RidgewayGirl Reads in 2015 -- Part Four

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RidgewayGirl Reads in 2015 -- Part Four

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1RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 31, 2015, 9:31 am

This year's goal is to increase the percentage of women authors to at least 60%. And that's it. My reading has been a mixture of the noteworthy, the proven classic and pure junk. I don't expect that to change.

In addition to book reviews, I'll also be posting reviews of art exhibitions and museum visits. Munich has a quantity of excellent art museums, from the enormous to the tiny, with an busy schedule of temporary exhibits. Writing about what I've seen keeps me from mixing them up and forgetting what I saw.



Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

2RidgewayGirl
Editado: Sep 29, 2015, 2:05 am

Read in 2015

January
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
In Matto's Realm by Friedrich Glauser
Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

February
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman
A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Adam by Ariel Schrag
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
Us by David Nicholls

March
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Longbourn by Jo Baker
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes
Ghettoside by Jill Leovy

April
Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain
Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Rodi
The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette
Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel
Stoner by John Williams
A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher

May
The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones
The Day of Atonement by David Liss
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Like a Charm edited by Karin Slaughter
Addition by Toni Jordan
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

June
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Anti-Christ Handbook: The Horror and Hilarity of Left Behind by Fred Clark
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

3RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 29, 2015, 6:10 am

Also Read in 2015

July
Daydreams of Angels by Heather O'Neill
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante

August
Disclaimer by Renee Knight
The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates
The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah
It's Not Me, It's You by Mhairi McFarlane
Edisto by Padgett Powell
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt
The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell
Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

September
Finders Keepers by Stephen King
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton
The Beat Goes On by Ian Rankin
The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan

October
Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer
The Hanging Tree by Bryan Gruley
The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernieres
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Make Me by Lee Child
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

November
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
Slade House by David Mitchell
Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell
The Woman from Bratislava by Leif Davidson
The Fever by Megan Abbott

December
UnderMajorDomo Minor by Patrick deWitt
Fallout by Sadie Jones
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
The Clarinet Polka by Keith Maillard
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

4RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 29, 2015, 6:12 am

Books Read by Year of Publication

I thought it might be interesting to see where this leads. Two of the books I'm currently reading were first published in the 1930s. I think that most of the books I read this year will have been published in 2014 or 2015, but it will still be interesting (to me, at least) to see it laid out.

1814 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
1855 The Warden by Anthony Trollope
1857 Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
1932 Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
1936 In Matto's Realm by Friedrich Glauser
1959 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
1965 Stoner by John Williams
1969 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
1972 The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette
1984 Edisto by Padgett Powell
1994 Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays by David Sedaris
1995 The Prestige by Christopher Priest
2000 Sushi for Beginners by Marian Keyes
2001 The Woman from Bratislava by Leif Davidson
2002 The Clarinet Polka by Keith Maillard
I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
2003 The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2004 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Like a Charm edited by Karin Slaughter
2005 A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell
20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
2008 Addition by Toni Jordan
The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher
2009 Labor Day by Joyce Maynard
2010 Bitch in a Bonnet by Robert Rodi
The Hanging Tree by Bryan Gruley
2011 Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis
2012 Jane, the Fox, and Me by Fanny Britt
A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante
The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones
2013 All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane
Let Me Go by Chelsea Cain
Longbourn by Jo Baker
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer
2014 Adam by Ariel Schrag
After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman
Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories by Hilary Mantel
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernieres
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Fallout by Sadie Jones
The Fever by Megan Abbott
The Girl Next Door by Ruth Rendell
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill
The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe by Alexander McCall Smith
Mr Mercedes by Stephen King
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter
Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
Outline by Rachel Cusk
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Stone Mattress: Nine Tales by Margaret Atwood
The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
Us by David Nicholls
2015 The Anti-Christ Handbook: The Horror and Hilarity of Left Behind by Fred Clark
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
The Beat Goes On by Ian Rankin
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell
The Day of Atonement by David Liss
Daydreams of Angels by Heather O'Neill
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
Disclaimer by Renee Knight
Finders Keepers by Stephen King
First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Ghettoside by Jill Levy
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
The Green Road by Anne Enright
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay
The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan
It's Not Me, It's You by Mhairi McFarlane
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Make Me by Lee Child
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates
Slade House by David Mitchell
So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton
UnderMajorDomo Minor by Patrick deWitt

5RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 29, 2015, 6:12 am

And the compulsion to compile more and more statistics of negligible meaning continues:

Nationality of Author

American
Megan Abbott (The Fever)
Sarah Addison Allen (First Frost)
Aziz Ansari (Modern Romance)
Greg Baxter (Munich Airport)
Chelsea Cain (Let Me Go)
Wiley Cash (A Land More Kind than Home)
Roz Chast (Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?)
Fred Clark (The Anti-Christ Handbook: The Horror and Hilarity of Left Behind)
Bill Clegg (Did You Ever Have a Family)
Jan Ellison (A Small Indiscretion)
Jill Alexander Essbaum (Hausfrau)
Atul Gawande (Being Mortal)
Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist)
Bryan Gruley (The Hanging Tree)
Joe Hill (20th Century Ghosts)
Jeff Hobbs (The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace)
Edward P. Jones (The Known World)
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
Stephen King (Mr Mercedes, Finders Keepers, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: Stories)
Jon Krakauer (Missoula)
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy)
Ann Leckie (Ancillary Justice)
Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)
Jill Leovy (Ghettoside)
Laura Lippman (After I'm Gone)
David Liss (The Day of Atonement)
Keith Maillard (The Clarinet Polka)
Janet Malcolm (Iphigenia in Forest Hills)
Joyce Maynard (Labor Day)
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
Celeste Ng (Everything I Never Told You)
Joyce Carol Oates (Lovely, Dark, Deep, The Sacrifice)
Jenny Offill (Dept. of Speculation)
Padgett Powell (Edisto)
Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)
Robert Rodi (Bitch in a Bonnet)
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
Mary Doria Russell (A Thread of Grace)
Ariel Schrag (Adam)
David Sedaris (Barrel Fever)
Anne Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread)
Jeff Vandermeer (Annihilation)
Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five)
John Williams (Stoner)
Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming)
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)

Australian
Toni Jordan (Addition)
Evie Wyld (All the Birds, Singing)
Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

British
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins)
Jane Austen (Mansfield Park)
Jo Baker (Longbourn)
Belinda Bauer (Rubbernecker)
Louis de Bernieres (The Dust that Falls from Dreams)
Lee Child (Make Me)
Rachel Cusk (Outline)
Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm)
Sophie Hannah (The Telling Error)
Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train)
Philip Hensher (The Northern Clemency)
Sadie Jones (The Uninvited Guests, Fallout)
Renee Knight (Disclaimer)
Hilary Mantel (The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: Stories)
Mhairi McFarlane (It's Not Me, It's You, Here's Looking at You)
David Mitchell (Slade House)
David Nicholls (Us)
Andrew O'Hagan (The Illuminations)
Christopher Priest (The Prestige)
Ian Rankin (The Beat Goes On)
Ruth Rendell (The Girl Next Door, Dark Corners)
Jon Ronson (So You've Been Publicly Shamed)
J.K. Rowling (The Silkworm, Career of Evil)
Alexander McCall Smith (The Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe)
Anthony Trollope (The Warden, Barchester Towers)
Sarah Waters (The Paying Guests)

Canadian
Margaret Atwood (MaddAddam, Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, The Heart Goes Last)
Kate Beaton (Step Aside, Pops)
Fanny Britt (Jane, the Fox, and Me)
Lauren B. Davis (Our Daily Bread)
Patrick deWitt (UnderMajorDomo Minor)
Elizabeth Hay (His Whole Life)
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
Heather O'Neill (The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, Daydreams of Angels)

Danish
Leif Davidsen (The Woman from Bratislava)

French
Jean-Patrick Manchette (The Mad and the Bad)

German
Friedrich Glauser (In Matto's Realm)

Irish
Anne Enright (The Green Road)
Marian Keyes (Sushi for Beginners)
Colm Tóibín (Nora Webster)

Italian
Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay)

South African
Lauren Beukes (Broken Monsters)

Swedish
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Ove)

6RidgewayGirl
Sep 26, 2015, 9:23 am



After a few serious books, it was time for something frivolous and so I picked up Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. It did not disappoint. Cath is a college freshman who had expected to room with her twin sister, except her sister wanted to try living apart. Cath is a shy loner, who lives more in the world of fan fiction for a series that sounds very much like Harry Potter. There, she's a popular author. At the University of Nebraska, she's a freshman struggling to get used to life without her sister and away from her bipolar father.

So this was a fun book. Cath and the people she meets are all engaging and Rowell has a real talent for dialogue. I was not very interested in the examples of Cath's fan fiction, but that's a minor quibble in a book that was just a lot of fun to read.

7baswood
Sep 26, 2015, 10:06 am

We have a Volkswagen, so I guess we are polluting the countryside.

8RidgewayGirl
Sep 26, 2015, 10:28 am

Ha! Bas, this is THE topic of conversation here in Germany. I just told my neighbor that he should be able to get a great deal on a VW diesel.

Hence the new ad. No one can say I'm not topical.

9rebeccanyc
Sep 26, 2015, 11:46 am

>8 RidgewayGirl: No one can say I'm not topical.

Ha!

10Nickelini
Sep 26, 2015, 1:18 pm

I'm looking forward to Fangirl.

11NanaCC
Sep 26, 2015, 2:03 pm

Great ad, Kay, and your review of Fangirl caught my eye. I didn't have any interest in it, but your review has me second guessing myself.

12charl08
Sep 26, 2015, 4:09 pm

Love the ad's topicality. Time for us all to go electric?

13RidgewayGirl
Sep 27, 2015, 4:48 am

Charlotte, my husband's currently driving an i3, an electric car. He plugs it in at work, where they are testing how well solar panels do in recharging electric cars.

Colleen, Fangirl is a lot of fun, and Rowell does a great job telling a classic fish out of water story. I can see why it's been so popular.

14RidgewayGirl
Sep 27, 2015, 6:46 am



Well, the new book by Hark! A Vagrant author, Kate Beaton is out and I have a copy. If you're not familiar with her work, she does comics about topics like the founding fathers, the Lady of Shallot, Wonder Woman, straw feminists and Wuthering Heights, along with stuff about obscure historical figures, Greek gods and riffs on old book covers.

