Nickelini's 2020 ROOTs

Looking ahead to 2020, I don't see a lot of time for reading, so I'm setting my goal as a reasonable 15 books for the year.

1. Souvenir of Canada
2. Once Upon a River
3. Cold Shoulder
4. A Tranquil Star
5. The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia
6. A Change of Climate
7. The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam
8. The Finishing School
9. Forgiveness
10. Becoming
11. Italy Out of Hand
DNF: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
12. Hollow Heart
13. To the Back of Beyond
14. Audrey Hepburn, an Elegant Spirit
15. The Decameron
16. I Remember Nothing
17. The Breaking of a Wave
18. Don't Stop Believin'
19. August Folly
20. The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared
21. The Country Where No One Ever Dies
22. Your House Is On Fire, Your Children Are Gone
23. The Day of the Triffids
24. The Devil's Picnic
25. The Pumpkin Eater
26. The Book of Imaginary Beings
27. Tinder
28. Taaqtumi
29. Winter
30. Last Vanities

Books Read That Were Not From My TBR Pile (see my ClubRead Thread for comments and conversation):

The Temptation of Gracie
Soap and Water & Common Sense
My Sister, the Serial Killer
The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East 1978 - 1984
The Summer Villa
The Complete Persepolis
Ghost Wall
Such a Fun Age
Darcy's Utopia
Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian
Such a Fun Age
The Ghost in the House
French Women Don't Get Fat
Enya: a Treatise on Unguilty Pleasures
The Turn of the Key
Miss Iceland
Starve Acre

Welcome back, Joyce. Happy ROOTing in 2020

Good to see you again. Happy reading!

Welcome back from me too!

Welcome back and have a great reading year!

>2 connie53:, >3 MissWatson:. >4 Jackie_K:, >5 rabbitprincess:

Thanks, everyone!

>2 connie53: - you live in the Netherlands, if I remember. My daughter is currently living in Switzerland but is talking about doing her Masters at a university in the Netherlands. This warms my heart, as my ancestry is Dutch, but is completely subsumed by my husband's Italian (she's living in Europe under her Italian citizenship, even though she's born in Canada). I love visiting her in Switzerland, but I'd really love to visit her in the Netherlands!

That would be great, Joyce. Did she choose an university? The Netherlands is a relatively small country and I would love to meet when your daughter decides to study here and you are visiting her.

>7 connie53:
No, she hasn't gotten that far yet. She wants to work and make $$ for now but eventually wants to go back to uni and probably become an accountant. She's looking at the Netherlands or the UK. If she ends up in the Netherlands for sure we can meet up! I love visiting LT friends (likewise if you ever come to Vancouver let me know)

Hope your reading is all good!

1. Souvenir Of Canada 2, Douglas Coupland, 2004


cover comments: Yep, that's a Doublas Coupland early-2000s cover

Comments: This is the sequel to the author's successful 2002 Souvenir of Canada. Same idea -- a series of essays on things that are uniquely Canadian and document our history and developing national identify, with unique photos to illustrate his vignettes. Some topics this time include Eaton's, Moose, Plywood, & Scary Bank Calendars.

Rating I see I rated the first one 4 stars back in 2013, and this wasn't quite as good, so 3.5 stars then.

Recommended for: Coupland is always a good read, but you'd also have to be interested in the topic.

Why I Read This Now: it's been kicking around my house for years, and I'm bogged down in the overly-long novel I'm reading. A quick break.

2. Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield, 2018


cover comments: Full marks for this -- absolutely lovely and evocative. Definitely draws me in.

Comment: here's the blurb on the back cover: "It was the longest night of the year when the strangest of things happened . . . On a dark midwinter's night in an ancient inn on the Thames, the regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door burst open and in steps an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a child. Hours later, the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. . . . "

Well, that just sounds like something I'd love. And I enjoyed (but didn't love) the author's earlier novel The Thirteenth Tale. When I read the 5 star reader reviews on this, I think "Yes! this is the book for me." I loved the setting of the upper Thames, where I spent part of my of my 2009 holiday in England.

Unfortunately, it really wasn't. maybe wrong book, wrong time? It was overly long. From page one. I started it early December and just couldn't do it--even though it seemed like a good Christmas holiday book, and I had book club meeting on it in mid-January. I picked it up again at New Years and found it a slog. Some parts were absolutely lovely. But it just wasn't working for me.

Recommended for: not sure -- the 5 star reviews really make it sound like my sort of book. It's only 416 pages long, but it felt like 1,416 to me.

Why I Read This Now: it was a book club book that I was enthused about. The meeting was in the middle of January and I had only managed to get a quarter of the way through by then. Happened to be a week of bad winter weather, and the meeting was 35 km away, so I bailed. The meeting went ahead because a group of members lived close. I stuck with the book, but was determined that I'd not be reading it into February! So here I finish, Jan 31. I considered quitting it 4 pages from the end.

Rating: 3 stars. It was fine. Didn't work for me. I had to force myself to care.

>11 Nickelini: I considered quitting it 4 pages from the end.
!!!

>11 Nickelini:

With such a review I'm surprised it even got a 3 star rating! Wow to persevering!

3. Cold Shoulder, Markus Werner, 1989; translated from German by Michael Hofmann, 2016


cover comments: this isn't actually my cover, although are similar and clearly done by the same publisher. I like mine better. Both seem very Swiss, except for the use of a serif font

Why I Read This Now: Since my daughter moved to Switzerland, I've been trying to learn as much about the country as I can. Ideally, I want to read contemporary female authors but there aren't many or any translated into English, so this is what I get.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Comments: Through most of this, I thought it was pretty good -- some parts were amusing, and some a bit boring, but overall it was a 38 yr old white guy jabbering on about his mediocre life. I asked myself why some published in 2016 decided they needed to translate this 1989 novel. Was it just that the author was considered one of Switzerland's literary stars? Did the English reading world need another novel about a middle aged white guy navel gazing? But there on page 22, that said middle aged white guy started talking about navel gazing: "he lay there gazing at his navel, . . . He couldn't quite manage to think of himself as an embryo, but he thought he could understand why 'navel-gazing' was a term of disapproval . . . " Hmmm, to devote a whole paragraph to 'navel gazing' in such a short book made me think the author was doing something else here. (Also, I'm interested to learn that this is an expression that is known in German. Google Translate shows "Nabelblick." I wonder if it's in other languages too? A quick check of Google Translate gives me the French word "Nombrilisme" so I think "yes")

Anyway, this short book (117 pages, but they are dense pages because conversations are all blended into a paragraph, unlike what we do in English language books) tells about a few days in a hot Zurich summer when Moritz Wenk, "a moderately unsuccessful artist", goes about his day interacting with his dental hygienist girlfriend Judith, an unhappy friend couple, a dinner party, and a few other people. All fine, and then --wham!-- the last 25 pages had a big, dark, sad twist that I didn't see coming at all. Maybe I was lulled by the ho-hum Swiss few days and there was foreshadowing that I missed. I guess I'll have to reread this one day. Yeah, so the end sort of blew me away.

Recommended for: Sure, some readers will say, "but it's still a middle aged white guy and his problems." Fair enough, if you're beyond drowned in those books, I hear you. Yet, for me, the amusing bits and the ending made me like this more than I expected to.

