RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Fourth Quarter

Esto es una continuación del tema RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Third Quarter.

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1RidgewayGirl
Editado: Ene 8, 2022, 12:54 pm

2021 is on its last legs. A weird year that was going to mark a return to normal, but ended up being almost as tumultuous as 2020.

Currently Reading

Recently Read

Newly Acquired

2RidgewayGirl
Oct 1, 2021, 9:22 am

First Quarter Reading

January
1. The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
2. Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
3. Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession edited by Sarah Weinman
4. The Paris Hours by Alex George
5. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
6. The Harpy by Megan Hunter
7. Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
8. Telephone by Percival Everett
9. Monogamy by Sue Miller
10. Mother May I by Joshilyn Jackson
11. Lord the One You Love is Sick by Kasey Thornton

February
1. Memorial by Bryan Washington
2. Figuring by Maria Popova
3. Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
4. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
5. Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
6. The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier, translated by Pablo Medina
7. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
8. Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses
9. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
10. We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
11. Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

March
1. Sansei and Sensibility by Karen Tei Yamashita
2. Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
3. Deacon King Kong by James McBride
4. Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu
5. The Divines by Ellie Eaton
6. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
7. No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
8. Prayer for the Living by Ben Okri
9. The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken

3RidgewayGirl
Oct 1, 2021, 9:24 am

Second Quarter Reading

April
1. A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion
2. Pickard County Atlas by Chris Harding Thornton
3. The River by Peter Heller
4. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
5. No Exit by Taylor Adams
6. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green
7. Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba by Andrew Feldman
8. Come On Up by Jordi Nopca, translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem
9. Sophomores by Sean Desmond

May
1. Exit by Belinda Bauer
2. The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky
3. Summerwater by Sarah Moss
4. Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han
5. The Gate by François Bizot
6. Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
7. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
8. No Dominion by Louise Welsh
9. Crimson Lake by Candice Fox
10. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell

June
1. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
2. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri
3. Girl A by Abigail Dean
4. Like This Afternoon Forever by Jaime Manrique
5. Lightseekers by Femi Kayode
6. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
7. Life Class by Pat Barker
8. My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee
9. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
10. Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller
11. Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

4RidgewayGirl
Oct 1, 2021, 9:26 am

Third Quarter Reading

July
1. I Couldn't Love You More by Esther Freud
2. Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
3. Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen
4. Her Here by Amanda Dennis
5. American Estrangement: Stories by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
6. Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
7. If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha
8. Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan

August
1. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
2. Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey
3. Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers
4. The Turnout by Megan Abbott
5. The Night Inspector by Frederick Busch
6. God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney
7. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
8. Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
9. The Magician by Colm Tóibín
10. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

September
1. Sleepovers: Stories by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
2. Face It by Debbie Harry
3. Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor
4. Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
5. False Witness by Karin Slaughter
6. The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey
7. Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane
8. Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

5RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 30, 2021, 10:44 am

Fourth Quarter Reading

October
1. Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
2. Snowflake by Louise Nealon
3. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
4. A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam
5. The Girl in White Gloves by Kerri Maher
6. The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards
7. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
8. The Guide by Peter Heller
9. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
10. Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
11. Zorrie by Laird Hunt
12. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder
13. The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

November
1. At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman
2. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
3. The Comeback by Ella Berman
4. Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead
5. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
6. The Apartment by Greg Baxter
7. Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah
8. Wayward by Dana Spiotta
9. Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls: Stories by Alissa Nutting
10. Keeper by Jessica Moor
11. The Trees by Percival Everett

December
1. The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz
2. Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi
3. At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis
4. A Country Road, a Tree by Jo Baker
5. Dream Girl by Laura Lippman
6. Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
7. The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister
8. The Group by Mary McCarthy
9. All's Well by Mona Awad
10. We Germans by Alexander Starritt
11. The Pisces by Melissa Broder

12RidgewayGirl
Oct 2, 2021, 6:52 pm

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo dives into the lives and relationships of three women. Taddeo interviewed the women over a decade and they allowed her close access to their lives. There's Maggie, who reported her high school teacher and saw her community turn on her. And Lina, who is having an intense affair with the man she dated in high school in an attempt to feel a sense of intimacy with someone. And there's Sloan, whose husband chooses men for them to sleep with and when people find out, she's the one who is blamed.

The depth with which Taddeo has explored these three lives is impressive, Women's desire is an uncomfortable topic and the author explores the way that how and what these women desire is formed by their upbringing and experiences. Reading this was an intense experience, that often felt startling intimate.

13dchaikin
Oct 2, 2021, 7:30 pm

>12 RidgewayGirl: how fascinating. Haven’t heard about this.

14RidgewayGirl
Oct 2, 2021, 8:01 pm

>13 dchaikin: This was first published in 2019. Taddeo has a novel out now which pushed me to finally get around to this one.

15avaland
Oct 3, 2021, 7:14 am

>6 RidgewayGirl: I like your various lists! I'm assuming it's all fiction. How do you list translations if you have them? by the year of first publication? Or the year of publication in English? That's a lot of US authors!

16AlisonY
Oct 3, 2021, 8:46 am

>12 RidgewayGirl: Oh that's right up my alley - adding that one to the list.

17RidgewayGirl
Oct 3, 2021, 4:25 pm

>15 avaland: Thanks, Lois. I do like a list. Most is fiction. I'm just embracing my preferences. I list translations by the year they were originally published in the original language. And yes, so many American authors, but in my defense, it's a reasonably diverse selection. And my lists remind me not to get stuck in one time or place.

>16 AlisonY: Alison, I'm thinking about it a lot. I'm eager now to read her novel, Animal.

18RidgewayGirl
Oct 5, 2021, 12:05 pm

The narrator of Intimacies by Katie Kitamura is a translator at the International Court in The Hague. She has one good friend and is beginning a relationship with a Dutch man that she is optimistic about, so she's hoping to be permanently hired when her contract ends. But translating is not without its hazards; the work can often be stressful, especially once she begins translating at the trial of a west African leader accused of human rights abuses.

Kitamura writes with both intimacy and a sense of remove, the reader is privy to the narrator's private thoughts and desires while her past and even her name remain hidden. Access is given, but only to a portion of the narrator's life, which heightens the sense of urgency and of time passing. There's no bird's eye view or insight given with the passing of time, just this one woman navigating her life as best she can.

19labfs39
Oct 5, 2021, 6:06 pm

>18 RidgewayGirl: I like books featuring translators (Bel Canto, Translation is a Love Affair), and I see you give this one five stars? Onto the list it goes!

20japaul22
Oct 5, 2021, 6:09 pm

I believe I put this on my to read list after seeing it recommended by President Obama. Glad to know you liked it too. Great comments.

21RidgewayGirl
Oct 5, 2021, 9:23 pm

>19 labfs39: & >20 japaul22: I loved her previous novel, A Separation, which also had a translator as the protagonist, and this book is even better. And as an interesting aside, Kitamura is married to Hari Kunzru.

22RidgewayGirl
Oct 6, 2021, 5:36 pm

Well, it looks like Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo will be just fine. I was worried about it because I hadn't heard much about it so far and now it has been announced that it will be a Reece's book club pick or whatever that's called. Good choice from the Witherspoon people and please don't not read it because it's a popular book guys. But if you're checking it out from the library, you might want to place your hold now.

23RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2021, 10:32 am

When Debbie is accepted into Trinity College, Dublin, she's thrilled and envisions a world of like-minded friends and a sense of belonging she never found in her small Irish village, where her mother is both mentally ill and known for sleeping with a number of the village's men. Her bedrock is her uncle, who lives in a trailer behind the house and who runs the dairy farm. But university isn't what she'd dreamt of. It's a lot harder than she thought and she's only managed to make one friend, a well-off girl named Xanthe who finds Debbie to be refreshingly "authentic."

Louise Nealon's debut novel Snowflake is, on the one hand, another coming-of-age novel by a young Irish woman and, on the other, a refreshing angle on that flooded genre. Debbie is a mess, but she's also got better reasons for it than general ennui and despite the huge problems in her family, she has more support than many of the wealthier versions of this character. It was interesting to see how a culchie, someone from rural Ireland, experiences Dublin and the people who live there, and how they, or at least Xanthe, experience rural Ireland. And the writing is far better than one usually finds in a debut novel. Even if you've tired of Sally Rooney, or if you love her and want something similar from a different angle, this book is worth reading.

24dchaikin
Oct 8, 2021, 11:18 am

>23 RidgewayGirl: i had just assumed there was some trumpy-related political angle to this book based on the title. Something completely different, clearly. Glad to read your review.

25RidgewayGirl
Oct 8, 2021, 12:31 pm

>24 dchaikin: So many words were tainted by the last Administration. Ugh.

26Nickelini
Oct 8, 2021, 7:58 pm

Look at you go! Amazing reading year you're having . . . . >1 RidgewayGirl: 2021 is on its last legs. A weird year that was going to mark a return to normal, but ended up being almost as tumultuous as 2020. . . . have you been escaping into books? I found that I was able to do that last October - April, but somehow since then I just keep getting busy with ?? and my reading has slowed down. I'm hoping that I can slide back into the mega-reading groove this autumn-winter-spring too, but I'm not seeing it happening. Hope I'm wrong

27RidgewayGirl
Oct 9, 2021, 1:24 pm

Said good-bye to our good dog, Ivy, today. She was the best dog, loved her pack and her house and treats. Liked walks, but preferred the walk home. She didn't love the cats, but coexisted without eating any of them and allowed them to nap with her in sunbeams. She always barked at the delivery guys, whether UPS, USPS, FedEx or amazon, but never at the neighbors or anyone she knew. She is already missed.

28dchaikin
Oct 9, 2021, 4:52 pm

So sorry Kay. Your description is familiar to me, as another German Shepard-ish (mystery-heritage?) owner. These pets are family.

29kidzdoc
Oct 9, 2021, 5:10 pm

I'm sorry that Ivy is no longer with you, Kay.

30labfs39
Oct 9, 2021, 8:44 pm

What a loving expression Ivy has in that photo. I'm sorry for your loss, Kay

31AnnieMod
Oct 9, 2021, 9:09 pm

>27 RidgewayGirl: I am so sorry, Kay. Hugs.

32lisapeet
Oct 9, 2021, 10:26 pm

Oh, I'm so sorry, Kay. What a sweet and lovely face.

33torontoc
Oct 10, 2021, 7:58 am

I am sorry for you loss. Pets have had an extra burden this past year as they helped raise the spirits of their owners.

34SandDune
Oct 10, 2021, 8:08 am

>27 RidgewayGirl: So sorry!

35japaul22
Oct 10, 2021, 8:31 am

>27 RidgewayGirl: So sorry, Kay.

36BLBera
Oct 10, 2021, 10:14 am

Sorry for your loss, Kay. Ivy sounds like a good buddy.