Here's one about Lois Lane, trying to get things done:



And here's Ida B. Wells and the suffragettes:



Step Aside, Pops is just as imaginative, intelligent and funny as its predecessor.

15rebeccanyc
Sep 27, 2015, 2:51 pm

I keep meaning to check out Hark! A Vagrant.

16RidgewayGirl
Editado: Sep 27, 2015, 2:59 pm

Take a look, Rebecca:

http://harkavagrant.com

edited to add This will always be my favorite.

17wandering_star
Sep 27, 2015, 8:50 pm

I'm reading Step Aside, Pops too! - but trying to ration the cartoons and not just race through them.

Dude Watchin' With The Brontes is definitely the best (and most representative) of the cartoons!

18Nickelini
Sep 27, 2015, 9:40 pm

>16 RidgewayGirl:, >17 wandering_star: - Yes, always a favourite.

19RidgewayGirl
Sep 28, 2015, 11:30 am

I'm planning fall break. We've only got a limited time left here and we've visited the nearer locations, so I've chosen Denmark as our destination. I selected 17 holiday rentals in various parts of Denmark, from central Copenhagen to a tiny island accessible only by ferry. My son got home and loved every choice more than the last, which was unhelpful. I'm leaning toward Helsingore, which offers an apartment on the harbor, or a thatched cottage on a fjord. It's not easy to choose. Also, it is remarkably easy to find a place on the water in a country formed of islands and fjords.

20rebeccanyc
Sep 28, 2015, 2:54 pm

>16 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay! And I think you posted that one before, and I lvoe it too.

21RidgewayGirl
Sep 28, 2015, 3:21 pm

Rebecca, I think I've posted it a half dozen times on LT. Every time it's vaguely appropriate. Anne is my Bronte, which makes me love it even more.

22NanaCC
Sep 28, 2015, 3:22 pm

And, I love it every time you post it.

23Nickelini
Sep 28, 2015, 6:29 pm

24NanaCC
Sep 28, 2015, 9:49 pm

>19 RidgewayGirl: I am also jealous. My husband spent a month in Denmark in 1999 doing Y2K programming. He is not a good traveler and yet he managed fine, and loved it. He and the two people he went with did a lot of touring on weekends. Enjoy!

25AlisonY
Sep 29, 2015, 1:40 pm

>19 RidgewayGirl: look forward to hearing about your travels in Denmark. I keep trying to persuade my husband that we need to take the kids there for a few days.

26RidgewayGirl
Sep 29, 2015, 1:56 pm

Colleen, it will be fun. Landscape-wise, it looks like the Netherlands in the pictures, and we had a great time there.

Joyce, someone who's living in Vancouver, with both the Rockies and the Pacific, has nothing to complain about.

Alison, I've narrowed down the places to stay to 11. All are beautiful in different ways. Some come with boats. I like cities, but the rest of the family love to roam around in nature, rather than cafes and museums, so it will be a country place. I'll make a decision tomorrow.

27RidgewayGirl
Sep 30, 2015, 4:58 am



Ian Rankin has collected the short stories that he's written about John Rebus, his curmudgeonly Scottish detective, in to one book, The Beat Goes On. I took my time working my way through the book, which is arranged chronologically in Rebus's life, and along the way rekindled my love of him. In the later books, he has sometimes veered from charmingly grumpy and old school, into a depressed misanthropist and I was happy when he retired. I liked Malcolm Fox, a character as far from Rebus as possible, and I wasn't thrilled when Rankin brought Rebus back (I realize that this is a minority view). But reading stories set all along Rebus's career was useful in reminding me how very good the character is, and how enjoyable it can be to see Rebus steamrolling along, ignoring protocol and getting the job done.

In each story, Rebus solves some mystery, bringing the perpetrators to justice and drinking a few whiskies or IPAs along the way. We see his partner change from Holmes to Siobhan and how he ends up being slightly less of a loner by the end of the book. While I recognized a few of the stories from previous collections, it was still worthwhile to read a sort of survey of Rebus's professional life. I'm looking forward to the next installment, Even Dogs in the Wild, due out in November.

28NanaCC
Sep 30, 2015, 6:54 am

>27 RidgewayGirl: As a fairly new Rebus fan, I think this book belongs on my wishlist.

29RidgewayGirl
Sep 30, 2015, 10:47 am

Colleen, it is a good overview.

30RidgewayGirl
Editado: Oct 4, 2015, 11:42 am

In the continuing saga of booking a holiday place for the end of the month, I had the rest of the family weigh in once I'd reduced the number of possibilities to nine. My son made a spreadsheet and collected votes, which left us no nearer a decision. I caught my husband compulsively looking at the choices and not coming to any conclusions. Indecision has hit us all. House may have to be chosen at random.

And we are a family with no dogs which, I think, technically means we are no longer a family. The dog we brought with us to Germany died in June and our old greyhound, who stayed behind with friends, died Saturday.

The cat is poor consolation, although he tried to comfort us with the gift of a small, not-very-dead mouse. Despite his best efforts, this did not improve the general mood.

31avidmom
Oct 5, 2015, 1:40 pm

I'm so sorry about the loss of your fur babies. So heartbreaking.

Well, you gotta give the cat credit for trying..... I guess.

(It probably didn't improve the general mood of the "not-very-dead mouse" either. ;)

32RidgewayGirl
Oct 6, 2015, 11:02 am



The Illuminations by Andrew O'Hagan is a story about families, and how those connections shape us, and how we aren't always our best selves when we're with our families. The novel tells the story of Anne Quick, an elderly woman who will have to soon move from her sheltered accommodation into a nursing home, despite the efforts of the residence's warden and a neighbor who keeps a close and caring eye on her, fascinated by Anne's career as a professional photographer in New York. It's a far different life than that of retired women living in a small seaside town near Glasgow. But the novel is also about Maureen, a woman who is caring and diligent when she's with Anne, but despite her best intentions, difficult and tense around her own children and grandchildren. And it's about Luke Campbell, Anne's grandson, who is serving in the military in Afghanistan and watching his commanding officer fall apart. As the threads of the relationships draw them together, Luke wants to take Anne on one final trip to her beloved Blackpool, to see the famous illuminations one last time.

This is one of those deceptively quiet novels, revolving as it does around the memories of an elderly woman, but that stillness hides a powerful story of war and how we shape our stories. The Illuminations very much deserves its place on the Booker longlist. The writing and the intricate shape of the story are both very fine.

33AlisonY
Oct 6, 2015, 1:47 pm

Sold! The Illuminations sounds like something I'd enjoy.

34RidgewayGirl
Oct 6, 2015, 1:50 pm

Alison, the writing reminded me of Anne Enright's The Green Road and also Colm Toibin.

35janemarieprice
Oct 6, 2015, 2:43 pm

30 - Sorry to hear about your furry friends.

36RidgewayGirl
Oct 6, 2015, 2:53 pm

Thanks, Jane.

37charl08
Oct 6, 2015, 3:58 pm

>32 RidgewayGirl: I like your comments about this novel. As you say, it had some real insight into family communication. I particularly liked the Blackpool section of the book (not saying more for fear of spoilers...)

38ursula
Oct 6, 2015, 4:03 pm

I'm very sorry to hear about your dogs. I can only imagine how tough it is to lose two so close together.

39dchaikin
Oct 7, 2015, 10:22 pm

Sorry about your pups.

40RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2015, 1:22 am

Thanks, ursula and Daniel. The week after the first dog died, the cat would not leave her old dog bed. He's a jerk, but he's doing his best to be as sensitive as he can. I do lecture him every time he goes out, reminding him of his responsibility to stay safe. Then he heads next door for Second Breakfast.

41RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2015, 3:44 am



Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer begins with the story of a man driving through bad Welsh weather to pick his daughter up after her train home was canceled. A moment's inattention sends his car through the guardrails and down a steep hillside.

Then there's Patrick, who is autistic. His mother is not coping well with the challenge of raising him in an isolated house in the countryside, but his father is caring and patient, taking Patrick with him to the betting shop and for long hikes. When his father dies, Patrick can't understand the metaphors used to explain his father's absence to him, and his determination to find out what happened to his father leads to him studying anatomy in university. Living in a run-down house with two flatmates, as well as interacting with his fellow students in the dissection class are stretching him to interact with others in a way he's never tried before. But what really fascinates Patrick is the challenge of determining the cause of death of the corpse they've been given to dissect. It takes over from his obsession with his father's death and becomes especially strong when he begins to believe that the cause of death on the death certificate is not the actual cause of death.

This is the kind of crime novel where, after a few chapters, it's impossible to put it down. Bauer has done a fantastic job weaving the stories of the two main characters into something riveting. And the way in which she tells Patrick's story through his eyes is very well done. He's at a disadvantage in some ways; being unable to read facial expressions or the way he takes comments literally, for example, but he's also able to exert a dogged determination to find answers, well beyond what anyone else would be willing to do. Bauer does a credible job both describing Patrick's reactions to people and events and in describing the reactions of people to Patrick. This is also quite a creepy and atmospheric book, as much of it is set in a hospital ward full of coma patients.

42janeajones
Oct 8, 2015, 4:22 am

Intriguing review.

43AlisonY
Oct 8, 2015, 4:47 am

>41 RidgewayGirl: Hmmm - not the sort of book I would normally choose myself in a bookshop but you have me intrigued with this one. Great review - I can already imagine the creepiness. One for the list.

And somehow I missed the post about your poor doggies. Sorry to hear that - I'm sure you're bereft. I imagine the cat's doing it's best, but let's face it - moggies are the takers of this world, whereas dogs are the givers.

44RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2015, 8:38 am

It's National Poetry Day, at least in Britain, which is good enough for me. Here's a fun take on my favorite poem by Phillip Larkin. He would have hated it.

45FlorenceArt
Oct 8, 2015, 8:47 am

>41 RidgewayGirl: Have added Rubbernecker to my wishlist! Thank you for the review.

46charl08
Oct 8, 2015, 10:17 am

>44 RidgewayGirl: Love this. Have you read the volume where (I think Carol Ann Duffy) commissioned poets to speak back to another poem? Some good stuff. Hopefully at some point I'll remember the title.

