Chatterbox Stumbles Into 2022: Part I

Starting off the New Year with a suitably seasonal image and poem, at least the kind of winters we used to have in North America. Right now it's 50 F/10 C outside, which is weird and makes me feel unhappy. I'd love that kind of weather by St. Patrick's Day, but I'm surprised by how much I miss "real" winters.

The following poem is by Wallace Stevens, one of the great 20th century American poets.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Here we go again! I've been a denizen of the 75 group since 2010, with greater/lesser levels of posting & thread visiting. These days, I'm more of a lurker, alas...

For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Suzanne. I'm obsessed with books, love the two resident felines (Sir Fergus the Fat, whose lifetime ambition is to devour every single cat treat in existence, and Minka the Velveteen Kitten, who I adopted about two years ago, and who has been my entertainment and solace during the pandemic), and am facing my looming 60th birthday with tremendous trepidation. Books will help, right??

I live in Providence, RI, although I'm not "from" anywhere in particular. I'm a dual US/Canadian citizen, and these days I toy with the idea of repatriating to Canada with growing frequency. I was born in New Jersey, but "emigrated" at the age of six months, and didn't return until I was 32, when the Wall Street Journal -- my former employer -- sent me from Toronto to NYC. In between, I had lived in England (elementary school), Ottawa (middle school) and Belgium (high school), as well as Japan (graduate school and then a job at the Japan Times in Tokyo as a copy editor, working alongside a failed kamikaze pilot and Tokyo Rose's ex-husband. These days I'm sloowwwllly rebuilding/reimagining my writing life, doing some ghost writing and more corporate writing, while hanging onto a few freelance gigs. The days of making an adequate living from journalist freelancing are gone, though.

The pandemic -- wow. Only a few losses due to COVID in my immediate circle, but so many losses otherwise that it leaves me reeling. BOTH of my editors (NYC and Toronto). Former colleagues. Friends. My father is about to turn 86, and is struggling with advanced Parkinson's disease in Canada. I've become a de facto remote caregiver, coaching him through putting away his groceries, getting organized each day, making sure he takes his meds, etc. He needs to be in an assisted living facility, but understandably enough loathes the very idea. I suspect that will happen this year, though. The travel restrictions ended and I had begun planning a trip to see him when, boom, Omicron arrived. So, that's up in the air. I'm estranged from my other family members (mother and brother) at present. It's complicated and painful.

My reading levels last year were underwhelming (well, at least for me.) I continued to do a lot of re-reading and to struggle with "serious" fiction. Increasingly, I'm reliant on Kindle books and on audiobooks, as my vision is deteriorating. I use reading glasses, but can only wear them for about two hours at a stretch before my eyes start to water or feel strained. That's aging, I guess! I'll post my "best of" list in a few days.

I'll list the books I read here, but mini-reviews just aren't my thing these days. I'll flag the books I find most entertaining, appealing or compelling -- or disappointing. My ideal book? Anything in which I can completely immerse myself, and at the end, wish I hadn't read it, so that I could read it again for the first time... Which is why I like to re-read some favorites each year. If you want my thoughts on anything I've read, feel free to ask! Every year, I set out to imagine my thread as being a cyber version of my ideal literary salon would be like, and in this year, well, there ARE no real salons. I think of LT as a better kind of Zoom. Better, because I don't have to stare at a computer screen (migraine trigger!), wear my headset, worry about my Internet connection or make sure I'm camera-ready.

This is the seventh year running that I've hosted/organized/coordinated/whatever the non-fiction challenge. Well, I'd de-emphasize the challenge part, since basically it's really just a series of monthly themed reading threads devoted to non-fiction, hopefully giving participants insights into books they might otherwise never stumble across. We usually kick off with a month reading nonfiction tomes that have been nominated for/longlisted for some kind of award in the past, and this year's other challenges include "Welcome to the Anthropocene" and "Espionage". Check out the year's first thread for an introduction to 2021... https://www.librarything.com/topic/338089#

As always, the only "rules" of the road for this thread: please treat each other and everyone else's views with courtesy, civility and thoughtfulness, and leave the politics and drama for other kinds of social media. Pretty please.

Wishing you all a happy new year of reading pleasure!

The reading lists!

This is where you can find an ongoing list of what I've been reading this year. I always read far more than 75 books a year and so just keep a single ticker to track my total reading. I'll start new threads when the total number of posts hits between 150 and 200. I will try to keep the list current.

This year I'm once again setting my goal at 401 books. While I topped that in 2020, I fell short in 2021, so we'll see!

To see what I have been reading in real time, your best bet is to go to my library on LT, and look at the dedicated collection I've established there, under the label "Books Read in 2022". As I complete a book, I'll rate it and add it to the list. I'll also tag it, "Read in 2022". You'll be able to see it by either searching under that tag, or clicking on https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Chatterbox/booksreadin2022.

I do have some reading objectives. Last year, I did VERY poorly on these lists, so have kept each category to only 10 books, and five for re-reads, book bullets and books in French.



The January list:

1. The Call of the Penguins by Hazel Prior (finished 1/1/22) 3.8 stars
2. Road of Bones by James R. Benn (finished 1/2/22) 3.85 stars (A)
3. *The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis (finished 1/2/22) 3.65 stars
4. Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner (finished 1/3/22) 4.35 stars
5. Never Far Away by Michael Koryta (finished 1/4/22) 3.8 stars
6. The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It by Mark Bowden & Matthew Teague (finished 1/6/22) 4.2 stars
7. The Queen's Men by Oliver Clements (finished 1/7/22) 4 stars (A)
8. *Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh (finished 1/7/22) 4.1 stars
9. The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (finished 1/8/22) 3.5 stars
10. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (finished 1/8/22) 4.35 stars
11. The Pimlico Murder by Mike Hollow (finished 1/9/22) 3.4 stars
12. The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading by Phyllis Rose (finished 1/10/22) 4.45 stars
13. The Traitor by V.S. Alexander (finished 1/11/22) 2.1 stars
14. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (finished 1/12/22) 4.4 stars
15. The Turnout by Megan Abbott (finished 1/12/22) 3.5 stars
16. *Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes (finished 1/13/22) 3.8 stars (A)
17. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (finished 1/14/22) 4.25 stars
18. Three Debts Paid by Anne Perry (finished 1/15/22) 3.2 stars
19. Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age by David Wessel (finished 1/16/22) 4.2 stars (A)
20. Acts & Omissions by Catherine Fox (finished 1/16/22) 4.1 stars
21. The Lark by E. Nesbit (finished 1/17/22) 3.6 stars
22. The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan (finished 1/18/22) 4.5 stars (A)
23. *Word to Caesar by Geoffrey Trease (finished 1/19/22) 4.2 stars
24. Unseen Things Above by Catherine Fox (finished 1/20/22) 4.2 stars (A)
25. The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future by Stephen Marche (finished 1/21/22) 5 stars (A)
26. The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance by Ross King (finished 1/22/22) 4.5 stars (partly A)
27. Emma by Jane Austen (finished 1/23/22) 4.15 stars (A)
28. The Man in the Bunker by Rory Clements (finished 1/23/22) 4.2 stars
29. Something to Hide by Elizabeth George (finished 1/24/22) 4.3 stars
30. Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan (finished 1/25/22) 3.75 stars
31. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (finished 1/26/22) 5 stars
32. Realms of Glory by Catherine Fox (finished 1/26/22) 4.2 stars
33. *Box 88 by Charles Cumming (finished 1/27/22) 4.1 stars (A)
34. The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag (finished 1/29/22) 3.8 stars
35. Find Me by Alafair Burke (finished 1/29/22) 3.5 stars (A)
36. New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation by Paul Dyja (finished 1/30/22) 4 stars
37. *The Polly Harris by Mary Treadgold (finished 1/30/22) 3.7 stars
38. How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith (finished 1/31/22) 5 stars (partly A)

The February list:

39. A Serious Widow by Constance Beresford-Howe (finished 2/1/22) 4 stars
40. I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg (finished 2/2/22) 4.75 stars
41. Tales From Lindford by Catherine Fox (finished 2/3/22) 4 stars
42. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (finished 2/5/22) 3.85 stars
43. Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler (finished 2/5/22) 4 stars
44. *The Great Mortality by John Kelly (finished 2/6/22) 4.3 stars (A)
45. Judas 62 by Charles Cumming (finished 2/7/22) 4.2 stars
46. The Library of Legends by Janie Chang (finished 2/7/22) 3.6 stars
47. *The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (finished 2/8/22) 5 stars
48. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (finished 2/8/22) 2 stars (A)
49. The Great Stewardess Rebellion by Nell McShane Wulfhart (finished 2/10/22) 4.2 stars
50. A Three-Dog Problem by S.J. Bennett (finished 2/11/22) 4 stars
51. *Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes (finished 2/12/22) 4.15 stars (A)
52. Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner (finished 2/12/22) 3.7 stars
53. The Race to Save the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (finished 2/13/22) 4.1 stars
54. The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb (finished 2/13/22) 4.35 stars
55. *The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade (finished 2/14/22) 3.5 stars (A)
56. The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (finished 2/15/22) 3.55 stars (A)
57. Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng (finished 2/15/22) 4.5 stars
58. Could It Happen Here?: Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit by Michael Adams (finished 2/16/22) 4 stars
59. A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (finished 2/16/22) 3.6 stars
60. *Red Rising by Pierce Brown (finished 2/18/22) 4.3 stars (A)
61. Le Suspendu de Conakry by Jean-Christophe Rufin (finished 2/18/22) 4.1 stars (partly A)
62. The Circle by Dave Eggers (finished 2/20/22) 4.15 stars
63. Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (finished 2/20/22) 4.3 stars (A)
64. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (finished 2/21/22) 5 stars
65. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (finished 2/21/22) 4.5 stars
66. The Last White Rose by Alison Weir (finished 2/22/22) 3.2 stars
67. Jane and the Year Without a Summer by Stephanie Barron (finished 2/22/22) 3.85 stars (A)
68. *Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black (finished 2/23/22) 3.4 stars (A)
69. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (finished 2/23/22) 4.15 stars (A)
70. The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (finished 2/24/22) 4.6 stars
71. The Fell by Sarah Moss (finished 2/24/22) 5 stars
72. The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill (finished 2/25/22) 4.1 stars
73. The Latinist by Mark Prins (finished 2/25/22) 3.85 stars
74. The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter (finished 2/26/22) 3.5 stars (A)
75. Yesterday's Spy by Tom Bradby (finished 2/26/22) 4.1 stars
76. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: Reporters Who Took On A World at War by Deborah Cohen (finished 2/27/22) 4 stars
77. *Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (finished 2/27/22) 3.7 stars (A)
78. The Finder by Will Ferguson (finished 2/28/22) 3.6 stars