4. A Tranquil Star, Primo Levi, 2007 -- translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, Asessandra Bastagli, & Jenny McPhee


cover comments: fine, whatever

Comments: A collection of short stories that were published in various magazines during the author's lifetime. The first five, the "Early Stories," were published between 1949 and 1971, and the "Later Stories" were from 1973 to 1986, for whatever that's worth. Of the early stories, I only liked the first one, "The Death of Marinese," which was a straight forward war story, written in 1949. By far not my favourite genre, but still a good story. Levi is a writer who is famous for his books about the Holocaust, so I was surprised that the remaining stories were seemingly unrelated to WWII. Many of them reminded me of the type of story you'd see on the TV show The Twilight Zone. My favourites of the collection were "The Magic Paint," "Gladiators," "The Fugitive," "The Sorcerers," "Bureau of Vital Statistics," and perhaps my very favourite, "Buffet Dinner." This last one is probably also the oddest. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but then it became clear that this was the story of a kangaroo going to a dinner party. It's really quite complicated, and I felt for the poor guy.

Rating Short story collections are difficult. The reader is constantly figuring out and building new worlds, and then stopping and starting again. There are almost always some duds, or some I don't understand, or some I just don't like. A Tranquil Star was no different. However, there were enough stories that I deeply enjoyed to give this book a high rating. I also really liked the length of the stories -- all about 5 pages, which to me is a good length for a short story (as opposed to those long 67 page short stories). 4.5 stars

Why I Read This Now: I'm working my way through any Italian authors I have in my TBR pile.

Recommended for: fans of The Twilight Zone

The Steppes Are the Colour of Sepia: a Mennonite Memoir, Connie Braun, 2008


cover comments: quite nice

Comments: Author Braun worked from her father's memories, family photos, and historical documents to weave together this "memoir " of her grandfather and her father's struggles in 20th century Europe. They were part of the Russian Mennonite community--that is, German speaking people who had immigrated from Prussia the century before and established farms in what is today Ukraine. And so not Russian at all. By the late 1800s, the writing was on the proverbial wall that things were not going to go well for them under the new Soviet order, and they began the exodus out of the region, mainly to North and South America. This mass migration continued through the 1920s. Braun's grandfather, a pastor, believed that things would settle down, and so he stayed to minister to the people in the Ukraine. He also travelled to Siberia to help the people who had been sent there, all under cover as practising religion was illegal. The 1930s were a horrible time of famine and purges under Stalin, but somehow this family survived. During this period, Braun's father was born.

The second half of the book tells of the family's suffering in WWII. When the German's invaded, life improved for them, as the invading army assumed these fellow German speakers were allies, but life was also dangerous as their Russian and Ukrainian neighbours assumed they were traitors. When Germany retreated, they took the Mennonites west with them to basically be slave labour. Braun's family ended up in what is today Slovenia. At the end of the war, the Yugoslavian army wanted to annihilate them, but the Soviets began repatriating everyone back to Russia. Lots more suffering. Eventually they ended up in eastern Austria, where they kept their heads down and prayed they wouldn't be sent back to where they heard things were even worse. Then finally, a stroke of luck -- the USSR and Britain swapped territories, and they were suddenly in the West. Now the surviving members of the family could immigrate to Canada.

I've read quite a bit, and of course heard family stories, about the horrors that Mennonites experienced during the Russian Revolution. I was much less familiar with what happened to the people who didn't get out until after WWII though, so I appreciated learning about that, even though most of it was terrible. Although this book is fact-filled and historical, Braun is a poetic writer at times. She says she was influenced by the novels Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels and The Russlander by Sandra Birdsell, and it shows.

Recommended for: readers interested in daily life for people in Stalin's USSR and surviving WWII, readers interested in Mennonite history.

Rating: 4 stars

Why I Read This Now: I'm trying to read more memoirs, and this one was physically at the top of my pile

A Change of Climate, Hilary Mantel, 1994


cover comments: ho hum. Doesn't speak to the novel

Comments: It's 1980 and Ralph and Anna live with their four children in a rambling old house in the Norfolk countryside, taking in Good Souls and Sad Cases through the charity that Ralph administers. In the early years of their marriage, Ralph and Anna lived in South Africa and Botswana as so-called missionaries (more humanitarian than religious), and some very bad things happened that we don't speak about anymore. The story shifts between their life in England and their experiences in Africa. The novel is full of secrets, betrayal and forgiveness.

Rating: 3 stars. There is some really lovely writing in A Change of Climate. I wasn't a fan of the structure. I'm in a stage of life where reading is super low in my priorities, and this may have brought on my overall "meh" feelings about this novel.

Recommended for: Hilary Mantel fans will no doubt love this. Reader reviews are generally positive.

Why I Read This Now: I didn't know what to read and I had 6 Hilary Mantel books on my shelf, so I thought I should probably read one.

Previous books I've read by this author: An Experiment in Love & Beyond Black

The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, Chris Ewan, 2007


cover comments: I always like a picture of Amsterdam, so good I guess

Comments: Charlie Howard is a British suspense novelist, currently living in Amsterdam. On the side he's also a talented burglar. Which of course immediately led me to the question: Is the author of this novel, Chris Ewan, also a burglar? No idea. Anyway, Charlie gets himself involved in a complicated scheme to recover diamonds that had been stolen back in the 90s. This genre isn't unknown to me, but it's certainly not one I've read much of the last 20 years or so, and because of that, I'm not sure how to critique this book. Seems like more improbable situations and coincidences than I'm used to reading. Am I just supposed to roll with it? Or is it a fllaw? Again, no idea.

Why I Read This Now: my reading pace has slowed by a massive degree and the title of this told me it would be a light and entertaining read. I guess it worked, as it only took me 10 days to read.

Rating: 3 stars. It was a solid okay but not really my thing. I did love the Amsterdam setting though -- fond memories from my trip there in 1992 (can't believe I've been back to Europe 6 times but never back to the Netherlands -- if we're ever allowed to travel again I must change that!)

Recommended for : readers who like crime capers

The Finishing School, Muriel Spark, 2004


cover comments: seriously ho hum

Comments: Nina Parker and Rowland Mahler run a finishing school in Ouchy, Switzerland. The married couple is still in their 20s, and I think that's pretty presumptuous that they think they have any finishing techniques to share. At any rate, the school is rather experimental and they sort of wing their way through it. One of their students, Chris, is writing a novel about Mary Queen of Scots, and he's getting attention from publishers and movie producers. Rowland is also trying to write a novel, but becomes obsessed with Chris; Chris in turn becomes obsessed with Rowland. Nina does her own thing. Everything is resolved neatly at the end.

Rating: a solid 3.75 stars. Readers who liked this say it's hilarious. Readers who dislike this find it thin and undeveloped.

Recommended for: people who like books set in boarding schools, Muriel Spark competists. It's only 123 pages, and is a breezy read.

Why I Read This Now: I love books set in Switzerland.

Forgiveness, Mark Sakamoto, 2014


cover comments: I find this very attractive -- both the Japanese writing and the colours. The author is credited for the cover photo, but no where could I find a description of what it represented. The motif is repeated at the beginning of each chapter, so it means something. Is it "forgiveness" in Japanese? Or something else? I wish I knew.

Why I Read This Now: book club and I've been wanting to read the memoirs on my TBR stack anyway

Comments: : I bought this right after it won Canada Reads 2018 "One Book to Open Your Eyes." Mark Sakamoto's paternal grandmother was a Japanese Canadian who had her life ripped out from under her in WWII when the Canadian government forced her and her family to abandon everything to become basically slaves on a farm in Alberta. Sakamoto's maternal grandfather, at the same time, was a soldier who was shipped to China to fight in the war, but was quickly captured and spent four years in various Japanese POW camps. Horrible, horrible things happened to both of them. This part of the book was pretty bleak, but interesting. After the war , they both restart lives for themselves. Fast forward to 1968 and the children of the soldier and the internment victim meet, fall in love, marry, and have Mark and his younger brother. Their lives aren't happy either.