47rachbxl
Oct 8, 2015, 10:51 am

>44 RidgewayGirl: wonderful! And I've added Rubbernecker and The Illuminations to my wishlist. (I grew up not far from Blackpool, and hated, hated, hated the illuminations).

48RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2015, 11:01 am

>47 rachbxl: As someone who is not a great fan of crowds and who has just finished her third year living in Munich during Oktoberfest, I think I know how you feel.

49baswood
Oct 9, 2015, 8:59 am

https://youtu.be/m0GUbAImHuw

Adrian Mitchell and Liverpool scene

50RidgewayGirl
Oct 9, 2015, 10:57 am

Bas, that was amazing. I feel somehow that I should now reread On the Road and wear a black turtleneck.

51RidgewayGirl
Oct 9, 2015, 10:58 am



The very best part of Bryan Gruley's crime series about journalist Gus Carpenter is the setting. The working class town of Starvation Lake is located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where hockey, especially when it involves the local team, is the most important thing going on. So when a wealthy developer from Detroit moves into a big house on the lake and decides to build a new and better hockey arena, the town is enthusiastic enough to gloss over signs that something shady is going on. Enough to want to cover over what might be a murder, downgrading it to a suicide, even as Gus tries to write the real story of what's going on. The newspaper owners are much more interested in the promised advertising revenue from the new arena to allow his stories to be published.

The Hanging Tree is the second in a mystery series that begins with Starvation Lake. It is full of the atmosphere of a gritty, down-on-its-heels northern town that lives and breathes hockey. Gus is a native son, the star goalkeeper who let the critical puck hit the back of the net during the play-offs, the guy who left for the big city of Detroit, only to return in disgrace years later to find that that missed puck is still a topic of discussion. He's both a native son and an outsider, still determined to be the best journalist he can, despite the reduced circumstances of now writing for a small, weekly paper primarily functioning to generate ad revenue. The plot is sturdy enough, although Gruley isn't great at writing female characters. Gus is an interesting guy, and I'll admit that having grown up in two Canadian cities that elevated hockey to a religion, I very much enjoy revisiting a version of that world.

52Oandthegang
Oct 11, 2015, 7:46 pm

>44 RidgewayGirl: Don't know if you heard The People's Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 on Saturday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034pwcb I quite liked it. Must try to track down the origianl Shipping Forecast poem to which it was a response.

Rubberneck sounds good. The Bryan Gruleys sound like a crime version of Richard Russo's Mohawk books.

53Oandthegang
Oct 11, 2015, 7:54 pm

And may I add my condolences on your double dog loss. It is awful when pets die and I sympathise with your anxiety about the cat. One hopes he is not aware of being regarded as inferior in any way. Will he be going on holiday too? And has the holiday decision been made? Perhaps you should let the cat choose.

54RidgewayGirl
Oct 12, 2015, 3:29 am

Oandthegang, thanks! I'll listen to that. As for the cat, he knows he's fabulous. And he'll be moving next door while we're away. He spends a lot of time there and they like having him sleep-over. I did make a decision on the holiday cottage, mainly based on who answered my query first. We'll be up north near Ebelstoft, which is said to be a charming historical village. And the house comes with a selection of bikes, which makes things easier.

55RidgewayGirl
Editado: Oct 12, 2015, 3:33 am



The Dust that Falls from Dreams by Louis de Bernieres is the story of a family before, during and after the First World War, and has an old-fashioned feel to it. The McCosh family are wealthy and middle class, living in a beautiful town outside of London, with their four daughters. They enjoy the company of their neighbors, and one of the girls even becomes engaged to the boy next door, just as he marches off to fight in the Great War. Following both the family members as they experience life on the home front, and the sons of the neighbors as they fight in various capacities in the war, The Dust that Falls From Dreams is meticulously researched, with the author clearly feeling great affection for the characters he has created.

Louis de Bernieres can certainly write. And he's adept at keeping dozens of characters and their intertwined stories going, but there were a few flaws in this impressive book that are worth mentioning. The first is that the research is not always shown lightly enough. One feels the weight of the unnecessary detail and the elaborate description far too often. The family, as well, is too ideal. Not that there cannot be happy families, but it does become obvious over time that poor people exist only to allow the various McCosh family members to show their benevolence. The aftermath of WWI was one of economic turmoil in Britain, with many returning soldiers dealing with injuries and amputations that restricted their ability to work, many more soldiers unable to find employment and many families left without their breadwinner. This is barely noticeable in this novel, as the men who do return, return intact and into easy futures. It was as though any unpleasantness was to simply be ignored.

And finally, there was one character that set my teeth on edge. She was the most beautiful, charming and saintly girl imaginable, and all the boys were in love with her, and remained so; even if they last saw her when they were twelve, they would still be unable to love any other woman for the rest of their lives. And she was, frankly, a self-absorbed pill of a woman. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the attraction was or how she managed to fool her entire family so effectively.

Quibbles aside, there was something very enjoyable about spending time with this charming family and their friends. It was a pleasant way to learn about everything from life as a WWI flying ace, to spiritualism in the 1920s, to the importance of golf to the businessman. This looks to be the beginning of a series of novels, and I will certainly pick up the next, with the understanding that this is a gilded version of history, smooth and velvety, without grit, but not without sorrow.

56charl08
Editado: Oct 13, 2015, 2:56 am

Gosh what a beautiful looking place your holiday destination is (the wonder of Google image search). I read Captain Corelli (along with everyone else) and then rather gave up on de Bernieres. I have had rather a lot of the WW1 period lately (I think with the Dr Watson novels, amongst others), so will pass on this for now (excellent review notwithstanding).

57NanaCC
Oct 12, 2015, 8:10 am

>55 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed the audio version of Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, narrated by John Lee. You have tempted me with this one, although I still have Corelli's Mandolin sitting on the shelf.

58RidgewayGirl
Oct 16, 2015, 2:59 pm

Charlotte, we're all looking forward to our week in Denmark. Only eight days to go!

Colleen, I loved Captain Corelli's Mandolin when I read it. I guess it depends on which world war you'd prefer.

And there was an English language charity booksale today, which I enjoyed very much. This is what I brought home with me.

59Nickelini
Oct 16, 2015, 3:15 pm

the Strangers Child is soooo good.

60japaul22
Oct 16, 2015, 8:03 pm

Alberta and Jacob!!!!! I loved it and think it seems very "under-read".

61RidgewayGirl
Oct 17, 2015, 2:38 am

Joyce and Jennifer, how do you think these books end up on my wishlist anyway? In the case of Alberta and Jacob I looked for the other two in the hopes of finding the other two as well, but no luck there.

There was a good selection of non-American or UK literature, which makes sense when you consider the donations came from expats. They are all, except for the Peter Temple, in pristine condition. I also found a book for my husband, who is happy to encourage my book buying if it means there is always a fresh book waiting for him when he finishes the previous one. I got out of the habit of keeping my eyes open for books he'd like after getting him the entire Song of Fire and Ice, which kept him busy for some time. So I was pleased to find a China Mieville he hadn't read.

62Helenliz
Oct 17, 2015, 4:11 am

Cloud Atlas is one of my desert island library. So hope you enjoy that one.

63RidgewayGirl
Oct 17, 2015, 1:27 pm



Bill Clegg's debut novel, Did You Ever Have a Family certainly had a buzz going about it. Clegg has written two memoirs, but his first novel was showered with positive reviews and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Told from various points of view, Did You Ever Have a Family tells the story of an early morning house fire that takes the life of four people. The cause of the fire was determined to be an electrical failure, but there are certainly rumors. The books follows various characters with more or less connection to the family during the years after the fire, from the mother of one victim and partner of another, who is dealing with crippling grief, to the woman who cleans the motel room she eventually stays in. Clegg's writing is assured and he has a premise here that has the potential to be powerful.

But this brief novel never quite achieves what it promises. There are so many characters that the two women at the center are not given enough time to become more than a symbol of bereavement, rather than an exploration of what they are feeling. And partway through, Clegg is distracted into exploring the cause of the fire, which drains momentum from the central story of overwhelming grief. There is no room in this novel to do all the things it wants to do, and so the story of why the fire started (the least interesting part of the book) is the only element fully explored. The grieving mothers remain ciphers.

64NanaCC
Oct 18, 2015, 5:40 pm

The new Cormoran Strike book comes out here on Tuesday. Have you seen it over there yet? I know you get some books before we do.

65japaul22
Oct 18, 2015, 6:29 pm

>61 RidgewayGirl: True, you have put many, many books on my wish list as well! Alberta and Jacob was by far my favorite of the trilogy anyway, and I think it would be just fine to read only it.

66RidgewayGirl
Oct 19, 2015, 1:51 am

Colleen, I've pre-ordered it and am hoping to take it with me next week when we drive to Denmark. Some British titles do come out here a lot earlier than in the US, but I guess they didn't think they could do that for Cormoran.

Jennifer, I was most intrigued by Alberta Alone, but I'm looking forward to reading this.

67charl08
Oct 20, 2015, 2:38 am

>63 RidgewayGirl: I think I liked this more than you did! Having recently lost two family members I found the focus on small town manners and community support as the novel developed, reassuringly hopeful. It also made the book more bearable to me than a full on focus on mourning would have been.

(Different strokes etc! Although I envy the Booker judges their access to so many new books, I don't think they have an easy job to choose a winner).

68RidgewayGirl
Oct 20, 2015, 3:26 am

Charlotte, I've also noticed that other reviewers, including a few people whose bookish opinions I respect loved Did You Ever Have a Family. I read it after a more substantial novel, and I wonder if I was disappointed in its brevity and it being less involved than the other book. I wonder how much what is read immediately before influences my experience of the books I read.

I mean, the next book I read was A Little Life, and I was left feeling it was too long, despite usually loving longer books. I don't know.

69RidgewayGirl
Oct 20, 2015, 4:36 am



Can a person be damaged beyond repair?

Hanya Yanagihara's Booker-nominated novel, A Little Life begins with the stories of four young men who were college roommates, becoming best friends, forming relationships that will continue through adulthood. The main focus, however, is Jude, the socially awkward, fiercely intelligent member of his happy group. Unlike his friends, Jude doesn't share stories of his childhood and is made visibly uncomfortable when anyone asks him about his past. His first fifteen years of life will turn out to have been nightmarish, with steadily escalating abuse until the physical damage done to him results in a permanent disability.