37ELiz_M
Oct 10, 2021, 12:54 pm

Oh no! So sorry to hear about Ivy.

38LolaWalser
Oct 10, 2021, 1:31 pm

She didn't love the cats, but coexisted without eating any of them and allowed them to nap with her in sunbeams.

A superior dog for sure. So sorry she left you.

39AlisonY
Oct 11, 2021, 4:04 am

Aw, sorry to hear you lost an important family member.

40RidgewayGirl
Oct 11, 2021, 10:28 am

Thank you all so much for your kind words. The Terminex guy just told me that he'd been careful to latch the gate and wondered where Ivy was (she liked to keep him company), so it's good to know others enjoyed her quiet presence.

41RidgewayGirl
Oct 11, 2021, 5:50 pm

And now for two fantastic books and one terrible one.

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is a Victorian novel without any attempts to pace the exciting bits. It just plows ahead with plot, no pauses at all to drink tea or write a letter. If you've watched the BBC mini-series (and if you're reading this novel now, it's because you spent a few hours watching Richard Armitage stare off into the middle distance in a brooding sort of way, let's not pretend otherwise) you'll be familiar with the events of the novel. What is surprising is how closely the television adaptation follows the novel. With the exception of Bessy, who is rather cloying in the novel but a caustic breath of fresh air in the mini-series, the characters are on the page as they appear on screen.

Despite the way Gaskell keeps things moving along rapidly, she doesn't fail to create a cast of memorable characters. In this novel, the parents are a lot. Mrs. Thornton reacts to the world around her with a prickly defensiveness which is understandable given that her husband lost their money in a foolish bet, then committed suicide, leaving her to eke out a living for her two small children. But understandable doesn't mean that she isn't a hard person to be around. And the Hales, Margaret's parents, are both weak and whiny. And yet their children love them deeply and also manage to have become the kind of people who animate their morals with action, so that Margaret befriends a working family and sets out to help them in the ways they both need and can accept and Mr. Thornton postures and yells a lot, then works to improve the conditions for his employees.

This novel was clearly intended to illuminate what conditions were for textile workers, but did so with a certain, not unexpected belief in the need for bosses to call the shots. But Gaskell is also pushing against the caste system with her constant theme that men who make their fortunes in factories are the equals of those who inherit theirs and that working men are as intelligent and ingenious as those who supervise them. There are a number of digs at the moral and intellectual abilities of the Irish, I guess proving that humans will always manage to scapegoat somebody.

This novel was a lot of fun and was often hard to set aside and I'm sure I'll revisit it soon.

42AlisonY
Oct 12, 2021, 3:47 am

>41 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I've not read this yet, and you sell it well.

43Nickelini
Oct 12, 2021, 9:03 am

>41 RidgewayGirl: oh wow, that sounds great. I’ll have to dust off my copy. I never did see the movie or show or whatever

44RidgewayGirl
Oct 12, 2021, 11:41 am

>42 AlisonY: I like a Victorian novel, probably largely because the ones that survive are the best of them, but also they understood how to tell a story. And Margaret Hale is a wonderful, strong character.

>43 Nickelini: Joyce, it's one of the best adaptations, up there with the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with the way the characters were respected and brought to life. The casting is so well done, with Anna Maxwell Martin as Bessy and Sinead Cusack as Mrs. Thornton. Every time I pick up a 19th century novel, I'm reminded that I love them and then it's months before I pick another one up.

45NanaCC
Oct 12, 2021, 1:19 pm

>41 RidgewayGirl: This is one of my favorite Victorian novels, but I’ve never seen an adaptation. I’ll have to look for it.

46RidgewayGirl
Oct 12, 2021, 6:12 pm

>45 NanaCC: Colleen, it's wonderful. Currently, it's available on the BritBox streaming service.

47RidgewayGirl
Oct 13, 2021, 4:45 pm

After the war has ended, a man takes a long walk in Columbo, Sri Lanka, and later he takes a train to attend the funeral of his grandmother's caretaker. Along the way, he remembers other walks and other train journeys he took in India with the woman he fell in love with. Anuk Arudpragasam's novel, A Passage North, has a deceptively simple framework from which he explores the aftermath of Sri Lanka's long war on its citizens and the life of those who leave their home countries.

And while all that would be reason enough to make this novel a stand-out, the real reason to read A Passage North is for the writing, which is beautiful. Arudpragasam describes the places Krishan travels through and exists in so as to make the reader feel present in a specific place and time, to see things through the protagonist's eyes and to understand the people he interacts with. This is a remarkable novel and I'm glad that it has been put on the Booker shortlist.

48RidgewayGirl
Oct 13, 2021, 5:00 pm

Reading The Girl in White Gloves by Kerri Maher was like wading through tepid oatmeal. Nothing offensive happened, but nor can I say that I enjoyed the experience. A novel needs some grit to propel it forward. I will note that there is nothing in this novel that would prevent giving it to your grandmother, or to your pastor's grandmother, which is surprising given that Grace Kelly had some fun before she got married. You certainly wouldn't know it from this book, where she whines and complains and dresses nicely for 370 unrewarding pages. The writing is fine, but lazy, with the most expected turns of phrase used every time. This book is not only boring, but there are a ton of careless errors, casting doubt on every detail presented. I wish the author had taken some of the time she used to go on vacation in Monaco to learn how to use google. Ms. Maher, Long Island Iced Teas were invented in the 1970s, so it's unlikely that Hollywood starlets would have been drinking them in 1956, and canoes are propelled and steered by paddles, not oars. It's the small details like that that make the rest of the story less believable.

49dchaikin
Oct 13, 2021, 5:01 pm

>47 RidgewayGirl: great review. Another Booker list book. Hopefully I will get there.

50RidgewayGirl
Oct 13, 2021, 5:03 pm

>49 dchaikin: I can only agree with Darryl's assessment that this is a worthy winner and certainly a front-runner.

51lisapeet
Oct 13, 2021, 5:40 pm

>47 RidgewayGirl: Nudging this one up the pile—thanks for the good review.

52baswood
Oct 13, 2021, 6:25 pm

>41 RidgewayGirl: One of my favourite Victorian novels.

53labfs39
Oct 13, 2021, 8:09 pm

Two winners and a dud, but all good reviews. I look forward to A Passage North.

54RidgewayGirl
Oct 13, 2021, 9:45 pm

>51 lisapeet: It's so good, Lisa. Give yourself time to just take in the atmosphere he creates.

>52 baswood: Bas, it's fun to encounter a strong, fascinating Victorian woman.

>53 labfs39: That's not a terrible ratio, but I'm rethinking my book club, which chose the Grace Kelly book.

55AlisonY
Oct 14, 2021, 5:37 am

>47 RidgewayGirl: I was looking at the short-listed books yesterday and this sounded really interesting. Actually, a number of the short-listed titles sound really good.

56BLBera
Oct 14, 2021, 12:13 pm

Great comments, Kay. I haven't read the Gaskell although it's been on my shelves for ages. I'm waiting for my turn with A Passage North.

57RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 9:40 am

>55 AlisonY: The shortlist does look promising, Alison. The only books I'm not excited about are all by Americans. I didn't like the Lockwood and I'm not going to read another sanctimonious book about trees where the women are just terribly written. But other than that, I'm excited about the list.

>56 BLBera: Beth, the Gaskell is a lot of fun. Every time I read a 19th century novel, I'm reminded about how I really enjoy them and think that I should read more of them and then I forget to do so.

58mdoris
Oct 15, 2021, 10:39 am

>57 RidgewayGirl: "sanctimonious book about trees where the women are just terribly written"
Well said, true words!

59Cariola
Editado: Oct 15, 2021, 11:29 am

>41 RidgewayGirl: Oh, now you must watch the wonderful Brit adaptation of North and South! It's one of my favorite period dramas and has an excellent cast.

Edited to add: Well, I should have read down a bit as I see you have watched it. I thought Richard Armitage was pretty great, too. And Tim Pigott-Smith and Leslie Manville as Margaret's parents. Brendan Doyle--Bates from Downton Abbey--is also very good as Bessy's father.

And let me add my condolences for the loss of your sweet one-of-a-kind doggie.

Don't wait too long to get around to Matrix. It soared to the top of my Best of 2021 list.

60RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 12:27 pm

>58 mdoris: I really hated The Overstory. So much.

>59 Cariola: It's so good! I've watched it so many times. I've noted Matrix. I am a fan of Lauren Groff.

61Cariola
Oct 15, 2021, 1:23 pm

>60 RidgewayGirl: Well, guess I will skip The Overstory. I won a free copy from LT or Goodreads, can't remember which. So far, China Room isn't doing it for me.

I own a DVD of North and South--love it that much.

62BLBera
Oct 15, 2021, 3:27 pm

I do love nineteenth century novels as well, Kay. I have a few unread on my shelves. Matrix is pretty wonderful. I have become a big Groff fan.

I didn't hate The Overstory, but it could have used some editing. I am loving Bewilderment so far, and it is much shorter.

63RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 3:58 pm

>61 Cariola: The first chapters, which are a series of short stories in which trees are featured, is just great. There's one about a big, old tree in front of a farmhouse that is wonderful. And then Powers gets carried away and it becomes heavy-handed and preachy. But don't discard the book before reading those stories.

>62 BLBera: It is shorter. And this one review did not make me want to give Powers another chance (I've read two of his books. Along with The Overstory, I've read Orfeo). But I'm very happy when people like books I don't.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/books/review-bewilderment-richard-powers.html...

This review also has the best final paragraph in a book review.

64labfs39
Editado: Oct 15, 2021, 4:37 pm

>63 RidgewayGirl: Rats. I hate firewalls, whoops, meant paywalls

65RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 5:09 pm

>64 labfs39: Nuts to that. Here's the highlights:

Among those writers, a quarter of a century later, may be Powers himself. His new one, “Bewilderment,” is so meek, saccharine and overweening in its piety about nature that even a teaspoon of it numbs the mind.

“Bewilderment” is the follow-up to “The Overstory” (2018), his beloved novel about trees, the importance of maintaining forests and people, in that order. It won a Pulitzer Prize and made Powers something close to a secular saint. Let no one say it was overrated.

“The Overstory” was seen to be improving and educational and concerned, like the magazines — Mindful, Rock and Ice, Naked Food, Dwell, Runner’s World, Yoga — on display at Whole Foods, and thus healthy to be observed carrying around.

There are some books you want to give to your best friend; this is one to give to your distant aunt, for her reading group. It’s a James Taylor song when you require a buzz-saw guitar. There’s no impudence, no wit, no fire and little fluttering understanding, despite the ostentatious science, of how human minds really work.

It’s a book about ecological salvation that somehow makes you want to flick an otter on the back of the head, for no good reason at all.

