Leslie's 2016 Challenge: Let's Go to the Movies - Part 2

Welcome to the second thread of my 2016 challenge! I have been having an awesome first quarter of reading and 4 of my goals have been met already ☺

✓1. Stage Door -- Read 18 plays
✓2. Dead Poets Society -- Read at least 6 books or collections of poetry
✓3. Brief Encounter -- Read at least 6 books or collections of short stories.
✓4. Foreign Correspondent -- Read at least 12 books in translation
5. Anatomy of a Murder -- Mysteries
6. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – Science Fiction & Fantasy
✓7. The Way We Were -- Historical fiction
8. Bringing Up Baby -- Children’s & Young Adult books
✓9. The Official Story -- Read at least 3 nonfiction books
10. The Postman Always Rings Twice -- Rereads
11. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof -- books that fit CATs
12. Rules of the Game -- BingoDOG/Book Bingo or some other group challenge
13. The Crowd -- Group reads
✓14. And Then There Were None -- ROOTs: Kindle Catch up: Goal=15+
✓15. Schindler’s List -- Read at least 25 new-to-me books from the Guardian’s 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read list.
16. Odd Man Out -- Overflow

Books can be used for multiple categories (and hopefully will be!). I don't think I am going to set a goal for the total number this time, although I might change my mind.

tickers & rating info




My attempt to define my rating system:
I rate by gut reaction & sometimes I will go back and change a book’s rating after some time has passed, based on how it has (or has not) stuck with me. Thus books that I enjoyed at the time may end up lower down on the scale if they are forgettable while books that I didn’t care for very much may rise up in the ratings if they strike me as significant in some way (even if I didn’t like them).

0.5 ★: Utter waste of paper and ink; should never have been written.
1.0 ★: Couldn't finish reading or a very poor read.
1.5 ★: Major disappointment.
2.0 ★: It was OK but either the writing or the plot was lacking.
2.5 ★: Flawed in some way but still enjoyable
3.0 ★: Good, a solid read that I finished but can't promise to remember
3.5 ★: Above Average, there's room for improvement but I liked this well enough to pick up another book by this author.
4.0 ★: A very good read; a book that I think will last
4.5 ★: An excellent read, a book I will remember, recommend and probably reread
5.0 ★: A powerful book, either because it was the right book at the right time for me or because it will stay with me for a long time to come

Some symbols & abbreviations:
·Books with an asterisk (*) are from The Guardian's List of 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read
·Authors with a capital N (ℕ) are Nobel Laureates in Literature
·books sourced as MOB are from my own bookcases; those from BPL are from the Boston Public Library (as opposed to my local library); SYNC refers to audiobooks acquired (for free) through the annual summer program hosted by http://www.audiobooksync.com/

✓1. Stage Door -- Read 18 plays Done!

1-12 can be seen on the previous thread...
13. Oedipus the King (4/10) (audiobook)
14. The Way of the World (4/12)
15. Oedipus at Colonus (4/29)
16. Antigone (by Sophocles) (5/1)
17. Eurydice (5/15)
18. Androcles and the Lion: An Old Fable Renovated by G.B. Shaw (ℕ) (5/23)

19. The Burial at Thebes by Seamus Heaney (ℕ) (5/27)
20. Antigone by Jean Anouilh (6/8)
21. Tartuffe: Born Again by Freyda Thomas (6/14)
22. Pygmalion by G.B. Shaw (ℕ) (7/5)
23. We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! by Dario Fo (ℕ) (8/2)
24. A Woman of No Importance (8/9)
25. The Lion and the Jewel (ℕ) (8/22)
26. Death and the King's Horseman (ℕ) (9/4)

✓ 2. Dead Poets Society -- Read at least 6 books or collections of poetry Done!

The first 7 books can be seen in the previous thread.
·Hapax (4/8)
·Selected Poems of Octavio Paz (ℕ) (5/30)
·Crow (6/9)
·The Deleted World (ℕ) (6/18)
·Three Hundred Poems, 1903-1953 (ℕ) (7/21)
·Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (ℕ) (8/23) {translated by Doris Dana}

✓ 3. Brief Encounter -- Read at least 6 books or collections of short stories. Done!

1. Ficciones (1/15)
2. Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions (1/23)
3. miscellaneous short stories (individual stories not part of a collection)
     ·"The Beauty King" by Margery Allingham (2/15)
     ·"Caesar's Wife's Elephant" by Margery Allingham (3/11)
4. The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories (4/6) {audiobook}
5. High Spirits (4/24)
6. The Illustrated Man (5/3)

7. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (ℕ) (5/12)
8. Aesop's Fables (6/12)
9. The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century (7/21)
10. Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (8/14)
11. Captain Blood Returns (8/24)

✓ 4. Foreign Correspondent -- Read at least 12 books in translation Done!

I hope to coordinate this with the GeoCAT as much as possible.

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com
I am also hoping to have an AwardKit focus. To help me in that focus, I plan to refer to this list of Nobel Laureates in Literature.

See the previous thread for the first 3 months of countries visited.
April: GeoCAT=Poles, Islands & Bodies of Water
18. The Paper Moon (Italy) (4/7)
19. Oedipus the King (ancient Greece) (4/10)
20. Oedipus at Colonus (ancient Greece) (4/29)
21. Jar City (Iceland) (4/30)

May: GeoCAT=North America
22. Antigone (ancient Greece) (5/1)
23. *Don Quixote (Spain) (5/16)
24. The Burial at Thebes (ancient Greece) (5/27) (ℕ)
25. Selected Poems of Octavio Paz (Mexico) (5/30) (ℕ)

June: GeoCAT=Australia & New Zealand
26. Antigone by Jean Anouilh (set in ancient Greece but written in French) (6/8)
27. Aesop's Fables (ancient Greece) (6/12)
28. Reykjavik Nights (Iceland) (6/16)
29. The Deleted World (Sweden) (ℕ) (6/18)

July: GeoCAT=Central America & Caribbean
30. August Heat (Italy) (7/5)
31. *The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk (Czechoslovakia) (7/8 Book One)
32. "Aboard the Aquitaine" (France; African coast) (7/14)
33. Three Hundred Poems, 1903-1953 (ℕ) (Spain/Puerto Rico) (7/21)
34. "Talatala" (France; Democratic Repulic of Congo) (7/19)
35. The Wings of the Sphinx (Italy) (7/24)

August: GeoCAT=Sub-Saharan Africa
36. "Tropic Moon" (France; Gabon) (8/2)
37. We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! (ℕ) (Italy) (8/2)
38. *The Tin Drum (ℕ) (Germany/Poland) (8/10)
39. *Sidetracked (Sweden) (8/18)
40. Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (ℕ) (Chile) (8/23)
41. *Palace Walk (ℕ) (Arabic/Egypt) (8/24)

5. Anatomy of a Murder -- Mysteries
Two major parts to this category - my mystery ROOTs and foreign mysteries


a) Sleuth -- Continue to read through my mystery ROOTs:
goal=18+ paperback or hardcover mysteries I already own, with particular emphasis on Ross MacDonald and Michael Dibdin (1-6 are available on the first part of this thread):
7) Pale Gray for Guilt (4/1)
8) The Silent Sea (4/16) (thriller not mystery but still counting it here)
9) *The Postman Always Rings Twice (5/16) (thriller not mystery but still counting it here)
10) The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (5/24)
11) Colour Scheme (6/16)
12) Overture to Death (8/3)
13) *Ratking (8/13)
14) Smallbone Deceased (8/30)


b) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- Mysteries Around the World: finish the Read the USA challenge from the Cozy Mysteries group & continue with foreign mystery series (especially Montalbano {Italy}, Martin Beck {Sweden}, Dept. Q {Denmark}, Maigret {France}, Fandorin {Russia})
 Read the USA mysteries: still need ✓Idaho, Oklahoma and ✓Washington D.C.

visited 49 states (98%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Brazil travel guide for Android
   ·Murder on Capitol Hill (8/25)
   ·Dead Aim (9/3)

 Translated mysteries:
   ·The Paper Moon (Italy) (4/7)
   ·Jar City (Iceland) (4/30)
   ·Reykjavik Nights (Iceland) (6/16)
   ·August Heat (Italy) (7/5)
   ·The Wings of the Sphinx (Italy) (7/29)
   *Sidetracked (Sweden) (8/18)

-----
 International mysteries written in English
   ·The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (Australia)
   ·Colour Scheme (New Zealand)
   ·The Miracle at Speedy Motors (Botswana)


c) The Killers -- all the other mysteries I read which don't fit in either of the above categories!
  ·The Paradise Mystery (5/18)
  *Black and Blue (6/5)
  ·The Mugger (6/10)
  ·Fire and Ice (6/18)
  ·Home Sweet Homicide (6/19)
  ·In Cold Blood {audiobook} (7/14)
  ·The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century (7/21)
  ·The Green Rust (8/7)
  *The Great Impersonation (8/10)
  *The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent (8/21)
  ·The Secret of Chimneys {audiobook} (8/27)

6. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial – Science Fiction & Fantasy
a) Continue with Discworld series: Goal: 5+
·Equal Rites {book #3, Witches #1} (2/18)
·Mort {book #4, Death #1} (3/11)

b) Misc. sci fi/fantasy (esp. ROOTs)
·The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories (4/6) {audiobook}
*Childhood's End (4/13)
*Hyperion (4/16) {audiobook}
·The Illustrated Man (5/3)
·Starship Troopers (5/18) {audiobook}
·A Fire Upon the Deep (6/2) {audiobook}
·First King of Shannara (7/3) {audiobook}
·The Fall of Hyperion (7/13)
·Dark Wraith of Shannara (8/14) {graphic novel}

✔7. The Way We Were -- Historical fiction
Goal = 5+ with emphasis on my ROOTs such as Wolf Hall and The Crusades - Done!
See the first part of this thread for the first 8 books.

 ·The Last of the Mohicans (4/6) (set in ~1760 New York)
 ·Outlander (5/16) (set in Scotland, 1945 & 1743)
 ·Three Day Road (5/22) (set in ~1900-1919, Ontario & France)
 *Kidnapped (7/17) (set in 1751 Scotland)
 ·A Murder in Time (7/18) (set in part in 1815 England)
 *Captain Blood (7/22) {audiobook} (set in 1680s Caribbean)
 ·Catriona (7/28) (set in 1751 Scotland, Holland)
 ·X: a Novel (7/31) (set in 1930-46 U.S.A.)
 ·The Summer Before the War (8/1) (set 1914 England)
 *Palace Walk (ℕ) (Arabic/Egypt) (8/24) (set in 1917-1919 Cairo)
 *Sister Carrie (8/25) (1880s & 1890s USA)

8. Bringing Up Baby -- Children’s & Young Adult books
with emphasis on my audiobook ROOTs from SYNC
·Aesop's Fables (6/12)
·The Ring and the Crown (6/24) {audiobook}
*Kidnapped (7/17) {audiobook}
*Captain Blood (7/22) {audiobook}
·X: a Novel (7/31) {audiobook}
·Dark Wraith of Shannara (8/14) {graphic novel}

✔ 9. The Official Story -- Read at least 3 nonfiction books Done!

·Schott's Original Miscellany (1/19)
·The Federalist Papers (abandoned @~40%) (4/20)
·Birds, Beasts and Relatives (5/29)
·In Cold Blood {audiobook} (7/14) (nonfiction novel so maybe nonfiction, maybe not!)
·Silent Spring (7/16)
·The Perfect Storm {audiobook} (7/25)

10. The Postman Always Rings Twice -- Rereads
January-March rereads are in the first part of the thread.

·Oedipus the King (4/10) (audiobook)
·Oedipus at Colonus (4/29)
·Antigone by Sophocles (5/1)
·Love and Freindship (6/3)
·Antigone by Jean Anouilh (6/8)
·Pygmalion by G.B. Shaw (ℕ) (7/5)
*Kidnapped (7/17) {audiobook}
*Captain Blood (7/22) {audiobook}
·A Woman of No Importance (8/9)
·Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (8/15)
*Heavy Weather (8/23)
·The Secret of Chimneys {audiobook} (8/27)

11. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - read books for one or more of the CATS

April
GeoCAT Poles, Islands & Bodies of Water
 ·The Silent Sea (4/16) {Antarctica}
 *Victory: An Island Tale (4/26) {Indonesia/Java}
 ·Jar City (4/30) {Iceland}
DeweyCAT 300-349
 ·The Federalist Papers (4/20) {abandoned at ~40%}
RandomCAT Earth Day
 *Childhood's End (4/13)

May
GeoCAT North America
 ·Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (5/12) {Canada} (ℕ)
 *The Postman Always Rings Twice (5/16) {U.S.A., California)
 ·Selected Poems of Octavio Paz (5/30) {Mexico} (ℕ)
 *Elmer Gantry (6/7) {U.S.A., Missouri) (ℕ)
DeweyCAT 350-399
 ·Aesop's Fables (6/12)
RandomCAT Colors
 ·The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper (5/24)
 *Black and Blue (6/5)

June
GeoCAT Australia & New Zealand
 ·The Mystery of a Hansom Cab {Australia}
 ·Colour Scheme {New Zealand}
DeweyCAT 400s
 ·Antigone by Jean Anouilh {read in French}
RandomCAT I do, I do
 ·The Marriage of Elinor DNF

July
GeoCAT Central America & Caribbean
 *Captain Blood (7/22) {audiobook} (Barbados, Jamaica)
DeweyCAT 500s
 ·Silent Spring (7/16)
RandomCAT Time
 ·The Fall of Hyperion (7/13)
 ·Silent Spring (7/16)
 ·A Murder in Time (7/18)
 ·Uncle Fred in the Springtime (7/19)