This was a quick, interesting read, but the book was extremely flawed. Many have noted the proofreading errors, but the editing problems were bigger than that. It is quite choppy, and too often I wondered why the author was including information that he did. Themes were flat and unexplored. I'm surprised that it was even nominated for Canada Reads, let alone a winner. That said, it was indeed interesting for the most part a compelling read.

Rating: The editing definitely pulls this down -- 3 stars seems low, so maybe 3.5 stars?

Recommended for: people who like unusual memoirs, or readers who don't know anything about Japanese POW camps or Canadian internment of the Japanese during WWII

Hi Joyce! Still reading I see. Which is a good thing. And if you ever visit The Netherlands again I love to meet up!

>21 connie53:
Hi, Connie! Nice to see you at my thread. I'm still sad that our trip to Slovinia-Italy-Switzerland that was to start this coming Friday is cancelled. The good news is that I CAN carry over all my 20 days of holidays to next year. I won't do that because it's been almost a year since I took my last holidays, but I'll try to carry most of them over. But I'm dubious about what the future of travel will even be. When can we get back to Europe? My daughter who is working in Switzerland has no choice but to use some of her holidays, and nothing is open, and she's been working from home since the 2nd week of March, so not so thrilled about time at home, since she's a young 20-something who needs her coworkers camaraderie. Weird world we suddenly live in.

Who knows what the future holds, but being in Europe is on the top top of my list, and returning to the Netherlands (my ancestors- my people!) is high on that (long) list

>22 Nickelini: Good! I can totally understand you being sad about the cancellation of your trip. Especially since it included seeing your daughter.

Becoming, Michelle Obama, 2018


cover comments: a predictable middle-of-the-road cover for a memoir of a famous person. The colours are lovely though

Comments: When Becoming was tearing up the best seller lists in 2018, and everyone was raving about it, I was happy for her success but I had no interest at all in reading this memoir. But then my daughter gave it to me for Christmas, and it popped into my TBR pile after all. I've also rekindled my interest in memoirs, and then when my book club suggested this, I was happy to read it. Anyway, ...

Obama's memoir is divided into three sections: "Becoming Me," "Becoming Us," and "Becoming More." I was fascinated by her childhood story and how she went from the South Side of Chicago to get two ivy league degrees and a lawyer job at a fancy firm with an office on the 47th floor in a building in the centre of Chicago. This is where she met Barak, when he was a law student and she was appointed as his summer mentor. I didn't know this story and so I found it very interesting. The whole bit about Barak getting into politics was less interesting, although I was surprised to hear that she only said "okay" to him running for president because she was sure he wouldn't get close to winning. In the final third of the book, I was amazed at some of the details of their life in the Whitehouse.

I admire Michelle Obama for her dignity and integrity, her love of fun, and her dedication to her daughters and to girls' education.

Rating: Overall, this was a good read. Not life changing or anything, but a good read.

Why I Read This Now: bookclub

Recommended for: a wide audience. It's a positive and hopeful book, so if you need one of those right now, consider this one.

I see you have Sarum on your list of books. Did you finish? I am still reading it.

>25 mnleona:
I read it about a thousand years ago. It took me a long time, but it was back when I didn't pay attention to how many books I was reading. I still remember lots about it though, and I took a trip to England once and sought out several of the places I had read about in Sarum

Italy Out of Hand: a Capricious Tour, Barbara Hodgson, 2005


cover comments: perfect

Comments: Barbara Hodgson is an artist and author who produces illustrated books -- sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction. In Italy Out of Hand, she guides the reader through Italian cities, starting in Genoa and zigzagging across and south to end in Catania in Sicily. Everywhere she stops, she highlights some of the more obscure sites and figures from Italian history, with a focus on cemeteries, museums you've probably never heard of, and famous foreigners who visited and lived in the country. Scattered throughout are small Italian language vocab lists that pertain to the city -- some of the words are regional slang, I had fun trying these out on my Italian-speaking husband.

Why I Read This Now: I've owned Italy Out of Hand since it was published 15 years ago and I was happy just to browse through it and look at the unusual illustrations. Hodgson's books are always beautiful and a pleasure just to hold. I recently dusted my shelf of my most beautiful books, and started actually reading it this time.

Rating: 4 stars

Recommended for: fans of illustrated books (Nick Bantock is another similar writer-artist, and in fact the two are friends), people who like odd Italian history. This is a book to dip in and out of rather than to read straight through.

DNF: the Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne Valente


cover comments: looks good!

Comments: A sassy girl named September gets whisked out of her boring home in Omaha and mysteriously taken to Fairyland. I was hoping for charm and delight, but was just disappointed. It was over-written and I constantly had trouble envisioning the scenes. It was just a series of convoluted silly conversations between September and various odd characters. I should have known I was in trouble when I kept seeing comparisons to The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. I Pearl-ruled this one.

Why I Read This Now: This has been in my TBR stacks for years, and I finally pulled it out because I thought it looked fun, and I can use FUN right now. The title held a lot of promise.

Recommended for: readers looking for a 21st century Alice in Wonderland

Rating: DNF says it all, but I'm far from the target audience, so I will refrain from assigning or not assigning stars

Hollow Heart, Viola Di Grado (translated from Italian by Antony Sugaar), 2015


cover comments: I love this so much. Great art, and the colour is fabulous -- a dark, inky indigo that in some lights looks like dark violet. Europa Editions usually have the fuglyiest covers ever, so this one is a pleasant surprise.

Comments: Most of Dorotea Giglio's narration takes place after her suicide in July 2011, with some flashbacks to her life in Sicily before. On both sides, she's depressed, lonely, and a little bit emo. Now a ghost, she meanders through her apartment and city streets, and goes to her old job regularly, where her boss can still see her. She also likes to go into her coffin and report on the details of her decomposing body.

Rating: I like the uniqueness of this story and the Italian setting; but overall it perplexed me and I struggled with the world building. Dorotea has no body, but she talks about eating and drinking, and she's able to move things around, but at the same time can float through walls. She says she can't read anymore, but certain parts only make sense with written language. Her life after death wasn't all that different from when she was alive, and we don't know why she committed suicide. It all seemed a bit pointless. So 3 stars for a decently written novel plus 1 star for being creative and unusual.

Recommended for: There are many glowing reviews written in English over at Goodreads. There are also many negative reviews written in Italian. The Italians seem to call BS on this one and say it's boring and repetitive (a tratti noioso a tratti ripetitivo! Italian sounds so much nicer than English), and has no plot.

Why I Read This Now: chipping away at my Italian TBR pile.
'

Vampire Film Study

Since this isn't about books, this post is mainly for me to keep a record of the films I've watched this month. But I'll throw this out here and if anyone has anything to say I welcome a conversation.

My 20 yr old daughter had planned to come home from university this summer and work, hang with her friends, and have fun. COVID had other ideas, and work fell through, so she decided she might as well take some online university courses and knock off some elective credits. She took a one month condensed course on vampires (Germanic Studies program -- this is not her area of study; my older daughter went to the same uni and took a Germanic Studies course on fairy tales). She's reading Dracula, and had to watch the following movies. Since I'm staying home too, I've watched them all with her:

1. Nosferatu (1922) -- this silent film was surprisingly good, and really the blueprint for vampire movies to come after it. She really liked it and wrote her essay on it.
2. Dracula (1931) -- Bela Lugosi! (Nosferatu was better)
3. Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (197?) -- liked this one too -- really good creepy scene with people dining in an outdoor square with many, many rats
4. Interview with the Vampire (1994) -- I had seen this back in the 90s, and read the book Interview with the Vampire not that long ago, so it was interesting to rewatch. Kirsten Dunst is the best thing about this movie
5. Perfume (2006) -- I was happy to see this because I read and enjoyed the book Perfume a few years ago
6. Let the Right One In (2008) -- I'd never heard of this Swedish "horror romance". Her classmates didn't like this one -- I think some people just struggle with subtitles. My daughter, husband, and I all really liked it a lot. IMDb says it won about a jillion awards. Should I read the Let the Right One In?
7. Lost Boys (1987) -- I saw this in '87 and loved it, and have seen it several times since. It still holds up, and it's a fun movie. Compared to Let the Right One In though, you can see how the Swedish film raked in awards, and Lost Boys raked in $$
8. Bram Stoker's Dracula -- such a great cast (Gary Oldman! Winona Ryder wasn't terrible-- good, even) -- like the book Dracula, the movie had a few awesome moments, but overall . . . . hmmmm, meh

That's a lot of vampire in a month, but it's been fun watching these and discussing them with her. Sounds like the online lectures were interesting.