66AnnieMod
Oct 15, 2021, 5:18 pm

>62 BLBera: "I do love nineteenth century novels as well, Kay."

I think we should organize a Club Read read-along next year with some 19th century novels :) I am game for pretty much any :)

67RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 5:29 pm

>66 AnnieMod: I'm lousy at follow-through, but that sounds like a good idea.

68RidgewayGirl
Oct 15, 2021, 5:29 pm

He drove us back to Ma's, and on the highway ramps, we passed over the police department and over the serial killer in his cell too. The downtown fell away from the highway as we headed west, away from the breweries and the factories churning out chocolate, and cheese, and sad, sad lives. Peter kept his eyes on the road.

In July, 1991, Peg's sister disappears. It's not a great time to be a missing person in Milwaukee given that the media have descended on the city and the police department is busy with the Jeffrey Dahmer case. It doesn't help that the detective assigned to the case is not that interested. Almost thirty years later, Peg's mother wants to hire a psychic to find her daughter's body. Peg is hoping she can finally get someone to look at the man she knows is responsible.

The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards is structured like a run-of-the-mill thriller, but there's more going on than finding out what happened. Richards is looking at how women are allowed to move through the world and which people get attention when they disappear, a topic highly relevant in these days when a missing social influencer, blonde, young and pretty, takes all the attention to the point where even the family of Gabrielle Petito point out that there are missing women who never rate a single mention. In this case, the first missing people who are ignored are the young, non-white gay men preyed upon by Dahmer, where the only people who care are family and friends. And then Peg's sister, caught in the middle of having too messy a life to matter and a police officer who isn't doing his job. Milwaukee is vividly rendered here -- it's wonderful when novels are published that aren't set in New York, London or any of the usual places. If you enjoyed Liz Moore's Long, Bright River, you'll enjoy The Comfort of Monsters.

69AnnieMod
Oct 15, 2021, 5:44 pm

>67 RidgewayGirl: As am I. But a year-long thread for Victorian novels (pre-selected or whatever catches someone's fancy) may be worth having - a few people appreciate them... so why not? :)

70Cariola
Oct 15, 2021, 7:02 pm

>66 AnnieMod:, >67 RidgewayGirl: I'd give it a try, but I'm also not too good at following through. Way back when in grad school, one of my self-designed exam topics was "Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Novels." Gaskell, Hardy, Wharton, etc.

71Nickelini
Oct 15, 2021, 7:45 pm

I’m up to read a 19th century novel or 2 next year. I’ve been eyeing the 2 Wilkie Collins books that are covered with dust

72japaul22
Oct 15, 2021, 9:09 pm

>66 AnnieMod: love it! I love Victorian novels and would read or reread just about any.

73dchaikin
Oct 15, 2021, 9:42 pm

>65 RidgewayGirl: that review is really entertaining.

>68 RidgewayGirl: The comfort of Monsters sounds really sad (although I have some curiosity about Milwaukee. My father-in-law grew up in a polish area there.)

74labfs39
Oct 16, 2021, 9:21 pm

>65 RidgewayGirl: Thank you for sharing snippets of that review, Kay. What a riot!

>68 RidgewayGirl: Good review of The Comfort of Monsters

75BLBera
Oct 17, 2021, 10:51 am

The Comfort of Monsters sounds good, great comments, Kay.

I skipped the review comments for Bewilderment; I am currently reading it, and while it won't be one of the year's best, I am enjoying it.

76RidgewayGirl
Oct 18, 2021, 5:50 pm

>73 dchaikin: Daniel, I'm not sure any book about the lasting effects of violent crime are going to be cheerful, but the Milwaukee stuff is really interesting.

>74 labfs39: No problem, Lisa. I enjoyed reading it again.

>75 BLBera: Beth, I look forward to reading your comments on Bewilderment. I doubt I'll read it, but I would like to read about it.

I have jury duty this week, which has allowed me to finish one book so far.

77avaland
Oct 19, 2021, 12:22 pm

>41 RidgewayGirl: Nice review of the Gaskell; it's one of my favorites (in any form).

78RidgewayGirl
Oct 19, 2021, 3:50 pm

Thanks, Lois. It was fantastic and I'm sure I'll reread it.

79RidgewayGirl
Oct 19, 2021, 6:22 pm

When Carmen Maria Machado was getting her MFA at Iowa City, she was also involved in an abusive relationship that she writes about in In the Dream House. The conceit is that every chapter -- ranging in length from a single paragraph to several pages -- is set in a specific genre or trope, so one chapter is "The Dream House as Unreliable Narrator" and another is "The Dream House as Choose Your Own Adventure." It's an effective way of pulling together a narrative that isn't too difficult to read, given the subject matter. Machado has researched ideas and themes that appear in fairy tales and folk tales and pulled them in to illustrate the ways in which the abuse manifested and in her response. Machado is also looking at the history of domestic abuse among women and how that differs from and imitates the more familiar partner violence in heterosexual relationships.

This could be a heavy book and a sad one, but Machado is so brilliant and her mind is so active and eager to seek out connections and ideas that I had to consciously slow down my reading. And Machado's story doesn't remain one characterized by uncertainty and turmoil.

80AlisonY
Oct 20, 2021, 1:04 pm

>79 RidgewayGirl: Sounds really interesting and original. Plus I love the cover.

81RidgewayGirl
Oct 20, 2021, 1:41 pm

>80 AlisonY: It's excellent. I also highly recommend Machado's feminist take on folk tales and fairy tales in Her Body and Other Parties.

82RidgewayGirl
Oct 20, 2021, 1:41 pm

After the events of The River, Jack takes a job as a fishing guide for the second half of the season at an expensive resort in the Rockies, the previous guide having abruptly quit. His first client is a famous singer who is a competent fisherwoman and this should be an easy job. But Jack, haunted by his past, is troubled by the inconsistencies and odd behavior he sees at the resort.

The Guide by Peter Heller reads like if Lee Child formed a writing collaboration with Norman Maclean. Jack is laconic and highly competent with a strong sense of duty and right and wrong. The novel is a fast-paced adventure novel in which a lot of time is spent fly-fishing and talking about nature. This has the potential to be a fun series of thrillers and I appreciate how good the writing is and how Jack is deeply affected by the events in his past.

83labfs39
Oct 20, 2021, 4:50 pm

>82 RidgewayGirl: The Guide by Peter Heller reads like if Lee Child formed a writing collaboration with Norman Maclean.

I feel like I know exactly what you mean. I haven't read The River yet, but I loved The Dog Stars and liked The Painter. I knew Peter back when he was still messing around rivers in a kayak. Very nice guy, and I'll so glad his writing career has taken off.

84stretch
Oct 20, 2021, 8:12 pm

>82 RidgewayGirl: I defintely have some of Peter Heller's books on my watch list. I've never read a Lee child book, is that reference a good thing? i get the impression he is a love or hate him kind of author.

85RidgewayGirl
Oct 21, 2021, 10:15 am

>83 labfs39: I'm glad he's a nice guy since that fits his novels. I particularly like his books because both my husband and father expect me to keep them in reading material and it's fun to find an author I like that I can hand off to them, too. We all loved The River.

>84 stretch: Lee Child's thrillers are very fast paced and the main character is a strong, silent type with a strong moral compass and a willingness to knock heads. They aren't badly written and I've enjoyed several of them -- they are good when you are in a place where it's difficult to concentrate on anything complex.

86BLBera
Oct 21, 2021, 10:57 am

I have to stop visiting this thread! I've just added the Heller and the Machado to my WL.

87AnnieMod
Oct 21, 2021, 2:34 pm

>82 RidgewayGirl: "reads like if Lee Child formed a writing collaboration with Norman Maclean."

My coffee flew everywhere... :) Never read Maclean - sounds like both him and Heller will be right up my alley.

88SassyLassy
Oct 23, 2021, 4:06 pm

Catching up on this entire thread, as I was away when it started. Lots of good reading here.

>66 AnnieMod: >67 RidgewayGirl: >70 Cariola: I'm all for a 19th century novel year.

89RidgewayGirl
Oct 23, 2021, 4:53 pm

>86 BLBera: Beth, both were really good. I hope you like them as much as I did.

>87 AnnieMod: A River Runs Through It and Other Stories is a collection most known for the story made into a movie. Maclean's stories were published in the seventies and there's a bit of an old-fashioned feel to them which enhances them. In any case, he has a real love for the outdoor places.

>88 SassyLassy: I think we're all committed to at least setting something up.

90RidgewayGirl
Oct 23, 2021, 4:54 pm

Back in the 1960s, when Zimbabwe was still called Rhodesia, a girl dreamed of a better life than ceaseless manual labor she sees her mother doing. She gets a few years in school, thanks to her uncle, a man with a degree who studied in the UK and who now supports an extended family. Her older brother is the one who gets to continue with school, until a tragedy gives her an opportunity she is determined to make work for her.

Nervous Conditions is the first book in a trilogy by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga and I'll certainly be continuing my journey with Tambu as she fights for the opportunities an education might bring her. This was a well-crafted book that did not feel like a debut. Dangarembga plays off of the difference between Tambu and her cousin, a girl her age who went with her family to England and grew up there, only to be brought back as a teenager and expected to fit back into a deeply patriarchal and hierarchical society, which she finds impossible to do. The novel gives a glimpse of what life was like then for an ordinary Rhodesian, the enormous gap between the Black population and the colonists, and the enormous resiliency and tenacity of one girl.

91dchaikin
Oct 24, 2021, 11:12 am

>89 RidgewayGirl: I’m also into this 19th century novel idea. For what it’s worth, that’s a major hole in my own reading. I’ve read very few of all famous novels. I’ll join in.

92dchaikin
Oct 24, 2021, 11:15 am

>90 RidgewayGirl: glad you enjoyed. A terrific novel, and quite an intro into Zimbabwe.

93RidgewayGirl
Oct 24, 2021, 12:20 pm

>92 dchaikin: Really fantastic. I'm eager to start the next one, The Book of Not.

94RidgewayGirl
Oct 24, 2021, 12:20 pm

My next two books coincidentally were written by men about a woman's life and those women were contemporaries, both Americans beginning their lives near the beginning of the twentieth century. But other than that, the novels are completely different. I loved both of them.

Mrs. Bridge is a modern classic and Evan S. Connell's debut novel, a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes uncharitable look at a woman's life. Mrs. Bridge of Kansas City is a woman who has lived within the confines of what is expected of her and she places those same restrictions and expectations on her family. Yet while she is the one who keeps the rules and knows what to do, this doesn't mean she doesn't also chafe sometimes or realize that there is something missing from her life, an entirely pleasant, financially comfortable existence that doesn't entirely cover for her lack of connection to her children or her husband's emotional and often physical absence.