August
GeoCAT Sub-Sahara Africa
 "Tropic Moon" (8/2) (Gabon)
 *The Great Impersonation (8/10) starts in German East Africa (Rwanda?)
 ·Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (8/15) (Zambia)
 ·The Lion and the Jewel (8/22) (Nigeria) (ℕ)
 ·The Miracle at Speedy Motors (8/28) (Botswana)
 *The African Queen (8/28) German East Africa (Tanzania)
 *She (currently reading) (Mozambique ?)
 *A Good Man in Africa (8/31) (Cameroon)
DeweyCAT 600s
 ·The Green Rust (8/7)
RandomCAT Camping
 ·Mrs. Pollifax on Safari (8/15)

12. Rules of the Game -- BingoDOG/BingoPUP

BingoDOG card and the BingoPUP card:
  

BingoDOG:
1. The Heights of Macchu Picchu
2. The Sense of an Ending
3. Hunger (or more appropriately, The Living)
4. Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow
5. Jump at the Sun
6. Birds, Beasts and Relatives
7. Pale Gray for Guilt (John D. MacDonald)
8. Over to Candleford
9. Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp
10. Ficciones
12. Blott on the Landscape
13. Don Juan in Hell (Jan. RandomCAT) or The Discreet Hero (Jan. GeoCAT)
14. The Silent Sea
15. *A Bend in the River or Three Day Road
17. *Dom Casmurro
18. Jill the Reckless
19. Rogue Island
20. *Madame Bovary
21. The Art Forger
22. *Go Tell It on the Mountain
23. Dark Wraith of Shannara

BingoPUP:
1. The Ring and the Crown
2. Silent Spring
3. The Nature of the Beast
4. Tish
5. Blacklist female private detective
6. Death in the Stocks
7. And Still I Rise (and other poems)
8. Mrs. Pollifax on Safari
9. A Blunt Instrument Georgette Heyer mystery
10. Barrayar Hugo Award, Best Novel 1992
11. *Diary of a Provincial Lady
12. Shards of Honor
13. Deadly Proof
14. Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn
15. Daughter of Fortune
17. Beautiful Creatures
18. Colour Scheme {set it New Zealand}
20. *Lark Rise Flora Thompson was 63 when this was first published in 1939
21. The Unfinished Clue (first published in 1933)
23. Miss Buncle's Book
24. Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral
25. Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice (pseudonym for Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig)

13. The Crowd -- Group reads
Goal = 8+

Group reads here at LT:
 ·Shards of Honor {reread via audiobook} (1/29) (Vorkosigan series group read)
 ·Barrayar {reread via audiobook} (2/15) (Vorkosigan series group read)
 ·Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2/16) (Vorkosigan series group read)

 ·High Spirits (4/24) (Robertson Davies group read, April-June)
 ·Tempest-Tost (6/13) (Robertson Davies group read, April-June)

Reads for groups elsewhere: (Jan. - March books are listed on 1st thread)
 ·Brick Lane (April group read in GR)
 ·Agnes Grey (June-July group read in GR)

✔14. And Then There Were None -- ROOTs: Kindle Catch up: Goal=15+ Done!
None left being the ultimate (but unreachable!) goal for my ROOTs, so even though I have reached this goal I will keep working on this challenge. Books 1-16 are in the 1st part of the thread.

17. *Candleford Green (4/3)
18. The Last of the Mohicans (4/6)
19. *Victory (4/26)
20. *The Virginian (4/29)
21. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (ℕ) (5/12)
22. *The Good Soldier (5/14)
23. Outlander (5/16)
24. *Don Quixote (5/16) {though I actually read it in paperback, I do have it on my Kindle as well}
25. Androcles and the Lion (ℕ) (5/23) {contained in the Kindle omnibus The Plays of Shaw}
26. *The Old Wives' Tale (5/30)
27. *Elmer Gantry (ℕ) (6/7)
28. Fire and Ice (6/18)
29. *The Return of the Soldier (6/26)
30. Pygmalion (ℕ) (7/5) {contained in the Kindle omnibus The Plays of Shaw}
31. *Kidnapped (7/17)
32. Catriona (7/28)
33. The Invisible Man (8/5)
34. The Green Rust (8/7)
35. *The Great Impersonation (8/10)
36. *The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent (8/21)
37. *She (8/31)

✓15. Schindler’s List -- Read at least 25 new-to-me books from the Guardian’s 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read list. Done!

Here are some of the ones I already own, either in print, audiobook or on my Kindle, matched to the AlphaKIT 2016:

April: V and H              Herland, ✓Hunger, ✓Victory, Villette, ✓The Virginian
May: O and P              ✓Palace Walk, ✓The Old Wive’s Tale
June: F and R              ✓Ratking, The Road, ✓A Fine Balance
July: K and A               Atonement, ✓Kidnapped
August: G and S         ✓The Shrimp and the Anemone, The Group, Geminal
September: C and M   Cat’s Eye, Cider with Rosie, The Moviegoer
October: I and W         I Capture the Castle, Wapshot Chronicles, Waverley
November: N and Y      Nostromo
December: T and E      Tropic of Cancer, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
As with previous years, X and Z are year long

Books 1-18 are available on the first thread.
19) Childhood's End (4/13)
20) Hyperion (4/16) {audiobook}
21) Victory (4/26)
22) The Virginian (4/29)
23) A Bend in the River (ℕ) (5/3)
24) The Good Soldier (5/14)
25) Don Quixote (5/16)

26) The Postman Always Rings Twice (5/16)
27) The Old Wives' Tale (5/30)
28) Black and Blue (6/5)
29) Elmer Gantry (ℕ) (6/7)
30) Cry, the Beloved Country (6/12)
31) The Reader (6/20)
32) Fingersmith (6/24)
33) The Return of the Soldier (6/26)
34) Oscar and Lucinda (6/28)
35) The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk (Book One) (7/8)
36) A Thousand Acres (8/9)
37) The Tin Drum (ℕ) (8/10)
38) The Great Impersonation (8/10)
39) Ratking (8/13)
40) A Fine Balance (8/17)
41) Sidetracked (8/18)
42) The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent (8/21)
43) Palace Walk (ℕ) (8/24)
44) Sister Carrie (8/25)
45) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (8/25) {audiobook}
46) The Shrimp and the Anemone (8/27)
47) The African Queen (8/28)
48) A Good Man in Africa (8/31)
49) She (8/31)
35b) The Good Soldier Schweik (Books Two & Three) (9/4)

16. Odd Man Out -- Overflow
Books that don't fit into any of the other categories...
·Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite (3/20)
·A Toast to Tomorrow (3/31)
·Brick Lane (4/11)
·Go Down, Moses (ℕ) (6/12)
·Summer Lightning {audiobook} (6/27)
·Summer Moonshine {audiobook} (7/1)

March round up and April plans will be coming...

March summary - books still in progress not counted

# of pages = 6,224 pages in 26 books (4 mysteries; 2 sci fi)
# of books from the Guardian's list (new/total) = 5/6
# of books in translation = 4
# by Nobel Laureates = 3
# of library books (including ebooks & audiobooks) = 7
# of audiobooks = 6
# of books owned prior to 2016 previously unread = 5 print, 12 total
best of the month = The Devil's Disciple by G.B. Shaw (ℕ)
# books & short stories acquired = 7

Nice new thread! I hope good books will follow like spring flowers!

Leslie, I noticed that today is your third Thingaversary. Happy returns of the day! :)

Happy new thread AND happy Thingaversary! Excellent thread topper :)

Thanks >20 mamzel:! I look forward to reading in the sunshine soon :)

>21 DeltaQueen50: Gosh, I didn't even know what day I started here. Thanks Judy! And thanks again for reminding me about John D. MacDonald -- I read another of the McGee books and it was better than I had expected. I don't own any of his stand alones but I think I must look into getting Cape Fear from the library sometime soon...

>22 rabbitprincess: Thanks! I went with different posters this time but am not convinced that they are better. But it is good to have a new topper as that is the one I see most frequently :D

83. Pale Gray for Guilt by John D. MacDonald
format/source = paperback/MOB; 224 pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Sleuth  
The Rules of the Game BingoDOG Square 7: author born in 1916

Review: I found this 9th entry in the Travis McGee series to be above average -- it had the social commentary that I like so much without the sometimes disturbing 1960s view of women & sex. Don't get me wrong, there are women and sex! But some of the earlier books in the series had a bit too much of a masculine 50s/60s attitude about women which bothered me and I found that happily missing in this one.

As I have mentioned in some of my other reviews of the McGee books, Travis McGee is clearly the forerunner of the TV show Leverage; his job is to help out the guy who has been 'done wrong' by the rich & powerful. Usually the deal is for McGee to "recover" what was taken for a 50% cut but this time what was taken was his college buddy Tush Bannon's life. Perhaps the con he arranges with the help of his friend Meyer to punish the men who were trying to snatch Bannon's property is illegal or immoral but the reader is rooting for McGee to succeed all the way.

And with this book, I complete a full column in the BingoDOG, second one from the left, using this book for the author born in 1916 square :)

Happy new thread! And joining in with the Thingaversary congratulations!

Thanks >25 -Eva-:! I should have gotten myself some cupcakes or something to celebrate with.

>24 leslie.98: I have the starter book for this series on my tbr shelves so it's good to see that it's still going strong so far in.

Happy Thingaversary!

>26 leslie.98: I think the traditional way to celebrate one's Thingaversary is to treat oneself to new books--one for each year on LT 😊 Happy shopping!

Happy new thread and happy belated Thingaversary!

Happy new thread and Thingaversary! Great readings so far! A Toast to Tomorrow sounds good, but I'll put the first in the series on my BB list instead. :)

>27 AHS-Wolfy: I have found the Travis McGee books good to very good so far but I still have about 10-12 books to go! For me, they are best enjoyed when spaced out a bit as the environment and style is very distinctive.

>28 kac522: lol -- that will help my effort to reduce my book buying! But I will use it as a good excuse as I recently bought two new books in print (Whisky Galore and a play, "Tartuffe: Born Again" a modernized version of Moliere's classic). Guess that means I can buy one more :-)

Thanks for stopping by >29 lkernagh:

>30 Chrischi_HH:, good idea to start at the beginning with Drink to Yesterday. I suspect that knowing that there is a whole Tommy Hambledon series acts as a bit of a spoiler to the end of that one but that is just a guess based on the beginning of A Toast to Tomorrow. I am debating whether to go back to the first one before progressing further -- probably I will.

84. *Candleford Green by Flora Thompson
format/source = Kindle/manybooks.net; 163 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None  
Country: England

Review: The last volume of the Lark Rise trilogy tells about Laura Timmons' experiences working at the village post office. I find that all 3 volumes were more anecdotal than I preferred but the way of life (now vanished) is described vividly. I can't think of any other book which covers this particular section of British society in the 1880-1900 period.

85. The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories by R.A. Salvatore
format/source = audiobook/Audible; 384 pages; 3★
Categories: Brief Encounters, E.T.  
Country: N/A

Review: These stories probably deserve a higher rating as I found they drew me in even though I have no background in the Drizzt series. However, coming to them as I did, I found each story started with me floundering to figure out what was going on.

This audiobook is not actually a "full cast performance" -- each story had a sole narrator but a different one each time. I liked this approach to audio short stories, which I haven't encountered before.

86. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
format/source = audiobook/Audible & Kindle/Amazon; 410 pages; 2★
Categories: The Way We Were, And Then There Were None    
Country: U.S.A. {1757 when it was still British}

Review: Watch the movie! For once, I think the film versions (none of which are completely true to the book) are better than the original novel. Cooper has written an exciting adventure story in such a way that it is a struggle to read. It is tempting to blame that on the early date it was written (1826) except that Jane Austen wrote even earlier and in a much easier style!

This audiobook edition also has some problems. This digital audiobook from Recorded Books has chapter markers but they bear no relation to the chapters in the text! I suspect that they represent the sides of cassette tapes -- but at least there wasn't any "This is the end of..." bits. The narrator was okay. Unfortunately, his voice, instead of compelling my attention, caused my mind to wander. For some sections, I had to resort to reading my Kindle edition after repeated attempts to listen left me unable to comprehend what was happening.

>32 leslie.98: Glad you enjoyed the Candleford books. I loved the TV series and I enjoyed the books (I read it as a one-volume tome). I also appreciated her memories of times gone by, especially children's games and the life of children during this period. I'm amazed at the detail she recalled.

>35 kac522: I think that I slightly prefer the TV series but I am glad I read the books. And I agree that it was amazing how well she recalled things -- in this last volume, Laura started keeping a diary and I suspect Flora Thompson did too. It would have been a great aide-mémoire for this type of book!

>36 leslie.98: Yes, I was thinking she must have kept a diary, too.

87. The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri
format/source = Kindle/library; 264 pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Italy

Review: Another satisfying entry in the Inspector Montalbano series. This one had very little Livia in it and none of his housekeeper -- perhaps these domestic aspects would have interfered with the mild flirtation or attraction that Montalbano has with the two main (female) suspects/witnesses in this case! One domestic detail remained true -- his love affair with his food :)

As usual, Stephen Sartarelli's translation included interesting notes but in this Kindle edition, they didn't appear as footnotes in the text (i.e. there were no markers in the text to let the reader know that there was a note attached to a particular word or segment). This is the first of these books I have read in Kindle form so I don't know if that change is due to the format or to this book in particular. Whichever it is, I found it a shame (though I read all the notes anyway!).

88. Hapax by A.E. Stallings
format/source = paperback/borrowed; 90 pages; 3½★
Categories: Dead Poets' Society  
Country: Greece
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT April: H & V

Review: I liked these poems, especially the limericks about characters from the Greek myths. However, I think that her volume Archaic Smiles was a better collection.

89. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
format/source = audiobook/MOB; 88 pages; 4★
Categories: Stage Door, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: (ancient) Greece

Review: I first listened to this audiobook edition of Oedipus Rex in May 2014 and this relisten didn't change my mind about it so here is my review from back then...

I liked this translation (my SYNC audiobook info didn't include who the translator was...)

The full-cast recording was very good, except for some of the chorus bits which were a bit difficult to follow.

