PAUL C'S SECOND HOME - PART 15

Scenes from my Books

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

POEM

Off to Scotland and Edwin Muir. This is "Merlin"

Reading Record First Quarter

JANUARY

1. Plague 99 by Jean Ure (1989) 218 pp
2. Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes (1857) 309 pp
3. A Lear of the Steppes by Ivan Turgenev (1870) 117 pp
4. A Fall from the Sky by Ian Serraillier (1966) 78 pp
5. The Overnight Kidnapper by Andrea Camilleri (2015) 262 pp
6. Dove on the Waters by Maurice Shadbolt (1996) 198 pp
7. A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson (2019) 81 pp
8. The Other End of the Line by Andrea Camilleri (2016) 293 pp
9. The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2019) 208 pp
10. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome (1930) 501 pp
11. Carrie's War by Nina Bawden (1973) 211 pp
12. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (2020) 430 pp
13. Judge Savage by Tim Parks (2003) 442 pp
14. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie (1962) 280 pp
15. Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer (1969) 227 pp
16. Jazz by Toni Morrison (1992) 229 pp
17. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell (1951) 230 pp

4,313 pages.

FEBRUARY

18. Junk by Melvyn Burgess (1996) 278 pp
19. The Great Fire by Monica Dickens (1970) 64 pp
20. At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie (1965) 265 pp
21. A Room of Own's Own by Virginia Woolf (1929) 153 pp
22. Bury the Dead by Peter Carter (1987) 374 pp
23. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (2011) 390 pp
24. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne (1873) 242 pp
25. Woods, etc. by Alice Oswald (2005) 56 pp
26. Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg (2015) 293 pp
27. A Burning by Megha Majumdar (2020) 289 pp
28. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch (2011) 373 pp
29. What is History? by Edward Hallett Carr (1961) 156 pp
30. A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell (1951) 278 pp

3,211 pages

MARCH

31. The Return : Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar (2016) 239 pp
32. The Hammer of the Scots by Jean Plaidy (1978) 417 pp
33. Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon (2015) 101 pp
34. Some Experiences of an Irish RM by Somerville & Ross (1899) 223 pp
35. The Age of Improvement 1783-1867 by Asa Briggs (1959) 523 pp
36. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853) 203 pp

1,706 pages

Reading Record Second Quarter

APRIL

37. Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham (2013) 439 pp
38. Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid (2000) 270 pp
39. Diary of a Murderer by Kim Young-Ha (2013) 200 pp
40. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001) 428 pp
41. Blue Horses by Mary Oliver (2014) 79 pp
42. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1864) 160 pp
43. The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers by Fouad Laroui (2012) 134 pp
44. The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths by Harry Bingham (2014) 457 pp
45. Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana (2019) 244 pp
46. Figures in a Landscape by Barry England (1968) 208 pp
47. Echoland by Per Petterson (1989) 132 pp
48. Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith (2019) 205 pp

2,956 pages

MAY

49. The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley (1984) 330 pp
50. I Choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne (2004) 210 pp
51. Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan (2018) 71 pp

611 pages (maybe my worst ever performance!)

JUNE

52. Still Waters by Viveca Sten (2008) 434 pp
53. Half a Life by VS Naipaul (2001) 211 pp
54. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (1969) 169 pp
55. A Bell for Adano by John Hersey (1944) 269 pp
56. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (2020) 370 pp
57. Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti (1982) 181 pp
58. My Country : A Syrian Memoir by Kassim Eid (2018) 194 pp
59. Vita Nova by Louise Gluck (1999) 51 pp
60. The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim (2019) 241 pp
61. Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (1946) 154 pp
62. Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood (1935) 230 pp
63. Mr Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons (2010) 355 pp
64. Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (1977) 212 pp
65. In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen (2014) 244 pp
66. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015) 438 pp
67. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1851) 1,179 pp
68. Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass (1961) 191 pp
69. No Turning Back by Beverley Naidoo (1995) 191 pp
70. Look at Me by Anita Brookner (1983) 192 pp
71. Vice Versa by F. Anstey (1882) 219 pp
72. The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm (1975) 308 pp
73. Mrs Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw (1893) 98 pp

Reading Record 3rd Quarter

JULY

74. Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling by William Fotheringham (2015) 345 pp
75. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling (1997) 332 pp
76. Rendang by Will Harris (2020) 85 pp
77. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys (2016) 383 pp
78. Corridors of Power by C.P. Snow (1964) 352 pp
79. Arab Jazz by Karim Miske (2012) 242 pp
80. The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier (1949) 136 pp
81. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner (2000) 395 pp

CURRENTLY READING

READING PLAN

1 British Author Challenge - set this year by Amanda in the 75er Group

2 1001 Book First Edition - Ongoing

3 Booker Challenge - Read all the Booker winners; I may get close to completing that in 2021

4 Nobel Winners - Read all the Nobel Winners

5 Pulitzer Winners - Read all the Pulitzer fiction winners

6 Around the World Challenge - Read a book from an author born in or with parents from all countries - I reset this challenge in October 2020.

7 Queen Victoria Challenge - Read a book from every year of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) with no repeat authors. Started December 2020

8 Queen Betty Challenge - Read a book from every year of Queen Elizabeth II reign (1952-2021) - British authors only and no repeats.

9 Dance to the Music of Time - One a month all year.

10. The 52 Book Club Challenge - A book a week from these selected categories https://www.the52book.club/challenges/2021-reading-challenge/

11. A Dent in the TBR - I have approaching 5,000 books in my TBR so I must read some of the 250 books I have bought in 2020 that end the current year unread.

12. Poetry - My first love in many ways and I am still something of a scribbler of lines to this day.

13. American Author Challenge - Linda came up trumps.

14. Series Pairs - I will choose one favourite series and read the next two books in that particular series I have slightly fallen behind with.

15 Great British History Writers - One classic work per month from a great British historian.

16 New Fantasy Series - I may take a couple of months over each so six may be the most I manage this year.

BAC



January: Children's Classics https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7317610 9 READ

February: LGBT+ History Month https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7317871 2 READ

March: Vaseem Khan & Eleanor Hibbert https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7318561 1 READ

April: Love is in the Air https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7319432 1 READ

May: V. S. Naipaul & Na'ima B. Robert https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7320231 1 READ

June: The Victorian Era (1837-1901) https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7320541 3 READ

July: Don't judge a book by its movie https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7321220 9 READ

August: Bernard Cornwell & Helen Oyeyemi https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7321374

September: She Blinded Me with Science https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7321899

October: Narrative Poetry https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7322840 1 read

November: Tade Thompson & Elizabeth Taylor https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7323772

December: Awards & Honors https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7325017 2 READ

Wildcard: Books off your shelves https://www.librarything.com/topic/326122#7325595 11 READ

40 BOOKS READ TO DATE

AMERICAN AUTHOR CHALLENGE



Please see:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/327669#7354831

January : Keep it in the Family :
February : Ethan Canin
March : Roxane Gay
April : Makers of Music : Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith

BOOKERS
Personal Reading Challenge: Every winner of the Booker Prize since its inception in 1969

1969: P. H. Newby, Something to Answer For - READ
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1970: J. G. Farrell, Troubles (awarded in 2010 as the Lost Man Booker Prize) - READ
1971: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G.
1973: J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur - READ
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist ... and Stanley Middleton, Holiday - READ
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust - READ
1976: David Storey, Saville - READ
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On - READ
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore - READ
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage - READ
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children - READ
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark - READ
1983: J. M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac - READ
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils - READ
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger - READ
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
1990: A. S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance - READ
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient ... and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger - READ
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How late it was, how late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders - READ
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things READ
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam - READ
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace - READ
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang - READ
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi READ
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville, The Sea - READ
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering - READ
2008: Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger - READ
2009: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall - READ
2010: Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
2011: Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending - READ
2012: Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies - READ
2013: Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
2014: Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North - READ
2015: Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings - READ
2016: Paul Beatty, The Sellout - READ
2017: George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
2018: Anna Burns, Milkman
2019: Margaret Atwood, The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other
2020: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain READ JAN 21

READ 33 of 56 WINNERS

Pulitzer Winners

As with the Bookers, I want to eventually read all the Pulitzer winners (for fiction at least) and have most of the recent ones on the shelves at least. Current status.

Fiction

1918 HIS FAMILY - Ernest Poole
1919 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS - Booth Tarkington
1921 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE - Edith Wharton
1922 ALICE ADAMS - Booth Tarkington
1923 ONE OF OURS - Willa Cather
1924 THE ABLE MCLAUGHLINS - Margaret Wilson
1925 SO BIG - Edna Ferber
1926 ARROWSMITH - Sinclair Lewis (Declined)
1927 EARLY AUTUMN - Louis Bromfield
1928 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY - Thornton Wilder
1929 SCARLET SISTER MARY - Julia Peterkin
1930 LAUGHING BOY - Oliver Lafarge ON SHELVES
1931 YEARS OF GRACE - Margaret Ayer Barnes
1932 THE GOOD EARTH - Pearl Buck
1933 THE STORE - Thomas Sigismund Stribling
1934 LAMB IN HIS BOSOM - Caroline Miller
1935 NOW IN NOVEMBER - Josephine Winslow Johnson
1936 HONEY IN THE HORN - Harold L Davis
1937 GONE WITH THE WIND - Margaret Mitchell ON SHELVES
1938 THE LATE GEORGE APLEY - John Phillips Marquand
1939 THE YEARLING - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940 THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck
1942 IN THIS OUR LIFE - Ellen Glasgow
1943 DRAGON'S TEETH - Upton Sinclair
1944 JOURNEY IN THE DARK - Martin Flavin
1945 A BELL FOR ADANO - John Hersey
1947 ALL THE KING'S MEN - Robert Penn Warren ON SHELVES
1948 TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC - James Michener
1949 GUARD OF HONOR - James Gould Cozzens
1950 THE WAY WEST - A.B. Guthrie
1951 THE TOWN - Conrad Richter
1952 THE CAINE MUTINY - Herman Wouk
1953 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA - Ernest Hemingway
1955 A FABLE - William Faulkner
1956 ANDERSONVILLE - McKinlay Kantor
1958 A DEATH IN THE FAMILY - James Agee ON SHELVES
1959 THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE McPHEETERS - Robert Lewis Taylor
1960 ADVISE AND CONSENT - Allen Drury
1961 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Harper Lee
1962 THE EDGE OF SADNESS - Edwin O'Connor
1963 THE REIVERS - William Faulkner ON SHELVES
1965 THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE - Shirley Ann Grau
1966 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER - Katherine Anne Porter
1967 THE FIXER - Bernard Malamud
1968 THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER - William Styron
1969 HOUSE MADE OF DAWN - N Scott Momaday ON SHELVES
1970 THE COLLECTED STORIES OF JEAN STAFFORD - Jean Stafford
1972 ANGLE OF REPOSE - Wallace Stegner ON SHELVES
1973 THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER - Eudora Welty ON SHELVES
1975 THE KILLER ANGELS - Jeff Shaara ON SHELVES
1976 HUMBOLDT'S GIFT - Saul Bellow
1978 ELBOW ROOM - James Alan McPherson
1979 THE STORIES OF JOHN CHEEVER - John Cheever ON SHELVES
1980 THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG - Norman Mailer ON SHELVES
1981 A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES - John Kennedy Toole ON SHELVES
1982 RABBIT IS RICH - John Updike
1983 THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker ON SHELVES
1984 IRONWEED - William Kennedy ON SHELVES
1985 FOREIGN AFFAIRS - Alison Lurie ON SHELVES
1986 LONESOME DOVE - Larry McMurtry ON SHELVES
1987 A SUMMONS TO MEMPHIS - Peter Taylor
1988 BELOVED - Toni Morrison - ON SHELVES
1989 BREATHING LESSONS - Anne Tyler
1990 THE MAMBO KINGS PLAY SONGS OF LOVE - Oscar Hijuelos
1991 RABBIT AT REST - John Updike
1992 A THOUSAND ACRES - Jane Smiley
1993 A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN - Robert Olen Butler
1994 THE SHIPPING NEWS - E Annie Proulx
1995 THE STONE DIARIES - Carol Shields ON SHELVES
1996 INDEPENDENCE DAY - Richard Ford ON SHELVES
1997 MARTIN DRESSLER - Steven Millhauser ON SHELVES
1998 AMERICAN PASTORAL - Philip Roth ON SHELVES
1999 THE HOURS - Michael Cunningham ON SHELVES
2000 INTERPRETER OF MALADIES - Jumpha Lahiri
2001 THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY - Michael Chabon ON SHELVES
2002 EMPIRE FALLS - Richard Russo ON SHELVES
2003 MIDDLESEX - Jeffrey Eugenides ON SHELVES
2004 THE KNOWN WORLD - Edward P. Jones ON SHELVES
2005 GILEAD - Marilynne Robinson ON SHELVES
2006 MARCH - Geraldine Brooks
2007 THE ROAD - Cormac McCarthy
2008 THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO - Junot Diaz ON SHELVES
2009 OLIVE KITTERIDGE - Elizabeth Strout ON SHELVES
2010 TINKERS - Paul Harding
2011 A VISIT FROM THE GOOD SQUAD - Jennifer Egan ON SHELVES
2013 ORPHAN MASTER'S SON - Adam Johnson ON SHELVES
2014 THE GOLDFINCH - Donna Tartt ON SHELVES
2015 ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE - Anthony Doerr ON SHELVES
2016 THE SYMPATHIZER - Viet Thanh Nguyen ON SHELVES
2017 THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD - Colson Whitehead ON SHELVES
2018 LESS - Andrew Sean Greer ON SHELVES
2019 THE OVERSTORY - Richard Powers ON SHELVES
2020 THE NICKEL BOYS - Colson Whitehead
2021 THE NIGHT WATCHMAN - Louise Erdrich ON SHELVES


18 READ
38 ON SHELVES
38 NOT OWNED OR READ

94 TOTAL

NOBELS

Update on my Nobel Prize Winning Reading:
1901 Sully Prudhomme
1902 Theodor Mommsen
1903 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1904 Frédéric Mistral and José Echegaray y Eizaquirre
1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz
1906 Giosuè Carducci
1907 Rudyard Kipling - READ
1908 Rudolf Christoph Eucken
1909 Selma Lagerlöf
1910 Paul Heyse --
1911 Count Maurice Maeterlinck
1912 Gerhart Hauptmann
1913 Rabindranath Tagore - READ
1915 Romain Rolland
1916 Verner von Heidenstam
1917 Karl Adolph Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan
1919 Carl Spitteler
1920 Knut Hamsun - READ
1921 Anatole France - READ
1922 Jacinto Benavente
1923 William Butler Yeats - READ
1924 Wladyslaw Reymont
1925 George Bernard Shaw - READ
1926 Grazia Deledda - READ
1927 Henri Bergson
1928 Sigrid Undset
1929 Thomas Mann - READ
1930 Sinclair Lewis - READ
1931 Erik Axel Karlfeldt
1932 John Galsworthy - READ
1933 Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin - READ
1934 Luigi Pirandello - READ
1936 Eugene O'Neill - READ
1937 Roger Martin du Gard
1938 Pearl S. Buck - READ
1939 Frans Eemil Sillanpää
1944 Johannes Vilhelm Jensen
1945 Gabriela Mistral
1946 Hermann Hesse - READ
1947 André Gide - READ
1948 T.S. Elliot - READ
1949 William Faulkner - READ
1950 Bertrand Russell - READ
1951 Pär Lagerkvist - READ
1952 François Mauriac - READ
1953 Sir Winston Churchill - READ
1954 Ernest Hemingway - READ
1955 Halldór Laxness - READ
1956 Juan Ramón Jiménez
1957 Albert Camus - READ
1958 Boris Pasternak (declined the prize) - READ
1959 Salvatore Quasimodo
1960 Saint-John Perse
1961 Ivo Andric - READ
1962 John Steinbeck - READ
1963 Giorgos Seferis
1964 Jean-Paul Sartre (declined the prize) - READ
1965 Michail Sholokhov
1966 Shmuel Yosef Agnon and Nelly Sachs - READ
1967 Miguel Ángel Asturias
1968 Yasunari Kawabata - READ
1969 Samuel Beckett - READ
1970 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - READ
1971 Pablo Neruda - READ
1972 Heinrich Böll - READ
1973 Patrick White
1974 Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson
1975 Eugenio Montale
1976 Saul Bellow - READ
1977 Vincente Aleixandre
1978 Isaac Bashevis Singer - READ
1979 Odysseas Elytis - READ
1980 Czeslaw Milosz - READ
1981 Elias Canetti
1982 Gabriel Garciá Márquez - READ
1983 William Golding - READ
1984 Jaroslav Seifert - READ
1985 Claude Simon - READ
1986 Akinwande Ouwoe Soyinka
1987 Joseph Brodsky - READ
1988 Naguib Mahfouz - READ
1989 Camilo José Cela - READ
1990 Octavio Paz
1991 Nadine Gordimer - READ
1992 Derek Walcott - READ
1993 Toni Morrison - READ
1994 Kenzaburo Oe - READ
1995 Seamus Heaney - READ
1996 Wislawa Szymborska - READ
1997 Dario Fo - READ
1998 José Saramago - READ
1999 Günter Grass - READ
2000 Gao Xingjian
2001 Vidiadhar Surjprasad Naipaul - READ
2002 Imre Kertész - READ
2003 John Maxwell Coetzee - READ
2004 Elfriede Jelinek - READ
2005 Harold Pinter - READ
2006 Orhan Pamuk - READ
2007 Doris Lessing - READ
2008 J.M.G. Le Clézio
2009 Herta Müller - READ
2010 Mario Vargas Llosa - READ
2011 Tomas Tranströmer - READ
2012 Mo Yan
2013 Alice Munro - READ
2014 Patrick Modiano - READ
2015 Svetlana Alexievich - READ
2016 Bob Dylan - READ
2017 Kazuo Ishiguro - READ
2018 Olga Tokarczuk - READ
2019 Peter Handke - READ
2020 Louise Gluck - READ

READ 73 OF
117 LAUREATES

AROUND THE WORLD CHALLENGE

Around the world in books challenge. I want to see how many countries I can cover without limiting myself to a specific deadline.