Connell does not go lightly on Mrs. Bridge, spotlighting moments where her need to preserve appearances was silly or harmed her relationship with her children. But he's also often kind to her, revealing how little respect or support she receives from her husband. This book is also full of quietly powerful moments or humorous ones and Connell's descriptions of daily life allows plenty of room for the small disappointments and harms to be given their due. This quiet novel is a wonderful glimpse of a world that no longer exists, and of a woman who honestly did her best.

95japaul22
Oct 24, 2021, 12:51 pm

>94 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed this book when I read it several years ago. It's one I'd like to reread some day. I also read the companion novel that is from Mr. Bridge's point of view. It was also good, but I preferred Mrs. Bridge.

96AlisonY
Oct 24, 2021, 5:58 pm

>94 RidgewayGirl: Glad you also enjoyed it. I remember thinking it was really quite profound in places whilst being dressed up to be something much more trivial.

97AnnieMod
Oct 24, 2021, 7:13 pm

>89 RidgewayGirl: Post WWII 20th century American non-genre fiction is one of my blind spots so not surprised I missed him. I will see if i can check that collection. :)

>88 SassyLassy: >91 dchaikin: Well, sounds like we have enough of a quorum then :) 19th century novels will be a separate thread for next year in Club 2022. I will post an exploratory thread next week here in Club 2021 so we can discuss if we want to lock into a novel (or 3) or leave it more open and other details (so we stop derailing this thread) :)

98lisapeet
Oct 24, 2021, 8:24 pm

I really liked Mrs. Bridge, though I read it so long ago the details are fuzzy. I do remember being impressed with Connell's deft touch painting a portrait of a woman who could have come across as a caricature in many ways, both at the time it was written and from my vantage point reading it in 2008, but didn't at all.

99RidgewayGirl
Oct 25, 2021, 9:51 am

>95 japaul22: I'm thinking of going ahead and watching the movie Mr and Mrs Bridge while my husband is in Germany next week.

>96 AlisonY: Yes, definitely Connell was writing about more than one somewhat superficial woman. I'm impressed that he was able to do this in a debut novel. And then he never achieved such success again.

>97 AnnieMod: Derailing this thread is fine and thank you for being willing to set up the thread. I've been thinking of potential titles to suggest.

>98 lisapeet: Lisa, you probably remember the vignette that had me hooting with laughter -- when a party is held up and Mrs. Bridge's full description of one of the men was "not wearing a necktie," and when the robbers ask who owns the blue Cadillac, a lady yells, "Don't you tell 'em, Ralph!"

100kidzdoc
Oct 26, 2021, 2:28 pm

Nice review of Nervous Conditions, Kay. I'm long overdue to dust off my copy and get to it, probably early next year.

101RidgewayGirl
Oct 27, 2021, 10:25 am

>100 kidzdoc: I'll look forward to finding out what you think about it.

102RidgewayGirl
Oct 27, 2021, 10:25 am

Laird Hunt's novel, Zorrie, is an account of the life of a woman most would overlook. Zorrie is born and raised on an Indiana farm until her parents die when she is young and she is sent to live with an aunt who provides her with a place to stay and plenty of work, but little in the way of nurturing. When her aunt dies, Zorrie is a teenager left homeless and penniless in the middle of the Great Depression. But while Zorrie may have had to prove her resilience time and time again, this isn't a tragic tale because Zorrie is no one's tragic heroine. She's a tough and yet loving woman who loves the Indiana soil and the people in her life.

I loved this quiet story about an ordinary and remarkable woman. Hunt writes about her with such love and understanding that she feels like a beloved older relative. Zorrie lived through a tumultuous time in history, working as a "radium girl" painting clock faces and dials with glowing paint, seeing her husband leave for the war and not return and to have a transformative experience of her own, late in life. I'm glad this book was shortlisted for the National Book Award and so brought to my notice. It's a worthwhile read.

103mdoris
Oct 27, 2021, 1:10 pm

>102 RidgewayGirl: Oh that sounds good, Just put in a library request, with thanks.

104dchaikin
Oct 27, 2021, 2:24 pm

>102 RidgewayGirl: not following the National Book Award, and this title is new me. Interesting and great review.

105RidgewayGirl
Oct 30, 2021, 6:52 pm

>103 mdoris: Mary, it's a beautiful small novel.

>104 dchaikin: It's a solid shortlist, Daniel. I'm looking forward to reading the other four.

https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2021/

106RidgewayGirl
Oct 30, 2021, 6:54 pm

On an unnamed island things disappear. People wake up to find ribbons, or roses, or birds erased from their ability to hold them in their minds. Physical objects are quietly disposed of, new jobs are found and life continues. But not everyone forgets, so The Memory Police find those people and take them away, along with any forgotten objects that may remain.

Yoko Ogawa's novel is ominous and gorgeously written. As more and more object disappear, life becomes more difficult for the residents of the island and an unlikely trio of people find solace in supporting and protecting each other. This was an odd and wonderful book that I keep thinking about.

107Nickelini
Oct 30, 2021, 11:26 pm

>106 RidgewayGirl:
I'm looking forward to The Memory Police. I bought it in the summer of 2020 and I'd never heard of it -- now it seems I'm going to be the last to read it

108RidgewayGirl
Oct 30, 2021, 11:37 pm

>107 Nickelini: That's when I bought my copy, too. What a weird time -- I had plenty of books on my tbr, but because the bookstores and libraries were closed, I ended up buying more books than usual. I really enjoyed this one. It gave me plenty to think about.

109Nickelini
Oct 31, 2021, 12:44 am

> What a weird time -- I had plenty of books on my tbr, but because the bookstores and libraries were closed, I ended up buying more books than usual.

I've spent years trying to curb my book buying, especially since 2017 when I changed careers and had other lifestyle changes that resulted in my reading dropping from 65-100 books a year to more like 30. But by the summer of 2020, the flood gates opened and I've been buying books like crazy. I'm not buying anything else so might as well buy books. The day in 2020 I bought The Memory Police was one of the first times I'd been in a nice, fun store (not a grocery store), and it just felt so good. I mean, it always feels so good to go to Munro's. My daughter and I went shopping for necessities yesterday (shoe stores, department stores, Lululemon to replace something--I hate Lululemon but they do have some quality items). It became incredibly painful. We reflected later that we only want to shop at Munros, because it was the only truly pleasant store we'd been to (we then went to Bolen Books, which we gave a very good rating). Moral of my long story: for happy shopping, go to bookstores.

110lisapeet
Oct 31, 2021, 9:55 am

>107 Nickelini: Ohh, probably not the last. It's on my shelf too—I picked it up specifically because of that wonderfully weird cover.

111dchaikin
Oct 31, 2021, 2:01 pm

>105 RidgewayGirl: thanks for the link.

Also great post on The Memory Police. Seems everyone has something interesting to say about it.

>109 Nickelini: I like your moral.

112RidgewayGirl
Nov 1, 2021, 12:42 pm

>109 Nickelini: I agree. For most shopping, it's get in and out as quickly as possible, but bookstores and art supply stores are the exception.

>110 lisapeet: It's a great cover.

113RidgewayGirl
Nov 1, 2021, 4:35 pm

The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You is a collection of short stories by Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Ruffin's first novel was a satire but these stories fully inhabit the present, even when Ruffin pulls things into the near future. These are also stories set in and about New Orleans, but not the one the tourists or wealthy in-comers see, but a New Orleans of people just getting by, of hustlers and kids and working folk. Many of the stories are vignettes, short pieces of just a page or two but for all their brevity, they didn't feel like fragments.

Ruffin inhabits different characters with an easy grace that comes of keen observation, but he's at his best in writing from the point of view of children trying to get by in a world where they have very little control over what happens around them. A few of the stories reminded me of Jamel Brinkley's A Lucky Man and my favorite story is the one that closes out the book, about a woman trying to save her house while her neighborhood is gentrifying around her. Tip hotel housekeeping, guys!

114RidgewayGirl
Nov 3, 2021, 3:32 pm

At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman begins when a young homeless woman finds a dying man in the bushes of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Before she realizes what's going on, she also sees the face of the man who stabbed him. But this novel is not primarily about that, but about the people who sleep in the park when the weather's good and in a shelter when it isn't. Maddy becomes homeless once she ages out of the foster care system and her friends, a small group that sticks together for safety and support, come from a variety of backgrounds. Seligman explores what led Maddy to prefer life on the streets and touches on the issues of her friends and in this she is both humane and clear-eyed. These characters are real people, often with serious problems and she also shows how help can be both well-meaning and badly aimed.

The situation created in the beginning of the novel is more of a distraction and I never bought into Maddy's motivations for some of her actions, but it also served to show the impact on a family when one of its members choses to leave and live without a fixed address. I appreciated this novel more than I enjoyed it, although it never felt preachy and the way it illuminated the daily fabric of living homeless was something not often found.

115Nickelini
Nov 4, 2021, 8:38 pm

>114 RidgewayGirl: That does sound interesting

116kidzdoc
Nov 5, 2021, 7:03 am

Ooh, you hit me with two book bullets, Kay. Maurice Carlos Ruffin's novel We Cast a Shadow is sitting in my bookshelf in my old room in my parents' house, waiting to be read later this year, but The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You sounds even more interesting, given its setting in my old home of New Orleans*, its focus on working class residents, which applies to most of my relatives who lived there, and its comparison to A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley, one of my favorite short story collections of the recent past. I'll add this book to my Christmas wish list...no, actually I'll look for it when I make my first trip to Virginia Highland Books, which may happen today depending on what time I drive my SUV home from the BMW service center in Decatur.

*Even though I only lived in the Crescent City for three years while I attended Tulane University its influence on me is stronger than anyplace else, and I'll always claim New Orleans as one of my homes. I can't say the same about Atlanta, though, even though I've lived here for 24 years.

At the Edge of the Haight also sounds very interesting, given my frequent trips to San Francisco in the 2000s. I'll add it to my list of books to borrow from the public library.

117RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 5, 2021, 9:54 am

>115 Nickelini: There was a lot that was interesting about it. I'm not sure the murder mystery aspect worked, but there was enough there to make it interesting regardless.

>116 kidzdoc: I really enjoyed We Cast a Shadow, but it is satire, and if I remember correctly, that's not a favorite of yours. Ruffin's short stories are not satire at all. I agree with you on the excellence of A Lucky Man. I still think about that one story of the boy at the pool party often.

118NanaCC
Nov 5, 2021, 12:23 pm

Finally caught up Kay. As always, you’ve done some excellent reading.

119kidzdoc
Nov 6, 2021, 6:38 am

>117 RidgewayGirl: I'm not a huge fan of satire, but I do like and appreciate the works of Percival Everett and Ishmael Reed, and I do plan to read We Cast a Shadow soon, possibly during Thanksgiving Week.