But beginning with meeting his roommates at a prestigious university in Massachusetts, his fortunes change dramatically. First he makes close friends, something he has longed for, not just his roommates, but many other people are drawn to him, and remain devoted to him, all wanting the best for him. Then he finds success in his career, becoming both wealthy and admired in his career as a lawyer. His friends are also remarkably successful; despite having chosen creative careers as artist, actor and architect, each reaches the top of their chosen paths with only minor set-backs to trouble them. Then he finds parents and even love. A Little Life looks at a man who has everything, but who was emotionally damaged by the abuse he suffered, and explores whether or not the emotional damage done to him is as permanent as the physical damage.

This is a powerful novel, and Yanagihara is able to create great sympathy for her main character. The reader is rooting for Jude, and celebrates with each little gift of happiness or security he receives. But A Little Life is also a flawed story, going on with too much repetitiveness and detail about various exotic vacations and lovely dinner parties spent with his large and relentlessly caring group of friends. The level of wealth on display ends up detracting from the power of Jude's story, as he has stunning weekend houses built, or buys or is given generous and thoughtful gifts. The novel is also far too long. I'm generally a fan of a long novel that allows me to remain in the company of characters who interest me, but the sheer number of dinner parties and long weekends spent in luxurious settings grows onerous, especially as there is little to no character development taking place. It's not that the rich cannot suffer, it's just that all that wealth is a distraction from the meat of the novel.

70baswood
Oct 20, 2015, 4:21 pm

Enjoyed your review of A little Life and now I know it is definitely not for me.

71dchaikin
Oct 21, 2015, 12:13 pm

I was curious about A Little Life, so I was glad to read your review. I'm intrigued even if it's probably not a book for me.

72RidgewayGirl
Oct 26, 2015, 3:24 pm

Thanks, Bas and Daniel. It's gotten good reviews, and I would probably have read it no matter what, but I'm disappointed that the early promise of it could not carry through to the end.

73RidgewayGirl
Oct 26, 2015, 3:38 pm



So, another Jack Reacher novel. This time, in Make Me, Lee Child takes his large and battle-scarred protagonist out into the vast reaches of the middle of the US, to a small town called Mother's Rest, which is important in that it has a train station and some sizable grain silos, but is otherwise unremarkable outside of its odd name. Reacher planned a brief stop before continuing on with his peripatetic life, but is drawn into helping a private detective find a missing colleague. This being Reacher, things get complex and violent, but it's nothing that he can't handle.

It's fun watching Reacher unravel puzzles. Child gives all the details of how Reacher solves the mystery, and how he predicts what the bad guys will do next. He is also good at creating large casts of characters and making each memorable by giving each a telling detail, without bogging the story down with descriptions. Bog down is something a thriller about Jack Reacher never does.

This installment is solid, with a return to one of Child's favorite locations. It's well-plotted and the short chapters flew by. Reacher is a man with principles, although most of us would recoil from some of them, including a cavalier attitude towards murders of convenience. Reacher isn't really a kind man and he's far from being a hero, but it is entertaining to watch him bust heads and shoot things.

74avaland
Oct 28, 2015, 6:26 am

I'm impressed by your quantity of reading and your penchant for statistics. Did you conclude anything or decide to make any changes in your reading from your list by nationality of author? I haven't made a list but I tend to note nationality as I go along, and I think, excluding crime novels, I'm reading more US authors than usual, and maybe a wee bit more nonfiction.

I see you have acquired Peter Temple's Truth. If I'm remembering correctly, I thought that a fine, complex crime novel but bleak, bleak, bleak---it features a Melbourne with no redeeming qualities and a bit regressive when it comes to including women. I will be very interested in what you think. I liked The Broken Shore, which came before it, much better.

>44 RidgewayGirl: Love this take on Larkin.

75VivienneR
Oct 28, 2015, 1:43 pm

Catching up and as usual finding lots to add to my wishlist.

>58 RidgewayGirl: I've read Between Shades of Grey, a tragedy that, until reading Sepetys, I wasn't aware went on for so long. The book was harrowing but unforgettable.

76RidgewayGirl
Oct 28, 2015, 4:00 pm

Lois, tracking authors by nationality and books by year of publication was an afterthought - this year's goal was to read more books by women. It has brought to my attention that I'm reading even more by western authors than I'd thought, though, so next year, I hope to continue reading more by women, and also to add more diversity, in reading more both outside of the US and UK and to read more diversely within the US and UK.

And I was excited to find the copy of Truth as I'd been keeping an eye out for it for some time.

Vivienne, I had just read a review for Between Shades of Grey here just a few days before running into it at the book sale.

77charl08
Editado: Oct 29, 2015, 8:27 am

>76 RidgewayGirl: I've found this tracking fascinating - I wouldn't have thought that I read so many British authors until I started tracking, or realised how my reading breaks down by author gender. It has made me consciously seek out (or perhaps, encouraged me to) more fiction in translation, which is a new favouritem of mine. Especially those imprints which seem to focus on translation like Serpent's tail and Macelhose press. I recently found I can search by publisher on my library catalogue, which was a good bookish moment.

78Oandthegang
Editado: Oct 29, 2015, 6:45 pm

>77 charl08: Harvill used to be really good for work in translation. They published among others Peter Hoeg and Yuri Dumbrovsky (Touchstone doesn't acknowledge him, probably because of spelling variants, but he wrote The Faculty of Useless Knowledge Ah, see, there it is). I don't keep up so I'm not sure about now.

79charl08
Oct 29, 2015, 6:55 pm

The Faculty of Useless Knowledge sounds amazing. Added to the wishlist. Thank you!

80Oandthegang
Oct 29, 2015, 9:43 pm

>79 charl08: Great! I loved it. After that I read The Keeper Of Antiquities as well.

81RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 5:16 am

Charlotte, your reading this year has been much more diverse than my own. I have to work on that, as I'm missing some good stuff!

Oandthegang, excellent information to remember.

82RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 5:16 am



Any concerns that the Cormoran Strike series would lose steam are happily quashed in the first chapters of the third book, Career of Evil. J.K. Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith, is only getting started, and this installment is the best yet.

I'm not going to say anything about the plot of Career of Evil; if you've been reading the series, you'll prefer me not to, and if you haven't, you should go back and begin with The Cuckoo's Calling. These are well-crafted crime novels, staying true to the private detective genre, with clever and hard-edged plots, with satisfying conclusions. These aren't cozies, however, so if you don't like gritty, give this series a pass.

83NanaCC
Nov 2, 2015, 7:43 am

>82 RidgewayGirl: I wish whoever is in the queue before me at the library would get moving. I've been number one for ages. I honestly think there must be people sneaking ahead of me in line.

84charl08
Nov 2, 2015, 7:50 am

>81 RidgewayGirl: So much of this has been LT related -has been so nice to find a community of people who are similarly interested in prizes, reviews and authors, so that I've got interested in a range of books that I wouldn't have thought of before this year.

>82 RidgewayGirl: Glad you enjoyed this too. I feel like I can't wait for the next one - I want to know what happens next!

>83 NanaCC: On your behalf sending Encouraging Vibes to whoever has the book ahead of you. I think reserved books definitely fall into the 'watched pot' category. I was way back in the queue and couldn't wait so got a digital copy instead.

85RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 8:00 am

Colleen, when I first noticed it had reached my library's ebook collection, I placed a hold and was number 28. This was months before the book was even released! So I pre-ordered instead, because I was too impatient. Of course, now the long wait for book four begins.

Charlotte, I know my reading is more diverse because of LT - previously most of my choices were based on the NYT Book Review and what was on the tables at the bookstore, both places not well known for diversity. I just need to push a bit more as these books are usually less visible than the latest by the white American guy who has already won awards. Which is no slam on that guy, I still read his books, I just read other stuff, too. And I've gotten bored with books about affluent white people problems. I feel like if that is what is being served up, it needs to be done in a new way, and executed flawlessly, because I've already encountered so much of it.

86NanaCC
Nov 2, 2015, 8:46 am

>84 charl08: The weird thing is that I put my name in the queue when I found out about the release date. This was some time in September. I was number two in the list. I looked a few days after the release and I was number one. A week later I was number two again. That is why I said I wonder about people sneaking into line. My library isn't large, and I think they only have one copy.

>85 RidgewayGirl: I think my reading has been enhanced by this group, but I am lucky to have Chris / cabegley as a daughter. She has great reading tastes. :). I walk into her house and it is like walking into a bookstore where the books are free.

87RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 10:01 am

>86 NanaCC: My dad does that. He once came over and walked right past me into the living room saying, "I know where the good books are." and proceeded to root through my TBR shelves.

88NanaCC
Nov 2, 2015, 10:34 am

>87 RidgewayGirl: Chris has book shelves in almost every room in the house. I think a few of the shelves are for books that she has read. For the most part I try to borrow books that she has already read. I have a three shelf book shelf on my landing that is filled with books I've borrowed from her. I sometimes feel guilty that I don't read them fast enough, but she doesn't seem to mind.

89lesmel
Editado: Nov 2, 2015, 11:00 am

>86 NanaCC: if your library's system has a "suspend hold" function, that could cause what you are seeing. Usually a suspend hold function won't drop a patron to the end of the hold line, it will drop them back where they were in the hold line.

I have access to 4 library systems. I love seeing how well a title is doing (hold wise) in each. FBL has 26 copies and 27 holds. HPL has 32 copies and 40 holds. HCL has 26 copies and 131 holds (that's gonna be awhile). BCL has 13 copies with 12 holds (I'm #7 in line) Thx for the post in >82 RidgewayGirl:! I didn't even know the 3rd book was out!

Did anyone see this? http://bit.ly/1SiSwC3 -- J.K. Rowling's BBC series revealed. I'm TOTALLY jealous because: "There are no official details yet about when or where the series will make its U.S. debut."

90Oandthegang
Nov 2, 2015, 11:16 am

Not that I need anything else for the mountainous TBR pile (I'm in the same boat as others, constantly finding amazing looking books on LT threads), but I'm interested in the reaction to the Cormoran Strike series. I and several of my friends didn't like A Casual Vacancy, but I know it had fans. What did you Cormoran Strike fans think of it? (i.e. if I didn't like Vacancy is it likely that I will have a similar reaction to Strike or is her tone/writing quite different in them?)