From 1 October 2020

1. United Kingdom - The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard EUROPE
2. Ireland - The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde EUROPE
3. Lithuania - Selected and Last Poems by Czeslaw Milosz EUROPE
4. Netherlands - The Ditch by Herman Koch EUROPE
5. Armenia - The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian ASIA PACIFIC
6. Zimbabwe - This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga AFRICA
7. United States - Averno by Louise Gluck AMERICA
8. Australia - Taller When Prone by Les Murray ASIA PACIFIC
9. France - Class Trip by Emmanuel Carrere EUROPE
10. Russia - The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov EUROPE
11. Denmark - Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard EUROPE
12. Democratic Republic of Congo - Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanze Mujila AFRICA
13. Canada - I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven AMERICA
14. Italy - The Overnight Kidnapper by Andrea Camilleri EUROPE
15. New Zealand - Dove on the Waters by Maurice Shadbolt ASIA PACIFIC
16. India - A Burning by Megha Majumdar ASIA PACIFIC
17. Libya - The Return by Hisham Matar AFRICA
18. Pakistan - Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid ASIA PACIFIC
19. South Korea - Diary of a Murderer by Kim Young-Ha ASIA PACIFIC
20. Morocco - The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers by Fouad Laroui AFRICA
21. Thailand - Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana ASIA PACIFIC
22. Norway - Echoland by Per Petterson EUROPE
23. Belgium - I Choose to Live by Sabine Dardenne EUROPE
24. Sweden - Still Waters by Viveca Sten EUROPE
25. Trinidad - Half a Life by VS Naipaul AMERICAS
26. Sudan - Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih AFRICA
27. Uruguay - Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti AMERICAS
28. Syria - My Country : A Syrian Memoir by Kassem Eid ASIA PACIFIC
29. Ghana - The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim AFRICA
30. Austria - Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl EUROPE
31. Germany - Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass EUROPE
32. South Africa - No Turning Back by Beverley Naidoo AFRICA
33. Mauritania - Arab Jazz by Karim Miske AFRICA
34. Cuba - The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier AMERICAS


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

QUEEN VIC CHALLENGE
Regarding my Victorian Era Challenge which I started this month with the aim of completing it by the end of 2021. 64 years. 64 books. 64 authors.

From Dec 2020

1843 FEAR AND TREMBLING by Kierkegaard
1850 PENDENNIS by Thackeray
1851 THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Dumas
1853 CRANFORD by GASKELL
1857 TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS by Hughes
1864 NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND by Dostoevsky
1870 A LEAR OF THE STEPPES by Turgenev
1873 AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS by Verne
1881 PRINCE AND THE PAUPER by Twain
1882 VICE VERSA by Anstey
1893 MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION by Shaw
1899 SOME EXPERIENCES OF AN IRISH RM by Somerville & Ross
1900 THREE SISTERS by Chekhov

13/64

QUEEN BETTY CHALLENGE

From December 2020 70 Years 70 Books 70 Different British Authors

1952 A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell
1959 The Age of Improvement by Asa Briggs
1961 What is History? by EH Carr
1962 The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side by Agatha Christie
1964 Corridors of Power by CP Snow
1966 A Fall from the Sky by Ian Serraillier
1968 Figures in a Landscape by Barry England
1969 Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Framer
1970 The Great Fire by Monica Dickens
1973 Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
1975 The Age of Capital by Eric Hobsbawm
1977 Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
1978 The Hammer of the Scots by Jean Plaidy
1983 Look at Me by Anita Brookner
1984 The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
1987 Bury the Dead by Peter Carter
1989 Plague 99 by Jean Ure
1996 Junk by Melvyn Burgess
1997 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
2001 Half a Life by VS Naipaul
2003 Judge Savage by Tim Parks
2005 Woods, etc. by Alice Oswald
2010 Mr Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons
2011 Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
2013 A Delicate Truth by John Le Carre
2014 The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths by Harry Bingham
2015 Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling by William Fotheringham
2018 Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan
2019 A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson
2020 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

30/70

52 BOOK CLUB CHALLENGE

Based on this challenge suggested by Katie & Chelle

https://www.the52book.club/challenges/2021-reading-challenge/

January
Week 1 : Set in a school : Tom Brown's Schooldays by Hughes Read 2 Jan 2021
Week 2 : Legal profession : Judge Savage by Tim Parks Read 28 Jan 2021
Week 3 : Dual timeline : Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer Read 29 Jan 2021
Week 4 : Deceased author : Jazz by Toni Morrison READ 30 Jan 2021
Week 5 : Published by Penguin : Junk by Melvyn Burgess READ 3 Feb 2021
Week 6 : Male Family Member : Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch READ 12 Feb 2021
Week 7 : 1 Published Work : A Burning by Megha Majumdar READ 19 Feb 2021
Week 8 : Dewey 900 Class : What is History? by EH Carr READ 28 February
Week 9 : Set in a Mediterranean Country : The Return by Hisham Matar READ 5 MAR 2021
Week 10 : Book with discussion questions : Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham READ 2 APR
Week 11 : Relating to fire : Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid READ 4 APR
Week 12 : Title Starting with D : Diary of a Murderer by Kim Young-Ha READ 6 APR
Week 13 : Includes an Exotic Animal : Life of Pi by Yann Martel READ 11 April
Week 14 : Written by an author over 65 : Blue Horses by Mary Oliver READ 14 April
Week 15 : Book Mentioned in a book : Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky READ 15 April
Week 16 : Set before 17th Century : Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell READ 5 June
Week 17 : Character on the run : Figures in a Landscape by Barry England READ 26 April
Week 18 : Author with 9 letter surname : Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti READ 6 JUNE
Week 19 : Book with a deckled edge : In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen READ 21 JUNE
Week 20 : Became a TV series : Corridors of Power by CP Snow READ 12 JUL
Week 21 : Book by Kristin Hannah : The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah READ 22 JUNE
Week 22 : A Family Saga : Mr Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons READ 14 JUN
Week 23 : Surprising Ending : Still Waters by Viveca Sten READ 2 JUN
Week 24 : Book to be read in schools : Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl READ
Week 25 : Multiple POVs : Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys READ 11 JUL
Week 26 : Author of Colour : The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim READ 8 JUN
Week 27 : 1st Chapter Odd Page : The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner READ 25 JUL
Week 28 : Little known historical event : The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier READ 20 JUL
Week 29 : The Environment :
Week 30 : Dragons : Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling READ 8 JUL

SERIES PAIR CHALLENGE

January : Andrea Camilleri - MONTALBANO DONE
February : Agatha Christie - MISS MARPLE DONE
March : Ben Aaronovitch - PETER GRANT DONE
April : Harry Bingham - FIONA GRIFFITHS DONE
May : Megan Whalen Turner - EUGENIDES

BRITISH HISTORIANS

As if I don't have enough challenges! I want to polish up on my reading and re-reading of the British historians who either inspired me as a student or who I have since come to greatly admire

The French Revolution by Thomas CARLYLE 1837
The Age of Improvement by Asa BRIGGS 1959 READ MAR 21
The History of England by Thomas Babington MACAULAY 1848
The Making of the English Working Class by EP THOMPSON 1963
Fifteen Decisive Battles by EDWARD CREASEY 1851
What is History? by EH CARR 1961 READ FEB 21
The Course of German History by AJP TAYLOR 1945
The American Future by Simon SCHAMA 2009
The Face of Battle by John KEEGAN 1976
The King's Peace by CV WEDGWOOD 1955
The Age of Capital by ERIC HOBSBAWM 1975 READ JUN 21

FANTASY SERIES CHALLENGE
Six New (for me) Fantasy Series to go at:

I will concentrate on one series every two months

N.K. JEMISIN - The Inheritance Trilogy

TAD WILLIAMS - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn

C.J. CHERRYH - Chanur Saga

GENE WOLFE - The Book of the New Sun

DAVID EDDINGS - The Belgariad

DIANA GABALDON - Outlander

Love the bookshelves!

READ MORE THAN ACQUIRED

Last year I added 300 books but read 50 of them. In addition I have another 4,500 plus on the TBR.
The challenge is not to make the situation of my TBR worse.
So I must read or remove from my wider TBR more than I acquire this year and I will gauge this against last years "new" TBR and any future incomings. Therefore the older TBRs don't count against this challenge.

The figure at the start of the year is 250 books and this number must be smaller by December 31. These are the 250 books:

1 Stay with Me Adebayo
2 American War Akkad
3 The Catholic School Albinati
4 The Unwomanly Face of War Alexievich
5 Saltwater Andrews
6 Big Sky Atkinson
7 At the Jerusalem Bailey
8 The Body Lies Baker
9 The Lost Memory of Skin Banks
10 Remembered Battle-Felton
11 Springtime in a Broken Mirror Benedetti READ JUN 21
12 A Crime in the Neighborhood Berne
13 Stand By Me Berry
14 Love Story, With Murders Bingham READ APR 21
15 This Thing of Darkness Bingham
16 The Sandcastle Girls Bohjalian
17 The Ascent of Rum Doodle Bowman
18 Clade Bradley
19 The Snow Ball Brophy
20 Paladin of Souls Bujold
21 Parable of the Sower Butler
22 The Adventures of China Iron Camara
23 The Overnight Kidnapper Camilleri READ JAN 21
24 The Other End of the Line Camilleri READ JAN 21
25 Lord of all the Dead Cercas
26 Uncle Vanya Checkov
27 The Cherry Orchard Checkov
28 Blue Moon Child
29 Trust Exercise Choi
30 The Night Tiger Choo
31 The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side Christie READ JAN 21
32 At Bertram's Hotel Christie READ FEB 21
33 The Water Dancer Coates
34 The New Wilderness Cook
35 Hopscotch Cortazar
36 The Illumination of Ursula Flight Crowhurst
37 Deviation D'Eramo
38 Boy Swallows Universe Dalton
39 The Girl with the Louding Voice Dare
40 The Rose of Tibet Davidson
41 Dhalgren Delany
42 The Butterfly Girl Denfeld
43 Vernon Subutex 1 Despentes
44 Postcolonial Love Poem Diaz
45 Childhood Ditlevsen
46 Youth Ditlevsen
47 Dependency Ditlevsen
48 Burnt Sugar Doshi
49 Frenchman's Creek Du Maurier D
50 Trilby Du Maurier G
51 Sincerity Duffy
52 Sumarine Dunthorne
53 The Narrow Land Dwyer-Hickey
54 Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race Eddo-Lodge
55 Axiom's End Ellis
56 Figures in a Landscape England READ APR 21
57 kaddish.com Englander
58 Shadow Tag Erdrich
59 The Carpet Makers Eschbach
60 The Emperor's Babe Evaristo
61 Small Country Faye
62 To Rise Again at a Decent Hour Ferris
63 At Freddie's Fitzgerald
64 The Guest List Foley
65 Man's Search for Meaning Frankl READ JUN 21
66 Love in No Man's Land Ga
67 Norse Mythology Gaiman
68 The Spare Room Garner
69 The Kites Gary
70 Gun Island Ghosh
71 Vita Nova Gluck READ JUN 21
72 Trafalgar Gorodischer
73 Potiki Grace
74 Killers of the Flower Moon Grann
75 The Last Banquet Grimwood
76 Guapa Haddad
77 The Porpoise Haddon
78 Late in the Day Hadley
79 The Final Bet Hamdouchi
80 The Parisian Hammad
81 Nightingale Hannah
82 Coastliners Harris J
83 The Truths We Hold Harris K
84 Conclave Harris R
85 The Second Sleep Harris R
86 Tales of the Tikongs Hau'ofa
87 A Thousand Ships Haynes
88 The River Heller
89 Dead Lions Herron
90 Real Tigers Herron
91 War and Turpentine Hertmans
92 A Political History of the World Holslag
93 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine Honeyman
94 The Light Years Howard
95 Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself Huber
96 A High Wind in Jamaica Hughes
97 Ape and Essence Huxley
98 Me John
99 Nightblind Jonasson
100 Black Out Jonasson
101 How to be an Anti-Rascist Kendi
102 Death is Hard Work Khalifa
103 Darius the Great is Not Okay Khorram
104 Himself Kidd
105 Diary of a Murderer Kim READ APR 21
106 Dance of the Jacakranda Kimani
107 The Bridge Konigsberg
108 Who They Was Krauze
109 The Mars Room Kushner
110 The Princesse de Cleves La Fayette
111 The Other Americans Lalami
112 The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers Laroui READ APR 21
113 Fish Can Sing Laxness
114 Agent Running in the Field Le Carre
115 Pachinko Lee
116 The Turncoat Lenz
117 The Topeka School Lerner
118 Caging Skies Leunens
119 The Fifth Risk Lewis
120 The Three-Body Problem Liu
121 Lost Children Archive Luiselli
122 Black Moses Mabanckou
123 Blue Ticket Mackintosh
124 A Burning Majumdar READ FEB 21
125 The Mirror and the Light Mantel
126 Original Spin Marks
127 Deep River Marlantes
128 The Return Matar READ MAR 21
129 The Island Matute
130 Hame McAfee
131 Apeirogon McCann
132 Underland McFarlane
133 Hurricane Season Melchor
134 The Shadow King Mengiste
135 The Human Swarm Moffett
136 She Would Be King Moore
137 The Starless Sea Morgenstern
138 Poetry by Heart Motion
139 A Fairly Honourable Defeat Murdoch
140 The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov Nabokov
141 The Warlow Experiment Nathan
142 The Left-Handed Booksellers of London Nix
143 Born a Crime Noah
144 The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney Nzelu
145 Girl O'Brien
146 After You'd Gone O'Farrell
147 Henry, Himself O'Nan
148 Inland Obreht
149 Weather Offill
150 Dept. of Speculation Offill
151 Stag's Leap Olds
152 Blue Horses Oliver READ APR 21
153 Felicity Oliver
154 Will Olyslaegers
155 Woods, etc Oswald READ FEB 21
156 Night Theatre Paralkar
157 The Damascus Road Parini
158 Empress of the East Peirce
159 The Street Petry
160 Disappearing Earth Phillips
161 Arid Dreams Pimwana READ APR 21
162 Peterloo : Witness to a Massacre Polyp
163 Lanny Porter
164 The Women at Hitler's Table Postorino
165 A Question of Upbringing Powell A READ JAN 21
166 A Buyer's Market Powell A READ FEB 21
167 The Acceptance World Powell A
168 The Interrogative Mood Powell P
169 Rough Magic Prior-Palmer
170 The Alice Network Quinn
171 Where the Red Fern Grows Rawls
172 Such a Fun Age Reid
173 Selected Poems 1950-2012 Rich
174 The Discomfort of Evening Rijneveld
175 Jack Robinson
176 The Years of Rice and Salt Robinson K
177 A Portable Paradise Robinson R READ JAN 21
178 The Fall of the Ottomans Rogan
179 Normal People Rooney
180 Conversations with Friends Rooney
181 Alone Time Rosenbloom
182 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone Rowling READ JUL 21
183 The Watch Roy-Bhattacharya
184 The Five Rubenhold
185 Contact Sagan
186 The Hunters Salter
187 The Seventh Cross Seghers
188 Will Self
189 Moses Ascending Selvon
190 The Dove on the Water Shadbolt READ JAN 21
191 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Shafak
192 In Arabian Nights Shah
193 The Caliph's House Shah
194 Mrs Warren's Profession Shaw READ JUN 21
195 Arms and the Man Shaw
196 Candida Shaw
197 Man and Superman Shaw
198 Dimension of Miracles Sheckley
199 The Last Man Shelley
200 Temple of a Thousand Faces Shors
201 Year of the Monkey Smith P READ APR 21
202 Eternity Smith T
203 Crossing Statovci
204 Lucy Church, Amiably Stein
205 Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead Stoppard
206 Blood Cruise Strandberg
207 Shuggie Bain Stuart READ JAN 21
208 Three Poems Sullivan READ MAY 21
209 Rules for Perfect Murders Swanson
210 Cane River Tademy
211 Real Life Taylor
212 The Queen's Gambit Tevis
213 Far North Therous
214 Walden Thoreau
215 Civil Disobedience Thoreau
216 Survivor Song Tremblay
217 The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee Treuer
218 The Small House at Allingham Trollope
219 A Nest of Gentlefolk Turgenev
220 A Quiet Backwater Turgenev
221 A Lear of the Steppes Turgenev READ JAN 21
222 The Queen of Attolia Turner READ JUL 21
223 The King of Attolia Turner
224 Redhead by the Side of the Road Tyler
225 Outlaw Ocean Urbina
226 Plague 99 Ure READ JAN 2021
227 The Age of Miracles Walker
228 The Uninhabitable Earth Wallace-Wells
229 Judith Paris Walpole
230 Love and Other Thought Experiments Ward
231 The Death of Mrs. Westaway Ware
232 Lolly Willows Warner
233 Second Life Watson
234 Final Cut Watson
235 Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen Weldon
236 Before the War Weldon
237 Lazarus West
238 Educated Westover
239 The Nickel Boys Whitehead READ JAN 21
240 The Death of Murat Idrissi Wieringa
241 Salome Wilde
242 An Ideal Husband Wilde
243 Lady Windemere's Fan Wilde
244 A Woman of No Importance Wilde
245 The Salt Path Winn
246 The Natural Way of Things Wood C
247 East Lynne Wood E
248 A Room of One's Own Woolf READ FEB 21
249 Interior Chinatown Yu
250 How Much of These Hills is Gold Zhang