The March list:

79. The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia and Political Warfare 1945-2020 by Tim Weiner (finished 3/2/22) 4.4 stars (A)
80. The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon (finished 3/3/22) 3.2 stars
81. *The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (finished 3/3/22) 4.7 stars
82. Love in the Time of Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 3/3/22) 3.8 stars
83. Pastoral Song by James Rebanks (finished 3/4/22) 4.5 stars
84. *Night & Day by Elizabeth Edmondson (finished 3/4/22) 3.7 stars
85. Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (finished 3/5/22) 4.2 stars
86. One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner (finished 3/5/22) 3.35 stars
87. The Spy in Moscow Station by Eric Heseltine (finished 3/6/22) 3.85 stars (A)
88. Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (finished 3/6/22) 5 stars
89. *A Winter's Tale by Trisha Ashley (finished 3/7/22) 4.1 stars
90. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John LeCarré (finished 3/8/22) 4.3 stars
91. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre (finished 3/8/22) 4.4 stars (A)
92. Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (finished 3/9/22) 4.3 stars
93. Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (finished 3/10/22) 4.3 stars
94. The School of Mirrors by Eva Stachniak (finished 3/11/22) 4.4 stars
95. And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain by Elisabeth Åsbrink (finished 3/11/22) 4.3stars
96. *While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes (finished 3/12/22) 4 stars (A)
97. It Could Happen Here by Jonathan Greenblatt (finished 3/12/22) 3.75 stars
98. The Night Before Morning by Alistair Moffatt (finished 3/13/22) 4.1 stars
99. *Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (finished 3/15/22) 3.9 stars (A)
100. Fierce Poison by Will Thomas (finished 3/16/22) 4 stars
101. *Dark Invasion by Howard Blum (finished 3/17/22) 4.2 stars (A)
102. A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos (finished 3/18/22) 4.1 stars (partly A)
103. The Midcoast by Adam Wood (finished 3/18/22) 4.2 stars
104. The New Neighbor by Karen Cleveland (finished 3/19/22) 4 stars
105. The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon (finished 3/20/22) 4 stars (A)
106. Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson (finished 3/20/22) 4.3 stars
107. Agent Sniper by Tim Tate (finished 3/21/22) 4.15 stars (A)
108. King Richard: Nixon and Watergate -- An American Tragedy by Michael Dobbs (finished 3/23/22) 4.7 stars (A)
109. A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear (finished 3/24/22) 4.3 stars (A)
110. Nine Lives by Peter Swanson (finished 3/24/22) 4 stars (A)
111. A Game of Fear by Charles Todd (finished 3/25/22) 4 stars (A)
112. Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped by Gary Kasparov (finished 3/26/22) 4.25 stars (A)
113. Still Life by Sarah Winman (finished 3/27/22) 5 stars (partly A)
114. Hitler's British Traitors by Tim Tate (finished 3/27/22) 3.7 stars (A)
115. *Magpie Murders by Anthony Horwitz (finished 3/28/22) 4.35 stars (A)
116. After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (finished 3/29/22) 4.2 stars (A)
117. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (finished 3/29/22) 5 stars
118. *Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson (finished 3/30/22) 3.9 stars (A)
119. A Shot to Save the World by Greg Zuckerman (finished 3/31/22) 4.7 stars

The April list:

120. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (finished 4/2/22) 4.4 stars (A)
121. What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (finished 4/2/22) 4 stars (A)
122. The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation by Cathy O'Neil (finished 4/3/22) 4.6 stars
123. Bruno's Challenge by Martin Walker (finished 4/3/22) 3.2 stars
124. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (finished 4/5/22) 4.15 stars
125. *Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (finished 4/6/22) 4.5 stars (A)

* -- re-read
(A) -- audiobook

Best of 2021: Fiction

Hold your horses!

Best of 2021:Non-Fiction

Coming soon!

Climbing Mt. TBR Part I (New, But Unread)

Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
The Foundling by Ann Leary
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Anthem by Noah Hawley
Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King Read
The Magician by Colm Toibin
The Final Case by David Guterson
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
The Promise by Damon Galgut

Climbing Mt. TBR Part II – The Hall of Shame

Mr. Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd
The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian
Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
The Historians by Cecilia Eckback
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Plot – Jean Hanff Korelitz Read
Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams
Snow by John Banville
The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam

Around the World in 10 Books

The Republic by Joost de Vries (Netherlands)
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (Japan)
Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers (South Africa)
The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout (Tunisia)
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop (Senegal)
Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (Mexico)
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag (Sweden) Read
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam (Sri Lanka)
Smile as They Bow by Nu Nu Yi (Burma)

Non-Fiction Mania

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson
Last Call at the Hotel Imperial by Deborah Cohen Read
Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet
New York, New York by Thomas Dyja Read
The Sinner and the Saint by Kevin Birmingham
A Shot to Save the World by Greg Zuckerman Read
The Vanishing by Janine di Giovanni
Only the Rich Can Play by David Wessel Read
The Last Winter by Porter Fox
The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon Read

Reading targets #2

Travel

Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs
To the Island of Tides: A Journey to Lindisfarne by Alistair Moffatt
Marco Polo – John Man
Out Of Istanbul: A Long Walk of Discovery Along the Silk Road by Bernard Ollivier
The National Road – Dispatches from a Changing America by Tom Zoellner
Northland by Porter Fox
Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins
Meet me in Atlantis by Mark Adams
The Broken Road – Patrick Leigh Fermor
Travels With a Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Mystery & Suspense

The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan
The New Neighbor by Karen Cleveland Read
Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone
Friends Like These by Kimberly McCreight
The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon Read
The Passenger by Lisa Lutz
The Unheard by Nicci French
The House by Tom Watson
We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz
Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson Read

Series & Sequels

The Pimlico Murder by Mike Hollow - Read
Resistance by Mara Timon
Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan
The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths
Ascension by Oliver Harris
The Cannonball Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry
The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith
What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch Read
Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey

Canadiana

Fight Night by Miriam Toews
Accusation by Catherine Bush
The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill Read
The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack
Indians on Vacation by Thomas King
Greenwood by Michael Christie
Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
The Finder by Will Ferguson Read
A Serious Widow by Constance Beresford-Howe Read

Lighter Fare

The Last Debutantes – Georgie Blaylock
Observations by Gaslight – Lyndsey Faye
Call of the Penguins by Hazel Prior Read
The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk
A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe
Dragonfly by Leila Meacham
Love in the Time of Bertie – Alexander McCall Smith Read
A Rip Through Time– Kelley Armstrong
A Wedding in the Country – Katie Fforde
Bruno’s Challenge And Other Stories of the French Countryside – Martin Walker Read

New-to-me authors/Debut authors

Acts & Omissions by Catherine Fox Read
The Red Arrow by William Brewer
The Verifiers by Jane Pek
The Recent East by Thomas Grattan
Hades Argentina by Daniel Loedel
Still Life by Sarah Winman Read
The Pages by Hugo Hamilton
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb Read
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler Read
Clean Air by Sarah Blake

Reading targets #4

Re-Reads

1. Mariana by Monica Dickens
2. The World, the Flesh and the Devil by Reay Tannahill
3. The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis Read
4. While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes Read
5. The Tilsit Inheritance by Catherine Gaskin
6. Csardas by Diane Pearson
7. A Crack in the Teacup by Michael Gilbert
8.
9.
10.

Livres en français

1. Le train d'Erlingen de Boualem Sansal
2. Le suspendu de Conakry de Jean-Christophe Rufin Read
3. 1719525::Allocha de Henri Troyat

LT Book Bullets

1. The Fell by Sarah Moss Read
2.
3.

Revolutionary Reads

1. Benjamin Franklin in London by George Goodwin
2. Revolution Song by Russell Shorto
3. Tom Paine by John Keane
4. The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents by Joseph Ellis
5. To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and the Ambiguities of the American Founders by Bernard Bailyn
6. First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks
7. 1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton

Done with the targets? Happy New Year, Suzanne!

Happy reading in 2022, Suzanne!

>8 Chatterbox: Finally, yes!! The touchstones & images are always such a PITA.

>9 alcottacre: Thanks!!

Happy new Year!

>8 Chatterbox: It will be interesting to see the books you are reading in French. Something I really need to get back into doing.

This group always helps me to read; welcome back to the group, Suz.

>1 Chatterbox: That is a lovely topper and it is pretty hard to go wrong with Wallace Stevens.

Happy 2022, Suzanne. I love your categories of intention. And i hope caring for your father long distance gets easier this year.

I hope that you have a much better new year in 2022. It is shaping up to be a year in which I might retire. It is getting harder for me to manage the things I need to manage from 1200 miles away. I also hope that you have a good reading year.

Happy New Year, Suzanne!

>14 ffortsa: Hi, Judy! Thanks for dropping by, and the good wishes. Right now, I'm trying to coach him on how to put away groceries, use his stove and his microwave. We failed at trying to get his oven turned on, alas. I don't know the model, and he doesn't remember.

I love the description of "categories of intention", btw! Hopefully, if I think about them in that way, I won't feel bullied by them!!

>13 PaulCranswick: Welcome, Paul... That's pretty much my life! :-) Though i can't keep my phone in airplane mode. (I almost typed keep my plane in airphone mode... sigh)

>12 figsfromthistle: Welcome! Yes, I've been lazy about reading in French over the last few years. I've been watching some TV in French recently -- seeking out some movies and documentaries and opting to watch "Lupin" in the original French -- and it reminded me of the extent to which French has become something I have to work a bit to function in vs having it all just flow naturally. Another one of those "older is not always better" kinda things. And I have a stack of books (thanks to Albertine in NYC, and also the growing availability of books in French for Kindle in both the US and UK) that I could read. One of them will be a travel book, Sur le chemin des ducs, also by Bernard Ollivier, whose book about the Silk Road travels is already on my travel list.

Hope you have a great year of reading!

Happy New Year, Suz!

Happy New Year Suzanne!

Happy New Year Suzanne! I did a terrible job of following your reading last year, or anyone else's for that matter, but I'm hoping to participate more this year. Missing those book bullets!
I hope 2022 is an easier year.

Just wanted to drop by and thank you for your recommendation of The Writing of the Gods last year. It is my first 5-star read of 2022.

>22 alcottacre: I'm so glad to hear that, Stasia!! I thought it was a fascinating topic and so well handled.