91NanaCC
Nov 2, 2015, 11:32 am

>90 Oandthegang: I didn't hate The Casual Vacancy, but I was disappointed. It felt forced, as if Rowling thought she had to include everything found in an adult novel - death, sex, drugs, race issues, and maybe even the kitchen sink. Cormoran Strike, on the other hand, feels well thought out. She can definitely write.

92charl08
Nov 2, 2015, 11:38 am

>89 lesmel: Hadn't seen this. Now engaged in a game of fantasy casting. Robin's obvious (to me) but I'm stuck re Cormoran.

I still have to read A Casual Vacancy: will have to add it to the TBR.

93auntmarge64
Nov 2, 2015, 11:57 am

>86 NanaCC: I read your comment about your place in the reserve line being changed. Definitely a no-no in the library world. I'd ask the library director what the story is. If there's hanky-panky, maybe knowing people have noticed will help put an end to it.

94RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 12:00 pm

Colleen, if she's like me, she's pleased the book is out of the house, but will be returned in good shape. My Dad is great about stacking the ones he's done with on the table by the door for me to pick up the next time I'm over there. My brother on the other hand - it's utterly random as to whether I'll get a book he's borrowed back, although the chances are distinctly lower if I tell him I want a specific book back. I'm counting it as proof of my love, but there are a few I secretly regret letting him have.

Hi, lesmdel! Since they haven't even cast the Cormoran Strike series, I don't think we have to worry yet that it won't reach American shores. I am very concerned, however, that they don't pull a Reacher and cast someone entirely unsuitable as Strike.

Oandthegang, I haven't read A Casual Vacancy as the reviews were mixed and I have a towering TBR, but the Cormoran Strike series is brilliant. Rowling clearly loves the genre and understands it. If you have any interest in crime fiction and aren't put off by literary violence and body parts, you will probably like the series a lot. I mean, I love it and I am lukewarm about the whole Harry Potter thing.

Charlotte, I know who I'd cast, but he's probably too short (but he is hairy enough). Who would you cast as Robin? I also know who I'd cast as Matthew.

95auntmarge64
Nov 2, 2015, 12:02 pm

Re: reading and LT - oh yes, my choice of books is most definitely affected by what I read on LT. And when I see a book reviewed elsewhere, I still check here to see what people say and what the star ratings are. It's not my only criteria for deciding to invest time in a book, but it weighs heavily. Before I retired I read Kirkus, Booklist, etc. as part of my job and used their reviews to find books of interest, but LT and BookMarks have largely replaced them, even though many of those reviews are available online.

96lesmel
Nov 2, 2015, 12:13 pm

>92 charl08: I had no problems casting people for The Martian...but this is totally different.

>94 RidgewayGirl: ::waves:: Hello! I'm more worried it's going to be just like Sherlock where I'm still waiting for my library to .... wait! What is this! Season Three is finally on the shelf!

>90 Oandthegang: I keep comparing Strike to Harry Potter if he were older, more cynical, and very world-worn (I was going to weary, but worn feeling more accurate).

>94 RidgewayGirl: Who would you cast as Strike? And Matthew?

97RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 12:18 pm

>95 auntmarge64: Well, it does mean not wading through a bunch of superfluous information. I was a huge NYT Book Review reader, and I still like it, but there's no question that they are lacking in diversity and seem to lean towards authors who travel in certain circles. It's limiting. And I haven't trusted an amazon review for years (and have quit posting my own reviews there), and now I can see why:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/18/technology/amazon-lawsuit-fake-reviews/

I tend to weigh reviews depending on who the reviewer is here. There are people here who, if they like a book and it interests me, I can be pretty sure that I'll like it, too. And that keeps me in books, pretty much. I'll often hold off on buying a book until someone here reviews it.

98RidgewayGirl
Nov 2, 2015, 12:21 pm

>96 lesmel: lesmel, enjoy season three of Sherlock. It is amazing. I've watched it more than once.

And if he weren't too big a star for a supporting role, I'd put Tom Hiddleston in as Matthew. And if Aidan Turner could grow a foot and maybe take steroids, he'd be a great Cormoran. In one woman's opinion. Still dying to find out who Judy thinks should play Robin.

99lesmel
Nov 2, 2015, 12:34 pm

>98 RidgewayGirl: OH!! Hiddleston would be perfect. I saw him in the Wallander series. I hardly recognized him! Then again, I'd already known him from Thor. Heh.

Joe Manganiello (yes, he's American. *sighs*) might be able to pull off Strike. Maaaaybe. Ooo, maybe Jason Momoa (ok, also American). Though, he might be too pretty. Even as Khal Drogo, he was almost too pretty. Henry Cavill? Sean Bean could pull off the scruffy bit.

100charl08
Nov 2, 2015, 12:48 pm

>94 RidgewayGirl: Karen Gillan would be great. Whether she's too big for tv post Marvel I don't know...

101dchaikin
Nov 6, 2015, 11:22 pm

>89 lesmel: Leslie, that's interesting. I use HCL and didn't realize it had more traffic and HPL

(HPL is Houston Public Library, HCL is Harris County Public Library. Houston is in Harris County, but the country library generally only serves outside the city limits...or at least that's what I thought.)

102lesmel
Nov 7, 2015, 5:33 pm

>101 dchaikin: Harris County has a small branch in the medical center. I used to use the West University Branch until I moved out of the area. As far as I can tell, HCL basically overlays all of HPL service areas.

(FBL is Fort Bend County Library)

103RidgewayGirl
Nov 8, 2015, 10:25 am



Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari is both a humorous book written by a famous comedian, a serious look at how courtship has changed over the past few generations, and a guide for dating in the modern world.

Getting married and starting a family was once seemingly the only reasonable life course. Today we've become far more accepting of alternative lifestyles, and people move in and out of different situations: single with roommates, single and solo, single with partner, married, divorced, divorced and living with an iguana, remarried with iguana, then divorced with seven iguanas because you iguana obsession ruined your relationship, and, finally, single with six iguanas (Arturo was sadly run over by an ice cream truck).

Ansari has an engaging and easy-going tone to his writing and he is genuinely interested in both his chosen topic and in people in general (and also food. He talks about food a lot). It was helpful for me, as someone who is part of the previous generation, to learn not only how meeting potential partners has changed with the digital age, it hasn't necessarily changed for the worst. My parent's generation generally met and married young, to someone living within a few blocks. Courtship was short -- people were looking less for a soul mate, than for someone with shared values to build a life together. My generation generally met through friends, and married later. The current generation marries even later, with a longer courtship and the percentage who meet through an on-line dating site is increasing every year.

Along with talking to people from different generations, Ansari also looked at dating practices across the world, from the macho-infused streets of Buenos Aires, to Tokyo where, in addition to eating some delicious ramen, Ansari learns about "herbivore men" -- young men who have essentially given up on meeting women.

This isn't the most scholarly book I've read, but it is one of the most amusing. And Ansari is serious about the subject and worked with sociologists and researchers to write something more substantial than I'd expected.

104.Monkey.
Nov 8, 2015, 11:03 am

>103 RidgewayGirl: He was on the Daily Show and was funny, but while not "scholarly" he did spend a lot of time and a lot of research to make a legit book, not just a comedy/satire kind of thing. :)

105charl08
Nov 8, 2015, 11:09 am

>103 RidgewayGirl: I love that quote. Snorting away attractively here...

106RidgewayGirl
Nov 9, 2015, 2:45 am

Yep. Ansari did his homework.

Charlotte, there is one joke whose punchline comes a few chapters after the set-up. I love jokes like that.

107NanaCC
Nov 9, 2015, 7:31 am

>103 RidgewayGirl: I think I know someone who might like this as a gift. Hmmmm

108RidgewayGirl
Nov 11, 2015, 5:29 am

Klee & Kandinsky Friends, Rivals, Neighbors
Special exhibition at the Lenbachhaus, Munich



Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee met in Munich, where Kandinsky was founding the Blue Rider group. Klee was impressed with Kandinsky, who was 13 years older and would eventually show a few works in the second Blue Rider show. After WWI, which sent Kandinsky back to Russia and Klee back to Switzerland, they met again, this time as instructors at the Bauhaus, and as next door neighbors. At the Bauhaus, the dynamic between the two changed, as while Kandinsky was the older artist, Klee was the more popular instructor. And while their styles were very different, they were both expressionists, who had a close affinity for music. After the Nazis came to power and the Bauhaus was closed, things deteriorated rapidly for the two. Kandinsky's art was declared "degenerate" and he fled to Paris, where he died in 1944. Klee was accused of being Jewish, which he was not, but he felt the accusation deserved no response and so had to return to Switzerland to avoid arrest. He became very ill and dies in 1941.


Kandinsky In Blue 1925

The exhibition features many works by both artists, with their shared biography posted with their works chronologically arranged. I'm very familiar with Kandinsky's pre-WWI works, as the Lenbachhaus is one of my favorite museums, but I really liked seeing works across his entire career. I'd always loved Kandinsky, but getting to see so much of Klee and learning more about his life, has made me much more excited about his work, which combines a graphic design background with a sense of playfulness.



During the time when they were both forced to leave Germany because of the Nazis, their art became dark, with Kandinsky using muddy browns - colors he'd never used before, and Klee going even darker.

I am going to have to return to this exhibit.

109rebeccanyc
Nov 11, 2015, 8:49 am

Thanks for the art review. I like both Klee and Kandinsky.

110RidgewayGirl
Nov 11, 2015, 9:05 am

Rebecca, I'm going back. There seems to be a tendency here to pair artists for big retrospectives. I've seen Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, and then another show of Franz Marc and August Macke before this one. It's an effective way to put on a big show, especially when the artists in question had much of their work destroyed by the Nazis, as with Kandinsky, Klee, Dix and Beckmann, or who died very young, as with Macke and Marc, who both died fighting in WWI.

111charl08
Editado: Nov 11, 2015, 10:24 am

>108 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a great exhibit. The link between their experiences of Nazism and their colour palette is striking. Did they have a catalogue? I love those thick image-heavy books (but they seem to have low print runs and high prices).