BEGIN : 250
READ : 30
LEFT : 220

THIS YEAR'S ACQUISITIONS

1. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. by Somerville & Ross READ MAR 21
2. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome READ JAN 21
3. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
4. The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle
5. The Black Corsair by Emilio Salgari
6. The Prime Ministers : Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson by Steve Richards
7. The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim READ JUN 21
8. Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
9. Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli
10. The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
11. The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron
12. Death's Mistress by Terry Goodkind
13. The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
14. Small Days and Nights by Tishani Doshi
15. Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
16. Desert by JMG Le Clezio
17. For the Record by David Cameron
18. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
19. The Guardians of the West by David Eddings
20. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
21. The Council of Egypt by Leonardo Sciascia
22. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
23. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by NK Jemisin
24. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
25. Rupture by Ragnar Jonasson
26. White Out by Ragnar Jonasson
27. The Age of Capital by Eric Hobsbawm READ JUN 21
28. The World Turned Upside Down by Christopher Hill
29. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
30. Modern Times by Paul Johnson
31. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy
32. The Warehouse by Rob Hart
33. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
34. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings
35. Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings
36. Magician's Gambit by David Eddings
37. Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
38. In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan
39. The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
40. The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian
41. Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
42. At Lady Molly's by Anthony Powell
43. Casanova's Chinese Restaurant by Anthony Powell
44. The Kindly Ones by Anthony Powell
45. The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
46. Still Waters by Viveca Sten READ JUN 21
47. Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo
48. The Europeans by Henry James
49. Vice Versa by F. Anstey READ JUN 21
50. A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
51. The Scarred Woman by Jussi Adler Olsen
52. Closed for Winter Jorn Lier Horst
53. News of the World by Juliette Jiles
54. Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon READ MAR 21
55. A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea by Dina Nayeri
56. Death in the Tuscan Hills by Marco Vichi
57. American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
58. Good Morning Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton
59. Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
60. The Enchanted by Rene Denefeld
61. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
62. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Machado de Assis
63. The Innocents by Michael Crummey
64. Night Waking by Sarah Moss
65. Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
66. Throw me to the Wolves by Patrick McGuinness
67. Consent by Annabel Lyon
68. Selling Manhattan by Carole Ann Duffy
69. Rendang by Will Harris READ JUL 21
70. The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
71. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
72. Amnesty by Aravind Adiga
73. The Awkward Squad by Sophie Henaff
74. The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown by Vaseem Khan
75. Afternoon Raag by Amit Chaudhuri
76. The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
77. The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson
78. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
79. Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer
80. The Eastern Shore by Ward Just
81. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
82. The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck
83. Vertigo& Ghost by Fiona Benson
84. Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
85. Soot by Dan Vyleta
86. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
87. Abigail by Magda Szabo
88. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic
89. Coming Up for Air by Sarah Leipciger
90. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
91. Selection Day by Aravind Adiga
92. The Voyage by Murray Bail
93. Peace : A Novel by Richard Bausch
94. The Third Reich by Roberto Bolano
95. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
96. The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier READ JUL 21
97. My Life as a Russian Novel by Emmanuel Carrere
98. Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
99. Man V. Nature by Diane Cook
100. The Melody by Jim Crace
101. SS-GB by Len Deighton
102. Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald
103. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff
104. The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall
105. Munich by Robert Harris
106. Bodies Electric by Colin Harrison
107. The Punch by Noah Hawley
108. Spook Street by Mick Herron
109. London Rules by Mick Herron
110. The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
111. The Land of Green Ginger by Winifred Holtby
112. The Wreck of the Mary Deare by Hammond Innes
113. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
114. Exiles in the Garden by Ward Just
115. Duffy by Dan Kavanagh
116. The Good People by Hannah Kent
117. The Life to Come by Michelle de Krester
118. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin
119. 10:04 by Ben Lerner
120. Home is the Hunter by Helen MacInnes
121. Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan
122. The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney
123. The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller
124. Arab Jazz by Karim Miske READ JUL 21
125. Bodies of Light by Sarah Moss
126. Carthage by Joyce Carol Oates
127. The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe
128. The Horseman by Tim Pears
129. Echoland by Per Petterson READ APR 21
130. Last Stand by Michael Punke
131. The Waiting Time by Gerald Seymour
132. Home Run by Gerald Seymour
133. Eisenhower in War and Peace by Jean Edward Smith
134. To the Back of Beyond by Peter Stamm
135. They Know Not What They Do by Jussi Valtonen
136. The Tulip Eaters by Antoinette Van Heugten
137. Smoke by Dan Vyleta
138. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
139. That Eye, The Sky by Tim Winton
140. Fear : Trump in the White House by Bob Woodward
141. Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell READ JUN 21
142. Gerta by Katerina Tuckova
143. My Country: A Syrian Memoir by Kassem Eid READ JUN 21
144. Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
145. The Hotel Tito by Ivana Bodrozic
146. Strange Hotel by Eimear McBride
147. Blame by Paul Read
148. House of Lords and Commons by Ishion Hutchinson
149. To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek
150. Your Story, My Story by Connie Palmen
151. Wake Up : Why the World Has Gone Nuts by Piers Morgan
152. Death of a Coast Watcher by Anthony English
153. Limitless by Ala Glynn
154. Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono
155. Daughter of the Tigris by Muhsin al-Ramli
156. Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
157. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
158. Incomparable World by S.L. Martin
159. The Dancing Face by Mike Phillips
160. Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors
161. Sharks in the Time of Saviours by Kawai Strong Washburn
162. The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
163. Rest and Be Thankful by Emma Glass
164. Minty Alley by CLR James
165. The Fat Lady Sings by Jacqueline Roy
166. Actress by Anne Enright
167. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
168. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
169. Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas
170. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov *Replacement*
171. Summer by Ali Smith
172. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor *Replacement*
173. Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
174. The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima
175. The Girls by Emma Cline
176. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
177. The Flint Anchor by Sylvia Townsend Warner
178. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
179. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
180. The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
181. Just Like You by Nick Hornby
182. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
183. Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih READ JUNE 21
184. The Book of Chameleons by Jose Eduardo Agualusa
185. The Dig by Roger Preston
186. The Historians by Eavan Boland
187. Selected Poems by Elizabeth Jennings
188. The Deemster by Hall Caine
189. When Rainclouds Gather by Bessie Head
190. Maru by Bessie Head
191. Derek Mahon: New Selected Poems by Derek Mahon
192. A Move in the Weather by Anthony Thwaite
193. Door into the Dark by Seamus Heaney
194. Driftless by David Rhodes
195. Independence Square by AD Miller
196. Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
197. Lot by Bryan Washington
198. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
199. The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha
200. Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow
201. Aria by Nazanine Hozar
202. Waking Lions by Ayelet Gudar-Goshen
203. Victim 2117 by Jussi Adler-Olsen
204. The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell
205. The Quality of Madness by Tim Rich
206. Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi
207. The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

207 added
14 read
180 nett additions

RESOLUTIONS

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

January : The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
February : Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg
March : The Return by Hashim Matar
April : Life of Pi by Yann Martel
May : The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
June : Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

READING INFLUENCE WINNERS

A book for the book bullet that made the biggest mark on me that month. Only one win per person each year.

January 2021 MARK (msf59) for THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones
February 2021 ADRIENNE (fairywings) for THE BELGARIAD by David Eddings
March 2021 BONNIE (brenzi) for DRIFTLESS by David Rhodes
April 2021 KERRY (avatiakh) for THE DIG by John Preston
May 2021 DEBORAH (Cariola) for I AM, I AM, I AM by Maggie O'Farrell

BOOK STATS :

Books Read : 81
Books Added : 207
Nett TBR Addition : 126

Number of Pages in completed books : 21,199
Average per day : 102.91
Projected Page Total : 37,562

Number of days per book : 2.54
Projected Number : 143
LT Best : 157

Longest Book read : 1,179 pages
Shortest Book read : 51 pages
Mean Average Book Length : 261.72 pages

Male Authors : 49
Female Authors : 32

UK Authors : 42
Italy : 2
USA : 12
NZ : 1
Russia : 2
France : 2
India : 1
Libya : 1
Pakistan : 1
South Korea : 1
Canada : 1
Morocco : 1
Thailand : 1
Norway : 1
Belgium : 1
Sweden : 1
Trinidad : 1
Sudan : 1
Uruguay 1
Syria 1
Ghana 1
Austria 1
Germany 1
South Africa 1
Mauritania 1
Cuba 1

1001 Books First Edition : 11 (315)
New Nobel Winners : 1 (73)
Pulitzer Fiction Winners : 2 (18)
Booker Winners : 2 (33)
Around the World Challenge : New countries : 21 (34)
BAC Books : 40
AAC Books : 1
Queen Vic Books : 10 (13/64)
Queen Betty Books : 30/70
52 Book Challenge : 29/52
British Historians : 3/12

OVERALL TBR RECORD/UPDATE

TBR at Midnight 31 May 2021

Books Unread : 4,425
Pages Unread : 1,555,749
Average Book Length : 351.58 pages

Books Read : 30
Pages Read : 8,401 pages

Books Added : 20
Pages Added : 5,909 pages

Books Culled : 180
Pages Culled : 77,262

Revised TBR
Books Unread : 4,235
Pages Unread : 1,475,995
Ave Book Length : 348.52 pages

Next is yours.....

Happy new thread!

>20 torontoc: Wow that was quick, Cyrel. Thanks - will add two more bookcases this week.

>29 amanda4242: Thank you, dear Amanda.

Happy new thread.

Have fun Pottering about. It was ever so much fun when Mike read them, pretty much as they came out, to Becky. At the end of Quidditch game in Prisoner of Azkaban she was practically flying about the bed and we had to call a calm down break.

>32 quondame: Probably a good job that I am reading it in a state of tiredness as I think that Hani would be rather concerned to have me flying round the bedroom!

Happy new one!

>34 drneutron: Thanks Jim!

Happy New Thread, Kind Sir!

>36 mahsdad: Thank you, Jeff

Happy new thread Paul.

>38 humouress: Thanks Neighbour!

Happy New Thread, Paul!

>40 connie53: Thank you, Connie.

Happy new thread, Paul!

Has everything arrived in the new appartment?

>42 FAMeulstee: I'm sure the moving supervisor will ensure that once he's made sure his books are fine ;0)

(Sorry to rib you Paul; TBH, that's what I'd do.)

Happy new thread, Paul. Your library looks absolutely amazing.

>42 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita. I sorted out my books roughly by alphabet so that I could get them on shelves but am now shelving them properly (it will take some time) alphabetically by author and then chronologically by author. I have gotten my poetry and plays all done and A&B already fully completed.
I have noticed that a few books seem to be missing from my Bs. This could be because of not putting them in the right place in the rough sweep but let's see.

>43 humouress: I resemble that remark, Nina! To be fair I am much better at supervision than execution.

>44 DianaNL: Thank you Diana. Give me a couple of weeks and I will be very happy with it.

>45 PaulCranswick: I love sorting my books. And I do it exactly as you do it, Paul. I leave some free space for future books to end up by its siblings.

Happy new thread, Paul!

>47 connie53: Me too, Connie. A must is always to remember your collection will grow and allow regular breaks or space to take up the increased numbers.

>48 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley. x

A must is always to remember your collection will grow and allow regular breaks or space to take up the increased numbers.

In your case, this has to rank as the understatement of the year. 😀

>50 drneutron: Hani has given me a few shakes of her head and a frown has creased her brow as she considers my priorities when moving home.

Happy new thread, Paul, and hope your move is coming along smoothly. It's a good sign if your books are getting in order, I'd say ;)

Yay! A new manageable-for-me thread! Hello! How are you? Is this your first time reading the Harry Potter books?

I enjoyed the books--I really appreciated all of the imaginative details of the wizarding world. But I had plenty of beefs with the series too. And that was before J. K. Rowling's full transphobia was on display...nevertheless, the Harry Potter books remains an important cultural touchstone.

Happy New thread, Paul. Hooray for Hamnet! Is this your first time around with Harry Potter?

>52 bell7: Thanks Mary. The move is complete but the books will take a while longer to take up what are exactly their correct positions.

>53 justchris: Thanks Chris and always great to see you here. It is the first time I'm reading any book by Rowling.

I'm not sure I would be so comfortable labelling someone as phobic for anything when I am not quite au fait enough with all the issues. I certainly understand that she is a convinced feminist and many feminists in the UK, including the celebrated Germaine Greer, seem concerned that the belief in equality does not start to impinge on women's rights. I'm not expressing an opinion on whether they are right or not but we should be careful in not trying to infer that every opinion that doesn't meet our own necessarily would be racist or ageist or sexist. I think most people's views are generally accepting and understanding and tolerant but there are plenty of discussions around the edges still necessary and we shouldn't shrink from or be diverting from such discussions by the shrill sound of vitriol.

>54 msf59: Thank you, mate. It is my first time with Potty Harry.
Hamnet was a great study of grief.

>50 drneutron: I was wondering how much space he had to leave on each shelf :0)

>57 humouress: It's all very subtle, Nina!

Whoa. Glad to could get here before this new thread hits three digits on the post-meter. You've got so much data packed into your lists and challenges, that I can usually find some tidbit I've previously overlooked. Thanks!

I'm well ahead of you on acquisitions for 2021, which is pretty scary. Nevertheless, I'm hitting a library book sale tomorrow, and it's a multi-day affair (tomorrow being the first day), so there's peril I'll get sucked back on another day (or two). Oh, ye gods.

>1 PaulCranswick: I'm guessing this will be the Winning Book of the Month!

>59 weird_O: I am in a period of enforced restraint Bill. Firstly it is total lockdown here and the bookstores are closed and secondly I was moving house so I couldn't order any books for delivery either.
If you carry on adding books at your present rate, book splurges will be described as Billish rather than Cranswickian in future!

>60 m.belljackson: I do hope to give it some competition , though, Marianne. Let's see. Out of the two books read , it is leading the way!

>55 PaulCranswick: I hear you say that you're not expressing an opinion. But "the shrill sound of vitriol" is not at all neutral.

Mainstream news media are calling Rowling a terf (trans exclusionary radical feminist), and I'm pretty comfortable with that assessment of her beliefs:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/jk-rowling-trans-men-terf.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dawnstaceyennis/2019/12/19/jk-rowling-comes-out-as-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/09/what-terf-definition-trans...

The celebrated Germaine Greer and others in her particular circle of feminism believe that the existence of trans women impinge on the rights of women. And they are effectively allying with Christian conservatives in their efforts to deny or rollback rights for trans people:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/christian-right-feminists-uk-trans-rights/

I can see how it might feel like a "discussion around the edges" for the majority of folks who are cis, whether they identify as feminist or not. But it's pretty central to trans folks who are being told they don't quite qualify as fully human and aren't entitled to full human rights.

Frankly, I consider gender identity much like nationality. Some people are natural-born citizens of women's country, and others are naturalized citizens. Either way, they're citizens of women's country. The same is just as true for men's country. And then there's the tiny percentage of us who reject both and move to someplace like nonbinary island or the genderfluid straits. Right now, some groups of natural born citizens are working hard to strip hard-won rights from naturalized citizens.

ps, this can happen with respect to nationalities too: denaturalization of black and brown immigrants became a big thing under Trump, and it remains to be seen how the Biden administration will proceed in that regard.

Disclosure: I do identify as trans, and I am not neutral on this topic.

>62 justchris: The vitriol I was referring to Chris is on all sides of the argument. I am neutral in this issue and I have mentioned a few times that it is a subject that, from my vantage point here, where even homosexuality is still illegal and occasionally enforced as such, I would like more education on. I am only neutral on the issue to a certain extent, however, as for my part I believe that trans males or females are entitled to exactly the same rights as anybody else without fear of being prejudiced against. If someone holds the view that trans people are not fully human then that would be a shameful and completely unsupportable position. This is my basic premise.

I'm not sure that we are usually dealing in such definitive existential terms though. This seems to be something particular to men transitioning to women rather than the other way round in that there is an uncomfortable co-existence between women's rights and trans rights. It is something that needs work on - in areas such as women's sports for example due to innate physical advantages of a trans woman having transitioned from a male body. Ultimately though it would be a preposterous position to try to deny or roll back trans people's rights. On this I am firmly in the Daniel Radcliffe camp - trans women are women.

I am also troubled by the issues of prejudice in orthodox Christianity (and Islam for that matter) which holds homosexuality and I presume gender transitioning sinful. As much as I hold such views as repugnant they are sincerely held and I would have some difficulty in agreeing to legislate against such views which are thankfully these days marginalised. If we were not careful they would be arguing that we were christianophobic or islamophobic.

I don't care about the skin colour, gender, sexuality, age or creed of any of my friends - they are just my friends and I love and respect them all. You are my friend, Chris.

Or we could just say, however we identify, we’re all on this planet together and can we please save it because it’s the only one we’ve got?

>64 humouress: Yikes, Nina, don't get me started on ecology! The environment is THE issue that most concerns me at the moment and mostly because - other than lip service - the politicians don't really care because they don't see the votes in it.

>63 PaulCranswick: Thank you for the kind response, Paul.

I agree that MTF trans folks get the most hate--in terms of both rhetoric and violence.

Many people transitioning these days are so young, and most of the trans bans in sports are directed at school sports, where such athletes are most likely on hormone blockers and thus don't get any natural advantages as you are describing. And such arguments fail to acknowledge the natural advantages between different cis athletes in terms of the wide variation of testosterone levels and the like. In other words, humanity exists on a spectrum, and biological, physical, and biochemical differences don't fit quite as neatly into boxes as we'd like to think:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/we-celebrated-michael-phelpss-gen...

>64 humouress: and >65 PaulCranswick: Right there with you. This seems to be an even larger problem to tackle because it requires a systemic shift in the values undergirding our societies. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry keeps on keeping on with its corruption and coverups and obstruction and unwillingness to do anything other than continue wrecking the planet in the shortest amount of time. Not that they're the only bad actor, just the one with the most power.

Yeah, if we start ranting about this topic, we'll never be done.

>64 humouress: >65 PaulCranswick:

If you can find a copy, the 1948 ROAD TO SURVIVAL by William Vogt (zero touchstones)
opens many doors to solutions for the planet.

>66 justchris: My watchword, Chris, is to always try to treat others as I would wish to be treated myself and it is usually a reliable guide.

I am enjoying listening to Nanci Griffith this evening. I love her album The Dust Bowl Symphony and have followed it with the slightly earlier Other Voices, Other Rooms.

>67 m.belljackson: This is the correct touchstone to the book, Marianne Road to Survival. I shall certainly have a look for it.

