woman In White for ages in my TBR Tower and I forgot all about it. I have really have to write a note to myself to get to this before the end of the year. *sigh* so many books, so little time

Nice selection!

#146: Nice haul, Pat!

Hmmm, you went in for one book and you came home with 4 - that's pretty restrained.

I have Lords of Finance sitting here waiting for me, but it keeps getting displaced by books about the current financial meltdown. Maybe we'll end up reading it at the same time!

Life Work is on my wishlist now, thanks!

I have The Glass Room languishing on my shelf too. I really want to get to it.

I'll be interested in what you think of Methland since Oelwein, IA is where I went to high school. I'll reserve comment until you've had a chance to read and digest.

#149 Caroline, maybe you can read The Woman in White on one of your long plane trips. :)

#150, 151 Thanks Bonnie and Stasia!

#152 I agree Cushla. Lords of Finance will probably have to wait while I get to a couple books I already have about the current financial crisis (i.e. How Markets Fail by John Cassidy and Too Big to Fail by Andrew Sorkin).

#153 Hope you like Life Work when you get to it, Angela. It is a pretty fast read at just 124 pages.

#154 The Glass Room is something I'd start now, Bonnie, if I didn't have some other books I have a deadline for.

#155 Now I'm interested in what you have to say about Methland, markon. Unfortunately, it will probably be next year before I get to it.

Oh wow -- you write wonderful reviews! I'm adding Life Work to my wishlist.

Thanks, Anne. Life Work really is a great book. I never checked to see if it's on audio but if so it would probably be great to listen to him describe the joy he gets out of his work.

Thanks, Pat. If there is an audio version, my library doesn't have it. I think (and hope) my schedule will ease up after Christmas -- I love audio books, but miss reading!

Hi Anne. I checked Amazon and it looks like there are only paperback versions of Life Work available.

I've actually never tried audio books but want to try one while I do some knitting this winter. Do you have a favorite so far?

I went to my local used book store today which, wonder of wonders, was having a sale (buy two used books and get the third one for $1.00). So I now own the following:

Old School by Tobias Wolff (recommended by Bonnie/brenzi)
1776 by David McCullough (recommended by Becky, Lucy and a few other LTers)
The Seige: A Novel by Helen Dunmore (recommended by Stasia, Rebecca and other LTers)
This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig (a memoir written in 1980)
Wallace Stegner and the American West by Philip L. Fradkin (the second biography of Stegner I now own)
Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (because it won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in History and because getting the polio vaccine is one of my more vivid memories from childhood for some reason)

Some great/interesting books there! I'm going to read my first Stegner book this autumn, I have resolved. I loved Old School and have some of Wolff's short stories on the teetering TBR tower.

Thanks, Suzanne. Stegner is someone I've discovered recently. My favorite is Crossing to Safety, followed by Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs and then Angle of Repose. I probably wouldn't have gotten as much out of Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs if not for a group read here on LT and, unfortunately, I found Angle of Repose kind of a slog and only finished it because it got the Pulitzer and the end took place in Idaho.

Old School will be my first Tobias Wolff and I'm looking forward to getting to it.

Hope you end up liking Stegner.

I listened to 1776, just a few weeks ago and thought it was very good. My first and and only Tobias Wolff was This Boy's Life, which was excellent. I also have a couple of his short story collections, sitting on the shelves. I love Stegner and was crazy for both Angle of Repose & Crossing to Safety. I have The Spectator Bird & The Big Rock Candy Mountain also in the tbr.

We took a drive the other day further west in Idaho to a little town called Marsing on the Snake River. They have a landmark called Lizard Butte which I loved. Here's a picture:

Some meaty books there, Pat! I remember the day all of us kids were getting polio shots in school. I ran home for lunch and never went back--or maybe I just thought about not going back. I remember standing in line and seeing the kids in front of me get their shots, but don't remember if I got one. My memory is that I didn't. Gosh, I wish I could go back in time just to see what really happened as opposed to relying on what I can retrieve from my very faulty memory--very little.

eta: I can see the lizard! I can see the lizard!

I see the lizard too!! That's great!!!
What I remember most about polio is that my friend John was out of first grade for most of the year with it and my cousin Charlie also had a light case. I was glad to get that stick.
And I'm another recent convert to Stegner.