112RidgewayGirl
Nov 11, 2015, 9:58 am

Charlotte, I did get the catalog and it is stunning. They tend to have plenty of the German version, but a very limited number of the English version, so I grabbed one immediately, even though I'll be going back. While I think that nothing can compare with seeing a painting in person, the quality of the reproductions is high and I look forward to revisiting the show in years to come by opening the book.

113VivienneR
Nov 11, 2015, 7:53 pm

You are so fortunate to be able to attend such wonderful exhibitions. I love Kandinsky. Interesting that the colour choices changed so dramatically after their exile.

114RidgewayGirl
Nov 12, 2015, 3:49 am

Vivienne, they had both been happy and well-respected in their professional lives in Germany. And as middle-aged men that was stripped away from them as they watched their adopted country self-immolate. It was traumatic for them, especially watching much of their lives' work displayed in "degenerate art" shows and then burned. We only have a number of Kandinsky's earlier works because the artist Gabrielle Münter, with whom he had had a serious relationship and who had no reason to think kindly of him, hid a quantity of his works in her house in Murnau, with no small risk to herself.

I think that the reason that German Expressionism isn't as widely known and admired as French impressionism is because so much of it was destroyed by the Nazis. And many of the artists who survived (many did not) lost all heart as a result.

115VivienneR
Nov 12, 2015, 12:49 pm

The Nazis certainly had a wide-reaching impact. It's a heartbreaking story.

116charl08
Nov 12, 2015, 6:46 pm

Just been looking at what's on locally for art (answer: lots) This tate exhibit heads over to Germany next year:

You’ve arrived at Tate Liverpool in the future. All of the works of art on display are about to disappear, forever. Which works of art do you want to know by heart, committing them to memory so that your favourite piece lives on?
An Imagined Museum: works from the Centre Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections sees three major European art museums bring together over 60 major, post 1945 artworks from their prestigious galleries. On display will be works by Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg, Bridget Riley, Dorothea Tanning, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread and many more.

117RidgewayGirl
Nov 13, 2015, 3:01 am

Charlotte, I'm returning to the US this summer. :(

118charl08
Nov 13, 2015, 7:47 am

>117 RidgewayGirl: Oops. Well that's poor timing in my posting! I'm sure you'll fit in some more great exhibitions before you head back.

119sibylline
Nov 13, 2015, 8:34 am

Stopping in -- good stuff on Kandinsky and company.

I'm so happy Rowling found a new outlet for her huge talent. I'm hoarding #3 for xmas. Silly, but we have a great reading binge right after, and that's when I want to curl up and read it.

120RidgewayGirl
Nov 13, 2015, 8:47 am

Charlotte, I'm going to try and swing a few days in London before we leave to visit the museums. Fingers crossed.

sibyx, that would be a perfect time to read it. I was annoyed at the way I was still expected to function in ordinary life while reading Career of Evil.

121arubabookwoman
Nov 18, 2015, 12:48 pm

How lucky you are to have seen the Kandinsky/Klee exhibit (and all the other art you've absorbed these last 3 years--I can't believe it's been 3 years since you announced in CR you were moving to Germany!). Klee is my very favorite artist, and I wish I could see more by him "in person" than the few pieces I visit regularly when I visit my kids in NYC.

122RidgewayGirl
Nov 18, 2015, 1:06 pm

>121 arubabookwoman: Klee is fantastic. I have been very lucky in being in a city with so much art. And I'm looking forward to going back. I wouldn't mind having a reason to regularly visit NYC (especially MoMA).

123RidgewayGirl
Nov 18, 2015, 2:22 pm



I spent the first chapters of A Man Called Ove thinking that there was no way I was going to like the book. The main character, Ove, is an unpleasant old man, difficult to get along with. He's a widower, forced into taking an early retirement and he is angry at the world. Not my idea of someone I'd like to spend time with. But Swedish author Fredrik Backman's novel won me over. Ove is a curmudgeon, but this is about how he is pulled into being a part of his community against his will, due to the determination of a pregnant Iranian neighbor and a homeless cat.

A Man Called Ove feels as though it might of been written by Alexander McCall Smith, with a deceptively light style. Chapters include A Man Called Ove Does Not Pay a Three-Kronor Surcharge, A Man Called Ove and Countries Where They Play Foreign Music in Restaurants and A Man Called Ove and a Society Where No One Can Repair a Bicycle Any More. While some of the events in the book are humorous and some are very sad, they are all written in a matter of fact tone that enhances both the humor and the tragedy.

124RidgewayGirl
Nov 18, 2015, 2:54 pm

And I've added a new ad up top. Sexist? Just good, clean fun?

125NanaCC
Nov 18, 2015, 3:07 pm

>124 RidgewayGirl: Oh my goodness.... It is amazing what we accepted in advertising back then.

126rebeccanyc
Nov 18, 2015, 3:18 pm

>124 RidgewayGirl: >125 NanaCC: What Colleen said!

127sibylline
Nov 18, 2015, 4:11 pm

Holy leapfrogging cats, that ad is stupefying.

128Helenliz
Nov 18, 2015, 4:40 pm

>124 RidgewayGirl: um, I beg your pardon? I'm not even going to begin to comprehend that one.

129Nickelini
Nov 18, 2015, 7:58 pm

Re: new ad . . . what the ??

130RidgewayGirl
Nov 25, 2015, 4:18 am

I've noticed that it's men's clothing ads that were the worst. As though putting on the right shirt will allow you to have your way with women, who are clearly just objects in one's manly life.

131RidgewayGirl
Nov 25, 2015, 4:18 am



Slade House is a ghost story, set in David Mitchell's world of The Bone Clocks. It stands alone, though, and should be just as fun to read if you haven't read the previous book, and maybe even more so. It's a slighter book than usual for him, both in size and substance.

Slade House exists impossibly, a grand house surrounded by gardens, located off a narrow alley that skirts behind a row of council houses. It shouldn't be there, and maybe it isn't, but for the people invited in, once every nine years, it is all too real. Can the deadly cycle be broken?

This is a fun, creepy story, perfect for a cold, dark evening. The book naturally divides into five separate stories, each following a similar pattern, but each time the protagonist is different and the pattern varies. Mitchell excels at creating vivid, believable characters, and here he is at his best, as we follow, in turn, a timid boy, a less-than-admirable police officer, a plump university student with a hopeless crush and an intrepid journalist as each finds out a little more about the house and its inhabitants. There's a bit too much explanation at the end, but Mitchell's story is so inventive that I can see that the urge to show off all the cogs and wheels was simply irresistible.

132NanaCC
Nov 25, 2015, 8:04 am

>131 RidgewayGirl: And of course, being spanked will surely lead to wanting to be ravished by the spanker....

133charl08
Nov 25, 2015, 8:12 am

>123 RidgewayGirl: I was like this too. *So* glad I kept going with it, makes me smile just to think about that book.

134RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 25, 2015, 8:58 am

Charlotte, it is a book that liberally rewards sticking with it. I may give a copy of this to my mom for Christmas.

Colleen, you mean that it doesn't work that way for you? Maybe we should celebrate this ad as an early acceptance of sexual fetishes (although to be interesting, maybe he should be the one being spanked)?

135RidgewayGirl
Nov 25, 2015, 10:35 am



I had low expectations when I began Ruth Rendell's final novel, Dark Corners, and those expectations were met. I read for nostalgia's sake - Rendell is one of my favorite crime novelists and it's sad to know there will be no more, but I would have been better off rereading one of her earlier books. Which is not to say there was no point to reading Dark Corners. The book is written in her voice, with her ability to put together ordinary people and deeply disturbed individuals, as well as her skill at keeping a plot moving.

On the other hand, this was clearly a book written by an elderly person about young people, and it's set in modern day, so that the characters all behaved oddly, as though they had abruptly time traveled and were still uncertain about the ways the world had changed. They would have fit beautifully in a book set fifty years earlier, but they all seemed more than a little bizarre in 2015. The plot was also weak, not in forward momentum, but in plausibility.

The story revolves around Carl, a novelist who takes a renter for the top floor of his house as he works on his second book. Carl is an odd character; incurious about the world around him in a way that seems unlikely in a writer, with a passive personality, but that's nothing compared to the man he lets the flat to; Dermot is obsessed with religion, and a natural sneak. When he discovers something about Carl, he is quick to blackmail him, and Carl is quick to allow himself to be blackmailed, lacking the imagination necessary to find a solution. Then there's Lizzie, who is living on very little money in a terrible flat. When a friend is murdered, she moves in and uses her dead friend's clothes, make-up and food. She's frivolous and selfish, with a tendency to lie when convenient, and her straight-laced father dislikes her. But her frivolity and fibs will be punished in time.

The plot is weak, and there is so much going on, from muggings to bombs to kidnapping to murder, all smashed together. Rendell at the height of her powers would have woven these disparate threads into something amazing, but this is not a plot that even the most credulous of readers can accept. If you adore Rendell's writing and have read all her other books, you'll be reading this anyway, but this isn't the book to begin with. She has written so many better books.

136NanaCC
Nov 25, 2015, 2:10 pm

Have you read everything by Ruth Rendell? So far, I've only read one, and keep thinking I have loads more fun in store.

137RidgewayGirl
Nov 25, 2015, 2:31 pm

Colleen, I discovered Ruth Rendell when I was 21. I have, over the years, read every single book, including those written as Barbara Vine. You have so much more fun in store! I'm thinking that I can read the ones I read decades ago when I miss her writing.

138VivienneR
Nov 25, 2015, 2:42 pm

I too have read everything I could lay my hands on by Ruth Rendell and Barbara Vine. Time for re-reads I think.

139RidgewayGirl
Nov 29, 2015, 10:51 am



The Woman from Bratislava is a Danish thriller about spies, the influence of history and family ties. Set during the early days of NATO bombing of Serbia, Leif Davidsen explores the history of Nazism in Denmark and the more recent history of the Cold War, when Denmark's location on the Baltic Sea gave it strategic importance.