90. Brick Lane by Monica Ali
format/source = hardcover/library; 369 pages; 3★
Categories: Odd Man Out  
Country: England & Bangladesh

Review: This Man Booker prize nominee went on just a bit too long for me -- my interest petered out about 70 pages before the end of the book. I did like the way the book ended though so it was worth persevering.

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
format/source = video of play/YouTube; pages; 2★
Categories: Stage Door  
Country: Greece? N/A

Review: While I was waiting to get my print copy from the library, I was told about this video of a production of the play by Rice University students on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz9nGskjG08

Unfortunately, now that I have seen this performance I am not interested in reading the play! I had hoped to have more of Eurydice's view of events but instead this is a strange absurdist take on the traditional tale. For example, there is a fairly long scene in the second act in which there is no dialogue; Eurydice is in Hades doing hopscotch while her father is 'building' her a room with some string and the 3 stones (Ruhl's version of the Greek chorus) are sitting and watching. Boring...

And a minor detail to quibble about but why, in this quasi-modernized rendering of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, does Eurydice have to go to a pump to get water when people are living in high rises with elevators?

91. The Way of the World by William Congreve
format/source = paperback/MOB & audiobook/LibriVox; 88 pages; 3★
Categories: Stage Door    
Country: England

Review: This Restoration comedy didn't tickle my funny bone as much as either Sheridan or Goldsmith. Perhaps if I saw it performed, I would like it more... That said, it did have some funny moments and I liked the irony about Mr. and Mrs. Fainall both being unfaithful.

I read my print copy (included in "Four Great Comedies of the Restoration and 18th century") as I listened to this full cast recording by LibriVox. Mil Nicholson was marvelous as Lady Wishfort but not all of the cast were of comparable quality. Overall, I would say this recording is good but not excellent.

92. *Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
format/source = Kindle/Amazon Prime lending library; 212 pages; 3½★
Categories: E.T., Schindler's List  
Country: N/A U.S. and various other locations

Review: I found this 1953 sci fi classic to be well-written and thought-provoking but I didn't like the ending. Clarke in the foreword hinted that he himself didn't like the ending anymore (~50 years after it was first written) when he mentions that after working with Yorkshire Television on a show about paranormal abilities, he discovered that the paranormal was almost all fraudulent and no longer believed in it.

93. The Silent Sea by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Brul
format/source = hardcover/MOB; 403 pages; 3½★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Sleuth  
Country: Argentina, U.S., Antarctica
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof April GeoCAT: Poles, Islands, & Bodies of Water
The Rules of the Game BingoDOG Square 14: Book with a body of water in the title

Review: I picked up this hardcover at my local library's book sale last June thinking it was an ocean adventure story. Despite the fact that it turned out to be something else, it was still an enjoyable escapist read if you don't mind some unrealistic scenarios. And a lot of the action happened in Antarctica so it works well for this month's GeoCAT :)

94. *Hyperion by Dan Simmons
format/source = audiobook/Audible; 483 pages; 4★
Categories: E.T., Schindler's List  
Country: N/A
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT April: H & V

Review: I like the Canterbury Tales aspect of the story (and the many other literary references) but didn't realize when I bought it that it wasn't a complete story on its own. Now I am forced to wait for the next book, The Fall of Hyperion, from my library to find out what happens!

The narrators of this audiobook did a good job, though I found Allyson Johnson's voice a bit annoying. Luckily, once she was the main narrator (for the Detective's Tale) I got used to it and it ceased to bother me. I liked the way each of the pilgrims to Hyperion had their own narrator, not just when telling their Tale but also during the "present" sections. It was a well done compromise between being a solo narration and being a full cast narration which fit the story perfectly.

95. High Spirits by Robertson Davies
format/source = paperback/MOB; 198 pages; 4★
Categories: Brief Encounter  
Country: Canada
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT April: H & V
The Crowd: Robertson Davies group read

Review: Very enjoyable ghost stories but not at all scary... just my kind of thing!

>47 leslie.98: Great cover, too!

I like that cover too >48 rabbitprincess:!

96. *Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
format/source = Kindle/Amazon; 410 pages; 4★
Categories: And Then There Were None, Schindler's List  
Country: Indonesia/Java
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: April GeoCAT - Poles, Islands, and Bodies of Water
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT April: H & V

Review: I didn't know anything about this book when I started it other than 2 facts: it was written by the author of The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, and it was on the Guardian's list of 1000 novels everyone should read.

After I started, I quickly found myself engaged in this somewhat odd story about a very odd man, Heyst. A little farther into the story, I went back to find in which category the Guardian's list had placed this book & was surprised to find it was in the "Love" category rather than the "War and Travel" category I had expected. By the end of the book, I understood the placement! If I had to describe it in one sentence, it would be as a cross between his earlier book Heart of Darkness and Romeo and Juliet. Heyst and Lena are surely just as star-crossed as Romeo and Juliet and their end is just as tragic.

While the love story gains in prominence as the plot progresses, the other main theme remains in the forefront. That theme is the power of suggestion or illusion over reality. Schomberg doesn't know or understand Heyst but instead sets a terrible chain of events in motion through his belief in the false image of Heyst he created. Even before Heyst comes to stay at Schomberg's hotel & meets the girl Alma (later named Lena), Schomberg had a long-standing grudge against him. As Conrad puts it:

"Schomberg believed so firmly in the reality of Heyst as created by his own power of false inferences, of his hate, of his love of scandal, that he could not contain a stifled sound of conviction as sincere as most of our convictions, the disguised servants of our passions, can appear at a supreme moment."

This false image of Heyst is then filtered through Ricardo, who adds in his own personality traits, believing all men are like himself. These men are unable to conceive of Heyst as he really is and this inability to recognize reality without the filter of one's own personal experiences is what causes the tragedy.

>47 leslie.98:
I've finished part of the Deptford Trilogy and I already know I'll be reading more of Davies, so taking a BB!

>51 -Eva-: Robertson Davies has a deft touch with his writing so I am sure you will enjoy these short stories.

97. *The Virginian by Owen Wister
format/source = Kindle/manybooks.net & audio/Hoopla; 364 pages; 4★
Categories: And Then There Were None, Schindler's List    
Country: U.S.A. {Wyoming}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT April: H & V

Review: This classic is considered by many to be the first 'Western'. It certainly has most if not all the tropes now considered to be standard for that genre! The hero, whose name we never learn, is a young man of about 24 when the story opens and at that time, he has already been on his own for 10 years and has traveled and worked in most of the West.

The descriptions of life in Wyoming in the period after the Civil War (~1870s) was well drawn and the romance between the cowboy and the schoolteacher from Vermont allowed some discussion about the differences between the settled East and the "Wild West".

Overall, I liked this book more than I had expected. Even if you think Westerns aren't for you, this one is worth trying. I mostly listened to the Tantor audiobook edition & John Pruden did an excellent narration of this classic Western.

98. Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles (translated by Robert Fagles)
format/source = Kindle/library; 110 pages; 3½★
Categories: Stage Door, Foreign Correspondent, The Postman Always Rings Twice  
Country: ancient Greece (Athens/Colonus)

Review: I read the Storrs translation (the free public domain one) a couple of years ago and really disliked his translation. So this time I borrowed the Robert Fagles translation from the library -- so much better! However, I ended up with the same overall impression that this is the weakest of the 3 Theban plays.

Here is my review from 2014, minus the bits ranting about Storrs translation:

I don't think that this play is as good (strong, powerful) as the other two Oedipus plays. However, this middle play of Sophocles' trilogy provides an important bridge between the more powerful first (Oedipus Rex) and last (Antigone) plays. It concludes the action of Oedipus Rex and sets the scene for the action in Antigone. Those two can of course stand on their own, but this play does flesh out the overarching story.

Since I wrote that, I have discovered that although this is the middle play in terms of the internal chronology, it was actually the last one Sophocles wrote. Perhaps that explains the fact that this one has less "kick"... it is the story of an old man, written by an old man & thus seems more melancholy than tragic.

99. Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason (translated by Bernard Scudder)
format/source = paperback/library; 275 pages; 4½★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent, Anatomy of a Murder/The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo  
Country: Iceland

Review: When I first discovered Indriðason, it was with Silence of the Grave (the book that comes after this one). I loved it and read through the rest of the series but for some reason, until now I had never come back to this 1st book (in English, 3rd in Icelandic).

Indriðason has a wonderful way of weaving past and present in his stories; this one had less of the 'flashback' style but still blended past events with current ones. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Erlendur's daughter Eva has a significant part in this book.

This is an excellent police procedural series with some of the Scandi-noir flavor but not too much (some of that stuff is too gruesome for me!). If you like Martin Beck or Wallender, you should give this series a try.

April summary - books still in progress not counted

# of pages = 4520 (4795) pages in 18½ books (2 mysteries; 3 sci fi)
# of books from the Guardian's list (new/total) = 5/5
# of books in translation = 4
# by Nobel Laureates = 0
# of library books (including ebooks & audiobooks) = 4
# of audiobooks = 5½
# of Print ROOTs = 4
best = Jar City or Oedipus the King {reread}
# books & short stories acquired = 6 (4 Kindle, 1 audio, 1 print)

My reading fell off a bit in April as I spent almost a week without reading!

100. *A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul (ℕ)
format/source = Kindle/library; 278 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: unspecified African country (Zaire, now DRC) with AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 2001
The Rules of the Game BingoDOG Square 15: about indigenous person/people

Review: This story of an Indian man born and raised in Africa post-WW2 varied from insightful to tragic to boring. Salim moves from his family home on the east coast to an unidentified city in central Africa which had been a Belgian colony (I suspect it is Kisangani, Zaire now DR Congo). There are distinct echos of Conrad's Heart of Darkness particularly in the first section.

I find the setting fascinating but the story is told in what I am beginning to think of as the "Booker Prize" style -- lots of description of Salim's thoughts and opinions and the action felt as if it was occurring at a distance even when it is happening to Salim himself.

101. Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Robert Fagles
format/source = Kindle/library; 72 pages; 4★
Categories: Stage Door, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: ancient Greece, Thebes

Review: Powerful tragedy dealing with the conflict between duty to the state versus family. It also revisits some of the issues of hubris that Oedipus raised since both Antigone & Cleon are stubbornly unyielding in their positions.

102. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
format/source = paperback/MOB; 186 pages; 3½★
Categories: Brief Encounter, E.T.  
Country: N/A

Review: Good set of 1940-50s science fiction short stories but some of them are dated now (65+ years after their first publication). Others were just as good as ever!

103. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (ℕ)
format/source = ebook/bookos.org; 321 pages; 2½★
Categories: Brief Encounter  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Canada with AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 2013

Review: Though well written, I didn't really like these short stories. The characters didn't engage me & I was often left with a feeling that the story didn't have any purpose.

>60 leslie.98: I read this last year and hated the first couple of stories. The main character of the first story (I forgot the woman's name) was completely spineless, and I couldn't stand it. But I thought the collection improved after those first few stories. At the time that I read it last year, the wonderful writing was enough to make me love the collection for the most part (discounting the first two or so). But these days I seem to need more than just great writing, so I don't know how I would feel about this story collection if I read it now.

>61 Tara1Reads: I spent a large portion of my life in the belief that I hated short stories. It is only after repeated encouragement that I tried again several years ago. Now I have something of a love-hate relationship to this sort of writing and I find it hard to pinpoint what tips the balance. Sometimes beautiful writing is enough but generally I am a plot-driven reader so I like the story to have some sort of resolution.

104. *The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
format/source = Kindle/Project Gutenberg; 256 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None  
Country: Germany, England

Review: I waffled a bit between 3.5 and 4 stars for this classic. While there were things about it that didn't appeal to me (some Catholic bashing for example), it made an impression on me & made me think. Two different but equally dysfunctional marriages are laid bare throughout the course of the book.

It is written in an unusual style that I am not sure that I liked but worked well here -- the narrator
writes as if the reader knew some fact or event that had not been revealed yet and then later explains it. For example, in the beginning of Part II, he is relating his own history talking about how he and Florence became married. He remarks "she might have bolted with the fellow, before or after she married me." What fellow? who is this person never before even alluded to? The reader begins to have suspicions of who it is and then several pages later it is revealed.

As the story progresses, it becomes more and more clear that this is a highly unreliable narrator. And his shifting perspective may be not so much of a shift as a revealing of underlying views formerly hidden (from the reader and perhaps from the narrator's own conscious mind).

105. Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
format/source = paperback/library; 71 pages; 3★
Categories: Stage Door  
Country: N/A

Review: Review of print edition, May 2016
I enjoyed the print edition of this play more than the performance reviewed in April. However, it still was a more of an absurdist version of the Orpheus & Eurydice tale than the feminist view I had hoped for. But at least reading it, I could skim over some of the parts I found dull in the production (such as the scene with the father building the room of string).

106. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
format/source = audiobook/Audible & Kindle/Amazon; 864 pages; 3½★ for the book, 4* for audio
Categories: E.T., And Then There Were None, The Way We Were    
Country: Scotland
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT May: O & P

Review: I was taken aback (and a bit disappointed) by the amount of explicit sex scenes in this (especially in the first third or so of the book). I might have given up but Davina Porter's narration of the audiobook was great and pulled me through.

I found the second half of the book was much better than the first half. Just a note for others who might (like me) not know much about this. It has often been shelved as science fiction but except for a single incident of time travel near the beginning, it really isn't. Historical fiction a la Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court...

107. *The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
format/source = paperback/MOB; 120 pages; 4½★
Categories: Schindler's List, Sleuth  
Country: U.S.A. {California}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT May: O & P

Review: Despite the fact the characters in this thriller are not at all appealing, I really enjoyed this! Cain pulls you in and the book is a fast & compelling read.

Of course, having seen the classic film with Lana Turner & John Garfield, I knew the basic plot. I think that the book is even better than the film so I might end up increasing my rating...

108. *Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
format/source = paperback/MOB; 1050 pages; 3½★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent, Schindler's List  
Country: Spain

Review: Although it is a bit repetitive in places, I was surprised by how easy to read this was in general. I liked Starkie's translation & he provided plenty of footnotes to explain various aspects of the text.