To the Back of Beyond, Peter Stamm, translated from German by Michael Hofmann (2016)


Cover comments: Yeah, this is really good. I like it. The English title I don't quite like as much -- a direct translation of Weit uber das Land is "Far Across the Country." I guess the one they chose is a play on words, as the protagonist doesn't just go across the country, but also acts in a way that is beyond what is acceptable. However, the term "back of beyond" is just true-blue-dinky-die Australian and in my view, "back of beyond" only works in an Aussie context

Comments: From the book's blurb: "Happily married with two children and a comfortable home in a Swiss town, Thomas and Astrid enjoy a glass of wine in their garden on a night like any other. Called back to the house by their son's cries, Astrid goes inside, expecting her husband to join her in a bit. But Thomas gets up and, after a brief moment of hesitation, opens the gate and walks out." The 140 novel has no chapter breaks, but switches back between Thomas going walking through Switzerland, and Astird at home with the kids.

There was something about the writing that drew me in and kept me fascinated. Stamm's style is somewhat sparse and unemotional, but at the same time terrifically evocative. I loved all the little details of their day-to-day movements. The book was the perfect length for this style, although the end was perhaps a bit rushed and could have been another ten pages or so. And until the end, I had no idea how this was going to finish off. I also loved all the Swiss details, large and small. It wasn't until half-way thought the novel that the author started putting in place identifiers, but once he did I started following on a map of Switzerland where the characters were going, and I was delighted when I recognized a place I knew (geography geek coming out again) .

The author also did some tricky things with time. The one that stands out the most is that most of the novel was clearly set around the time it was written, and at one point Thomas reads a newspaper story that happened in September 2014. But then near the end of the book, things move quite quickly, and the children age at least a dozen years from the beginning of the book, and maybe even more. So it goes on past the publication date, which is somewhat unusual.

I think overall the translation was well done, but two things stood out for me. One was that the translator chose to Americanize the novel. Switzerland is a metric country, and I think most Americans reading this would be able to grasp the basic ideas of Celsius and kilometres. And the other quibble was occasionally he'd use an English word in a way I've never seen before. I know that when I use Google Translate with German, the results are sometimes quite rough, especially compared to translations of Italian or French. Maybe German is a trickier language to translate and sometimes the results are a bit odd.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Recommended for: If you like contemporary European novels, and this one sounds interesting, try it. There are lots of poor reviews over at GoodReads, and these generally complain that 1. the reader never learns the characters motivations, 2. the characters aren't particularly likeable and it's difficult to empathize with them, and 3. "OMG, how can he just abandon his family?" My favourite of these reviews says, "Despicable bastard goes on a hike." Okay, they're not wrong. I just don't care.

I do find it interesting how some readers absolutely freak out about abandonment novels. I have 8 books tagged "disappearing mother" in my collection, and of those that are about a woman who left her family, all have scathing reviews about what the character did (as opposed to how the book is written). In the case of To the Back of Beyond, many complained that his behaviour was never explained, but I've read books where it is explained and then people just say "that's no excuse" or "she should have found a different solution." We all have our trigger issues, but if parent abandonment upsets you, rather than tearing into the author for writing about it, how about read something else instead. Maybe that's just not the book for you.

Why I Read This Now: When I started this, I had reservations to be in Switzerland that were then COVID-cancelled. So I had to be there vicariously through literature.

Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit: a Son remembers, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, 2003


cover comments: Hello! Audrey Hepburn. Nothing but lovely.

Rating: 4.5 stars (as just a picture book, 5 stars)

Why I Read This Now: A few years ago, my husband installed some built-in bookcases around our fireplace and under our stained glass windows (I live in a 1913 Craftsman house, so I think he was replacing what was probably once there) and that's where I keep all my prettiest and most special books. I go months without actually going into these bookcases because my TBR isn't there, but for some reason I saw this and pulled it out. Sadly, I hadn't thought of Audrey Hepburn in too long.

Disclaimer: To stop myself from fangirling too much, I'll say this up front: I think Audrey Hepburn might be the most perfect person from the 20th century: Yes, she was born into privilege in 1929, but her parents were inadequate, and then at the eve of WWII, it was decided that she'd be safer in Holland than England. Her key growth years were spent in the middle of a war zone. She worked for the resistance, almost starved to death, and the malnutrition in those important years caused lifelong health problems. Then somehow she ended up staring in films, and won all the awards -- the Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy, Grammy, Tony, etc. and so on. She was the muse of Givinchy, and is still a style icon. Then she walked away from it all to raise her sons, and later went to work for UNICEF (who had helped her at the end of WWII). She speaks elegantly in English, and is also fluent in Dutch, French, Italian, and Spanish (I also suspect that she speaks pretty good German-- between occupied Holland and living in Switzerland for most of her life). She is the epitome of grace, kindness, compassion, intelligence, and beauty. (She's pretty much the direct opposite of Donald Trump)

For my honeymoon in 1994, we went on a Princess cruise. The robo-voice in the elevator sounded very Audrey Hepburn. I loved it. Usually, I'm a stair-taker, but on this trip I'd go with the lift just to hear it (her) say "Lido Deck". Believe me, those words sound so much nicer in Audrey's voice than . . . well, who do YOU want to hear say "lido deck" ?

Years ago I bought an Audrey Hepburn rose (it's the pink of her shirt on the cover, above). I'm a gardener, but not a rose person, so tend to ignore them. Somehow, I haven't killed it yet.

Comments: I bought this when it was published in 2003 because it was written and created by Audrey's oldest son, Sean. This coffee table book went into my LT library with a 5-star rating, even though I hadn't read it because it was chock-full of photographs and detailed captions. Many fabulous photos, some that we've all seen before, and many family photos. On top of that are copies of important letters (such as her appointment as the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador), art from her childhood, and also when she had a bedridden pregnancy, and her birth certificate, childhood passports, and her United Nations passport from 1988. This is why I rated it 5 stars.

Now that I've read the text portions, I came away moved, but maybe not for the reasons the author intended. Near the end, he reprints a long speech as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador to the UN in Geneva in 1989. In this role, and as herself, she's hopeful and optimistic. It's sad to read something written about children in 1989 from a 2020 perspective. Downright depressing, actually. But that's not the author or book's fault. The following section about her dying of cancer, was personal and also very sad (especially since she was only in her early 60s). The earlier parts of the book, before the author was born, were scattered and unsatisfying. He was better at the personal.

Another complaint I direct at the book designer over choice of typeface, which was difficult to read. They used a fine sans-serif, and when used in italica, was almost unreadable except in the brightest light. This, and the size of the book, made it physically difficult to read.

Recommended for: Her fans, anyone needing a break from Donald Trump culture.