Teddy is a university lecturer whose dissertation concluding that the Soviet Union would remain strong for the foreseeable future came out early enough to get him his current position, but too late for him to have become a full professor before his field of study became obsolete. He frequently joins groups traveling through eastern Europe, and it's on one of those tours that he's visited by a Yugoslavian woman who claims to be his half-sister. Meanwhile, his other sister is arrested when the opening of Stasi files indicates that she is the Danish spy, formerly known only as Edelweiss, who had passed important state secrets to the Soviet Union. The police officer assigned to find out who fed her the information is sent all over eastern Europe, from Prague to Budapest to the Albania port city of Durrës, as he seeks to find the woman who claimed to be Teddy's sister, and who seems to hold the key to all the secrets.

Spy thrillers are not really my thing, but the novel did a fantastic job of illuminating a time and place that I know less than I should about. From the Danish history of having troops fighting on the side of the Germans during WWII, until the war was lost and those same men who had fought in the SS were vilified and imprisoned when they returned home, to those chaotic days when formerly communist countries became capitalist overnight, to the disintegration of Yugoslavia, this book was full of historical events I know little or nothing about.

The translation was iffy, and seemed to have been either done in a rush, or by someone with less than complete fluency in English. Eye shadow sets off the color of a woman's iris, for example, and clothing is referred to as "self-colored" more than once. Still, I was happy to have a less than stellar translation than none at all.

140dchaikin
Dic 1, 2015, 12:53 pm

>139 RidgewayGirl: sounds fun.

141RidgewayGirl
Dic 2, 2015, 2:59 am



Megan Abbott is one of my favorite authors. She's adept at writing about the hearts of teenage girls, and she doesn't shy away from darkness. Her latest book, The Fever, does not disappoint.

Deenie is a teenage girl with a close group of friends. She lives with her father, who worries about her fearlessness and her fragility, and her older brother, who concentrates mostly on his hockey, and who is confused by the attention he gets from girls. Then, Deenie's best friend has a seizure in class and is taken to the hospital, where test after test is taken and where she lies in a coma. The subsequent days are confusing, as other girls in Deenie's circle suffer from seizures while at school. And hysteria mounts, both among the high school girls and their parents, some of whom are sure the source of the mysterious condition is the newly introduced HPV vaccine.

Abbott tells the story from inside the heads of Deenie, her brother and her father, allowing the reader to be as confused as the people in the community. The Fever is a vivid portrayal at how a group will react when it feels threatened, and how confusing and intense adolescence can be, especially when your world is falling apart.

142RidgewayGirl
Dic 9, 2015, 4:57 am



UnderMajorDomo Minor is Patrick deWitt's follow up to the wildly successful, funny and clever The Sisters Brothers. Here he turns his wit from the wild west to an off-kilter and vaguely fairy tale-feeling European setting, where young Lucien (Lucy) Minor gets a job as an Undermajordomo in a castle a long train journey from his childhood home, where he has mainly distinguished himself as being entirely undistinguished. The castle, and the ramshackle village outside its gates, is like nothing Lucy has encountered before, from the unrepentant pick-pocket he meets on the train on the way to his destination, to the baron of the castle itself. Each character is technicolored and prone to inexplicable actions, for which Lucy largely plays the straight man, although he finds himself to be more willing to take action than one would have thought knowing him at the beginning of the novel.

UnderMajorDomo Minor is as madcap and humorous as one would expect, but there's a strained quality to much of it, as well as a lack of substance underneath the clever wordplay. Many of the individual sentences were undeniably witty, but the story as a whole failed to make much of an impression.

143NanaCC
Dic 9, 2015, 6:20 am

>142 RidgewayGirl: I have The Sisters Brothers on my Kindle, and for some reason I just haven't picked it up yet. Your "wildly successful, funny and clever" description means I should add it to my reading list for next year.

144RidgewayGirl
Dic 9, 2015, 6:33 am

Colleen, you should. I think you'll like Eli.

145NanaCC
Dic 9, 2015, 6:58 am

I really need to organize the books on my kindle. I have so many that they get lost to new books added. After the holidays are over, I'm going to make the time to do that.

146janeajones
Dic 9, 2015, 10:03 am

How does one organize books on a kindle?

147SassyLassy
Dic 9, 2015, 10:19 am

>142 RidgewayGirl: The Sisters Brothers was a lot of fun. I was looking forward to this new book but seeing the reviews, including yours, I now wonder. I suspect I will still read it some time when I need something for amusement, but with fewer expectations.

Do you think he had film adaptations in mind?

>143 NanaCC: Do read The Sisters Brothers.

148NanaCC
Dic 9, 2015, 10:21 am

>146 janeajones: This weekend Chris showed me how to do folders, which I think are the same thing as collections. She has hers categorized by genre, and she has one called read soon.

149RidgewayGirl
Dic 9, 2015, 10:58 am

>147 SassyLassy: It didn't feel at all like a screenplay - and I have read books that definitely had plans for adaptation. Also, there is a long and not at all attractive orgy.

>148 NanaCC: So far, I only have a few ebooks (I use my ereader mostly for library books) but I may need to learn that skill someday.

150torontoc
Dic 9, 2015, 11:10 am

The Woman from Bratislava sound great- will have to look for it.
I loved The Sisters Brothers - sorry about deWitt's next book not being up to the same standard.

151janeajones
Dic 9, 2015, 11:23 pm

148> where do you go to create folders???

152lesmel
Dic 10, 2015, 9:47 am

>151 janeajones: What kindle do you have?

153RidgewayGirl
Dic 11, 2015, 2:55 pm

>150 torontoc: Cyrel, The Woman from Bratislava was certainly new ground for me. It was interesting learning about Denmark's role in Western Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and how the opening of the Stasi files affected more than people who had lived in the DDR. And how the new NATO members saw the break-up of Yugoslavia. Quite a lot.

And I didn't love The Sisters Brothers. It would be interesting to find out how someone who did sees UnderMajorDomo Minor. It has made more than one "best of 2015" list.

154RidgewayGirl
Dic 11, 2015, 2:55 pm



Sadie Jones's new novel, Fallout, hit me at just the right angle. I fell in love with this book about English theater in the early seventies, when everything was changing. It's the story of three young people who become close friends, opening a theatre together in the rooms above a pub. Paul wants to be a producer, Leigh is the stage manager, and Luke does a little of everything, while he writes plays in his spare time. There's a lot here about the inner workings of plays, described in a way that was both understandable to the layman and utterly absorbing.

But at it's heart, Fallout is a character-driven book. Luke, the son of a taciturn Polish father and a mother who has been in a mental asylum since he was five, is desperate to belong, and he finds security in his friendships with Leigh and Paul. But then he meets Nina, an insecure actress who was raised by a controlling and abusive mother. Paul is an oldest son and he feels his father's disapproval for his uncertain career. And Leigh just wants to work in the field, but not as an actress and she demands that people treat her work with the same respect they'd give a man. She's down to earth, and she steadies both Paul and Luke. They are all in their early twenties, living on their own for the first time, both excited and terrified of the careers they've chosen to pursue.

Fallout is also about London in the 1970s, when social constrictions were loosening, but only so far, and new plays were being written that wanted to say something, co-existing with sex farces designed to take advantage of the new openness toward stage nudity and Shakespeare's eternal presence.

155janeajones
Dic 11, 2015, 4:46 pm

Fallout sounds intriguing. My husband was in drama school in London 1967-69, and we spent our honeymoon in London in 1970 going to lots of theatre when you could still get into a West End production for under a pound.

156RidgewayGirl
Dic 22, 2015, 5:06 am



The Clarinet Polka by Keith Maillard is Jimmy Koprowski's story. After serving a tour of duty during the Vietnam War, Jimmy returns home to the dying steel town of Raysburg, to the working class Polish-American neighborhood he grew up in. Despite being stationed on Guam for the duration, Jimmy still thinks he deserves a little break before getting started with his life. So he moves back into his attic bedroom, takes the job his father finds for him of working part-time at a small appliance repair shop and begins drinking in earnest. He has plans to go to Texas, but never quite gets going. He ends up involved in an unhealthy affair with an unstable married woman, and in his sister's attempts to put together an all-girl polka band.

This novel is rich with details about Polish-American life; from the food and the language, to the church and the history of the immigrants who settled in this corner of West Virginia, against the Oho river, and worked in the steel mills. One of the girls in the band has parents who were DPs, and the novel explores how this new wave of Polish immigrants fit in with the second and third generation immigrants, as well as what happened in eastern Poland during the war. The Vietnam War, along with the student protests are also a large part of the novel, as well as how the returning vets readjusted to ordinary life.

The Clarinet Polka is dense with information, but it never bogs down. Jimmy is interested in this stuff, so he makes it interesting for the reader. I found myself enjoying pages about the history of polka music, to the point where I more than once had to listen to some of it. I still don't like it at all, but I enjoyed learning about it - which isn't something I thought I would ever say. And Jimmy's story is interesting, too. He's a likable guy, slowly being taken over by his addiction, which was beautifully handled in the novel. All in all, The Clarinet Polka is a book well worth the time spent reading it.

157auntmarge64
Dic 22, 2015, 6:55 am

I was glad to see your review of UnderMajorDomo Minor, because I tried it, and tired of it, with a few pages.

158dchaikin
Dic 22, 2015, 9:27 pm

Nice review. I'm wondering where you came across The Clarinet Polka.

159charl08
Dic 23, 2015, 6:47 am

Fallout sounds good. Will look out for it. She's very popular here, so should be in the library (fingers crossed).

Happy holidays, and thanks for all the great suggestions for books this year - it's been fun.

160RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 23, 2015, 1:00 pm

You were the smarter reader, Margaret. Although given my apparent need to read whatever is new, shiny and has a buzz about it, I might have had to read it, even with fair warning.

Daniel, I don't know how it ended up on my list of books to keep an eye out for. I do know that I picked it up at some used book store or other. It was well reviewed at the time (2002) and got on a few Canadian shortlists. I'm drawn to any novel set in some decaying industrial city, or hardscrabble Appalachian town, so take that for what it's worth.

Charlotte, Sadie Jones is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. I have one more of hers on my tbr, and hope to wait to read it until she announces the publication of another.

So I finished my Christmas shopping today - just stocking stuffers and a few small things to make the number of gifts for the kids roughly equitable. I was so happy. I even found someone's wallet on the ground and turned it in. Then I got home to discover one of my bags was missing. I'll have to brave the crowds tomorrow morning to replace those two items. Boo. Also, first world problems.

