The Eternal Question: What Are You Reading? 8 / 2021

New Year, new thread!

New Year, new thread!

My first finished book of 2021 was The Best American Short Stories 2020, which was fine but didn't knock me out as a collection, though all the stories were well done. Maybe there were too many variations on a similar theme, a lot of drifting young adults and teenagers, and a few adults, who just seem a bit unmoored from life. Standouts for me were T.C. Boyle's "The Apartment," because it was just such a T.C. Boyle story; Michael Byers's "Sibling Rivalry," because it was a totally believable sf story all by itself in the collection; and Elizabeth McCracken's "It's Not You," because she's always so good. Looking back through them, I actually liked almost all of them—there was just nothing that left me going, "Wow, how'd they DO that?" Which is probably an awful lot to ask of a writer, I know.

Now I'm about to start Joan Silber's upcoming Secrets of Happiness, which I'm reviewing for Library Journal.

Finished A Tempest which is a Carribean version of Tempest, and started Benediction which I thought Id read before but apparently I hadn't, but its been sitting on my tbr shelf for a while now.

I'm halfway into and liking The Parasites by Daphne DuMaurier.

Finished Behold the Dreamers, didn’t much care for it.

I love Du Maurier. And I was a big fan of Behold the Dreamers too, in part because it was so unexpected.

I started Blue Ticket and quickly ascertained it was not for me. Dystopia+misery porn. I read Sisters: A Novel which is a bit We Have Always Lived in the Castle, beautifully written with a very good twist that I figured out just pages before the reveal. Very clever and very disturbing. Also, with a house as a major character which I love.

I am luxuriating in a police procedural Still Life and reading a book of music history 33 Revolutions a Minute which I thought I was going to dip in and out of but has turned out to be very interesting. Not the writing which is a bit belabored but the pints he makes - the shift in mood in the soul of the post-Watergate 70s, the rise and fall of Disco, Sex Pistols vs the Clash, Fela, Victor Jara, the two-tone label.

I'm reading Better Luck Next Time which is set in Reno in 1938 at a dude ranch and centers on women waiting for their divorces to become final, so the whole thing makes you think of that part of The Women nonstop. I wish it was fizzier, but it's pretty fizzy.

That sounds fantastic.

>10 cindydavid4: A Promised land and Without a Country for my book group on Tues. Could not find this anywhere; apparetly Amazon published it and would not release it to indies. Fine. Went to Bookfinder, my go to for used and snatched a nice hard copy for a good price But it took two weeks to get here. I have enough time, anyway :)

ETA And I have now put it down because the writing is so poor Ah well, I suspect I'll be in the minority tonight

However am loving A Promised Land! BTW Trevor Noah had an interview with Obama a few days ago that I found very interesting. FYI

Just finished Training School for Negro Girls. Just fantastic,one of the best collections I’ve read in years. Very happy to have read it.

I'm currently reading The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem. Not sure if it's even any good (I'm about 100 pages in), and the reviews weren't great. But, it's fairly short, so I'll try to finish. Working on reading real books (or Kindle) instead of just listening to audiobooks while I try to sleep.

Finished on audio The Secret Lives of Church Ladies which just blew me away. It’s one of the three finalists for The Story Prize and an exceptional read. Listening to the stories read was wonderful because the book is very much about very strong voices. A major new writer.
Lisa,I’m pretty sure you read all of the finalists. Was historical corrections your favorite? I have Likes as the next one to read.

I thought I posted this, many of you have been fans of Sharon Kay Penman over the years. She passed away Friday after a long illness. So sad; her blog is still up and people keep sending posts about what she meant to them I for one will read her last book that came out last year land beyond the sea in her honor and memory.c

Also I talked before about reading her novels starting from the one earliest in time When Christ and his Saints Slept though to the one that starts the Welsh triology. I normally dont do challenges, but Id like to try this.

>13 alans: Alan, yeah—The Office of Historical Corrections was my favorite, and I liked Likes a lot. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies I thought was really strong in terms of plot and imagination, but the writing was just slightly underbaked—like I want to read whatever she does next, no question, but I feel like she's just stretching her wings. Anyway it's a great trio of finalists, and I'm looking forward to watching the event (remotely, sigh... that's one I always liked to catch in person).

So I had a hell of a time reviewing Joan Silber's upcoming Secrets of Happiness. If it had been any other review venue than LJ I could have dived in happily—this was a humane, philosophical novel that was more than the sum of its parts, starting with the fact that you need to read the title and keep it in mind as you go. But LJ reviews are not necessarily about the intricacies of subtle storytelling—or rather you can say that that's what you get with this book, but you have 200 words to say it in and the purpose is for a librarian to decide whether or not to order the book. With most of what I review for them that's a pretty easy task, but this was not—just a bit too much going on under the surface. So here's what I finally came up with:

What do we need to be happy? Love? Money? Work? Family? Joan Silber takes on the question with her usual deft touch here, though without ever addressing it head on. Beginning with Ethan, a young Manhattan lawyer who discovers that his father has a second family, Silber unspools a web of lovers, siblings, parents, and children, from Greenwich Village to Bangkok, whose searches for fulfillment ripple outward in unexpected ways. From the entanglements of Ethan’s half brothers in Queens to his new boyfriend’s dying ex, whose sister watches them care for him warily even as she rekindles an old flame, to a young filmmaker living with her mother’s regrets and her sister’s capriciousness, each set of choices—infidelity, caretaking, the rejection of parents’ values and money, the work to build an extended family based on love and loyalty—affects the others in ways both subtle and large. Silber moves easily in and out of her characters’ heads; the novel is deceptively airy yet, given a reflective reading, has an ethical center without the shortcut of easy morality.

Now I'm reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them, which is about nuns during the time of the Black Plague. It meanders along like a little stream and is very, very archly funny.

I just finished The Corner That Held Them and I really loved it. What an unexpected pleasure. Historical to be sure, but so slyly humourous. I loved the way is just trickled along and BIG HAPPENINGS - which would have been the centerpiece of another different kind of novel, just kind of occur and then everyone moves on and oh yeah, there's a butterfly on a windowsill or the milk has soured. This is true of some huge historical events as well, like the Black Plague or the Peasants Revolt which hover in the background, impacting on the most human scale. It's quite astonishingly good.

I am reading Sometimes You Have To Lie which I wish wasn't quite so workmanlike but oh brother, do I love the topic and all the crazy things that weave the net that is Louise Fitzhugh, like her uncle was Peter Taylor and her writing teacher at Bard was James Merrill! It's too much.

I am also reading the first in the Persephone books William: An Englishman after watching a great interview with the press's founder. I have been buying the books whenever I can afford them or asking people to purchase them for me if they go to London and I have about 30 but I've only read one or two. So I decided I better treat them less like art objects and more like books because otherwise I'm going to die without making a dent The novel itself is very interesting, about a couple who are politically active in London on the eve of WWI - active but also clueless about history or events outside their very narrow range of interests- they marry and go to Belgium on their honeymoon in July 1914........ you can see where this is going. There is something very timely about it - people who are so invested in their political ideas that they end up being extremely shortsighted and unable to understand anything in its wider context.

Oh, I am dying for that Silber book -- I really think she's my favorite living writer now that Alan Bennett has gone largely silent.

Well, Lauren's getting the galley so you can't be too far behind. I agree—she does the American comedy/drama of manners so well.

>14 cindydavid4: I'd been in the hospital again (permanent placement of a biventricular AICD), and I'd not seen this until today. So many sad deaths this past year, but this one touches me personally & deeply due to the many hours of extraordinary pleasure I derived from reading her books.

Cindy, I'd mentioned several times over the years that one of my reading goals was to revisit her books in chronological, rather than publication, order. It was the very first reading-related activity I attacked right after I retired, and even all these years later the books held up magnificently. Spending all those hours reading it in order of the historical events was one of the best literary rides I've ever experienced.

The Plantagenets
1101-1154 When Christ And His Saints Slept (Book 1 )
1156-1171 Time And Chance (Book 2)
1172-1189 Devil's Brood (Book 3 End of the Henry &
Eleanor Trilogy)
1174-1180's The Land Beyond the Sea (King Baldwin, Saladin, Knights
Templar, Crusaders)
1189-1192 Lionheart (King Richard Book 4)
1192-1199 A King's Ransom (End of King Richard Book 5)

Justin de Quincy Mysteries Books
1192-1193 The Queen's Man (Book 1)
April-June 1193 Cruel as the Grave (Book 2)
July-Oct 1193 Dragon's Lair (Book 3)
Dec 1193-March 1194 Prince of Darkness (Book 4)

Welsh Trilogy
1183-1232 Here Be Dragons (Vol 1)
1231-1267 Falls The Shadow (Vol 2)
1271-1283 The Reckoning (Vol 3)

1459-1492 The Sunne In Splendour (Standalone masterpiece, her 1st publication)

I have so many unread books that I should attend to, but if you're serious about a chronologic challenge, I'd totally be up for doing it again. According to my calculations, (feel free to double-check me)we could start with WCaHSS and agree to read 8,654 pp at 201.25 pp/week to bring the challenge to completion by the last week in Dec. ~200pp/wk is very doable while still allowing plenty of time to read other books during the week.

Pat, I'm very glad to see you back.

Hi Pat, good to see you! And hope you're doing OK post-procedure. I've never read anything of Penman's—where would I want to dip my toe in, if I were to?

I also finished The Corner That Held Them and agree with Lauren (quelle surprise)—it's a strange and lovely book, very drily funny and really hits a sweet spot between current events/politics and everyday interpersonal life. Beautiful descriptions of the natural world, as well. There's no plot other than that corner of the world and its history, but that's enough, honestly—or else I was just in the mood for that kind of narrative that feels as though you're floating by in a boat taking note of the details. Unlike anything else I've read in a while, and I have a feeling bits and pieces will keep surfacing in my head at odd moments.

Now on to Robert Gipe's Weedeater, the second in a trilogy of illustrated novels that starts with Trampoline, which I fiercely loved when I read it in 2015. They're set in contemporary Appalachia, and this one continues the story of Dawn Jewell, who's a punky, out-of-place teenager in the first. There's a third, too, Pop, coming out later this month. I decided last-minute I want to talk to him for Bloom about his political work with a local theater company, so I want to get as to much of the new two as I can before next week.

I also succumbed to suggestibility and got All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells's Murderbot series, from the library. It so sounds like not my thing, and everyone who knows me says that it so is. So what the hell, it's short.

Thanks, you two.

Lisa, definitely start with The Sunne in Splendour. It's her 1st publication, the only standalone book she's written, and it's inarguably her masterpiece. It also has a legendary story to it. She wrote it when she was a young law student after years of research before the internet (early 1980's). She was shopping the manuscript around to different publishers, but in between, she was moving into a new apartment, left the manuscript on her car's trunk, and when she came back to get it, it was gone. She insinuated she suspected a certain someone but has never mentioned a name. Anyway, she was so traumatized by losing all that work, she stopped writing altogether. It wasn't until she'd graduated and had been working for years for a tax law firm, that she up and quit one day and decided to write it all over again from scratch. I love that story, and TSiS is my all-time favorite in the genre. It totally converted me to historical fiction but set a high bar. It's also one of the few books I'll reread.

ETA: I've had All Systems Red on my Kindle for a long time. The reader reviews sold me. Might have to pull that one out.

So many books. So little time. However, now that we've sanity back in the White House, Pentagon, and State Dep't., I feel like I can finally get back to my pre-Trump reading concentration level.

oh pat Ive been thinking of you, so glad you are well, Re your order of reading, Im about half way through WCSS, and still amazing. She will indeed be missed but well remembered. Just saw her obit in NYT, does a very good job about what I loved about her writing, and how much of an impact she had ot readers and writers around the world RIP; hope you are somewhere having a mug with Richard the III, Henry and Eleanor, and Llewylyn at last.

ETA challenge yup, you are on!

What page are you on in WCSS? Take a breather for a couple of days and let me catch up. Then we'll do the 200pp/week thing until Dec. Sound good?

Um I exaggerated a bit - on pg 203. I'll wait :) BTW 200 pgs per week means we;d be done in one month not December. Or did you mean as we go through the books 200 pgs per week?

Yes. I meant all the books in chronological order.

I am having an overdue movie day with my Dad, but I plan on spending most of the night with Maude & Co. My post-retirement chronological read was a few years ago, so this is going to be kind of fresh.

ok then; are we discussing it as we read? or when we finish? Or are we just reading, which is fine for me

Whatever you feel like doing, Cindy, is good with me. It's not like these are new publications we want to protect against spoilers. Plus, it's all fairly well-known history, right?

I don't know if you noticed, but I opened a dedicated topic for us here.

Ha, yes I did see that!!! Cool, our very own discussion thread (and possiblly others who'd like to join) can I post it on Sharon's FB page?

All my library books came in at once. I just read The Truants which is a bit like the Secret History meets The Great Gatsby but in England - regular girl who never fit in with her middle class family falls in with a posh crowd at college led by a charismatic professor and murder - maybe- ensues. There's addiction, compulsive lying, sad sex and a house on a remote Italian island. The narrator is a bit too dumb to be believed - don't go to that island! - and I'm always uncomfortable when a female narrator talks about her unkempt curly hair and bone-thinness because I'm never sure what they are telling me - but the Agatha Christie sideplot kept me engaged. Now I am reading Before the Ruins which also features a clump of young people, a death, a disappearance and a mysterious abandoned manor. There must be something in the water over there.

>31 laurenbufferd: "a posh crowd at college led by a charismatic professor and murder - maybe- ensues"

At this point, I think this scenario deserves its own genre designation.

>30 cindydavid4: Of course. I think that's an excellent idea, Cindy.

cool, will do

Before the Ruins was a bit of a surprise, especially coming on the heels of a not-very-satisfying novel about posh people, in crowds, and charismatic professors. This too started with a group of misfit teens and it has a mystery element to it - a death, a disappearance, a manor, a diamond necklace. But it's more coming of age and grittier. I found myself very moved, especially by the narrator whose wretched childhood causes almost insurmountable problems as an adult and whose struggle for wholeness and sanity becomes much more significant as the story progresses.

Mr Fufferd gave me Mary Tyler Moore's memoir After All for Christmas as we have been watching the MTM show religiously for several months, one show per night before bed. The show is genius. The memoir, heartbreakingly sad. I knew some things - the struggles with alcohol and diabetes, but what a crummy childhood. I really need to get to the MTM years.

After All was a wee disappointment. I wanted some serious MTM dish and i didn't get it. I found her road to recovery really sad, in some cases, hitting close to home and in others, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Oddly enough, another little book Growing Up Again of hers was much better, using diabetes as a lens to view her life through. I still need the gossip about the MTM show but where to find it?

Just started Secrets of Happiness.

Getting caught up with my New Yorkers and I came across this by Joyce Carol Oates:

This is Not a Poem

Here's a bit:

"...sere grasses hiss-
ing like consonants
in a foreign language...."

I mean, seriously. Is there anything that woman can't do?

I just slogged through A Country Doctor by Balzac and am a few pages into Country Music Originals: the Legends and the Lost.

Last week I finished up Robert Gipe's Weedeater, which is the second in his Canard County trilogy. It was a sweet, offbeat book about the many ways you can't save the folks you love—and also the shifting currents of motherhood and friendship, whether art or politics can redeem a body, class, drugs, community—the book is set in early 2000s Appalachia—and unrequited love. Along with the story itself, Gipe does a fantastic job with both the dialogue/dialect—no easy thing to do well, and he nails it—and the wonderful, fourth-wall-breaking, deadpan illustrations that help move the story along. This is way different from anything else I've read lately, compassionate and quirky without ever being cute, and I liked it a lot.

I also read the very short All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells's Murderbot series. It hadn't sounded like anything I'd like, but a few friends sang its praises to me, and they were right—it's science-fictiony enough to be entertaining in that vein, but also whimsical and action-packed. Plus Murderbot is really charming. Much as I don't love series, which always seem to run out of juice as they go, I'll probably try some more of those.

And speaking of series, I'm about halfway through the third in Gipe's trilogy, Pop: An illustrated novel, and while I'm not sure I have the same degree of love for it as the first two—there's more action, more new characters, and the interiority I liked in the others isn't quite there—it's still a lot of fun. I talked to Gipe for a Bloom piece that's going up in a couple of days, and he's really interesting... one of those cases where talking with an author augments the book for me, much as I always try to keep those things separate.

I'm a little late getting to Shuggie Bain but gosh, it's so good that I'm glad I waited until I had a lot of cooped-up (pandemic + ice storm + part time job) time on my hands. I do think Stuart has a habit of ending every chapter on a ta-da/cliffhanger/revelation/take-THAT kind of moment, but part of me thinks it's a nod to Dickens or Trollope or any other of a dozen doorstopper authors who serialized things back in olden times so I'm not really objecting. But you do get trained to expect something surprising or at least super dramatic at the end of every chapter, so it does the opposite of what he intends and ends up not surprising at all. That's not a complaint, I guess - the whole thing is very good.

Finished Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Chilling and timely. I loved it.

Then on to What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron. Dark and strange in the most fabulous way. And such beautiful writing.

The Cameron book is so weird and lovely -- it did make me think a little of his previous Andorra, which in comparison feels a little like a dry run for this one.

I have Shuggie Bain and am waiting for the right time to read it.

I had loads of things out of the library and since I wasn't going into work, had lots of time to read.

Black Widows you know I will watch or read anything about polygamous cults so this was right up my alley. Husband dies in a grisly murder, which one of his wives did it? As a mystery, it's a bit meh, it's researched to within an inch of it's life, and that ending is just too good to be true but I still enjoyed it. The pace is brisk, the characters are very engaging and the story really sucks you in. A few red herrings along the way keep the story lively as well. I don't know why but you can tell that the author is British even though the story takes place in rural Utah.

Little Cruelties Very clever novel about three completely reprehensible brothers in a morally suspect family. One has died and the other two at his funeral but you really don't know which one is a dead until you get to the end. If you enjoy novels about posh people behaving REALLY badly, this will tick every box.

The Third Rainbow Girl this was a toughie. I rarely read true crime - actually never- so I don't know if the structure is unusual or if the fact that the crime is never completely solved is true to the genre. As it is, I'd give it an A for effort but the execution is a bit lacking.

The narrative is split into two - the story of the crime, the search for the murderer, the trial(s), the effects on the community and Eisenberg's own story - her arrival in West Virginia first as a volunteer and then a paid employee at an organization that assisted young girls in career and college counseling, her relationships, her sexuality, her connection to the place, her grappling with the poverty, sexism, racism in her community as well as the tremendous sense of camaraderie, fellowship, and joy she experienced. She tries hard to get out from under the stereotypes of Appalachia without ignoring the complexities and how repressive it is for men and women both.

I think the biggest problem is that her personal story is not that interesting and she is not quite strong enough as a writer to make you care. Which is not to say that she doesn't make some very strong points along the way and one's I will continue to think about. She is wise about the nuances of Appalachian culture - like anywhere, it's not just one thing. I just don't think her ideas about the community and the crime itself add up to something greater than the sum of its parts. It feels like an antidote to Hillbilly Elegy etc but I just wish that the writing was better. Or it had been an essay.

Secrets of Happiness is spectacular but I think DG is reading it so I won't say anything except that never has a novel about ideas been so buoyant.

>44 lisapeet: DG probably isn't reading Secrets of Happiness unless he got another copy, because I haven't made it out to the post office yet to mail it. But I will! Probably this week. The NYC post office is the worst, because there are no parking lots and neither of mine is near the house or near public transportation, so since I'm not commuting downtown it's a trek. But I'll get there!

Speaking of Appalachia and getting away from that Hillbilly Elegy, I finished the final installment in Robert Gipe's Canard County trilogy, Pop: An Illustrated Novel. I didn't love it as much as the first two (Lauren, did you read Trampoline back when I was raving about it a few years back?) but that was a lot of love to live up to. This one's more sprawling and less intimate than Trampoline and Weedeater, but a fun ride—there are ghosts and visions, teenage entrepreneurs, a murder, and at least one surprise reveal. If there's a lesson here, it's that things are not always what they first seem (except for the guy who gets killed), and it's good to approach what you think you know—people, regions, and politics—with care and attention. And the illustrations, as always, are top notch. I suspect this is Gipe's last Canard County book, and I'll genuinely miss the cast of characters.

