Annie's 2022 Reading Diary - Part 2

With February ending (well, it ended awhile ago but that's where I am in my notes) and the other thread getting long, time to move to a new one.

I had been doing some thinking about the structure of my threads and instead of carrying all the top lists, I will keep updating the ones over in the first thread and just have a running current list of books and orphan stories here. We shall see how that goes.

Books read in 2022. (For a full list for the year: https://www.librarything.com/topic/338036#7697569)

A book is defined as a single ebook file, a single issue of a webzine (which publishes issues) or a single paper book/magazine so this list will contain short stories published separately, omnibuses, separate plays, collections of plays and anything in between.

=== MARCH ===
49. Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization by Amanda H. Podany
50. The Fall of Koli by M. R. Carey -- Rampart Trilogy (3)
51. Death and Relaxation by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (1)
52. Dues and Don’ts by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (0.5)
53. By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
54. Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena, translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore
55. Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from the French by Alexia Trigo
56. A Short History of Monsters by Jose Padua
57. Spidertouch by Alex Thomson
58. A History of Modern Oman by Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout
59. The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb -- Konrád (1)
60. The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
61. Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett
62. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
63. Billy Summers by Stephen King
64. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated from the Italian by G. H. McWilliam
65. The Calendar Man by Christoffer Petersen
66. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri
67. Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah
68. Winter in Sokcho by Élisa Shua Dusapin
69. Trashlands by Alison Stine
70. River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey
71. Hard Reboot by Django Wexler
72. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

=== APRIL ===
73. Cyber Mage by Saad Z. Hossain
74. Abandoned in Death by J. D. Robb
75. Home Front: The Complete BBC Radio Collection: Volume 1 by Katie Hims, Sebastian Baczkiewicz, Sarah Daniels, Shaun McKenna
76. The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn
77. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 13, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan
78. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
79. Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson, translated from the German by Damion Searls

=== MAY ===
80. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1967, edited by Ellery Queen
81. Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity by David Christian
82. The Life and Letters of John Keats by Joanna Richardson
83. Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Pickett Country by C. J. Box
84. I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan with photographs by Seamus Murphy, translation and commentary by Eliza Griswold
85. The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins
86. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1970, edited by Ellery Queen
87. Thrilling Science Fiction, June 1974, edited by Sol Cohen (uncredited in the magazine)
88. Robert B. Parker's The Bridge by Robert Knott -- Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch (7)
89. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by N. K. Sandars
90. China in Ten Words by Yu Hua, translated from the Chinese by Allan H. Barr
91. Rimrunners by C. J. Cherryh -- Alliance-Union Universe (23)
92. At Last by Edward St. Aubyn -- Patrick Melrose (5)
93. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 15, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (managing editor)
94. Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
95. In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali, translated from Persian/Farsi by Mariam Rahmani
96. The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros, translated from the Welsh by Manon Steffan Ros
97. Red Sorghum by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt
98. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, April 1967, edited by Ellery Queen
99. Devils and Details by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (2)

=== JUNE ===
100. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 25, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan
101. Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas
102. Waiting by Ha Jin
103. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi, translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan
104. Plague Birds by Jason Sanford
105. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February 1971, edited by Ellery Queen
106. Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, edited and translated from the Chinese by Xueting Christine Ni
107. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1977, edited by Ellery Queen
108. Give Unto Others by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (31)
109. Death and Judgment by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (4)

=== JULY ===
110. Acqua Alta by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (5)
111. Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (6)
112. A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (7)
113. Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (8)
114. Friends in High Places by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (9)
115. A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (10)
116. Gallic Noir: Volume 1 by Pascal Garnier, translated from the French
117. Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon -- Commissario Brunetti (11)
118. Gods and Ends by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (3)

=== AUGUST ===
119. Rock Paper Scissors: Ordinary Magic Stories by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (4)
120. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
121. Five Uneasy Pieces by Debbi Mack
122. Hidden by Benedict Jacka -- Alex Verus (5)
123. Grandville Bete Noire by Bryan Talbot -- Grandville (3)
124. Precursor by C. J. Cherryh -- Foreigner (4)
125. Slow Horses by Mick Herron -- Slough House (1)
126. The Fires Beneath the Sea by Lydia Millet -- Dissenters (1)
127. The Immersion Book of Steampunk, edited by Gareth D. Jones and Carmelo Rafala
128. Dime a Demon by Devon Monk -- Ordinary Magic (5)
129. Robert B. Parker's Bye Bye Baby by Ace Atkins -- Spenser (50)
130. The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction by Eric H. Cline
131. Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
132. On the Edge by Edward St. Aubyn
133. Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
134. Германският пациент by Михаил Вешим
135. Veiled by Benedict Jacka -- Alex Verus (6)