161baswood
Dic 23, 2015, 11:28 am

>156 RidgewayGirl: It's so good when a book piques your interest in something else, enough to make you want to explore more.

162RidgewayGirl
Dic 23, 2015, 1:00 pm

Bas, I will not be listening to more polka music. I now understand a bit of its rich history and the many varieties thereof, but I'm still not a fan.

163AlisonY
Dic 23, 2015, 1:54 pm

>156 RidgewayGirl: nice review. Enjoy these kind of books.

164NanaCC
Dic 25, 2015, 7:38 am

Merry Christmas, Kay! Have a wonderful holiday.

165RidgewayGirl
Dic 26, 2015, 10:05 am



In many ways, horror works best when it's not too drawn out an experience. Layering on the suspense often results in my feeling like it's just all too unlikely, the kiss of death for that genre. Stephen King is the master of horror, but even his books tend to be less tightly written than they could be. His short stories, however, never fail to hit their mark. Of course, for Stephen King, the definition of short story is loose, with many of his best edging over into novella territory, but the need to keep the story as concise as possible results in King's most effective writing.

Here, with The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, King collects some stories published elsewhere, from Blockade Billy, which was published as a novella in 2010, to Ur, which he wrote as a kindle single. Ur was, by far, my favorite in the collection, because of the premise of the story, in which a college professor orders a kindle and receives the wrong kind, one which gives the owner the option of downloading books by authors from parallel universes, of which there are millions. So in one ur, Hemingway didn't write The Sun Also Rises, but did write two novels he didn't write in this ur, and you could download those two novels for a few dollars each. Of course, this being King, the magical kindle has a distinct downside.

I enjoyed the stories in this collection, and while there are stories I'll remember more than others, there wasn't a dud in the book.

166FlorenceArt
Dic 26, 2015, 1:05 pm

A magic Kindle! I'm still grinning just thinking of that.

167RidgewayGirl
Dic 28, 2015, 10:17 am



I'm a sucker for modern interpretations of Jane Austen's novels. I will read any I come across, despite my experience being that most are substandard at best. Here's Looking at You has the advantage of having been written by Mhairi McFarlane, who knows how to write breezy Chick-Lit where the main character is neither flighty nor really into shopping.

This version is very loosely based on Pride and Prejudice, with a few scenes and characters somewhat similar the inspiration. Lizzie's part is ably played by Aurelianna Alexi, known as Anna. She's a professor at the University College London, and assisting the British Museum with a special exhibition. Pretty nice gig. She's also looking for a relationship, although her internet dating has resulted in a lot of dates with duds. Then she runs into James Fraser, the mediocre Darcy character. He'd bullied her in school, but doesn't recognize the grown-up, self-assured woman as the girl he publicly humiliated for a laugh.

And that was my problem with this book. Darcy was haughty and full of himself, but never weak and cruel to those less fortunate than himself. In Chick-Lit, if you don't like the love interest, it's quite an unsatisfying read. Fraser may be good-looking, but that in no way trumps his entitled and privileged attitude. And neither McFarlane's writing nor Anna's charm can overcome that sizable flaw. Still, the cat is fun, as are Anna's friends. Tellingly enough, in this version, no one wants to be Darcy's friend. There's no sign of a Bingley to be found.

168NanaCC
Dic 28, 2015, 10:40 am

I usually steer clear of Stephen King, as his books are usually outside my comfort zone. But this sounds like something I could handle. Magic Kindle indeed.

169RidgewayGirl
Dic 28, 2015, 10:45 am

It's a nice mix of stories, Colleen, but still pretty much mostly horror. Except for one about a friendly fireworks competition that gets out of hand.

170NanaCC
Dic 28, 2015, 10:53 am

So maybe not for me. :)

171Nickelini
Dic 28, 2015, 12:46 pm

>167 RidgewayGirl: This sounds like one I can miss. The right Darcy is important to me!

172RidgewayGirl
Dic 28, 2015, 1:10 pm

No kidding, Joyce. This guy was NOT Darcy.

173RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2015, 6:01 am



I don't know how one boy could have caused so much disappointment without ever giving anyone any grounds for hope. Man, I should say, since he's well into his thirties. No, he must be forty by now. He is not the eldest or the youngest or the best or the bravest, only the most beloved.

In Marilynne Robinson's beautiful novel, John Ames is an old man with a younger wife and young son. Gilead is the letter he writes to the son he knows he won't be able to guide into adulthood. Ames is still a pastor at the small church his father once preached in, in the small town of Gilead. His closest friend is the retired Presbyterian minister and the letter talks about his relationship with Boughton and his family, as well as giving his son a family history, from his own grandfather, a fiery abolitionist preacher who wore his weapons into church, to his thoughtful, peace-loving father who gave him much of his own personality and theology, to the disgust of his grandfather.

This is a deceptively quiet book. Quite a lot happens, but Ames is such a fair-handed and reflective person that even moments of high drama appear measured, although that does not impair the impact of the events. Ames is a man of faith, but he isn't blindly faithful. His theology is thoughtful and willing to tackle mysteries and to not solve them; to look at men's hearts and still give them the benefit of the doubt. This is a book to read more than once and I'll keep my copy for the future. I'm also eager to read Robinson's other novels.

Transgression. That is legalism. There is never just one transgression. There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough seems never to heal at all.

With many thanks to Jennifer (japaul22) for telling me to read this book. It should not have taken me as long to get to it as it did.

174RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2015, 6:25 am

That's the last book I'll finish this year.

And so to the conclusion:

I read 107 books this year, which is average.

My goal for this year's reading was to consciously increase the proportion of women authors. I aimed for a 60:40 split and achieved it, with 59.8% of the books I read being by women.

Most of my books were by American and British authors, with only 23% of my reading coming from other places. They are:

Canada: 11 books by 8 authors
Three books each by authors from: Australia, Ireland and Italy (all by Elena Ferrante)

One book each by authors from: Denmark, France, Germany, South Africa and Sweden

Most of my reading was from books published in this century - 89%, 28% were published in 2014 and 31% were published in 2015.

My favorite books of the year were:

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Daydreams of Angels by Heather O'Neill
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The Story of a New Name & Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith
Fallout by Sadie Jones
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

175kidzdoc
Dic 30, 2015, 7:29 am

Nice review of Gilead, Kay. I'll read it early next year, before I start Lila.

176japaul22
Dic 30, 2015, 7:42 am

I'm so glad you enjoyed Gilead! It's not the safest book to recommend with its religious background and quiet nature, but Robinson's prose is so beautiful and I think she has great insights into human nature and relationships.

Interesting wrap up! I knew you read a lot of new releases, but I didn't realize it was such a high percentage of your reading. You remind me that I really need to try something by Heather O'Neill.

177RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2015, 7:48 am

Thanks, Darryl.

You should read something by Heather O'Neill, Jennifer. She's amazing. And thank you for the recommendation!

178rebeccanyc
Dic 30, 2015, 11:12 am

I have Gilead on the TBR, and I mean to get it to it someday. Thanks for reminding me.

And I love Cold Comfort Farm too.

179valkyrdeath
Dic 30, 2015, 8:16 pm

>174 RidgewayGirl: I've still got to go through my books list to pick out my favourites for the year, but I think I'm going to match your first two choices there. I never expected to like Cold Comfort Farm as much as I did.

180NanaCC
Dic 30, 2015, 9:15 pm

A couple of your favorites hit my list too, or are on my TBR. I posted mine on the Favorites thread, and Barchester Towers (that was actually in 2014, but the rest of that series made my favorites list for this year) as well as Career of Evil made my list. I read Cold Comfort Farm in 2014 and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. You've had a great year. I will never be able to read that many books. I just missed my 75 goal. I must have too many other distractions in my life, or I'm just a slow reader.

181RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2015, 4:53 am

Yes, Cold Comfort Farm. Rebecca, you had mentioned this book and I sort of added it mentally to my wishlist, but not really, because it sounds dreadful. I've known about it for decades - but it just sounds so dreary. And then I ran into a copy in a used book store in excellent shape and with a clever cover and I felt obligated to buy it. And then, of course, it was wonderful.

182RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2015, 12:10 pm

Happy New Year, everyone! Here in Germany, fireworks will be set off, all night long. Fondue is the traditional meal and every single German person will watch an old British short called Dinner for One. So we are having people over for fondue and my son and husband have amassed an impressive selection of fireworks for between fondue and cake.

If you'd like a look at a staple of German pop culture, here is Dinner for One. It's only ten minutes long, but it will give you a real insight into German humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HpGJHvuANM

183valkyrdeath
Dic 31, 2015, 6:39 pm

>182 RidgewayGirl: I have a friend from Sweden who told me they watch that short every year too. He even sent me a DVD of it. I think it's virtually unknown here in the UK.

184rebeccanyc
Ene 1, 2016, 9:04 am

>182 RidgewayGirl: Well, what can I say? It isn't my sense of humor, I guess.

185RidgewayGirl
Ene 1, 2016, 9:10 am

valkyrdeath, I've been informed it's traditional in the Netherlands as well. No one has been able to explain why, however, or how it began.

Rebecca, after watching it every New Year's Eve for some decades now, it has not improved any, but it has grown on me.

186AnnieMod
Ene 1, 2016, 9:32 am

There was an article trying to explain why it got so popular some years ago. The one I m finding now is http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2005/12/the_mystery_of_dinner_for_... - which probably is not the one that I read years ago but seems to be informative enough.

As for the sketch - I kinda like it in the same way I like Benny Hill sketches for example. Or Fawlty Towers.

187RidgewayGirl
Ene 1, 2016, 9:56 am

Thank you, Annie! Also, the article linked to a children's parody of the sketch, featuring a loaf of bread named Bernd as James. It was amazing.

188janeajones
Ene 1, 2016, 11:02 am

The video was linked on FB as well -- I'd never heard of it before.

189FlorenceArt
Ene 1, 2016, 12:36 pm

Fasninating stuff. Not my kind of humor either. I have always hated Benny Hill too.

190dchaikin
Ene 1, 2016, 5:00 pm

>182 RidgewayGirl:/>186 AnnieMod: - the cultural education we get through LT. (I enjoyed it)

Glad you likes Gilead Alison. A great book, but also one you can read and miss practically everything. (kind of like the story of the no-hitter...)