120RidgewayGirl
Nov 7, 2021, 4:17 pm

121Nickelini
Nov 7, 2021, 6:39 pm

>120 RidgewayGirl: LOL

122markon
Nov 8, 2021, 3:44 pm

Oh my, this is a dangerous thread for book bullets! I am interested in all four of the National Book Award nominees, but don't know when I'll get around to reading them. Also adding A passage north, Peter Heller and Zorrie to my list.

123RidgewayGirl
Nov 9, 2021, 3:56 pm

Lucy Barton, the main character in My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible, is back in Oh William!, an account of her relationship with her ex-husband. But as in her other novels, this becomes a reason to look back over her own life and how it intersected with her ex-husband's, how she got along with his mother, and culminating with him asking her to accompany him on a trip to visit the area his mother grew up in, in conditions that weren't too different from Lucy's own.

Elizabeth Strout writes movingly and so clearly about people that even though her novels are not really plot-based, they are a delight to read. This one is no exception. Lucy grew up in an impoverished household and she often reflects how that has formed who she is, she also thinks about the teacher who helped her and how she has never really felt at home anywhere, or even entirely visible. And her own idea of how she appears to others is challenged by William's comments about her over the course of their post-marriage relationship. Strout writes about ordinary lives better than anyone else.

124BLBera
Nov 12, 2021, 9:50 am

I'm waiting for my turn with Oh William! and am happy to see such positive comments about it.

On the Edge of the Haight and the Ruffin short stories also sound like ones I would enjoy. Great comments, Kay.

125RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 13, 2021, 12:07 pm

>122 markon: This is the season for longlists and end of year lists to appear and it always makes me desperate to read everything.

For example, my personal favorite, The Tournament of Books, has just released their long longlist and I have been making lists of books.

https://themorningnews.org/article/the-year-in-fiction-2021

>124 BLBera: Beth, Strout really writes so wonderfully. I like how she's settled into writing about and around Lucy Barton. And I highly recommend the Ruffin.

126dchaikin
Nov 13, 2021, 1:25 pm

>125 RidgewayGirl: that was fun - scanning the ToB longlist

127labfs39
Nov 13, 2021, 2:19 pm

>125 RidgewayGirl: Ooh, some new-to-me books that sound interesting and some that were already on my radar. I've never followed the ToB before--this may be the year!

128mdoris
Editado: Nov 13, 2021, 7:32 pm

I like following the Tof B too. Good to have a peek at the longlist. And thank you! I just finished Zorrie which was a bb from you and really enjoyed it.

129RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 13, 2021, 9:10 pm

>126 dchaikin: That's one of my favorite things to do. I have made a list of a few titles I want to read and that's a large part of my reading for the next few months.

>127 labfs39: It's a lot of fun, Lisa.

>128 mdoris: Wasn't it great, in an understated, measured way? I was disappointed to not see it on the ToB list.

130lisapeet
Nov 14, 2021, 9:36 am

Interesting ToB list. Is it my imagination, or are there more under-the-radar books this year than usual? I like when the popularity factor is so varied, even though the dark horses never rise up very far.

131RidgewayGirl
Nov 14, 2021, 11:49 am

>130 lisapeet: The funny thing about the dark horses is that while they might not win, some of them attain a sort of cult status within the people avidly following the tournament. Like Stephen Florida or Version Control, books that never got much traction but most ToB readers have strong opinions about them. It is fun to discover new books and authors -- the ToB has introduced me to Marcy Dermansky and Samanta Schweblin, for example.

132RidgewayGirl
Nov 15, 2021, 4:46 pm

The Comeback by Ella Berman is a novel that uses a provocative premise to explore deeper issues in a surprisingly thoughtful way. When Grace is barely a teenager, she is chosen by a charismatic director as his muse. He moves her family from England to California, but also effectively removes Grace from their care, controlling and manipulating her along the way. After a series of events, she ends up hiding out in her parents' house, the house her money bought them, where they are unequipped to help her. When she hears that the director is getting a lifetime achievement award, she devises a plan to reveal to the world what he did.

But while Grace is unevenly plotting, she's also a young woman who is deeply damaged by what was done to her and she's also being ceaselessly pursued by paparazzi. But even as she's falling apart, she's learning about what she needs to do to heal. This is such a nuanced look at what fame can do to a young woman, and the problems posed by our new social media-focused society. Berman made the exploration of these issues a lot of fun even as she gave no easy answers.

133RidgewayGirl
Nov 16, 2021, 2:00 pm

Martha Gellhorn did not like that her accomplishments were overshadowed by having been Ernest Hemingway's third wife. She would most like to be known for her now-forgotten novels. What she deserves to be remembered for is her ground-breaking war reporting that paved the way for women to report from conflict zones.

Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorhead is a thorough look at Gellhorn's life, with care taken to center her life and activities within the history and politics of the time. And with Gellhorn being a regular visitor to the Roosevelt White House, breaking into journalism with reports on the living conditions of mill workers in North Carolina and Massachusetts during the Depression, being on the ground in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and reporting during the Second World War, including being among the first reporters on the beaches on D-Day, this makes for interesting reading. She traveled all over Europe during the last days of the war, including riding through Italy with the soldiers fighting and a post-liberation visit to the Dachau concentration camp. Later, she'd visit both Israel and try to get a pass to report on the Vietnam War.

This biography bogs down in the final third, when Gellhorn's life becomes less about her career and more about her disappointments with aging and relationships. She was not a good mother and when the book turned to detailing things like how many times she humiliated her son or the time her cats peed on the sofa, I found my love for this detailed book waning. I'd recommend it for the first two-thirds and suggest skipping the rest. She was an important historical figure, but certainly not an unproblematic one.

134labfs39
Nov 16, 2021, 4:28 pm

>133 RidgewayGirl: As soon as I saw this was written by Caroline Moorhead, I was ready to add it to my wish list. I thought both A Train in Winter and Village of Secrets were excellent. I'm sorry this one disappointed in the end. Have you read anything else by her?

135RidgewayGirl
Nov 16, 2021, 5:45 pm

>134 labfs39: No, but I do have a copy of A Train in Winter. I wish she'd condensed the final third quite a bit, but I think she may have had so much material and it was too hard to omit stuff. Gellhorn was a fascinating woman and remarkably fearless.

136RidgewayGirl
Nov 16, 2021, 7:22 pm

In 2019, I read an extraordinary memoir in German called Herkunft by Saša Stanišić. It won the most prestigious German literary prize -- quite an achievement for a refugee from the Balkans who only learned German beginning when he was twelve. It will be released in an English translation on December 7th, and I highly recommend this extraordinary book.

137labfs39
Nov 17, 2021, 9:08 am

>136 RidgewayGirl: What it means to belong to a country that no longer exists. Interesting question. Onto the wish list it goes!

138RidgewayGirl
Nov 17, 2021, 3:10 pm

Frida is a single parent to a toddler. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She and her husband had planned a future together, but halfway through her pregnancy, he found someone younger and less pregnant to love instead and now Frida is struggling. She's taken a lower paying job that lets her work from home on the days she has custody of Harriet, but Harriet has an ear ache that kept her up all night and Frida needs some papers from her office to complete an overdue task. So she makes the mistake of leaving her child to run a quick errand. An errand that took a little longer than planned and when she gets home, it's to find the police there and child services taking her daughter away. Soon after, Frida is sentenced to a year in a reeducation program for bad mothers.

So begins The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. Frida is incarcerated with a diverse group of mothers whose transgressions swing between actual abuse to the allegations of an ex-husband. Each woman must been seen to learn her lesson and become a good mother, with the help of AI robots designed to look like appropriately-aged children. As the women work through the lessons of parenting -- an approach that says that every moment a mother must be vigilant and attentive. This is a version of the world just slightly different from our own and the differences seem all too plausible.

Frida isn't an entirely likable character and her mistake toes the line against what is acceptable, but she's also very human and a good conduit for showing this repressive world and what it might entail. Chan is a talented writer and the novel is well-plotted. I don't generally like dystopian fiction, but this book kept me turning the pages, invested in Frida's life.

139dchaikin
Nov 17, 2021, 3:19 pm

>133 RidgewayGirl: very interesting about Martha Gellhorn

>>138 RidgewayGirl: this sounds fun

and these two books make an interesting pair.

140RidgewayGirl
Nov 17, 2021, 3:24 pm

>139 dchaikin: Gellhorn was a fascinating person. Difficult and ground-breaking. And yes, oddly, this dystopian nightmare of a book was fun to read. Terrifying to contemplate though. There's another program for fathers being run concurrently and it's very, very different.

141dchaikin
Nov 17, 2021, 6:47 pm

You have a messy parent theme going…?

142labfs39
Editado: Nov 17, 2021, 7:54 pm

>138 RidgewayGirl: Ouch. Book bullet with The School for Good Mothers. Good review. Has me eager to know what happens and what the school for fathers was like. Off to request it from the library.

Edited to add: rats, not published until January...

143RidgewayGirl
Nov 18, 2021, 10:27 am

>141 dchaikin: Yikes, I do! A book I'm currently reading, Wayward, also has a bad mother as the main character.

>142 labfs39: Sorry, Lisa.

144SassyLassy
Nov 18, 2021, 10:41 am

>133 RidgewayGirl: I'll look for this book.
Gellhorn has also been credited with doing much of the reporting on China that was published under Hemingway's byline.
I have read one of her novels: Liana

145RidgewayGirl
Nov 18, 2021, 1:40 pm

>144 SassyLassy: The account of their trip to China in the biography was very interesting, although I would have liked more on it. Gellhorn later wrote an account of the time, Hemingway was named "UC" for Unwilling Companion.

146RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 18, 2021, 2:53 pm

An American has recently moved to a city in Central Europe. It's a cold day sometime before Christmas and he meets up with a woman he's recently met to look for an apartment to rent. As they travel around the city, meeting up with her friends, looking at this place he's decided to call home and looking for the apartment, the man thinks back over his life, especially his time in Iraq. There are also memories that lead to digressions about music and art. Not much happens, and while it's not an ordinary day, it's not a remarkable one.

And yet, I was entirely pulled into this exercise in minimalism. The Apartment is written in a way that places the reader entirely within the setting of the novel, feeling the cold from the snow seep through your shoes, smelling the sausages for sale at the Christmas market, seeing the daylight fade in the afternoon. Greg Baxter knows how to evoke a setting. He also knows how to build a character, letting the details arise organically as the novel progresses. This short novel is a masterclass in character-development and in creating a setting, even if neither the protagonist nor the city are ever named.

147RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 18, 2021, 2:54 pm

duplicate

148markon
Nov 21, 2021, 11:27 am

Why do I read this thread - I always get hit by book bullets!

I read it because it tells me about so many interesting books. I'm only recording two this time: The apartment by Greg Baxter - I love character based novels, when I can relax to read them - and The school for good mothers by Jessamine Chan.