Anne! Rhian! Roni! Lori! The gang's all here! I'm hoping to be a bit more engaged in LT this year, but I think I said that LAST year. Oh well. Good intentions count, don't they? kinda, sorta??

Happy new year of reading, Suzanne.

Happy New year, Suzanne. It's summer here and my four cats have all migrated to the garden. We see them during the day stretched out in various shady parts of the garden.
It's great to see you active on TIOLI again. We have a shared read of The Passenger over there.

Happy Reading this year!

Happy new thread and happy new year, Suzanne.

Lovely Stevens poem! Was 3F this a.m. so very seasonal here!

Happy New Year! Let us hope for better times.

Happy New Year, Suzanne! May it be filled with good books and good times.

>23 Chatterbox: I agree and highly recommended the book on my thread. Hopefully others will discover the joy of the book as well!

My front porch is literally a movie set. Specifically, they are filming a scene for Hocus Pocus 2 (a Disney + movie, apparently with Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker etc. etc.) on the street outside. My front porch has pumpkins on it and lights and other decorations. It will be like this for two days, and I have to negotiate entering and exiting my home. No, I do not get paid. (My landlady? possibly.)

OOO! Have you seen Bette Midler yet? I'd be peeking through the curtains with a camera.... ;-)

Noooo.... They have been filming across the street at the Armory since early summer and no celeb sightings. I don't really care, to be honest. It's just been a lot of noise and hassle (eg people in trucks shouting at each other at 5 a.m.)

>31 Chatterbox: >33 Chatterbox: My younger self would probably find this exciting. My current self would not care either, and would be longing for the filming to wrap. Early summer to mid-January seems like an extraordinarily long time to be filming the same movie.

Apparently the summer stuff was just preparation, and actual filming didn't start until October. Oy vey. They promise it will be over "soon". Ha!

>35 Chatterbox: We've had filming up our street a couple of times. The novelty quickly wears off.

The filming sounds very annoying, especially over a long period of time. If I thought I was likely to watch Hocus Pocus 2, I guess I'd get to see your neighborhood.

>37 AnneDC: LOL, I will post pics of the action tomorrow. It's going be below freezing, and the scene is supposedly set around Hallowe'en.

Welp, it turns out that the production designer and I have a close mutual friend, so we called Richie in NYC to chat; lotsa fun. That said, it's freezing out there. Decorative soda cans (product placement) are exploding.

>39 Chatterbox: Exploding soda cans?! It just keeps getting better, doesn't it?! I hope your ordeal ends soon. And that someone cleans the soda off your porch so you don't have to.

>40 cbl_tn: LOL, thankfully the exploding soda cans were in a flimsy booth beneath the porch, so I could just be mildly amused by it all. They finally finished at 1 a.m. Frankly, I was too bored to watch more than 10 mins of the rehearsals once they all ended up on set, though I did see Sarah Jessica Parker stalking up and down in a big turquoise crinoline outfit, trying to stay warm. And lots of grumpy extras hovering outside my bedroom window.

More about books -- aka the important stuff! -- soon.

Finally my first five-star book of the year, and two excellent but provocative/controversial non-fiction books.

The five-star book is a political "what if?" tome by Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future, which posits different scenarios (evolving from things we're already seeing in U.S. society) that in his view (and those of other thinkers he points to) could lead to civil conflict and that have done so in other countries. He is careful to consider and comment on aspects in which the US differs from other nations (for instance, separatism usually requires not just political differences that are intractable, but differences that flow from history, ethnic identity etc. -- so Kosovo, Catalonia, Quebec, Scotland are more likely to find a coherent identity as an independent nation that are segments of the United states) but also to note the factors that could support an independent segment of the US, such as the potential economic strength of Texas or California.) Secession is just one scenario he envisages; others include the growing irrelevance of the constitution and thus the demise of a political unifying factor, and possibility of violent resistance to central authorities (from both sides of the political spectrum) leading to any kind of military soft coup that in turn would be followed by a cycle of escalating violence. (Think Vietnam, which highlighted the failure of counter-insurgency tactics: the U.S. won the plain vanilla military conflicts, but lost the war.) And yes, there's a climate scenario that includes the impact of economic inequality. Some of these scenarios sometimes feel as if they are the plot lines for dystopian novels; in other cases, I was fascinated by them as a former grad student in political science who studied a lot about civil wars (my focus was on the way that civil wars become proxy conflicts between "great" powers that can't/don't want to confront each other directly -- viz. Ukraine right now?) It's just out; I haven't looked but I strongly suspect that it will be controversial and that people will be arguing the author is catastrophizing. That said, it's at least as valid as any other forward looking book about technology, business, health care, education, etc. It just happens to touch some Very Sore Spots in the US political dialog.

Another controversial book is by Rosemary Sullivan, whose Villa Air-Bel about the surrealists trying get out of Vichy France and Varian Fry's campaign to rescue artists, I loved. A group of investigators led by a former FBI agent hired her to tell the story of how they tried to identify WHO betrayed Anne Frank, and the result is The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation. While some of the coverage I've seen has been critical of the approach and/or conclusions, and even said that the conclusion (which identifies someone who was a Jewish leader who collaborated) smells of anti-Semitism, I'm not sure that's the point. I found myself thinking instead about the time in which people worked on this (growing anti-Semitism in Europe that is driving too many French, Belgian, Dutch Jews to consider leaving; a point when it's now tough for someone to meet people who lived through that era and had to consider how they might themselves have grappled with ethical issues involving collaboration and/or resistance. We like to think we'd know, but I would argue we really don't, and one of the services this book does is to really force us to understand the stakes. I wanted to read this because I read the Diary of Anne Frank at the age of seven, when we visited Amsterdam and the Anne Frank House. It was a crashing introduction, followed two weeks later by a visit to Dachau. In hindisght, I marvel at my parents' willingness to let me engage on my own with this book and to take me to Dachau. (I remember throwing a temper tantrum in the back seat of the car because I refused to go to the country that had murdered Anne Frank...) Since then, growing up largely in Europe (in the late 1960s and early 1970s it was still possible to see bomb sites in parts of London; in the mid-1970s in Belgium, not only did I work as a guide at a World War I battlefield in northern France and talk to people there about their experiences in both wars/the Occupation, but my neighbors all had vivid first-hand stories to tell. None of my immediate family was involved in the war (my father lost an uncle following the Normandy landings), but this felt immediate. What would I do? How would I react? How would I behave in the face of discrimination and injustice? I'm not suggesting that there are good answers to any of this, just that I was a bit atypical in trying to think about them intensely at a very young age, given my family history. And it's that kind of understanding and thinking that I worry about losing, and that I think this book can encourage. Ultimately, for me the value of the book lies less in the answer it comes to than in considering the fact that so many Jews in hiding during the Occupation WERE betrayed, and that such a small group devoted themselves to ferociously protecting their charges. It's not about placing the blame on a single individual, but in considering the realities of life in a world few of us in Europe, North America or Australiz/NZ can really grasp, because we have not lived in anything like it.

Long screeds above, apologies.

For relief, I've gotten hooked on Catherine Fox's ecclesiastical novels. After initially struggling with the narrative style (there's an omniscient narrator speaking directly to the reader, which I tend to find irritating), I became addicted to the characters and situations. This isn't Trollope and it's not Barchester (though there's a fictional Barchester diocese in the books, just for giggles.) Still, there's that great match between matters of great seriousness (kindness, faith, service to others) and dysfunctional people. And it deals with questions like the ordination of women as bishops, marriage equality as it affects Church of England priests, and the question of whether such a fuddy-duddy institution occupied by people of goodwill can still be transformative. I read this as a die-hard agnostic (who often wishes, wistfully, that I had been gifted with SOME kind of faith in a deity that would help me make sense of the world and its idiocies, and help give me patience with those I meet), and ended up finding the books delightful. There are now four books, all very inexpensive on Kindle, the latest of which apparently deals with the pandemic. I've just started book #3. Tremendous literary merit? Hope, but they are great comfort reads. I rather wish that I knew people like 'Father Wendy' and her three-legged retired greyhound, or Matt the archdeacon, who we first meet when someone's wife refers to him as Voldemort, but who turns out to be a real softy. Is this 'real'? I don't care. Does it overlook the C of E's failings? Less than you'd think. Do you find yourself looking at the world through rose-tinted glasses? To some extent, but Fox's skill kind of reminds you that her characters are part of a distinct world, outside of which chaos can reign, and the problems of that chaotic universe is something that her characters also are well aware of. So it's not escapist reading.

More later.

>42 Chatterbox: Adding both the Stephen Marche and Rosemary Sullivan's books to the BlackHole. Like you, I loved Sullivan's Villa Air-Bell.

Thanks for the reviews and recommendations, Suzanne!

I’ve seen both recently at my library - your reviews have me intrigued. Thanks!

>42 Chatterbox: I'm not sure about availability or prices because I already have them, but Catherine Fox's early novels were published in paperback (possibly original paperbacks) by Penguin in the 1990s. I might have read one or two from the library and picked up charity shop copies later, and/or bought new from bookshops when I had a little bit more disposable income from 1995 onwards - it's so long ago I can't remember!

I have read a couple of books which touch on or are about some of the controversial issues in the Rosemary Sullivan book. Persephone publishes The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 with an introduction by Eva Hoffman. The founder of Persephone, Nicola Beaumann is from a Jewish refugee family (German I think) though I believe she was born in the UK. I learned this from reading obituaries for her older sister Jessica Mann, who died a few years ago aged 80 but whose writings included crime fiction and who I heard speak at the St Hilda's Crime and Mystery conferences a couple of times (an amazing annual event organised by an Oxford women's college, although sadly I haven't been to it since 2006).

There is also a book called Eichmann's Jews which was translated (I think from German) a few years ago and which I read and (I think) reviewed through Amazon Vine.

>45 elkiedee: I picked up a volume of Etty Hillesum's writings at the library a number of years ago, and was interested to read them as a kind of adult companion to Anne Frank's: both are reflective/thoughtful, but the generational difference (and family relationships) are clearly different. Didn't realize at the time that it might have been a Persephone book.

I think this particular series dates to quite recently, as there are references to the queen's 60th jubilee and other contemporary events. I did notice that she had written other books that don't involve these particular characters. Not sure yet whether I will seek them out, however.

Trying for the I don't know how many times it has been to read Judy Batalion's The Light of Days, about women in the Jewish resistance in Poland. I've had it on my shelf for two years, and was prompted to return to it by reading Sullivan's book -- but the writing is SO BAD. One person she writes about is praised for 'speaking her truth' and there is lots of jargon, purplish prose and clunky construction. It's a pity, as the fundamental story is intriguing. But I think I'm going to put it aside again. Sigh.