>160 phebj: Pat, I am very new to audio books myself, so I might not be the best person to ask. I just started listening this fall because I have a long commute to school and no time to read. Probably my favorite so far has been Persuasion. It was such a fun way to experience Jane Austen. I think I grinned for the entire 8 hours. Certainly the commute was much more pleasant! I didn't love Sense and Sensibility as much at first, but then I found a different narrator whose style I liked better, and then that was a favorite, too. My current audio is Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart. I like it so far, and this audio version got a great Amazon review. Normally I just wander the audio section of the library to find selections. Since they're anywhere from 7 to 14 hours of listening, they last awhile.

eta: I really like Stegner, too. I enjoyed Angle of Repose a few years ago, and loved Crossing to Safety earlier this year. I started a collection of his short stories, thinking I could just read one here and there as I have time, but I haven't had time to get past the first one.

Ooh that's a good bookshop haul. I loved Old School, and have wishlisted all his other books over at Book Mooch.

I haven't read any Stegner yet, but both that book and the Ivan Doig were mentioned in one of the books I'm reading at the moment - The King's English, by Betsy Burton, the founder of a (fabulous sounding) independent bookstore in Salt Lake City. She has some great book lists and one is of books about the west.

Great haul, Pat! Some wonderful reading there.

Thanks for posting the picture. Beautiful countryside.

#164 Hi, Mark. A couple of other LTers recommended This Boy's Life too. After doing the Stegner group read earlier this year, I ordered Big Rock Candy Mountain and am looking forward to getting to it soon (not sure how realistic that is--but I can dream.)

#166/167 Bonnie and Peggy, I also have slightly scary memories of the polio epidemic. One of my neighbor's children was several years older than me and came down with the virus and was never able to walk again without braces and crutches. It really made an impression on me as a child. What I remember was getting the vaccine on a sugar cube in the midst of a huge crowd at the local elementary school. It was an easy way to get the vaccine but it was obviously a very serious event to the adults involved and one I didn't fully understand at the time.

#168 Anne, I'm going to participate in Stasia's Austenothon next year and might try Persuasion on audio. The good thing about short stories is you can put them down for awhile and easily come back to them. Hope you don't have to wait too long to get back to reading.

#169 Cushla, you're killing me! Another book I've never heard of that I want to read now--The King's English. On top of that, Salt Lake City is not that far from where I live and may now be worthy of another visit just to check out that bookstore which I had no idea was there.

#170 Hi, Stasia. As always, good to see you here!

Great haul Pat. I'm actually reading The Siege right now. I read just about all of Stegner's fiction about twenty years ago (terrific stuff!) but plan on rereading Angle of Repose and Crossing to Safety next year sometime.

I see the lizard too!

>165 phebj:: Lizard, what lizard? *Kidding*-- that is an awesome sight and a great picture. Thanks for sharing part of your beautiful world with us.

I'm sorry you didn't like my favorite by Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. It's been such a long time since I've read it perhaps I would consider it somewhat of a slog if I read it again. I think it was the first one I read and his writing just blew me away. What's up with these touchstones?

ETA: I edited the first time to leave the touchstone remark, and natch, it fixed itself! Too funny.

Hope you love The Seige Bonnie. I picked it up in the library and it looked good so I was thrilled to see a good copy in the used bookstore yesterday. I would definitely re-read Crossing to Safety and am considering doing the 11 in 11 Category Challenge next year with a category for re-reads--this would be a good candidate.

Donna, I liked Angle of Repose but had such high expectations because of the Pulitzer that I was disappointed. I'm still in love with Stegner though. He strikes me as someone I would have wanted to know as a person.

Continuing to catch up on reviews:

Book No. 70 Family Portrait by Catherine Drinker Bowen

Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973) was a biographer (of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Adams among others) and Family Portrait is her biography of her talented family--the Drinkers of Philadelphia.

Bowen was the youngest of the six children of Henry and Ernesta Drinker and looked up to her older siblings in more ways than one. Her sister, Ernesta, was unusually beautiful and of her four brothers, Harry was a prominent corporate lawyer and an accomplished amateur musician, Cecil was a physician and the first dean of the Harvard School of Public Health and Philip was an engineer and the inventor of the Iron Lung. Her other brother, Jim, led a less exalted life but was the most well-balanced of the siblings according to Bowen.