I'm reading a book for LJ review, Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism—I love Joseph Cornell and I'm always up for an ambitious chunk of art theory, but this one's going slowly—probably because I'm reading it in the evenings when I'm totally bleary from sitting in front of a screen all day. I should have some nice reading down time this weekend, though.

Much more suitable to bedtime reading is the gorgeous Telephone Tales, a super thoughtful gift from dear Lauren B—dreamy little bedtime stories and fab illustrations on thick creamy paper, with inserts and foldouts... just the thing for my tired and jaded eyes.

Hey Lauren, Your link to Secrets of Happiness leads to the wrong book. I kept trying to figure out what was so special about it til I realized you were talking about the Silber one.

I finally read The Dutch House. Patchett never lets me down.

I liked The Dutch House too - quite a bit - and I have been let down by Patchett! I didn't like how everything was resolved so neatly by the end but I am sucker for a novel about a house.

I am reading Marianaand it's just the kind of thing for reading when you are home on a snowday or curled up on a rainy afternoon. It's just a delicious kind of novel with loads of things - food, clothes, interiors - set in and around London in the 1930s with a scrappy, not altogether likable young woman, coming of age.

I took a break from Joseph Cornell and read Jess Walter's The Cold Millions, which I liked a lot. It was a thoroughly enjoyable combination of setting, period, and historical period—the IWW labor wars in the first decade of the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest—with two itinerant Irish American brother running up against bosses, corrupt cops, and anarchist double-crossers. The pace was good, the writing very nice, and even though it was a boys' tale, there were a few fine kickass women characters as well, including real-life labor agitator Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the fictional, wonderful Ursula the Great, who does a burlesque act with a live puma and moves up in the world from there. The teenage protagonist, Ryan Dolan, is terribly sweet, too.

Before I go back to Cornell, my hold on Artificial Condition, another one of those Murderbot novels, just came in, so I'll read that first. It's another shortie.

>48 lisapeet: "The Cold Millions" was one of the first library loans I copped when I re-up'd my library membership. Unfortunately, it came in when I was still feeling poorly and having trouble concentrating. It had a bunch of holds on it, so I just returned it. I did read about the first 30pp or so and made a note to return to it sometime.

I'm taking a break from my Penman and reading The Arctic Fury about an all-woman, 19th century Arctic expedition.

I want to read that too Lisa.

I am reading The Once and Future Witches which honestly has no business being as good as it is. Late 19th c mash up of witches and suffragists, nursery rhymes and charms, fairy tales and dystopias. I honestly can't tell you why it works because it sounds just as twee as hell but it does and it's just loads of fun. Even though at 400+ pages, it's a bit too long!

OI also read a mystery by Nicci French (who I always get confused with Tana French) House of Correction. Much less formulaic than I expected, with a really engaging main character. A pleasant surprise.

>49 Pat_D: Pat, I think you'd like it.

>50 laurenbufferd: Lauren, you too. And hmm... I'm usually congenitally allergic to books with "Witches" in the title, but that sounds kinda interesting.

>50 laurenbufferd: The Witch book is written by the same author who wrote Ten Thousand Doors of January that Lynn really liked and recommended.

>50 laurenbufferd: I am reading The Once and Future Witches which honestly has no business being as good as it is. Late 19th c mash up of witches and suffragists, nursery rhymes and charms, fairy tales and dystopias.

Ok that hits all my buttons, add that one to the list! Tho Pats comment gives me pause because I really didn't like the January book. But I'll give it a go, sounds up my alley

I just finished That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye. It's a novella, really, translated from French and published by Two Lines Press. It apparently was a big hit in France. I've had a Two Lines Press subscription for a couple of years now, and I really love it. You rarely get a book that you've (or I've) heard of, and the books themselves are always interesting looking and nice to own.

Anyway, this one was kind of a highbrow Twilight Zone episode. I was puzzled throughout the first half, but then it got delightfully weird. Recommended.

I also am happy to have finally started Cantoras by Carolina de Roberts.

It takes place in Uruguay, beginning in 1977, when the country became ruled by an oppressive military government. Many things, including homosexuality, were punishable by torture, prison, and death. Five lesbians, singers (I've yet to discover how the singing comes into it), discover a tiny remote cape, where they make a home and community for 35 years.

I don't know anything about the history of Uruguay, but I'm going to brush up quickly in the hope that I will enjoy the book more.

That Two Lines Press sub looks really intriguing. Not that I need to bring more books into this house, but when did that ever stop me?

I've had Cantoras on hold from the library a bunch of times and had to pass it up because I was reading other things and the time wasn't right. Let me know what you think, though—I should probably try again.

I'm interested in that too.

I just started Shuggie Bain and it's so good and so painful all it once.

I had never heard of publishing house subscriptions until I saw a discussion about them on Goodreads. There's a woman who runs several groups there who talks about them a lot. Her name is "lark" and she is an amazing reader and reviewer. Does anyone else know her? She also turned me on to the Graywolf Press subscription, which is great. I finally found a cure for my envy of those who receive pre-pub books!

I've been hesitant to talk about reading Shuggie Bain because it's hands down my favorite read of the past five or six years, and I've noticed that I'm already defensive about it. Like if someone says they didn't like it, my esteem for them actually lowers a bit and I wonder where the flaw in their education was.

I said it elsewhere, but Agnes Bain is truly one of the great complicated (and I mean COMPLICATED, with all that entails: good, bad, absolutely terrible) heroines of modern lit, even if she doesn't quiiiiite fit the hero mold. And when I say "doesn't quiiiiite," I mean "does not at all."

dg, I am within 50 pages of finishing Shuggie Bain and you are right, it is all that. My quibbles are so small they are almost non-existent and I almost think they are additions that his editors asked for to explain some sociological something about Glasgow. I have audibly gasped and this morning something was so dark and horrible (and yes, it involved Agnes and one of her neighbors) that it made me bark with laughter. Even with all the sorrows in the novel, it is also a joy to read.

I'm so looking forward to this. Holley is reading it now.

I have that too, and ditto.

Finished Artificial Condition, the second installment in Martha Wells's Murderbot series, which was fast-paced and fun. The short format along with the engaging voice inclines me to keep on with this series—they're real palate cleansers in between other reading.

Now back to Joseph Cornell for a bit. Still waiting on my hard copy, but now that I've had a rest from PDF-reading I feel ready to jump back in and it's moving right along. It really feels like 1980s ArtForum, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

>60 laurenbufferd: Okay, well that's it. I've had "Shuggie Bain" on my Kindle for quite a while. Guess I'll check it out tonight.

I’m almost finished listening to Galveston by the creator of True Detective.I haven’t seen True..yet,but I’ve wanted to read this since it first came out. I really dislike the entire thing. It’s heavy duty noir which I usually like,but this is so cliche and annoying.

I just turned the last page in Shuggie Bain, but it's too soon to type about at length or with any intelligent assessment. Except, I have to say here and now that Leek will hold a tender spot in my heart for a long time. The part where Shuggie puts 2+2 together and realizes Leek's been watching over him all this time? That about destroyed me.

With no distractions, I should finish the first book in our Penman read tonight.

I've also started 3 other books: This is How They Tell Me the World Ends, The Arctic Fury, and The Rebel Nun.

ETA: Corrected title spelling.

>65 Pat_D: I want to hear more about The Rebel Nun just because the title is so awesome.

Pat, I could slow down if you'd like, its more fun to discuss if we are on the same book :)

>67 cindydavid4: Yeah, sorry, Cindy. I got distracted with a few other reads. It's just the two of us, so I see no reason to stick to a schedule. It's my second chronological read but I'm not skimming. It's been so long I'd forgotten a lot of the details.

>66 lisapeet: I'll report back. It's an intriguing story, isn't it? It's based on real events though completely unfamiliar to me.

BTW: Amazon has it on sale for the Kindle for $8.69

>69 Pat_D: Even better, my library has it! At some point when I'm out from under my required reading, I'll check it out (literally).

Pat, I think one of the great things about Shuggie Bain is that the title tricks you a little into thinking it's going to be mostly about Shuggie and while, sure, it is, it's also EQUALLY about the other Bains and the fullness of the depiction of each member of the family (and even some of the neighbors) comes a complete surprise. Even Catherine, who basically disappears early on, is pretty clearly outlined.

FFS. I just typed a few thoughts and lost the whole damn post somehow. I'll come back later to repost them.

For about the whole first half of the book, I kept wondering why it wasn't titled "Agnes Bain." As it turns out Shuggie is the hero of the story. Although, IMO, nothing is possible without Leek's quiet guardianship. Catherine was the pragmatic one. No Irish romantic, that one. She was always going to get out first chance she got.

I agree with everything said about Shuggie Bain so far. I felt very strongly about all of Agnes' children.

I had to read The Kingdoms for review. One of those books where I don't know if its me or the book. I though it was a mess. It could be that I am not someone who loves time travel stories because they hurt my brain. This felt esp convoluted.

I finished Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden which I don't imagine anyone here will even be interested in. It's by rose Simpson and it's about the brief years that she was a part of the Incredible String Band. I loved it - but it's very much my thing. I didn't think she was such a great writer but her perspectives a unique one. And somehow she never lost sight of who she was and as the rest of the band drifted into Scientology, had the wherewithal to pack up and get out.

I'm reading essays in The Ballad Collectors of North America for fun and also The Snow Ball which is a tiny baroque masterpiece.

I am for some idiotic reason listening to the Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. I found a copy in a lfl and I can’t throw away a book until I’ve read it. This has to be one of the worst books I have ever read,and people love Tyler! I listen to whole sections and I’m amazed by the triviality and uselessness of the whole thing. I remember taking an English class thirty years ago and the prof said he never would imagine he would consider Ann Tyler a great American writer, the book is horribly painful. Just trivial and idiotic.

Ninth House . It's fantasy, college murder-y, set at Yale where all the secret societies are actually magical. Like grown up Harry Potter with junkies and assaulting ghosts and hideous preppies. I don't know why it's so fun but it is.

>74 alans: at the time Tyler was one of my fav writers; I loved her querky style and even querkier characters. Got to a point tho that several years back, all of her books were the same, just change characters and setting. So its been awhile. But that book, plus others, were gold to me (realize that I have not reread them in a while and am very hesitant to do so!)

However your mileage may vary; so carry on

Another author of that time for me was John Irving. Same thing, loved several of his early books but then I stopped reading them.

>75 laurenbufferd: started reading that and stopped when it started getting too dark. Should try again I think

>75 laurenbufferd: I loved Ninth House! A little disappointed that it ended on an obvious to-be-continued note, but I'm totally up for the next installment anyway. That combo of higher ed and dark supernatural makes me very happy.

cindy, there's a very gruesome image early on but if you can get past it, it's quite a fun read. so far.

I love Anne Tyler, but Accidental Tourist was a long time ago and if I recall correctly was quirkier than most of her others. Her writing is deft and I find her current novels to be so smooth.

>79 laurenbufferd: ok I think I will, maybe I'll close my eyes when I turn the page :)

Like Lauren, I read Brigid Brophy's The Snow Ball, and what a fun, odd, and specifically atmospheric novel it was—I can't think of anything else like it I've read. It all takes place during one New Year's Eve costume party in England in the early 1960s, I think (it was published in 1964), with the guests dressed as 18th-century figures—many out of Don Giovanni, which makes me wish I were more up on my opera, but it's not necessary to enjoy the slightly plotless action: a one-night stand, a deflowering, a death, a pompous professorial lecture, and a bunch of missed connections with masks on that make the whole thing quite delicious.

Also finished Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, in which journalist Tom Vanderbilt follows the lead of his grade-school-age daughter, who apparently takes endless lessons, as good Brooklyn children do, and sets out to cultivate "beginner's mind"—the cognitive shift that comes with learning a new skill, and the benefits that accrue when doing it at age 50+. It's pop-psychy, which I didn't mind, and you have to maneuver around the fact that his learning process, while enjoyable to follow, still involves a succession of fabulous teachers, coaches, surfing camp in Costa Rica, "swimming wild" off the coast of Corfu on vacation with his family, etc. But hey, either he's got the resources and time or he's spending down his book advance, and either way more power to him—they're interesting experiments, and I enjoyed the book. I meditate, and there's a lot of talk about beginner's mind, and also approaching life with a sense of curiosity, and you know... After 12-1/2 months of this I have ZERO curiosity left in my body. I'm getting stuff done to get stuff done and then afterward I have no energy for fun, and I'd really like to goose my engagement factor a little. I have a lot of free sketching courses on YouTube lined up, and maybe if I can find time to watch them that'll get my creative juices flowing. But right now oy, I got nothin'. (Which is why I'm going to write a Bloom essay on it this week, which will probably be kind of a Bataan Death March of creative flow but what the hell, I'm supposed to fill my slot on Tuesday and it totally slipped my mind, so.)

Now I'm reading Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses. I know, so cheerful!

I loved An Inventory of Losses - it's the type of book I frequently fall for, like Mark Doty's Still Life with Oysters and Lemon

>83 DG_Strong: I'm actually going to have to put it on hold for a month or so—I need to read five novels in April to get ready for an LJ author event I'm moderating. It's really DENSE, kind of a dwarf star of a book, and I feel like rushing through it isn't the way to read it. Although I had to read the second essay, on the Caspian tiger, with a hand over my eyes—that description of the animals fighting in the Roman circus was too much for this snowflake.

I have yet to read Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, though it's been on my wishlist forever, mostly because of your recommendation, DG.

I'd like to know what five novels, Lisa.

The Brophy was wonderful and weird, wasn't it?

I'm kind of curious about the Vanderbilt book - in part because I've tackled learning two new things in the last two years and I think a lot of has to do with my age and just having zero fucks to give about whether I am 'good' at them or not. But your description is a bit off putting.

I loved Ninth House and was really impressed how she pulled all the threads together, in part, because I felt like The Kingdoms was kind of a mess and it was fresh in my mind. I just finished How much of These Hills is Gold? which I thought was pretty amazing and a bit like There, There in that it makes you think literally about the land you walk on and every lie you were told in school. It's also a beautiful book stylistically, very elegant.

>85 laurenbufferd: It was indeed. Like nothing else I've read in a while, with such vivid, oddball visuals.

I think I gave the Vanderbilt book kind of short shrift. There's a lot more to it than that little whiff of privilege, and really I only mentioned it because it felt like it was a bit of an elephant in the room, but I also could have been cranky. I mean, the New Yorker sends its reporters all over the world and I don't sit here thinking, "Gee, I wonder how many frequent flier miles they had to redeem to do THAT?". The whole thing was a bit lite but also interesting, and I've committed myself to using it at least as a jumping off point for a Bloom essay.

My five April books:
Uwem Akpan, New York, My Village
Bernhard Schlink, Olga
Lauren Groff, Matrix
Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
Margaret Verble, When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky

They're all fall books, I think.

>68 Pat_D: no worries, I finished Devils Brood and really think it would have been a better book without so many minor characters having conversation to tell us whats happening. But maybe I need to take a break perhaps? BTW a celebration of life is planned for April 22 7 pm live on Facebook (not sure how this works ....) Anyway if you want more info go to her FB page.

>86 lisapeet: Oh I am very interested in The Lincoln Highway, really like Towles keep me posted on what you think

Im in between about five books right now that are the same I've been reading but have just been very distracted this last month. It'll calm down eventually

>87 cindydavid4: Dang, woman. You're way ahead of me.

I'm a recent library ebook convert, but I haven't figured out how to plan my loans. Either nothing is available, or all my requests show up at the same time.

For example The Lamplighters came in and now that's 3 library books I have to get through.

>87 cindydavid4: note: I am skimming a bit :)

I am dying to read Matrix!!!

>91 laurenbufferd: It's like Lauren Groff read The Corner That Held Them and decided to go from there! Total reading serendipity.

heh I was wondering about that!

>83 DG_Strong: I'm reading that right now!

LuAnn!!!

I read Luster in two days - what a book and what gorgeous crazy long sentences. There's a plot and it's a good one but its so much about being young and scrounging for a job and paying student loans and a black woman in NYC right now (well, not right now, it's pre-covid) that it almost doesn't matter what happens, it's just all that. I loved it.

I have to read a new Chris Offut for review so am reading My Father, the Pornographer which is superb. DG, have you read this? It might not be the right time but it seems very up your alley.

>95 laurenbufferd: I thought My Father the Pornographer was fantastic. (Also, in hardcover best cover ever!) Offutt's new novel comes out next month and is getting all kinds of great buzz from indie booksellers.

Oh yes, I am all caught up on Offutt.

>95 laurenbufferd: You know, I was kind of put off Luster by the plot—oh no, another young woman in publishing novel—but that makes me think I might like it after all.

I finished Lauren Groff's Matrix, which imagines the life of Marie de France, was pure fun—especially after having read The Corner That Held Them—another tale of an abbey set a couple of centuries later—earlier this year. Groff inhabits the "what if" of history really adeptly, and Marie's story is interesting, spirited, and ultimately infused with a gentle affirmation of faith that doesn't grate. I do love a good nun novel.

Now reading Margaret Verble's When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, which looks like it'll be really interesting as well.

I dropped everything, returned unread library books, because Willy Vlautin's new book is out now: The Night Always Comes. I honestly believe no other writer today captures the American Everyman's/woman's story so authentically.

The Night Always Comes.

I finished Willy Vlautin's new one in one sitting. I don't understand why his books aren't more popular. His stories of the downtrodden yet good-hearted are completely devoid of sentimentality and gimmickry. There's no convoluted use of literary devices, just plainly told stories about real peoples' struggles. Every single one of his books and I've read them all, leaves behind at least one unforgettable character who will break your heart. In Motel Life it's Frank and Jerry Lee Flannigan. In Northline it's Allison Johnson. In Lean on Pete it's Charley Johnson and Del Montgomery. In The Free it's the trio of Leroy, Freddie and Pauline. In Don't Skip Out on Me it's the half Paiute wannabe boxer, Horace. With his latest, The Night Always Comes, it's Lynette, who may be his most devastatingly authentic character yet. I have one small criticism of his latest, and it's when he gets a little too on-the-nose with the politics of the day, but it occurs only briefly and hardly warrants a mention. I know it's become a trite description, but I believe Vlautin's the closest thing we have to a modern-day Steinbeck.

"I don't understand why his books aren't more popular. His stories of the downtrodden yet good-hearted are completely devoid of sentimentality and gimmickry."

I believe you just answered your own question. There are a handful of authors I admire and read religiously stuck in the same boat, I think. I liked Lean on Pete quite a bit -- I'll see if I can round this one up.

I also really liked Lean on Pete. I'll definitely check out the new one. Thanks, Pat.

I liked Lean on Pete a lot too. I have The Motel Life and this new one, neither which I've read, but that characterization pushes me in that direction for sure.

I finished Margaret Verble's When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, which could have used a bit of tightening—and hey, it's a galley so it well might get it before publication—but it was fun. The setting was great bit of history to play with—Nashville amusement park in the 1920s—featuring a Cherokee woman who does a horse diving act, an unconventional murder mystery, and some of the best non-anthropomorphized animal characters I've come across in a while.

Now reading Bernhard Schlink's Olga, which is, so far, sooo old world but pleasant.

I think I know every writer and now I read about Willy Vlautin who I’ve never heard of so I’m really grateful for sites like this one. Will definitely check him out.

Have any of you read Anne Enright’s Actress? I’ve never read her,always on my list,but I got a very cheap copy of this and the story interested me. I didn’t get far and had to drop it. I can see why some people might like it,but I found it so trite and about nothing. I kept waiting for the big reveal and..I guess I expected the wrong thing. I find these days I need to read things that jolt me in some way. This was so bland and dull,dosed with Irish something.

>101 DG_Strong: Who are some of the ones you admire, deeg?

Here's a Web site with an excerpt from The Night Always Comes and multiple links to download an e-galley, although if there's one author who deserves support, it's Vlautin. All of his books are highly discussable, but this latest one, with its theme of homeownership = the American Dream is especially so and relevant.