>44 drneutron: Welp, if they are at the library, clearly they are waiting for you. It's a sign from the book gods!

>42 Chatterbox: I've added the Sullivan book to my OverDrive wishlist. I read a lot of Holocaust books because I think it's important to remember, and also important to reflect on these kinds of moral questions. I don't know how I would react in similar situations, but the more I engage with these questions, the more likely it will be that I'll do the right thing if I'm ever confronted with such choices.

>42 Chatterbox: I read the Lindchester novels recently, finishing Tales From Lindford in May last year and I was shocked at how much of the Covid lockdown conditions I had forgotten so soon. I find this sort of story even more interesting as I have been a C of E vicar's wife for thirty years now, and we are based in Cheshire - quite close to 'Lindchester'!

>46 Chatterbox: The copy you read might not have been a Persephone in the US. Some of their books have been brought out by other publishers a while ago, but not so far back that they're not available in other editions. For example of their total output - perhaps 140 now, at about 5 books a year, I have some in other editions including Virago Modern Classics, Virago non fiction, Harvester (a gulag memoir by Evgenia ?), Puffin (The Children Who Lived in a Barn, Oxford University Press and a couple of others. Some of the books that they've published in new editions have been released with the same content (translation and introduction for example) by NYRB, for example some Irene Nemirovsky short stories (another interesting backstory as some of these were first published in the 1930s in a conservative and actually often quite anti-Semitic journal or newspaper).

>48 CDVicarage: I'm not at all religious, wasn't brought up to be, but I find the subjects of vicarage and parish life, past and present, really quite interesting. My dad's father was a vicar, but neither my dad or his brother are religious, and my mum's parents were lapsed Catholics (and one of my mother's cousins is a nun). My parents split up when I was a baby but my dad used to take me to stay with his parents from time to time, and I have hazy memories of a west London vicarage garden and Sunday School. I also used to go sometimes to the Methodist Church with a friend who lived over the road - we were both in the Brownies at that church for a couple of years.

My mum's parents also had a cottage next door to an abbey in an Oxfordshire village and I used to go and look round both the church when there wasn't a service on, and the graveyard, and buy secondhand books from there, which weren't very religious - I still have The Poetry of Rock with song lyrics from Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and many others.

>50 elkiedee: I think many people would find the clergy and their families surprisingly non-religious! but we do know the 'rules' of church life. I enjoy books featuring clergy characters because I know what it's probably really like, particularly those set in earlier times when the vicar's wife was an unpaid (and untrained) curate who was expected to do her part in running the parish. In the same way that medically trained people enjoy books set in hospitals or librarians like to read books set in a library - and find faults!

You got me with a BB on the Rosemary Sullivan book. I added it to the every growing TBR list.

>50 elkiedee: & >51 CDVicarage: Fascinating posts.

Have a good weekend, Suz.

My grandmother resisted the role of the traditional vicar's wife to some extent, returning to paid work (she was a teacher) after marriage and the birth of two children in the early 1940s. But she shared her husband's high church Anglican and pacifist values and they were active in the Labour Party and CND for many years, even when they retired to Petersfield, Hampshire, a place with a much higher than average population of current and retired admirals and other senior armed forces people since at least Jane Austen's day.

On my father's side of the family, there's a long list of Welsh Baptist ministers, but that's about all I know. When my grandmother was a child, she and her siblings had to observe the Sabbath very strictly, and there was nothing involving drinking or card playing AT ALL. Until the week she died, she enjoyed her evening cocktails and her bridge games... My great-grandfather, meanwhile, either lost his faith or his calling as a minister, and ended up as an insurance salesman. But HIS father had been a minister at Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, a rather famous institution there. On my mother's side of the family, they were mostly Protestant Irish, many of whom left after the 1798 rebellion and before the potato famine. But no ministers/vicars, etc. in the family. That said, I'm fascinated by questions of faith and what it means to live a faith-driven life.

Finished the audiobook of Emma, read by Juliet Stevenson. I think Stevenson is an amazing narrator; I've got a few audiobooks just because she narrates them. I understand the fascination with Austen's work, but I confess that this was not a fave. Not as exasperating as Mansfield Park, and I know that part of this is satire, but I find so much about so many of the characters here inexplicable, even in a historic context. Maybe I need to read a biography of Austen herself. I do like P&P and Persuasion and even Sense and Sensibility, but the rest? So much characterization is heavy-handed -- Jane Fairfax at one extreme, Mrs. Elton at the other. Others are caricatures, like Emma's father and the dithery aunt. Mr. Knightley struck me as patronizing, even as I endorsed his view of Emma's meddling. Ergh.

Or, maybe it's just me.

Paula Byrne, Jane Austen: a Life in Small Things is a mixture of biography and social history which offers some context. Or there's Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice - I don't know if these were real letters to a real niece called Alice but they set out to put Austen in context for a teenager, and a teacher used extracts of it when were studying Mansfield Park for A level. Emma and Northanger Abbey are my favourites after P&P, and I thought the film of Sense and Sensibility featuring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet balanced a good representation of the novel with a sense of fun (despite the ummm, contrast between ages of some actors and those of the characters they played).

>56 elkiedee: I remember reading the Fay Weldon book back in the mid/late 80s.

I have found myself embarking on a "re-listening" marathon of the Aubrey/Maturin novels and appreciating once more all the details that bring the story alive. Via audiobooks narrated by Patrick Tull.

My first 5-star fiction read of the year: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is a small gem of a novella, revelatory in a gentle way, practically perfect in writing and pace. Do not miss this.

Just want to say thanks for recommending The Writing of the Gods - halfway through and totally enjoying it. Have you read The Anomaly? That was a weird one!

>60 vivians: Not yet! I haven't been in the mood for weird... too much of that in real life right now!!

I finished the third volume of Catherine Fox's Lindchester Chronicles last night and suspect I will move right along to #4 today. Book #3 focused on the horrors of 2016 and I think the latest one was described as a pandemic-era novel.

>42 Chatterbox: I like the sound of those Catherine Fox novels so I've added the first one to my wish list. I've never been C of E officially, although we did attend when we wanted to get Jacob into a C of E school. (My conscience is clear on that as we had been regular churchgoers before that point - it just wasn't the right church). When I've attended church regularly in the past it's been more non-conformist in nature (Baptist, United Reform Church, Church of Scotland (that one was in Bermuda not Scotland, by the way)).

>55 Chatterbox: there's a long list of Welsh Baptist ministers I don't have ministers, but I do have deacons, lots of them, both Welsh Baptist and Methodist. When my Dad was a child it was chapel three times on a Sunday apparently, morning afternoon and evening, and I still remember my mother being shocked when I wanted to go to the cinema on a Sunday!

I enjoyed the discussion of vicarage books! I really do love books set in villages where the vicarage and its inhabitants play an important part in the plot.

I enjoyed reading To Serve Them All My Days over the Thanksgiving break. The book features teachers. The man who is the headmaster of the school at the beginning of the book, eventually retires and become a vicar in a neighboring village and makes reoccurring appearances in the second half of the book. He doesn't have a small role in the novel, but he isn't the main character. In this book the school is located in a small town far from any big city and the school is part of the town/village life. It really made the English countryside come to life for me. And of course, it is about school teachers - a profession of which I am a veteran.

>65 benitastrnad: I remember reading those books (and the "Avenue" books by Delderfield) in high school. While entertaining, I also felt at times that Delderfield had simply picked up the plot of Goodbye Mr. Chips by James Hilton and expanded/adapted it. Still, not as egregious as when Colleen McCullough basically copied the plot of LM Montgomery's The Blue Castle in her Ladies of Missalonghi. ARGH. That infuriated me. It was a lesser-known title of Montgomery's but a fave of mine, and all McCullough really did was to transport the setting to Australia and make the characters a bit more distinctively of their time/place. That was plagiarism, IMHO.

I've finished the Catherine Fox novels; I don't have an overwhelming interest to read her other books at this stage since it really was the characters in the "Lindchester" books that grabbed my attention. Book #4 was almost painful to read at times, as it was a more or less contemporaneous chronicle of the first year of the pandemic. Which is still dominating our lives and messing with them, nearly two years later.

>65 benitastrnad: Agree Benita. That is a great book.

I wish the C. Fox's were available on Audible! But I have put Lindchester on my WL.

>68 sibylline: The first two books ARE on Audible! (I actually listened to book #2, and the narration was quite good.) Acts & Omissions and Unseen Things Above.

I had one of those weirdly disappointing reading experiences in the last few days. Finally got around to reading Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler, much touted (The Millions raved about it, massive blurb from Zadie Smith) and it was a real slog. It's what I've decided to call an "MFA novel". To me, that's a novel that's super-self conscious about style, and about ideas, but that leaves me absolutely cold. The writing may be lovely, but I always "hear" the author there, and feel him/her peering over my shoulder as I read. "Look what I can do!" the author whispers in my ear. "See how clever I am, weaving my ideas into this plotline?" The ideas were intriguing -- the narrator finds her bf has been misrepresenting himself, and then she moves on to misrepresenting herself. It's essentially a riff on social media and inventing our personae. But wow, how heavy handed it is. Stubbornly, I read on to the end, and finished by giving it four stars, but only for the caliber of the writing. And I'll stay very far away from books of this ilk in future, if I can. Not everyone that can write, should write novels? Or perhaps, don't turn a cool short story idea into a full-length novel that ends up feeling to reader as if they are watching Baryshnikov hog the stage for 35 minutes, or some Wagnerian tenor stand immobile and sing AT the audience for 35 minutes? That's what it felt like. However good the dance or the singing -- it's wearying when it becomes all about that individual and not about the whole performance.

Hopefully I managed to convey my deep but elusive sense of frustration....

Moved on to a re-read of The Remains of the Day for a book group discussion on Wednesday -- that's a good palate cleanser. The writing is elegant, and even stylized, but never for one moment do I feel as if Ishiguro has a hand in the small of my back, shoving me toward something specific he wants me to understand. He trusts the reader to do the work.

Oh, am also re-reading The Great Mortality, about the black death of the 1340s. Much better as a re-read (well, a re-listen) than I seem to have found it when I first read it. Perhaps because I'm thinking about our current pandemic and finding a lot to reflect on -- eg how people react to a new and deadly illness, how globalization brings with it pandemic risks, interesting if only partial parallels in terms of society's inequities and the fallout of the plague (reckless behavior, inflation, demands for political change.)

>69 Chatterbox: I think I sometimes give books 4 stars when really it should be 3* or 3.5* (or even less than 3) - I think there's nothing wrong with saying that the writing was good but .... and explaining a lower rating.