The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, 1352. Translated by Mark Musa & Peter Bondanella, 1982


cover comments: the painting is lovely and suitable, but the arrangement of the whole is less than artful

Why I Read This Now: I bought this book in 1984 when I was studying Italian history, but then my studies took me elsewhere and I never got around to it. It's been on my to-read list for the last two years as I've been travelling (and trying to travel) to Italy. I started this the weekend in March when Italy slammed shut for the COVID-19 lockdown. What better time to read a book set during a plague in Italy than during a pandemic in Italy? (Now I'm finished and COVID-19 can be finished too, please and thank you.)

Comments: It's 1348 and the Black Death is raging through Florence. A group of wealthy 20-somethings (seven ladies and three gentlemen) decided to self-isolate in a country villa. To ward off the boredom of eating and drinking, they set up a game of each telling ten stories ("Decameron" is ten-days in Ancient Greek). The tales cover characters from all aspects of Medieval life, and many of the stories are rather humorous and often bawdy.

My favourite story, by far, was "Sixth Day, Fourth Story," in which "Chichibio, Currado Gianfigliazzi's cook, turns Currado's anger into laughter with a quick word uttered in time to save himself from the unpleasant fate with which Currado had threatened him". I loved it so much I read it out loud to my husband and daughter.

My mass-market paperback edition was just under 700 pages of tiny smudgy print crammed onto pages with the narrowest of margins. Physically, it was an unpleasant read. That's part of the reason I read the publishers suggested list for university professors who want to teach an abridged version. This still resulted in me reading 54 stories, introductions, summaries, etc, and still reading close to 400 pages of the text. No one needs to read every single word.

Recommended for: if you liked The Canterbury Tales, you'll love The Decameron. Chaucer visited Italy in the 1370s where he may have met Boccaccio, but whether he did or not, his writing was distinctly influenced by the Italian.

The Shmoop Tough-o-Meter says "If you stick with a good translation, the toughest thing about this work is the length."

Rating: 4 stars

Yes, I've hit my goal and it's only exactly half-way through the year. This is not an accomplishment but just really bad guessing at how many books I'll read in 2020. Also, it was a very small number to begin with. Nothing to celebrate, nothing to take pride in.

>34 Nickelini: well, you should take pride in reaching your goal however small.

16. I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections, Nora Ephron, 2010


Cover comments: Nice colours

Comments: I adore Nora Ephron. After she died in 2012, I turned my trip to New York City into an Ephron-themed event. I even found an Upper West Side apartment to stay in, and we pretended to be New Yorkers for a week.
When I’m feeling funny, I think my humour is similar to hers. I like to think that if we’d known each other we’d have been great friends. Now that I’ve read I Remember Nothing, I see that I have almost nothing in common with Ephron. She’s a New York secular Jew who grew up in Hollywood where her parents were both screen writers and they often had glamorous people in her living room. Somehow, I can still relate to all her quibbles and share some laughs.
This very loosely structured memoir covers key points in her life. Near the end, she wrote “The O Word,” (O as in old), which I found to be bittersweet, as it was about growing old and dying. Overall though it was a fun read.

Recommended for: a reader who wants to spend a couple of hours reading a clever, breezy book.

Why I Read This Now: I want to read more memoirs, and this one had been on my shelf for years

Rating: 4.5 stars

The Breaking of a Wave, Fabio Genovesi, 2015, translated from Italian by Will Schutt


cover comments: it's okay by regular cover standards, but rather nice by Europa Edition standards

Rating: 4.5 stars -- It was going to be a 5 star read, but then around the 3/4 mark I got a bit bored. This novel is almost 500 pages long and should have been 350-400. Interesting to me was that online reviews by Italians are rated much lower than reviews written in English.

Comments: The Breaking of a Wave is set in the off-season Tuscan beach town of Forte dei Marmi, and tells the story of a loosely connected group of loners, eccentrics, and misfits. The centre of the story is 13 year old Luna, a clever and likeable girl who also has albinism. She struggles with the death of her older, and much-loved, brother and her mom's depression. She also befriends an odd boy named Zot. Their lives are tied in with 3 friends who are all single men in their early 40s, who each still lives with his mother (an Italian phenomena known as "mammoni" or "bamboccioni", which translates to "big babies." But I digress). I have to admit defeat and say that I cannot adequately describe what this novel is about.

I loved it because I found it refreshing and unusual. I loved the writing, even though many Italians thought the writing was appalling. I loved the story of contemporary Italian lives (as opposed to the US/UK fantasy versions), and I loved the setting of Forte dei Marmi, in the province of Lucca. This is the area of Italy that I know better than any other, and I learned a lot of little things about the place and it's culture. I can't count the number of times I had to stop and read passages out loud to my husband (who spent his childhood summers here).

Recommended for: readers who like current Italian fiction, or who like unusual books with quirky characters. I should mention though that there are some gritty parts, and several scenes of nasty bullying. So it's not all light hearted fun, if that's the impression I gave.

If I ever find other Genovesi books translated into English, I will buy them in a heartbeat. If not, I guess I'll have to improve my Italian language reading skills.

Don't Stop Believin', Olivia Newton-John, 2018


cover comments: Excellent cover, because it immediately reminded me of the album cover below. The title comes from her 1976 song and album, and is not a rip off of the significantly more iconic Journey song of the same name which came out in 1981.


Comments: In the summer of 2012, my friend asked me if I wanted to go see Olivia Newton-John at the PNE (our big regional fair here in Vancouver). “Sure . . . okay!” I had been a huge ONJ fan when I was 11 and I hadn’t thought about it, but seeing her live had always been on my bucket list. So a week later, on a summer evening, I stood in a crush of people with my friend, her sari-wearing mom who didn’t speak a word of English, and her sister Brinder with her engineer wife with their adopted baby, belting out songs and dancing. So much fun. When I was young and Olivia’s biggest fan (I loved horses! She loves horses!) , my 4 older brothers and their wives mocked me for liking her. Now I was an adult and I didn’t care.

Actually, looking back, I really only liked her early, country stuff (and no, I don’t listen to any other country music) – “Let Me Be There” and “If You Love Me, Let Me Know,” and “If Not For You.” (I also liked her version of “Banks of the Ohio” but even at 11 I was a bit disturbed by singing “I held a knife against his breast . . . he cried “my love, don’t murder me! I’m not prepared for eternity.” My grade 6 self sang that loud and I have never yet knifed anyone.) Anyway, by the time Grease came around, I’d moved on.

That long personal introduction is my explanation to the expected “WHY WOULD YOU EVER READ THAT?!”, which I know you’re all thinking.

Now on to the book. OMG. Right from the “Prologue” I was stunned by the bad writing and atrocious editing. It never got better. Do you know why you rarely see an exclamation point in the books you’re reading? Because Oliva Newton-John took them all and used them here! As for the structure, it’s kinda chronological, and kinda thematic, but everything jumps around in an awkward way, so much that it sometimes didn’t make sense. Soooo many internal-contradictions. Soooo many missing details, or things that have no connection. Soooo many details that add nothing. She really doesn’t like to add dates or markers to help the reader along. Usually the date will come at the end of a page-long story. Both in the text and in the captions of the pictures include lists of people who she thinks are amazing, and nice to recognize them, but it breaks up the flow of the story. Except when she wrote about meeting the pope—a page long and she didn’t say WHICH pope.

My husband noted how many times I was sighing while I read this. My hand was twitching to grab a red pen and mark it up and send it back to the publisher and her manager with a note: “what is this schifo!”

And the name dropping. Shallow, meaningless. At the same time, she won’t say a bad word about anyone. Everything is positive! The best people! The best event! Best! Best! Best! Can you say “Pollyanna”? This is a woman who has gone through a divorce, 3 rounds of cancer (she’s on her 4th now), had a boyfriend “disappear” mysteriously, and her only child went through public episodes of addiction, eating disorders, and extreme plastic surgery. Okay, she’s a very private person. That’s fine. But the sunny paint on Every. Single. Word. Yikes. So her saccharine image might actually be the whole package. She likes to think she’s both Sandy #1 and Sandy #2 from Grease but really, she’s only the first Sandy.