149RidgewayGirl
Nov 21, 2021, 12:33 pm

>148 markon: Oh, thank you, Ardene! I have been having a great reading year this year.

150labfs39
Nov 21, 2021, 8:18 pm

>143 RidgewayGirl: The librarian is ordering a copy of The School for Good Mothers. Yay!

151RidgewayGirl
Nov 22, 2021, 10:13 am

Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah is the story of boy growing up and coming to terms with his family's story. It's also the story of his parents and how an act of love destroyed their marriage. It's about a young man, taken away from all he knows to study in a foreign country, living with relatives who expect constant gratitude, then building his own life. It's about a fraught relationship between a father and a son and how Salim comes to understand his father.

Gurnah is a talented writer who builds a vivid picture of Zanzibar in the 1970s and of what life was like for an African in London. His writing is both clear and understated. There's a feeling of telling a tale and of grounding the story firmly in the world as it is. I'm very interested in reading more by this author.

152avaland
Nov 22, 2021, 11:32 am

All caught up with your reading. As one expects you have another interesting collection of reads :-)

Glad you enjoyed The Memory Police. I read that back in 2019. I've read three of her others, although I didn't right a review for one. Also glad you liked Gravel Heart; Gurnah has been one of my favorite African authors.

I also enjoyed your review of the Gellhorn book, too. Very interesting.

153RidgewayGirl
Nov 22, 2021, 3:00 pm

>152 avaland: I can see why Gurnah is one of your favorites. I'm hoping to read something else by him soon.

154RidgewayGirl
Nov 22, 2021, 9:16 pm

Sam is a middle-aged, comfortably-off woman living in a suburb of Syracuse, New York. She has a job, but the hours and pay mean it's almost volunteer work, giving tours of the house of a local suffragette. Her daughter is in the middle of college applications and extracurricular involvement in an entrepreneurial student group and her husband loves her but doesn't really pay attention to her when she's talking. Then she tours an open house for a run down arts and crafts home in a blighted neighborhood and falls in love. As she puts down earnest money, she realizes that she's leaving her husband for a house.

As someone who has, upon occasion, browsed Zillow for run-down Victorian houses and craftsman bungalows, I was all in with the opening chapter. And I've loved a previous book of Dana Spiotta's, the wonderful Innocents and Others. Spiotta writes complex, problematic women so well. But as Wayward went on, I liked it less. Partly, it's the setting - the US in the aftermath of Trump's election, and partly it's how Sam isn't ever portrayed as complex so much as she is just annoying and self-involved. This isn't a bad book, so much as it is ham-fisted. Maybe I need more time before I'm ready for a novel about the Trump years and maybe this just isn't Spiotta's best.

155RidgewayGirl
Nov 24, 2021, 5:47 pm

Some people in Hell are nice. They just happened to have done a very reprehensible thing at one point. I killed my husband once, for instance. But I felt bad enough about it to also kill myself.

Alissa Nutting's Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls is a collection of both weird and weirdly heartfelt short stories. A woman arrives in Hell and ends up in a relationship with the devil. A grandmother sends her granddaughter into the heating vent to confront the ghost of her dead mother. A woman who works piloting cargo ships from planet to planet buys her cryogenically frozen mother when the prison she was held in closes. A mortician smokes the hair of the deceased to gain insight into their lives.

But when I'm around children it seems like I will someday be able to accept my own death. I observe their natural purity, the joy they derive from grass, trees, and human company, and I realize that these things would never make me joyful....I also like the park because kids are easy to watch: they're fast and loud and they never stop moving. Watching kids play is like staring at an aquarium set to "boil."

The longer stories in this collection, where Nutting took the time to allow her characters to fully inhabit their odd circumstances, were the strongest in this book. The shorter ones felt undeveloped.

156labfs39
Nov 24, 2021, 7:18 pm

>155 RidgewayGirl: Unclean Jobs sounds creative, to say the least. I like the "aquarium set to boil."

157RidgewayGirl
Nov 24, 2021, 7:39 pm

>156 labfs39: Nutting does have an interesting way of looking at things and, as we know from her novel, Tampa, she's not afraid to go to extremes.

158AlisonY
Nov 25, 2021, 7:25 am

>157 RidgewayGirl: I agree. I think her surname is rather apt.

159RidgewayGirl
Nov 27, 2021, 12:45 pm

>158 AlisonY: It really is. Although she was born in Michigan and now lives in Iowa, she has lived in Florida and her style is very "Florida Weird."

160RidgewayGirl
Nov 27, 2021, 12:59 pm

Set outside of Manchester, Keeper, the debut thriller by Jessica Moor is a dark and atmospheric tale with an ending twist that surprised me. The book goes back and forth between when a young woman meets and begins a relationship with a seemingly nice young man and after her body has been pulled from the river as an apparent suicide, where there are just enough questions to warrant an investigation.

The story is cleverly constructed and while the signs add up in the story of Katie's relationship, it's because the reader is also following two detectives as they attempt to find out about her past. She was working in a shelter for battered women when she went missing, so finding out about her involves getting to know the group of women who are taking refuge there, from a teenage girl beaten to the point of needing to be hospitalized by her younger brother, to a seventy year old woman who took 49 years to leave her abusive husband. The two detectives, especially the older one, is dismissive and skeptical of the women's fears and both dislike the abrasive woman who runs the house.

A lot of this novel is disturbing to read, focusing as it does on a variety of ways women are abused by those they are closest to. It might have easily been ham-handed or preachy, but is saved by the way the two male detectives are drawn and in that startling but logical twist at the end. I'm eager to read Moor's next novel.

161labfs39
Nov 27, 2021, 4:09 pm

>160 RidgewayGirl: This sounds very interesting, although not something I want to read at the moment. It's the type of book I need to be emotionally prepared for.

162labfs39
Nov 27, 2021, 10:11 pm

I just saw your thread on the Global Challenge page. I like that you are aiming for books that are not only by an author of that country, but that are set in the country as well. You are also focusing on recent reads, as opposed to all time. I may tweak the way I'm doing it as I go along, we'll see. I added a ticker. I have 193 countries. I found a list online of UN member states, then I added Palestine. How many do you have? I thought about adding Chechnya as well, but that's a slippery slope to go down. Are you including memoirs, or only fiction?

163RidgewayGirl
Editado: Nov 28, 2021, 3:46 pm

>162 labfs39: I'm being a little arbitrary with it. I've omitted lighter reading and won't count multiple books by the same author. And focusing on recent reads is entirely due to my having only started to keep track of authors's nationalities in 2015.

As for the countries included, I copied your list and added Palestine, Taiwan and the Republic of Congo. It may be a slippery slope, but I'd rather add more countries than omit them. And I am tentatively including memoirs, but I'm favoring fiction.

I'm happy about having a place to track global reading that doesn't just start fresh each year. Thanks for pointing the forum out.

164RidgewayGirl
Nov 29, 2021, 4:06 pm

The Trees by Percival Everett begins with an apparent double murder in Money, Mississippi. Then one of the bodies disappears from the morgue. When another man is found murdered, and the missing corpse is with the body, things get weird. And then two special detectives for the MBI (Mississippi Bureau of Investigation) show up to solve the crime and find the (again) missing corpse.

The Trees is a novel that defies easy description. It's a novel about lynching that is also really funny? A humorous novel about racism? Whatever it is, it's best book I've read this year.

165stretch
Editado: Nov 29, 2021, 5:20 pm

>164 RidgewayGirl: I've seen this recommend in places, but no one can seem to describe it with any clarity. With your recommendation I think I'll have to put this on the TBR.

166RidgewayGirl
Nov 29, 2021, 5:44 pm

>165 stretch: I suspect that people just don't want to give anything away. It's really good.

167mdoris
Nov 29, 2021, 8:18 pm

>164 RidgewayGirl: Thank you, just put that one on hold at the library!

168lisapeet
Nov 29, 2021, 10:19 pm

>164 RidgewayGirl: Oh good, nudging it up the pile.

169Simone2
Nov 30, 2021, 5:34 pm

>164 RidgewayGirl: You nailed it with your review. A very uncomfortable hilarious read. I have loved all the books I’ve read by him so far!

170rachbxl
Dic 1, 2021, 2:52 am

Hello there, I'm catching up. What struck me yet again on reading your posts from the last couple of weeks is how you seem to have a never-ending supply of great books, as well as the will, or the energy, to read them...and then to post unfailingly thoughtful comments about your reading. My own reading goes in fits and starts so I'm quite envious of your apparently steady reading flow.

Needless to say, you've added to my wishlist - this time I've made note of The Keeper and The Trees.

171RidgewayGirl
Dic 1, 2021, 11:50 am

>167 mdoris: & >168 lisapeet: I look forward to finding out what you think of it!

>169 Simone2: Barbara, Percival Everett deserves to be much better known than he is. Each of the books of his that I've read have been very different from each other and all very good. But The Trees I think is extraordinary.

>170 rachbxl: Rachel, I'm having a great reading year. I felt like I lost my love of it somewhat during the uncertainties of 2020, but regained it this year. It helps that both my children are now off in college, which leaves me more time for reading.

172RidgewayGirl
Dic 4, 2021, 11:54 am

The problem with Lily King's short story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, is that the first story was so perfect that I was over-invested by the end of it and never recovered from this not being a novel about a fourteen year old girl working as a summer nanny for a wealthy family. So when I picked up the book to read the next story, I spent it regretting that it wasn't the second chapter in the book I badly want to read, but another very fine story, this time about a quiet bookstore owner who is raising his daughter alone and the bookstore employee who comes over to help his daughter with her French. The stories here are fantastic. King writes with empathy and skill and her writing here reminds me of both Elizabeth Strout and Elizabeth McCracken. Each one is just lovely and I wish there had been twice as many stories in this collection.

173RidgewayGirl
Dic 4, 2021, 11:56 am

Melmoth has rearranged the furniture to make her Saturday morning bird-watching more comfortable. I don't have the heart to put the chair back as she seems so happy.

174LolaWalser
Dic 4, 2021, 12:59 pm

>173 RidgewayGirl:

Genius!

175Cariola
Dic 5, 2021, 12:27 pm

>172 RidgewayGirl: This one is already on my wish list. I do love a good short story collection. I just finished Claire Keegan's lovely novella. If you haven't read any of her short stoy collections, you should give them a try.

>173 RidgewayGirl: Been there, done that!

176ELiz_M
Dic 5, 2021, 7:09 pm

>164 RidgewayGirl:, >169 Simone2: I bought this on impulse today and I blame the both of you!

177RidgewayGirl
Dic 6, 2021, 8:41 am

>174 LolaWalser: I'm absolutely certain that this was an accident caused by my butterball deciding to perch on the top of the chair, but it did work out well for her.

>175 Cariola: I have not read anything by Claire Keegan, but she is on my wishlist.

>176 ELiz_M: You will not regret the purchase.