Having another deeply annoying book experience. Finally picked up The Boy With the Striped Pajamas. Lots of raves for it out there -- but really, is there a 9-year-old who lived in Berlin as the son of a SS senior officer who didn't know what a Fuhrer was or that Jews were "bad"? De minimis, he would have been part of the junior level of the Hitler Youth, for instance. I can kinda/sorta understand the naivete about Auschwitz, but the main protagonist feels as if he's 5 years old, at most, not NINE. Oh, and then there are all kinds of minor but irritating historical errors. The main character remembers his grandmother singing "La Vie En Rose". Four or five years before the song was written.... Such a waste. This could have been made a convincing and more complex narrative. Instead, it's dumbed-down to a point that even when I was 8 or 9, I wouldn't have accepted it.

>71 Chatterbox: I was not one of the ravers! I had the same problems with it that you did. I didn't catch the "La Vie En Rose" chronological error. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me.

>72 cbl_tn: So glad to know I'm not alone. I feel really kind of ripped off by this -- Boyne has such a great reputation and so for this first book by him that I've read to be this bad?? Especially when it's about such an important subject, and aimed at the YA demographic, virtually none of whom will ever have had any first-hand contact with people who endured the Holocaust.

>73 Chatterbox: I know. It probably made it worse that I read it immediately after Anne Frank's diary. It felt manipulative and wrong.

>74 cbl_tn: Yup, I was thinking about that. I first read Anne Frank's diary when I was 7, and even without being surrounded by the bombast and cruelty and the war I could feel what had happened better than Boyne's character seemed able to. He rambles on about having to turn out the lights in his Berlin home -- because of growing air raids. But those air raids aren't mentioned. I'm assuming that Boyne's intent was to let the whole thing (set in the Third Reich being a big 'reveal') creep up on the reader, but the impact? But he undermined the whole damn thing. Give a kid When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, or something else like that from a child's POV if you don't want to give them Anne Frank's diary.

>69 Chatterbox: *Great Mortality* is available on Kindle USA for $1.99. I didn't even try to resist. (I wonder.. I always ask to transfer my new book via computer. The last two have gone straight to my Kindle although my request stands.)
Sorry about the Boyne. It sounds cheap and dreadful. I read Absolutist and liked it 3½ stars worth.

>75 Chatterbox: I read Boyne's book and thought- this story is so untrue. ( even for fiction) I have a friend who hates Holocaust fiction. Her parents were Holocaust survivors and she believes that authors who use the Holocaust as subject matter are trivializing the events.

The Auschwitz Museum Twitter account comes down very hard on Boyne's book. It was quite a kerfuffle several years ago, I believe, and it periodically comes up.

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/auschwitz-museum-twitter-spat-john-boyne-author-bo...

>78 katiekrug: Well, I've got good company then... I was gobsmacked to read Boyne's final comment: "by its nature (fiction) cannot contain inaccuracies, only anachronisms, and I don’t think there are any of those in there.” Welp, Mr. Boyne, I found one and I wasn't even looking.

>77 torontoc: "Holocaust fiction" is a weird genre. Where Boyne and I do find common ground is with respect to our distaste for titles that are clearly exploitative, designed to sell. That said, for many people younger than most of us here are, the first/most compelling way they are likely to relate emotionally to what happened is through fiction. Good historical fiction can create that empathy, but authors need to approach topics like this with tremendous care. The Holocaust isn't a suitable subject for "fables", for instance.

>76 LizzieD: Check your settings, perhaps? If you change computers they sometimes default. But I'm glad you found the book so affordably!

I just noticed today on NetGalley that the first big crop of pandemic/lockdown fiction is en route. The next Elly Griffiths/Ruth Galloway mystery is set against the UK lockdown; Christopher Buckley's upcoming novel (due second half of the year) is also about the pandemic.

>71 Chatterbox: & >77 torontoc:
I agree with you on this book. I read about the Kerfuffle regarding its historic accuracy. I also thought that it was historically implausible. I stopped reading Holocaust fiction for that very reason a long time ago.

>79 Chatterbox: I've read two books that refer to this pandemic (as well as a couple of novels that became more topical between writing and publication), though one, The Startup Wife is mostly set BCV, and the pandemic is just beginning at the end, it's fairly central to Louise Erdrich's The Sentence.

I also understand it features in my current library book and a Netgalley I've had for 2 or 3 months though I don't remember when it starts. I decided not to have Burntcoat and The Fell on the go at the same time.

Yes, I've got The Fell on my UK Kindle and plan to read that soon. Gary Shteyngart's new novel also is set against the pandemic backdrop. I started The Startup Wife last year but put it down to move on to something else -- can't remember why, as Anam's writing and characters are fab. I do have an e-galley of The Sentence lurking around, too, but since I've only just finished The Night Watchman (which I loved...) it likely will be another month or so before I read it.

I remember Emma Donoghue's most recently-published book dealt with the Spanish Flu and turned out to be eerily prescient.

>71 Chatterbox: I also felt real contempt for the author over this one. Apparently he wrote it over a few days only and didn't research at all. I read it as a book proof before it was published and was amazed at how it was accepted by my fellow children's literature friends as a wonderful fable, making the Holocaust accessible to younger children. The book and its reception really made me angry.

Lisa from Club Reads and I established an LT group for Holocaust Literature a couple of weeks ago which you might like to check out sometime. There was some discussion about exploitative books on the Holocaust on the threads late last year.
Earlier this week, I attended a zoom meeting 'A conversation with Art Spiegelman', the author of Maus. When asked to recommend books schools could include in their curriculum he only said, "NOT The Boy in Striped Pyjamas."

I would think that schools should go back to sources and memoirs - where better to start than Anne Frank herself? At least my kids' school asks kids to do a certain amount of reading eg Chapter 10. We read a book called Friedrich, though after nearly 40 years I remember reading about the way that a Jewish family in Germany faced a steady stream of antisemitic legislation, told I think from the viewpoint of Friedrich's neighbour and classmate who isn't Jewish - I don't remember how the storyline developed. I have a copy upstairs somewhere and should reread.

>84 elkiedee: That's why I mentioned When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit; it is quasi-memoir/memoir written in fiction, by a woman who, as a young girl, lived what she wrote about. But yes, whenever possible, PRIMARY SOURCES or books written by those for whom this was a lived experience and not just a marketing hook for getting published.

I just looked up Friedrich and there may well be elements of biography and autobiography. It sounds as though there aren't concentration camp scenes in the (novel but it does focus on persecution and life in hiding with the shadow of the concentration camp and other danger. I think reading on this needs to include the before (much better documented by primary sources as well) and the rest as well - maybe diaries or a novel combined with survivor writings and maybe some reportage about coming to "liberate" the camps and beginning to confront what had happened. I think that some mixture of reading would be far more powerful than what sounds like a tacky bit of fiction. I have John Boyne's book on Kindle but probably won't rush to read it.

>87 Chatterbox: Luci, I wouldn't rush to read it. It has left a rather bad taste in my mouth (clearly) and I wish I hadn't read it. There aren't many generally well-written books of which I feel that is true, but...

>87 Chatterbox: Totally agree! I've enjoyed many of his books but this one was thrown across the room. Just dreadful. The Fell, on the other hand, is really worthwhile.

>83 avatiakh: Kerry again comments on exploitative books on the Holocaust. My reading *Cesare* by Jerome Charyn has kept me away from any novel about the whole Nazi experience until now. I have March Violets open for reading soon. While I don't expect that Kerr trivializes the horror, I still feel a little guilty about getting enjoyment from such a dire time.
I think that my gold standard for the Jewish experience in a Nazi state remains Life with a Star by Jiri Weil. It is both lyric and soul-shattering. The Charyn book is phantasmagoric and devastating in the end.

>88 vivians: I think you gave me the book bullet for The Fell, Vivian!

>89 LizzieD: What I like/appreciate about Kerr's books is that he seems to dig into the struggle that a somewhat decent human being -- or at least one with guiding principles of decent behavior and 'justice'. Bernie Gunther is flawed, but he's not callous or evil or racist. He questions the beliefs and actions of people who clearly strike him as despicable. Does he act? Not enough; not as much as a reader would like. But then that's realistic to me. Perhaps putting the spotlight on Gunther as the main figure is a good approach: he's not an Eichmann or a Heydrich, but neither is he a Sophie Scholl or a Libertas Schultze-Boysen. And he's not a victim. Even in the parts of the novels set after the war, he knows he's not the victim; that the justice (perhaps unevenly applied) is correct in its aims. Kerr made a good choice by picking someone we can empathize with as someone who is human and flawed, I think. It reminds me of the character of Schindler in Schindler's List. Not someone you would trust, perhaps; not someone who is admirable. But someone who ends up doing the right things in spite of themselves.

Perhaps this explains why I prefer 'realistic' fiction to magical realism, fables or other approaches to narrative. People already are so complex that an author really trying delve into who someone is has so much fertile ground, without resorting to tropes or fables.

The wonderful experience of re-reading The Remains of the Day and discussing it in my Providence Athenaeum book group yesterday afternoon helped me think through some of this. The character of Stevens the butler is not someone sympathetic -- but it's impossible not to grasp the poignancy of the situation in which he finds himself. Just a gem of a book.

On a completely different note -- out of curiosity, I looked up prevailing market prices for a signed & inscribed first Canadian edition of The Handmaid's Tale (which I possess), and was startled to find that it's now worth about $500 retail. I have an asset!! LOL

It took me forever to get around to reading The Remains of the Day and I am with you, a gem.

Congrats on having such a marvelous asset!

>90 Chatterbox: There is not one book by Ishiguro that I have not liked. All of them are excellent.

Have a great weekend.

I've only read two Ishiguro novels but have most of his others on my TBR in Kindle form, including The Remains of the Day. His latest is on a growing list of books I hope to borrow (again) from the library and read soon, unless like his other books I can get it on Kindle Daily Deal or in a charity shop - I've heard some of it serialised on the radio, and I can see it being a future group read for my library reading group but this depends on the library service being able to make a set of copies available.

I have a copy of The Buried Giant that I need to read, also The Unconsoled. One of my faves of Ishiguro's books also is less known, a collection of short stories/novellas on musical themes.