A reader on GoodReads said something like “reading this was like a day spent doing nothing but eating marshmallows – airy and sweet.” Captures the whole experience, I’d say.

I was a bit alarmed at the end of the book. Even as a child, I saw that she was a bit shallow and cringe-worthy (I remember when I lived in Australia in the early 80s and whenever I mentioned her to Australians, they all had a negative reaction.). Maybe several rounds of cancer will do this to one, but she’s into woo-woo, and has married a guy who is an “expert” on Amazonian healing herbs (no mention of whether he has any credentials or education). She loves him madly, but everything I read screamed “con man!” At least she still mixes her new age treatments with science-based, double-blind placebo treatments and healthy habits. (Hey, Olivia! Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? It’s called “Medicine”)

I would love to quote examples, but I think I’ve rambled on far too long. I write these comments for me, and if anyone else reads them, well, thanks for sticking with me. At the end of the day, she’s flaky, but I’ll always have a soft spot for her. She does have a good heart.

Why I Read This Now: I'm trying to read more memoirs and this one seemed light and breezy. It also reminded me of why I stopped reading celebrity memoirs all those years ago

Rating: For writing and editing, it's a 1 star read. But I was interested, and always happy to pick it up, so I guess I'll give it 3 stars.

Recommended for: True-blue ONJ fans will love this and not notice any of the major flaws. This book gets very high reader reviews because her big fans have blinders on to anything but their adoration of her. The rest of us are on our own with this one. I'm not sorry I read it.

This is a book I'll never read, but I read and enjoyed every word of your review!

>39 Rebeki:
Thanks! I like to write an entertaining negative review now and again

>39 Rebeki: Seconded! Excellent review (although now I'm nervous about using another exclamation mark).

Hi Joyce, I completely agree with Jackie and Rebecca.

August Folly, Angela Thirkell, 1936


cover comments: Mick Wiggins created new covers for the latest Virago Modern Classics covers of their Thirkell series. They all charm, and are evocative of a simpler time. I can't remember this scene happening in the book, and certainly the extensive cast of characters in August Folly were all pasty white English people, but I still like this.

Comments: August Folly is a romp through the summer vacation in the Barsetshire countryside with a small group of families in the mid-1930s. First we meet the Tebben family: Richard, home for the summer after an unsuccessful year at Oxford, and his parents, who annoy him to no end, and who are supposed to the "poor" family, even though they have servants. The neighbourhood gentry are the Palmers, who mean well but Mrs Palmer has forced everyone in the village to act in her summer play, Hippolytus (not sure who's supposed to be left watch this). Finally, we meet the "impossibly glamorous" Dean family - the perfect parents with the "exquisite" mother, who Richard crushes on, even though several of her offspring are around his age, and their gaggle of children. There are a few other friends and villagers. Lots of fun and misunderstandings are had by all, and everything is wrapped up nicely with a little romance thrown in too.

Rating: 3.5 stars. Overall this was a fun read. There were many lovely phrases and amusing conversations, and it captured the air of a carefree English summer. On the downside, being written in 1936, there is also too much misogyny, a little classism, and a couple of incidents of casual racism. The other downside is this 283 page book was packed with too large a cast. And I really didn't care at all for the theatrical production.

Recommended for: lovers of charming English novels from a by-gone era. Not recommended for readers who apply today's ethics to long-dead writers.

Why I Read This Now: I started this the last week of August because I was in the mood for another summery read and this one says AUGUST right in the title.

20. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson (2009), translated from Swedish in 2012 by Rod Bradbury


cover comments: pretty neutral. The composition was fine, but I don't like the orange

Comments: Allan Karlsson, on his 100th birthday, wants to avoid the birthday party at his old age home and so climbs out his window and many things happen. We also learn about his past, and how he got himself involved in many important events of the 20th century. The story goes back and forth between his past and his current escape adventures. Easy to sum this one up as a Swedish Forest Gump. One of the things that stood out for me was that there were almost no female characters (it would have been easy to make one of the cops female, for example. Or one of the criminals). There is one woman in most of the book, but she gets renamed as "Beauty," and then near the end there's another that the men are too lazy to learn her name so call her "Amanda." Even if I try, I can't help but just be bored by such androcentric books. Also I can't find any reason to try.

Rating: 3 stars. I was okay. Just not for me. I get why people love this, but I struggled to pick it up and to keep reading. Not a bad book, but not everyone's thing.

Why I Read This: My SIL put this in my hands in 2016 and I want to return it, but I don't want to say "nah, not interested." I guess that's peer pressure?

Recommended for: many readers loved this. At least is was Swedish. That was probably my favourite thing about it.

Note: I hear there's a movie. I would watch it.

The Country Where No One Ever Dies, Ornela Vorpsi, 2005


cover comments: very much a Dalkey Archive cover, done in Albanian colours. Not wonderful, but pretty good

Rating: 4 stars

Comments: This novella is a series of vignettes about a girl (or possibly girls) growing up in 1980s communist Albania. Some of the bits were incredibly evocative, like when two children played Romeo and Juliet sword fights with what turned out to be the uncle's bones. On the downside, I could have read this in a sitting or or two, but the abuse of the narrator by her elders was too uncomfortable. How many times was she called a "whore" before she was old enough to know what sex was?

Why I Read This Now: I was looking for a short book before heading into October spooky reads (a sorbet course, perhaps?). I own this book because I got interested in Albania a few years ago when I made friends with an Albanian who has told me a lot about the country and shown me pictures of its beautiful beaches and gorgeous mountains. Definitely on my list of future travels. If international travel happens again.

This novel won several literary prizes in Italy.

Recommended for: fans of Dalkey Archives, readers who want to know more about life in Albania or life under real communism, or lives of young women under traditional and repressive regimes.

ETA: Notes about the translation - Originally published in Italian in 2005 as "Paese dove non si muore mal", and translated by Robert Elsie and Janice Mathie-Heck. But I read elsewhere that it was actually written in French in 2004. And the blurb about the translators says that Robert Elsie is an expert on Albania, and doesn't say anything about either of them working in Italian. Strange. At any rate, the English translation was done in 2009.

>45 Nickelini: Adding to my wishlist, sounds fascinating!

>44 Nickelini: This has been in my wishlist a long time (I like stories about elders and aging) ... and I guess it stays there for now :0

Your House Is On Fire, Your Children All Gone, Stefan Kiebye, 2012

Kiebye is a German author, but he's lived a lot of his adult life in the USA. This novel, set in NW Germany, is clearly German, even if he wrote it in English


cover comments: I have two minds on this one. It drew me in, but it also drew in people who would never like a book like this one. First, I stumbled on this book at the sale shelf of a book store. I did like the horror picture of the child (a character who isn't in the novel), and based on disappointed reviews, this drew in horror fans who were outraged that this wasn't a horror novel. But, secondly, I paid money for it because of the orange bottom and Penguin logo, which told me it was chilling literary fiction. Which it was.

Also, and this is cool, if you move the novel in the light, there is shadow text that says "If you tell on me, you're dead." Impressive

Rating: Yep, sticking with 5 stars

Comments:
It’s a good novel when I finish it and immediately go back and reread the Prologue. Watching all the blocks fall into place like a successful round of Tetris is so satisfying. I want to reread this, and see what I missed. I had started it last year but quit after the first few pages threw so many characters at me (in a novel only 198 p long). Second time around, I “enjoyed” it from the beginning, if you can say that about such a nasty book. This time I made a character list while I read the Prologue and that covered almost everyone who appears in the book. Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone opens 40 years after the events of the novel with Christian, Alex, Martin and Linde meeting at the burial of their friend Anke. The rest of the novel is told in linked vignettes by Anke, Linde, Martin and Christian. Their stories all share their coming of age in an environment thick with chilling casual violence. This book tells some pretty messed up stories.