Bowen wrote this book in her late 60s after the deaths of her parents and two of her brothers (Harry and Cecil). She obviously wanted to protect the privacy of her remaining siblings so it is Harry’s and Cecil’s lives we learn about in the most detail. Both these brothers were extremely successful in work and love, but both seemed to have obsessive traits. Harry’s were channeled into music but Cecil’s found an outlet in alcohol which proved to be his undoing.

At times, I wanted to know more about Bowen herself outside of her role as the youngest child in this family but I had to remind myself that this was not a “tell all” memoir of the kind I’m used to reading today. It was published in 1970 as a “celebration” of the Drinker family and a “mourning” of those members of the family who had passed on.

Bowen is a fantastic writer and does a great job capturing the times and places her family’s lives unfolded in. I loved reading about the brothers and sisters skating on the frozen Lehigh Canal while the fires from the Bethlehem steel works glowed in the distance like a version of hell (her father was President of Lehigh University at the time), their Grand Tour of Europe in the years before the first World War, and the annual summer idles at their house in Beach Haven, New Jersey.

This ended up being one of my favorite books of 2010 and I’m giving it 4 1/2 stars. Highly recommended look at what it was like to be part of a loving and competitive family “for whom excellence was the starting point.”

______________

Another thanks to Becky (labwriter) for bringing this book to my attention and to Lucy (sibyx) and Yolana for reading it with me. (Our group read comments are here on LT if anyone's interested in learning more about the book.)

I just realized my Hemingway course doesn't start until November 9th so I won't finish For Whom the Bell Tolls in October and will have to remove it from the no polysyllables TIOLI challenge. With that freed up time in October, I'm going to see if I can read and finish The White Family by Maggie Gee that Darryl so generously passed on to me. If so, I'll put it in the 21st century TIOLI challenge.

I should finish my YA Newbery Award book The Twenty-One Balloons tonight and am making slow progress through A Week at the Airport by Alain de Botton.

My attempt to re-read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience in October has failed and although I haven't totally given up, there are just too many other books competing for my attention at the moment. I hate to feel like I'm forcing myself to read something.

Pat- Terrific review of Family Portrait! I have not heard of Bowen before this! On the list it goes!

#176: I enjoyed that one too - thanks to Becky's recommendation. Glad to know you liked it too, Pat.

Hope you like Family Portrait when you get to it, Mark. This was one of those unexpected discoveries that I owe entirely to LT and why I love this site so much.

Hi, Stasia. I forgot you had read it too. Hope it's something Linda will be able to read soon. I think she'd love it.

#181: I know she has a copy of it. Maybe once she is well enough to read she can tackle that one. She has several set aside to read while she has this time off. I will have to check and see if that is one of the books.

Very nice review of Family Portrait, Pat!

>176 phebj:: Here's to the Drinkers of Philadelphia. Sorry, couldn't resist. What an interesting last name. Family Portrait sounds like an interesting book, too.

I get so much more enjoyment out of a book if it's a shared read with someone. We need to do more of that here. I know we have many group reads, but there isn't always a lot of interaction in many of them. I'm looking forward to delving into Middlemarch and sharing our reading experience.

Excellent review of Family Portrait Pat. I'm looking forward to Middlemarch as well.

Pat, if you are interested in reading more of Catherine Drinker Bowen's work, I would recommend her Adventures of a Biographer to you.

Donna- "I get so much more enjoyment out of a book if it's a shared read with someone." Boy, that just about nails it!!

#183 Thanks, Darryl.

#184 Donna, one of the interesting things in the book is the influence the name "Drinker" had on Bowen's oldest brother. When he was young, he was teased because the name rhymed with "stinker" and he vowed he would excel in life in order to make the name worthy.

#185 Thanks, Bonnie.

#186 Thanks for the recommendation, Stasia. My library actually has Adventures of a Biographer and I've put it on hold.

#184-187 I've gotten so much out of the group reads on LT--especially for books I might not finish on my own (Middlemarch being one example so I'm looking forward to doing this as a group). It seems so much easier to comment on a book as you go rather than try and remember everything to talk about it at the end (the way I do in RL book groups).