After going down a bit of a rabbit hole reading both non-fiction (an ARC) and then following up with a re-read of a novel about the end of the Romanov dynasty, I moved on to more interesting and compelling yarns. Shout outs to books by two new authors: The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb is a debut novel about a Black classical violinist who inherits a Stradivarius left abandoned in his grandmother's attic, and all that follows -- written BY a Black violinist. A lot of the plot was a bit obvious (and I figured out who had stolen the violin about halfway through...) but I really enjoyed a fresh voice and POV. Then on to Swimming Back to Trout River, a wonderful debut novel by Linda Rui Feng, Shanghai-born Canadian transplant. It's set in China at the time of the Cultural Revolution and then in the 1980s, as Chinese were finally "freed" from some of the restrictions of political Communism under Deng Xiaoping. But the story is really a family narrative -- about how family tragedies echo. And oh, there also are violins in this book -- go figure!

I then picked up Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit because of the bloody truckers' protest in Ottawa. The author was notably more optimistic than the protests seem to suggest -- unless one clings to the idea that those idiots really are a small minority of Canadians (more supported by the social research data that the author uses as a frame to explore his theme) while in the US they are (alas) more typical. Some of that data was fascinating, especially the fact that nearly a quarter of all Canadians are immigrants or children born to immigrants (about double the rate in most OECD countries.) Not a lively book, and slightly dated (given that it was published pre-pandemic, pre-Jan 6th, etc. etc.) But still worth a look if you're interested.

Personally, I think Justin Trudeau lived down to my worst fears about his leadership during this stuff. He dithered about invoking the Emergencies Act (no one really worries about a repeat of the constitutional upheaval his father's declaration of the then-War Powers Act in 1970, when Pierre Trudeau -- asked how far he'd go -- replied only, "just watch me.") No one needs authoritarian leaders. But no one needs anarchy, either. Democracy is striking the balance between acting on behalf of the majority of the population while allowing dissent.

Finally, re-read Red Rising so that I can move on to other books in the series. I think I first read it some time in late 2014 and had forgotten some of the details about characters and events. That said, it's almost as good as I thought it was at the time, given that it's genre fiction. With all dystopian novels, it's fun to try and ponder the author's inspiration. In this, obviously, there's ancient Rome, but also a kind of Iliad-like battle, with deities intervening and tilting the playing field.

>94 Chatterbox: On violins in fiction, it's really strange how often several books with something quite odd in common suddenly come up, whether it's something you know about at the start or that you realise later.

My accidental theme for this year looks set to be Cinderella stories. So far I've only read one, a YA novel carried over from 2021, Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly - I've read books by her I liked more but it was an enjoyable read. Then I was looking at an LT list of Cinderella stories and thought I'd add the Donnelly and one from my TBR, and then I realised, hang on, I actually have two out of the library and a reservation. I think there are probably a few more lurking on my shelves/Kindle/various wishlists....

I just finished reading Frangipani Tree Mystery. I found it on the shelves at the public library and remembered that you had recommended it I checked it out and when I entered it in to LT - sure enough - I had a note that this series was recommended by you. Thanks. It was a fun read.

>96 benitastrnad: Glad you enjoyed it! I'm going to read the latest in the series in the next week or two, I think.

>95 elkiedee: I usually find that one book leads me to the next. So, for instance, I've just finished listening to Is Paris Burning? because I realized that while I'd watched the movie, I'd never read the book (which is FAR more interesting.) I've decided that I'm going to "re-read" (i.e. listen to the audiobook of) Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black, which is set at the other end of the Occupation, in 1940. I miss Paris IRL however, as I'm reminded because I end up dreaming of it frequently. One scene in the Collins/Lapierre book is set in my fave part of the city, where I almost always stay when there -- the 6eme, between place de l'Odéon and the Luxembourg (think, St. Sulpice, Boul. St. Germain, Luxembourg, etc.) There's a reference to a hotel on rue Monsieur le Prince, from the windows of which resistants battled German forces, and I kept wondering which hotel!

>95 elkiedee: I was struck by the violin that appears in Black River and plays such an important role in the story. It actually shook me a little, as I am struggling to practice my own enough to improve.

I've always wished that I had learned to play the cello. I realize it would have been utterly impracticable, and I never absolutely demanded music lessons (so I really can't feel ripped off!!) but I love the instrument, the tone, etc.

That said, there's some even more fabulous music for violin. But Bach's cello suites? sigh. Bliss. I think I'll go listen to them right now, in fact.

>99 Chatterbox: I am a very convinced lover of music, Suz, and encouraged all three of my terrors to play something - all opted for piano and Kyran was very creative but not so dedicated, Belle mechanically proficient and Yasmyne not too interested.

I variously had guitars growing up and practiced the bass guitar often and the drums I could keep rhythm fairly well but I was never dextrous enough to be more than barely adequate. I have done a lot of singing though in clubs including one quite large charity event in Malaysia in which I performed with three friends who just happen to be well known "artistes" here. AC Mizal, Adflin Shauki and Hans Isaac. I held my own, I think!

Suzanne, I'm looking at an ad through AARP for a service called Chirp, for audiobooks. I thought I recalled you had tried it and didn't like it, but I can't find the comment on your thread. Was this the one you had trouble with?

>1 Chatterbox: Farmers in Wisconsin applaud your desire for a "real" winter - we need more snow, then even more.

Here's one for your younger readers that Wallace Stevens may also have enjoyed:

I like Winter
I like Snow
I like icy winds that Blow

I like Snowflakes oh so light
Making all the ground so bright
I like sliding down a hill
I like tumbling in a spill

Low, low, Breeze and blow,
I like Winter - I like Snow!

(Memorized from reading to my daughter many years ago - no idea of author.)

>3 Chatterbox: Congratulations on reaching 75, Suzanne!

>101 ffortsa: Chirp is OK. Scribd is the one that was very bait & switch. Chirp offer the chance to buy audiobooks outright at deep discounts; the selection can vary widely/wildly, but you own what you buy and there's no subscription to pay if there's nothing there that appeals.

Scribd makes me crazy, as the more you read, the more "saved" titles they yank from your queue. Their methodology is completely unclear -- and I think they like it that way. I have been able to listen to three to five audiobooks a month, but never more (unless I wanted the classics or random offerings).

>104 Chatterbox: Oh thanks. I am again on 'pause' with Audible, because I can't really catch up on the monthly plan, but I need to 'spend' my credits before I disengage otherwise I lose them (and they are already paid for!)
So Chirp was attractive. I'll see how far I get.

Congrats on reaching 75 books ( already) !

Belated salutations on reaching 75 already but not really a huge surprise as you usually get to that number around now!

>106 figsfromthistle: >107 PaulCranswick: Thanks! I'm reading more rapidly than I did last year, in part because my health hasn't been great, so it's been a struggle to do other stuff. Thankfully, I've ended up reading some really great stuff in the usual mish-mash of books. Standouts include:

Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng: a Shanghai-born Canadian author who wrote the story of a Chinese family dispersed by the Cultural Revolution and the early years of Deng Xiaoping's political turnaround.

The Fell by Sarah Moss -- astonishing/remarkable

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan -- a gem of a novella

Plus re-reads of Remains of the Day by Ishiguro and The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (the last of which was a delightful comfort read.

And on the nonfiction front, essays from Ann Patchett and Jami Attenberg; Clint Smith's amazing book, the fascinating The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King (which as always with this author, digs into a topic that I already found compelling, in this instance the early humanists/"bookpeople" of the Florentine renaissance, just pre-Gutenberg). Also worth noting was Stephen Marche's book, full of warning, about political rifts and the tipping point(s) where wars of words could devolve still further.

I just finished listening to The Spy in Moscow Station, which was intermittently fascinating and frustrating. There's far too much technical detail in here for a general reader to absorb; if you don't have a layperson's understanding of electrical engineering, I'd suggest reading rather than listening. But it's particularly compelling in the context of how the groundwork may have been laid for cyberespionage, and especially interesting in light of how these experiences may have shaped Russian/Soviet perceptions of US/NATO behavior, attitudes, etc, expectations that may now be driving their strategy/actions in Ukraine.

I've given up BUYING books for Lent (nope, I'm not religious, but I do have a massive TBR stack) and will concentrate on reading what I have or can source from the library or via other existing subscriptions.

I am interested in Swimming Back to Trout River so added it to the TBR list. I like books like this. A few years ago I read Shanghai Faithful and it ended up being one of my best reads of that year.

I haven't started Spy in Moscow Station yet as I am still reading Spy Who Was Left Behind but I should finish that one this week and will take the Spy in Moscow Station book home with me for Spring Break.

Anyone looking for a timely book -- check out Lynsey Addario's memoir, It's What I Do. One of the best books I read last year. She's a war photographer, and took a soon-to-be iconic picture that's topping the New York Times about shelling of civilians today.

Hello - could you please again put up the link to the Non-fiction thread?

While deleting 2-3 threads, I accidentally lost this one.

Though NF readers may not be legion, some are faithful,
while many disappeared after the Book Covers were no longer up on top...
a lot of work, but they were a draw.

>111 m.belljackson: Here you go:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/340007#

Sorry about the covers, but it often took me two or three hours to do the covers, which is time that I just don't have. That's just setting it up, re-launching my entire laptop when it crashed (which would happen 2 to 3 times each month when setting up), etc., not updating it. If someone else would like to take that on, it would be lovely, but I'm still scrambling to do work and keep a roof over my head, and have to limit screen time due to neurological issues, so....

>111 m.belljackson: & >112 Chatterbox:
I tried to do it, but just couldn't figure out how, so I quit trying to do it, too. It must involve more steps than I am willing to do. It certainly isn't like downloading the thumbnails from Amazon and plunking them in using the "edit your cover" function.

I don’t know if the covers were a huge draw. They certainly weren’t for me. Instead, I’ve been finding it difficult to fit reading in, so targeted reading tends to get left behind. Simplifying sounds good to me!

>114 drneutron: Would different themes have made this easier? If so, please do send an idea or two my way...

Not really - it mostly comes down to work being really busy, so not as much time to get themed books gathered. Plus, I tend to gravitate to comfort reads during busy times. Your themes have been great!

I find that the categories are loosely composed enough that I can fit in lots of different books. This thread also serves to help me search through books that I have listed in my TBR category to find things that will fit the category, so I appreciate doing that. For me books are like bright lights - there is always a bright one twinkling that catches my eye and I forget about the one I was looking at before.

One of these days I will figure out how to download those book covers and make our lead-in all fancy-smanchy.

>112 Chatterbox: I might be willing to take on the covers. I can try to do it now for the current month, although we are many posts in so they won't be on top, but maybe as a test. If it works, you could let me know when you're about to start the new thread, and I will hop in with a placeholder post.

Thanks so much, Anne; that would be invaluable. I usually post the last day of the month, but we can coordinate... :-)

I'm kinda stuck with audiobooks for now, thanks to some kind of infection in my left eye. It's all red and sore, and this morning when I woke up, it declined to open. Using eyedrops, but may have to venture off to the eye doctor. Good grief.