>68 PaulCranswick: It was Nanci Griffith's birthday yesterday. I love her music, though The Dust Bowl Symphony isn't one I know so well - I have the two volumes of Other Voices, which are paying tribute to some of her influences by covering her work. I used to listen a lot to Flyer and Late Night Grande Hotel among others. I really like going back to discover the musicians who other musicians and songwriters who other musicians have admired and listened to.

I also have a book by her called Nanci Griffith's Other Voices: A Personal History of Folk Music

Since I've always operated on the "you are what you say you are" principle, I am frankly irritated by people who need to draw lines and build fences to suit themselves.

Lesbian separatist? Hi, have fun! on down the line. Why is it anyone's business but their own? And, corollary to that, why do people need to *prove* something to get human rights? You're human...you got 'em.

Or so it should be.

Hi Paul, a belated happy new thread mate. It was lovely to see Cav win another stage and now Merckx must be sweating, he could equal or exceed Merckx before the next rest day. It is as though he has been given a new lease of life and takes me back to his glory days when Renshaw was his lead out man with Bernie Eisel marshalling things for him.

>70 elkiedee: I have to admit, Luci, I didn't know that when I was listening to her. Always been a big fan of Griffith.

>71 richardderus: Certainly agree with that, RD. Human rights clearly apply to all of us equally.

>72 johnsimpson: I like Cavendish but his number of stage wins being more or not he will never approach Merckx's palmares.

Hi Paul and happy new thread, sounds like your move has gone well and that you will have your book shelves sorted before too long. Everytime I sort my bookshelves I find something that I stashed away but is so intriguing that I need to read it right away!

>75 DeltaQueen50: Lovely to see you, dear Judy. I do have the same sorts of experiences when I am going through my books and it reminds me that I ought to have read a particular book long before now!

>68 PaulCranswick: I don't think I've ever listened to Nancy Griffith, beyond what I might catch in passing on a radio station.

>76 PaulCranswick: Good luck with the arranging and rearranging and organizing and finding lost treasures and generally shaking things up in your life.

I bought this condo at the end of 2019, but I have recently decided that I won't be staying in this area. So now I have a few years to figure out where I'll be going. I'll be inspired by you and all the other LTers with relocations recently.

>62 justchris: *sigh* as it happens, I also have strong feelings on this subject. I come from a place where what little "gender identity" I have comes from shared experiences and shared oppression. (E.g. the experience of being raised as a girl, or of receiving a pelvic exam from a careless doctor.)

I'm tempted to argue about this topic at great length. (Hint: I support J.K. Rowling's right to say whatever she wants, and in particular not to conform to gender identity orthodoxy.)

But net.discussions of this generally don't end well, and this particular discussion is taking place on someone else's thread.

I found a thread in this group that appears to be yours, and stuck a star on it. When I have time, I'll catch up on it, but won't bring this discussion there unless it's already present in some form.

Phew Paul! We’re through to the finals. England players have an impressive range of belly slides.

I’m not sure I can survive watching the final; last night was tense enough.

>77 justchris: I love her gentle homespun storytelling, Chris.

>78 ArlieS: Thanks for your thoughtful post. As you could probably see from my comments I am quite loathe to blame and/or label people phobic when their views don't perfectly align with that currently in vogue. I am a great believer in freedom of expression and speech within very broad confines. The confine obviously being that I do believe that the existential right of everyone to be treated equally both as an individual by the rest of humankind as well as under law and irrespective of race, creed, gender, age and sexuality is a universal given.

I do take umbrage with oppression whether of the minority by the majority or vice versa and I sincerely believe that mutual tolerance and understanding (and sometimes forgiveness) will take us all much further than condemnation.

>79 humouress: I have been buzzing all day, Nina.

Pretty soft penalty actually and kudos to Denmark and the way they performed amid a very difficult tournament for their players. On the balance of play there is little doubt that England deserved it and in fairness the challenge on Kane in the second half of normal time looked a better penalty shout than the one given.

Italy will be stressful and tough - if Kasper Schmeichel was playing for us (and I think he was born in England - I would be less stressed. What a performance he put on.

Congrats on reaching the Finals, Paul!!

>82 connie53: Thanks Connie. We had been World Champions for less than two months when I was born at the beginning of September in 1966. It has been a long time coming and we were so close in Italy 1990 and Euro 96 losing Semi-Final penalties.

Both France and the Netherlands gave glimpses and Belgium went into the tournament as World Number One in the rankings but I do feel that the best two teams over the tournament will grace the final. Italy will be tough but I will be watching and hoping and chewing my nails to the quick at the weekend.

>81 PaulCranswick: Pickford has been solid all tournament but he seemed a little off his game last night and in the previous match. Mind you, all our boys seemed bit keyed up for the first half.

Our commentator noted that he beat George Banks’ (England) record of keeping a clean sheet by about 7 minutes.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/333568

>85 SilverWolf28: Thanks Silver.

BOOK #75



Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling
Date Published : 1997
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 332 pp

Challenges :
British Author Challenge : 39
Queen Betty Challenge : 28/70
52 Book Club Challenge : 25/52

The first of the Potty Harry books.

Ok I liked it. If I had read it in my teens I would have loved it.

Some of it was a tad juvenile but I guess that would be its strength as well as its weakness and I suppose the characters were a little obvious but not much the worse for that. I may even read another one.

I have made 75 in early July so I am reasonably pleased with my reading progress this year.

Congratulations on 75!

>87 PaulCranswick: I loved Harry Potter as an adult, but fantasy is my thing and I had a 6 year old daughter at the time.

>87 PaulCranswick: The first three are pretty fun reads, but by book four the bloat kicks in and they loose some of the charm.

>87 PaulCranswick: >89 quondame: So I started reading the Harry Potter books after the fourth one came out because my husband bought it for me but I found it hard to see beyond the hype. They're fun to read but I didn't spot what made them the phenomenon they are.

Any takers?

Grats on 75.

>89 quondame: Thank you, Susan. I enjoyed it far more than I expected and I can certainly see why it became so popular. It would have been one to read to the kids for sure.

>90 amanda4242: The repetitive vanquishing of evil does lose its sheen after the third pass!

>91 humouress: I don't think we'll ever really know why some books catch fire and others do not, Nina. Every year there are at least two of the shortlisted books for the Booker that completely baffle me and sometimes the winner too.

>92 ArlieS: Thank you!

I missed it. Congratulations on 75! Are you going for a double this year?

>87 PaulCranswick: Congratulations on reaching 75, Paul!

The beauty of Harry Potter is that it starts juvenile, and grows up through the series.

>95 humouress: Nina, thanks. I am hoping to get there at least. If I can replicate last month often enough, then I will do it comfortably.

>96 CoffeeCan: Shame you are spam because I love coffee.

>97 FAMeulstee: Thank you Anita. It is funny isn't it the more mature was Potty Harry, the less his books seemed to have been enjoyed.

>93 PaulCranswick: The first Harry Potter is a fun book, but the first movie is even better!

Owls! Dumbledore! Hagrid! Hogwarts!

>100 m.belljackson: Hagrid must be my favourite character. Book was better than the film for me.

Congrats on hitting 75!

>102 drneutron: Thanks Jim

>91 humouress:
I completely agree with you about the Harry Potty books. I have often wondered why certain books are such a phenomena. For instance Twilight - what is so very special about that series? It is basically a Harlequin romance with vampires. Of course, then that leads to the question about what are Romance novels so popular? I think it has to do with reading levels. I think that the Harry potty books are easy to read. They are juvenile literature. I can understand why kids would like them. What I have trouble getting is why adults were so attracted to them? The only answer I can find that makes sense is the reading level and, for some, the shared reading experience with their kids.

I also strongly suspect that many readers have never read the books. I think they watched the movies and tell everybody that they read the books. I do have to give the movies credit - they follow the plots of the books closely and I don't think there is a clinker of a movie among them. The producers of the movies should be applauded for keeping the movies faithful to the spirit of the books. This is something that rarely happens in the world of translating a book into a movie or TV series.

I am slowly working my way through the series and am now on book 4 and the bloat has definitely set in. I think that Book 4 is more backstory than forward moving plot. The plot for the series is simplistic and for a person with my reading experience you can see the outcomes from a mile away. There is very little surprising to be found in the plot. I think that the strength of the series, if there is one, is in the interesting secondary characters that the author created. Those creations are the heart and soul of the stories and give the simple plot and simple main stock characters some backbone and texture.

The other attraction to the books are that they are so undemanding. It is a perfect fantasy world with plain and obvious good and evil main characters. Compared with other children's fantasy series from the same time period (Golden Compass, or Septimus Heap for example) these are simple and straightforward with no complications from things like climate change, or extinction of species, pollution, etc. etc.

I do intend to continue listening to the Harry potty series because Jim Dale does an outstanding job of narrating. If it weren't for him I would call it quits on the series because the plots are just not that interesting. However, Dale is outstanding! I find that I often recommend this series for family listening on road trips as it will entertain adults and children over the long haul.

Paul - you might consider reserving these books for listening on your long haul flights. I am listening to one book on each of my 18 hours trips to and from Kansas.

>104 benitastrnad: Interesting perspective on the phenomenon of what makes a successful book series. Usually I would say timing and hitting the sweet spot with a craftily identified target audience. I can guarantee that I will not fold and read Twilght, Hunger Games, Fifty Shades or Divergent series.

As to long distance reading, I have Poldark and the Outlander series to go at.

>87 PaulCranswick: I was so distracted by you finally reading Harry that I didn't notice you've hit 75! Congratulations!

>104 benitastrnad: I also strongly suspect that many readers have never read the books. I think they watched the movies and tell everybody that they read the books.

I'm not sure that's entirely true with Harry Potter since I've seen too many people walking around with well-worn copies for me to believe that's the case. And it would be pretty hard to fake it with the later books since the movies make some pretty significant changes.

>106 amanda4242: Thanks Amanda. I am not even at half your figure but I am happy to still have virtually half a year to go at the next 75.

>107 amanda4242: There may be some truth in that because whilst I have seen the Potty Harry books, I didn't really watch them - they were just sort of on.

>87 PaulCranswick: Congratulations on your 75th! (Read, of course, being so much younger than I am and I'm only 42 (for the 20th time).)

>109 richardderus: I having been watching Uncle Joe Biden increasingly stumble his way through press conferences and speeches and I am more convinced that we are mere striplings, RD. I had expressed some concern during the election about the fellow's cognitive well-being and it looks like he is finding things a bit much. I really do wish him and his administration well and I pray that he gets something of a second wind.
I prefer a bit of forgetfulness to downright mean-mindedness anyhow as we had with the previous incumbent.

.

I wouldn't say the later Harry Potter books are bloated versions of previous ones - though that isn't completely off the mark. The stories and the tone noticeably grow up with HP&C.

Twilight was pitch perfect girl wish fulfillment which my daughter loved and a couple years on forcefully donated the volumes for kindling (I suspect movie Edward's twinkle wasn't up to snuff).

>111 quondame: Your post gave me the biggest chuckle today, Susan.

I've read The Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent - the first book in the series - and think I have others in the Kindle TBR - I probably read more dystopian fiction - YA and adult - in my teens than I have as an adult - but I wouldn't dismiss reading them or more Harry Potter. There are other books which don't appeal to me at all, and that includes the Twlight series.

Congratulations on 75 reads Paul. Inly ever read the first volume of Potter, I got fed up with the necessary repetition kids need. I'm not much of a reader of kids or YA books.

I thought that the Potter series did a great job getting so many kids enchanted with reading though.

I listened to the first HP book on CD read by Stephen Fry. It was on a list of best audiobooks for children. Hard to find at least over here, Jim Dale version was a lot easier to find but less well thought of.
My wife just watched all the movies, I stuck with the first couple but ran out of steam.
Hope you are well Paul. I see you moved. Did someone say there is a picture of your library? Can't seem to find it.

Congratulations on reaching 75!

The Harry Potter books build in length and complexity, and in my opinion peak in books 4 and 5 then go a little down hill. The first one is the weakest if you think it is ok, then the second might appeal more.

>21 PaulCranswick: "Interior Chinatown" by Charles Yu was an excellent novel. I think you'll enjoy it. I finished "Dhalgren" by Samuel Delany last month, and it's bizarre but ok.

>113 elkiedee: Twilight, Hunger Games and Divergent don't appeal to me TBH, Luci. I guess that there are just so many books and too little time.

>114 Caroline_McElwee: This group has lead me to more YA fiction than I would otherwise have bothered with, Caroline and often with extremely positive results. I particularly enjoyed the books by Morris Gleitzman for example and I always loved Ian Serraillier and Henry Treece.

>115 hredwards: Nice to see you Harold. I don't read audio books as a rule but Stephen Fry would be a draw, I must say. I remember some of the group being enchanted by the late Alan Rickman reading Thomas Hardy.

This reprise is for you :

>116 DMulvee: Thank you.

Aren't opinions wonderful? I think yours is the first comment making the debut novel the weakest and I'm being impelled towards finding out for myself!

>117 ocgreg34: Nice to see you here Greg.

Dhalgren was on a list I had last year of the top chunksters from the last 50 years and the synopsis leads me to think your assessment of it being bizarre is on the money.

Hey Paul - you don't have to read the whole Potter series - it was a promise, not a punishment!

>121 m.belljackson: As I recall, Marianne, I promise to read a Harry Potter book and I have done so. From my review you will see that I had whispered qualified approval for the book and I may have little choice to at least read the next one! No punishment whatsoever. xx

>78 ArlieS: Well met! Our kind host has diligently ignored the ball on the floor, and I can respect that. You're welcome to chat me up on my thread.

>105 PaulCranswick: Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey both sounded nauseating and reinforcing abuser tropes as romance. Yuck. Not even remotely tempted. Read the back cover of Divergent, and it sounded uninterestingly derivative.

The Hunger Games, though. I think the trilogy is a brilliant meditation on the trauma of state-sponsored violence. And unlike the Harry Potter books, it raises serious issues and deals with them, rather than dropping them totally unresolved/ignored or worse acting as apologetics for some truly terrible things. I very much enjoyed the movies just as much as the books. I was impressed by the one or two author interviews I found when I looked her up after finishing the first book.

>123 justchris: That's a good point about The Hunger Games trilogy. I'm kicking myself for missing the prequel as a Kindle Daily Deal a few weeks ago. Not sure how that happened. I'd seen it as aimed at older children but my sons' school read it in English lessons as an example of dystopian fiction in year 7 or 8 (11/12 or 12/13.

>124 elkiedee: Some pretty heavy material for tweens. What did your son think of it?

>123 justchris: Did I ignore the ball on the floor, Chris? Not intentionally so, My advocacy has always been for tolerance and informed respectful debate. Seen plenty of that from all involved here I am pleased to say.

If my humble abode helps brings members together as friends then I will be overjoyed.

None of those series remotely appeal to me to be quite honest, Chris, but doesn't mean that they are necessarily bad.

>124 elkiedee: So it seems of the four the one I'm harshest on is the Hunger Games. Still won't read it though, Luci. (I said that about Potty Harry too!)

>125 justchris: I'm sure that at 11 (the age when I was given LOTR to read) I would have been keen to read it.

>127 PaulCranswick: The illustrated version of The Hobbit is the first book I remember owning, starting when I was around 7-8, maybe. I still have it, though I had to have it rebound because the cheap paperback glue failed many years ago. I'll be screening the animated movies the illustrations for that edition came from soon for the kids in my building. Gotta love 1970s musicals.

>120 PaulCranswick: Most people I've discussed it with thought the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was the weakest, but as it wasn't at all the same story as HP&tPS it suffered more in comparison than any of the later ones.

Danny really liked The Hunger Games and quickly devoured the next two books. Sadly at around the start of lockdown he really lost interest in reading - he's been reading Volume 1 of LOTR since then. I've suggested he tries other things as he can always come back to LOTR at another time. I'm hoping he'll rediscover reading at some point.

At his age I was still reading some YA fiction but I was beginning to mix it with adult books, a wide range of genres and trashy stuff to quite literary books.

>119 PaulCranswick: That looks great!

Happy Weekend, Paul. Congrats on hitting #75! Lets see if we can double that by year's end. LOVE the shelves. Wow!

>128 justchris: The Fellowship of the Ring was my first read although I remember watching The Hobbit being told on a BBC programme called Jackanory narrated by a brilliant comedic actor Bernard Cribbins. I was utterly enthralled so much so that I can remember it 45 years later!

>129 quondame: That is second in the series, Susan, right?

Hi Paul.

>87 PaulCranswick: Congrats on #75. Congrats on reading HP. I guess I’m a tad surprised that you have no more to say about it. Ah well.

>89 quondame: I loved Harry Potter reading it for the first time as an adult, too, Susan. My daughter was 8 when the first movie came out in 2001. I insisted that we read the book before I’d let her see it, and we were hooked.

>91 humouress: They are like LOTR, Nina. You either care passionately or you don’t. I care passionately about HP and could care less about LOTR in any way, shape or form. As I joke with my daughter, I only like Gollum and the trees. (Ents?)

>105 PaulCranswick: Both Poldark and Outlander are excellent series, although IMO Poldark gets a bit tedious after the 20-year hiatus between book 4 Warleggan and book 5 The Black Moon. I just now discovered that #9 in the Outlander series, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, will finally be published later this year and immediately pre-ordered it.

>115 hredwards: There are quite a few comparison videos of Jim Dale’s Stephen Fry’s readings of HP on YouTube. Being in the US it was easier to get Jim Dale’s version, and for years I didn’t even realize there was a different English reader. For me, it’s Jim Dale all the way.

>130 elkiedee: My three are interesting when it comes to reading. Yasmyne still reads but sporadically. Kyran adores audio books and usually has something about history, psychology, sociology, genetics, politics or theology on the go (cheerful, I know) but Belle who was originally the most dedicated reader has gone the same way as Danny and presently seems uninterested.

>131 DMulvee: The corridor of books!

>132 msf59: We'll both make it Mark, I'm sure (more sure of you than me anyway!)

>133 Rodake_6931: Good for you, but no thanks......too busy trying to actually earn my money.