Book No. 71 Await Your Reply by Don Chaon

This is a well-written thriller about identity and cyber-crime whose structure reminded me of a kaleidoscope where all the pieces slowly click into focus. Actually, there are some things that are never really clear even at the end (such as “was that person’s death really accidental?”)--but that just contributes to the creepiness of the book.

The story is told from the point of view of three different characters who are unhappy with their lives and open to the idea of changing identities but naive about the kind of people this brings them into contact with. It’s hard to say much about the plot without giving things away but I thought the author did a good job of slowly revealing clues and keeping the story moving along.

The real value of the book to me though was that, in addition to telling a good story, the author raises a number of questions about identity in general. Some of the things this book made me think about were (1) how easy it is to be someone else on the internet, (2) the extensive and murky world of cyber criminals and (3) the issue of even wanting to change your identity in the first place. It made me realize I never even think about this. (And the last time I even remotely did was before going to college when I briefly considered switching to using my middle name instead of my first.)

In my paperback version of the book, there’s an interview with the author. One of his comments struck me: “I’ve been reading a lot about the problem of memory, and I’m fascinated by the work of researchers like Elizabeth Loftus, which suggests that memory and our sense of our own life stories are more fictional than we’d like to believe.”

Favorite passage: “I never wanted to get to a point in my life where I knew what was going to happen next. . . . I can’t understand how people can settle for having just one life. I remember we were in English class and we were talking about that poem by--that one guy. David Frost. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood--’ You know this poem, right? ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could, to where it bent in the undergrowth--’ I loved that poem. But I remember thinking to myself: Why? How come you can’t travel both? That seemed really unfair to me.” (I sometimes think about the path not taken but never about taking both!)

Bottom line: Entertaining story with a lot of food for thought. Recommended--4 stars.

First thumb...already on the wishlist. I also liked You Remind Me Of Me by Chaon.

Thanks, Donna. I have to read You Remind Me of Me soon. The other thing Chaon talked about in the interview at the back of the book was being adopted and how that affected his sense of identity. Wasn't You Remind Me of Me about being adopted? (Actually, one of the characters in Await Your Reply is adopted now that I think about it.)

Hi Pat... just trying to catch up after being away for 4 days. Looks like a few good reads here I definitely need to look into. Love the lizard! Great picture. :)

Good review on Await Your Reply! I read it last year and enjoyed it. Some very interesting characters. I'd like to read more by him.

#192 Hi Claudia. Thanks for stopping by.

#193 Thanks, Mark. It looks like we both gave it 4 stars.

Thumb on your review of Await Your Reply which is already on my shelf thanks to Deborah. Must get to it.

Thanks, Bonnie. Hope you enjoy it when you get to it.

Great review, Pat! Makes me want to read the book again. For sure, I have to look for that interview.

#188: I hope you enjoy the Bowen book, Pat!

#189: Great review!

#197/198 Thanks, Bonnie and Stasia! The author interview at the back of the paperback version of Await Your Reply was one of the better ones I've read.

I've wishlisted Family Portrait, thanks!

Pat, you're hot twice today. Congratulations!!! Await Your Reply sounds particularly interesting to me. I immediately thought of Richard Powers's The Echo Maker which deals in a quite different way with identity. He's one of my favorite contemporary writers, and I don't see his name mentioned often around here although it might have been earlier when he won the 2008 National Book Award for *EM*. (I'll add that this, The Time of Our Singing and The Gold Bug Variations are my favorites.)

Congrats on the Hot Reviews, Pat!

#200 Hope you like Family Portrait when you get to it, Angela.

#201 Thanks, Peggy! I looked up the Richard Powers books you mentioned and thought to myself "Why have I never heard of this author" and then saw that he wrote Gain which I read so long ago I no longer remember it. I'm going to my library's big book sale tomorrow morning and will keep my eye out for his books.

#202 Thanks, Stasia!

So here I am, Pat, I think I did exactly what I described in my note to you, messed up changing threads. Or something. I can't figure it out, frankly. Anyhow, I am so glad you loved the Bowen too and that you've had two hot reviews simultaneously, I wonder if anyone has ever managed to have all four.......

Hi, Lucy! I've lost people's threads before too. Not really sure how (I'm always convinced it's nothing I did). Glad you're back!

Congrats, Pat! Double Hot!

Thank you, Claudia!