“Time is of no importance” is the opening sentence, and establishes the mood. By the technology, it appears the novel is set after WWII, yet perhaps due to their poverty, it feels older. In the end, I found this anachronistic aspect added to timeless feel that gave this a bit of Grimms Fairytale atmosphere.

Set in the fictional isolated Hammersmoor, in NW Germany, the village is a backwater at the end of an abandoned rail line a ways past Bremen and Hamburg. The locals dig peat, and other than one family, everyone is poor or almost-poor. Several times they mention things in town that commemorate the 30 Years War. I had to look this up: it happened all over Europe from 1618-1648. The local battle was triumphant, and it seems nothing important had taken place since.

While reading, my question was always “what is driving all of this darkness? Other than the black tongue story early in the book, none of the nefarious acts are actually supernatural, despite the Gothic feel. I didn’t actually expect an explanation at all, so I was delighted by the succinct reward at the end.

I think to appreciate this novel, the reader has to have an understanding of how trauma can affect not just the person it happened to, but their child too. My grandparents experienced murder and gang rape in the Russian Revolution, and I know this in turn traumatized my mom. I’ve read about studies that show horrific trauma can change DNA, and it reflects in descendents. Having that knowledge in my pocket was crucial to getting this.

Recommended for: readers looking for a dark, dark literary novel. Not recommended for people looking for a a horror novel.

Why I Read This Now: I like to read creepy books in October

The cover caught my eye immediately when I saw it, that's for sure.

23. The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham, 1951


cover comments: I ordered 6 of these Penguin Wyndham editions from England a few years ago, so that means on some level I really liked them. I'm guessing this is the main character Bill Masen, and we never get a description of him. Yet, I think if he was written with neon lime green hair, Wyndham would have mentioned that.

Comments Classic 1950s British sci-fi or post-apocalyptic fiction. I feel like I don't need to give the story outline, but until I picked this up a few weeks ago, I actually thought this was the base for the movie "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." I was wrong, it's not. So here's the basic story . . . in an alternative 1951 world, there exist Triffids -- odd plants that were engineered by the Soviets, and that have a deadly sting and they can amble around (kinda like zombies). But generally they are "docked".

That's the background. In the opening of the novel, the protagonist, Bill, is in the hospital about to be released from surgery to his eyes. On his last night in the hospital, the earth passes through comet debris and there is an unprecedented celestial light show that he can't witness due to the bandages. The next morning almost everyone on the planet is blind, except those few who missed it. He emerges to a new world. And the triffid plants are emboldened to become more aggressive and start to take over the planet.

I did have my doubts early on when Bill got out of the hospital and wandered around London, and the novel felt way too much like two other books - War of the Worlds, which I did not like, and Blindness, which I loathed deeply. But it quickly changed course and I got along with it better.

Rating: 4 stars. An interesting and engaging read throughout. The ending got very exciting, but not n an action-thriller way. I wish I'd read Wyndham when I was 18-21 -- this would have been right up my alley and a 5 star read for me then.

Some readers complain about the gender stereotypes, but I know going in that I'm reading a book written in the mid-20th-century by a man, so I factor that in. And I have to give him a nod for having the other protagonist, Josella Playton, be the author of a best-seller titled Sex Is My Adventure. She was the best character in this novel.

Recommended for: Readers who like "scary" stories that aren't horror

Why I Read This Now: I specifically bought all those Wyndham novels a while ago, so it was time. This one came first because it's the last of his books on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list (and my first 1001 this year!). Not spooky, but it kinda fell under the general Spooktober umbrella.

The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt, Riel Nason, illustrated by Byron Eggenchwiler


cover comments: fabulous

Comments: I don't usually review picture books, but iThe Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt calls for one.

This beautifully and cleverly illustrated Halloween book tells the story of a ghost who was a quilt in a world of white sheet ghosts. Apparently he had an ancestor who was a checkered tablecloth. It's a lovely Halloween story, but goes beyond that to tell a story of feeling like an outcast, but then using your uniqueness to do something special (along the lines of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer). There are many lovely details in the illustrations -- perhaps my favourite is the nod to Canadian trick or treaters with the children wearing ghost sheets -- one with ski mittens, one with a jacket over the sheet, and one with a toque on top of his head.

The author, Riel Nason, who I know from the adult novel The Town That Drowned, is also a quilter. What a great result of her combination of talents.

Recommended for: anyone looking for a charming and kind Halloween story, and quilters everywhere

Rating: 5 stars

>51 Nickelini: That sounds gorgeous! And the cover picture is wonderful.

24. The Devil’s Picnic: Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit, Taras Grescoe, 2005


Cover comments: I like it. Strong colours. The snake is symbolic of the serpent tempting Adam & Eve.

Comments: This title is misleading, and so is the subtitle. What this book is really about is prohibition; specifically prohibition of things we ingest. Grescoe travels the world and explores various substances that are illegal, and how in most cases how the laws prohibiting them are often misguided, and while we’re all told the laws protect people, in fact, the impetus is actually to protect corporate interests.

1. Aperitif – Hjemmebrent – Norwegian moonshine and alcohol prohibition
2. Crackers—the author sneaks poppy seed crackers into Singapore, where poppy seeds and chewing gum are illegal
3. Cheese – raw cheeses in France
4. Main course- Criadillas – a hunt through Spain for bull’s testicles. Along the way he eats a whole lot of offal.
5. Smoke – Cuban cigars smuggled from Montreal to New York and San Francisco, and an examination of smoking laws
6. Digestif—absinthe in France and Switzerland
7. Dessert – chocolat mousseux – chocolate in France
8. Herbal tea – mate de coca – a trip to Bolivia to chew coca leaves
9. Nightcap – pentobarbital sodium – suicide tourism in Switzerland (medically assisted death)

This was a fascinating piece that was a bit travelogue, a bit foodie writing, and a lot of other information about drugs and alcohol and laws and a hundred other subjects. I spent as much time off on google searches as I spent actually reading it.

Why I Read This Now: I’ve recently developed a taste for reading about food, which I thought was the main topic of this book.

Recommended for: readers interested in these topics

Rating: 4 stars. I had to knock off half a star for verbosity. Although this was only 357 pages long, each page was stuffed full – not much white space here. I found each section longer than it had to be. But otherwise, I found it to be terrific.

>53 Nickelini: I think I'd like this. Interesting -- I reviewed his Bottomfeeder about the seafood industry, I liked it and was informed by it, and I also characterized his writing as "dense." So he sounds consistent :) Maybe that's why I haven't yet gotten to his Straphanger (about public transit).

>54 detailmuse:

I have Bottomfeeder somewhere in my TBR piles -- I won't read it this year but maybe next. I think I'll pick up Straphanger when I see it on a sale table at some point because the topic interests me.

25. The Pumpkin Eater, Penelope Mortimer, 1962


cover comments: I *love* this cover. The image, Susan Bower's Downhill in a Pram is great, and the smoky lavender and inky blue is perfect. The cover and pages of this NYRB edition had a delicious, smooth feel.

Comments: This autobiographical novel is the story of a mid-century British woman's mental breakdown. Mrs Armitage is on her fourth marriage. She has a lot of children -- they're just one big noisy mass, and the reader never learns their names or exactly how many she has. In the past, when she didn't know what to do to make her life better, she just had another child. She didn't have to mother very much though, because her latest husband was successful and they have servants. Which gave her even less to do. He's also selfish and a serial-cheater. None of this particularly sounds like a book I'd like, but the writing is sharp and the story moves along quickly for the most part.