I did a quick search through Vlautin’s work,could someone please suggest one to start with. One of them is about a woman obssesed with Paul Newman movies,not my thing.

I've been zooming through library books lately - When No One Is Watching which I'd give an A- for ideas but a lower grade for execution. Its kind of like a Get Out about gentrification in Brooklyn and it has some great points to make but the novel isn't paced right and it just ends in a mess. I'll give it a giant pass because I think it probably attracts readers who may not have put all the dots together and so perhaps is a palatable way to introduce some of the links between prison pipeline, gentrification, war on drugs, but for me, it was kind of a miss.

I also read Aftershocks which is a really superb new memoir by Nadia Owusu about her family and her personal struggle with mental illness and genetically inherited trauma. She grew up all over the world - Ethiopia, England, Italy - her mother is of Armenian descent and her father was from Ghana - and her mother left the family when Nadia was quite young. For me, the use of an earthquake as the lens to see how the break-up of the family affected her was quite effective. There is a tiny bit of oversharing and the constant shift in time and place can be a little confusing but mostly, I'd say this was an extremely well written and articulate memoir that offers something new.

I am reviewing Chris Offutt's new mystery Killing Hills - super for sense of place, but the actual crime is a snooze-fest. I am also reviewing Love and Fury to help out my editor. There are so many reasons I often avoid historical fiction but this is quite good.

Leave the World Behind has to be the worst book I’ve read since the last bad book I’ve read. I realized very late that it is a dystopian novel and that’s really not a genre I enjoy. The spookiness of the book,which is why I picked it,was done better by any episode of The Twilight Zone. The book is supposed to be a commentary on race but apart from the introduction of the mysterious visitors,there is no difference between the two couples. A very bad book which has received enormous praise and is apparently being made into a Netflix film. Really bad Stephen King. The idea of the book-something mysterious and terrifying out there-but never actually explained is exactly like a play which won the Pulitzer Prize years ago.

>107 alans: Based upon the positive response from people here who've read it, Lean on Pete seems to be the most popular (it also enjoys that very rare thing: an excellent film adaptation). I became a diehard fan after reading his first novel, Motel Life. I'm completely biased, but I think all of his books are wonderful. Even Northline (the Paul Newman obsession one you mentioned), which is about much more than a movie star fanatic.

Reading and enjoying The Greenhouse Think I will need to look up her other books (which I hope are translated!)

Thank-you Pat

Finished Bernhard Schlink's Olga, which is kind of hard to sum up. It's the story of one woman's life from a couple of points of view—her narrative, that of a man who was a boy and then a man in her company, and then a third section of her letters to her absent lover. Understated and old-wordly, this is a lovely, solemn novel of the many ways a person can be lonely—including while being loved—and still have a life that matters in ways large and small. But mostly small... it's on the sad side.

Now reading Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway.

Thats on my list!

For me, there is something abotu Schlink that is literally lost in trasnaltion. I don't dislike but I read his books, think 'huh' and then totalyl forget them five minutes later.

I am reading Red Island House and it is everything!!!!!!!! Nancy, you would love this. Any Andrea Lee is worth the wait and this is no exception.

I'm reading The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey, a library hold for which I'd been waiting. So far, the first 20pp or so have been about nothing but a dress one of the characters selected for an event. Unlike the last 3 holds that came in for me, I'm determined to finish this one before it disappears from my Kindle, because some of the reviews were very intriguing. However, it's trying my patience.

Wow, Lauren. I have never even heard of Andrea Lee. Thank you!

I really regret not picking up a galley of Red Island House—the blurb didn't excite me, but all the excerpts I've read have been terrific. I'll probably end up borrowing it from the library at some point.

Lisa, it's heavenly................

I found you’re thread over here. Been keeping up with your reading on notifications when you post a review. Glad to have found you.

>120 blackdogbooks: Hey, long time no post! Good to see you here, and hope you're well.

Yea! Whatcha reading, blackdogbooks?

Glad to see a newcomer posting, blackdogbooks.

So, after a rocky start (I really didn't think I'd last long with this one), I finished The Echo Wife this morning. It's left behind a disturbing and freaky afterglow. The book would benefit from much better, maybe even ruthless editing (too many minutiae that lend nothing to the story or pacing), but the plot is like the proverbial car wreck from which you can't stop looking.

An award-winning pioneer in the neuro-mapping of clones, sacrifices her marriage, to a likewise brilliant scientist/professor, because she refuses to give up her career for childbearing. I won't give away any more of the plot, but be forewarned there are many gruesome aspects to cloning that go into some stomach-churning detail. I don't know if all those details are accurate, or even scientific, but there are really upsetting issues I'd not given much thought to. Such as, the dispensing of clones that become, essentially, biohazard waste. Will labs take care to terminate them humanely after consciousness? Will labs terminate those clones whose "conditioning" as perfect replicas turn out to be faulty (a "perfect replica" can't just be grown, healed bone fractures, scars, dental histories, etc. must be matched to the original). The "conditioning" is brutally described. For those with enough stamina for such things, this is a very thought-provoking read with themes highly controversial and discussable.

Now, I'm off to start the second in our Penman chronological read.

Thanks for the welcome -

I just finished up:

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell - this one should have been right up my alley, but there was something just off about all of the stories.

Dark Night of the Soul - this was one of the most difficult books I've ever read, religious or otherwise. There was so much in each line that it was overwhelming at times. Probably a re-read at some point.

Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko - my second of hers, and I preferred Ceremony. This was more epic in scale, but still with the same mystical quality. And it's deeply rooted in the desert landscape, which is also up my alley. She's a far too often overlooked author.

>124 blackdogbooks: I read Almanac of the Dead about 25 years ago and don't remember any of it (other than the fact that I lent it to a short-term coworker who never returned it), but I recall that it was different from anything else I'd read at the time and I was into it. As with a lot of stuff I read back then, I wonder what I'd think of it now—but probably not enough to reread it.

I do have Vampires in the Lemon Grove and I like Karen Russell a lot so I'll probably give it a shot at some point.

You should try Ceremony.

I loved Ceremony. Extraordinary book.

I finished the very very nutty new Charles Baxter this morning The Sun Collective
. It starts very prosaically, a retiree on his way to a shopping mall to walk with some of his buddies. On the light rail, and then again at the mall, he encounters two young people who are part of a cult/religious group/commune/ anarchist organization called the Sun Collective who believe in what they call a termite revolution - destruction from within. There's a mind altering drug called Blue Telephone and a woman who survives a small stroke, only to engage in dialogue with her cat and dog. There's a horrible president who seems not unlike DT and references to Minneapolis' radical past and socialist politicians, but oddly enough, nothing about race.

It was tremendously readable and I love Baxter but I can't help feeling like there's a hole in the story where Floyd should be - or at least, the precursors to what happened, esp because there is a political element to the book. I know it's not fair that he didn't include the murder of George Floyd - you can't blame an author that left something out that may not have happened before he wrote the book but somehow, the overall whiteness, the reference to the state's past radical politics but not systematic racism, and the two characters that were specifically identified as African American were barely more than sketches and the fact that I was reading this during the final week of the trial made something about the novel feel hollow.

But I'd still recommend it, odd as that may seem.

I am about to read my first Nicole Kraus! To Be a Man.

I liked the Kraus and I may give one of the novels a spin. I don't know why I''ve been so resistant to her - I think she was over hyped and I was cautious. A few of the stories were just exquisite, I wish she trusted the reader more to put it together; there a few stories that felt over explained. I thought I am Asleep but My Heart is Awake was a stunner.

Reading The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

Well that's two good recs for Ceremony, and the library's got it. I'll give it a try one of these days.

>128 laurenbufferd: I really liked that Kraus collection a lot. I haven't read anything else of hers, not for any particular reason. I do want to check out that Baxter—for me, anything he writes is worth taking a look.

I finished Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway, which was a bit overlong but engaging—a shaggy dog epic quest/road trip story with an interesting cast of characters, cheerful with more than a touch of malice. There was a character who reminded me of a young, American version of Julius in Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honorable Defeat, madly entertaining but with a dark seam. The end was really discomfiting, even for a person who doesn't like happy endings, and I'm still thinking about it.

Now reading Uwem Akpan's New York, My Village.

Oohla, I am on a ROLL.

Finished up The Final Revival of Opal & Nev. Super good and really engaging. It's about the rise of an iconic interracial Afropunk (for lack of a better descriptor) duo in the 1970s, their breakup, and the secrets that come to light when they try to reunite decades later for a comeback tour and told as if it were an oral history assembled by a music journalist who has a personal tie to Opal . The author wrote for Essence and Entertainment Weekly and she seems to have a great grasp of the music industry. Thoroughly enjoyable timely, well crafted and damn, it's a lot of fun too. I just watched the Powells interview with her (done by Nadia Owusuu, author of Aftershocks which I just read and thought was very good) and I like it even more now.

Nancy, this is a good one for you and Pat D. And of course, Lisa.

Thank you, Lauren!!

>130 laurenbufferd: Yay I have that! It looked like a Lisa book.

It's very NYC too. I think you will like.

Reading Memorial. Bryan Washington always makes me hungry.

Last week I finished:

Bearing an Hourglass by Piers Anthony - Not a bad fantasy read; part of a larger several book series. Anthony is a little bit of an oddity. I tried this after listening to an episode of This American Life about a young fan who ran away from home to end up at Anthony's home. The show featured the author quite a bit, including descriptions of his long Author Notes at the end of each book, which appealed to me. On balance, the author note was my favorite part of the book, with him talking about his day-to-day life and writing process. Probably won't continue reading the author's book, especially after reading about his views on women in the Wiki on him.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat - a coming of age memoir-type novel, set mostly in Haiti. I've never read Danticat, but her prose is elegant and beautiful. I'll certainly be reading more of her.

Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville - another new author to me, even though he is very popular in his genre. This is a collection of short fiction. While it's not poorly written, the stories are just one step too weird for me, so I quit reading about 100 pages in.

Now, I'm reading The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin - he is better known for his series of vampire epics, and this was written first, closer in time to when he was in an MFA program, I think. It's really very good, surprisingly so. I loved the vampire series but didn't know how well his chops would translate to something more literary. But chops they are. Lyric and engrossing historical fiction.

Impressive, blackdog.

I was a HUGE fan of Lot and though I liked Memorial less, I still enjoyed it very much. It's kind of a shaggy dog, not a lot happens - a couple are separated when one goes to Japan to see his dying father which puts an additional strain on a relationship that is already frayed. but there is something about Washington's style which is loose and yet precise, that makes you feel like you are hanging with him for the day and it's just so engaging. Like messy, imperfect but beautiful improvised jazz because you know you need a TON of skill to create something that seems so effortless.

But don't read it hungry because this couple is always eating.

I was a huge fan of Piers Anthony early in my all sci/fi fantasy all the time mode in HS. Loved the Xanth series. Wasn't till I tried to reread it after college I realized how bad it was. Tho I do remember loving Bink, who didn't think he had any magic like others around him, to find out what his real magic was -

>134 blackdogbooks: I read a lot of Piers Anthony as a sf-loving pre- and early teen, but I don't think I remember any of it. That's a neat pile of books, bd.

I finished New York, My Village, which is really too early a draft for me to critique it... I have a feeling it's going to be touched by a lot of editors between now and when the book drops. Some interesting, and difficult, background about the Nigerian Civil War, which I knew very little about. That's five out of five books for my panel... now I just have to come up with some clever questions before 1 p.m. tomorrow.

Back to Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism (I finally got a print copy!) for an LJ review due soon.

I was a huge fan of Piers Anthony early in my all sci/fi fantasy all the time mode in HS. Loved the Xanth series. Wasn't till I tried to reread it after college I realized how bad it was. Tho I do remember loving Bink, who didn't think he had any magic like others around him, to find out what his real magic was -

Just finished Fireweed another excellet YA book by Jill Payton Walsh, about two kids fending for themselves during the blitz.

I loved Fireweed when I read it as a kid. Probably the first thing I read about the Blitz.

Excellent description of living during the Blitz. Was disappointed in the end had so many questions unanswered.

""I wanted the houses I knew to be back up again, I wanted grown ups to be there. I wanted to be told what to do. I wanted to be worried about; I didn't want to have anyone else to care forI didnt want anyone to need me at all. I wanted to be back in wales being yattered at, and given hot buns for tea; I wanted to be safe, I wanted my own father I wanted my Dad"

The cry of displaced children everywhere

I'm reading Lady Joker -- or the first volume of it, anyway -- and it's just the sort of thing I love, some nutty complicated crime story with long discursive detailed sections on COMPLETELY OTHER THINGS like, oh, how to run a brewery. Vol 2 is due to be translated and published by next summer, and that's such a DG thing to do, read a 500 page volume 1 of something that I will forget by the time the second half comes out.

dg, did you read Maud's Line? I sent you a picture this morning. It's a very DG book in that not a lot happens and it takes place in Oklahoma in the 1920s. The plot itself has been told a million times - young girl in rural setting yearns for more - but there is something unexpected here, a vivid sense of place and community that takes this to another level. The ending made me gasp.

Highly recommend AND there's a prequel Cherokee America.

While searching for something on my shelves, I happened upon a book by David Lodge that I don't think Id read (read most of his stuff) out of the shelter about a boy growing up during the Blitz, who later takes a trip to visit his sister, working for the US army in Heidlburg Started reading it; like fireweed, very close examination of the horror of the blitz and afterwoods the years of deprivation caused apparently by US police toward aid. He has just gotten to his sisters and he definitly is just off the boat. Well see what happens

Also started Jack and just in the first few paragraphs I was hooked. But Robinson does tend to do that to me.

>142 laurenbufferd: Oh I loved Maud's Line --- didn't know there was a prequel.

I think I first read about it on one of those guardian lists a few years back....

Reading a wonderful collection of essays Loitering by Charles D'Ambrosio.

>145 blackdogbooks: I've had a galley of that forever, and have heard such wonderful things about it—thanks for the reminder. I'll bump it up.

My author panel went really well. Everyone was delightful and very engaged, and gave interesting answers—nobody was phoning it in, which I appreciated. Lauren Groff's Matrix was far and away my favorite: solid historical fiction, strong female characters, Middle Ages, nuns, good writing. It's out in September, I think, but those of you who think it sounds good should keep it on your radar.

I finally finished Marci Kwon's Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism, which I'm reviewing for LJ... in case I get frustrated with life and work, I need to remember the fact that I'm the arts editor's "go-to Joseph Cornell person," which is a nice station in life to have arrived at. The physical book is absolutely gorgeous, the font a bit small and dense for my old eyes but that's no fault of the book's, but I'm really glad I have it in addition to the PDF (I say "in addition to" rather than "instead" because the PDF is great for blowing up images to get a better look, cf old eyes). The book looks to situate Cornell in the cultural movements of the time, which includes schools of art such as Surrealism, dance, poetry, film, commercial graphics, and also classical painting, which was a great referent of his. It's very heavy on art history and art theory, so it's not a light read or a bio, but it's a really interesting deep dive into his work and the milieu that influenced it. She also features three artists who were influenced by or connected to him in the Epilogue, which makes for some good continuity. Altogether I liked it, though it was very dense and took a little time to digest.

And now, wow... I can read anything I want! I think I'll go back to Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses, since my library hold ran out when I had to jump on all that work reading.

You won't be disappointed by the D'Ambrosio.

I've been dancing around Lauren Groff awhile, looking for a copy of something in my book haunts to try.

>146 lisapeet: Everyone was delightful and very engaged, and gave interesting answers—nobody was phoning it in, which I appreciated. Lauren Groff's Matrix was far and away my favorite: solid historical fiction, strong female characters, Middle Ages, nuns, good writing.

Lauren Groff's appearance at the ABA's Winter Institute was a standout for me. Which is saying something, because the panel was called "The Novelist as Citizen" and her co-panelists were Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colson Whitehead. Far from "phoning it in" her answers to every question had me scrambling to take notes or thinking "I want to remember that!"

Of course, this is the woman who once told an interviewer who asked how she balanced her work life and family life "I understand that this is a question of vital importance to many people, particularly to other mothers who are artists trying to get their work done, and know that I feel for everyone in the struggle. But until I see a male writer asked this question, I'm going to respectfully decline to answer it."

Which made me a fan for life.

ETA: I tried to provide a link to the Novelist as Citizen event but rats, you need to be a member of the ABA to see it.

I cannot wait for that book to come out!!!!! And Lincoln Highway sigh, fortunately I have a few books on hand to read while waiting, grrrrr

Great quote from Lauren Geoff.

Finished Jack, and well, love her writing but we are in his head for the entire novel, and I grew tired of him repeating his problems over and over again page after page. Kinda a forgone conclusion what happens at the end, but I wanted more conversation with him and Della. And of course wanted the world to act human....The first 70 pages were just sublime. Not sorry I read it, but I was expecting more.

Continuing to read Medusa Uploaded for my sci fi group last thursday. Hadnt finished yet, didn't mind being spoiled, but I still want to know how it all happened. Amazing book,mayb need to read the sequel

And rereading Mirror and the Light for Club Talk book discussion. Im picking up on so much that I missed the first time

Just finished up The Bluest Eye. Morrison may be the most uncompromising writer, ever. This edition, circa 1993, had a wonderful afterword from her ruminating on the book and its place in the world, which was extremely timely.

>152 blackdogbooks: I still think The Bluest Eye is her best book, by quite some distance.

I've read three others and I quite liked Paradise. Beloved was just a brutal read.

have several book groups I am reading for this month and next, so I have a slew to read before or during June. the books for my RL groups are ones Ive read, but need to reviw. modern fiction is reading Olive Again my sci fi group is reading song of achilles which means I will have to reread Circe need to finish Mirror and the Light for out group read here, and i am reading Travels with Herodotus for May's Meet the Press Theme. And oh yeah havent settled on a book I want to read for the childhood theme in Reading Globally. Then next month for the Time theme in June, Ancient Lands

Think I'll finish the Mantel one and the travels one, and Circe. Ill worry about Junes reading some time. good thing Im retired, tho getting cloned would really help

I'm reading the depressing and impressive Shuggie Bain.

Finally finished Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses, after having to let the library swallow it again and doing a whole bunch of work-related reading in between, and then just having it be a slow burn in general. The book is a series of essays with a few fictional and autobiographical pieces in the mix, all taking wildly different views of things that have disappeared in one way or another—extinct animals, demolished castles, islands that sunk back into the ocean, the lost poems of Sappho, a lost legendary film, and more—through deep dives into research and the resulting rabbit holes, imagined episodes, and personal reminiscences. Because each chapter is so different it was very stop-and-go reading for me, and some carried me along more than others. What I did like was what a love letter it is to deep research and the fact that the flights of fancy it can inspire—the what-ifs, the missing connections imagined out of whole cloth—are just as valid a response to an archival item as the facts. Asking questions is a huge part of research, and no one knows, when they start out, exactly which questions are going to prove useful to the search. And Schalansky's book really pays homage to that—asking creative questions as an art. I was almost less interested in the execution, which I found uneven—some really fun, others a bit tedious, and I had a lot of trouble with the chapter about the now-extinct Caspian tiger, which was all about animals fighting to the death in the Roman Circus, because I just can't take animal stuff. But otherwise, it was an interesting exercise, if not a page-turner (which it wasn't intended to be, so caveat lector).

And now for something completely different, I'm reading Rogue Protocol, the third in Martha Wells's Murderbot series. I just described it to my husband as "sf for people who don't like sf." I actually do like some sf, but I stand by my description. It's really fun.

An Inventory of Losses is my favorite book of the year so far, in the way that those types of books always are! See: Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, etc etc. That book Lauren gave me, The Sleeve Should Be Illegal, is a close second and is in the same category.

>158 DG_Strong: Both of those other books are on my wish list... I have no idea why I haven't read the Doty by now. And the Frick book looks excellent. I do have a Strand gift card burning a hole in my virtual wallet since Christmas, so maybe that's a good nudge to spend it.

Finished yet another Murderbot book, Rogue Protocol—they're quick reads. Thinking about what I said above about not being a big sf person, I do like it a lot in certain incarnations, but maybe not usually the kind of space opera that Wells riffs on here, so more credit to her—and I like how it's just techy enough to be cool but I can still understand everything. And, as every single person who has ever liked this series says, Murderbot is a great character. I do wish the installments weren't separate books needing to be borrowed, but maybe the suspense adds to the enjoyment.