And this completes my Schindler's List category!

Hi Leslie, I've enjoyed catching up here. I recently listened to Book 4 in the Outlander series with book #5 to be read sometime in the summer. I love these books in audio form!

I also loved The Postman Always Rings Twice and totally agree that the book is better than the movie.

109. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
format/source = audio/Hoopla streaming; 208 pages; 3★
Categories: E.T.  
Country: N/A
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: SFFKit May: Space Opera

Review: Much different in style than the shoot-em-up action movie based on this book. I don't agree with all of Heinlein's ideas but this book is more about ideas than the action. In particular, he explores the idea that citizenship should be a privilege rather than a right, with that privilege earned by proving that one is willing to put the good of the state first (by doing service of various types but in this story specifically military service).

Lloyd James' narration was good but not great. He often paused for a second or two in what seemed to me odd places.

110. The Paradise Mystery by J.S. Fletcher
format/source = Kindle/Amazon; 224 pages; 3½★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/The Killers  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT May: O & P

Review: I think that I was disappointed that Bryce wasn't the murderer because he was such a slimy arrogant toad!! Though I suppose he did get his just deserts in the end (is it just desserts or just deserts?).

I found this a fun quick read and will read more by this author.

111. Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
format/source = hardcover/library; 351 pages; 4★
Categories: The Way We Were  
Country: Canada & France

Review: I find World War One difficult to read about so I probably wouldn't have read this if it hadn't been recommended to me as part of a swap. I liked the Cree characters & the parts set in northern Ontario were the best parts for me. The interleaving of the Auntie's stories and Xavier's recollections of WW1 trench warfare was a good method for telling this story. However, I found the ending unrealistic and a bit abrupt but at least it was as happy an ending as possible!

112. Androcles and the Lion: An Old Fable Renovated by George Bernard Shaw (ℕ)
format/source = Kindle/Amazon; 158 pages; 3½★
Categories: Stage Door  
Country: Italy {ancient Rome}
AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1925

Review: Shaw uses the framework of Aesop's tale of Androcles and the lion to examine how different people exhibit (or fail to exhibit) Christian virtues. In particular importance in the play is the Christian ideal of turning the other cheek. There were many ideas similar to those in "The Devil's Disciple" but as a play I think that this one isn't as good entertainment as "The Devil's Disciple" was.

read as part of the Kindle omnibus The Plays of Shaw

added later
I checked the DVD of this movie out from the library -- 1952 with Victor Mature & Jean Simmons; so reminiscent of "The Robe" (which actually was made after this!). The play is improved by seeing it but still not as good as Shaw's best. 3½*

113. The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper by John D. MacDonald
format/source = paperback/MOB; 256 pages; 3★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Sleuth  
Country: U.S.A. {Florida}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT May: Color in the Title

Review: This 10th entry in the McGee series was fast-paced, a good suspense story. Even so, it only gets 3* as it didn't have the caustic wit MacDonald sometimes displays when commenting on social conditions. McGee seemed a bit off his game - maybe the absence of Meyer was the cause.

>67 leslie.98: - good to know your thoughts on the ending for the Boyden book. I have that one waiting for me on my TBR shelves.

>67 leslie.98: I'm going to have to reread Three Day Road once I finish The Orenda!

>71 rabbitprincess: I saw that you were reading a Boyden book - funny how I was unaware of him until recently and now seem to see his books everywhere!

114. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone by Seamus Heaney (ℕ)
format/source = hardcover/library; 79 pages; 4★
Categories: Stage Door, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: ancient Greece
AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1995

Review: I recently read the Fagles' translation of Sophocles' Antigone and thought that this would make a nice companion piece. I had thought based on the title that this was an adaptation of the play but it turned out to be a fairly straight-forward translation. Heaney brings his own poetic gifts to the translation and I would recommend this 'version' to anyone interested in reading this play.

Here is an example of Heaney's translation, in a passage at the beginning of the play (Antigone is talking to her sister Ismene):

This is law and order
In the land of good King Creon.
This is his edict for you
And for me, Ismene, for me!
And he's coming to announce it.
"I'll flush 'em out," he says.
"Whoever isn't for us
Is against us in this case.
Whoever breaks this law,
I'll have them stoned to death."

In the afterword, Heaney discusses his doubts about creating a new translation and how, in 2003, he saw the Bush administration reenacting much of the play's situation in its tactics & arguments for the war on Iraq. In these days of Donald Trump's unexpectedly (at least to me) successful candidacy, rereading this play might be a good idea for many Americans!

115. Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell
format/source = paperback/MOB; 248 pages; 4★
Categories: The Official Story  
Country: Greece (Corfu)
The Rules of the Game BingoDOG Square 6: A book about the environment

Review: This second book of Gerald Durrell's Corfu trilogy isn't quite as good as the first one ("My Family and Other Animals"). However, if you like his style of writing this is worth reading. It has plenty of natural history, funny anecdotes and quirky personalities, making it a pleasant and quick read.

116. Selected Poems of Octavio Paz by Octavio Paz (ℕ) (translated by Muriel Rukeyser)
format/source = hardcover/library; 171 pages; 4★
Categories: Dead Poets' Society, Foreign Correspondent  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Mexico with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1990
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT May: O & P

Review: While some of the poems went over my head (or maybe I was just too lazy to think about them hard enough), others I found accessible and enjoyable. My favorites in this collection, translated by Muriel Rukeyser: "The Bird", "Life of the Poet", "Written in Green Ink" and "Native Stone".

I look forward to reading some more by this Nobel Laureate from Mexico!

117. *The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audio/Librivox; 624 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None    
Country: England & France
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT May: O & P

Review: I don't really know what to say about this book. It was easy to read and kept my interest throughout; some passages were humorously sarcastic (I wish there had been more of these!). Despite the title, it is really the story of the lives of 2 sisters from teen years until their deaths. Constance and Sophia would have been contemporaries of Meg and Jo in Little Women so it is interesting to see the similarities & differences due to their different settings. One thing that struck me in the early parts of the book was how teenaged girls haven't changed much in 150 years!

And not just the attic in my home!!

>77 leslie.98: Oh, that picture brings back memories of my grandparents attic. They had boxes of National Geographics for us kids to pour over. There was also my grandfathers' WW I memorabilia, my grandmothers button box and old sewing patterns and even some of my Mom's old books. We loved to spend time up there!

>77 leslie.98: Or a basement, for that matter!

118. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
format/source = audiobook/BPL; 613 pages; 3½★
Categories: E.T.  
Country: N/A
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: SFFKit June: Cover art

Review: While the narration was excellent, I wish that I had read this in print. I struggled with the alien names and places not being able to see them written and so I suspect that I missed some of the plot and didn't get as involved in the story as I might have.

119. Love and Freindship by Jane Austen
format/source = Kindle/Girlebooks; 64 pages; 3★
Categories: The Postman Always Rings Twice  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: June 2016 reread of "Love and Freindship" read as part of Sanditon and Other Stories
This epistolary novella deserves the title often bestowed upon it of Juvenilia - the spelling errors (I don't really know why they have been preserved!) combined with the melodramatic plot are juvenile! The satire though shows Austen's budding talent. I had to laugh several times, especially as whenever Laura didn't know what to do, she fainted! Worth reading if you are an Austen fan but probably not if you aren't.

I decided to reread this (previously read in 2012) because of the new film "Love and Friendship" only to discover that the movie is actually a dramatization of "Lady Susan", not "Love and Friendship"!

120. *Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
format/source = Kindle/library; 224 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List, Anatomy of a Murder  
Country: Scotland
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT May -- colors in the title
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: Better than average but not really my preferred style of police procedural mystery - Rebus has too many problems which makes me feel tired and depressed... but the actual mystery/detection part of the book was excellent.

121. *Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (ℕ)
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla & Kindle/ebooks@Adelaide; 432 pages; 5★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None  
GeoCAT Country: U.S.A. {Missouri} with AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1930

Review: I had expected that I would know the basics from having seen the movie but the book was completely different! Excellent satire about evangelical Christians, small town America & hypocrisy and the Anthony Heald narration was very good.

Elmer Gantry is a hypocrite but he doesn't even seem to realize it (or only dimly)! So many aspects of Elmer reminded me of Donald Trump that at times it was hard to continue (and made me hate the ending when despite having his hypocrisy revealed to the public, Elmer manages (with help) to bribe & threaten the witnesses and spin the press so that he ends up being the winner. -- great for satire but awful for the real world).

121. Antigone by Jean Anouilh
format/source = hardcover/library (in French!) & audiobook/BPL (in English) ; 123 pages; 5★
Categories: Stage Door, Foreign Correspondent, The Postman Always Rings Twice    
Country: ancient Greece {France?}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: DeweyCAT June 400s (languages)

Review: Excellent full cast recording in the L.A. TheaterWorks audiobook and the translation by Christopher Nixon was also very good.

Luckily for me I got the audiobook as when I turned to the print edition I had checked out from the library, it turned out to be in French!! My French isn't good enough to have read this alone but was good enough to attempt reading it with the help of an English translation in audio :) It was an interesting experience! The L.A. TheatreWorks audiobook doesn't include stage directions so I would pause momentarily while I read these.

One thing that I noticed is that while Creon talks to Antigone in the familiar (tu), she responds to him in the formal (vous). This difference gives a spin to their relationship which cannot easily be duplicated in English.

Reading this knowing that it was written & first performed in Vichy France gives certain phrases and actions a special significance. However, even without that Anouilh's version of this story had some interesting twists to Sophocles' original. Creon is a more ambivalent character; he seems more reasonable, more caring and less stubborn than the one in either the Sophocles or Heaney versions. Antigone's relationships with Haemon (Creon's son) and her sister Ismene are both expanded but her motivation for her actions in this version is much more murky. By lessening the contrast between the 2 characters you would expect that the tension would be less but Anouilh manages to make their confrontation even more heartbreaking as it has overtones of a family feud (and of course, if you read into it Creon as the French colloborator acting for the Nazis and Antigone as the Resistance fighter, then the drama is heightened even further).

>83 leslie.98: I love Sinclair Lewis and I love it when people enjoy his books. I haven't read Elmer Gantry yet though.

>85 Tara1Reads: I read Babbitt back in college and liked it but have never read more until now. I look forward to reading more!!

122. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte
format/source = audiobook/LibriVox & Kindle/Feedbooks; 251 pages; 4 & 3½★
Categories: The Crowd    
Country: England

Review: 4 stars for this LibriVox recording (version 2) but only 3½ stars for the book. It was a quick and easy book to read but I found the character of Agnes rather one-dimensional and that dimension was a pious goody-good. If I had been a pupil of hers, I would have misbehaved too!

That said, the author did make me think about how difficult it must have been to be a governess, in that awkward position of not being part of the family nor of the servants, being asked to do tasks without always being given the authority to accomplish them.

The audiobook is called a dramatic reading on the LibriVox website but it isn't a dramatization. Rather it is a full cast recording in which different people voice the different characters. I really liked hearing the various voices and also the pace, which was slightly faster than typical.

123. Crow by Ted Hughes
format/source = hardcover/library; 84 pages; 3★
Categories: The Dead Poets' Society  
Country: N/A

Review: I am still pondering... but my initial thoughts are that Ted Hughes was angry with God when he wrote these. Some of the poems are not just dark but disturbing; others I didn't get and some I liked so it is hard to give an overall rating.

I really like "Lineage", "A Childish Prank", "Crow Communes" or even "A Disaster" (which I liked despite its bleakness) and this one:
Crow Frowns

Is he his own strength?
What is its signature?
Or is he a key, cold-feeling
To the fingers of prayer?

He is a prayer-wheel, his heart hums.
His eating is the wind --
Its patient power of appeal.
His footprints assail infinity

With signatures: We are here, we are here.
He is the long waiting for something
To use him for some everything
Having so carefully made him

Of nothing.

But most of them are much more gritty such as "A Kill", "Crow Tyrannorsaurus" or "Crow's First Lesson" which I found most disturbing!

>86 leslie.98: I haven't read Babbitt either. It's waiting on my shelves. I have read Cass Timberlane and Main Street.

>64 leslie.98:
Congrats on finishing! I have attempted a couple of times and given up. It's still on the list, though, I'm not completely defeated yet.

>82 leslie.98:
That's one of my favorite series, mainly because the dialogue is so great, but I love Rebus as well. He does have a few personal problems, though... :)

Thanks >90 -Eva-: :) I read Don Quixote as part of a buddy read over at GoodReads; having a schedule and others to discuss it with, if only to compare progress, was really helpful.

Regarding Rebus, I have a few more Rankin's on my shelves that I got as 'hand-me-downs' from my mom so I will be reading at least those! I have been told that it doesn't matter what order you read them in -- do you agree?

>91 leslie.98:
There's an overall story-thread (as in all series), but it's not essential to read in order - you'll catch on pretty fast where you are in Rebus life.

>92 -Eva-: That is what I thought. Thanks!

124. The Mugger by Ed McBain
format/source = Kindle/Amazon Prime lending library; 198 pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/The Killers  
Country: U.S.A.

Review: This is the second book in the 87th Precinct series. I found it to be well done crime fiction. A very fast read once I got started - I look forward to reading more of this series!

McBain was the first mystery/crime writer to feature an entire precinct instead of one or two detectives and he also created a fictional yet realistic city to set the series in (he claimed that this was so he wouldn't have to worry about being accurate!). One feature in the first book which I am happy to see again is the inclusion of things like fingerprint cards or photostats of typewritten police reports -- it helps make me feel like a part of this 1950s police force!

125. *Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
format/source = audiobook/BPL; 282 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: South Africa

Review: Michael York did an adequate narration but, for some reason I can't readily identify, he didn't really engage me in the story the way some other narrators do.

The book itself is worth reading even now that apartheid has ended in South Africa. A bit more religion in it than I would prefer...