Why I Read This Now: I guess the pumpkin in the title made it sound like an autumn book? It's been high on my TBR for a while. (Note: no pumpkins were hurt in this novel)

Rating: 4 solid stars

Recommended for: readers who like 20th century British novels. This one is perhaps more lively than the average in that genre.

26. The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges, 1967 - translated from Spanish by Norman Thomas di Giovanni


cover comments: I love this Vintage Classics edition. However, when I ordered it from the Book Depository, based on what I clicked on, I expected this other even more gorgeous cover:



Rating: 2 stars

Comments: This is a book past its Best Before date. It's a bestiary that covers fantastical creatures from mythology and literature, including the well-known and the obscure. I also introduces a bunch from single and recent pieces of fiction (like Kafka & CS Lewis). Good representation of Europe and Asia, not so good (to non-existent) coverage of indigenous people of the Americas, Australia and assorted islands.

Great concept, but without fabulous full colour illustrations, this can be better covered with a google search. Wikipedia has a perfect synopsis for this book, so I'd recommend reading that instead. This was a book I'd pick up and read an entry or two and it took me ages and ages to get through because the writing was overwhelmingly dry and uninteresting. It did have some moments, but I had to read a lot of boring words to get to it. Illustrations would have helped because the text wasn't evocative enough to spark my imagination.

Recommended for: creative people looking for inspiration and who live in 1967.

Why I Read This Now: Well "now" doesn't actually apply, as I'm sure I started reading this in 2019. Possibly 2018. But I did read the whole stale 197 pages and finished it today.

>57 Nickelini:

That's some amazing persistence! Wow! Hope you have a good book in your hands now.

Tinder, Sally Gardner, 2013


cover comments: oh wow, well this cover is why I bought this book. I had never heard of it when I saw this at a book store shortly after it was published, and I was immediately sold.

Comments: This is an illustrated novel, which is one of my favourite things. The awesome drawings boost this to the next level, and are essential to making this the book it is.

Tinder is a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's "the Tinderbox," which is one of his more obscure stories. Unusual for a fairy tale, this book is set in a definite and real time and place, that beng Saxony, Germany in November 1642. Otto Hundsebiss (whose surname is German for dog bite) is a young soldier who has just survived the second battle of Brietenfeld in the Thirty Years War. He has just left the army when he meets a myterieous half-man, half beast and then the magic begins and continues up to the twisty ending. There are werewolves. As is common with fairytales, exploration of character and character developement is scant. The beauty of the writing is in the rich and evocative atmosphere.



Rating: 4.5 stars

Recommended for readers who enjoyed A Monster Calls and books by Emily Carroll. There are YA tags on this book, but it's definitely more Adult than Young.

Why I Read This Now: It seemed like the perfect book for the period after Halloween and before Christmas.

Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories - various authors, 2019


cover comments: this cover is gorgeous, as is the book itself. If you can't see it in the thumbnail, there is a black raven on this cover, with the title in stylized dark red print. There is more of this art between earch of the short stories.

Rating: Until I read the last few stories, I was ready to give this 5 stars for concept and production, but only 3 stars for the actual stories. But then a couple of the last ones I read were very good, and one was excellent, so in the end I'll give this 4 stars.

Comments: Taaqtumi is published by Inhabit Media Inc., who (from their website) is "the first Inuit-owned, independent publishing company in the Canadian Arctic. We aim to promote and preserve the stories, knowledge, and talent of the Arctic, while also supporting research in Inuit mythology and the traditional Inuit knowledge of Nunavummiut (residents of Nunavut, Canada’s northernmost territory). Our authors, storytellers, and artists bring traditional knowledge to life in a way that is accessible to readers both familiar and unfamiliar with Inuit culture and traditions."

I like that on their website About page, they show their office on a map:

https://inhabitmedia.com/about/
Who knew there was such a company on Baffin Island, and one that could produce such a beautiful product? One of the nicest things I've learned this month.

Anyway, on to the stories: As with any anthology, this is a bit of a mixed bag. There were a few that I quite liked, "The Haunted Blizzard" by Aviaq Johnston, "The Door" by Ann R Loverock, and "Sila" by KC Carthew, but the endings didn't work for me. But then near the end I really liked "Utiqtuq," which was about a pandemic and zombie apocalyse -- not a genre I usually enjoy, but this one was good. And the one that blew me away: "The Wildest Game" by Jay Bulckaert. I actually had a look of horror on my face as I read this first-person story of a cannibal. It was just masterfully executed. The kind of story that Stephan King might read and think "Wow, I wish I'd written that."

Taaqtumi includes a glossary of Inuit words for those who are interested.

Recommended for: readers who like stories set in the Arctic, or who want to read Inuit literature. Squimish readers will probably need to pass this one up -- most of the stories include brutal descriptions of wild animals attacking humans and humans attacking wild animals. They are described as horror stories, so don't expect cosy mysteries and cute puppies.

>59 Nickelini: Those illustrations and cover are stunning!

>61 Jackie_K: That's what I thought too.



Happy Holidays from the Netherlands!

>62 connie53:
I'm sure no one has ever wished me a Fijne Kerstdagen before, so thank you very much. And Merry Crhistmas to you from rainy Vancouver

I hope you can translate the Dutch words, Joyce ;-))

29. Winter, Ali Smith, 2017


Cover comments: I love the covers for this series and think this one is especially lovely

Comments: I read the first in this series, Autumn, in autumn 2019 and I remember enjoying it but don’t remember a lot about it. I suspect I will be the same with Winter. This one is about two sisters and their son/nephew getting together over Christmas. Their relationships are fraught, but the son, Art, has brought along a stranger, Lux, who he is paying to act as his girlfriend. This is all set against the backdrop of England after the Brexit vote, the refugee crisis, and other recent world events.

Overall this was an interesting and enjoyable read. I was initially very confused about the floating head that Sophia was seeing, and I thought there was too much about that and it distracted rather than added to the novel.

Why I Read This Now: needed a book to read over Christmas, and this novel was set at Christmas so if not now, when?

Rating: Solid 4 stars. I will go on to read the remaining two books in this series

Recommended for: People who like literary novels about unusual families and their dynamics, readers who like books set in recent times

>64 connie53:
I hope you can translate the Dutch words, Joyce ;-))

LOL, I happen to be especially talented at Google Translate, but the picture kinda clued me in :)

>66 Nickelini: LOL I thought it would!

30. Last Vanities, Fleur Jaeggy, 1994; translated from Italian by Tim Parks 1998


cover comments: understated but rather apt - a seemingly nice pearl broach with an image of a perfectly-nice eye that has some sort of diseased pustules growing near it. Symbolizes the book well.

Comments: This short collection of seven short stories is the second book I've read by this author. As in the novel Sweet Days of Discipline, Jaeggy writes about simple nice Swiss lives, but with a dark, dark twist. I love her writing and am sad she didn't write more.

Except for one story set on Lac Leman in French-speaking Switzerland, these stories are all set in German-speaking areas. I find this interesting because Fleur Jaeggy writes in Italian.

Rating: 4 stars

Why I Read This Now: I was in the mood for some Swiss literature

Recommended for: people who like dark, atmospheric, and somewhat ambiguous short stories.

Year end wrap up:

In 2020, I read 46 books. The last few months of the year were stellar for reading, the earlier months very slow. At the beginning of the year I had 3 large projects that took priority over any reading. By mid-March, 2 of them were COVID-cancelled, and I completed the third project in summer. Maybe that's why my reading picked up? Anyway, I had set a modest goal of 15 books from my shelves, and managed to read 30. This is difficult to plan accurately, but not really important.

Here's to another year of good books!