Now reading The Salt Path, which I borrowed from the library by accident when I thought I was just checking to see if it was available. That's fine—I wouldn't have been looking if I wasn't interested in it in the first place.

>157 lisapeet: >158 DG_Strong: This was in the Shelf Awareness Newsletter this morning:

Jackie Smith has won the $10,000 2021 Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize for her translation of An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky (New Directions). Sponsored by the Goethe-Institut New York, the prize, celebrating its 25th year, honors "an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the U.S. the previous year."

>161 southernbooklady: Well deserved—it's a very good translation, and I bet was challenging.

Just back from a quick trip east to see my parents - I read Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno - it left me kinda cold but I think it was me. I just never engaged and a mystery by Nicci French that was perfect for a vacation and then leaving in a free little library.

I am reading The King of Infinite Space which is kind of a mess but also a retelling of Hamlet and I like that kind of thing.

The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell which fits so well with our Wolf Hall reading. Not very far into it but already enjoying reading the nonfiction account of his life. Well written and very readable.

Currently working on American Gods - only my second Gaiman, but I really like it so far.

Is anybody reading anything??

Yes! I've started reading again this week. I just finished Annihilation, 2/3rds of the way through The Library Book, which I'm really enjoying and just started burnt sugar.

American Gods and it's companion Anasi Boys are both interesting reads.

Lauren, I read my first Niki French this year. It was how you described - light and disposable - but just what I needed when I read it.

I've been a big slump for a while but read a bunch in the last month. Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom, a reread of Wide Sargasso Sea which I enjoyed, Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski was terrific, and Anxious People by Fredrik Backman was not his best but still an enjoyable read. I've just started Elizabeth McCracken's new story collection The Souvenir Museum; too soon to have an opinion though it is off to a goo start.

Im juggling several right now for June groups Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell, The Childrens Train In an Antique Land, and Achilles glad its hot here coz then I have an excuse to stay inside and read!

I am, I am! I read Raynor Winn's The Salt Path, which is an oddly affecting hiking memoir. The twist is that the author and her husband lost their home (which was also their livelihood) as part of a bad investment at the same time he was diagnosed with a terminal disease, so they just said fuck it and decided to walk the 630-mile path around the southwesternmost tip of England with not-great gear and almost no money. Which sounds like it could be all kinds of trite, but it was good—I liked it, anyway. Wynn has a very low-key style, and it feels more like a story you'd tell someone than a self-consciously literary effort. The fact that they weren't hobbyist hikers made it interesting—they were effectively homeless, and apparently looked it too, and people reacted accordingly. She doesn't go too deep into the civics of that, which I think was wise—as dire as their situation was, what they were doing was still a choice—but there was a certain desperation to what they were about. And it's more hopeful than dark, for all that. I suspect this just hit me at the right time, but I liked it and feel a bit soothed for having read it.

Now I'm reading Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green, which is rather different.

I started The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin and all I can say so far is it's a very me kind of book -- set in the west/Chinese railway worker/oh and assassin sort of deal. There is a little bit of... let's say magic realism and you know how I feel about that (not so good), but so far so good.

Lisa, I read The Red and the Green a long time ago and remember liking it very much. A couple of passages still live in my head. I'm putting The Salt Path on the stack.

If it makes you feel any better, DG, a friend an I came to the conclusion that one person's magic realism was just another person's realism.

The Salt Path sounds good. I have the Read and the Green on hold as well but just found out I am interviewing Lauren Groff about her new book and I best get going with that.

I am currently reading The Talented Miss Farwell which is a lot of fun - based on a case of a woman in Dixon, illinois who embezzled millions from the city. In the novel, the character pours money into art buying and has a totally double life - a high-flying, couture wearing art trader and the whiz-kid treasurer of a small midwestern town who hides the art in her barn. It would make an awesome Lifetime movie.

I also read Elissa Washuta's White Magic which was a bit tricky for me - I thought the middle essay was brilliant but the first essay felt like a muddle and the third one was a bit snoozey. I'm not sure if it was generational but some of her topics just escaped me - Pokemon Go and other online games, karaoke, a deep deep dive into Twin Peaks but she also had deep, mind altering ideas about the connections between deep ecology, violence and indigenous people. I think I read it too fast (library book) and I'm wondering already about a re-read.

>173 laurenbufferd: but just found out I am interviewing Lauren Groff about her new book

can I borrow your life for a few hours???? :)

Yes, but you might get yesterday morning when two of my employees got into a fight and then threatened to quit.

>175 laurenbufferd: ha! ok then

>173 laurenbufferd: She's a great interview, Lauren—you'll have fun, I think. She has a lot of interesting things to say about the book and its writing. Tell her I said hi! (And that reminds me—SHIT!—I forgot to send out thank-you's for the panel I did a month ago. Well, everyone will be pleasantly surprised to get them now.)

Iris Murdoch is such a trip in this one. Her sentences are like a boulder on a hill—they take a while to dislodge, but once you do they just ROLL and you have to scramble to keep up.

I'll take ANY GROFF TIPS YOU HAVE, Lisa.

Oh, Lauren -- we'll have to talk about The Talented Miss Farwell. It was a strong dislike for me --As I said somewhere, you can't name your character Becky AND reference the Ripley books in the title of your novel and not even ATTEMPT something on a Thackeray- or Highsmith-scale. Such a mouse, this Becky.

>173 laurenbufferd: "but just found out I am interviewing Lauren Groff about her new book"

Nuns!

And, ouf, work drama sounds very unfun.

DG, the Farwell novel didn't bother me that much. I found it a bit - grindy.... what's the word where it lacks spark and you can feel the plot gears ticking along. But I liked the plot. I found Becky less of a mouse and more someone who allowed herself to be a screen that everyone could project upon, keeping all her true motives, fears, and desires hidden.

Speaking of workman-like writing, I am reading a short biography of Pete Seeger. Very little new material or research, just putting the life into some political context. It was a gift To Everything There is a Season.

Now reading Song of Achillesfor our book group next week.This was her first book, think but her next book Circe much more finish. iPerhaps Circe felt so new, and actually changed from the mythology. Achiles is the same throughout, really Ill finish it tho

Also reading In an Ancient Land for LTs June theme of Rewriting the Past and loving it all over again. And its fun since over time Ive gotten familar with the research he did, Im getting much more out of it now

The new Lauren Groff - due in September - is very very good. It's very readable but there's some deep stuff happening there and some very subtle metaphors. First rate historical fiction. I was lucky enough to interview her today and she was so smart and charming. I'm a little in love.

Reading Cherokee America which is prequel to Maud's Line. Verble is such an odd writer - so matter-of-fact, very little artfulness and the pace is meandering at best but what a crazy beautiful mixed up bastard American history is - at least the way she tells it.

Gotta get back to Iris Murdoch.

Hello to All. Popping back in after a long absence and trying to catch up with what folks are reading. I can't let the previous mentions of Anne Tyler pass by without comment: yes, The Accidental Tourist is full of quirky folks, as is Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Yet they're authentic and loving portrayals of real people who aren't always so easy to love, and they're both two of my favorites. I haven't completely appreciated as much some of the more recent Tyler novels, but I think the newest Redhead by the Side of the Road is nearly back to classic Tyler at her best.
I'm on summer break-ish and have tried a few books I really hoped to love but didn't, so I won't mention those, but one I have absolutely loved is Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed. I'm also doing lots of Medical Humanities reading and thoroughly enjoyed Rachel Clarke's Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss, but it would need to be the right time for someone to pick it up.
I have a stack of books waiting that I never seem to have time to get to, but the mentions here of Shuggie Bain just moved that up to the top for my Provincetown vacation reading. And I really intend this to be the summer I finally read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

OMG! cd, are you coming to Provincetown? You know we moved back there. Would love to meet you, but would understand if your schedule doesn't allow. I think you have my email--not sure if I'd be allowed to post it here, but I'll try: nmsirventatyahoodotcom

Hey cd!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cd, how nice to see you.

I went to university forty years ago and completed a MA about fifteen years ago and I know I’m not alone in saying that university caused me to become a snob when I read or listen to what other people read. I’ve suffered a lot of difficulty with reading since then because I’ve lost the youthful love of reading just for fun. So as it’s summer I’ve decided to order two books that I would never admit reading in public before-The Other Side of Midnight and The Thorn Birds. My education taught me that life is too short to read this sort of thing,but I want to try and maybe I will find that indeed these books are a waste of time. I just miss the period of my life when I read endlessly for pleasure. I read Harold Robbins like a fiend as a teenager,I loved the sex and the nasty plots. I need to return to that joy in reading again. For decades my reading has felt like too much work.

>185 Nancy_Sirvent: OMG2! Email incoming!

And hello to everyone!

alans, That's understandable. I'll be dying to know how your experiment goes!

Go for it, alan.

Cherokee America was very enjoyable. I still don't get how this writer was nominated for a Pulitzer because the pacing plods and the writing is nothing to get excited about but in terms of capturing a whole bunch of things about the United States that you probably don't know anything about - man, it's all that. So recommended but with the caveats listed.

I am back to Murdoch The Red and the Green and now that I have made a sketch of the family tree (confusing with sisters marrying brothers), I'm good.

Snows of Kilimanjaro, a collection of shorts with some Nick Adams stories in there.

I finished reading Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green last week, which, as laurenbufferd will attest, was nutty, in a very good way—a combination historical novel about the week leading up to the Irish Easter Rebellion in 1916/extremely thwarted bedroom farce, laced through with a big dose of dark Catholic satire: Everyone in it wants to subject themselves to a stern master of some kind, no one gets laid, there is a lot of last-minute martyrdom, and the character who is the most sympathetic (and who is one of the few who makes out well in the end) is the biggest coward. If that sounds mean or tedious, though, it's not. But scathing, yeah, tempered with these absolutely stunning descriptions of the land, the sea, and the houses of Northern Ireland in 1916. Absolutely worth a read, but whatever you might expect from it, it's probably not.

Now I'm reading Jane Harper's The Survivors, which is a gobble-it-up thriller that I expect to finish before we leave for our overnight to Connecticut tomorrow, so I'll need to pack something else.

>184 cdcoleman: Hi cd! Good to see you around these parts!

>188 alans: Looking forward to hear how the fun reading goes, alan. I also get a little fried on have-to-read stuff, even if it's work I'd pick up on my own anyway, and a bit of a palate cleanser goes a long way.

>191 laurenbufferd: Veblen's most recent, When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, sounds similar: not very well written, and not particularly propulsive, but really interesting background—enough to carry it along for me (although it was also work reading).

>192 blackdogbooks: I went through a Hemingway phase in my teens but never read the short stories. Interested to hear what you think.

>193 lisapeet: My Hemingway phase is a life-long one - this is not my first foray into his short work. On balance, I like the Nick Adams stories in In Our Time better, but these are really good, too. But I'm a Hemingway fan, and his standing is not great these days - and I don't care. Still love his writing. In this one, the title story about Kilimanjaro is the standout, so far. I have a couple more to read before I'm done.

Only read on Iris Murdoch but it was funny - she's very wry.

Also currently reading The Empathy Exams and The River Why.

What Lisa said about The Red and the Green, except it's Dublin, hon, not N. Ireland. There are sentences to die for and so many guns, you know someone is going to die by the end. But not who you'd think. And it is like a farce with all the men showing up at a lady's house with sex on their minds and literally running into one another. Lots of self loathing and conniving, guilt and confusion. But the writing is off the hook gorgeous, I really don't know how she does it.

I loved the last line.

Reading Send for Me which is sweet and sad.

Oh whoops, you are correct about the location, Lauren.

I gobbled down The Survivors, which was a fun and compulsive thriller. Now reading another murder mystery for some reason, Children of Chicago, because it got a good review in the Times or something and I put it on my holds list ages ago. Already on like page three some kid is identified as being “16-years-old,” which is my ENORMOUS bete noir, but I guess I’ll charge ahead a bit further.

Send for Me wasn't bad but man, I'm kinda tired of the format for a lot of historical novels that have parallel narratives running, current and past. It feels a bit shopworn.

I have tons of stuff to read but somehow I drifted toward an unread Charles Baxter novel first light and it's just the thing, especially because it moves back in time. It's just so elegantly written.

>197 laurenbufferd: I so agree!!! Its rare that it works, usually the historical events are far more interesting than the current story, and usually the match up is not a good fit (People of the Book, looking at you!) I avoid them like the plague.

Mr Fox by Barbara Comyns is terrific. It’s as if Jean Rhys had a sense of humor!

I am reading Palace of the Drowned by Christine Mangan because I will literally read any book set in Venice and I thought her previous Tangerine was just the nearestmiss. I view all books marketed as Highsmithian with an eyebrow raised to the ceiling but she does get close...only her plots are filled with lady psychopaths, not gentlemen kind.

Well, my second-in-a-row thriller was way less of a hit than the first, and it made me appreciate Jane Harper's good writing, control of pace, and believable descriptions of people and places. I libraried Children of Chicago up based on a review somewhere and was seriously disappointed. The premise—which is why I picked it up in the first place—was good and spooky, positing an evil force from the darkest of the oldest fairy tales killing teenagers in present-day Chicago, and a tormented, entangled homicide cop on its trail. But the plotting didn't ratchet up the fear factor well, the characters—even the coffee-swilling, troubled officer, who should have been a real draw—felt flat, and what happened to the copy editor at Agora Books? There were way too many grammatical and punctuation errors for a published book. And the ending was way too dissatisfying for a thriller, even though I should have taken my cue from the number in the subtitle... I'm not big on series as it is, and I really resent when the first book just serves as a giant cliffhanger. On the other hand, I finished it, mostly because I did think the idea was cool.

so question for you former villians - someone on another thread mentioned they were going to read moby dick this summer, and I of course mentioned that we decided not to, including ulyses. Do you remember how that started? I remember having great fun topping each other but how it began escapes me

>200 DG_Strong: I've just begun reading Tangerine and am intrigued so far. I'm also reading The Long Call by Ann Cleeves.

Nina MacLaughlin's Summer Solstice is a lovely little chapbook, inside and out. Her seasonal essays are one of my favorite things in the Paris Review, and it's nice to reread this on a sultry night a week after the solstice when summer is really settling in here on the East coast. A dear friend sent me this for my birthday last year (Daniel from Readerville, for those of you who remember him) and I read it but didn't record it; I think I was too unsettled to think about the seasons turning in 2020. This year I get it, and even though not all MacLaughlin's summer nostalgia hits the same notes for me—in the last essay she admits to not loving the summer, at least not in New York, and it made me smile—this is a real ripe peach of a book.

Cindy, I think the rv annual "What are you not reading this summer?" was started by tpc (Paul Clark), with whom many of us are still in regular contact via Facebook. He's a terrific guy.

>205 Nancy_Sirvent: Oh I am too! thanks, I'll message him!

starting an absolutely remarkable thing and rereadingbolive, again for book groups

two book group reads: Olive, Again and Hank Greens an absolutely remarkable thing Having some minor surgery tomorrow, will spend the night at the hospital, hopefully I'll be able to read some of these!

I liked First Light especially the way it was told - present to past - but I found the middle a bit muddley. I think maybe Baxter can't sustain a novel.

I am about to start my first Cormac McCarthy but I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate it. I reread Someone at a Distance so I could get a full load of English domestic fiction with people behaving badly but in a genteel way.

>Which McCarthy? There are some I loved and others I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

I'm reading Jennifer Saint's Ariadne, which a friend sent me for my birthday. It's no Circe (what is?) but so far it's a very engaging myth retelling, full of good vivid detail and I'm all in.

Suttree I am going to a performance in Knoxville - music and found archival image footage that is somehow riffing off the novel and I thought it was maybe time to read him.

If I was forced to compile a 10 Best Reads of My Adult Life list, Suttree would rank a permanent spot high on that list.

I envy anyone reading that for the first time.

>211 laurenbufferd: >212 Pat_D: That's one of my very favorite books too, or at least as of ten years ago, so I got nothin' else for you. See if you can stick with it for a bit and get in the swing of his language... but it's not for everyone, that's for sure.

Oh no - I gave up at page 30 after the watermelon-fucking scene.

>214 laurenbufferd: I'm going to be laughing over that review for days.

olive again Started it before and didn't click with it. Rereading for a book group and really liking it now.

I finished The Long Call. Cleeves uses birds in this one the way P.D. James used dogs in Devices and Desires. I like Cleeves but I wish she did more showing and less telling. Now to finish Tangerine, which I'm liking. The bookstore called to say my order of The Salt Path has arrived, and I'm excited to go pick it up.

sorry friends, I did not make it far in Suttree. I did however really enjoy White Houses although I think Bloom is a better short writer than a novelist - this was beautiful and sad and made me snort with laughter several times.

Reading my first Furrowed Middlebrow title Miss Penny and Miss Plum and finding it a bit meh.

Don't give up on McCarthy completely - there are two McCarthy's.

I'm 60 and my TBR list has like a 1,000 books in it. If I don't make it back around to CM, I'll be ok.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from McCarthy...I am reading Stephen Rowley's The Guncle, which is the most hideously-titled book of this or any season (and the cover does it no favors either; between the title and the cover, it's a really tough book to convince people about).

Comic novels are so hard to pull off and there are so few people doing it that when one comes along that works, it seems faintly miraculous. It's a good rec for people who think Stephen McCauley takes too long in between novels (he does).

Reading Tangerine is rather like watching a '50s film noir with dual voiceovers.

Finished Olive again and have mixed feelings about it. There were some great moments that reminded me how much I loved the original book, but others that just felt disjointed. And the end felt like a long slow crawl to the obvious conclusion. Yet there were moments of brilliance, in how other characters some how brought Olivia to a place of trust and acceptance of others. It will be an interesting discussion in our book group later on coz right now Im not sure how to rate it

Now reading an absolutely remarkable thing for my sci fi group and already loving it! Will be easy to finish by tomorrow. (been distracted from reading for a month or so due to the NBA finals and last nights game was amazing! Been a long time since I got excited about this team , for good reasn. Go suns!!!)

Ariadne was fun, a solidly entertaining retelling of the Theseus myth from the point of view of Ariadne, who helped him defeat the Minotaur and betrayed her family in the process, and her sister Phaedra. Saint has a really nice bright visual sense, animating the scenes and people well, and centering Ariadne—a minor but pivotal character in the original myth—was a good choice. I don't think there's any point in comparing her to Madeline Miller just because they're both retellings from a woman's POV—there isn't the same absolute control of pacing and mood as Circe, but I don't think it's intended to be the same kind of book. Ariadne is a vivid, engaging recasting of a myth and didn't need to be anything more than that—I liked it a lot just the way it is.

>222 LaureneRS: I thought Tangerine was just barely a bit of a miss - though I liked it and recommended it to people - and it had to do with the two narrations. I thought their voices were a little too close together (and I know, it was probably intentional); but more than once, I had to flip back to see if it was Alice or Lucy doing the narrating. But I think a lot of multiple narrator books are like that.

The follow-up, Palace of the Drowned, is good - I just finished it a couple of days ago.

>226 DG_Strong: I also had to flip back sometimes to see which character was narrating. I liked the book, though -- finished it last night. I will put Palace of the Drowned on the pile.

Finished The River Why - bit of a slow start but ended up being really good. Very ahead of its time.

>228 blackdogbooks: Huh, I don't know it at all. It looks interesting.

I just started Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, which an old Readerville friend (Daniel, for those of you who know him) sent me last year. It's been sitting here on my desk with its gorgeous cover for a while, and then a couple of weeks ago I had dinner with a friend who was in the middle of it and LOVED it and said I had to read it immediately. And I am nothing if not suggestible. I'm just in the Introduction but I can see already that Sheldrake has a nice style—it's very readable.