>135 karenmarie: Thank you, Karen. I guess it is difficult to review HP from a fresh perspective which is why I didn't want to labour a point too much. I can see why it was successful but I guess nobody will ever really understand how it quite captured the imagination quite how it did.

The four books - Hobbit and the three LOTR books are books I could not be without at home and, for someone who rarely re-reads, I have read all of them 3 times. I guess I owe a debt of gratitude in particular to The Fellowship of the Ring as it started my love of reading in a more serious way - that and The Albermarle Book of Modern Verse which has followed me round for 45 years after I won it as a school prize. I wouldn't have continued to write poetry without the influence of that wonderful book.

I have read the first three Poldark books and will get to Warleggan and The Black Moon this year when I eventually travel back to England. I have the first two Outlander books on the shelves.

>138 PaulCranswick: I have no hope of reading the whole thread but the post above made me nostalgic for Tolkien. I also have reread those books more than any, particularly The Hobbit that I just find magical. I read all the series aloud with a very long-time-ago boyfriend when we did not have a television or digital devices. I haven't reread HP and don't plan to.

I started Poldark and then watched the series. Maybe I'll get back to the books. I did like Graham's prose style.

>139 witchyrichy: I'm yearning for Tolkien too, Karen just discussing the books.

Winston Graham's storytelling was typical of British writers from that era and probably my favourite sub-genre of literature.

I'm glad you enjoyed the first Harry Potter book. We read them as they came out - my kids anxiously awaiting each new book. We would buy two copies (one for each child) the very minute they came out and the ex-hub and I would wait until they were done ... or snatch bits of reading while the kids were elsewhere....

We went to one or two of the local book release parties; my daughter loved costumes so she would be costumed.

Scientists, post docs and technicians discussed them at work as the new ones came out and we speculated on the plot behind the as-yet-unreleased titles. I was sure I knew who the Half Blood Prince was ...I was wrong.

My kids reread them all several times, although I never have.

Tolkien was my first love, too. I've probably reread them ten times or so. Before LT I did a lot more rereading - now I can't keep up with everything I want to read.

>141 streamsong: It is nice to remember the excitement that the Harry Potter books releases occasioned. As a book lover I will always be grateful to Rowling for being capable of achieving that.

>134 PaulCranswick: Yes, CoS is the second.

>135 karenmarie: As much as I loved Poldark on first viewing and reading way back when, my re-read and re-viewing turn them into soap opera by the fourth volume and the suds got thicker the further along. Part of that had to do with knowing a great deal more about history and period clothing.

I did not join the LotR crowd when my high school incubated it, probably a big miscalculation, but about 6-8 years later in the mid 70s, certainly after college. I had however really loved Farmer Giles of Ham from my Jr. High days without having registered who the author was. For a few years, a friend and I would start a read in Sept and travel a few days a week through Middle Earth following along through spring. The penciled in dates through out the volume as well as the pages floating free are the tracks of many passages.

>142 PaulCranswick: We brought home 3 copies of volume 7 after midnight and got very little sleep if any until we had all finished.

>143 quondame: Weakest or not Susan, I guess I shall have to pick it up sooner or later.

>138 PaulCranswick: You made me curious about The Albemarle Book of Modern Verse, available on Amazon Marketplace for £885+ Paul, you have a treasure in more ways than one it seems!

Hello Paul! Nice to see you. Congratulations on reaching 75 books - wow! I am jealous that you are reading Harry Potter for the first time. I still love them, though I get their flaws and reader complaints. Here's my HP story: I had heard how great they were and put them on my "mean to read one day" list. When Callia was born she was a c-section and I had a really hard time staying in bed and resting/recovering from the surgery. Marina was also a c-section and my mom gave me the first book when I got home from the hospital. No trouble staying in bed:) The first four books were published then and I stayed in bed long enough to read them all.

Alan Rickman reading Hardy - that was a wonderful 15 hours! I could hardly attend to the story for the first hour or so because I was so excited that Alan Rickman was in my car, but like any great actor, he disappeared and I was swept away by the story.

>145 Caroline_McElwee: Wow Caroline! I doubt whether anybody would pay that for my tatty copy but then again I wouldn't sell it for double that anyway.

>146 AMQS: Lovely to hear from you, Anne.
I am sure that one day you will reappear in my dreams with Alan Rickman lodged in your aural canal!

Lovely that you got a school prize that means so much to you. My stepdad's father gave me his school prize works of Shakespeare in 3 volume - the fact that it was a school prize, his name and the date are inscribed.

BOOK #76



Rendang by Will Harris
Date of Publication : 2020
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 85 pp

Challenges :
Poetry : 7/12

Rendang is an Indo-Malay dish in which meat (usually beef) is slow cooked in spices. Generally served for special occasions, including weddings, it is a dish much revered locally and in our home too.

The collection is uneven but Harris displays a keen eye for fractured suburbia, displacement and the trying to fit into two very different worlds. His father white British and his mother from Indonesia his writing aligns more to his maternal influences than those from his father. There is also a yearning together with a revulsion for his Asian "homeland" that is a feeling common to all of us that love and occasionally loathe the locale with slightly more bias to the former.

The poem that will remain with me and I think will be included in anthologies most is "Mother Country"

The shutters open for landing,

I see the pandan-leafed

interior expanding

towards the edge of a relieved

horizon. Down along

the wet banks of the Ciliwung

are slums I have forgotten,

the river like a loosely

sutured wound. As we begin

our descent into the black

smog of an emerging

power, I made out the tin

shacks, the stalls selling juices,

the red-tiled colonial

barracks, the new mall…

It is raining profusely.

After years of her urging

me to go, me holding back,

I have no more excuses.

>148 elkiedee: Yes my name is in it too, Luci. I got into the habit of writing my name into most of my books probably as a result of that!

>141 streamsong: Our family also read the HP books as they came out. You did have to read them on the day of release to avoid spoilers. I read aloud the first couple of books several times.
After listening through the whole series a couple of years ago - Stephen Fry, narrator, I'm now done with them for good. Rather explore what else is out there.
Some good YA authors to try - Philip Reeve, Jonathan Stroud, Patrick Ness, Siobhan Dowd.

>151 avatiakh: Nice to see you posting, Kerry. I would have thought that Stephen Fry did a tremendous job of narration.
I have books by Patrick Ness on the shelves.

A belated happy new thread, Paul - and congratulations on reaching the magic goal with a magic book.
>68 PaulCranswick: That is very wise guide - I hope that I am also acting according to it.
I wish you a wonderful sunday.

>153 SirThomas: Thanks Thomas. You are one of the group's good guys!

Thanks for the praise Paul, I'm happy to give it back to you.

>155 SirThomas: Have a great weekend, Thomas

BOOK #77



Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys
Date of Publication : 2016
Origin of Author : USA
Pages : 383 pp

Challenges
52 Book Club Challenge : 26/52

This Carnegie Award winning novel recounts the little known but apparently largest ever maritime disaster in 1945 as mainly ethnic Germans were fleeing the oncoming Red Army and Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk with the loss of 9,600 lives.

The story is told from the perspective of four young people who finished up on the ship - a Lithuanian nurse, a pregnant young Polish lady, a young German fleeing from the Nazi's with a powerful secret and a Nazi.

A very effective piece of storytelling.

>157 PaulCranswick:
I am a big fan of Ruta Septys's books. She has one that came out in 2020 Fountains of Silence that is about the Spanish Civil War. Her best known work is Between Shades of Gray that is set in Lithuania and was made into a movie with the same title. Gunter Grass also wrote a book about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

>158 benitastrnad: Benita, I have Crabwalk by Grass on the shelves as well as Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray. She is a good storyteller.

Well they have been singing "Football's Coming Home" in England but after losing the final on a cruel penalty shootout "Football's Coming Rome" instead.

Wow, lots to catch up on here! Congrats on 75--I just hit my 75th book this weekend.

Your bookshelves look gorgeous.

Amazing that you have just read the first Harry Potter book now. I read them all right along with my kids when the series was still coming out. My kids were the perfect age--they started the series when the third book came out, and then were growing up along with the characters and so were able to deal with the darker themes in the later books. For a period of several years, we were a family obsessed. We went to midnight release parties and ordered multiple copies of each one so we could all read at the same time. I remember summers at swim meets when every kid had a copy of the latest Harry Potter under their deck chair, and a Hogwarts-themed Halloween party at our Children's Museum where kids got invitations addressed to them at "the cupboard under the stairs". These books were a significant part of my children's childhood and I'm still fond of rereading them. (Book 3 is the best IMHO)

But I don't have an answer to your question about why they took off the way they did.

>160 PaulCranswick: That was a hard fought match that could have gone either way at any time. Though the final result was, obviously, disappointing our boys have done us proud this year. I would like to see less dependence on trying to create free kicks which disrupt the momentum (although last night was better than the Denmark match) and it would have been nice if they could have played more in the Italian half as they had earlier in the tournament. The penalty shoot out just came down to luck and nerves and, unfortunately, put a lot of pressure on the shoulders of three young players. Pickford did well, too, in goal.

I did like how friendly the game was on the pitch which, I think, was down to the Italian team especially. Well done to them for the win.

But the England team still did an excellent job to take us all the way to the finals.

Maybe next year ... (touch wood)?

>161 AnneDC: We are neck and neck so to speak, Anne.

Don't really know why but Yasmyne and Kyran didn't really take to Potty Harry.

>162 humouress: An awful way to lose but I think that the Italians shaded it in all fairness. I feel so sorry for the three English boys who missed kicks, especially since two of them were brought on specifically because they were specialist penalty takers.

They did us all proud and Italy probably have suffered longer in Europe than elsewhere due to the pandemic so it is nice that if anybody beat us it was them.

I saw some comments about some racist tweets to the three lads who missed - disgusting. I'm a white, heterosexual middle aged man who was proud of all my countrymen on that field yesterday. Thank you for bringing joy to the nation these few weeks. Plus the "spoiled" footballers donated all their bonuses to the National Health Service. Bravo!

>163 PaulCranswick: I saw mention about the tweets although I didn't see them. Those boys did sterling work on the field and were unfortunate under pressure in the shoot-out.

>164 humouress: Yep. Isn't it sad that a few idiots on social media can leave a sourish taste when all of us were so together. I do believe that sport in the UK has lead the way in cultural and racial integration and has made heroes of people of all races and creeds. My own club, Leeds United, which has had trouble in the past with a minority of lunatic fans, pioneered integration in football in England - the first black player to star in the top flight was our winger Albert Johanneson in the mid 1960s, we had the first player of colour to play for England - Paul Reaney (I don't understand why many books record it as Viv Anderson who debuted 10 years later) and our Captain on the way to the European Champions Semis was the wonderful South African - The Chief - Lucas Radebe. I am proud of the contribution made by Leeds United in that respect especially as we always used to get such bad press.

Congratulations Paul and Anne. I also finished my 75th "book" of the year - my total does include one extremely short essay by George Orwell - 6 pages! but also some fairly long and/or substantial reads.

I'm not really into football or other sports and I was brought up in a family which if it supported anyone would be backing Ireland (my mum's family) and Wales (my stepdad) and anyone but England unless there were good reasons not to - apartheid South Africa for example. But I think this team has made supporting England feel like something very different, with players supporting taking the knee and Black Lives Matter with full public backing of their team mates and the manager, with their campaigning which went well beyond charity events and included making the questions about why it was necessary very obvious - the NHS, feeding children etc.

>166 elkiedee: I do feel English (and British), Luci, even though my Gran was Irish but I do let history in when it comes to rugby union (remember that we played Rugby League mainly in the Yorkshire coalfields) which was perceived when I was younger as a Public Schoolboy's game. Then I would support Ireland and most wholeheartedly the British Lions.

This football team has been a credit to the nation in so many ways.

We lived opposite Headingley Rugby ground (Cricket was on the other side of the same site) and people always wanted to take short cuts through our garden. Some of them would try to bribe my much younger brother to let them through - he must have been all of 5 or 6 at the time.

>168 elkiedee: Decent way of making money at an early age! Headingley is a unique sporting venue.

Book #78



Corridors of Power by CP Snow
Date Published : 1964
Origin of Author : UK
Pages : 352 pp

Challenges
52 Book Club Challenge : 27/52
Queen Betty Challenge : 30/70

This novel is about the labyrinthine ways of politics. It is set in the mid 1950s and concerns a politician and his civil servants who try to achieve a policy that Britain will forego an independent nuclear deterrent and the attempt to pass legislature to that effect.

Oh the precarious life of a politician even then!

I am reading an excellent book by a Canadian author. Boat People by Sharon Bala. I am more than half done with the book and I already know that this one will make my Top Books of the year list. This one is about refugees. It won the Harper Lee Legal Fiction Award in 2019. This award is given by the University of Alabama Law School for the best fiction book of the year that depicts the legal profession and how it works. The Canadian system for granting asylum is different than that of the U. S. but it is very realistic in dealing with the process. It is based on a real incident in 2010 when a boat of 500 Siri Lankan refugees sought political asylum in Canada. It has been very good reading.

>171 benitastrnad: That certainly looks like one to look for, Benita.

Glad to see your foray into the world of Harry Potter was generally enjoyable, Paul. I think I started reading them at a pretty good time - I was 19, four books had come out, and I had been hearing all sorts of responses to them from "they're fantastic!" to "they're evil and promote witchcraft", and as a very young adult read the first to decide for myself. I really enjoyed it, read the rest, and then waited with bated breath for each new book with everyone else. Me, one of my brothers, and one of my sisters were all reading them around the same time, and I can remember putting two copies of the sixth one on hold at the library, knowing that would be enough for the three of us to be able to read one whenever we wanted (our work schedules meant we wouldn't generally all be home at once). I think that remains the one book my youngest brother has ever read faster than me. I would rate the fifth book the weakest, but of the movies it's my second favorite.

I can't say exactly what made that book series hit right, but it seems to me a fun story, good marketing, and word of mouth all help make a book big. Often people want to read what others are reading, so if it's a best seller or their friends are talking about it, they'll request it from the library. Sometimes that means I'll try something - I did read Twilight for that reason, and it was an alright "potato chip" book to read in a weekend, but I won't revisit them. It's how I discovered All the Light We Cannot See as well. Other times, I decide to read something a little less popular, knowing that if my patrons already know about the super-popular title, maybe I can recommend something they *don't* know about (I didn't choose to read Fifty Shades of Grey).

Congrats on reaching 75 and beyond! I'm close - I have a couple of short books I expect to finish soon.

>173 bell7: I won't read the second one so quickly as I am concentrating on reducing my TBR mountain a bit. I will not write it off though as I have done in the past.

I am focused o beating my best ever book total on LT which has been 157 and I would have been well ahead of schedule had I not lost my closest friend a couple of months ago to such a tragic and untimely death.

Congrats on reading 75 and beyond, Paul. I’ve yet to see a picture of your newly set up bookcases. The pics keep disappearing before I get to them. My own fault for being so far behind in the threads.

>175 Familyhistorian: I don't know why that happens, Meg, but I can still see them at post >119 PaulCranswick:.

>176 PaulCranswick: I'm not sure what it is, Paul. I couldn't see the pictures on either Safari or Firefox. I even signed into the dreaded Chrome and it shows a broken link.

>177 Familyhistorian: I can still see it. I'm on Safari.

>177 Familyhistorian: I couldn't understand it either Meg because I checked my previous thread and the picture there had disappeared but I can still see the one on this thread.

>178 humouress: I have safari and chrome. I need to update my safari which can be a problem but I can see it on chrome.

Just popping in....way behind. I'm glad you got to Harry Potter finally, and didn't hate it.

I can't see the photo in >119 PaulCranswick: either.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/333710

>180 laytonwoman3rd: Nice to see you Linda. I will look at re-posting it again.

>181 SilverWolf28: Thanks Silver.

Hey Paul, looks like the Hogwarts Gates flew open with all the folks waiting for your promised first read!

>183 m.belljackson: Thanks to your persistence, Marianne. xx

BOOK #79



Arab Jazz by Karim Miske
Date of Publication : 2012
Origin of Author : Mauritania
Pages : 242 pp

Challenges :
Around the World : 33

This would make a better movie than it was a book. A Parisian version of Guy Ritchie would have fun with this.

A grisly murder of a young air stewardess in the 19th arondissement where muslims, christians, jews and jehovah's witnesses live in cramped accommodation alongside each other. Is the killing sex related, or drugs or religion or a mixture of all three?

Not telling you - read it yourself!

PC, I think your floating issue of invisibility in >119 PaulCranswick: is down to the URL. If I browse w/US browser addy, it's an expired URL, or http instead of https.

>185 PaulCranswick: looks like fun!

>186 richardderus: I will go back to Hani's fb page where I took it from and see if I can reload the image. Thanks, RD.

READING PLAN FOR JULY 2021

1. The Badger : Bernard Hinault and the Fall and Rise of French Cycling by William Fotheringham DONE
2. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by JK Rowling DONE
3. The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
4. The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
5. Arab Jazz by Karim Miske DONE
6. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
7. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
8. Fifteen Decisive Battles by Edward Shepherd Creasy
9. Hurry Me Down by John Wain
10. Rendang by Will Harris DONE
11. The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell
12. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
13. Freedom and Death by Nikos Kazantzakis
14. The Devil's Pool by George Sand
15. The Famished Road by Ben Okri
16. The Corridors of Power by CP Snow DONE
17. Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe
18. The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi
19. Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys DONE
20. The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier
21. Happy Families by Carlos Fuentes
22. Throwing Sparks by Abdo Khal
23. The Prospector by JMG Le Clezio
24. Trilby by George du Maurier

Here is a different one with yours truly in home dress pondering on his partial organisation of the books.

>189 PaulCranswick: Paul, we've talked about this: if you are going to post pictures of your shelves, you *must* make sure we can read the titles.

>190 amanda4242: Thousand apologies. Let me get them all properly sorted and I will repost something for you. x

For what it's worth, I can see the shelves in >119 PaulCranswick: perfectly. (Although to Amanda's point, the angle is not good for browsing titles.)