Hi Pat - I'm so far behind. Great picture! Congrats! I loved your review of Await Your Reply - it was an interesting book.

>203 phebj: Good luck at the library sale, Pat! I think that Gain (double story: soap company/woman with cancer) is my fourth favorite among the Powerses that I've read. Hope you can find one of my top three!

I have had The Echo Maker on my shelf for forever. Thanks for the nudge Peggy.

Congrats on two hot reviews Pat.

#201 - just chipping in to say that I also love Richard Powers and recommend his books, especially The Time of Our Singing.

Well, I didn't see anything by Richard Powers at the library sale (but of course they say you have to come back because they put out new books every day). We'll see if I get back there this weekend. I did get the following, however:

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (because Bonnie loved it so much)
Fault Lines by Nancy Huston (also a recommendation from Bonnie)
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (because I liked Such a Long Journey)
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (because I like him)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (this seems to be a hit or miss book here on LT. Suzanne and Darryl liked it if I remember correctly, the two Bonnies not so much)
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (because of all the talk about Great House)
You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon (recommended by Donna and I just finished and liked Await Your Reply)
Blue Ridge by T. R. Pearson (author recommended by my friend Juli)
This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann (the job of a sandhog under NYC sounds interesting to me)
John Adams by David McCullough (recommended by Lucy and I think Becky as well)
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (a number of LTers were raving about this recently)
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (because I liked Freedom)
Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman (because I liked Call Me By Your Name)
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman (because I liked Intuition)

14 books, all in good condition, for $25. I was very happy.

Nice haul, Pat! And you can't beat the price.

Wow! That's a really good haul! I have All the King's Men, Corrections and Family Matters in my TBR pile too. Maybe we can read one of them at the same time, Pat. You'll really like Me Talk Pretty One Day--it's my second favorite Sedaris; and I hope you love The History of Love--I just loved the voice of the main character. It will be interesting to see what you think of You Remind Me of Me; I found it much more depressing in a RL way than Await Your Reply. I didn't not like The Slap; it was just a little raw for me. John Adams was surprisingly good, and Team of Rivals is supposed to be terrific! I haven't read the other books, but I have read Intuition and I think I'd try another book by Goodman. I'll be waiting for your review on that one. Happy reading!

Pat- That's an incredible haul! Good for you! Team of Rivals has been on my list forever!

Couldn't find anything, huh?
Holy cow! What a great selection - and $25!
If I send you $25, will you shop for me?
I imagine you will fall asleep with a smile on your face tonight. :)

I love library book sales. I don't even mind the aching back from walking with my head down for hours at a stretch. You got some terrific books. Definitely go back this week end. I got my favorite book when I went back the second time a couple weeks ago.

Grump grump.
Why doesn't NYC have library sales?? At least, not in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

#213 Thanks, Darryl. I must say I was thrilled with the total price. I'm no good at keeping a running total in my head so I was very pleasantly surprised.

#214 Bonnie, I'd love to read one of those books with you. I get so much more out of doing shared reads. Maybe sometime early next year?

#215 Thanks, Mark. I don't think I ever would have considered trying something as long as Team of Rivals if not for all the accolades I've seen for the book here on LT.

#216 I imagine you will fall asleep with a smile on your face tonight. :) I definitely will, Claudia. I went to the sale first thing this morning and then had a couple of appointments. Every once and a while I'd think about the books sitting out in my car and it would make me smile!

#217 Donna, I know what you mean about the aching back. My posture is not the best and I have to consciously relax my back when I'm browsing in bookstores and I found my neck aching after an hour of looking down at books (to say nothing of my creaking hips after bending down to look at all the books under the tables!).

#218 Suzanne, that does seem odd in a way. Maybe they have so many big donors they don't need to raise funds that way??? Or maybe they don't have the space? I know Bonnie (bonniebooks) said the Seattle Public Library has two huge sales a year.

The other thing I meant to mention about the library sale that was new to me (and this is really the first big one I've been too) was that there were at least ten people there with scanners supposedly using them on the books' barcodes to see if they already had them or not. The people working at the sale said they were booksellers. Thought that was interesting.

Pat

I'm slowly coming back and vow to check a few threads a day until I'm up and about in normal fashion.

I'm checking your thread tonight and when I saw the lovely photos, I smiled.