126. Aesop's Fables by Aesop
format/source = Kindle/Project Gutenberg & online (http://www.read.gov/aesop/index.html); 306 pages; 3½★
Categories: Brief Encounter, Bringing Up Baby    
Country: N/A {ancient Greece}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: DeweyCAT May (350-399) - fables

Review: I liked these but you can only read a few at a time! The illustrations were worth having though the ones by Milo Winter (available online courtesy of the Library of Congress's edition of 'Aesop's Fables for Children' shown in the second cover above) are much better. I switched reading from one to the other for a while as I was a bit worried that the "for Children" edition would be too simplified but in the end there was very little difference except in the quality of the illustrations.

I was surprised by how many common aphorisms were from these fables! Things such as "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched"...

127. Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner (ℕ)
format/source = hardcover/library; 383 pages; 4½★
Categories: Odd Man Out  
Country: U.S.A. {Mississippi} with AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate (1949)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: I just love Faulkner's writing - the Deep South he describes just seems to come to life before my eyes. This set of connected short stories make up the history of two entwined families -- the white family of McCaslin/Edmonds and the Negro family of Beauchamp -- ranging from the pre-Civil War times to the 1940s. The heart of the book is the novella "The Bear," which I had read years ago. I think that it was enhanced by having the surrounding stories and would recommend this over reading it as a stand-alone.

128. Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies
format/source = paperback/MOB; 284 pages; 4★
Categories: The Crowd  
Country: Canada
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: The first book in the Salterton trilogy. Very amusing satire about an amateur theater group. I found the character of Hector Mackilwraith particularly funny with his approach to teaching:

"It was in dealing with stupid pupils that his wit was shown. A dunce, who had done noting right, would not receive a mark of Zero from him, for Hector would geld the unhappy wretch of marks not only for arriving at a wrong solution, but for arriving at it by a wrong method. It was thus possible to announce to the class that the dunce had been awarded minus thirty-seven out of a possible hundred marks; such announcements could not be made more than two or three times a year, but they always brought a good laugh. And that laugh, it must be said, was not vaingloriously desired by Hector as a tribute to himself, but only in order that it might spur the dunce on to greater mathematical effort. That it never did so was one of the puzzles which life brought to Hector, for he was convinced of the effectiveness of ridicule in making stupid boys and girls intelligent."

Haven't we all suffered from a teacher like this? Therefore, it is satisfying to see the effects of ridicule upon Hector in his stupidity at romance at the end of the book! Just enough for a comeuppance, not too much...

>128 leslie.98: Nice quote. Um, yeah, I've encountered teachers like this.

129. Tartuffe: Born Again by Freyda Thomas
format/source = paperback/MOB; 130 pages; 5★
Categories: Stage Door  
Country: U.S.A. {Louisiana}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Note that I cannot get Touchstones to work for this book; it links to the original play.
from the publisher: This modern adaptation casts Tartuffe as a deposed televangelist who rooks Orgon and his family of their money and property and nearly compromises Orgon's wife. The action takes place in a religious television studio in Baton Rouge where the characters cavort to either prevent or aid Tartuffe in his machinations. Written in modern verse, Tartuffe: Born Again adheres closely to the structure and form of the original. Moliere's legendary comedic characters are delightfully at home in this modern day version that played at New York's Circle in the Square.

my review: I found this modern adaptation of Molière's classic play hilarious! Of course, it helps that I think the original is pretty funny too - especially the Richard Wilbur translation. I was pleased that Thomas kept the rhyming couplets in this translation. It is amazingly true to the original, with only a few things changed, most notably the ending with the FBI replacing the King's agent.

I watched the Richard Wilbur translation of Molière's original on YouTube as a companion to reading this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&persist_app=1&v=VKm7_CFNIn8

The video is adequate, with the audience noise sometimes too loud, but the production is pretty good.

130. The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/LibriVox; 238 pages; 3★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/The Killers    
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Australia
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: 3.5 stars for the LibriVox audiobook narrated by Sibella Denton.

A fun mystery - parts were a little predictable but that didn't interfere with my enjoyment. Hume managed to keep me wondering about who the culprit was right to the end.

131. Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
format/source = paperback/MOB & audiobook/Hoopla; 235 pages; 3½★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Sleuth    
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: New Zealand
The Rules of the Game: BingoPUP Square 18: set in Europe, Australia or New Zealand

Review: While I enjoyed the north New Zealand setting, this WW2 mystery/spy thriller struck me as more dated than some of her more traditional mysteries. Even though this came across to me as more of a spy story than a murder mystery, Marsh did 'play fair' with the clues being there for the observant reader (which wasn't me this time!)

I did appreciate how Marsh managed to get in a touch of the theater world even among the mud pots of Rotorua with visiting actor Gaunt and his entourage! :)

My paperback edition is in terrible shape (it is actually in two separate pieces, the binding having split) so it was nice to find this in audiobook format on Hoopla. Wanda McCaddon (aka Nadia May) did an excellent narration.

132. Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indriðason (translated by Victoria Cribb)
format/source = hardcover/library; 294 pages; 3★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Iceland
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: Enjoyable but the mystery part was slightly predictable. It was interesting to find out how Erlunder and Hallidor first got together though!

133. Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow
format/source = Kindle/Amazon and audiobook/Audible; 304 pages; 3★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/The Killers, And Then There Were None    
Country: U.S.A. {Alaska}
The Rules of the Game: BingoDOG Square 4: About an airplane flight
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: A little heavy on the background which I guess is not unexpected for a first book in a series. I like the Alaskan setting and Stabenow has created a likeable cast of characters. I would be happy to read the next one (in print or on my Kindle, probably not in audio for reason discussed below). Airplanes and pilots are integral to this story so I am counting it for the BingoDOG square about an airplane flight, even though it isn't about a specific flight.

Marguerite Gavin does a good narration but it felt a bit odd to listen to a woman narrate a book that is told almost exclusively from a male character's perspective. However, I especially appreciated her voicing of the drunks so I will see what else she has narrated.

134. The Deleted World by Tomas Tranströmer (ℕ) (translated by Robin Robertson)
format/source = paperback/library; 41 pages; 5★
Categories: Dead Poets' Society, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Sweden with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 2011

Review: I found this short book of poems wonderful. I loved the imagery in particular. My favorites were "Autumnal Archipelago", "The Couple", "A Winter Night", "Out in the Open" and "From March 1979" (though there were no poems that I didn't like!). Translater Robin Robertson did an excellent job -- to give you a taste, here is one:

Autumnal Archipelago

storm

Suddenly the walker comes upon the ancient oak: a huge
rooted elk whose hardwood antlers, wide
as this horizon, guard the stone-green walls of the sea.

A storm from the north. It is the time of rowanberries.
Awake in the night he hears -- far above the horned tree --
the stars, stamping in their stalls.

 
 
evening - morning

The mast of the moon has rotted, its sail grey with mildew.
The seagull makes a drunken sweep of the sea, the charred
chunk of jetty, the heavy undergrowth in the dark.

On the threshold. Morning beats and beats on the granite
gates of the sea, and the sun sparkles at the world.
Half-smothered, the summer gods fumble in the haar.

135. Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice
format/source = hardcover/library; 311 pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/The Killers  
Country: U.S.A. {California}
The Rules of the Game BingoPUP Square 25: Male pseudonym -- Craig Rice (pseudonym for Georgiana Ann Randolph Craig)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

(from the dust jacket): Well, here's this woman, Marion Carstairs, who writes mystery stories for a living. She's got three of the nicest, smartest kids you ever saw -- Dinah, aged fifteen, April who's thirteen, and Archie, the ten year old man of the family. They're getting along fine, even though Mother has to turn out about five books a year under different names in order to pay the rent and buy the meat and potatoes and all the stuff that three kids have to have. Then, all of a sudden, there's this murder right next door -- so close that when the kids hear the two shots they get there almost in time to catch the murderer.

So, naturally, the kids figure that if Mother can solve the murder and get all the publicity ... well, it's obvious. Her books'll sell better and she won't have to work so hard. And when Mother refuses to have anything to do with real crime, it's up to the kids. They've just got to do it for her. After all, they've read all her books. They know just how to go about it.

my review: This 1944 mystery probably only deserves 3½ stars but despite some extremely improbable situations, I enjoyed this a lot. The kids have a naiveté that was adorable if unrealistic -- I don't know if children were that naive even in the 1940s! If you don't like cozies, though, this won't be for you!

136. *The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (translated by Carol Janeway)
format/source = paperback/MOB & audiobook/library; 218 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List, Foreign Correspondent    
Country: Germany
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: I was surprised by how quickly I finished this - I had not intended to speed through it!! I'm glad I own this one as I think that I will have to reread it at some point; there was a lot of things to think about both in the surface story about Michael and Hanna & in the social commentary aspects (regarding both WW2 and Hanna's secret shame).

Campbell Scott did a fine job narrating this. I did encounter one small glitch at the junction of the first two parts of the digital download from the library -- I don't know if it was just a problem with my individual download or intrinsic to the recording but several sentences were skipped. Luckily I had the paperback so I could just read them!

>107 leslie.98: I've been curious about this one. I haven't been tempted enough to request it though. Still on the fence.

>108 VictoriaPL: I found it more engrossing than I would have anticipated from the blurb. It actually doesn't sound like a book I would like (and the fact that it won the Man Booker Prize was a strike against it!). Glad I tried it!

>109 leslie.98: I will keep that in mind! thanks.

137. *Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
format/source = hardcover/library; 511 pages; 3½★
Categories: The Killers, Schindler's List  
Country: England
Cat on the Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: While Waters' style doesn't appeal to me, this novel continued to surprise me with its twists and turns and in the end, it was an excellent story. I'm glad that I didn't give up in the first section!

138. The Ring and the Crown by Melissa de la Cruz
format/source = audiobook/SYNC; 384 pages; 2½★
Categories: Bringing Up Baby  
Country: England (mostly)
The Rules of the Game: BingoPUP Square 1: about a female ruler
Cat on the Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: Teen drama among the titled, rich and 'wanna-be' set would have been okay (if a bit dull for this old fogey) except for the fact that the author decided to rewrite history in random and inconsistent ways. For example, the Plantangent family (in the form of 100+ year-old Queen Eleanor) is still ruling the British empire in ~1920s with the help of "The Merlin" and North America is still a colony; however, even though it is a British colony, the Americans still fought their Civil War. This makes no sense -- the issue of slavery would have been decided in England so why fight each other? Pandora has be revised into a witch of dark magic so that Pandora's box can become a weapon of war. And I had to roll my eyes when Ronan Aster was surprised to discover that the young men paying attention to her were after her supposed riches. After all, she was deliberately trying to convey the impression she was well off & and she herself was looking to repair the family fortune by making a "good" marriage.

139. *The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
format/source = Kindle/girlebooks.com & audiobook/LibriVox; 84 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None    
Country: England
Cat on the Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT June: F & R

Review: I listened to the Elizabeth Klett recording available at LibriVox - she is an excellent narrator!

The descriptions are beautifully written. The story itself was sad, rather than tragic, and the horrors of WW1 are very much in the background. One reason that this didn't get a higher rating from me is that the class-conscious snobbery exhibited by Kitty and Jenny rasped on my nerves. I have read other books that have this same attitude that didn't bother me so I don't know what it was -- maybe the way it was phrased?

140. Summer Lightning by P.G. Wodehouse
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla; 255 pages; 4★ but not for this audiobook
Categories: Odd Man Out  
Country: England

Review: 2½ stars for the 2012 audiobook edition by AudioGO (review below); 4 stars for the book itself.

I have reread the Jeeves & Wooster series a couple of times since I was first introduced to Wodehouse as a teenager but for some reason, I haven't reread the Blandings books as often. Note that while LT includes the Psmith books in the Blandings series, I prefer the Fantastic Fiction organization of Wodehouse's books. Having reread the first book in the Blandings Castle series (Something Fresh) a few years ago and recently purchased the 3rd, Heavy Weather, as a Kindle book, I was inspired to look for this 2nd entry as an audiobook through my library.

I was disappointed that I couldn't find a Jonathan Cecil narration as I find him the best narrator for Wodehouse I have come across. John Wells was truly terrible in his choice of voices for these characters, making Lord Emsworth sound like a petulant teenaged girl, his niece Millicent talk with a lisp, and other sundry affronts to my ear. If this had been my first experience with Blandings, I would never have read another...

Luckily, after getting over my shock, I found that I could mostly ignore most of that and get lost in the wonderful silliness of a Wodehouse plot. I love Clarence (Lord Emsworth) & his pig and it was great fun to see the attempted return of the officious Baxter, connived at by Lady Constance, being foiled even if that was a minor element in the plot!

I have been not feeling like writing up my usual updates so I am just listing my most recent books... Hopefully my enthusiasm will return shortly.

141. *Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
format/source = Kindle/library; 433 pages; 2½★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: England & Australia

142. Wings Above the Diamantina by Arthur W. Upfield
format/source = paperback/MOB; pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Sleuth  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Australia

143. Summer Moonshine by P.G. Wodehouse
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla; 238 pages; 4★
Categories:  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July Good Times (Summer)

Review: One of Wodehouse's better stand-alone novels. I was tickled by the fact that one plotline revolved around a dispute between a young American and his English sweetheart over the pronunciation of various words as well as proper terminology!! As Wodehouse lived for some time in the U.S. this subject was one he knew something about :-)

Jonathan Cecil was in fine form with this narration and listening to the abovementioned dispute in audio added to my amusement considerably!

144. First King of Shannara by Terry Brooks
format/source = audiobook/BPL; 435 pages; 3½★
Categories:  
Country: N/A

May summary:
# of pages = 5,440 pages in 17 books (3 mysteries; 3 sci fi)
# of books from the Guardian's list (new/total) = 4/4
# of translated books = 4
# by Nobel Laureates = 3
# of library books (including ebooks & audiobooks) = 6
# of audiobooks = 3
# of Print ROOTs = 4
best = The Postman Always Rings Twice
# books & short stories acquired = 13

June summary:
# of pages = 7,492 pages in 26 books (9 mysteries; 2 sci fi)
# of books from the Guardian's list (new/total) = 7/7
# of books in translation = 5 (6 if you count the Thomas play)
# by Nobel Laureates = 3
# of library books (including ebooks & audiobooks) = 14
# of audiobooks = 10
# of Print ROOTs = 4
best = Tartuffe: Born Again; Antigone by Jean Anouilh {reread}; The Deleted World
# books & short stories acquired = 11 (3 Kindle, 2 Audible, 6 SYNC)

145. The Marriage of Elinor by Margaret Oliphant DNF
format/source = Kindle/Project Gutenberg; 320 pages; 1½★
Categories:  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT June I do! I do!