>192 AnneDC: I think that is a fair complaint, Anne. I went back to look at my photo and even I can only identify a handful of titles. in >119 PaulCranswick: the following titles are clearish :

Annie John
I am Radar
Eye of the Leopard
Resistance
Abyssinian Chronicles
More than This
Zoli

My current reading

I am trying to progress the following books this weekend.

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (Pulitzer & AAC)
Our Mutual Friend by Chuckles (1001 & Queen Vic)
Throwing Sparks by Abdo Khal (Around the World - Saudi Arabia}
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi (Around the World - Malta, Queen Betty)

Throwing Sparks sounds very intriguing...my Saudi friend Saleem thought it was only okay, but several non-Saudi Arab friends rate it very highly.

So hurry up!

>119 PaulCranswick: The url signature expired. I find this happens when I have shared pics from FB or elsewhere - the photo urls are short lived.

eta: I had been able to see it previously but not now.

>196 richardderus: Will let you know anon, RD.

>197 RBeffa: I'm not sure how to get over that, Ron.

>189 PaulCranswick: I can see the bookshelves in this post. They look so neat unlike my shelves that are starting to get things crammed onto them when there is no room left.

>199 Familyhistorian: That's good, Meg. It seems that these images have a limited shelf life (pun only slightly intended).
My fourteen shelves cover mainly my unread collection. I say mainly because I do keep some of my favourite authors together - i.e. all the Zola's I have in the house are kept together irrespective of whether it is read or not. I also keep my poetry and plays together on the same basis and because of my propensity to dip. As a simple calculation there are 14 cases of six shelves each double stacked. If each bookcase has 400 books on average that equates to about 5,600 books. I also have two old wooden bookcases in the bedroom which are crammed full of the books I have read but simply cannot bear to be parted from or which may tempt me to a re-read. They are much fuller and add about another thousand titles. Hani keeps her cookery collection of maybe another couple of hundred titles in a separate case in the kitchen area. Allowing that I also have a couple of hundred books in the UK then my total collection has decreased to around approximately 7,500 books.

That means I haven given away or lost 4,000 books in the last decade. This week alone I gifted around 700 books to the condo library here.
I used to read a lot of series books back in the day:
for example Sandford, Block, Mankell, Nesbo, Indridason, Silva, Camilleri, Rankin, Leon, Robinson, Child, and authors such as Robert Goddard and I haven't kept those books either and I also was saddened to notice that a box with some of my most prized books (some of my poetry - Hughes especially, and all my Graham Greene, Muriel Spark and Somerset Maugham books) got lost when we moved a couple of years ago. I will rebuy them at some stage for re-reads but I miss looking at them too!

Speaking of books - my reading stalled over the weekend as I set about finishing the sorting into alphabetical and chronological (by author) order of my collection and I completed things last night! So I can now place my hands on any book in my collection within 2 minutes of being asked to produce it. I'm happy.

Now back to reading.

>197 RBeffa: >198 PaulCranswick: A work-around for the photo problem, one I use, is to download the image to your own computer, so no link to FB or whatever is involved. Then upload the image from your computer to your member gallery here on LT. When you put the image in a post, link to the image in your gallery

>202 weird_O: That is a good idea, Bill. I will figure out how to do that.

>202 weird_O: That's the way I always do it too. Except I use the "junk drawer" rather than the main "Member Gallery" to store most of my photos. Any external link can go bad.

>204 laytonwoman3rd: Yes. I also use the 'junk drawer' for my images, much better than relying on a link.

Paul - my reading is really suffering of late. One of our cats must have been hit by a car. Yesterday he had surgery to remove a back leg - terrible but then he survived the hit and is currently being much loved. We live at the end of a no-exit street so being hit by a car is still surprising to me. The bones in his foot were completely torn away and precision surgery to fix them was out of our price league at several thousand dollars, plus not guaranteed to be a success.

Anyway my strategy of reading several books at once means I'm making little progress in any.

>205 avatiakh: How ghastly about your cat. I do hope he heals well and gets most of his mobility back.

>205 avatiakh: I am so sorry about your poor cat! I have heard that three-legged cats (and dogs) can adapt remarkably well. I hope yours has an uneventful recovery, and is back to a comfortable existence very soon.

>205 avatiakh: Oh no! I too hope for a speedy and uneventful recovery and ready adjustment to the tripod lifestyle.

>206 quondame: >207 laytonwoman3rd: >208 justchris: Thanks for your good wishes. He's currently living in a little pet playpen which restricts his movement to the minimum. He had to wait over the weekend for the op. Sunday morning he ripped open the door of the playpen and we found him outside sitting on a garden chair, enjoying the winter sunshine.
He's on pain relief and is in good spirits. My daughter named him Conrad as she had studied Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim at university just before we got him.

I mentioned him here on Paul's thread as he also had a cat survive a terrible accident a few years back.

>204 laytonwoman3rd: I'm still learning everyday especially on the computer. Thanks Linda to you and Bill and I will try to make use of the tips.

>205 avatiakh: Oh Kerry, I am so sorry to hear that terrible news. I was missing you around the threads and I do wish that your absence was for much nicer reasons. One of our two remaining cats was taken to the vets again and I can sense the poor little fellow's end is closing in. Bambi (he who had fallen from the fifth floor years ago and survived the vet's wishes to put him to sleep) he is now suffering with his kidneys and has been kept in the vets for the upcoming three days.

Two and a half years ago my daughter's cat became a tripod. For the moment at least this link might take you to a quick 6 second video of me releasing the tripod to show off how well she has done. https://www.facebook.com/kelly.beffa/videos/10161035514868849

>206 quondame: Yes it is an awful thing to happen. Our cats/dogs etc become a part of the family and it is incredibly upsetting when they are in pain.

>207 laytonwoman3rd: Linda, Bambi one of our cats has effectively only had three fully functioning legs for most of his life and Belle & Erni (daughter and maid/arabica princess) have done wonders over the years to make his life a full and enjoyable one.

>208 justchris: They are amazingly resilient creatures, Chris. I'm sure that Conrad (great name, by the way, Kerry) will adapt better than we might do.

>209 avatiakh: I hope that Bambi, is a good example Kerry. He never made a full recovery of course but I do think that - despite him and sister disliking me intensely - he has had a fundamentally enjoyable existence, if a little too pampered at times.

>212 RBeffa: That is such a shame, Ron, because I couldn't open your link. Same problem my friends have with my facebook links in reverse!

It is a public holiday here celebrating EID MUBARAK (The Haj). We celebrated with delicious roast leg of lamb, roast pumpkin, brussels sprouts charred with beef bacon, roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings. Followed off by homemade Tiramisu.

All good!

BOOK #80



The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier
Date of Publication : 1949
Origin of Author : Cuba
Pages : 136 pp

Challenges :
Around the World Challenge : Book 34
1001 Book First Edition : 10 (314 total)
52 Book Club Challenge : 28/52

Packs a lot into its small frame.

The story is both a critique of the dehumanisation of slavery and an understanding that power corrupts and death equalises.

The story centres around the independence of Haiti won from harsh French rule in 1803. After detailing the miserable existence of the slaves under their "owners" the slaves after several abortive revolt attempts finally see the end of the French only to fall under the murderous spell of self-proclaimed King Henri Christophe. Slavery liberated to tyranny. Strangely in often less dramatic ways the need to oppress rather than unshackle has been prophetically repeated throughout much of post-colonial Africa and it is a state of mankind that bears some introspection.

The novel also has plenty of mystical elements which is now characterised as magic realism and is a very effectively rendered early example of that genre.

>217 PaulCranswick: Good isn't it!

Hi by the way.

>218 BekkaJo: Nice to see you, Bekka.

I liked the style of the book. The short chapters suited it and helped me to accept the magic realism bits which in a more dense format would have defeated me probably.

Happy Haj! Or, at least, I hope it was.

Belated congrats on reaching 75 books for the year so far mate, i will be a bit hit and miss on here for the next week or so (see my thread for details) but as always it is nice to drop by and say hello dear friend.

>220 humouress: Thanks Nina. It was a quiet day but Kyran had his first jab the day before and was feeling under the weather yesterday.

>221 johnsimpson: Thank you, John. I will go over shortly and see what you have been up to!

>217 PaulCranswick: One of the best anti-colonial novels to come out of a former colony.

Hope the Holiday made every sacrifice worthwhile.

>223 richardderus: It is one that makes you think, RD, and its themes are just as relevant today.

I didn't sacrifice very much prior to the Haj holiday if truth be known. Bit tough for the pilgrims these days as the Saudi's are not welcoming them. It is probably one of the pillar of the religion that has the lowest priority for me as that particular regime is amongst the worst and most repressive in the world and largely gives the faith it is supposed to uphold a very bad international press.

GOOD NEWS FOR ME IS THAT MY TEMPLE OF BOOKS REOPENED YESTERDAY.

I will saunter on down there at lunchtime and see what I can see!

On the flipside, I got a call from Samsung's VP yesterday that they want to start to get the sites back to normality and asked me (and all other senior managers) to lead the teams back to site. The managers (non-construction teams as the construction boys are already in place) considered team leaders will be at site for strategy purposes this week and the teams back fully within the next week.
That means Commercial Manager, Contract Manager (your correspondent), Administration Manager, Accounts Manager, Purchasing Manager, Cost Manager, Planning Manager, Design Manager and MEP Manager all returned to site yesterday.

I was enjoying my time in my new home but eating far too many home baked breads and cookies!

>225 PaulCranswick: Excellent!

>227 drneutron: I am pretty pumped, Jim.

As you know I am no conservative, but I am extremely concerned that Doctor Fauci is getting an easy ride from much of the American media when he has been implicated in funding the Wuhan lab which now seems in most probability the source of the pandemic and is splitting hairs about whether it is Gain of Function research or not. It was certainly dangerous research and it was uncontrolled - ie monies were passed to the Chinese government lab with no checks and balances in place to control what they were doing there. Apparently they were going out into caves and taking viruses from bats which were not communicable to humans and then mixing it with other viruses which made it communicable. That seems to me to be extremely reckless and the fact that this "technology" is now with the Chinese rather than the West is even more concerning.

Dr Fauci lead the theorists trying to maintain that the virus was a natural occurrence but it is surely too much of a coincidence that the virus emanated from the very town in China that was undertaking highly suspect research into the very virus released on the world. He has been taking us all for fools quite frankly. There is also the question of the COVID numbers reported by China. Either they are patently understated as the world has always considered or they were prepared for the pandemic and took prior measures to reduce the impact on their own population. Perhaps China should say which one it is.

The countries in Asia Pacific are rightly concerned about the growing power and bullying attitude of China and this is getting a lot of coverage in Australia and even here. I have to say that if Dr. Fauci is criminally indicted as, I believe, the Australian government and a number of those in the American Senate may request, then this is not going to go away.

Good for you that the bookstore is open again, Paul. Looking forward to your next haul!
And back to work, does this mean that the numbers are down in Malaysia?

>230 FAMeulstee: The numbers are not really down, Anita, but Samsung have gotten approval to restart and some of the stores have been lobbying hard under the very real dangers of closure.

I have of course made use of my lunchtime to pay a visit to the Bookstore! It opened at 12 pm and I arrived bang on time. I was the seventeenth customer allowed through the doors and I was actually excited having to queue for admittance.

Not much time as I had to get back to work but I did add:

195. Independence Square by AD Miller
196. Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
197. Lot by Bryan Washington

Kyran will go to the UK in September to Birkbeck College London to study History and International Relations and he asked me to put him a reading list of novels from my collection for him to immerse himself in prior to leaving. Of course I was delighted. I picked him 10 :

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo
Shame by Salman Rushdie
Saville by David Storey
The Human Factor by Graham Greene
Docherty by Hugh McIlvanney
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

Sometimes it is great being a dad.

>233 PaulCranswick: No female authors? I think the Timonthy Mo is set in London. Are any of the others?

>235 elkiedee: I did notice that, Luci, but it was too late to go back and him some Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch or Doris Lessing. The Human Factor is also set in London. Storey's book is set in Wakefield.

This is from the Gravitas news network in India on the Rand Paul / Fauci spat. I'm tired of the American news channels Fox News being a mouthpiece of the Republican Right and CNN & CNBC doing the same for the Liberal Left. Every day more polarised and every day more opinion and propaganda than news.

India and Australia are covering the links between Fauci and Wuhan and people are getting seriously in need of answers rather than hairsplitting obfuscation. Rand Paul is not the man to bring him down as his own biases are too obvious but really the world deserves to know why Fauci's institute was funding the Wuhan lab and it awaits confirmation that the lab started the virus, inadvertently hopefully, and what reparations will be given for the lives lost and economies broken by the pandemic it brought about. I'm willing to wager a year's salary that this was not a natural occurrence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Kh-li8D2Wo

Hi Paul!

>229 PaulCranswick: I’ve only read one article about this but realize there’s a real problem with the NIH funding the Wuhan lab and that it is hairsplitting about NOT researching Gain of Function. I wonder what Fauci was thinking last March and April as he probably realized that a super coronavirus may have escaped a Chinese lab the US was funding?

>232 PaulCranswick: Yay for your lunchtime bookstore fix.

>233 PaulCranswick: Fantastic news about Kyran studying in the UK starting in September. Even more exciting is that he turned to you for a reading list.

>237 PaulCranswick: Thanks for sharing the WION youtube video. I’m now subscribed to WION on my cell phone. I'm beginning to think it was not a natural occurrence either.

>238 karenmarie: I am so pleased to see the bookstore open. I went two months without buying a book ---ME?!!

My own belief is that Dr. Fauci was incredibly naive giving money to a facility under thumb of the Chinese military and he is now relying on "progress reports" they gave him to try to justify or exonerate but more likely assuage his conscience.

The Australians are also up in arms about this and I really don't quite get the need of the Biden administration to support him so unquestioningly as it is not going to end well. They were not to blame for this as it did not occur on their watch and the Gain of Function research had been paused by President Obama's regime.

The below Australian link is very much in depth and seems well researched. Really I do think that Dr. Fauci must step down to allow a full investigation to be depoliticised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHgZtxg2_Nk

Paul - this is the first many of us have heard about the U.S. funding a Chinese lab without knowing what the research entailed.
Was Dr. Fauci in charge of this operation?

I thought the U.S. was in debt to China financially so this is a double surprise.

Yet, without the strength of the virulently attacked Dr. Fauci - so that he needs security protection for himself and his family -

even more Americans would be even more dead.

As well,
we and the rest of the world would know a lot less about the Delta Variant:
masks back on
(we never took ours off - my daughter has immune diseases)

and no traveling to Florida and, if you are smart, not to any Southern U.S. state...

and, if even smarter, apparently not to The White House.

Here's the next readathon: https://www.librarything.com/topic/333853

>239 PaulCranswick: Iiiinteresting. Must dig deeper...thanks PC!

>21 PaulCranswick: >22 PaulCranswick: Imagine if you *only* read these books, in order, for the rest of the year.

>229 PaulCranswick: I had only heard about the possibility of a Wuhan laboratory being the source of Covid-19...being a real possibility.... very recently. It really is a bad bad look, as Fauci was (for me) the source of truth in the fiasco that was Trump's America.
Off to read watch the article in >239 PaulCranswick:

>233 PaulCranswick: You have my dream son, right there. What a sublime request.

>240 m.belljackson: Well it seems that he is the one who secretly authorised the funding, Marianne and had no means of controlling the Chinese after the money was given. This is an established fact.

What they did with the money may never be known but it is true that the Wuhan lab was doing Gain of Function research and was a highly dubious facility to be ploughing research into. Dr. Fauci maintains that, based on progress reports he received, he is satisfied that no Gain of Function research was done with American tax-payer's money. This seems naive in the extreme.

It is also a fact that the Chinese military took out patent on the world's first coronavirus vaccine in February 2020 which is before the pandemic was even admitted or announced!!

As to Dr. Fauci's actions being responsible for saving American lives well I think you should wait until all this unravels. By the way his utterances on the wearing of masks has been inconsistent.

>241 SilverWolf28: Thanks Silver!

>242 richardderus: You are most welcome, RD.

>243 LovingLit: I was thinking to make a good old dent in the new books, Megan, but it becomes more a record of failure!

I think so many of us saw Fauci as a lonely voice of common sense at that time but all the while he was hiding fears of what may well have happened with the money he gave the Chinese.

I was so pleased with Kyran - my book hoarding finally found a purpose!

I so enjoy visiting here and seeing all your lists! You are very meticulous. On the other hand, I am scattered, which is why I cannot stick to a list of books. I read a book based on someone's recommendation, or because I see it on a shelf and grab it to read.

All good wishes sent your way my friend!

I have never understood the penchant that American's have for thinking that their leaders are wonderful lily white good people. Just because they talk common sense about the pandemic doesn't meant that they do every other thing perfectly - just look at Andrew Cuomo. Most people in positions of leadership aren't lily white good people all the way through and never have been. I think that at 80 years old Dr. Fauci should retire. If the old people in this country would move over and get out of the way some things might get better. I know that statement is going to cause problems here on your thread, but I can't believe that their isn't somebody younger who could do Dr. Fauci's job just as well as he has.

>246 Whisper1: Lovely to see you here, Linda. I am struggling at the moment actually on picking up a book and deciding that that is the one I want to read at the moment. Part of the reason for making the list is to try to concentrate my mind - but it isn't always successful!

>247 benitastrnad: I agree with that mainly, Benita. I'm not saying Fauci's intentions were bad necessarily but how on earth he could trust a facility with links to the Chinese military and several questionable reports about them with American money to fund obviously dangerous research beggars belief and shows that - for all his scientific knowledge - he knows little of the ways of man.

He should retire but I suspect he will not as he will not want some issues being brought out if he can help it.

Politics especially in the USA is such a slippery slope that you rather have to accept that someone needs to be a nasty so and so to get ahead. To be fair the only person in American government I believe comes across almost always as a good person is Obama. Cuomo's personal behaviour does not seem above reproach although he did do much to bring New Yorkers together in a time of crisis. Even there in his role of protecting the most vulnerable his success was mixed as those elderly dying in care in New York does not make pleasant reading.

>248 PaulCranswick: Quality, not age, makes the difference -
most of us would have wanted Ruth Bader Ginsburg to work on til she was 180!