What a great haul of books you found at your library sale! Now, where will you place them? Everytime I attend a library sale I swear to down size and make room for the new ones by giving away some of the old...somehow it just never works.

Thanks for all the notes and outreach. I appreciate you very much!

Everytime I attend a library sale I swear to down size and make room for the new ones by giving away some of the old...somehow it just never works.

I know exactly what you mean. I have too many books piled up on the floor with no place to put them! And it's so hard for me to part with books.

Glad to see you here. Take good care.

Congratulations on the haul, Pat!

Thanks, Stasia!

What a haul, what a haul, what a haul! Terrific. I'll be happy to read Team of Rivals with you next year sometime.

WOW! That's a great haul for sure!!! I even forgive them for not having a Richard Powers for you.

What an amazing bunch of books for $25! I've read three, McCullough, Franzen, Aciman, all winners.

#225 Bonnie, I'd love to read Team of Rivals with you. Just tell me when!

#226 Peggy, I went and ordered a used copy of The Time of Our Singing yesterday from Amazon after the strong recommendations from you and Janet. I just couldn't take it anymore.

#227 Lucy, I'm going to read the Aciman next month for the first TIOLI challenge and hope to get to John Adams early next year.

What a fantastic bunch of books you got at the library sale, Pat. We don't have these kinds of sales here (as far as I know), and I have to admit I don't really get it - why is the library selling off these books, especially the more recent ones? Do they only keep a couple of months' worth of new books on the shelves for borrowing? Or are these all donations especially for the sale?

That's a good question, Janet. I know some of them are donations and one table was labeled "book club books" which were all new hardcovers (or at least appeared to be). I'm thinking they must order extra books for book club reads. Some of the books were a little worn but had no markings on them. Some seemed brand new--like the hardcover of The Corrections. It doesn't look as if I'm going to get back there this weekend or I'd ask them.

Nice library sale haul, Pat! How nice to have a nice, new (to you) stack of books when winter's on it's way!

At our humble little library we get two or three boxes of books a week, it's incredible -- many of them only read once. But often we have the book on the shelf already, in hardcover, so the book goes right onto the sale table -- or if less desirable, off to the 'swap shop' at what folks used to call 'the dump' but now grandly refer to as the 'transfer station'.

Okay, I understand now (also saw the conversation re library sales on Donna's thread today). Maybe the reason we don't have these here is because we have other, well established places for donating books, like many charity shops and school jumble sales. I don't think I've ever seen the library ask for donations. Sometimes they have racks for sale, but I think those are books they are "decommissioning" from their own stock. A huge library sale would be great, but I guess I also like going to the different charity shops and schools, and those are worthwhile causes too, after all.

Wow Pat - I just saw your great library sale haul! The History of Love is a favorite of mine and I hope you like it, too. I have Fault Lines, The Corrections, and John Adams all lanquishing, unread, on my shelves.

>234 Copperskye: Exchange All the King's Men for The History of Love (not the same thing as Sex in History although I thought it was for a minute) and those are the ones I own too..... And *AtK'sM* is the only one I've read. AND I enjoyed Intuition too and hope to seek out Goodman again.

Glad you liked The History of Love so much, Joanne. I'm hoping to get to it soon.

I really liked Intuition, Peggy. The other one I want to read is her new one, The Cookbook Collector, but by the time I get to it the paperback version should be out.

Book No. 72 The Collector by John Fowles

I never heard of this book before LT (not sure why) but it’s exactly the kind of book I enjoy--a thoughtful psychological thriller where you get inside the mind of a sociopath.

Right from the beginning, you learn that Frederick Clegg, a lower-class administrative clerk who collect butterflies in his spare time, has lost all the people close to him by the time he was 15. He leads a lonely life that increasingly centers around his preoccupation with Miranda Grey, a beautiful and vibrant young art student who lives with her family across the street from his office. Clegg worships Miranda from afar until he wins a substantial amount of money in the football pools. This turn of events allows him to buy a house in a remote location with a basement suitable for holding Miranda captive.

The beginning of the book is told from Clegg’s point of view and you develop a certain amount of sympathy for him. He is unable to see things as Miranda does and believes he is taking good care of her and that she will eventually fall in love with him. When Miranda gets to tell her side of the story, you’re forced to see just how disturbed Clegg is and how cruel it is to imprison someone as full of life as Miranda.