That said, earlier this month I did have a run of very good/immensely readable books.

A brief summary:

Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King
I absolutely loved this anthology of short stories, and gave it the full five stars

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John LeCarré
I've been slow to discover the Smiley novels and others by le Carré. Trying to make up with it, and this one gathered momentum throughout.

Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre
I've been very pleasantly surprised by these 60s/70s-era books, after finding Collins' standalone thrillers to be acceptable but formulaic. These are comprehensive anecdotal history books. I devoured Is Paris Burning? a few weeks back, and this deals with the period leading up to Indian/Pakistani independence, Partition, and the aftermath, from perspectives ranging from those of Nehru, Jinnah, Mountbatten, etc. to the ordinary people on all sides. It's that holistic view that I really appreciate, so I'll try (with a bit of trepidation, given the ongoing perils surrounding the subject) to read O, Jerusalem next.

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (finished 3/9/22) 4.3 stars
Another pleasant surprise after reading the deeply underwhelming Daughters of Sparta. It's another novelization of ancient Greek drama, and while it's not as beautifully written as books by Pat Barker or Natalie Haynes, it was intriguing and compelling -- what about those heroes, anyway? I love the emphasis on the womens' version of events.

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (finished 3/10/22) 4.3 stars
This was a much better attempt to get inside the mind of someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer than the "Eleanor Oliphant" book that everyone was reading a year or two ago. That left me feeling manipulated by the author; Weike Wang's narrative made me feel deeply for the main character.

The School of Mirrors by Eva Stachniak (finished 3/11/22)
This falls more into the "thumping good read" category -- it's the story of a mother and a daughter in the years leading up to and during the French Revolution. Perhaps a bit overly ambitious, and characters kind of disappear unexpectedly so that the plot straggles, but it's very readable for historical fiction fans.

And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain by Elisabeth Åsbrink
If you happen to know who one of the main two figures in this novel turns out to be (son of a Swedish farmer and grandson of a German immigrant to Sweden), you'll instantly realize why it's so compelling. The big plus is the relationship between the main figure in the book, rescued as a teenager from Vienna and the Anschluss as one of a tiny handful of Jewish children that Sweden agreed to accept. Damning in her assessment of her country's immigration policies (which make those of other nations look positively lavish) during the 1930s, Asbrink doesn't fully succeed in tying up all the loose ends: the anger of the orphaned Jewish young adult isn't captured, nor is the later relationship between the two young men in Sweden in the final years of the war and the peace. I think she waits too long to move to that stage of the book, based on the way she has structured it (i.e. without enough substance up front). Still, worthwhile as an unexplored story.

I haven't had problems with my eyes but I picked up some kind of stomach bug on my trip and it has lead to some embarrassing moments this trip. I took my mother out to eat yesterday after her Doctor's appointment and about 4 spoonful's of soup into the lunch I had to head out the closest door. I barely made it outside before it was upchuck city. So embarrassing on a main sidewalk. We were in Hastings, NE when it happened and that is a 2 hour drive from home. I let my mother drive and I sat miserably in the passengers side. I finally ate some soup this morning, so am feeling better, but still embarrassed. Last time something like this happened I was in Washington, D. C. for the ALA conference and spent an entire day holed up in a hotel room. I just hate it when that happens on a trip that I want very much to enjoy.

Ouch for both of you. Suzanne, I hope your eye infection resolves fast. Benita, I hope you're over your stomach trouble.

Thank heaven for audiobooks! Slowly getting better.

Benita, hope you have/had a smooth trip home to Alabama...

Been a while since I checked in here so I thought I had better. As usual, you hit me with multiple BBs!

Glad to hear that you are slowly getting over the eye trouble!

Very belatedly, I've put together a list of my best fiction for 2021. Best non-fiction still TK.

Best books of 2021:

Fiction:

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
The amazing next-to-most-recent book by this wonderful author explores identity in a mid-20th century tribal community, and delivers a number of moving/devastating character portrayals.

When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
A different kind of novel for me – and a difficult one to read. Based on the author’s experiences, it’s an exploration of family relationships and domestic abuse, firmly rooted in Indian culture and caste. Stunning literary achievement, but also troubling.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King
The protagonist here seems to have a lot of things in her favor (she’s white, adult, etc.) but she’s struggling to find her footing in the literary world and baffled by relationships. Elegant writing & superb characterizations.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
One of the first books I read in 2021, and it set a high bar. Ogawa takes fantasy and high-concept literature and turns the result into a subtle, compelling read.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
This is the first of two books I read by this new-to-me author, and I devoured the second one as soon as it was released after reading this one. She focuses on environmental themes (in this case, the demise of seabirds; in the second case, the rewilding of wolves) as backdrops for complex stories of women trying to cope with traumatic personal legacies. In the hands of a lesser writer, this novel could have been melodrama; instead, it’s a tour de force.

Article 353 by Tanguy Viel
A conversation between an accused man and a French jurist results in the teasing out of all the details surrounding a death – and reveals the socio-economic changes that have buffeted Europe in the last several decades in the process.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
This Turkish novelist is becoming one of my faves, each time I read one of her books. This may have been her best yet. We know the central character is dead – murdered – from the first pages, but by revisiting her own memories and those of her eclectic circle of “outsider” friends in Istanbul, we learn who she was and why those friends so deeply mourn the death of a woman who lived on the fringes of society. A real triumph.

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Another novelist whose work never/rarely disappoints; this is an earlier novel, whose main character also is an outsider (an exotic dancer). She’s caught on camera with a suspicious character, and her life starts to collapse in slow motion. I loved the gradual unfolding of the narrative, and the sense of inevitable doom that Flanagan creates.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Brings to life the vivid lives of children living in a Mumbai slum, who have their joys and ambitions. Then a serial killer seems to be targeting these throw-away kids – and their peers decide it’s up to them to solve the case. It’s a novel, not a mystery, since the main narrative strand is the way the series of crimes mirrors/sheds light on the community. What I loved most was the fact that it gave distinctive & original voices to these characters.

Pilgrims by Mathew Kneale
The first of the pilgrims we meet in this book is a young man who wants to save his cat’s soul by going, first to a local shrine, and later to Rome. Stage by stage of his journey, the scope broadens to include his companions. With a nod in Chaucer’s direction (natch), the characters represent/capture the experiences of each strata of feudal society: “converted” Jews escaping pogroms in England, a murderous and bigamous noblewoman, and a merchant’s widow with an ailing son and envious sister.

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee
A contemporary scholar of Woolf is traveling to do research in the US before heading to a conference; her unhappy teenage daughter is stuck at a boarding school back in the UK. What happens when the scholar accidentally causes Virginia Woolf to re-manifest herself in the modern United States? Some of the more superficial plot themes involve how Woolf might view our more egalitarian and technologically-driven world (she can’t find her favorite kind of pen); the underlying narrative is about how Woolf’s life and experiences might affect those of mother and daughter.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
This is the second amazing novel I’ve read by this young (she’s only 31!) Nigerian author (the previous book was “Welcome to Lagos”.) What would it be like to discover as a mixed-race adult British woman that your father actually is an autocratic leader of an African nation? That’s the premise – and it works.

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
Two families – one from Pakistan, the other from Iraq – take very different paths to arrive in the United States, and different members have wildly disparate experiences once there. Anvar has zero interest in making Islam great again, in contrast to his brother, and delights in being the “bad Muslim”. Then his path crosses with that of Safwa, who has few choices but to be a good Muslim daughter – whatever that might mean. Witty but with real insight.

Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Finally got around to the third of this author’s trio of great novels. Each of three is VERY distinctive (one is quasi-autobiographical, a study of a mediocre academic clinging on to his life in the Midwest; one is an epistolary novel set against the backdrop of the first years of the Roman Empire; this is a Western!) What was the West like? Williams dispels the romantic aura thoroughly in an unputdownable novel.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
A Canadian novel that blew me away, revolving around the experiences of a group of young men and women who kinda sorta survived residential schools. This is extremely topical – but the novel itself doesn’t feel like it’s jumping on a bandwagon but instead as if it’s dealing with a perennial and compelling topic. READ IT.

Many thanks for your comments on this list, Suzanne!

>125 Chatterbox: Thanks for the list, Suzanne. I have added a bunch of those to the BlackHole.

"We cannot know exactly what horror will come next, only that there will be another and another, as long as Putin remains in power."

This from Winter Is Coming by Garry Kasparov, the chess champion/Russian opposition figure, which I just finished reading. Nope, not just written now. Published in 2016. Eerily prescient in anticipating the current state of things, but too far off the mark in predicting that sanctions would divide Putin from his supporters/allies, or that Russian military leaders were too rational to taunt NATO directly. Well, either that, or. we have responded too late -- or we must wait still longer for the fallout of those sanctions to materialize.

Incidentally, I have fallen in love with Still Life by Sarah Winman. I think it was Vivian who first recommended it to me, and wow, it's the triumph of hope over the bitterness of life, and exactly what I needed right now. I'm almost two-thirds of the way through it, and will finish it tomorrow, I suspect.

>125 Chatterbox: Thanks for that, Suz. I have 7 of the 15 on the shelves but have only read the Erdrich and I agree that it deserves to be on a best of list.

And here's the list of the top 15 non-fiction books of 2021.

Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury by Evan Osnos
With everything I read by Osnos, I become more impressed. There has been a flurry of books about Trumpian populism and the events of 2020 (the pandemic and the election and its aftermath) but this is one of the most thoughtful, well-written and analytical.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Lots of folks have already read this survey of the dysfunctional Sackler family, the Oxycontin saga, etc. The author knits together all the puzzle pieces in a detailed survey that will be one of those iconic books. It gets off to a slow-ish start, and puts the drama to one side in favor of substance, but stick with it.

Elderhood by Louise Aronsohn
I’m aging – sometimes I realize it; sometimes I forget that my chronological age is out of step with how I see the world. Aronsohn does a brilliant job of (from the POV of a geriatrician) spelling out why the way we see aging and being an “elder” doesn’t always serve seniors well, either socially or medically and addressing what it means to age “well”. I expect I’ll be revisiting this.

You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by Elizabeth Becker
When I was a preteen, Vietnam was the first “news story” I remember following (followed thereafter by Watergate). And I read Frances Fitzgerald’s amazing book “The Fire in the Lake” in my early 20s, while living in Japan. This book – by a journalist whose book about Cambodia’s war and its aftermath is also among my memorable reads – chronicles the pioneering work done by Fitzgerald and two other reporters, who were able to put their own unique stamp on reporting and photojournalism during Vietnam, and transformed the nature of war reporting. They cleared the way for the impressive work done by so many amazing women since then, as well as redefining what it means to report from a war zone. Kudos to both Becker and her subjects.