Just finished Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell and loved it. It was fun to come across a novel that I didn't want to put down and only took multiple days to read because life intervened. My mate asked at one point why I was marking the book if it wasn't one I planned to teach, and I said, "because the passages are so beautifully written." The only quibble I had, and it's a personal one, is that the depiction of raw grief and how long lasting it can be became a bit of a slog for me in places and I was tempted to skim, and I say personal because I don't have children and thus can't know what the loss of one might be like. (I don't think mentioning that is a plot spoiler because it's obvious from the title who it's about.) I became a bit impatient with some of the characters and wanted to say, look at what you still have, not what you've lost. But even as I type those words, my own past just rose up to accuse me. ;) So it's actually more a matter of my impatience and frustration with loss and reactions to it rather than a criticism of the novel, which I highly recommend.

>230 cdcoleman: I agree that Hamnet is beautifully written. It was my favorite book last year. I listened to it read by the most excellent Ell Potter, who has become my favorite narrator. Her reading of The Well of Loneliness tore me up.

eagerly awaiting my copy of McCaffery's Freedoms Land for the july theme. In the meantime I have all the way to the tigers and ariadne for this weekend. And a little basketball as well (go suns!)

I loved Hamnet. Last year was the perfect time to read it.

I finished Miss Penny and Miss Plum which was actually quite a sweet little novel, in many ways. Almost an anti-romance and the way it doesn't end the way you think it might is awfully satisfying. The pleasures of village life, good meals, and friendships, with lots of hot water bottles. I loved when the whole village skipped out on their chores and jobs and went ice skating.

I read The Last Romantics which was really a miss. It's been on my shelf FOREVER. There's a lot of unnecessary framing with the narrator as an extraordinarily successful poet (is there such a thing) giving a lecture where a question is asked that leads to an unfolding of the life story, a bit of a mystery solved (not really much of one, actually, if you are paying attention) and some extra fluff about climate change. When Conklin gets down to some good old fashioned story telling about a family wounded by death, mental illness and addiction, she's spot on. All the other stuff, sheesh. Shoulda left that stuff on the cutting room floor.

I blame the editor here.

I am rereading Groff's The Matrix because I read it too fast before and also Sankofa which I am reviewing.

(Here's the correct The Last Romantics link; yours goes to a pre-Raphaelite study).The Amazon reviews for the one you read are quite dire and funny. "I was so excited for this book! But the first chapter cured me of that,..."

>225 lisapeet: I agree with you about comparing Ariadne to Circe - the wring isn't at all the same and in the latter follows the myth and is much more suspensful to me than Circe was for some reason. Love them both!

Finished The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison -

Quite good book, superior intelligence in her writing, a rare and cutting wit she often turns on herself to evocative results.

Chat about Ariadne here

https://www.saveancientstudies.org/event-details/sasa-monthly-book-club-w-live-a...

>237 laurenbufferd: oh excellent! Just finished it last night and I was floored. one of my top read of the year..I'll get right there, thx

Reading The Longest Way Home and Forty Rules of Love.

Sankofa was good - one of those books that are very easy going down but leave you with a lot to think about. A biracial woman finds a journal that belonged to her African father after her mother's death (a not terribly believable plot point) and it turns out that he was a student who was radicalized in London and returned to his tiny country in Africa to start a revolution. She ends up going to Africa to meet him. I liked it and am looking for another of the author's books - she is Nigerian and quite young. she definitely doesn't sugar coat much of anything.

I started reading Fidelity. Has anyone read that? I am dying to talk to someone about it.

Fidelity - think Sinclair Lewis or Dreiser but a little denser, a little woolier. Ruth Holland upsets her family, friends and her small midwestern town when she runs away with a married man whose wife won't give him a divorce . Lots of interior monologues and flashbacks, complex moral issues mulled over, small acts of virtue and larger actions of ignorance and pettiness. I found Ruth a bit too good to be true and Glaspell's style tricky, especially for a playwright, surprisingly, the dialogue doesn't move anything along but the story itself is really interesting and groundbreaking for the time suggesting that marriage and romantic love might not be for everyone.

Is anyone reading anything ever??

about to finish dark water, very well written, part art history and part history of the Florence floods, esp 1966. With the exception of a middle section that was really unecessary and deviated from the purpose, really an excellent read, esp as we are having rather a deluge here. Foruntantly I am not near any standing bodies of water.(or moving ones either)

Also starting Freedom Landing for the for the RTT july theme of 'now we are free'

And I have Goblin Emperor for next months book group on tap.

given that its supposed to rain all weekend, guess Im set for reading material!

I read The Salt Path, which I liked a lot, especially the immediacy of the descriptions of the land and sea and the people they met along the way. Early on in the book, I wished that Wynn were less emotional in the writing (I know: that says more about me than about her) and she did become less so as the book progressed. I plan to read the sequel after I've read some of the other recent acquisitions that are making my room smell of print on new paper. My heart lifts whenever I come through the doorway.

Yesterday I finished Crow Planet. I can't say it better than (nor as well as) David Sedaris, who called it "a completely charming and informative book on the pleasures of keeping one's eyes open."

I've begun reading The Blackhouse. It alternates between third person and first person, which ordinarily would irritate me, but it's working rather well.

freedom landing is horrible. Barely made it passed 50 pages. This is nothing like anything Ive read from her, really disappointing. Ah well I can reread her other books if I want!

I finally got my hands on Alec: A Novel by William di Canzio. The jacket copy goes out of its way to not use the word "sequel," so I'll avoid that too - it picks up the story of Alec and Maurice from EM Forster's Maurice after that novel's famous happy ending and follows them into WW1 (it's very much a war novel).

It's strange to have a follow-up to a book that has a happy ending and at first I resisted it, sort of pissed off that di Canzio was messing with with what Forster intended (and kept secret for decades) but it's won me over - the war stuff is really good. I am anxious about how it's all going to wrap up, though.

Finished The Forty Rules of Love and Elif Shafak is an author you should be reading. Equal parts Dickens and Paul Coelho''s The Alchemist, this was a real pleasure to read, illuminating Sufi and Islam and Turkey in unique ways, providing a window into a world we don't often see described. And the author's personal story, aside from the book, is worth exploring.

that looks really interesting - but I have become allergic to stories with double time lines. Usually the more historic story works better than the modern and often the modern takes away from the book (see People of the Book) Does this author manage make this duel time periods work?

I think so, because the historic is essentially being told by one of 5hepeople in the modern. And the modern story is compelling. At least, I thought so.

Hah! Glad I got y'all going.

I just read The Late Mrs Prioleau A really fascinating novel and one that I think will appeal to a lot of Readerville folks. Susan meets her new husband's family - including her mother-in-law at the latter's funeral. The first half of the novel is all bad behavior and arch comments - almost like a Muriel Spark novel. Mrs Prioleau appears to have been a nasty woman, who spent her old age sending spiteful anonymous letters and torturing puppies (!) and the adult Prioleau children are a damaged lot, especially Austin, the oldest son. In the second half of the novel, Susan comes across Mrs Prioleau's diary and the context to the personality is provided, making her quite a tragic figure, indeed.

This was Tindall's only novel - she was a wonderful and gifted writer, though perhaps not the greatest plotter. If you need obvious heroes and heroines, this isn't for you. If you want a provocative character study about the unknowability of other people with some cool British life during WWII home front tidbits, this is your jam.

>250 laurenbufferd: If you want a provocative character study about the unknowability of other people with some cool British life during WWII home front tidbits, this is your jam.?
Sounds like my jam, all right.

>251 LaureneRS: Yah, mine too. Thanks for the recommendation—I clicked.

I've had a very good reading month so far, even though I feel like I spent more time falling asleep than turning pages. Ah well, sleep. I read Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, which was a fascinating and fun exploration of the world of fungi, and if you're the kind of person attracted to that idea than this is absolutely the book for you: there's science, lore, investigation, and potential uses, truffles and psilocybin and crazy interdependences (and maze-solving slime molds, can't forget them). Sheldrake is so deeply engaged in his subject, and such a generous guide, that the book hit just the right tone of scholarly and entertaining—I refer you to "Queer theory for lichens" and the following: "A truffle's fragrance and an orchid bee's perfume may circulate beyond the flesh of each organism, but these fields of odor make up a part of their chemical bodies that overlap with one another like ghosts at a disco." Highly recommended if you like reading about the natural world and learning lots of odd things.

Also a book of poetry that REALLY knocked me for a loop, Fiona Benson's Vertigo & Ghost, which was both amazing and totally harrowing. The first half is like the dark side of all those great Greek myth retellings—a cycle of poems about Zeus in which he is (as he was), a rapist and predator who eventually meets his own violent fate. The second half is presumably autobiographical, about sadness and the natural world and childbirth and the terrible places the mind goes when you pay attention to what's going on in the world when you have small children in your care. There's a good amount of violence against women and children and even some animals here—none of it gratuitous, it's all appropriate to what she's got to say—and it's hard reading. But also often beautiful, and incredibly rewarding if you can handle it. She's a fantastic poet. "Fly" is one of those things where a poem fits my skin absolutely and precisely at this moment, and I am copying it out at least twice (my copy is a library book).

Next up I'm reading Shruti Swamy's A House is a Body (thank you, Lauren!) and Elise Engler's A Diary of the Plague Year.

>249 blackdogbooks: ah, alright then! Ill give it a try (no pressure :)

The Third Mrs. Galway is a fictional account of the anti-abolitionist riots in Utica New York and the role the city played in the Underground Railroad/abolitionist movement in central New York. Historical fiction is almost always a mixed bag for me and this is no exception; there are facts and dialogue that feels shoehorned in but a story that has some genuinely exciting moments. A young woman, newly married, finds herself in the middle of a runaway enslaved family, a predatory doctor, addiction and a flirtation. It's a lot. But well told and about a part of the world I've always found interesting.

Thanks to the Early Reviewers program for a chance to be reminded that American history has always been bloody.

Finished Shruti Swamy's short story collection A House Is a Body, which was terrific. She has a really wonderful touch, blending realism with abstraction, internal and external life. The Indian women (and a couple of men, and one god) in these stories are moving through lives that weren't what they were led to expect, in many ways—fire, loss, abandonment, abuse, disappointment. Yet for all that darkness her characters are lovely and resolute, and this is not a sad book in the least. It's a fabulous debut, and I'm so sorry I missed it for last year's LJ Best Short Stories, because I would have pinned it up at the top. Definitely a favorite for the year—thank you, Lauren!—and I'm looking forward to her upcoming novel, The Archer.

I'm still reading A Diary of the Plague Year: An Illustrated Chronicle of 2020, and just started The Talented Mr. Ripley on a whim, because the guys on So Many Damn Books were talking about it and I've never read it.

I'm really thrilled you liked that, Lisa, I thought it was quite good.

I am in the middle of two challenging books - Eileen Myles' Cool for You and An interrupted Life. Myles is just a little older than me but not enough so that the places she talks about and her experiences are unfamiliar. I love reading about Boston in the 70s. Her jobs - at various nursing homes, summer camps, and a center for developmentally disabled adults are hard to read about but her voice - so flip, so poetic - is fantastic.

The Hillesum diaries are tough. They parallel Anne Frank's in time, although Hillesum was an adult, working and living in Amsterdam. She was an amazing writer, deeply introspective and like Frank, kind of amazingly cheerful, despite what was happening around her. She was also in a relationship that I think we would call abusive now. The man was older than her, had been in analysis and trained with Jung and was inappropriate at the very least - he 'wrestled' with all his clients, touched their breasts, and then claimed that these were not erotic or sexual experiences which was hugely confusing to Hillesum who already came from a family where there was mental illness and clear boundary issues. The idea of her altruism (she worked at Westerbrook before being sent to Auschwitz and there is some suggestion that she went willingly, despite opportunities to escape) for me is all mixed up with being in thrall to this predator and I'd love to read a feminist analysis of the diary because I think it would help me understand her better. She was an incredible writer though - fearlessly trying to navigate and parse every emotion. Like Frank, it's a great sorrow that she was struck down before maturity.

Finished The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was thoroughly entertaining, more of a noir than what I'd call a thriller. It isn't about the suspense, really, since you know Highsmith wrote four more Ripley novels, so he obviously survives to do more dark deeds in the world. Rather, the fun is all in watching Ripley—a big baby of a psychopath gallivanting around the mid-'50s Mediterranean—twist in distress and then brighten up again, over and over, as he thinks his gig is up and then turns out to have fooled everyone yet again… which essentially gives the reader a little taste of the joys of psychopathy, for what it's worth. And I have no quibble with that. I did pause at the fact that his bad behavior is framed—at least somewhat—as the outcome of not-very-arguably closeted homosexuality, but Highsmith is out to punish everyone here, no matter whether their impulses are decent or dark. Like poor docile Marge—I don't know anything about the other Ripley books, but I kind of hope she shows up out of the blue later on and TAKES HIM DOWN. I'm not sure I'll read further into the series, but I might—Ripley is a good guilty pleasure.

Now I'm motoring through a string of not-yet-published novels for another one of those work panels—the first one is Jonathan Evison's Small World, which is touted as a sweeping American train saga, and that sounds perfectly agreeable to me.

Someone should write a book about Marge's life after the events of The Talented Mr Ripley; she never reappears in the series.

The five Ripley books are a little like Bond movies; every other one is good. The third one - Ripley Underground - is my favorite of the series and is the basis for a very underrated adaptation from about 15 years ago with Barry Pepper as Ripley.

The first has two very good adaptations, you should watch them both (Purple Noon is the better of the two because: Alain Delon and sunny Italy).

The second, which is I think the most ludicrous in the series, has also been adapted twice - recently-ish with John Malkovich and then a long time ago (as The American Friend, and it's very good despite the source material) with Dennis Hopper.

The fourth, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, is the only true dud, because teenagers ruin everything, though you DO get Ripley in drag at a gay bar for a critical sequence, and I'd never advise you to skip such a thing.

Ripley has a wife - Heloise - and they play the harpsichord together, which is the exact sort of insane detail that makes me love Highsmith.

Oooh, Marge fanfic—I'm in. And thanks for the rundown of the others! My library has 'em all, so that makes life easy.

>257 laurenbufferd: I read those diaries in the early 80's I think, just after they were published in US. I was really taken with them at the time, they probably fed into my own tendency toward melancholia and a romanticized martyrdom. But I thought the writing was marvelous, intimate and questing and brave. But reading your comments, I'm sure reading them now would be a different experience as I remember being only slightly troubled by the relationship with her mentor, I guess you'd call him?. My reaction to her reminds me a bit of how I perceive Simone Weil who is genuinely daring, remarkable, intelligent, and yet seems in thrall to a kind of spiritual idea I think is unhealthy in some ways. You make me want to dig the diaries out again and reread.

This links to the NY Times article I read back then that introduced me to her work. You may find it interesting.... https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/29/books/eros-god-and-auschwitz.html

Thanks for this - LuAnn, you are bringing up exactly what my feelings are - I am in awe of how she expresses herself and yet I am disturbed by how in thrall - great phrase- she is to her mentor and then, frankly, to her own martyrdom. I do think I'd have had a very different response to reading them in my 20s or even my 30s. I just finished the diary part this morning - I could really only read about 10 pages at a time and then I'd go for a lie-down because its so upsetting. I still have the letters to read - the edition I have has both. Its hard not to think about Frank - another very sophisticated and thoughtful thinker, cut down too soon. I wonder if their paths crossed - at Westerbork or Auschwitz.

I think one thing that's really struck me is how humans make excuses for their lives not to change - here Hillesun's world was literally closing in, she knew what was happening at the camps, the gradual diminishment of human rights - the right to congregate, own a bicycle, use certain stores, and yet she stayed, not just because of her own desire to help others but also because she kept rationalizing what was happening and looking for hmanity in whatever was left.

Giant fan of The American Friend but mostly because I had a huge crush on Bruno Ganz.

Now reading O Beautiful.

I really liked O Beautiful which has the pace of a thriller but is a thoughtful - and thought provoking novel about racism, toxic masculinity and environmental destruction. The main character is a struggling free lance reporter who is sent to N Dakota to cover the changes in a small town as it struggles with changes wrought by enormous growth in the fracking industry. It's very well written and provocative.

I read Edward Crispin's The Glimpses of the Moon which was utterly enjoyable but didn't have much traction as a mystery and am also dipping in Patch Work which is lots of very very short chapters written by the textiles keeper at the V&A. Kind of a memoir through fabric. A little behind the scenes at a museum, a little fashion, a little family. Quite lovely.

I am still processing the Hillesun which is the best thing - and the hardest - I've read in ages.

That Hillesum sounds hard. Not sure if I'm up for it right now.

In the Not Hard department, Small World was a big sprawler, more wide than deep, but definitely engaging. The novel follows a cast of strivers from the mid-19th century—Irish immigrant twins who make their way from New York to Chicago and points west, a Chinese immigrant who lands in San Francisco in search of gold, an escaped slave, and a Miwok girl in search of a life away from the Methodists who took her in after the Native massacre at Sutter's Mill—and their descendants in 2019. They're linked in ways large and small, most notably, and literally, by the railroad—expanding across the country in the 1850s, hurtling up the west coast in the 21st century. It's a fun shaggy tale that picks up—excuse me—steam as it goes, and while Evison doesn't tie up all the ends perfectly (maybe for the better), it's a satisfying, panoramic read.

Next in my panel reading is Hester Fox's A Lullaby for Witches. I get a little itchy when a book has witches in the title, but I've been happily surprised before. And anyway it's for work, so I'm absolved of any power of choice, which is kind of fun.

Finished Laughing Boy and it will be on my top reads of this year for sure. Recieved the Pulitzer Prize in 1930, the book is a love story of two native americans from different backgrounds who manage to mesh together. The writing is amazing for its time, in that the Navajos are dynamic complex characters, and the description of landscapes, ceremonies and events are wonderfully portrayed. A short read, but a powerful one

Oh Cindy, that sounds good. I may look for that.

Is anyone watching Reservation Dogs on Hulu? It's about a group of teens on a reservation in Oklahoma. It's very scatological and not always as funny as it thinks it is but the kids in it, esp the girls- are fantastic.

Lisa, the Hillesum is rough but really beautiful. I hate to say spiritual but that too. The Evison sounds like a blast. I think you'd like O Beautiful too.

Nice, Cindy - I had to read up a little on LaForge's background before I was sure I would start searching for that one but he seems to be writing from a good place - I'm always on the lookout for a good NM author. Thanks.

Also, finished Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky. It's a book I went into with the expectation of liking it, wanting to like it. And the couple or three hundred pages were enjoyable. But it took a turn in the last quarter of the book that did not appeal - turns out the evil presence is actually the devil, and then a lot of, what I found to be, simplistic and overly rosy religious stuff limped the book along. The twist to reveal Satan wasn't founded well, and the ending was 'perfect' in a way that left a bad taste in my mouth. I deeply enjoyed The Perks of Being a Wallflower which, for a small book, was layered and realistic in so many ways that this 700 page monster wasn't. A disappointment.

>267 blackdogbooks: Im just amazed by how present his writing is, he died in 1962, He's written several other books I'd like to try. Im not a big fan of westerns or the south west in general, but he really hooked me with this book

A Lullaby for Witches was a quick, fun read—supernatural doings in an old Massachusetts town, a historic house and archives, and a little romance. I'm the kind of reader who gets more excited by archives than romance, but the book was propulsive and enjoyable, even if it didn't spook me as much as I think it meant to.

Now reading Elizabeth Taylor's The Soul of Kindness for my book group later in September... I run the risk of not remembering enough about it by the time we meet, but this is my available moment before I have to do more work reading, so here goes. I'll take a lot of notes.

Finished The Short Reign of Pippin IV is a wonderful satire on the craziness of government. Written 65 years ago, and still rather timely. Highly recommended

I began reading The Pisces and abandoned it about a third of the way through. Next up: This is Your Mind on Plants.

Rereading The Stand.

I really liked the little pieces in Patch Work and I recommend it but I also felt like I wanted more. The wee page-long essays are all about loss, nature, museums, fabrics and I found them to be really evocative but I wanted a through line that wasn't there. A bit too ephemeral for me.

I am reading the Stacy Abrams thriller While Justice Sleeps - where does this woman find the time???? and I started to read the biography of Pete Seeger How Can I Keep from singing? which I was going to skim but the first chapter was about the race riots in Peekskill, NY - where the Klan is and was very active - and now I'm going to read the whole book. Sheesh, this country, Why are we always so surprised at racial violence? It's been going on here for 400 years.