Review: I gave up at 60% through despite the fact that this is decently written. I couldn't take any more of Elinor - stupidly, willfully blind to any advice even after she should know better. She just irritated me intensely! I felt sorry for her mother and her 'cousin' John...

146. August Heat by Andrea Camilleri (translated by Stephen Sartarelli)
format/source = audiobook/library; 288 pages; 4★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder/Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Italy
Cat on the Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT July: A & K
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July Good Times (August)

Review: I found Livia irritating more than usual in this one and am beginning to wish Montalbano would find another girlfriend. Other than that, this 10th entry in the Montalbano series was another excellent police procedural. I chuckled at times over Montalbano's handling of the bureaucracy!

147. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (ℕ)
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/LibriVox; 120 pages; 4½★
Categories: Stage Door, The Postman Always Rings Twice    
Country: England with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1925

Review: I had read this before but it was years ago. I found both the similarities to and differences from My Fair Lady interesting.

I listened to the full cast audiobook from LibriVox, which was a well done ensemble recording of this famous play. I particularly appreciated the fact that Shaw's commentary (both before and after the play) and stage directions (for the most part) were included. I don't think that I read this part before and it was fascinating. I also read along in my Kindle omnibus, The Plays of Shaw...

I was a little surprised by Shaw's exposition explaining that Eliza does NOT end up marrying Higgins but Freddy!!! His description of what results from this marriage is satirical in tone but he is quite definite in this sequel to the events of the play. He describes in detail what Eliza and Freddy's married life was like and it wasn't all bad (though it might have been if Col. Pickering hadn't been around to help out)..

>121 leslie.98: I love the 1938 film with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Shaw did the screenplay and added scenes. The ending of the film is different from the play, and closer to My Fair Lady.

>122 kac522: I saw that film years ago (I have a little crush on Leslie Howard, despite his being Ashley in Gone With the Wind, due to the same name thing...) -- I should try to find it so I can rewatch it. And Wendy Hiller!! I didn't know who she was back when I saw this but I do now of course. Maybe this movie is on YouTube or at my library...

(later) It is on YouTube!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsntTkKg7dc
Off to enjoy myself :)

Enjoy!

>123 leslie.98:

Haha, "Woman, cease this detestable boohooing instantly." That's brilliant.

148. *The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Svejk, Book One by Jaroslav Hasek (translated by Zdenek K. Sadlon)
format/source = Kindle/Amazon Prime lending library; 260 pages; 3★
Categories: Schindler's List, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Czechoslovakia

Review: I suspect that the humor in this black satire of life under illogical but dictatorial conditions (mostly derived from the government and the army but also a lunatic asylum and a prison) will appeal more to those who have experienced such conditions themselves. Even not being one of these, I did find parts of it pretty funny.

My biggest complaint is that Hasek sometimes goes on about an idea or situation too long.

149. The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
format/source = Kindle/BPL; 503 pages; 4★
Categories: E.T.  
Country: N/A
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July 'Good times' and SFFKit July 'Changes'

Review: I am glad that I read this 'sequel' -- it really is more like the second half of a very long book than a true sequel. However, Simmons' vision of a possible future for mankind is bleak and the Shrike verges on horror (which is not my cup of tea at all!). I did like the ending and found the Ousters intriguing.

This book had a more straightforward storyline (even though it did switch narrators & points of view frequently) and so it was easier to follow than the first book. Despite that, I think that the first book would be the better novel if it had had a more conclusive ending. As I said above, these two read like two volumes of a single book.

150. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
format/source = audiobook/library CDs; 343 pages; 4½★
Categories: The Killers  
Country: U.S.A. (Kansas)

Review: Scott Brick does a magnificent job narrating this 'nonfiction novel' and this audiobook edition got an extra ½*.

I have seen the 1967 movie of this a few times (and the more recent 2005 movie Capote about his writing of this book) and so I figured that I knew what to expect. Well, although I still think that the film is excellent, the book is a different experience. For one thing, unlike in the film Capote himself is invisible - I don't think that there was a single reference to his interactions or interviews with any of the people involved. For another, there's more information about many of the "minor characters" and the Clutters themselves. A minor point which I record here so I don't forget it -- it struck me as peculiar the way Hitchcock kept using terms like "honey" when talking to Smith. It almost came across as if they were lovers though it was clear that Hitchcock's sexual preference was for underage girls...

One aspect that the book and movie shared that I find interesting is that both made me feel more sympathetic to Perry Smith than to Dick Hitchcock (even though Smith is arguably the more violent of the two). I have to wonder if that is Capote's personal bias coming through; if not, it seems a strange slant to the writing!

151. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
format/source = Kindle/BPL; 412 pages; 4½★
Categories: The Official Story  
Country: U.S.A. (though really applies globally)
The Rules of the Game: BingoPUP Square 2 - woman in science
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: DeweyCAT July: 500s (Science)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July: Good Times

Review: As expected, the science is a bit dated since this book is now ~50 years old. However, Carson's main points are still valid and powerfully put. She helped create the environmental movement which many now take for granted. While I am pleased to know that some of the threats she described have been reversed or avoided (such as the recovery of many bird & fish species from the effects of DDT), I was still appalled by the hazards that pesticides & herbicides posed then & probably still do. I was also left with a strong feeling that the USDA and other governmental agencies of the 1940-60 period were rife with corruption -- I don't know if this was ever investigated but I sure hope that there is more oversight on these agencies now!

Carson does an amazing job of giving explanations of some basic biology as well as the plentiful descriptions of case studies. Well worth reading.

152. Aboard the Aquitaine by Georges Simenon
format/source = hardcover/library (as part of omnibus African Trio); 94 pages; 3½★
Categories: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: N/A (takes place aboard ship traveling from Congo to France)

Review: I was a little disappointed to discover that this psychological crime novella didn't feature Inspector Maigret but Simenon's ability to create tension more than made up for it! I picked this book up because I like the Maigret mysteries and it was an A title for this month's AlphaKIT & I am glad I did (though maybe I should have waited for next month's Africa GeoCAT!).

153. *Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
format/source = paperback/MOB (& Kindle/Amazon) & audiobook/Audible; 232 pages; 4½★
Categories: Bringing Up Baby, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Schindler's List    
Country: Scotland

Review: I picked up the Kindle & audiobook editions in 2013 as a freebie pair when Amazon was promoting Whispersync. I enjoyed Michael Page's narration very much & his Scottish burr seemed spot on to these American ears. Betrayal, friendship and adventure in 1751 Scotland with some Jacobite politics in the background... What fun! I haven't read this in years (I think I was about 14 last time I read this) so I was pleased to discover that I liked it just as much as an adult. Unfortunately, the audiobook had a few minor glitches (such as missing at least one paragraph that I know about compared to my paperback edition) which brought the rating down a ½ star.

154. A Murder in Time by Julie McElwain
format/source = Kindle/library; 320 pages; 3½★
Categories: The Killers, ET, The Way Things Were  
Country: mostly England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July: Good Times

Review:
I found the hunt for the serial killer in 1815 very well done & it was fun watching how Kendra coped with the lack of technology. However, there were two main things that bugged me. The first, relatively minor but repeated many times in the book, was the use of "Duke" as a name (nickname?) for the Duke of Aldridge by his nephew and a few other characters. I have a strong feeling that it would be much more likely for these people to call him "Aldridge" or perhaps even his Christian name...

The second was the fact that the time travel happens with no reason or explanation. If you can suspend your disbelief to swallow this, then the rest of the book is very enjoyable. It is a murder mystery version of The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court...

155. "Talatala" by Georges Simenon (part of omnibus African Trio)
format/source = hardcover/library; 113 pages; 3★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire)

Review: Interesting look at the waning days of European colonialism in Africa. While the main plot revolves around a love triangle, it is Simenon's characters more than the storyline that make this short novel worth reading.

156. Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P.G. Wodehouse
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla; 240 pages; 4★
Categories:  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT July: Good Times

Review: Delightful romp involving the Duke of Dunstable trying to take Emsworth's pride and joy, the Empress of Blandings, and put her on a reducing diet. In an attempt to avoid this, Emsworth enlists his brother Galahad's old pal, Pongo Twistleton's Uncle Fred.

Jonathan Cecil narrated this audiobook and was once again a treat to listen to.

157. Three Hundred Poems, 1903-1953 by Juan Ramon Jimenez (ℕ) (translated by Elise Roach)
format/source = Hardcover/library; 263 pages; 3★
Categories: Dead Poets' Society, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Spain/Puerto Rico with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1956
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT July: Central America & Caribbean

Review: I don't know if it is the poems themselves or this translation but, although I didn't dislike them, they didn't really speak to me. I did like Jimenez's use of color in almost all of the poems... And the poems are short (some very very short!) which I like.

My favorites: Latitude (#211), #83 (White at first, the full white...), Night (#224) and The Birds from I Know Where (#264). To give anyone reading this a taste, here is #211:

Latitude (#211)

If I were only a bit
of sea or sky; the same and different always, with the waves,
the same and different always, with the clouds;
firm and roving,
full of doubt and sure,
hopeful of companionship and wishing solitude,
known and a stranger,
loved and forgotten, free and captive
-- different and the same always, with my clouds,
with my waves!

I love the ocean and part of that is this ever-changing but always the same aspect. Embrace the contradictory!

158. The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century edited by Tony Hillerman
format/source = hardcover/library; 813 pages; 4★
Categories: Brief Encounter, The Killers  
Country: U.S.A.

Review:
As with most collections, this one had some ups and downs but for the most part it was a great selection of crime short stories. I did like the chronological layout more than I had expected - it was interesting to see the progression of styles as well as the emergence of the strong female P.I.s in the 1980s.

I said crime above rather than mystery since some, particularly the later stories, were not 'mysteries' - they had no puzzle or whodunit aspect but were rather character studies of some mighty unpleasant characters. These stories were the ones I liked least but not because they were bad short stories, just because my tastes don't lie that way. I also didn't like a few of the very early ones which were mysteries but written in a style that didn't appeal to me (Melville Davisson Post's Uncle Abner story for example).

Someone who doesn't read a lot of American mysteries might be surprised by some of the authors included here (Pearl Buck & Flannery O'Connor for example) while some other well-known mystery writers are missing (Erle Stanley Gardner for one). I was pleased to get my first introduction to some well-known authors I haven't gotten around to yet (Cornell Woolrich, Stephen King & Dennis Lehane to name 3) and to meet up with some old friends as well (James M. Cain, Sara Paretsky & Sue Grafton among others). There were also quite a few unfamiliar names to me as well.

159. *Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
format/source = audiobook/BPL & paperback/MOB; 286 pages; 4½★ for the audiobook, 5* for the book itself
Categories: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Schindler's List    
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Barbados & Jamaica

Review: This review is for this audiobook edition only; see my paperback edition for my thoughts on the novel itself.

Robert Whitfield (aka Simon Vance) is one of my favorite narrators, particularly for classics. He doesn't disappoint in this historical fiction about 1760s England & Caribbean. However, perhaps because I first encountered this story via the Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland film, I found that I preferred my experience reading this to that of listening to it. Whitfield's various voices for the characters were well done (Peter Blood's Irish accent was specially good) but they weren't the voices I was used to and several times I found that I had lost the thread of the story. So in this case, the audiobook loses a ½ star instead of gaining one...

>137 leslie.98: Wow, I didn't know audiobook narrators also used pseudonyms!

>138 rabbitprincess: I guess it happened more in the earlier days of audiobooks when certain publishers imposed restrictions on the narrators. In order to get more work, the narrator would use different names for different publishers!

160. The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
format/source = audiobook/SYNC (and hardcover/library); 248 pages; 4★
Categories: The Official Story    
Country: U.S.A. {Massachusetts}
THe Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: DeweyCAT July: 500s

Review: Richard Davidson did a good job narrating this nonfiction book. However, I found that I had difficulty keeping track of what was being told in audiobook (because my auditory memory is not as good as my visual one). I rewound and relistened to several parts because of that & eventually got a print edition from the library to skim while listening -- that combination worked well for me.

Because of this difficulty I would say the audiobook was 3.5 stars but an extra ½ star was added due to the added value of the author interview included at the end of the book (which was fascinating).

I had already seen the 2000 film based on this book. At first I felt that Junger jumped around too much with the information and anecdotes he was relating and preferred the film's more linear story. However, by the end I realized that the book was a more layered, multifaceted experience and Junger's style (which worked much better for me in print than in audio) fit the amalgamation of science, local color and anecdotes.

After I finished the book, I rewatched the movie with George Clooney. Having just read the book, the movie ended up making me mad -- it was a much fictionalized version which took events that happened in history or to other fishermen and assigned them to the crew of the Andrea Gail such as the attempted rescue by helicopter (which was for another boat entirely!). It also made some significant alterations to the mood of the story by emphasizing captain Billy Tynes' supposed 'run of bad luck' (never once mentioned in the book) and strongly implying that Tynes was responsible for the loss of the ship and portraying the crew as being at odds (also never mentioned in the book). The events were also compressed in time -- I can see that these changes made for a more emotional & dramatic movie but having now read the book, it bothered me that the story told isn't the right one!

I have only seen the movie version of Captain Blood , but have long thought that I would like to read this story as well. I am also a fan of Simon Vance so I might just give the audio version a try.

>141 DeltaQueen50: It is a great adventure story -- this and Scaramouche (another great movie, this time with Stewart Granger) are my favorite Sabatini books. I think you would enjoy it!