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu
Owusu’s mother was Armenian American; her father, Ghanaian. Like me she grew up in countries she didn’t “belong” to and struggled with developing a sense of identity and belonging. That’s what drew me to this memoir; what kept me reading was Owusu’s piercing honesty and lyrical writing as she wrote about the disruptions that followed the death of her father when she was only 13 and the complexity of family ties.

The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights by Dorothy Wickenden
Harriet Tubman’s name is familiar; so, too, may be that of Frances Seward’s husband, a member of Lincoln’s cabinet and a powerful force in Civil War-era politics. Martha Coffin Wright, the third member of this trio, is probably less well known, but this Quaker was a powerful force in working alongside people like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women’s rights, and with Tubman for emancipation. This captures the life stories of women in the first half of the 19th century in the USA brilliantly, while also taking a refreshingly different look at their causes and women’s activism in the era.

The Writing of the Gods: the Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick
I’ve long been fascinated by the topic of this book, which is why I picked it up. What I ended up finding engrossing was the way Dolnick broadened the focus to include the nature of written communication and the shift from image-based language to alphabets. Wowza.

It’s What I Do by Lynsey Addario
Timely, since Addario is one of the New York Times photographers responsible for capturing the toll of the fighting underway in Ukraine. She’s worked in war zones for decades and won numerous prizes. Why does she do it? What’s it like? She asks herself those questions with ruthless rigor throughout. If you want to think about conflict in a different way and are recoiling from the relentless coverage of war as a spectator sport, this will restore a sense of perspective. (apologies for the wordplay; accidental…)

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
Anyone interested in India should include Dalrymple’s books in reading lists. Yes, he’s a Brit and has his own focus, area of interest and POV – so don’t read his books at the expense of those by Indian writers. That said, the evolution of the relationship between the Moghul Empire from a trading agreement to India becoming a colony of the UK has shaped today’s India, and including a comprehensive analysis from a British POV of those interactions is vital. Dalrymple also happens to be a great prose stylist, IMHO.

Under a White Sky: the Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
This is an anthology of some of Kolbert’s writing, and follows logically from her previous book, “The Sixth Extinction.” If we live in an unsustainable world today, what lies ahead? What are the solutions? Kolbert’s analysis of this question is chilling. Read it to get a good grip on what we’re facing.

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues that Made History by Alex von Tunzelman
A few of these statue conflicts have dominated headlines in their own countries; others are less well-known. If you want to put the controversy about Civil War statues in the US in a broader context, this is a good place to start. It will prod a lot of people into thinking about topics like the role of public art, the question of who we commemorate in statues and why, and about history itself.

Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough & Jason Stanford
Welp, Bryan Burrough. What else can I say? Oh yeah, I watched that movie about the heroic last stand. And since then have learned that (as with many such tales) the reality doesn’t measure up to the myth. So why has that heroic saga proved so enduring? Who has promoted it, and who has tried to create a broader context? What does it say about how we view our history? As we re-evaluate topics like who writes history and what is worth being passed along (by whom, how and why), this is a slyly fascinating and lively narrative.

Just Us by Claudia Rankine
This popped up on countless “best of” lists, which is one reason I read it. Do yourself a favor and when you pick it up, grab a “real” copy in order to fully appreciate the book’s design, which combines prose and images in a very careful way to enhance the impact on the reader. The content? Oh, yeah, it’s about how to transcend questions of whiteness and privilege and reach out to and understand each other. And much, much more.

Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream by Mychal Denzel Smith
A commanding and eloquent voice tackles an increasingly-familiar topic: the way that ‘race’ and ‘white privilege’ show how hollow or limited the argument is that the US is truly exceptional. The critique won’t be new to anyone who has their head above the parapet, but Smith’s ideas for redefining the nature of the national dream will (or should) provoke a lot of thought and discussion.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Half of the dozen children born the to the upwardly-mobile Galvin family during the baby boom era ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia. How on earth??? Part family tragedy, part medical detective yarn, this unputdownable book explores the difficult topic of mental illness and what that means for everyone in a family.

Wonder whether I can get to 150 posts around the end of March/early April so that I can start the second quarter of the year with a fresh thread??

Chiming in to give you another post! Love your 2021 lists and have picked up some BBs. And I'm glad Still Life was a hit for you.

>128 Chatterbox: I just recently finished Still Life too, Suzanne, and very much enjoyed it.

>130 Chatterbox: Nice list! I have read only The Writing of the Gods, which I loved and rated at 5 stars.

>130 Chatterbox:
I took several BB's from this list. I like the fact that you took some time to think about your list after the first part of the year. Most lists like this are generated right on January 1 and it appears to me that you took some time to think about what books really had an impact on you in the last year. I haven't read any of these books, but have most of them already on my TBR list. Part of my problem is that I am trying to use the library more and make fewer purchases of books and the newer a book is the longer I have to wait to get it. Generally, I don't have a problem with that because I will read them - someday. I have started tagging my books with the name of whoever it was that got me with a BB. Your name has been frequent on that list. Thanks for all the good book advice.

Thanks for the top 15 lists! Several caught my eye and are now on my radar!

OMG. I feel every title you mention is a BB. You make them sound so interesting! My reading has been slow, partly because I've been busy with other things that don't accommodate reading at the same time (audio). I have to rearrange my life to get more reading in.

>136 ffortsa: I'm stuck doing things on audio, too. Eye doctor strictly limiting my screen time (Kindle, phone, laptop work, Zoom, etc..) so audio it is. And I listen "more slowly" than I read!

>137 Chatterbox: Of course you listen more slowly than you read! Goodness, you read like lightning. If I were doing more solo walking, instead of in groups, or if I was spending more time at the gym (which I should be doing), I'd get more of my audio done. If I listen without doing something else, it lulls me to sleep unless it's really gripping. Night Boat to Tangiers was a notable exception.

Hope your eye problem resolves soon.

I just finished reading the second book in the Crown Colony mysteries by Ovidia Yu. This was a series from which I took a BB from you. My public library has four of the five books in this series and I read the first one a month ago. I hope to read the third one in April since the library has that title in its collection.
Might as well make use of their books! This is a fun series and so I wanted to thank you for sending that BB my way.

Is your eye clearing up? I hope so. I have much sympathy these days with any kind of eye trouble at all! Be well, Suzanne!

>141 Chatterbox: Only slowly, Peggy -- depends entirely on what I do on any given day, how much time I spend using my eyes, especially with respect to screens.

So I've been audiobooking today and finished listening to the amazing story of Shackleton's Antarctic exploration in Endurance by Alfred Lansing. Originally written in 1959, it's clearly from the POV of the men's heroism, but the rich detail and fast pace keeps even anyone who knows the outcome on edge. That said -- from the POV of 2022, I found my mind kept wandering back to what was happening in the trenches on the Western front during the months this small group of men -- celebrated for the heroism of their survival -- was stranded on ice floes and remote Antarctic islands. I'm awed by the magnitude of what they achieved, but in a weird way, both this story and the story of World War I warfare taking place at the other end of the world seemed to overlap as stories of futility. The Shackleton expedition was as much or more about vainglorious adventurism as science; it didn't reach its objective. The survival was heroic, but Lansing never really thinks about the point of it all or the cost. And the book ends without dealing with their return to a Europe still at war. Still, I'm giving this a 4.4 rating, for what it is. There are missing parts even in that -- Lansing never discusses the outcome of the trek at the other side of the South Pole by Shackleton's OTHER team, who were responsible for burying caches of food for the explorer and his crew, which is significant.

>125 Chatterbox: >130 Chatterbox: Thanks for your lists. I've taken a few BBs. I enjoyed Chibundu Onuzo's Welcome to Lagos and will look out this one.
I'm finally finishing up King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett on audio, it's 36 hrs long and a really great historical fiction about the real Macbeth. Taken me months as I've gotten out of the routine of audiobooks in favour of music.
Maybe I'll try Endurance on audio.

>131 Chatterbox: Hopefully helps in pushing you closer to 150 posts, Suz.

>130 Chatterbox: Certainly great lists like that deserve of comments. I have recently added the Dalrymple to the shelves and agree with you wholeheartedly about his prose style.

Plenty amongst the others listed to cogitate upon.

Have a splendid weekend.

>143 PaulCranswick: LOL, thanks Paul! I know lack of posts is in part my own fault, as I've been dilatory in visiting/commenting on others' threads, but I had kinda hoped to avoid long straggling lists of books read at the top...

I've been re-listening to some favorite espionage non-fiction. Last month's non-fiction challenge has gotten me onto some kind of binge.

>145 Chatterbox: There is always plenty over here to commend a visit, Suz. I acquire books at your rate but I despatch them at about a third the speed!

>146 PaulCranswick: Would be happy to assist with your acquisitions, if shipping to KL wasn't so pricey!

I think I've kinda run my course with the "Bruno" mysteries by Martin Edwards. I have e-galleys of the two latest novels, but they seem to be at least half about food, cooking and people. I love it when those elements contribute to building up a sense of place, of character, etc., but it gets tiresome when the author constantly interrupts the plot to write pages about cooking and consuming a meal. These thoughts prompted by a collection of short stories that felt as if they were exclusively written for die-hard foodies.

>148 Chatterbox:
I have read 8 of the Bruno, Chief of Police series and I think that you are correct about him writing for die-hard foodies. Have you looked at Martin Walker's web site? It is mostly about food and wine. Clearly an interest of his and for many of his followers.

I also finished reading book 2 in the Crown Colony series and still like that series. I hope to find time to read the next one in the series soon. My public library has the first 4 of the books and only lacks the latest one in the series. There is plenty of food in this series, but not nearly as front and center as in the Bruno books.

>149 benitastrnad:, yes the foodie stuff in Ovidia Yu's historical mystery is more about details than plot! That said, I think her other series (contemporary Singapore) is more aimed at foodies.

I'm battling my way through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Alas, I'm struggling with the oblique writing style, which makes it tougher for me to track the plot. Perhaps it's my concentration level? But EVERYTHING is so indirect, that reading it has created in me a craving for something well-written but also straightforward. Le Carré assumes a lot of knowledge or the ability to decode his jargon (housekeepers, scalp hunters, etc.) and that's irritating. Dialogue makes me think of joining a group of people for dinner and realizing that they have known each other for 25 years and are talking in code.

This is annoying, because I've really enjoyed several of le Carré's other books, and this is the iconic one. Ho hum.