>275 cindydavid4: Reading Tomato Rhapsody for the CR Food Theme. Liking the story, enjoying the history lessions, even if I skip over a lot of the foodie talk and descriptions.

Read this book for a book group. Takes place during the renaisance in a village near Florence. About a Jewish boy and his grandfather, and a Catholic girl and her step father. And tomatoes. Lots of them. So whats not to love? I don't mind a few off color scenes, but in the climax of the book (really no pun intended) A stupid donkey race becomes a drunken mess, with such vulgar descriptions and over the top ramblings that overtook any good humor and wonder that was promised.I kept reading thinking it couldnt get worse. But it does. I gave up, read the last chapter find out what happens to the lovers and then tossed it, This is not a Shakespear comedy as some reviews call it. Its a 12 year old boy's wet dream. Gave it two stars for the buildup. Wish I could give it 0

I'm reading The Chinese Question; I have a real thing for books about Chinese immigration/enslavement in the American West during the Gold Rush and the building of the railroads. There are a lot of books, I'm lucky. Not one journal from a Chinese immigrant survives - NOT ONE! What we have from them is in letters and notes and stuff, but there's not even much of that. So there always seems to be a point of view missing from these histories -- this one is a millimeter on the dry side, but it's still fascinating. There's so little documentation from the Chinese side, some of the books on this subject over lap a bit sourcewise -- but this one has a bunch of new-to-me stuff.

Why did I never read Karen Russell? I think I thought her titles were too twee. But I just read the first story in Orange World and I fell head over heels.

I read the new Rupert Thomson Barcelona Dreaming which didn't add to much except that now I want to move to Spain.

>277 laurenbufferd: I loved Orange World—you could just see the "Oh! What if..." in her head ticking away. That first story is the knockout of the book, but I liked it all the way through.

I am an ENORMOUS fan of Russell's Swamplandia; it's got the most unusual tone to it and she manages it all the way through and I loved it even though it sounds like I wouldn't, that sort of dreamy surreal kind of thing. Normally, I run screaming the other way.

That's the only one of hers I don't have, but my library does. I need to go on a Karen Russell binge soon.

just finished the warden, an liked it well enough; just not sure I want to read the rest

Oh brother, I love Trollope but I know what you mean. It does go on. I liked A Small House in Allington quite a bit.

I read those six Barsetshire books several years ago in what now looks like a trial run to see if I could do the twenty Zolas. I liked Doctor Thorne the best - at least, that's what my notes say! - but I can't for the life of me remember why that one and not another of them. I still love The Eustace Diamonds the most, Trollope-wise, though that's from a different batch, The Palliser ones.

It's odd to me that Trollope hasn't had the repeated resurrections that Austen or Forster or (maybe) Hardy has had; they're just as plotty and mini-series-able as those others. They're chillier, maybe.

>280 lisapeet: must be the only one here who wasn’t captivated by Russell. Tried her story collection and found it Meh.

>284 blackdogbooks: That's what makes horse races! Or something like that.

I just read Elizabeth Taylor's The Soul of Kindness since I was in between work reading. It was one of those deceptively breezy books that have a lot going on under the surface, a comedy of manners and sort of field study of the various ways an utter lack of self-awareness can trickle through relationships—in this case, among the mid-1960s British middle class. Taylor has very little sentiment—but is not without compassion—for her misguided, smug, and often lonely cast of characters. She paints them wonderfully with a few brushstrokes, and you get a strong feeling of them going on to live their lives busily off the page, leaving the reader to sit and think about them while they move on.

Now back to galleys for work: Quan Barry's upcoming novel When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East, set in Mongolia and narrated by a Buddhist monk, all of which is very OK by me.

Thought I'd check in with you guys - I'm still reading The Stand which is a door-stop. But enjoying the re-read, especially as I'm reading it more for the writing this time. But also started Upstream by Mary Oliver, and ... speechless.

Upstream? thats a click!

Reading bookseller of florence by ross king, excellent look at bookselling of manuscripts. Fascinating history as well as interesting connection with Tomato Rhapsody, in the same time and place. Cosimo the III is very much a part of both worlds.

Edited Reading Memory called Empire for a book group and gave it one more try. Its actually pretty good so far. Not sure what my problem was. Wont have time to finish but at least I can participate in the group!

I loved loved LOVEd Orange World - had forgotten about reading and being blown away by the title story in the New Yorker. Now I'm keen on all things Russell.

I liked but didn't love Beasts of a Little Land gosh, it's a baggy thing with about 4 eye rolling coincidence. I mean, Seoul is a big city right, could the same four people keep running into eachother - and recognizing each other - over 5 decades? But I thought it was ambitious in a good kind of way and it's certainly refreshing to read a book where America plays such a miniscule role.

I'm about to start The soul of Kindness and going to see Lauren Groff tonight so double happiness.

I very much liked Quan Barry's When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East. It was different from anything I’ve read in a while, and I don’t mean that at all as faint praise. It’s the story of a Mongolian novice Buddhist monk who joins the search for the next young reincarnation of a great lama, along with two other monks, a (Buddhist) nun, and his twin brother, who has left the order after years in the monastery as a child recognized as a reincarnation himself. In addition to being the tale of a quest, with a lot of interesting background on Mongolia and its distinct sect of Buddhism, the narrator is struggling with his faith, and his feelings about his twin’s loss of faith—the tension between religion and secularism is a subject that always interests me, and the fact that this isn’t framed in a Judeo-Christian context makes it especially interesting. It might help to have at least a passing interest in Buddhism to enjoy this one (I have more than a passing interest, and was really captured by the descriptions of the practices), but maybe not.

Now reading Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, which I've been looking forward to.

Lauren, how was Lauren Groff? I loved talking with her about that book when I had her on a panel last spring. And yesss Orange World.

just now reading Matrix. and wow, just wow. tried to stay up last night but fell asleep over the book on my chair, woke up and started reading again

I had interviewed Groff before for BookPage so I knew a little what to expect. We'd talked a lot about the book and what had led up to it, the kind of research she did. She's very bright and super sharp.

In person, she also reads a bit young, she plays with her hair when she talks and she comes across as wide-eyed and earnest. But she does not suffer fools and when she talked about her process, you can see she has a will of iron.

It was at Ann Patchett's bookstore and Patchett can be REALLY ridiculous - they came out each holding one of Ann's dogs and Patchett was very name droppy - at least one sentence started Yo Yo Ma once told told me... I've seen her really cow the interviewee with that grande dame schtick but she wasn't quite that bad this time.

>291 laurenbufferd: did you record that somewhere? Id love to hear it (or I am remembering maybe you wrote about it before?)

I can't share the recording but the interview is at Bookpage https://bookpage.com/interviews/26558-lauren-groff-fiction#.YT_7tp1KiM8

Finished Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, which I really liked. It's a smart, twisty, propulsive, and ultimately very humane novel about time travel, pandemics, and questions about the nature of reality, and I just gulped it down. It's a very sweet book at heart, but complex and very thoughtful at the same time. I see I'm going to have to read The Glass Hotel now. But this was a fun ride.

And because something like four people I know mentioned it to me this summer as something I'd like, I'm about to start Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass.

>294 lisapeet: I liked Braiding Sweetgrass so much I went back and read her first book which was all about studying mosses.

>295 southernbooklady: That one was also recommended to me when I was going on about how much I liked Entangled Life.

>293 laurenbufferd: thanks!

I need to read that Braiding Sweetgrass book myself.

We just finished the last episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show. we started watching again at some point during the pandemic - maybe after Carl Reiner died, starting with a few Dick Van Dyke seasons and then jumping into MTM. It's been kind of an amazing journey with lots of high points and a few rough seasons that were funny but hardly impactful. Anyway, i started reading Love is All Around which is not particularly well written but makes a lot of interesting points esp about the writers who had such an enormous impact on the show.

I just finished The soul of Kindness which is a novel about the way bad behavior is enabled and even encouraged d by family and friends - its subtle and beautiful and makes you care about people who would probably drive you crazy in RL. Very much a domestic novel but in the most expansive and generous way.

I started the stories in The World doesn't Require You - I didn't care for the first one but really liked the second one so I think I'll stick with it for a while. Lisa, I think you gave me this.

I'm reading Hot Stew. It's a terrible title, but it's the right title for the book, if that makes any sense. There are a lot of characters (which is never the easiest thing for me, Zola aside and with him, I use a family tree as a bookmark) but this is all pretty clearly laid out. Sometimes I think it's a little didactic and obvious (it is at heart an anti-gentrification novel and who ever takes the side of the landlords, I ask you?) but I'd say yes if you asked me if you should read it.

That's on my list.

The book about the MTM show wasn't very good but it was interesting to read, esp in light of having just watching all 7 seasons. There was a real shift after the women writers left for other projects and also things I'd noticed - like the lessened emphasis on Lou's drinking (which really was an appalling amount) was in response to some complaints and whatever organization in the 1970s that responded to cigarettes and alcohol use on prime time television.

I started reading The constant Nymph and am finding it extremely difficult to let go of my 21st century sensibility and not be most upset at a family of unsupervised adolescent girls in a house with single adult men. I'm 100 pages in and I've stopped gasping and fanning myself but there is something really unpleasant about it. Also mild anti-semitism.

So at a certain part in Matrix, Marie is watching death take two of her nuns, one a young welsh princess named Gwladys who was sent as punishment for her insurrectionary family, "for if she was not given to god, she would have bred great intellilgent Welsh nobles who would also inevitably chafe against the English Crown". I nodded, knowing exactly who this was. The story of that royal family of Wales was told by Sharon Kay Penman in her welsh trilogy. very sad story, but still, fun to see that Groff knew the history, and used it in this book.

Finished my re-read of The Stand, which I feel like might put me at odds with the reading sensibilities here, and the next one will probably be in the same category - The Only Good Indians, which is really good so far.

>303 blackdogbooks: Oh, The Stand was a great dystopian saga. And I often thought of that opening scene in the gas station—and a few others—in the first few months of COVID, especially on my morning walks when everything was deserted. I've been tempted to reread it myself.

Dystopias have a whole level of meaning now, don't they?

Thanks, Lisa - it stood the test of time, for sure - it was worth the time to re-read, with a little distance from some of the vaccine/virus stuff.

I really hated The Constant Nymph and look forward to the book group discussion I'll be leading next week. Watch out!

Now reading The house in the cerulean sea for a book group. Ive read so many of these types of books,, I was hesitant to try. So far tho, I am enjoying it.

I'm 100% in the tank for her already but Joy Williams' Harrow is simply fantastic. I was a tiny bit worried because I have HAD it with any sort of post-apocalyptic ANYTHING but, gosh, it's so good. She's doing that thing Muriel Spark did, where each successive book pares away more and more until you're just left with a little core of absolute pure her-ness. I think that makes it a bit of a tough first-Joy-Williams book, so if you haven't read her before, start elsewhere. If you HAVE read her before, yay, you're in for a ride.

do you remember when we saw her read, dg? She was cooler than cool.

I am reading (We Are the Brennans - I don't know why I like books about Irish families but I do! and so You Want to Talk about Race.

Is anyone reading?

I finished We are The Brennans and for me, it was a bit of stinker. Watching the same family members make the same mistakes over and over with no repercussions and not a lick of irony. I'm not even sure what I read.

Yup, I am! House in the Cerralaen sea started out really interetind and fun. The about 3/4 through the author decided she needed to explain through her characters the point of the book; ok we got it 100 pages to go, I guess he writes mainly for YA, but if he writes a sequel I'll try it

I was supposed to read Maplecraft, about the Borden muders. I figured there be some blood and gore, and I really like the main character, but I am not a fan of horror and don't like seeing the images she was making in my head. I do understand, my book group wanted to read

And of course Matrix which I agree with everythink folk here said about it!

Just started Mrs March and liking it so far.

um, Ok, I am on page 42 and ready to toss Mrs March out the window. I will admit to socially awkward, but dear lord reading about her is making me feel like the bell of the ball
Also just noticed that the author does not mention Mrs. Marches first name but gives one to every other character. Yikes. Anyone know if she eventually grows a spine?

Well, yeah it kinda goes down hill, and it does very much remind me of Patrica Highsmith, tho I think she's a better writer

I'm reading... I'm always reading. Still on Braiding Sweetgrass—it's big, and as a series of essays it's easier to put down and pick up than a novel might be, plus I've had other stuff (a freelance art review, and outside cat brought inside, much to his consternation) grabbing my attention—but it's a lovely, easeful read and I'm enjoying it. Also just barely started Stephanie Gangi's upcoming novel Carry the Dog, which I may end up writing about or excerpting for Bloom, and also a couple of pages into Sarah Stein Greenberg's Creative Acts for Curious People, because I'm interested in designy stuff these days.

I'm reading four different short story collections all at once and it's a confusing way to read, but eh, whatever. One in each room, so if I'm restless I don't have to haul a book around.

Skinship
Something Wonderful
Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You

The Hilma Wolitzer is the standout so far (I think), but I think she's nuttily underrated anyway.

That sounds like a wonderful way to read - I imagine you drifting from room to room and plopping down with a book. Perhaps in a caftan.

I am really struggling with the stories in The world Doesn't Require You They are amazing and satisfying but each one of them has been very difficult to ascend - I invariably spend the first 2 or 3 pages completely confused and then something clicks. Each story is imaginative and unexpected and the final novella - a satiric take on academia at a HBU which is also the culmination of all the stories before - is very very clever.

I recently re-organized my bookshelves, which my son moved from my short-lived library to the family room, by genre. I'm trying to be more disciplined re: new book purchasing by making use of the local library's digital catalog. Per both resources, I'm testing a new reading plan: one book from the shelves and one book from the library every week.

This week: Working in alphabetical order from the Fiction section on the shelves: Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd. From the library: Matrix by Lauren Goff.

good to see you back!

FInished life studies, read most of her novels, my first with her short stories. Its an art history class sorta book, with most of the stories connecting with fictional characters that surround the real life artist. So well written, and it had me googling all of the works mentioned that I didn't know about. Really have to get better at identifying a specfic artist - Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne and much later Amedo Madigliani who I never heard about beore, whose story is told through his daughter. Last section looks at upcoming young artists, all very well told. Need to see if she has more than this collection

good to see you back!

FInished life studies, read most of her novels, my first with her short stories. Its an art history class sorta book, with most of the stories connecting with fictional characters that surround the real life artist. So well written, and it had me googling all of the works mentioned that I didn't know about. Really have to get better at identifying a specfic artist - Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cezanne and much later Amedo Madigliani who I never heard about beore, whose story is told through his daughter. Last section looks at upcoming young artists, all very well told. Need to see if she has more than this collection

Now reading, or rather finishing, how long till black future month which I just discovered on a shelf forgotten about.

Also started a book by someone named Peter Cashwell called along the lines: the boundaries that create our world talking to someone around here about birding, and thought of his first book and remembered there was a second but never read it. Fun so far (but of course!)

Oh, I loved Chatterton back in the olden days when it came out - I had a thing for Peter Ackroyd for a bit.

That's encouraging because it's been a slow start. I was surprised at the amount of real estate on the "A" fiction shelf that's taken up by Ackroyd. He's prolific in an English literary Joyce Carol Oates way. Next in line on that shelf is his Milton book.

Re: the library hold, I really wanted to read the new Joy Wiliams everyone's been raving about, but I've found my local library sadly limited in the type of books in which I'm interested. I usually have to "Recommend" on Overdrive first and wait for the book to be purchased. I settled for the Goff because that was the other highly praised book by y'all which was surprisingly available.,

Just received my copy of Joan, Lady of WalesThose of you who have read the Welsh Trilogy of Sharon Kay Penman who wrote here be dragons might be interested in reading it. ( looking at you Pat!). For those who do not know, Joan was the illegitimate daughter of King John of England. He latter marries her off to Llewellen the Great, Prince of Wales.

note: lots of cheaper copies at Abe and Albiris, I got mine from Biblio)

This is non fiction, so it will be interesting how much this author adds to the story, esp since there is not a lot of info on the women of that time period.

In addition to Upstream, I'm also reading David Copperfield, and Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind.

OOh David Copperfield!

The World Doesn't Require You is an incredibly ambitious and creative collection of stories - and one novella - that I admit was a challenging one for me. I found each story to be a bit of struggle to access - I spent the first few pages invariably thinking WTF and then the penny dropped and I was all in. I loved the novella probably because I am always tickled by any kind of satire on academia and this one ticked every box. All the stories take place in a fictional mid Atlantic community Cross River - the only site of a successful slave rebellion - and Scott uses every tool in the toolbox - from science fiction to folklore to minstrelsy, robots and water sirens - to populate his strange and strangely familiar world. This is not an easy collection but its a fantastic one and well worth your time.

I really enjoyed The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley and loved that it was inspired by the life and labors of Hercules. I'm also a sucker for anything set in and around Boston. My problem with this - and with many books that draw inspiration from fairy tales and mythology is that the characters never seem quite real and I find it a bit hard to care for them because their actions, ideas, and thoughts, are always in thrall to something larger. That said, I read this like a house on fire, it's a real page turner with many satisfying moment.But it never jumped into that next level reading for me.

I am reading So You want to talk about Race and Leonora in the Morning where the topic is so much more interesting than the writing.

>323 cindydavid4: I don't know why, but I'm not usually drawn to non-fiction, Cindy. I think it might be all those years of school and required reading.

I'm flying through Matrix. Big thanks to all here who recommended it.

>326 Pat_D: hee I so understand. Actually I am finding that this is just confirming a lot that we already know about her and her times, but still going to continue on fir a bit

Finished Copperfield and started Missionaries by Phil Klay, he was the judge on a contest I entered recently with a collection of my work.

I finished a reread of A not So Still Life and it was as good as I thought the first time. I was compelled to read it after finishing Leonora in the Morning since Jimmy is a character in the novel. The memoir is about both his parents - Max Ernst and Lou Straus, his childhood, their divorce, moving between Germany and France and then emigrating to the states at the age of 18. There's loads of art gossip but it's written with such depth of feeling and all kinds of funny details, esp about life in America. I cannot recommend this enough.

What's everyone else reading?

finished Joan, Lady of Wales, certainly gave me a bigger picture of the life and times in Wales in the 12th century, and more info on Llywellen and Joannas life .

Now reading Killing Moon another Jemisin series; She did a short story that was wonderful and this takes you more into the world building

Only managed a hundred pages of Missionaries by Phil Klay - some will find the violence tinged with reality, and maybe that's the problem for me - it struck a chord, and I get enough of that in my day job right now.

I finished Matrix and Chatterton (will post more on those excellent reads later).

Joy Williams' Harrow came in at the library very unexpectedly (I had to post a Recommendation on Overdrive and didn't think it would get fulfilled so quickly). I read a little over 1/3 but had to return it unfinished (7 day loan), due to a busy week with little reading time. I've already re-requested it but it's a long wait now. Maybe it's because I hadn't gotten very far into it, but it wasn't rocking my world, anyway. I'll definitely revisit it, though, because of the raves here.

While waiting for my holds on Bewilderment, The Magician, and Harlem Shuffle, I started the next "A" on my fiction shelf, Milton in America, another one by Peter Ackroyd.

Also, as noted in Short Fiction, I'm following along with The Millions' William Trevor Reader project.

>316 DG_Strong: I will put that Wolitzer on my list, DG, thanks. I've looked at Wolitzer before but haven't opened one of her books and read it. I've just finished Tourist Season, short stories by Enid Shomer, which portray well the stranglehold emotion can have on humans. (By the way, having a book in each room works for me, too. I remember being snarked by someone on Readerville when I posted about that. But she also snarked me for wanting people to refrain from talking at the movies, so ....)

I'm a couple of chapters into Melville: His World and Work. Pretty fascinating so far.

>332 Pat_D: Pat your touchstone is wrong for Harrow, but the cover of the other book looks interesting :)

>333 LaureneRS: yikes, some people seem to have a need to snark and just be fricking mean. I thought it was bad back then, ho boy its a whole nother world. Fortunately Library Thing doesn't seem to have too many, at least not in the threads I am in.