The suspense of wondering if Miranda will be able to escape or not kept me turning the pages most of the time. But Fowles also uses her character to explore a number of subjects such as art, beauty, class differences in England in the early 1960s and religion. Some of the references that were specific to life in England during that time went over my head and I occasionally got bogged down in some of Miranda’s ramblings about the meaning of life but overall this was a book I became absorbed in and would highly recommend. It’s the kind of scary that slowly creeps up on you and all the more scary because it’s so realistic. 4 1/2 stars.

A quote (from Miranda as she realizes she is like one of Clegg’s butterflies): “I am one in a row of specimens. It’s when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I’m meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it’s the dead me he wants.”

Pat- Excellent review of The Collector. You got the thumb. A close LT friend was just raving to me about this book, very recently. On the list it goes!

Thanks, Mark. Hope you like it (and somehow I think you will) when you get to it.

Hi Pat, Everyone seems to be raving about this one. Loved your review. I guess I need to check it out!

I've been avoiding that book for years, simply because of the subject matter. I may have to reconsider...

Re library sales, the Brooklyn branch seems to deaccession via BetterWorld Books, which charges a markup on the books. I much prefer going to a library sale, where so much can be found in the same place at once. Maybe I'll have to visit Seattle just to check out their sale????

If you come to SPL's Spring sale, Suzanne, you can stay at my house. I'm just a mile or two away from the sale. :-)

Oooh, sounds like a plan, Bonnie! Air miles plus book sale plus LT get-together? Great recipe...

#237: Great review, Pat!

#240/244 Thanks, Joanne and Stasia!

#241-243 A Seattle LT meetup would be wonderful! And the SPL is worth a visit even without a sale but I must say the Fall sale that Bonnie described sounded fantastic. Count me in.

I tried The Collector (omg, it's three weeks overdue at the library!) but it didn't grab me in the first 20 pages and I got distracted. From your review, however, it sounds like a book that might reward persistence. Am I interpreting you correctly?

Hi Pat... have to say this does NOT sound like a book for me.
However - your review was great! Thumb for you!
You write wonderful reviews!

Thumb from me too, Pat. You helped me recall the book which was not my favorite of Fowles's. I was on a Fowles kick in the 70's (maybe?) when Daniel Martin came out. It and The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman remain my favorites in that order.

>245 phebj:: Yay! I meant to say you were invited too, Pat. We'll have to get all the Portlanders to come up, as well, though it will have to be first-come, first-serve on the beds. ;-). And maybe I'll get to meet up with Lisa too. And Terri and Kim, and everybody from Colorado and California and... OK, hold me down now, I'm getting a little carried away!

Great review Pat, and a well deserved thumbs up from me.

#246 Tad, if you only got through 20 pages I'd definitely give it another try. I read it a couple of weeks ago (I've very behind on my reviews) and have since taken it back to the library but my memory is that I liked it in the beginning but it took awhile (maybe 30-40 pages) to really get absorbed in it. That said, it is a little uneven and I got a bit bored with it when Miranda started to tell her story but overall I ended up loving it.

#247 Thank you, Claudia!

#248 Thank you too, Peggy. I know I read The French Lieutenant's Woman but can't really remember it and after reading The Collector I immediately ordered The Magus and was surprised by how long it was when it arrived. So I want to read that but don't know when I'll get to it.

#249 Bonnie, I'm getting excited about a LT meetup in Seattle!

#250 Thanks, Darryl.

Me too -- I was a Fowles fan in the 70's! I spent a summer being an aupair in Greece on the island where the Magus 'takes place'..... it was sort of required reading!

Just set up my third thread OVER HERE. Hope to see you there!

I'm a recent convert to Fowles' novels - it's only been in the past three or four years I've begun reading him. The French Lieutenant's Woman is excellent, as is A Maggot. I wasn't that taken with The Collector, and I think I'd probably have appreciated The Magus more if I'd read when I was in my twenties. I've not read Daniel Martin yet. I do think his novels are surprisingly easy to read - given how complex they are, you'd think they'd be more difficult to read.

Hi Ian. Thanks for stopping by! It's been so long since I've read The French Lieutenant's Woman that I need to re-read it. I don't think I've ever heard of A Maggot so will have to check that out. Thanks for the recommendation.