178RidgewayGirl
Dic 6, 2021, 4:23 pm

The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz is nuts. Owen meets Luna at college and they become friends. Their friendship continues over the years until, one day, Luna finds the body of Owen's wife while she's out for a jog. And while the police are untangling that murder, Lutz takes the reader back to Owen and Luna's college days, which involve another suspiciously dead body, but of course that's just coincidence. As is secret from Luna's past, one so large that she changed her name.

So there's a ton going on, with frequent shifts between the timelines and Lutz makes it all work somehow, spinning the various plates of plot while building a story about a friendship that isn't always healthy or even good for the two people involved, but which does turn out to be the most important relationship of their lives. This thriller is fast-paced and so well-written and constructed so if you like your escapist reading to have a bit of substance and bite, you'll love this one.

179RidgewayGirl
Dic 7, 2021, 5:53 pm

Books about writing fall into two camps. There are the instructional ones, with writing prompts and exercises, and there are the inspirational ones, that instead of telling you how to write, make the reader want to jump up and grab a pen. Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi is neither of these things, but rather a look at how writing a book is like making a map. The comparison sometimes gets lost in Turchi's giant enthusiasm for maps and the history of mapmaking and I have to admit that I was with him all the way. If you like maps a lot and write a bit, then this book is for you, and by that I mean that this book was for me. It also helps that the physical book is such a pleasing object, with heavy, creamy paper and plentiful maps of many kinds.

Given that our capacity for abstraction is great, greater than we may realize, it isn't necessary for a map user to know the first thing about projection formulas. A map maker, however, is obliged to understand exactly what he is doing.

This isn't an instruction book, but it does present a different angle with which to look at a writing project. Whether it will prove useful is unknown, but the maps were lovely, as was the author's discussions around them.

180Nickelini
Dic 7, 2021, 9:27 pm

>179 RidgewayGirl:
If you like maps a lot and write a bit, then this book is for you,

I guess I have no choice but to read this then. Thanks for introducing it to me.

181RidgewayGirl
Dic 8, 2021, 10:04 am

>180 Nickelini: I knew there were a few of us here.

182lisapeet
Dic 8, 2021, 10:59 am

>181 RidgewayGirl: Moi aussi—I'm very much a maphead, and of course a writer too. I just checked and that book has been on my wish list for ten years... time to do something about that, I think.

183RidgewayGirl
Dic 8, 2021, 1:21 pm

At Night All Blood is Black, the International Booker Prize-winning book by David Diop and translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, is no heart-warming tale suitable for holiday reading. It's a hard, harsh read. The writing is lovely, the way the novel is structured is beautifully done and the story itself is grim.

Alfa is a soldier in the trenches fighting for France in the First World War. He and his best friend came from Senegal to fight with les Chocolats, African soldiers from Frances colonies. And when the worst happens, Alfa is compelled to seek revenge on the other side. His fellow soldiers at first applaud his exploits, but are soon terrified of him.

The story moves back and forth between Alfa's childhood and young adulthood, and his experiences in France, and the reader gets an ever more vivid look at what trench warfare did to the hearts and minds of the men who fought. This novel is brilliant, superbly written and absolutely devastating to read.

184labfs39
Dic 8, 2021, 5:35 pm

>183 RidgewayGirl: Nice review of a book that I need to read.

185RidgewayGirl
Dic 8, 2021, 6:24 pm

>184 labfs39: It's excellent, but I was glad it was so short as a longer book of that impact would have been hard to read.

186rhian_of_oz
Dic 9, 2021, 11:25 pm

I'm finally starting to catch up and consider myself lucky to have escaped your thread with only three BBs :-). Your reading is so varied and your reviews are so interesting.

187RidgewayGirl
Dic 12, 2021, 12:48 pm

Thanks, Rhian. My wishlist is ridiculously large, but at least I'll never have trouble finding something to read. Coincidentally, I was in a bookstore yesterday and picked up a new book by an Australian author. Charlotte Wood's The Weekend.

188RidgewayGirl
Dic 13, 2021, 4:57 pm

He stares now at the three words he has written. They are ridiculous. Writing is ridiculous. A sentence, any sentence, is absurd. Just the idea of it: jam one word up against another, shoulder-to-shoulder, jaw-to-jaw; hem them in with punctuation so they can't move an inch. And then hand that over to someone else to peer at, and expect something to communicated, something understood. It's not just pointless. It is ethically suspect.

Samuel Beckett lived in France through the Second World War and A Country Road, A Tree is Jo Baker's novel about that time, as Beckett struggles with his writing, finds a way to contribute to the Resistance and manages to survive the war. He starts out as an eager acolyte to James Joyce, but his wartime experiences pare him down and change him and his writing.

This isn't a war-as-adventure-story, but one filled with the real deprivation, fear and insecurity that he and the people of Paris faced. Baker is one of my favorite authors; every single book she writes is entirely different from the next, but each is superbly written and worthwhile.

189rhian_of_oz
Dic 13, 2021, 11:54 pm

>187 RidgewayGirl: I'm currently reading The Weekend. So far it doesn't have the punch The Natural Way of Things but I am hopeful.

190labfs39
Dic 14, 2021, 10:10 am

>188 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read anything by Jo Baker, but I like historical fiction. Do you have a favorite you would recommend?

191RidgewayGirl
Dic 14, 2021, 7:28 pm

>189 rhian_of_oz: I'm very much hoping that The Weekend is not as grim as The Natural Way of Things!

>190 labfs39: She's so good, Lisa. Longbourn is probably her best known book - the story of the servants working in the Bennett household. It's really lovely, even if you're not an Austen fan.

192japaul22
Dic 14, 2021, 8:58 pm

>188 RidgewayGirl: I just picked this up at a library sale - glad to hear about it. I loved Longbourn and The Body Lies.

193RidgewayGirl
Dic 15, 2021, 1:31 pm

>192 japaul22: I do love her writing, Jennifer.

In some personal news, a lot is going on. Our beloved cat was diagnosed with a mast cell tumor and I'm waiting for the specialist to call and make plans for treatment.

AT&T was boring a hole under our driveway this morning (news to me!) when they hit a gas line so now my front yard is filled with men in high-visibility vests enjoying the beautiful weather and watching the utter destruction of my driveway. The timing is particularly good because . . .

I'm moving to Illinois! My husband has taken a new job in Bloomington (between Peoria and Champaign, about 2 hours south of Chicago) and they want him now so we are selling our house, packing up our cats and moving north at absolutely the best time of year to do so. So fingers crossed that our house here sells quickly to someone willing to pay a lot for it and that the house both my husband and I like the looks of in Bloomington remains available until we can go see it and make an offer. And anyone who want to come and help us move six cats is welcome to do so.

194Cariola
Dic 18, 2021, 12:48 pm

Good luck with your move! I'm one that really (like the cats) hates change, so this would be a nightmare to me, but it sounds like you are ready for a new beginning. So sorry to hear about the kitty. Is this Melmoth?

195japaul22
Dic 18, 2021, 12:54 pm

>193 RidgewayGirl: Bloomington! I did my undergraduate degree at University of Illinois. I don't know Bloomington as well, but I loved Champaign-Urbana. I think the universities around there should provide some good cultural options for you, and of course Chicago isn't too far and is so wonderful. But yes, winters can be rough!

196stretch
Dic 18, 2021, 1:22 pm

>183 RidgewayGirl: Good luck on the move. Weather is not too bad right now here in the midwest for a move. At least no snow yet, just rain. I keep finding myself moving in the depths of February, snow adds a fun challenge to moving.

>166 RidgewayGirl: You were so right about the Trees one of the best reads this years, yet hard to find the words to talk about it.

>184 labfs39: Great review! Hope to get to this one myself soon.

197RidgewayGirl
Dic 18, 2021, 3:36 pm

>194 Cariola: I grew up in a family that moved all the time and with a love of seeing new places, so it's just the sheer number of things to do that daunts me. And not having toddlers or dogs does simplify things. The cat in question is our oldest, Tarzan. Melmoth had her annual vet visit yesterday and remains the picture of health.

>195 japaul22: Jennifer, I'm hoping my childhood in Edmonton and my years in Munich will help me adjust back to having actual winters again. I'm looking forward to exploring.

>196 stretch: Yes, The Trees really is a hard book to describe. But also brilliant and moving.

198labfs39
Dic 18, 2021, 5:54 pm

>193 RidgewayGirl: I did a double take, as I went to grad school in Bloomington. The other Bloomington though (Indiana). Good luck selling your house and getting kith and kin or at least kittens to Illinois. Keep us updated!

199BLBera
Dic 18, 2021, 9:02 pm

Good luck with the move, Kay. How exciting!

I loved A Country Road, A Tree; it was my first book by Baker.

200RidgewayGirl
Dic 21, 2021, 8:46 pm

>198 labfs39: It's going well so far, Lisa. I'm busy getting rid of things, packing up other things, and making lists of minor fixes. Two cats are not going with us -- my Dad wants one of them and my daughter is seeing about getting permission to take her cat into on-campus housing. Moving four cats is child's play.

>199 BLBera: Beth, have you read any others by Jo Baker since? I've read three and enjoyed each enormously.

201labfs39
Dic 21, 2021, 9:19 pm

>200 RidgewayGirl: Moving four cats is child's play

Better you than me! When do you plan to head out?

202RidgewayGirl
Dic 21, 2021, 9:26 pm

>201 labfs39: My husband's start date in near the end of January, so as close to then as the movers will allow? We have temporary housing in a corporate apartment available, but it would be nice to not do much of that.

203lisapeet
Dic 22, 2021, 9:57 am

I'm not at all familiar with Jo Baker. Is A Country Road, a Tree a good place to start with her?

And good luck on the move and shuffling around and cat wrangling, Kay. I've lived in my house for more than 18 years and just the thought of moving makes my stomach drop... I have no plans to go anywhere at the moment, but there's always the consideration that there are stairs here, both inside and up from the street, and although we're still under 60 and in fine shape we may not be always.

204RidgewayGirl
Dic 22, 2021, 3:57 pm

>203 lisapeet: I've read three of hers and I think any of her books is a good place to start. Each of her books is so different from the others. Longbourn is her most well-known novel, I think, and good whether or not you like Jane Austen, while The Body Lies is a thriller with a lot of depth.

And we've been in this house for 15 years. Long enough that it's very much set up for us and the closets are full. One thing about a move is that it's a great way to clear out things that aren't used much anymore. And I hear you about the stairs. My current house has an upstairs, but the master bedroom is on the ground floor and the houses we're eying will all involve using stairs all the time. It's the downfall of very much preferring old houses over the new ones. A hundred years ago, no one was putting bedrooms on the ground floor.

205RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 22, 2021, 3:57 pm

In this horror-tinged thriller, Laura Lippman tells the story of an author who is stuck in a hospital bed in his exclusive Baltimore apartment, being cared for by a night nurse and his assistant, who begins receiving calls from a woman who claims to be the main character in his best known book. As she insists that he owes her, he wonders which of the many women in his life might have wanted to do him harm, but he's always been such a nice guy, in his own estimation.

Dream Girl takes the thriller into a darker place. Gerry is both attempting an honest evaluation of his own life and an unreliable narrator of his own experiences. As he thinks back over his life, there's more than a little self-justification and complaints about the over-sensitivity of women. But someone is out to get Gerry and figuring out who that is might be his only chance to save his own life.

This book is a bit of a departure for Lippman, who has been moving towards more depth in her popular crime novels. I appreciate that she's always improving her craft, but while I enjoyed this one, it's not my favorite.

206BLBera
Dic 23, 2021, 10:00 am

Hi Kay - I've also read The Body Lies, which was very good as well. I haven't read Longbourn yet. One of these days.

I've read a couple by Lippman, which were fine. It's that too many books problem.

207AlisonY
Dic 24, 2021, 10:43 am

Best of luck with your big move, Kay. One month to move sounds super speedy! Wishing you lots of happiness in your new home and town. Hope the kitties settle well.

208RidgewayGirl
Dic 24, 2021, 11:19 am

>206 BLBera: I have no idea what you are talking about, Beth. I'm easily able to read all the books published each year that look interesting. It's almost better to realize that I'm not interested in an author's work enough to hunt their books down than realizing I've added an author's backlist to my mental wishlist.

>207 AlisonY: Thanks, Alison. While my husband is heading north in January, I'll stay and finish up the move from this end if needed. I just really hope this house sells as quickly as our realtor thinks it will. I'm not great with uncertainty.

209RidgewayGirl
Dic 25, 2021, 11:35 am

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Hope your day is filled with peace and as much family as you'd like to have around.

Children are surprisingly hard to wrap.

210lisapeet
Dic 25, 2021, 5:13 pm

Children and cats, yeah. Merry Christmas, Kay, and I hope with everything else going on you find some time to out your feet up and enjoy the hiatus.

211dchaikin
Dic 26, 2021, 10:29 pm

Wow, a move. Catching up. Noting Jo Baker. Wish you guys (and cats) well in the move.

212RidgewayGirl
Dic 27, 2021, 5:18 pm

>210 lisapeet: Depends on the cat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm3dm5J5r0A

>211 dchaikin: It's an adventure, Dan. I'm currently frantically preparing the house for photos and showings, which begin in early January.

213RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2021, 11:20 am

Given the title, this novel has a lot to live up to. Luckily, Jason Mott mostly delivers a Hell of a Book, even if the premise grows thin by the end of this clever satire in which an author on his triumphant book tour, the kind of book tour available only to Franzens and fantasy, hallucinates the presence of a young Black boy. The story alternates between the author's life and the life of this boy, drawing parallels and moving the two lives closer and closer.

To be readable, or at least readable by white Americans, a novel looking at the stark, unforgiving effects of racism needs a large helping of satire or gallows humor. And in recent years, there have several satires on the issue, from The Sellout and We Cast a Shadow to The Trees. The satirical elements temper the righteous anger and allow the reader to receive a pointed message without feeling defensive. And the message in Hell of a Book is exceedingly sharp, as it needs to be.

214RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2021, 12:06 pm

The premise of The Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister is intriguing: when the two groups that set out to rescue the possible survivors of Franklin's Arctic expedition come back having failed, Lady Franklin puts together a new team, this time made up entirely of women. She promises riches and fame to the participants of a successful venture, but that she will disavow all knowledge of one that fails. For Virginia Reeve, chosen to lead this venture, that chance is enough. And while some of the women chosen to be in this group give her pause, she's willing to take the opportunity. The reader knows immediately that things went tragically wrong and the book alternates between the story of the venture and the subsequent trial, where Virginia is charged with murder.

There's no question that, despite the fact that it takes a very long time before the expedition even sets out, Mcallister writes with such forward momentum that it was hard to set this book down. There's not a lot of subtlety here and the shocking revelations were not at all surprising, nor was the ending, but somehow those flaws never stopped me from beginning the next chapter. I'm not the ideal audience for mainstream historical fiction, but despite the implausibility, I enjoyed this one.

215RidgewayGirl
Dic 30, 2021, 12:20 pm

If I had known that The Group by Mary McCarthy was so brilliant, funny and insightful, I would have read it years ago. This is an absolute banger of a book and the glimpse it provides of live in the 1930s is just wonderful. A perfect book.

216dchaikin
Editado: Dic 30, 2021, 5:17 pm

>215 RidgewayGirl: Mary McCarthy's name came up a lot when I was reading about the Nabokovs and Shirley Jackson. But I can't recall ever seeing a book by her show up here (apologies for all the ones I've overlooked). Anyway, she sounded interesting, so, well...cool!

217lisapeet
Dic 30, 2021, 5:24 pm

>215 RidgewayGirl: I read The Group when I was in my 20s and I just don't think I had enough life ballast—or knowledge of the era it was written about—to really appreciate it. That would be a good reread.

218rhian_of_oz
Dic 30, 2021, 8:16 pm

>214 RidgewayGirl: This sounds right up my alley - historical fiction about women doing something out-of-the-ordinary for their time. And here I thought I was done with BBs for 2021!

219labfs39
Dic 30, 2021, 9:31 pm

>215 RidgewayGirl: Hmm, I can't tell, so did you like the book? Ha, ha

220lisapeet
Dic 30, 2021, 10:19 pm

We're supposed to bring two book suggestions to my next Zoom book club meeting—we alternate strictly social and book sessions—and I think The Group would be a very good one (we're called the Iris Murdoch Fight Club, so it fits our general mission).

221RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2021, 1:39 pm

>216 dchaikin: McCarthy very much fits in with those authors. If you run into a copy, give it a try. The chapter about the new ideas about raising babies was especially fabulous.

>217 lisapeet: Definitely worth a reread. I wonder what I would have made of this in my twenties. And it's perfect for a good book group!

>218 rhian_of_oz: The Group is about utterly ordinary women (if wealthy, white and educated) living ordinary lives. But worth reading for the views on child-rearing alone.

>219 labfs39: It's easy enough to write something about a bad book, or one I liked, but impossible when my reaction is just to gush endlessly.

222RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2021, 1:39 pm

In All's Well by Mona Awad, Miranda is a stage actor who, due to an injury that has left her with ever increasing chronic pain, now works as a professor at a small private university, teaching and directing the annual play, this year it's All's Well That Ends Well. With her pain spiraling out of control, she struggles to perform the bare minimum required of her, while her colleagues and the medical profession lose patience with her. Then something weird happens and Miranda's life changes is inexplicable ways.

I went into this book without knowing the slightest thing about it. I enjoyed how it began as a book about a somewhat unpleasant and desperate woman dealing with chronic pain, trying to negotiate her way through the health system, maintain hope and keep her job and how the book changed into something else entirely. Yes, the hint is in the title, but don't think you know where this is going because of that.

223RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2021, 2:38 pm

When a grandson asks what he did during the war, Meissner gives a brief and irritated answer, but after his death, a letter is found addressed to his grandson. We Germans is that letter. Focusing on a specific event during the final days of the war, Meissner writes about his eight years lost to service in the German Army, from the first heady days to his years in a Soviet work camp. But mostly he describes when he and a small group head out to find food while on retreat in Poland, acting on a rumor that a village has a hidden cache.

Alexander Starritt has written a deceptively straight-forward narrative with a depth that reveals itself slowly. Honest and unsparing, Meissner is uninterested in defending himself. There's a lot going on in this brief novel, and the focus on the ordinary German soldier was different enough to make this one noteworthy.

224NanaCC
Dic 31, 2021, 3:06 pm

I’ve missed a lot in the past few weeks, Kay. You’ve really been reading a lot, considering you have a move coming up pretty quickly. I hope things go smoothly. As usual, you’ve added to my wishlist. Although, I’m at the way too many books stage right now and don’t know when I’ll get to any of them.

225RidgewayGirl
Editado: Dic 31, 2021, 3:37 pm

Lucy has stretched the writing of her dissertation out for years, working in the university library and trying to get her boyfriend to commit to more. When a spat ends with them breaking up, Lucy falls apart. Her sister invites her to dog sit for her in Venice Beach, and Lucy grabs the opportunity, reluctantly joining a therapy group for love addicts and walking on the beach at night. Every decision Lucy makes is a poor one, often dramatically so, and while she would be exhausting to know in real life, she's fascinating to read about. One evening, she meets a cute swimmer and while there are some surprising things about him, maybe he's her chance for love, especially when the first guy turned out to be a creep and the second won't return her calls.

I don't know why, but I do enjoy novels in which women are the agents of their own misfortune. And The Pisces by Melissa Broder has the interesting twist of the logistical difficulties of getting together with a merman, who may or may not exist.

226labfs39
Dic 31, 2021, 4:16 pm

>223 RidgewayGirl: Added We Germans to my wish list.

227RidgewayGirl
Dic 31, 2021, 4:25 pm

>226 labfs39: It's very good (my comments were hurried and uninspired) and was hand sold to me at my favorite local bookstore.

228raton-liseur
Ene 2, 2022, 12:09 pm

>223 RidgewayGirl: and >227 RidgewayGirl: Well, your comments on We Germans are not that uninspired. I too will have to look if I can get hold of that book. Hurried, but interesting review!

229lisapeet
Ene 3, 2022, 4:29 pm

Anyone interested in Mary McCarthy's The Group who isn't Amazon-averse, the ebook is on sale for $2.99 right now.

230RidgewayGirl
Ene 3, 2022, 5:40 pm

>228 raton-liseur: Thanks. It was a book that deserved a more attentive brain than mine right now. I'm holding on to my copy to reread in calmer times.

231Cariola
Ene 7, 2022, 5:53 pm

>222 RidgewayGirl: I've been thinking about this one for a while now.

232RidgewayGirl
Ene 8, 2022, 12:54 pm

>231 Cariola: Yes, and I really liked how Awad described what chronic pain does to a person.

233markon
Ene 8, 2022, 2:39 pm

You mentioned the Decatur Book Festival on Darryl's thread. I hope to get back to it one of these days (I live in the metro Atlanta area.) They are switching it from Labor Day weekend to October. Last year it was held the first weekend in October, and I haven't heard anything about this year. Depending on COVID waves & which weekend I'm off, I hope to attend in person again.

234RidgewayGirl
Ene 8, 2022, 2:48 pm

>233 markon: When I was in Atlanta over the summer, I spoke to a woman at Acapella Books who assured me that the organizers were eager to get things back to where they were. I'm hoping that this October will be a go.

RidgewayGirl Reads in 2021, Fourth Quarter

CharlasClub Read 2021

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