Still reading Killing Moon but slowing down a bit. Maybe coz it really is lovely outside and I have gardening and seed sowing to do, so not sitting down as much to read

Oh I saw the new Dune. YOu really have to watch it in the theatre, its tremendous cinematography. Some of it reminded me of Star Wars but then had to remember, this book was from 1965, long before. I think of the three attempts to tell this story, this one suceeds the best; Of course we will have to wait for the next two to come out to really see. But I was very pleased with it. There was one moment tho when I started laughing: a character actually says 'like the grains of sand through a hour glass'.....it was all I could do to stop from saying 'so goes the Days of our Lives'. I just giggled instead.

>334 cindydavid4: Keith is eager to see Dune on the big screen, so I'm glad to hear it's so well done. Re the Readerville snarker, I was taken aback at the time but later figured out she had a heavy load of unhappiness and she found it efficacious to channel some of it into bullying someone. In retrospect I felt sorry for her.

Ooops. Thanks for the heads-up, Cindy.

My Dad and I watched Dune the other night. It's very pretty. I found myself wondering how it would play to anyone who hasn't read the book though. I was constantly filling in the gaps in the story from what I remembered reading.

>337 southernbooklady: I haven't read the book, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I have that question as well. For me it felt like a good way to set up the story so there wasn't too much confusion. Plus it helps that since this book was written we already have seen tons of these kind of movies - good versus evil, heros and villans, with spaceships and battles, that the basic premise shouldn't surprise anyone I think

My son is kind of a "Dune" expert. He liked it but said he was very disappointed that Feyd won't be appearing until the sequels.

You know, I didn't notice that at first. But yeah, that needed to be at least mentioned by his brother (hey yeah Feyd is out on tour somewhere will be back in 23) Two years is a heck of a long time to wait.

We are looking for a movie to see on Halloween and Dune seems like a good prospect. I'm keen on Bond but not 2.5 hours of him.

I read the The Fortune Men and it's superb and very disturbing.
It's based on a Somali man in Wales in 1952 who was accused of killing a Jewish shopkeeper. Shoddy detective work and systemic racism, you can guess the results. The book is excellent though and Mohamad really captures the time and place. I had no idea of the rich diversity of Cardiff in the 1950s - multiracial, multilingual.

I also read the Cecily Strong 'memoir - I mean, I don't know what to call it, it's pretty slight This Will all be over soon. It's about the year when she lost a cousin to cancer and quarantined due to Covid but it turns out she has quite a history of trauma, anxiety and depression. Which in some ways just makes me like her more because she truly makes me laugh so hard. I guess I have a little crush on her. Don't buy it though - take it out of the library. It's not much of a book but it's sweet and if it touches someone or makes them take better care of their mental health, hat's off to her.

I am reading creepy Hawthorne stories for the season and also I'm Fine But you Appear to be Sinking, so You Want to Talk about Race
and various September New Yorkers.

Ooof. Thanks for the reminder, Lauren. My NY'ers are piling up, too.

So, per above, I was catching up on article reads and I just had to come and share this one:

The ‘Strange’ Writing of Robert Aickman
The author who demonstrates horror has always been elevated.

It has everything that appeals to me in articles about books & lit. Well-written, informative, and with striking excerpts/examples.

Just read my very first Barbara Comyns Who was Changed and Who was Dead and it was spectacular fun. A little gruesome, a little melancholy but also quite funny and with a strangely happy ending. Kinda like Stella Gibbons and Barbara Pym mixed up. I'm smitten though.

Reading Bill Clegg's The End of the Day.

afincished Killing Moon and immediately bought the sequel. and Ive got Cuckoo Land that I am eager to start

I really enjoyed Carry the Dog, and I ended up interviewing her for Bloom. But there's also a little backstory about my picking up the book, which is that I was scrolling through the list of e-galleys and saw this title and immediately flashed on the months at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020, when I was carrying my dear 60-pound hound dog Dorrie up and down our back steps in her last days. I'm generally a sucker for dogs in titles so of course I was going to read that one. And there on the first page, the dog in the book (which isn't the dog being carried in the title but never mind) is named Dory. So that was kismet for sure, and then the publicist cold-emailed Bloom to see if anyone wanted to interview the author and I was 100% all in.

It's a good book, too. It starts out feeling like it might be one of those NYC comedies of manners, which I like anyway, but then it gets really interesting and a little dark-while-still-being-fun about a lot of big subjects, among them aging and sexuality, agency and consent, and who gets to say what, exactly, gets to happen in the name of art. Gangi does a very good job of navigating all of that without giving it short shrift, and at the same time offering a really engaging, fun read. Recommended to anyone who thinks sounds like a good time, and absolutely if you identify as an aging hipster.

I also read Gangi's first novel, The Next, which was entertaining but also a bit vehement for my mood—probably more about me than the book—and it didn't spark my love the way Carry the Dog did.

Also a debut short story collection, Eat the Mouth That Feeds You by Carribean Fragoza—really impressive debut, especially the first three or four stories in the collection. There were a few in the middle that felt a bit more like good ideas than fully realized, plotted pieces, but maybe that's just in contrast to the strongest work. Minor quibbles, though. These stories are full of energy and I'll absolutely read whatever Fragoza writes next.

I started reading the NYRB reissue of Edith Wharton's Ghosts over the Halloween weekend—sent to me by Daniel from Readerville, for those who remember him—and am about to dig into Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay. I barely started Ruth Franklin's Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life but had too many other books going and my library checkout is about to run out, so I'll have to renew it—the first few pages, at least, were very good.

Library holds that came in:

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
The Magician

I'm deep into both and enjoying them when I also got notified that Harrow was available again (Which supposedly had an 8 week wait after I returned it. So, either it's a hit and people are devouring it, or it's not a hit and 4 people bailed. I hope I can get to it before it has to be returned).

Still following along with The William Trevor Reader. One more story ("A School Story"), and I'll be all caught up. For quite some time I've had difficulty staying committed to online group/scheduled readings, but I'm totally into this one.

Lauren, I totally concur on The World Doesn't Require You. I've got that Comyns on my to-read list (a few people talked me out of starting with The Vet's Daughter) and have The Fortune Men on the virtual shelf, so that's all good to know.

>337 southernbooklady: If I read Dune it was when I was 14 or so, and I have zero memory of it, so when I do get to the movie I'll definitely be fresh eyes. I'll let you know what I think.

>348 Pat_D: I'm also enjoying the William Trevor series at The Millions, though I'm reading pretty sporadically and not going back to the original stories alongside them, which I really should do but don't have the time.

I just lost an entire, long post. Gah, I hate that. My own fault for posting on this darn Chromebook instead of my Surface.

>347 lisapeet: Your commentary on and all the synchronicity surrounding Carry the Dog was like an arrow through my heart. Our Gracie's back legs were paralyzed in her final days. I'm even now having trouble typing about her, so, yeah, umm I don't think I'm ready for that book, yet. It's definitely going on the list, though.

>350 Pat_D: Well, if it's any comfort, the actual dog being carried is just in a photograph, and the book's title is the title of the photo. The dog in the book is in good health throughout. It's a good one.

Sorry about Gracie, though. It's still such a visceral memory for me, sidling down the six stairs 3-4 times a day, chanting in her ear because I was terrified, each time, that I would fall and kill us both. She wasn't a small dog.

Finished the most excellent Killer Moon (realized how much it felt like a vampire story, in Egypt) meant to start the book for this month but decided I wanted to remain in this world awhile so I picked up the sequel the shadowed sun 20 pages into it there is no other place Id rather be. And its set in a place I know well, Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Canyon de shea) located near Chinle Arizona within the Navajo Nation. Also home to the ancient Anasazi tribe that she studied while here. Used to hike in this area, gorgeous place. I am glad the weather outside is cool,and I am retired, so am spending quite about there reading. Life is good

I will probably put in a review of Killer moon in my thread later, if youd like to see it

{{{PatD}}}

Finished Deacon King King and, meh - I've tried a James McBride before and had the same reaction, though I do like his music.

Finished Eva Luna which was wonderful, as always, almost.

Reading My Dark Places which is interesting, if not exactly good. But I'll finish it.

Quit on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - too cute by quite a stretch with the removal of the word 'the' and 'computer speak'.

Still reading Florida

>353 blackdogbooks: I didn't know McBride was a musician. What does he play?

Saxophonist, jazz

I thought the Clegg was a right mess. And the guy's an editor! In the first 80 pages nothing happened but a woman in her 70s pees herself and a lady of similar age in Hawaii hangs up on a repeat caller. Then the book took off, only to come to a grinding halt three quarters of the way through. Between flashbacks and constantly shifting POVS, I scarcely knew where I was half the time. I think there's a decent book in here but lord, does this writer need an editor. Clearly, not himself.

I think I am 2 for 2 with Clegg now which may absolve me from ever reading anything by him again.

>356 laurenbufferd: I read his did you ever have a family for a book group, thought it was quite good, but remember that the editing was taken to task during our discussion.

Been under the thrall of NK Jemisons Dreamblood Duo and just came up for air. I love these worlds she creates, and it will be a litttle before I can leave it and start another. very powerful

I felt pretty meh about Clegg's first book too which I've basically forgotten completely.

I am reading Patrick Modiano's Occupation Trilogy which is really trippy and odd and I've had to completely relax my Virgo mind and let it take charge - a bit like Dylan's Blonde on Blonde phase or watching Juliet of the Spirits - loads of mood and menace, don't look for cohesion or order. It's not my thing but it's breathtaking all the same.

Ok so someone elsethread suggested Kelly Barnhill to me and Im hooked after reading this

On wildness, cracked worlds monsters and on the odd nature of the short story

"This is why I like reading short stories, and this is why I write them — to be astonished; to be left breathless; to return to the world, shaken and dizzy, and looking over my shoulder, waiting for the monster to return."

I am halfway through Night Came with Many Stars, which is half a kind of book I normally love (multi generational blibbbity blab) and half I normally do not (there's some rape, among other traumas, like an eyeball-piercing). It is mmmaaybe a touuuch too gooey (and honestly, I have to question the sanity of anyone lifting the gamble-away-your-daughter conceit from Mayor of Casterbridge and then not doing much with it), but I'm gonna stick with it to see which way I finally fall... though if you demand quotation marks, stay away.

>360 DG_Strong: It is mmmaaybe a touuuch too gooey

The eyeball piercing?

Finished The girl who drank the moon and absolutely loved it. A few reviewers compared this favorably to Neil Gaiman and I totally agree. Now reading her short story collection dreadful young ladies and loving it! New to me current fav fantasy writer!

Elizabeth Strout's newest Oh, William did not disappoint. I think she's maybe my favorite living fiction writer.

Still under the spell of the 800+pp doorstop "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois." Keeping up with The William Trevor Reader. Lost interest in The Magician , because the matriarch in the story was getting on my last nerve. I'll probably go back and finish it, though, because Death in Venice is one of a handful of books that I regularly revisit. I think it's absolute perfection.

"For beauty, my Phaedrus, beauty alone, is lovely and visible at once. For, mark you, it is the sole aspect of the spiritual which we can perceive through our senses, or bear so to perceive. Else what should become of us, if the divine, if reason and virtue and truth, were to speak to us through the senses? Should we not perish and be consumed by love, as Semele aforetime was by Zeus?"

>363 LuRits: oh there was an excellent review in the nyt and am eager to read it!

I'm reading the new Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends - it's the first pandemic novel I've tackled, though I guess we are going to see five billion of them, which I completely dread. It's a funny book; he has a way with a phrase. Its flap copy mentions Chekhov and that definitely seems to be what he's going for -- which is fine, it's right up my alley.

It also reminds me quite a bit of Peter Cameron's The Weekend.

Started and will quickly finish the book the sci fi//fan decided for December The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is the first book in the Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente. a YA book that we thought would be a short fun read. So far so good.

Also starting cloud cuckoo land as well as Parlor Games

Finished duchess of bloomsbury street Loved the first one, this one I dunno, just didn't enjoy as much as the first one. She is basically driven around place place at times screaming when will I get to see what I want to see. At times she seemed really spoiled and ungrateful tho that might just be me. Tho i did enjoy visiting london again through her eyes. I did love her visit with the stores owners wife and daugher. I did not like that the publisher decided to write on the back cover "hanff died in 1997 and never married' So all of her talents and accomplishments meant nothing I suppose. not the books fault but just maddening!

I seem to utterly lack a Shteyngart gene. I find him great in interviews but man, I cannot get through a book of his. I may try this new one but I don't know.

Has anyone here read The Victorian Chaise Lounge - it's 100 pages of creepy time traveling delight - perfect for a rainy November afternoon. But be careful of what you are sitting on!

Is that the Laski novel, Lauren. I want to read it but haven’t found a reasonable copy. I read her Little Boy Lost this past year and quite enjoyed it. I think Backlisted did an episode on the VCL.

I'll have to listen because it is quite an extraordinary and definitely frighteningly little nugget. I haven't been so creeped out by interior decor since The Yellow Wallpaper.

It's one of those Persephone reissues and they are just stupid expensive. I'll keep my eye out though for ya, Lu.

But be careful of what you are sitting on!
I have four cats, so... always.

Finished Planet of Clay, a short, strange, sad novel in translation about a young girl in the middle of the war in Syria who is in some way on the autism spectrum, though it's not explicitly stated anywhere—she doesn’t speak (but can sing the Qur'an), walks compulsively, and narrates her story in a strange and disjointed, but also affecting, way. It’s an odd book. I felt like it spun out a bit during the girl Rima's free associations—she's obsessed with The Little Prince, a sort of synesthetic philosophy of colors in her drawings, and Hassan, a friend of her brother's who rescues her from a chemical attack. But Rima's disassociated, often on the surface inappropriate worldview also worked as an apt commentary on war—how can anyone on the ground, caught in the middle of it, really make sense of it? What would actually be an "appropriate" reaction? Sometimes that kind of metaphor seems forced, but I thought it worked even when the style didn't always cohere.

Back to Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, which is looong, and dipping in and out of Ghosts.

Oh and somewhere in there I also finished Elise Engler's A Diary of the Plague Year, which is coming out next month—I interviewed the artist for Bloom, which should also go up next month. I thought it was awesome, though I realize a book about 2020 may not be for everyone. Engler sat down every morning and made a small painting about the day's headlines for something like five years, as part of a bigger project, but a publisher saw her work online and suggested she turn 2020 (or rather 2020 plus 20 days, to end with the inauguration) into a book. I really like her painting style, but it was also fascinating to see the year presented in one visual block like this—the element of interpretation, but also the confirmation that yes, that year was just as horrible as I remember. I found myself glued to it, turning the pages to see what happened next, even though I KNEW what happened next. The presentation was everything, and it was moving in ways that a straight-up collection of headlines wouldn't have been.

Lisa, that sounds amazing.

>373 laurenbufferd: She invited me down for a studio visit to see the paintings in person and I'm all eeeeeeee yes.

Shut! Up! I am jealous.

I started reading The Radical Potter and holy shit, it's dry. I am persevering but it ain't easy.

I loved loved LOVEd The Family Chao which is coming out in February. The story is based, in part, on The Brothers Karamazov - set in a small town in Wisconsin and centered around a family -owned Chinese restaurant . The father is a total tyrant, the mother has moved out of the house and is living in a Buddhist temple with the nuns, the oldest son has come home to work in the restaurant where he hopes to eventually be made partner, the middle son wants nothing to do with it and is embarrassed by his family and the youngest is pre-med and used to being babied. Everyone is home for the annual Christmas party when the father dies in a freak accident. Was it murder? There's a missing dog, casual anti-Asian racism, stolen money and lots of food. It's both funny and thought provoking and very very clever.

Is it an immigrant novel when the generation that were immigrants are dead? Isn't it just an American story?

Sign me up for The Family Chao!

Is it an immigrant novel when the generation that were immigrants are dead? Isn't it just an American story?
No. Yes. I'm putting The Family Chao on my list.

I read all of James Ivory's (of Merchant/Ivory) memoir, Solid Ivory, in a big gulp. It's not really a memoir, just a bunch of different short things about a lot of different things, ranging from his relationships with Ismail Merchant and Bruce Chatwin (there is a lot of unbuckling in the Chatwin passages), to a dinner party in India where someone's throat almost got cut, to a gentle (but definite) takedown of Raquel Welch. It's kind of a mess, but he emerges from it as a pretty fully-formed personality, though I suspect that personality is 100% crank.

Reading The Chosen - really interesting and well written. Surprisingly relevant for today.

>379 blackdogbooks: One of my fave books and authors in HS. He has three more -the promise My name is asher lev davitas harp remember not caring for the last one have no idea way Anyway try them out as well

I knocked out this little tiny (seriously, it's physically quite tiny) book last night, An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (translated from Swedish) and it was a lot of fun in a dark sort of way. Well, not really "sort of way," just dark - the titular elderly lady, Maud, is a ninety year-old psychopath who manages to dispatch someone in each little story for various perceived sleights. You don't really object because the victims are usually horrible in some ordinary, everyday sort of way. It's a whisker away from being laugh out loud, though that might just be me and my years-long suppressed grocery store rage; I identified completely with Maud more often than not.

It's a couple of years old; but there's a new collection out as we speak, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed.

Good for stockings, if you're looking for something other than the usual things that go in stockings.

ohhhh, “dark sort of way” — just my cuppa, thanks.

I’ve started looking at the Year’s Best lists. This title is popping up on several lists so far. I’m reading it and if’s mighty good.. Not your usual Best Book.

https://www.amazon.com/Razorblade-Tears-Novel-S-Cosby/dp/1250252709/

Oh my. All day yesterday till just now I was ready to praise mr dickens carol to the heavens. Then I got near the climax and well-the author jumped the shark. Totally ridiculous thing to do. I was planning a 5*, now a 3* and wondering if thats too high. I get that she's a screenwriter, and was not surprised how much the entire book was written for screen. But what she did made the entire journey fake and wasted. Im angry with her to waste my time with thi s But I reached a point that caused me not to care about the book . In fact I will not finish it. I enjoy fantasy, I enjoy magic realism, but this was neither. Just sloppy writing 2*

Finished Florida by Lauren Groff - not good at all, I think. Can't understand all the rave reviews and how she become the latest darling. Whiny and entitled characters. And other female authors handle the gender issues much better.

Earlier this fall I read Groff’s “Matrix,” her new novel. It is one of those revisionist books that make me crazy. The more effort she poured into making the revisioning credible, the worse it got.

And, it’s on a lot of year-end BEST lists. So, what do I know ?

How is it a revisionist book? Is it because there is little known about the main character and Groff told the tale as if it were true, esp when drawing in famous people as characters. that happens a lot in historic fiction. Some authors are better at making it believable than others; or is it something else

I really liked both Florida and Matrix and I'm one who did not like Fates and Furies at all, in fact, it was the stories in Florida that got me back on Groff's bandwagon. I didn't find the Matrix revisionist, it felt more like an imagining or a filling in of a template.

Just finished The Blue Flower which was really beautiful but felt a bit opaque. I'm still digesting it but I think it may not have been about Novalis at all.

I am reading The Great Passion for review - not the kind of thing I'd pick on my own but its very enjoyable. Runce is a good solid writer.

Also a fan of Florida and Matrix. Groff said something interesting about writing Matrix at an author panel last spring. She had been writing and researching it for several years, of course, and she said something to the effect that four years under the Trump presidency made her want to write a story with no men in it. I sympathized with the feeling.

It's not easy to write a women-only community that feels multi-layered, solid, and plausible. But on the whole, I think she did a decent job of it.

reading oh william and really enjoying it

I wasn't familiar enough with the subject in Matrix to have an opinion on it being revisionist (although I know Kat is."Nun" genre, has been one of her specialties as far back as I can remember). Even though I enjoyed the story and being introduced to an historic figure I'd not known, I think I admired the writing more. There were some beautiful sentences and imageries. I also liked her treatment of sexuality among the nuns, even though I highly doubt they were so open about it in that time period.

I readily admit to an historical fiction bias, in general, though. I love the genre.