Yes, Barack Obama is loved and missed by that same group of us,
yet, we were horrified when he chose to become a War President.

>249 m.belljackson: Indeed the realities and tribulations of leadership, Marianne, but for all that - and America was involved in too many overseas "adventures" on his watch - he remained and remains a thoroughly decent person and his essential humanity shines through.

With a judge mental acuity is the key not age and hers was never impaired.

On that subject I watched Uncle Joe Biden Cincinnati CNN Town Hall with increasing alarm and concern and sadness. I would hazard that he will not reach the end of his term and I see no way he would pass a cognitive test at this moment. It was very, very sad to see the level of decline obvious in the President who I also hold to be a sincere person as far as politicians go. As you know this was my concern during his campaign although at least Kamala Harris is youthful enough because third in line Nancy Pelosi also seems to be stumbling badly if her extremely rambling press conference yesterday was anything to go by.

>229 PaulCranswick: I haven't been following the news recently (I usually listen on the radio when I'm driving but I haven't been driving much lately) so I haven't heard anything about a lab deliberately producing the covid19 virus but if that's true, that's a really stupid thing to do.

>233 PaulCranswick: How's Kyran enjoying his reading?

>251 humouress: Stupid or extremely bad. I don't think Anthony Fauci has had any ill-intent but he seems to have been played by his colleagues at the facility.

Kyran asked for two more books to be recommended so that he'd have 12 to go at in six weeks. I added :

A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway
and
Half of a Yellow Sun by Adichie

to his list and he has started on Hemingway.

Good to see the addition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

BBC Four is showing a US series by Ken Burns about Ernest Hemingway at the moment, though it will be finished by the time Kyran gets here and I don't know how long the rights to keep it on Iplayer will last because it's bought in rather than made/ commissioned for the BBC.

Hi Paul! I thought I'd say, Hi, as I've not visited your thread for such a long time. Glad to see you are doing well, visiting bookshops, making a list for Kyran (and yes, I think you should have added Doris Lessing's African books;-)

And now you have me haring off to research this news about dr. Fauci and his Wuhan connection. Weirder and weirder. I haven't followed this, as Dutch news media seem to have missed most of it, and there is so much nonsense being spouted by the anti-vaccine league! But were they right being so paranoid? It seems our prime-minister Rutte and Boris Johnson have been doing the same stupid things all along. Sorry, can't say a kind word about either of them at the moment. But being paranoid about those two seems to be just right.

Best wishes for you, Paul.

>253 elkiedee: She was added largely in recognition of the justice of your comments before, Luci, but also because the book is still my favourite 21st Century novel.

>254 EllaTim: I don't have a copy of her brilliant debut novel The Grass is Singing here (I think it is in the UK) and I think everybody's first experience of her should start there.

This thread is not the place to come for nice words to be said about Boris Johnson or right-wing government in general.

>239 PaulCranswick: I watched the Australian link – thank you. Sharri Markson presented compelling evidence about the NIH’s funding, and Fauci’s feeble justifications are just naïve and wrong. Sigh.

>244 PaulCranswick: Dr. Fauci maintains that, based on progress reports he received, he is satisfied that no Gain of Function research was done with American tax-payer's money. This seems naive in the extreme. I agree. It doesn’t even matter that our $$ weren’t directly used – what matters is that the Gain of Function research was being done at all, clearly for military and political control.

>247 benitastrnad: At this point I tend to agree with you, Benita.

>256 karenmarie: At the bottom of it, Karen, I am very deeply saddened by the whole thing, being as pro-American as I am, I really never conceived that this level of, erm, negligent naivety was possible.

I am just as concerned to consider what do the Chinese actually have in addition to what we know. I always assumed that they were lying about the extent of their cases and fatalities but the alternative is far more disturbing.

>252 PaulCranswick: >253 elkiedee: The Hemingway series will be available for 11 month Luci, so there when Kyran is ready for it. An excellent series I thought.

>252 PaulCranswick: Glad Adichie's Half a Yellow Sun made the list, a fine novel.

Hi Paul! Waving!

>252 PaulCranswick: A Farewell to Arms is one of the very few books that made me cry.

Happy weekend!

"If anyone here is lying, senator, it's you."

>258 Caroline_McElwee: He does seem extremely interested in Hemingway, Caroline, so I will bring his attention to this. I must also remember to discourage him from ownership of a shotgun.

>259 connie53: Waving right back, Connie. xxx

>260 amanda4242: It does surprise me that Hemingway could have written such a sensitive book, Amanda.

>261 weird_O: Yes, well Bill, the truth will out unfortunately for Fauci. I'm no fan of Rand Paul or the Republicans but the facts in this matter are undeniable. What the hell was he funding Wuhan lab for? Unsustainable and unforgivable. The obfuscater is Dr. Fauci, I'm afraid.

I see deliberate or non-deliberate misunderstanding of how NIAID funding works. Tens of thousands of grant applications are made each year - maybe 20% are funded and online searches say about 20% of those go to international projects.

The intent of the grants are that they awarded to specific projects by specific researchers and have nothing to do with other projects being done in associated labs. Grant applications are thoroughly scrutinized by biosafety, ethics and animal welfare committees before the peer review is done. The peer review is done by experts in the field - in this case a committee of coronavirus researchers. The grants are scored and the the highest scoring grants are awarded. The only thing I've seen is a press conference where Fauci said it had a very high peer review score. I have no idea if Fauci saw the grant before it was awarded. I believe Fauci when he said that no US money was used in gain-of-function for this virus. However such research may have been done other labs at the facility. And in fact, this article from the Washington Post says that the NIH funding contributed to knowledge that was then possibly used afterwards further experimentation that was possibly gof . A hypothetical example of this would be that if a specific binding domain was identified under the grant, but then that knowledge was used for further experiments that were not part of the grant's scope. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/18/fact-checking-senator-paul-dr...

Here's the specific grant proposal: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8674931 Can anybody point out where they say they will be using recombint DNA? Or will they just keep handwaving that gof experiments were done at the lab.

I think it's more politicalized trash thrown at Fauci; the Trump administration and supporters have tried to discredit him from early on in the pandemic.

I predict it will go through all the channels, Fauci and the NIAID will be cleared of any misconduct and the Republicans and supporters will continue on with their conspiracy theories and hope it makes Trump come out smelling like a rose.

Remember, as yet there isn't even proof that the Covid 19 virus came from the lab. Possible? Yes. Also possible it came from a natural wildlife event. I'd highly recommend the book Spillover by David Quammen if you haven't read it.

Having worked in an NIAID lab for thirty years, I am not unbiased in this matter.

>264 streamsong: I'm sorry Janet but you are missing the point entirely here which is outside the politics and why I have not quoted anything from Fox or CNN which are mere propaganda vessels now. The point is it doesn't matter what is written on the grant scope - Fauci and NIH had no control over that money as soon as it was given to the Chinese. Naive in the extreme and the outcome is seen in the situation we are all in.

I am not unbiased in this matter either as I have had friends and family die or be seriously ill of this pandemic and livelihood's destroyed. I did not see my daughter for over two years because of travel restrictions nor am I able to visit my mother in hospice as I will lose my job as I could not return to Malaysia under present circumstances. Fauci's pattern of obfuscation is clear and whether he is cleared of misconduct it will not exonerate him from culpability for funding a facility under Chinese military control and one which was patently unsafe to do so. Doesn't matter what the Republicans try to do, Trump will never smell of roses but Fauci and the liberal press including the Washington Post and its frankly incredible "fact checking" need to start to come clean on this. Apologists for Fauci will be on the wrong side of history whether he is cleared or not by an administration that seems gullible in its unquestioning awe of the man.

If you really believe that it is a mere coincidence that the virus just happened to emanate naturally in exactly the same location as they were doing specific Gain of Function testing (whether using American dollars or not) then you are just as naive as Fauci was in giving them money in the first place. China has prevented any meaningful investigation into this and has failed to produce any evidence to support a natural causation which is completely at odds with what happened with SARS and MERS. How do we explain, if true, their incredibly low death rates or the fact that the Chinese military registered a coronavirus vaccine even before the outbreak was known?

I also noticed Nancy Pelosi rambling on and on in her press conference on Thursday. Either she was playing for time, or she didn't want to admit that she nixed those two nominees to the committee because she didn't like them. Maybe to keep the reporters from asking her more pointed questions she just kept talking in hopes that she would wear them down. Unfortunately, she came across as a confused old person. I think it is time for her to retire as well. She has fought the good fight but it is time to retire. She is 82. Time to retire. Same goes for Moscow Mitch. Time to retire. I just don't get them - I can't wait to retire and they just seem to want to stay on and on and on and ...

There was a very good program on Fresh Air last night in which the author Ronald Brownstein of the book Second Civil War addresses this issue of Congress being out-of-touch with its constituents. One of the reasons he gives is the extreme age of the representatives. Because they are so much older than the populations they are representing they don't have the same values. Even if they are Democrats representing Democrat districts they fail to understand how important younger people see certain issues. The example he used was climate change. Younger people of all ages see climate change as a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with NOW! (His emphasis - not mine) Democrats in Congress failed to continue to hammer the issue in congressional bills, hearings, etc. because they keep talking about finding compromises. This author says that the surveys of people under 45 show a majority want something done now and they feel increasingly ignored by their congressional representatives - even if they are Democrat. This makes for a dangerous situation in which everybody becomes disillusioned with their representatives and this makes the partisan stands even stronger and harder to break through.

Ok, convince me.

Show me your evidence that this is *not* a naturally occurring virus.

It may well have come from the lab, but it can be both: naturally occurring and yet released accidentally by the Wuhan lab.

It needs more research into what happened. Fauci himself has said this.

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagre...

Since this lab has worked for a decade on a vaccine for the SARS virus and the MERS virus, I do not find it surprising that they they would be able to take a known antigenic area of the very similar SARS virus (such as the antibodies that would inhibit attachment of the spike protein?) and use the same area of the Covid19 virus to quickly create a vaccine.

Any ideas I have on death rates would be just shear speculation on my part. If you want my short list of speculations, I could give them to you, but they would not be evidence based.

I certainly agree that the Chinese have not been forthcoming about the original spread of this virus.
Doctors such as Dr Li Wenliang who originally sounded the warning were treated very badly by the Chinese authorities.

I have no idea if Fauci was aware of this particular grant at this particular lab before the grant was awarded. And no, the NIAID does not have control over *any* lab it sends money to other than withholding the next year's funding - usually grants are multi year and are renewed (or not) after their yearly report.

It would be interesting to see a list of other countries that have labs with US grant money. I imagine there are hundreds, if not thousands of labs. Do other Chinese labs have US grant money?

Yes, I missed seeing my son, too, in the year and a half of pandemic restricted travel. You may remember he got married in California with no one allowed besides the officiant at the wedding and a zoom reception in the evening.

My brother, the gastrologist, treated many patients with Covid-related GI bleeds before he had proper protective gear. I actually sent him a few N95's I had from pre-Covid days. My sister in law also was a nurse for Covid patients without Covid protection. Ironically, she was given an 'official' N95 mask and was even vaccinated before her husband. Thank God they made it through. So many medical professionals did not.

Let's see what the evidence is. Correlation does not equal causation.

>229 PaulCranswick: Hmm. I don't expect honesty or openness from any government, but this is the kind of thing I'm not going to believe (or disbelieve) without good evidence, and this hasn't even been in the news where I am; I only see significant discussion of this lab's involvment in the epidemic on sites which also routinely discus genetic racial differences in intelligence.

With regard to US interaction with China in general, there's an Octavia Butler novel with a rather similar dynamic, except writ small. The local ruler, who basically rules based on his personal psionic powers, is ill and dying, and will probably be deposed and killed when this is discovered. So in all situations where an injustice occurs that he's expected to correct, his representatives find reasons to excuse the behaviour that the leader is no longer capable of punishing, while concealing that this is the reason.

IMNSHO, the "sole superpower" isn't able to set any limits on China, and the Chinese leaders know it. What little influence it still has is based on an increasingly thin pretence. Plus a certain amount of economic influence, as a major customer. Sure, the two countries could destroy each other, probably along with the whole planet. But that's worse for the US than "giving" China all of Asia and Asia Pacific.

>247 benitastrnad: I heard this a lot during the pandemic - specifically that the world (or the US, or all people the speaker cares about) would be much better off if old people would just get out of the way.

Sometimes I hear about the evil Baby Boomers all being individually responsible for several hundred years of evil; I don't remember being e.g. a slaver, but apparantly I was.

And of course we could have saved Social Security if old people had all conveniently died of covid, as well as avoiding the economic damage caused by the shutdowns, not to mention the horrific loss of freedom.

I do wonder how those speakers will feel, when the same things are said to them and about them, once they reach whatever age they currently consider to be old.

Edit: I'm not saying you believe all this, let alone that you said all the above. But your argument would have been better if it had been a lot more specific to Fauci, and not based on age at all. At the very least, it wouldn't have triggered me or other older people.

>264 streamsong: >267 streamsong: Thanks for the info and insight.

>268 ArlieS: >269 ArlieS: Ditto. Thank you.

>266 benitastrnad: There is a difference between McConnell and Pelosi, Benita. McConnell should have been "retired" at thirty whilst my concerns about Ms. Pelosi are of a much more recent hue. It isn't an age thing but a condition issue. The Malaysian politician Mahathir Mohamed remains very lucid at 95 years old but others who are younger than he and I believe this includes your President, are not as lucid as they were.

Retirement? I will keep going whilst I enjoy what I am doing but I do think we have to be honest with ourselves as to whether we can still function adequately or have someone that can help us decide.

>267 streamsong: It is easy to maintain a position on Fauci via fact-checking as he has been on record with almost every conceivable position on most subjects relating to the pandemic. (masks / no masks, natural occurrence / possible lab leak). He initially tried to shut down discussion on it being a lab leak and we now know why.

Yes you are right, Janet, no proof has been shown to demonstrate it emanated from the Wuhan lab as the authorities, especially in China, have prevented such information surfacing. Fauci has never denied knowing about the funding but has always denied that the "purpose" was Gain of Function. I think that you will agree with me that the US should not be giving money to China or any other potential enemy for potentially risky experiments it has no control over. This is the issue as it is undeniable.

I remember your sadness at being unable to attend your son's wedding and I claim no monopoly on the grief of the pandemic which has impacted every single one of us to a greater or lesser extent. What I do want is for the root causes to be determined and I am not blaming Fauci for directly causing the pandemic but the funding programmes need root and branch review.

>268 ArlieS: One of my concerns has been the media's bias in refusing to even cover much of this and I purposely used the Indian media as it has no right wing bias to speak of (although the Australian one is definitely not centrist) and the Hill has also covered concerns with this and is centrist.

My initial comment on this started as a result of dissatisfaction with the news media merely taking political positions on every issue rather than do their jobs as journalists.

>269 ArlieS: I agree with you on this and I am certainly not ageist (especially as my number gets bigger every year)! I do fear that Mr. Biden is having some cognitive issues and I am someone who wishes him and his administration well. Trump on the other hand was simply mentally unstable from the beginning and this had nothing to do with how old he is.

Age is just a number but we also need to stay fit and healthy. Alzheimer's is real and affects a significant number of people who need our love and care - I am not trying to diagnose anyone but I do feel very sad when - like in his town hall in Cincinnati he seemed so confused on occasions.

Anyone who believes that the death of pensioners in the pandemic would have been of benefit to save social security has not lost a parent or a grandparent or has not been able to be present at the funeral because of lockdown restrictions. These people would be right at home in Hitler's Germany.

>270 weird_O: Agree with you Bill that Janet and Arlie's comments were both welcome and insightful. Benita also made strong points and obviously no credit for the bad guy in raising an issue that the US and British mainstream media are not seemingly interested in? :D

>269 ArlieS: When I was in my 30s a fellow in my social group who was a few years younger was bewailing the dinosaurs who squatted on their positions at JPL when the younger men with all the good ideas had no upward path. In his 50s he was railing against the layoffs of all the experienced people who knew how to get things done so that younger lest costly workers could replace them. At the first instance I predicted the second, knowing that with his attitude he would not be one who was kept on in any organization with much choice.
Of course I was also well aware that those dinosaurs were supporting their children through college while also taking care of aging parents.

Hmmm. I thought trump was supposed to be the one displaying Alzheimer symptoms - now Joe too?

As for the younger generation caring more? - most of those folks storming The Capitol didn't appear to be OLD.

>274 quondame: Nice story, Susan. I had a messenger video call yesterday with an old Korean friend who had been working in India up until the Pandemic but who was forcibly retired and returned to Korea. He is a few years older than me and has lots to offer still. In September he will return to Malaysia (his daughter married a Malaysian Chinese) and will look for opportunities here. Asian culture typically venerates the "older generation" although the burgeoning younger population is putting pressures on the workplace that results in many companies operating compulsory retirement schemes at 55.

>275 m.belljackson: I don't think Trump has Alzheimers - he is just bat crazy. Mr. Biden is struggling - whether this is a case of being easily tired or something else I have no idea, but a fair analysis of his recent discourses does not make happy viewing. I wish him well and hope it is merely physical tiredness from what is obviously a very challenging job.

Couldn't stay away from the bookstore - I mean it has just re-opened and I am like a puppy marking it's territory. Showed a little (a little) restraint.

198. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
199. The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha
200. Fire and Ice by Dana Stabenow
201. Aria by Nazanine Hozar
202. Waking Lions by Ayelet Gudar-Goshen
203. Victim 2117 by Jussi Adler-Olsen
204. The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell
205. The Quality of Madness by Tim Rich
206. Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi
207. The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray

Allende's recent book was an apparent return to form, Intan Paramaditha is from one of Indonesia's most celebrated literary families, the Stabenow is a recommendation from a friend at work, Aria is the name of the condominium that my late dearest friend lived in prior to her passing, Gudar-Goshen's book called to me from the Asian Literature shelves, Adler-Olsen's Department Q books are a favourite series, Cornwell is added as I wanted to read two in his Saxon series next month for BAC, Rich's book is about the near God-like Marcelo Bielsa - Leeds United's saviour and supreme football coach, Vichi's Bordelli series is another favourite and the last book is a book that addresses the cancel culture that has become such a part of modern society.