I left this link on Judy's thread and thought you should be informed as well. It relates to our group read of Rogue Male earlier this year.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/benedict-cumberbatch-star-produce-adaptati...

OOh, what fun!

Oh dear, I have fallen behind in my updates to this thread. Here is the short version of what I have been reading:

161. Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped #2)
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/Hoopla; 219 pages; 2½★ audio & 3* ebook;
   
Categories: The Way We Were, And Then There Were None
Country: Scotland & Holland

Review: David Case did a good job with the narration of this sequel to Kidnappedc but unfortunately, I found the Scots dialect at times impossible to understand. In some places, hearing it rather than reading it helped to figure out what was being said but enough of the book involved this dialect that it impeded my ability to enjoy the plot.

As for the book itself, I was disappointed by it. A big part of that is due to the large amount of Scots dialect used in this novel as I mentioned above (at least the Kindle book had footnotes on some of the obscure terms!). Here is an example of what I mean:

"The solan keekit doon into Tam's face, and there was something unco in the creature's ee. Just the ae keek it gied, and back to the rope. But now it wroucht and warstl't like a thing dementit. There never was the solan made that wroucht as that solan wroucht; and it seemed to understand its employ brawly, birzing the saft rope between the neb of it and a crunkled jag o' stane."

Huh??!

I also found the adventure in this one less compelling and more far-fetched.

162. The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #11)
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla; 240 pages; 4★
Categories: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo  
Country: Italy

Review: Though this entry in the Inspector Montalbano series felt shorter than typical, the mystery didn't suffer at all. Grover Gardner is again marvelous in the audiobook edition...

163. X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz & Kekla Magoon
format/source = audiobook/SYNC; 384 pages; 4★
Categories: The Official Story, The Way We Were  
Country: U.S.A. {Michigan, Massachusetts}

Review: Another nonfiction novel! This book was co-written by Malcolm X's daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and is based on anecdotes of family & friends as well as the written accounts (letters, diaries, etc.) about how Malcolm Little became Malcolm X.

For those fans of nonfiction, the 'appendix' at the end in which Shabazz describes what exactly was fact, what was composite and what was fiction will be appreciated. I also liked getting the background timeline and historical perspective provided in the second 'appendix'.

Dion Graham was excellent narrating this audiobook. I found the story compelling although I had some difficulty relating to young Malcolm's feeling that life hustling was 'keeping it real'. However, I think that difficulty is personal rather than any fault in the book & I am now much more curious about learning more about Malcolm X.

164. The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson
format/source = hardcover/library; 479 pages; 3★
Categories: The Way We Were, The Crowd  
Country: England (and a bit in France)

Review: Well done story about the initial impact of WW1 on a small group of people in Rye. The title is misleading, I felt, as England officially declares war at about the 20% point; most of the book occurs during rather than before the war.

165. "Tropic Moon" by Georges Simenon (part of omnibus African Trio: Talatala, Tropic Moon, Aboard the Aquitaine)
format/source = hardcover/library; pages; 4★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Gabon

166. Can't Pay? Won't Pay! by Dario Fo (ℕ) (translated by Ron Jenkins)
format/source = paperback/library (part of We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! and Other Works; pages; 4½★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent, The Stage Door  
Country: Italy with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1997

Review: I read this as part of the omnibus "The Collected Plays, Vol. 1: We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! and Other Works" translated by Ron Jenkins.

I really enjoyed the satire in this! Jenkins must have updated some of the text as there was at least on Hilary Clinton reference (!). I am sorry that I missed the first English production of this play, which happened at the ART not far from my home... however, even though it would be better to see it performed, this is a play that reads well. I look forward to reading some more Fo!

167. Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh
format/source = paperback/MOB & audiobook/Hoopla; 336 pages; 4★
Categories: Sleuth    
Country: England

Review: Good entry in the Inspector Alleyn series though I wish that Fox had a bigger role. Wanda McCaddon (who also narrates under the names Donada Peters and Nadia May) was perfect for this Golden Age mystery.

168. The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/Hoopla; 149 pages; 4★
Categories: E.T., And Then There Were None    
Country: England

Review: Maybe even 4.5 stars -- this is the best H.G. Wells book that I have read so far. I found the prose flowed easily and didn't seem dated unlike that in "The Time Machine" or "The Island of Dr. Moreau".

One complaint - Griffin is shown by the end to be mad - to use modern terminology, a sociopath incapable of empathy or sympathy. I would have liked to have heard a little about his background and whether he had demonstrated signs of this condition when growing up in the epilogue. Also, when he reappeared at the end, he is albino - was he born albino? Is this lack of pigmentation what drew his interest to that area of research?

Scott Brick does a very good narration of this science fiction classic. The Tantor audiobook had some split second pauses in places (mostly at the beginning of a chapter) which I assume are left from editing. They were no problem but I mention them because they were noticeable and also I think they may contribute to the fact that this audio edition runs a little longer than most of the others I looked at on the Hoopla website (~6½ hours total).

I rewatched the 1933 film with Claude Rains a few days after finishing the book -- in case anyone reading this wants to see it, it can be viewed (or downloaded) at the Internet Archives:

http://archive.org/details/TheInvisibleMan1933

I had seen the movie before but with the book fresh in my mind, it was interesting to see what changes were made. It was to be expected that they added in a love interest but they also changed Kemp to be despicable; a cowardly man whose first thoughts were of his own personal safety. I did like one aspect that was different from the book -- they explained that the drug Griffin used in his invisibility serum caused psychosis. It made the end of the movie more tragic than the book's ending because there was the unfulfilled possibility that he could have been restored to sanity if he or his professor could have reversed the invisibility.

169. The Green Rust by Edgar Wallace
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/LibriVox; 272 pages; 3½★
Categories: And Then There Were None, Sleuth    
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S; DeweyCAT August: 600s Agriculture & Engineering

Review:
This 1919 thriller was suspenseful even though the plot is dated in some technical aspects (such as sending coded messages by pigeon to avoid government surveillance of the telegraph offices). The main portion of this though seemed surprisingly modern - an attempt by a terrorist to create and disseminate a bioweapon which would destroy crops (and perhaps all plant matter). Of course, being 1919, the terrorist is German but change him to an Islamic jihadist and update some of the technical aspects and it could take place today .

I listened to the LibriVox recording by Don W. Jenkins - his narration was good but I find his pacing and intonation not quite what I would like it to be. Still better than the text-to-speech feature on my Kindle though! I just discovered that there is another recording read by Kirsten Wever -- too bad I didn't find out sooner!

170. A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde
format/source = paperback/MOB; 93 pages; 3½★
Categories: Stage Door, The Postman Always Rings Twice    
Country: England

Review:
Read as part of my omnibus The Plays of Oscar Wilde while listening to the BBC Radio 4X radio drama (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jr48).

This play, while containing some excellent quips including the famous exchange Lord Illingworth: "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy." Mrs. Allonby: "No man does. That is his.", lacks the lightness of touch that characterizes "An Ideal Husband" and "Lady Windemere's Fan". Instead, Wilde seems almost to pound home his point about the unfairness of society's judgement that when a couple sins, it is the woman who gets punished while the scandal barely affects the man at all.

The BBC Radio drama stars Diana Rigg as Mrs Arbuthnot, Martin Jarvis as Lord Illingworth, Annette Crosbie as Lady Hunstanton and Sir Michael Hordern as Sir Charles Crawford. As might be expected with this cast, it was a treat to listen to these actors. I did regret a few of the cuts that the adaptor made but they were all well chosen in the sense of not disrupting the flow of the talk. Here is one snippet that got cut which as an American I particularly like:

Lady Hunstanton: ... Well, from whatever source her large fortune came, I have a great esteem for Miss Worsley. She dresses exceedingly well. All Americans do dress well. They get their clothes in Paris.

Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.

Lady H: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go?

Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.

171. *A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
format/source = paperback/MOB; pages; 5★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: U.S.A. {Iowa}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Wow!! The drama and impact of this Pulitzer Prize winning novel increases more and more the further you go. A compelling read that I highly recommend.

The family dynamics of both the Cook family and their nearest neighbors, the Clarks, start off seemingly so smooth and normal and unravel so completely.

Plenty to think about so more may come...

172. *The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/LibriVox; 206 pages; 4½★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None    
Country: mostly England (a bit in German East Africa {Rwanda?})
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Excellent espionage suspense novel set in the time leading up to WW1.

Two men who look amazingly alike, one German and one English, meet in German East Africa. Which one is it that returns to England as Everard Dominey?? Added to that is the mystery surrounding Dominey's wife and the circumstances which led him to leave England in the first place.

I listened to the LibriVox recording by Tim Weiss which was fine though a tad slow in its pace for my taste.

173. *The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (ℕ) (translated by Breon Mitchell)
format/source = Kindle/library; 582 pages; 4★
Categories: Foreign Correspondent, Schindler's List  
Country: Poland & Germany with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1999
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review:
3½ stars rounded up. I ran out of steam with this so I am giving it the benefit of the doubt by rounding up.

There is a lot to think about in this and I don't think that I understood some of it (much of it?). It is too bad that this is a library book as it would be good to go back and reread or ponder certain passages again when a little time has passed.

I really struggled with one fundamental feature of the novel -- Oskar's supposedly voluntary non-growth, allowing him to remain in a 3-year-old body. I don't know what it is supposed to symbolize but its unreality bothered me throughout the book. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief and let it be...

>154 leslie.98:
I saw the movie when I was a kid and it was ODD, so I've had the book on my to-read list for a while - sounds fascinating, if strange.

>155 -Eva-: I have seen the movie and for some reason, the oddity didn't bother me in the film as much as it did in the book -- I am not sure that is due to the different media or to differences in me as there were years in between my 2 experiences!

Grass is an excellent writer so I would definitely encourage you to try it.

174. *Ratking by Michael Dibdin
format/source = paperback/MOB; 272 pages; 4★
Categories: Sleuth, Schindler's List  
Country: Italy

Review:
Even better than the PBS series dramatization Zen! One thing in particular I don't remember from the show is the definition of the term 'ratking' -- in the book, this occurs in Chapter 3:

'Bartocci shook his head. " ... A ratking is something that happens when too many rats have to live in too small a space under too much pressure. Their tails become entwined and the more they strain and stretch to free themselves the tighter grows the knot binding them, until at last it becomes a solid mass of embedded tissue. And the creature thus formed, as many as thirty rats tied together by the tail, is called a ratking. You wouldn't expect such a living contradiction to survive, would you? That's the most amazing thing of all. Most of the ratkings that are discovered, in the plaster of old houses or beneath the floorboards of a barn, are heathy and flourishing. ..."'

Ewww! But this definition colored my reading of what followed in Zen's investigation into the kidnapping of Ruggerio Miletti. I also love how Dibdin brought this definition back into play when discussing how Zen planned to crack the case at the end.

>157 leslie.98: Ew, I'd forgotten about that! But yes, Zen is such a great character. I enjoy how cranky he is toward modern technology.

>157 leslie.98: I've had the first three of that series on my shelf for far too long. The description of a Ratking definitely gives me the shudders, but it also is making me want to get Ratking down off my shelves!

>159 DeltaQueen50: I found that the pages flew by and by the time I reached the middle, I couldn't put it down. Despite the grotesque ratking, it's not a noir style mystery and what violence is present is generally not graphic. Go for it!

>157 leslie.98: & >159 DeltaQueen50: I've also had Ratking on my tbr shelves for a while. This may be the push for me to actually get around to reading it.

>161 AHS-Wolfy: I have discovered that the author Michael Dibdin lived for several years in Perugia (where Ratking is set -- I had wondered about a non-Italian author writing a book (or series) set in another country but this helped assuage my fears.

175. Blandings Castle and Elsewhere by P.G. Wodehouse
format/source = audiobook/Hoopla; 272 pages; 3★
Categories: Brief Encounters  
Country: England & U.S.A. {California}

Review: I liked the Blandings stories, most of which involved Emsworth's younger son Freddy, better than the final 4 Mr. Mulliner stories, which all involved Hollywood. I think that those 4 were too similar - one I would have liked but by the fourth one, I found myself disappointed. Ah well...

James Saxon was OK as the narrator but he didn't have that little extra which lifts the narration into the superb category that Jonathan Cecil has.

176. Dark Wraith of Shannara by Terry Brooks
format/source = paperback/library; 161 pages; 3★
Categories: E.T.  
Country: N/A
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: SFFKit August: Series
Rules of the Game: BingoDOG Square 23: Graphic novel

Review: This was my first experience with a graphic novel (well, except for my abortive attempt at a Locke & Key by Joe Hill). I enjoyed the story which continues Jair's adventures after The Wishsong of Shannara but truthfully, the graphic format didn't add anything for me. I found that I was reading the dialogue and captions and all but ignoring the artwork. Well, at least I can say that I have tried the format properly now!

177. Mrs. Pollifax on Safari by Dorothy Gilman
format/source = paperback/MOB; 223 pages; 4★
Categories: The Postman Always Rings Twice  
GeoCAT Country: Zambia
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: RandomCAT August: Camping
Rules of the Game: BingoPUP Square 8: About a spy

Review: August 2016 reread -- I am increasing my rating from 3 to 4 stars. The Mrs. Pollifax books aren't great literature but they are a lot of fun and the best of them stand up well to rereading.

Amazing how the world has changed since this was first published in 1976 - issues that were of great contemporary interest then are now of more historical interest. But the characters still shine :)

178. Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan
format/source = audiobook/SYNC; 343 pages; 2½★
Categories: Bringing Up Baby  
Country: Scotland
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: 2 stars for the audiobook & 2.5 stars for the book itself

Inspired by the folklore of Orkney & the Sheltland Islands about selkie folk (seals that become transformed to human shape). It seems a bit of a strange choice of topic for an Australian author but that is besides the point.

About the audio edition, narrated by Eloise Oxer and Paul English -- I don't know why it was but both narrators had sibilant S sounds that caused a screechy effect on all my listening devices which was extremely irritating. That is probably the studio's fault rather than the narrators but it did cause me to knock off a half star.