391 (although I know Kat is."Nun" genre, has been one of her specialties as far back as I can remember).

ah, thanks for that. Kat I understand now why you see it that way. But like Pat I fell in love with the writing. I certainly had trouble with her timeline (Eleanor would not have known Maria in real life and a few other incidentals) But it was a good read for me. BTW has anyone read the corner that held them? Didn't like it as much as Matrix, but found it very interesting

I've read both Matrix and The Corner That Held Them—really enjoyed the Groff, and thought the Townsend Warner was strange and lovely... big on atmosphere and low on plot, but that was fine with me. I very much liked Matrix as a novel, and without any in-depth knowledge of the time period I thought the historical trappings were handled well enough to keep me satisfied.

>385 blackdogbooks: I didn't love Florida, or warm up much to Fates and Furies. But I thought this last one of hers was a lot of fun.

I was actually thinking of The Corner That Held Them because I just finished another ambience-heavy historical novel, Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower. I also liked it, in the absence of much plot, for the odd venn diagram she pulled off of very precise 18th-century German details coupled with an extremely funny archness. I'm sorry but you just can't beat period snark.

I loved The Blue Flower. It was strange and mysterious and very compelling- it plunges you into a place and time with not a ton of explanation and there you are with all of it. The writing is exquisite. Someone in my reading group talked about it how the masculine world of ideas and the feminine world of getting things done run parallel tracks, kind of gliding past one another and that was so visceral, it really helped me.

DG, have you read this?

I read The Victorian Chaise Lounge which is less a horror story and more of a tale about agony, ecstasy and the body. Really really interesting little book. There is a fantastical component but it holds together less well as macabre than thinking of the story in a more philosophical way.

I had to read two novels to review - The Great Passion which is a coming of age story set in Leipzig in Bach's household by the Grantchester guy. It's very well written - nothing to go wild over - but I enjoyed it much more than I thought I might. Also, The Violin Conspiracy which is heavy handed for a thriller but it's quite a unique setting - an African American violin protégé and a stolen violin - and I think it will be eye opening to a lot of readers.

I just started The Home Maker which is terrifying. Really enjoying these Persephone titles.

>394 laurenbufferd: You can watch the author of The Violin Conspiracy play his violin. He did a brief presentation for our conference in September. Very sweet guy.

I’m reading this. Won last year’s Prix Concourt.

https://www.amazon.com/Anomaly-Novel-Hervé-Tellier/dp/1635421691/

SBL, that is so lovely. may I share it with my arts leadership group?

>397 laurenbufferd: sure thing, Lauren.

>394 laurenbufferd: The Blue Flower had a brief flare up of interest long ago at Readerville; I think it was Derek Badman who entertained a particular dislike for it at the time. I did read it in an attempt to just be ornery but I'd have to read it again to talk about it. There was wine.

>394 laurenbufferd: >399 DG_Strong: For a book ostensibly about man's pursuit of the infinite and unreachable, The Blue FLower is remarkably grounded, physical, compassionate, and nondidactic. You can spend a lot of time talking about the philosophy and the finer points of German Romanticism, but it is a historical novel at its core, concerned with painting a true picture of a particular time and place and people, and it is a staggering success at that. I really, really liked it. It's on my list of "books worth re-reading."

>400 southernbooklady: Yeah, it very much seems like a book you'd get something different out of at different times.

Dg, I am chiming in with my galpals here - the subject might be a bit hi falutin', but the writing and story telling are not. It's almost deceptive in that way.

>396 kwlwarren: Kat, the synopsis at Amazon reads like a custom-made Netflix series.

>394 laurenbufferd: just started The Home Maker which is terrifying. Really enjoying these Persephone titles.

Oooo. I bought a copy of that last spring but haven't gotten to it. Might join you so I can chat with someone about it.

Do! I just finished it this morning. The thing I like about these titles is that are not not just cozy middlebrow books for women by women, there seems to be something in each of them that really packs a punch when you least expect it. The Home Maker is no exception - a family in small town America where the wife seems supremely unsuited to childcare (she is literally making everyone including herself ill by her compulsive demands and her inability to let her children be children) and the husband is miserable at his job. When their roles reverse, everyone is better served but the larger issue is societal pressures of gender expectations. It's also a total indictment of capitalist/patriarchal structure. I loved it.

I may crack on with Good Evening Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes or read Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.

I am almost finished Maid and I hate hate this book. I am listening to the author reading the book and I just want to throttle her. Yes she had a difficult life but single motherhood is not rare today,and I feel her poverty would be so much more painful if she was a visible minority. I just can’t stand the book and I’m happy I’m almost finished it. If I have to hear about one more filthy toilette I’m going to scream. I don’t doubt being a maid is back+breaking dehumanizing work,but many people do it and don’t write books with as much self-misery as this woman does. My offence tweaks my liberal guilt but still I can’t stand one page of this book. Clearly it’s written for wealthy folk who want a peak into the undercurrent of the service people working for them. I wish I had reached the point when I could trash a discard a book I hate so much. Just a terrible experience and beyond me why it has received so much praise. I guess it’s supposed to make us feel better for the lives we have. Most of us clean our own houses,deal with children alone,have horrible low-paying demeaning jobs-this is just the worst.There is one chapter in the book called The Porno house.while cleaning she opens a drawer in a house(?) and finds one porno magazine. She is horrified and goes on and on about wondering what sort of horrible marriage this family has and how sorry she feels for the wife.what kind of planet does this woman come from? Horrible book.

About revisionism. It’s not negative per se. Often it is recognition of what could have been as opposed to what was. Revisionism annoys me when there is not a nod to the recognition of reality.

PatD, I like contemporary French lit.

It's a rare book in translation that appeals to me, and I'm not fluent in any other languages to read foreign titles in the original, BUT I absolutely love French cinema which is often based on novels.

ok looking for a title that was very popular in rville back in the day. Its about a couple that are traveling through northern africa. The book is filled with letters and art and travel tags and such. Think it has museum in the title. Thought I had it but its walked away. Any ideas?

More than just North Africa, but maybe Griffin & Sabine?

Its not quite the same one im thinking of, but the concept is the same, I'll use it! Thanks deeg

This one is proving a grand read, grand!

“In the Field”
by Rachel Pastan

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Novel-Rachel-Pastan/dp/195300203X/

I'm taking a little break from the large Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (yeah, still) and am reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which is so far mild and charming.

I am finishing up Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger (dg, do you know her?) which I have mixed feelings about and diving back into the Occupation Trilogy which isn't exactly holiday reading. I have Christmas Pudding on deck and can't wait to dive in.

Just finished Towers of Trebizond and now reading the museum of purgatory Its not the book I was looking for, but enjoying it anyway (had it on my shelves for ever, not sure what happened there...)

OOOH I love Towers of Trebizond!

I was rather surprise by the gender question of the narrator. I felt so sure he was male, and assumed his real name was lawrence. Then I read some reviews that assume the narrator was female. It mattered somewhat considering she would have been traveling alone through an iffy area. Regardless, I loved the conversations they had and aunt dots descriptions, and all of the people she met along the way (was surprised to see Billy Graham, but I guesss he would have been old enough. Had some trouble determining the time period; thought it was post WWI, but then wasn't so sure).

ah HA! Thinking more about the book I was looking for, I remembered that the woman had a map tatooed on to her arm. goodled and this popped up! The Tattooed Map I thought I had it but seems to have disappeared. Oh well

Genderless protagonists fascinate me. When cleverly done. See also (index speak) Sarah Caudwell’s brilliant mysteries.

Speaking of genderless protagonists, I zipped through A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which is very charming sf. Some books are put on this earth to make us feel better about being here too, and I mean that with zero disrespect. This is one of those, which I also say with no faint praise intended. It's a lovely tale of person meeting robot in a future where justice and eco-awareness have won out, yet the human condition of discontent, self-doubt, and questioning the value of one’s existence has—unsurprisingly, if you think about it—persisted. The book’s two sole characters are engaging, and there’s some lovely world-building here. Plus enough casual profanity to remind the reader that, no matter how sweet it is, this is a book for grownups and teens (OK, maybe middle schoolers… I certainly swore plenty back then). Also, even though I was reading an ebook, I went to the publisher’s site and looked at the cover a few times just to hold it in my head, because it’s very nice. I’m looking forward to the next one in the series.

I also—yes, finally—finished Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life. It was good but not gripping—she was an interesting character, and I'm always game for reading about that mid-century literary milieu, because I think of it as my parents' (at least in terms of cultural influences), even though they were 10 years younger than Jackson and her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman. Jackson and Hyman also wrote for The New Leader, where I worked for a few years in its last days in the early 2000s. Hyman's intellectual mansplainyness was grating, and I'm not sure I ever got the chemistry between them, but I don't doubt it existed. I sympathized with Jackson's balancing act between the expectations of being a 1950s/'60s mother and housewife and a novelist, but I didn't quite feel it... then again Ruth Franklin's documenting Jackson's story from her correspondence and journals—to which Jackson added her own spin—and other people's accounts, so that takes away a bit of the immediacy. So: interesting but not a must-read, unless you're a Jackson fanatic (I'm not).

Now reading Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, which is—if I have this right—a 1990s rock'n'roll time travel novel, sent to me by a Librarything friend.

I finished Ring Road which was the third section in The Occupation Trilogy. I wouldn't say I enjoyed these but I am kind of in awe of him and the world he recreates as well as the translation which feels seamless. Modiano's father was mixed up in the black market/collaboration of Occupied France and these three novellas all address that in kind of a surreal and wild way. Very weird and very troubling.

I am reading Christmas Pudding which I want to be delighted by and am not quite and Diane McWhorter's book on Birmingham which is a F$%^&* horror show. This country. Carry Me Home

Im rereading an old fav book list Readers Delight and catching up on ones I hadn't read. Decided on indian summer Liking it very much so far. Some of the writing is very indicative of the time period, but I love the triangle, and all the italian scenery.

I have half a dozen books in process but I am slow and easily distracted these days. Reading and posting here, however sporadic, is encouraging, thanks all.

KW, I am always glad to see you here!

Aw, Lauren, in turn I welcome your kindness.

Meanwhile, MAGIC happened. it has been many months since I read anything that riveted me to page after page. That excited me so, and enthralled. I thought I was done for. That reading magic would not be mine again.

This novel saved me. I yet live to read.

https://www.amazon.com/Field-Novel-Rachel-Pastan/dp/195300203X/

Ooh that looks good, Kat, and my library has it.

I've been doing some reading over my time off... reading and baking and watching movies, mostly, since NYC feels a bit like a petri dish right now. We did go see the Joel Coen Hamlet with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, which was terrific. Other than that and visiting mechanics (two 22-year-old cars that won't pass inspection without some help, and jeez nobody in our neighborhood wants to work on them, so we finally went with our out-of-the-way guy who loves old cars and is friendly and honest but who's a pain in the ass to use), we've been sitting pretty tight.

One good kinda trashy book: Glimpses, sent to me by a Librarything friend, which I devoured in a few days like eating cookies. It's a shaggy-dog rock’n’roll time travel fantasy, with appearances by Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles (briefly), so—right there you can probably figure out if it’s your jam or not, and though I had some quibbles, it was definitely enough my kind of thing to be fun. The plotting was all over the place, and looks like it was set up to include as many elements of the author’s autobiography as he could cram in—and for all his characterizations of their various neuroses and challenges, the novel’s women are all pretty much two-dimensional fantasy projections, plus one slightly complex difficult WIFE, ahem. OK, the protagonist is a bit of a dick. But despite those criticisms, to overuse an overused phrase, it is what it is—an enjoyable music-geeky tale, the kind of book you would have picked up on the wire rack of the candy/smoke shop on the corner in 1995 and definitely have gotten your $7.95 worth.

I also read a lovely e-galley of Paul Madonna's You Know Exactly, the Third Collection of All Over Coffee. Madonna is an artist whose work I really, really like. It feels corny to say, but it's definitely an inspiration for me; I love his style and approach to his art equally. This is a wonderful book, both a visual treat and a good exploration into his craft—not so much the making of the work as his editorial decisions around the All Over Coffee series, his books, and other projects. I discovered him at City Lights Bookstore when I was in San Francisco in 2015, and just fell in love with his work—time for me to own more of it in paper-and-board format, I think. I had a professor in my undergrad years who said that every piece of art you make should have beauty and mystery, and Madonna's work satisfies that craving for me in a big way. It also makes me run to my sketchbook and draw, which is a good thing.

Also reading, on and off, Creative Acts for Curious People, because I'm interested in that kind of creative jump-starty kind of thing lately, and though the exercises here probably aren't going to be anything I can use in any of the situations I'm looking to solve problems for, you never know. It's not particularly linear so doesn't suffer from me dropping in and out.

Started two books this week: a galley of former Readerville member Katharine Weber's Jane of Hearts and Other Stories, which is super good storytelling and very fun, and Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which is good storytelling but I don't think I would call it exactly FUN. But absolutely interesting.

OOH, I'm eager to read Katharine's new book.

Lisa, have you see Twyla Tharp's book on creativity? I thin kit's good.

I have the opportunity to interview Jennifer Egan later in the month in conjunction with her new book The Candy House. I am not a big fan of Good Squad and I'm a bit sad that this seems like a continuation of the same with many of the same characters. Didn't care about them then and I still don't now. But it's hanging together a bit better as a novel and thus, the jury remains out.

I am also reading Carry Me Home which is a very detailed almost day to day account of the events leading up to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Ave Baptist Church with a cast of hundreds. As queasy making as reading about Bull Conner always is, what is more upsetting is the way the FBI - under Kennedy - simply looked the other way in regard to the Klan, infiltrating with informers but simply not acting.

And for when my brain needs a break Faithful Place which I think I might have read before but for the life of me, I can't remember a word.

>427 laurenbufferd: My best read this year was Walking with the Wind by John Lewis - a great companion to the one you're reading there.

>427 laurenbufferd: I haven't read the Twyla Tharp book, but I'm noting it, and NYPL has it—cool! What do you think of the new Egan? I was pretty neutral on Goon Squad, as I remember. And she gave me an incredibly boring email interview when she took over at PEN America, but to cut her some slack she must have been doing ten a day at that point.

>428 blackdogbooks: Also noted, and also available through my library, though too old for an ebook.

I'm amazed at how Patrick Radden Keefe can keep a piece of reported nonfiction rolling with such amazing momentum for hundreds of pages. He did it in Say Nothing and now Empire of Pain has me riveted. It's a combination of good narrative structure, good research, and good writing, but I'm not sure those alone always make for such a propulsive book. Really enjoying it, and Katharine's as well.

I am seventh in line for the Keefe book at the library. Say Nothing was captivating, and I'm glad to hear that Empire of Pain is, too. Currently I'm reading and loving The Hearing Trumpet and wondering how I've never heard of Leonora Carrington before.

>430 LaureneRS: The Hearing Trumpet was such a discovery for me. I adored it. I've got her complete short stories too but have only just started them.

I am a Carrington fan and am excited to see a new burst of interest in her. I can recommend the novel that came out about her last year Leonora in the Morning.
I was so underwhelmed by Goon Squad that my approach to The Candy House is very cautious. But I'm pleasantly surprised so far.

I've reported before that I'll sometimes use a mystery as a way to jump start me out of a reading slump and so that's what I'm doing now, with one of those Bruno, Chief of Police books. I'd tell you the title except I have now read five of them over the past couple of years and literally cannot tell you the difference between them so I have no idea which one I am reading. Bruno is eating some food and coaching some lady rugby and, oh, he's mixed up in an IRA terrorist plot. The usual.

DG, I read them all and can't remember a one.

I am reading a bunch of things. I finished The Candy House and I have such mixed feelings. Lisa, I may call you since I've never interviewed someone whose most recent book I've so disliked. It's not really a novel and there are several things that are so lazy I wanted to shake someone. I am currently reading The Keep. Sigh.

Over our snowpocalyspe, I read Faithful Place and I Tituba and tried to catch up on New Yorkers.

>434 laurenbufferd: Call away! I've done a few interviews where I didn't like the book, though I think not one-on-one. But we're due for a chat anyway...

I finished Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, which is just such a fantastic piece of longform investigative journalism/narrative nonfiction. I think part of what I loved was just seeing what he did in terms of pulling his research together to form an honestly gripping story—not always a given that it's a detailed internal history of a large pharma corporation—but I was pretty rapt all the way through. Or at least until the last few pages when it became clear that they were going to get to keep all their money and dodge a lot of accountability, which was just so disappointing—but no criticism of Keefe's writing, to be sure. It's a fascinating story and he's a great storyteller.

Ok, you lazy bitches, what are y'all reading?

I finished the Keep and I'm now thinking that besides the Manhattan novel, I don't care much for Jennifer Egan.

I am reading Debts of Dishonor which is suiting my distractibility nicely and i've just passed the halfway mark in the very long, very detailed but very engaging Carry Me Home.

A quick reread of The People We Hate at the Wedding, because he has a new one coming. I couldn't remember if I liked it or not. It's still an "almost" for me, though I do think he has one great comedy in him still to come.

I've never heard of Ginder, and apparently he's written several books. That wedding one sounds fun.

I am most of the way through The woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons and it's very much for the usual reading suspects - an idiosyncratic window inherits a cottage in the woods, steals an abused dogs and lights out for the country. It's like a gentler Lolly Willowes with more animals.

I have about 100 pages left of Carry Me Home and it's hard to know who to despise more - the Kennedys, George Wallace, the Klan or the FBI. The culpability is off the charts.

Over the weekend, I red Debts of Dishonor. I'm terrible with a mystery about finances but this was not overly complicated and reminded me a bit of Antonia Fraser's Jemima Shore detective novels.

I read the upcoming short story collection by Katharine Weber, whom most of you will probably remember from Readerville days, Jane of Hearts: And Other Stories, which was terrific. The stories vary in length from almost-novella to almost-flash, which makes for a very propulsive, energetic quality. They're all very smart and very interior, with very subtle links to each other here and there—blink and you might miss them. Also something I like as an admitted magpie person, a thread throughout of the power of objects over us all. Recommended! It comes out in March.

Now reading Rachel Pastan's In the Field, a Kat recommendation, because I do love a good science novel.

In the background of other things, I've been reading the new Matthew Sturgis bio of Oscar Wilde. It's at least my third Wilde bio so I know all the, uh, ins and outs of his life, so the main thing I'm doing is comparing it to the other ones I've read. I am a devoted fan of the Richard Ellman one from the 80s, but this one is very different. Ellman was a better critical biographer, but I do love the way Sturgis gets to how irritating and exasperating Wilde could be -- this one is a much better biography of a *human* than the Ellman, which is better bio of a *writer* (which I guess I am saying are two different things?).

It's also funny how I've changed my stance on OW a little. Both books talk about how right after Wilde got out of jail - like the next night! - he attended a dinner where he expounded on Dante for like an hour. Thirty years ago, I thought that was lovely and romantic. Now the very idea of it almost makes me run screaming from the room.

I highly highly HIGHLY recommend Carry Me Home but only if you want to live in a state of suspended outrage. I do hope McWhorter'll write a memoir because how she got to Harvard and the NYT from Birmingham is a story I want to know.

I am reading a Tana French mystery - boy those go down easy and stories from Good Evening, Mrs Craven which is a collection of Millie Panter-Downs' stories that were published in the New Yorker during WWII. They are truly excellent - subtle little vignettes about home life, Londoners moving to the country to get away from the bombs, ladies working for the Red Cross, artists joining the army. I can only imagine the delight of reading the New Yorker in the late 1930s and coming across these. She was truly a gifted writer.

I am also reading Dara Horn's book of essays People Love Dead Jews but slowly because every essay gives me a ton to think about.

I just finished Empire of Pain. What an excellent reporter and fine writer Keefe is, and what vile vermin the Sacklers are. I'm about to begin Kindred, given to me by my grandniece.

!somehow I got unstarred from this thread, wondered where everyone had gone! hope all is well with you and yours

recent reads
Island of Missing Trees
five thousand and one nights
a strangeness in my mind
the white ship

books Im reading now
spinning silver
chasing spring
The Silence of Scheherazade
I shall not hate

all for various LT themes and RL groups

Hi—this thread is loading soooo slowly these days, so I'm going to continue it in a new one. Full steam ahead to The Eternal Question: What Are You Reading? 9 / 2022!