>267 streamsong: 'Correlation does not equal causation.' No - but it's awfully tempting to assume it. To be honest, it's not that much of a coincidence that there would be a laboratory studying a virus near a naturally occurring source of that virus; it doesn't prove that the transmission to humans specifically came from one or the other.

>269 ArlieS: Ah! I knew it wasn't my fault ;0)

>280 humouress: That is true indeed but never my central points which were:

Why was the US giving funding to a facility doing obviously dangerous research which is under the control of the Chinese military?, and

Why is mainstream media in the USA and the UK neglecting to report on this and why is more not being done to investigate?

Anyway back to my books which will shake a lot less trees.

I own a copy of Aria, though haven't read it yet. I bought it after hearing her interviewed. She (and her book) sound fascinating. She is Iranian-born but came to Canada as a child and grew up here.

>282 jessibud2: The blurb caught my eye on the back cover but the front cover really sold the book, Shelley - what a beautiful cover.

>234 PaulCranswick: >279 PaulCranswick: So nice to get back into your real bookshop Paul. I assume it is a big one.

I've only heard of (and got) the Allende, so will be watching for your comments on these.

I've been reading, and not commenting on the pandemic convo. I suspect all governments will have plenty to answer for in time. BJ here is trying to obstruct full investigation into how his government have handled things. It will come out in the wash, but not for some while.

All governments are disingenuous at times, at the least, and most, outright dishonest, self serving and corrupt.

We currently have the issue of an MP breaking parliamentary rules by calling the PM a liar in the chamber. It is illegal to call a sitting member of parliament a liar in this place (just as no one dies there, which of course they have). There can only be one reason to ban accusing someone of being a liar, that is because lies are told. The rule wouldn't be necessary otherwise.

A colleague recommended a book on government blunder recently (still to be read), I asked him if 500 pages was enough, which made him laugh.

>284 Caroline_McElwee: I want to try to prioritise the newly bought books, Caroline so that they never quite get settled in my collection and are read when fresh. This is with the exception of some of the series books I add like the Bordelli and Adler-Olsen ones here above.

The blunders of the various governments across the world in dealing with the pandemic is going to be an issue that will run and run for a decade or more, I'm sure but they were onto a hiding to nothing anyway. Too many restrictions and the libertarians are up in arms and not enough and most of the rest of us panic. It is a very difficult issue and one which has seen such polarising and conflicting views put forward in the name of public health and science, but it does seem that Boris Johnson made a pig's ear of things mostly. The British government has gotten the vaccine distributed quickly but the level of inaction in the early days of the pandemic with the clear and sobering example of Italy for all to see was inexcusable. From afar, I didn't see that his leadership in a crisis was particularly inspiring either.

It is the silences and misinformation too Paul. In a recent BBC article it said '50% of those in hospital with Covid are unvaccinated', so are the other 50% Martians who didn't get the message that Earth was in the Red Zone regarding travel. Er, well, no.... they are the the partially and fully vaccinated, for which the current official message is 'if you are fully vaccinated, then you are likely only to get mild Covid and neither need hospitalisation or die'. Clearly not exactly true, as a number of people discovered. Commentator and journalist Andrew Marr only just stayed out of hospital for example. It was a close call. So not 'mild' covid.

>286 Caroline_McElwee: Does rather make one wonder which way we are all going. I saw Biden in his town hall talk in Cincinnati actually say you couldn't catch COVID once you were vaccinated - such dangerous misinformation should be stopped. This came a couple of days after he accused facebook of killing people and the administration announced it was liaising with social media platforms to essentially censor what it believed was COVID misinformation! They all have so much to hide.

I know that the vaccines will most probably help and I am taking mine as is all my family, though my twin brother has so far refused (his wife and children have had theirs). We are going to have to find a way to live with the virus moving forward and life may never be quite the same again. With my asthma I have terrible trouble wearing a mask for an extended time but I have no choice as they are mandated here irrespective of vaccination. I don't think that the citizens of UK or USA or Canada would put up with the restrictions here but observance is all but complete in Malaysia and still cases are rising.

>271 PaulCranswick: Masks. Easy enough. Fauci lied to avoid panic buying of masks.
Fact: Almost all of the US's supply of N95 masks and other PPD were produced in and imported from China. At the first sign of the pandemic, China shut down exports of PPD. There were not enough to go around to medical professionals much less the public. The toilet paper panic in the US was real.
Question: Trump could have used the War Power act to require some US manufacturers to produce masks. He did not. Why?
Further Question: Although N95's disappeared quickly, China still allowed export of KN95's (my brother called them 'Kinda N95's') which were produced without exacting standards. Naturally, hospitals wouldn't let their providers use them. In my opinion, they *probably* offered more protection than other alternatives.
The Trump administration ordered all KN95's seized at customs and destroyed. Why?
Personal experience: I had some N95's on hand which were commonly available here for forest fire smoke and I used while cleaning out mouse nests (Hanta virus) in the hay.To me, it beggars the imagination that people believed masks would not be effective against Covid. I tried to order a case of KN95's, not knowing they were being shipped directly from China. One or two small packets arrived (customs slips called them underwear :) ). Mostly I got notices that they had been destroyed by customs.

**ETA More personal experience***: I attended a seminar by Fauci in the fall of 2019 - just a few months before the pandemic - where he made the point that the US would be ill prepared for the next pandemic and was foolish to let critical manufactured items be completely outsourced to other countries.

>271 PaulCranswick: China. Reread the article in >267 streamsong: to see why Fauci thought having a relationship with the best lab in the world dealing with Corona viruses was important. I don't know if he knew of the grant ahead of time or not. Read Spillover to see why the next emerging pandemics will probably also be Corona viruses. Do you know of any lab in China not under military control?

I did not answer all the points in your >265 PaulCranswick: because I was frankly pissed by your insult - should I have not been insulted by being called naive? I can't tell you how many times I rewrote >267 streamsong: to keep it fact based.

But anyhoo, although Ebola is not a Coronavirus, there has been no reservoir identified for it either. The reservoir is believed to be bats, but has not been found there.

I'm done. If anyone wants to talk further, let's do it by PM.

>287 PaulCranswick: Lockdown "Restrictions" in Malaysia enforced by the Military?

Even before The Variant, it felt too soon to lift all the restrictions,
notably to take a chance on kids returning to school.

The lunacy here continues with the CDC refusing to approve vaccination Number 3
for vulnerable people like my daughter and your Mum.

>283 PaulCranswick: - The cover of the copy I have isn't the same as the one you show in >279 PaulCranswick: but if you click on the title, my cover is the one showing on the LT book page. Similar, and both covers are beautiful

Hi Paul. I was away from LT for a few days because of Peets surgery and all things that happened after that. Now I'm trying to catch up on the threads just skimming the longer ones like yours ;-))

>286 Caroline_McElwee: Not sure what the BBC were reporting, but in the UK 60% of those hospitalised for coronavirus are unvaccinated. I can’t find a breakdown of the remaining 40% how many have had 1 jab or 2. However 70% of the population have had 1 jab and 55% 2 jabs. Not sure this really changes your point that risks remain even if vaccinated, but thought I would put up the numbers

>281 PaulCranswick: As to why US funds were given to such a site, well, I doubt there is any research being done anywhere in China that doesn't have government and likely military involvement, considering how common government funding is in the US. Then there are all the agreements between government institutions that include a bit of this and a bit of that and maybe give windows into this and that. Not that I trust our govt. though I do trust the Chinese govt. to exploit and weakness or advantage on our part. Still, while not at all innocent and certainly unfortunate, it would surprise me if there was anything wrong or even significant in the US money that went into that lab. I'm sure there's been a review of other money that's been released now that that's turned out so embarassingly.

>288 streamsong: Janet, I don't see masks as being particularly controversial as an issue. It is clear that they afford some measure of protection at least and I wear mine scrupulously despite the difficulties asthma causes. Fauci's advice about masks in the early days of the pandemic seems to have been that the hospital grade stocks were insufficient and he was safeguarding that as you rightly say and secondly as he disclosed to CNN because the evidence was not yet available at to their effectiveness and that his advice in hindsight would have been different. I don't think that I have criticised him over masks as it does not affect me at all.

He was right about preparedness and PPE etc and there is no doubt that the American government at Federal and State level failed to cope.

I'm sorry Janet I should not have implied you were being naive and I apologise for having done so - it is the American funders of Chinese military owned research that has been naive and possibly criminally negligent in the process. Money should not be given to China for such purposes period. He authorised that funding because it couldn't be carried out in the US and he is on tape somewhere saying it was safer undertaking it in Wuhan rather than Virginia. Well it most probably wasn't.

We will probably never know the full truth of how it started because China will not permit us doing so, meanwhile we don't know what else they have developed at the Wuhan institute. I believe that the west should impose severe sanctions on China for the failure to properly investigate and disclose the source of the virus and that the American government should acknowledge flaws in its direct and indirect funding programmes to ensure that such delicate research is not allowed to be done outside of a NATO country.

The funding and the lack of the mainstream media are - I repeat - my concerns here; I'm not and do not pretend to be a scientist and note that not only scientists have died in the pandemic. We all have a right to ask these questions and seek the answers because we are not getting them.

>289 m.belljackson: It is being policed by the police, Marianne. We have seen the army in support occasionally but, to be honest, in terms of compliance there isn't much kick-back here especially for wearing of masks which is pretty much universal.

I am not qualified to state at what point of the immunisation programme does herd immunity kick in and I guess that many people will continue to wear masks for a good while mandated or not. There are very different types of masks quality wise and, I understand, only the hospital grade 4-ply(?) masks give really good protection. I wear the one that muslim ladies use with the headscarf as the straps don't go over my little ears which are busy trying to keep my glasses up. I have heard that regular booster shots for the virus may be necessary and I will do whatever it takes to get life back to normality or as close as it will ever be.

>290 jessibud2: Yes, Shelley, I saw that one too as I was cataloguing the book. Her publisher and agent is doing it's very best for her with the attractive covers!

>291 connie53: Lovely to see you as always, Connie. I will get across as soon as I can to your place. xx

>292 DMulvee: Thanks for that. xx I thought that the result of being fully vaccinated was to radically reduce your chances of an attack serious enough to see you hospitalised. I am still proceeding on that basis and hope that the jabs can cope with all these variants being bandied about (Delta, Indian etc). As far as I can see from a view of the statistics which is my forte after all, there is clear correlation between immunisation and significant drop-off in hospitalisation. I have never seen any data which suggested otherwise.

Could be a hospital administrator or a journalist not properly understanding the figures presented and I hope that is the case!

>293 quondame: Yes, Susan, that pretty much encapsulates my concern. I don't for a second believe that NIH gave money to the Chinese thinking for a moment that it would be used for anything other than the purpose they gave it. That is naive and why scientists should not have been making those decisions as their curiosity may result in reckless satisfaction of the motives of those with a different intention entirely.

>296 PaulCranswick: My sister controlled NIH funding in a different arena for a couple of decades, and naive is not applicable to those Washington insiders who know every elevator may be bugged and how not to get caught having affairs. A window into research that we couldn't carry out in the US is not naive, and most US administrations' morality is largely noticeable for it's absence.

Not that there aren't major blind spots, but mostly it's on one side maintaining the hold on anti-progressive votes and on the other not offending the temperamental liberals who seem swing from one interest to another.

>297 quondame: Then that is much more scary, Susan. I can understand, being a student of the subject, realpolitik but I don't see the interest in handing over money for research where you have no control over what happens to it. If there was a different agenda at play then that really does scare the pants off of me.

>298 PaulCranswick: There are dozens of reasons for funding a project or research area and often enough they have little to do with with the tech or science and more to do with the people or the organizations and the connections they maintain. Though the addmitted motives for maintaining specific connections are innumerable it boils down to power. And they don't think anybody will notice, which is mostly true. It's the actors that do think people will notice who are probably more dangerous.

>299 quondame: John Le Carre has passed away but his successor is alive and well in California! Very insightful, I would think. x

BOOK #81



The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
Date of Publication : 2000
Origin of Author : USA
Pages : 395 pp

Challenges :
52 Book Club Challenge : 29/52
Series Challenge : 9/52

This is rapidly becoming a favourite series. I enjoyed The Thief last year but this was much better and I think the sophistication of the storyline and depth of characterisation belies its YA label.

We again find our hero Eugenides in the clutches of the Queen of Attolia and three kingdoms will go to war (with a fourth hovering) as a result. Really, really enjoyable storytelling.

>301 PaulCranswick: I have steered away from these kind of books over the years but this series does sound interesting.

Hey, Paul. I hope you had a good R & R weekend.

>301 PaulCranswick: Woot!! I'm so glad you're enjoying this series!

>294 PaulCranswick: The U.S. police are too busy still enforcing marijuana laws to care about mask compliance -

which the CDC refuses to require. More rising WTF everywhere, seemingly for everything.

And the UK anti-vac protests = more of same as above.

>302 msf59: Lovely to see you, Mark. I am not a big fan of Sci-fi but like me some fantasy occasionally and this is a very enjoyable series.

>303 scaifea: What's not to like, Amber?! It has pretty much a little bit of everything with a pleasant narrative drive and a complete absence of expletives and genitalia. x

>304 m.belljackson: There are plenty of roadblocks and if people cannot explain why they are out they will be sent back and are at risk of a $2,500 fine (RM10,000). Only two people are allowed per vehicle and only the head of household is meant to do grocery shopping. No restaurants dining in, no pubs or clubs or karaokes or discos or even full mosque/church attendances allowed.

Cannot understand why people would be having anti-vac demonstrations. Mandates and compulsions I don't agree with but surely we must make up our own mind and governments are right to strongly advise on the benefits of doing so.

>306 PaulCranswick: Well, I agree with the Malaysian enforced mandates when people are still too idiotic

to protect other people if not themselves.

>307 m.belljackson: The mandates on mask wearing is overwhelmingly supported in Malaysia and I don't believe the public here would be keen to take them off mandated or not.

>300 PaulCranswick: Not hardly. I wouldn't even wish it.

>301 PaulCranswick: You're lucky to have the whole series complete before you. Queen of Attolia was the last one written when I started, and MWT takes her time.

>305 PaulCranswick: a complete absence of expletives and genitalia

*giant red "X" through Megan Whelan Turner*

>309 quondame: And at this moment in time they are all readily available! Starting The King of Attolia in the morning.

>310 richardderus: Hahaha trust you RD.

>301 PaulCranswick: Glad you are enjoying that. It is a very good series.

Right now it's too hot, far too smoky from forest fires and I am cranky. Thank you, Paul and I also apologize to everyone for the drama.

>312 RBeffa: It is indeed, Ron.

>313 streamsong: I don't see that you have anything at all to apologise for, Janet. You outlined an honest viewpoint passionately and analytically and certainly added to my knowledge. xx

Stay safe from the forest fires and I better not start blabbing about my concerns for the environment!

>301 PaulCranswick:
The series Queen's Thief by Megan Whalen Turner is an excellent YA series. The first one in the series The Thief was a Newbery Honor Book back in the day. I agree with you that the series has a sophisticated story line and a very diverse cast of characters. The last book in the series was published last fall. It is titled Return of the Thief. Turner has said that she will write no more books in this series, so those of you who have started the series can now finish it.

>266 benitastrnad:
The argument I posited in this post was not what I said. I was recapping in a very short version what was said by an author in a radio show. I thought it was an interesting argument and relevant to the conversation earlier on this thread. I happened to be watching the press conference with Nancy Pelosi and I stand by my observation that Nancy Pelosi rambled and was almost incoherent in her press conference on Thursday, July 22. I also don't think she looks healthy. I think she should retire and allow new people to enter congress who will represent their districts in a more relatable manner. All of this is why I work to register college students to vote and keep trying to get them out to vote when it is time. The only way things are going to change is if the young people (those under 45) get out and vote.

>275 m.belljackson:
There were three people from Alabama who were arrested for participating in the capital insurrection. They range in age from 70 at the oldest to 33 as the youngest. The majority of them are in their late 40's and in their 50's. I don't know about the participants from other states.

>315 benitastrnad: It is indeed a fantastic series, Benita and I will definitely read all of the books and soon.

I agree with you about Pelosi's interview in that she did ramble and was incoherent. I haven't seen enough of her speaking to know whether that is typical of her but I suspect that it is not. Maybe she was just having a bad day. There does seem to be a dearth of new people coming into politics period. Warren, Sanders, Pelosi and Biden have in excess of 310 years between them and will leave something of a gulf on the left. Assuming the GOP come to their senses and forget about Trump they also have to think about McConnell who is 80 in February. I'm all for experience but really?

I don't have anything meaningful to add about the Capitol Insurrection but will await the investigations with interest.

>316 PaulCranswick: I really dislike discussing politics, but I have to say that, from my observations, rambling and incoherent are the norm for Pelosi in interviews. She is a representative from my home state of California, although not my district, so I see her on a more local level and have not been impressed by her behavior. Last year she several times violated state mandates and when questioned either shrugged it off or attacked the person pointing it out; from my perspective, she seems to have adopted an "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" attitude.

>317 amanda4242: I much prefer talking about books too, Amanda, but I am surprised that Number #1 and Number #3 top ranked in the executive seem so incoherent at the moment.

Her husband seems to have benefitted financially from a knowledge of politics which would not be allowed in Europe and I guess is not strictly kosher in the USA either. There was also the case of the two Republicans who cashed in their shares immediately they got advance briefing of the coming pandemic. I suppose gone are the days when we expect to hold our politicians to a code of behaviour above that to which the man is street is put to.

I don't know much about Ms. Peloski or her public record other than she was prominent in the impeachment proceedings against Chump and for which I will not criticise her as her lead in that was needful if always futile with a Republican majority Senate as it was then.

>318 PaulCranswick: I suppose gone are the days when we expect to hold our politicians to a code of behaviour above that to which the man is street is put to.

*snort* I'd be happy if they were ever held to the same standard. If they were, I believe there would be vast numbers of politicians from all parties serving lengthy prison terms.

>318 PaulCranswick: I'm sure that you are right but it isn't a pleasant thought at all is it?