The book itself was told in a series of first person narratives. I felt that Misskaella Prout's character (which was pivotal to the whole plot) flip-flopped depending on the author's whim which bothered me. She starts off as a girl, not ordinary because of her powers, but not a 'witch'. Though Lanagan struggled to make her appear to be growing more bitter as she aged to make the 'revenge' idea more plausible, I didn't buy it. So when she appears to have become vengeful and malicious later on, it as if the author has said "Okay, now she is a witch not a person." For example, why should she set out to seduce Dominic Mallett?

179. *A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
format/source = paperback/MOB; pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: India

Review: I have heard Mistry compared to Dickens but it was missing the comic relief that Dickens usually includes & I for one would have appreciated it.

180. *Sidetracked by Henning Mankell {translated by Steven T. Murray}
format/source = Kindle/BPL & audiobook/BPL; 342 (?) pages; 4★
Categories: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Schindler's List, Foreign Correspondent    
Country: Sweden
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review:
Much better than the first Wallander book, imo! I read and listened to this and prefer the translation in this Kindle edition. Not only because of some of the word choices but it also had many little details that the audiobook translation omitted. None of them were crucial to the plot but they added to the overall feeling of the book. Maybe the fact that it had a different cover was a hint about the different translation!

Mankell wrote this in a manner that makes the culprit clear to the reader long before Wallander and his team figure it out. Normally I don't care much for that style of mystery, as it removes the puzzle aspect of the book and turns it into more of a thriller, but it worked very well in this case.

Dick Hill did a good job with the narration but I didn't like this translation as much as the one in the Kindle edition. Since the two weren't the same as I had expected, I ended up opting to read the Kindle book for most of the time.

I did like the Prologue, which was not included in the Kindle edition for some reason (hence the ? on the page numbers above).

181. *The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent by E. Phillips Oppenheim
format/source = Kindle/Amazon; 349 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List, And Then There Were None  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Decent Golden Age mystery but not as compelling as Oppenheim's The Great Impersonation. I found the protagonist a bit dense at times but believable.

Also I was annoyed by the fact that this Kindle edition had transcription errors - not a huge number but still a noticeable amount.

182. The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka (ℕ)
format/source = in hardcover omnibus of 5 Plays/library; 66 pages; 4★
Categories: Stage Door  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Nigeria with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1986
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: A thought-provoking play by the first African author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The play deals with the conflict between traditional ways and modernization; for example, should a man pay a bride price in order to marry? The young schoolmaster, a believer in Western culture, wants to marry 'the jewel' Sidi but doesn't want to pay her bride price claiming it is old-fashioned (though the reader/viewer is also left with the impression that he can't afford it!). The headman of the village, 'the lion', is in his 60s and has several wives and concubines already but can pay. The village is still traditional in its daily life but one senses that it is on the verge of change. As a Westerner myself, I started out with the preconceived notion that modernization would be a beneficial change but by the end of the play, I was not so sure. The 'Lion', representing the traditional values and culture, was not as weak and aged as he appeared to be -- I assume that is Soyinka's way of saying that the tradional culture isn't as ready to fade away either. Whether that is good or bad is unclear to me but interesting to think about...

183. Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral by Gabriela Mistral (ℕ) {translated by Doris Dana}
format/source = hardcover/library; 231 pages; 3★
Categories: Dead Poets' Society, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Chile with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1945
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Overall, I preferred Langston Hughes' translation though I can't give any examples to show why. I did like the accompanying woodcut illustrations by Antonio Frasconi that this volume included.

184. *Heavy Weather by P.G. Wodehouse {reread}
format/source = Kindle/Amazon; 285 pages; 5★
Categories: Schindler's List, The Postman Always Rings Twice  
Country: England

Review: August 2016 reread: One of Wodehouse's finest, full of zany plots and counterplots. I love his humor but have discovered (somewhat to my dismay) that not everyone shares my taste in humor/comedy. If you like Jeeves & Wooster but haven't discovered the delights of Blandings Castle yet, please start with Something Fresh (sometimes titled "Something New") as the comedy builds if you read the series in order. Even so, this is pretty darn funny as a standalone if you like this style of writing!

185. Captain Blood Returns by Rafael Sabatini
format/source = Kindle/ebooks@Adelaide; 231 pages; 3½★
Categories: Brief Encounter, The Way We Were  
Country: various Caribbean islands

Review: I liked these short stories which take place concurrently with the events of the original novel. Probably people who didn't care for the novel as much as I did would also not enjoy these stories which flesh out some of the details of Blood's time as a buccaneer.

186. *Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (ℕ) (translated by William Maynard Hutchins & Olive E. Kenny)
format/source = paperback/MOB; 498 pages; 5★
Categories: Schindler's List, The Way We Were, Foreign Correspondent  
Country: Egypt with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1988

Review: Despite the fact that the father irritated me intensely with his hypocrisy, I loved this family saga set in 1917 (?) up to 1919 Cairo! I got involved with all the family members and learned a bit more about Anglo-Egyptian relations post-WW1 as well. I can see why Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize!

187. *Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
format/source = hardcover/MOB & audiobook/BPL; 387 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List, The Way We Were    
Country: U.S.A.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Carrie lost my sympathy about halfway through when she rounds on Drouet and claims he never did anything for her. He supported her for several years while she didn't make any attempt to find work during this period!! This feeling turned to active dislike later when she dumps Hurstwood as soon as she starts earning some money.. She struck me as completely self-centered.

I did find that this book kept me engaged more than "An American Tragedy" did but I think that I liked the plot of that book better.

C.M. Hébert was marvellous narrating this classic.

188. *Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
format/source = audiobook/Audible; 160 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: various
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review of the audiobook edition:
This Audible edition starts with an introduction and a preface (I guess) which are labelled as Chapters 1 and 2. If, like me, you prefer to skip introductions, then start with Chapter 3!

Patrice O'Neill's voice was excellent for this novel; a bit reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in the film version but not overly so.

The novella itself is so funny that I laughed out loud more than once while listening to it. Now I am off to see if I can find the movie online somewhere...

189. Murder on Capitol Hill by Margaret Truman
format/source = ebook/Hoopla; 322 pages; 3★
Categories: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  
Country: U.S.A. Washington D.C.

Review:

I have read a few other of Margaret Truman's mysteries but this second entry in the series had somehow escaped me until now. Well done and now I can cross Washington D.C. off my Read-the-USA mystery challenge :)

>178 leslie.98: I read most of that series back in the 90s. I haven't thought of it in a long time.

>179 thornton37814: I know what you mean! I read them in the late 80s & early 90s but when I was browsing Hoopla, I saw this and was reminded of them. Perfect for my D.C. entry in my Read-the-USA mystery challenge :)

190. The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
format/source = audiobook/Audible; 244 pages; 4★
Categories: The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice  
Country: England & a bit in Zimbabwe
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: 4★ for the audiobook, 3½ for the book itself.

I had completely forgotten this first Superintendent Battle mystery. Quite fun with Balkan politics, international jewel thieves, blackmail and possible impostors, not to mention a murder or two!

Hugh Fraser does a marvelous narration.

191. *The Shrimp and the Anemone by L.P. Hartley
format/source = paperback/MOB; pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: England
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: This first book in the Eustace & Hilda trilogy takes place during one summer in the 1930s with Eustace at 9 years old & Hilda 13. He is an odd little boy, at once fanciful and submissive, perhaps due to his poor health. Despite the fact that he is unlike any small boy I have ever known, I quickly became sympathetic to him. The book was a fast read but has some ideas in it that I am still mulling over. I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy!

192. The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith
format/source = audiobook/library CDs; 214 pages; 2½★
Categories: Anatomy of a Murder  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Botswana

Review:
While Lisette Lecat did a fine job narrating this entry in the #1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, I was disappointed by the book itself. It was OK but certain phrases were repeated too often (e.g. Mma Ramotswe's car being always referred to as her 'tiny white van'). If you like these characters, it is enjoyable enough but nowhere near as good as the first book in the series.

193. *The African Queen by C.S. Forester
format/source = paperback/MOB; 308 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Tanzania

Review:

A fun, fast book though the ending was different from the movie version. I must have seen Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the film 10 times & it was interesting to get to know the characters a bit more in depth.

I couldn't resist rewatching the movie once I finished the book! Luckily for me, my library has the DVD :)

Great to see that you enjoyed both Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The African Queen! I am a huge fan of both movies as well, and even though different from their respective books, they hold up well.

>185 DeltaQueen50: I was inspired by your review of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to search it out! I plan to rewatch both films (available at my local library, yay!)...

>175 leslie.98:
I've been looking at that one for a long time, but it's a big trilogy to "sign up" for. It's still on my wishlist, but I'm pushing it higher up since I'm seeing 5 stars...

>187 -Eva-: I think that you could read and enjoy Palace Walk without reading the rest of the trilogy. Though I liked it so much, I do plan to read the next 2!

194. Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert
format/source = paperback/MOB; 190 pages; 4½★
Categories: Sleuth  
Country: England

Review: An excellent mystery of the Golden Age (of mysteries) which revolves around a law firm in London.

>188 leslie.98:
That's good to know - that'd make it much easier to start than if I knew I had to read all three to "get" it. :)

195. *A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
format/source = hardcover/library; pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Kinjanja (I am assigning this to Cameroon as it is set in the city of Nkongsamba)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: Morgan Leafy is a civil servant in the early 1970s Foreign Service posted to the small (mythical) country of Kinjanja in Africa. He simultaneously has inferiority and superiority issues -- he walks around with a huge chip on his shoulder but feels innately more important than any of the Africans. While this dicotomy is exaggerated in this satire, I suspect that it is not uncommon in people with Foreign Service postings in out-of-the-way places in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. However, Boyd's satire didn't entertain me the way Evelyn Waugh did in his African satires (Black Mischief and Scoop in particular) -- the humor is more caustic and felt more mean-spirited.

I followed up by watching the film with Sean Connery as Dr. Murray, John Lithgow as Fanshaw and Diana Rigg as Mrs. Fanshaw


I still found it more amusing rather than downright funny. Boyd wrote the screenplay of his book but I thought that it toned down much of Leafy's rough edges and in the process made him both more sympathetic and less satirical.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to rewatch the movie versions of a few of the books I have been reading.

I was surprised by how different Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was in the movie version!


I still had fun watching it and noticed that the introductory song tied in to some of Lorelei's background which the book explained (though in a 'cleaner' version as in the song, she just has her heart broken while in the book, she is seduced and then murders the man!). The production code guaranteed that the film version is much less 'risqué' than the original book!

196. *She by H. Rider Haggard
format/source = Kindle/Amazon & audiobook/Hoopla; 384 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List    
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: GeoCAT Country: Kor (I am assigning this to Mozambique based on info in book)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: 3* for the book & 4* for the audiobook
Bill Homewood's narration really added to my enjoyment of this classic. However, the book itself was not as good as Haggard's King Solomon's Mines for me -- the mystical element of the beautiful Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed, bothered me. Though I admit that the first time that phrase (she-who-must-be-obeyed) occurred in the audiobook, I broke into a smile thinking of Rumpole and his wife!!

197. Dead Aim by Ridley Pearson (aka Wendell McCall)
format/source = ebook/Hoopla; 250 pages; 3★
Categories: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo  
Country: U.S.A. {Idaho}

Review:
Pretty good mystery/thriller set in Idaho. Only Oklahoma left in my Read-the-USA mystery challenge!

>192 leslie.98:
Haha, yeah, they're quite different, aren't they!

>193 leslie.98: That phrase is irrevocably linked with Rumpole in my mind!

198. *The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hasek {translated by Paul Selver}
format/source = hardcover/borrowed from my dad; 448 pages; 3½★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: Czechoslovakia
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT August: G & S

Review: This WW1 classic Czech novel reminded me of Catch-22 or M.A.S.H. -- black humor about the way armies work. I much prefered this older translation to that of Sadlon's new one I started off with in Book 1 and also enjoyed Lada's illustrations this book had.

199. Death and the King's Horseman by Wole Soyinka (ℕ)
format/source = hardcover/library; 77 pages; 4½★
Categories: Stage Door  
Country: Nigeria with an AwardKIT focus: Nobel Laureate 1986

Review: Wow! A powerful play based on a real-life event. To quote from Soyinka's Author's Note at the beginning of my edition,
"   The bane of themes of this genre is that they are no sooner employed creatively than they acquire the facile tag of 'clash of cultures', a prejudicial label which, quite apart from its frequent misapplication, presupposes a potential equality in every given situation of the alien culture and the indigenous one, on the actual soil of the latter. ... It is thanks to this kind of perverse mentality that I find it necessary to caution the would-be producer of this play against a sadly familiar reductionist tendency, and to direct his vision instead to the far more difficult and risky task of eliciting the play's threnodic essence."

With this in my mind as I read the play, I tried to not focus on the conflict between the English colonial government and the Yoruba natives but on the transition between life and death that the King's Horseman is facing.

200. *The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
format/source = audiobook/Audible; 560 pages; 4★
Categories: Schindler's List  
Country: U.S. {various/at sea}
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: AlphaKIT September: C & M

Review:
Another book that I first encountered as a movie. Because of that, I was surprised by the first section of the novel about Willie Keith before he joined The Caine. And the book continues on long past the movie too!

Keith's relationship with May Wynn has a lot more depth in the book, though I came close to despising Willie for his superior attitude towards her. In fact, all the characters had more nuances to them except for Steve Maryk.

August turned out to be an excellent reading month for me!

# of pages = 9243 pages in 33 books (11 mysteries; 4 sci fi/fantasy)
# of books from the Guardian's list (new/total) = 14/15
# of books in translation = 6
# by Nobel Laureates = 5
# of library books (including ebooks & audiobooks) = 11 + 3 audio of books owned
# of audiobooks = 12
# of Print ROOTs = 9
best = A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley & Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
# books & short stories acquired = 5 Kindle, 4 SYNC; 3 Audible; 1 freebie

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