===September===
136. Content Warning: Everything by Akwaeke Emezi (poetry)
137. The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken
138. Defender by C. J. Cherryh -- Foreigner (5)
139. The Basel Killings by Hansjörg Schneider, translated from German by Mike Mitchell -- Peter Hunkeler English translations (1)
140. The Curious Thing: Poems by Sandra Lim
141. Burned by Benedict Jacka -- Alex Verus (7)
142. The Iliad by Homer, translated from Ancient Greek by Robert Fagles
143. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
144. Maigret and the Man on the Bench by Georges Simenon, translated from French by David Watson -- Maigret (41)
145. The Carter of 'La Providence' by Georges Simenon, translated from French by David Coward -- Maigret (2)
146. Kundo Wakes Up by Saad Z. Hossain -- The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (2)

Orphan stories (aka stories which are not in a book/magazine I plan to finish and review and are not their own books (paper or e-)

49. Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization by Amanda H. Podany

Type: Audio Lectures
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2018
Genre: History, Ancient History
Format: audio/Audible
Publisher: The Great Courses; (History -> Civilization & Culture)
Length: 24 lectures; 11 hrs and 16 mins; Course book: 216 pages
Reading dates: 23 February 2022 - 3 March 2022

The flood plain of Mesopotamia (the area generally covers modern Iraq plus the head of the Persian Gulf and parts of southeast Turkey, west Iran, northeastern Syria and northern Kuwait) has thousands of years worth of silt laid down by the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It is extremely flat and unless things go horribly wrong somewhere, the flood seasons are predicable. And the land is flat - so building irrigation canals was extremely easy. So there was no surprise that around 6,000 BCE, farmers started to move into the region from the neighboring hills or that bigger and bigger settlement start appearing - water and food is all someone needs after all. Less than 3,000 later, writing somehow gets invented and written history begins.

But this is not where Amanda H. Podany starts her series - she goes back to the cultures in the area, back to the Natufian villages of around 12,500 BCE and starts the story there. Because the first cities did not just show up out of nowhere in the 4th Millennium BCE - they were a direct result from what happened before that. But once they appeared, there was no way back.

There is a lot we do not know about that period - a lot of the cities that are known to exist had not been excavated yet - some of them because they cannot find them (the geography had changed a bit - although in this region the coastal areas had moved toward the gulf so at least they are not under water as is the case in a lot of other areas), some are under existing cities (making it almost impossible to really excavate) and then there is the little problem of the current situation in the area - the whole region had been in the news in the last decade because of ISIS and their shenanigans. Different historians put the start of the Mesopotamian civilization anywhere between 3,500 BCE (the time of Uruk) to 3,100 BCE (the time we know writing was used extensively) and almost any time within a few centuries of these dates. On the other side, things are a lot better defined: in 539 BCE, after having concurred everything else in the area, the king of the first Persian Empire (known in history as the Achaemenid Empire) Cyrus the Great walks into Babylon unopposed and puts an end to a 2,500-3,000 years of independent local rule in the region. The majority of these lectures deal with these 2,500-3,000 years - the time between the city-states of Sumer to the fall of the Neo-Babylonian empire. When it finally falls to Cyrus, an era finishes - the area will become a province for different empires (with some interludes of local kingdoms in the cases where the ruling empire prefers vassal kingdoms to assigning rulers). But that is a different story.

Amanda H. Podany is a historian, specializing in the Ancient Near East and more specifically in the Hana kingdom (a small Syrian kingdom in the general vicinity of Mesopotamia). That probably makes her one of the best people to develop and deliver these lectures - a specialist in one of the bigger kingdoms can overwhelm the lectures, pulling towards 'their' kingdom. Instead, we get a walk through history - because that continuous local rule was not exactly peaceful - the states changed, the first empires were born (and fell) but the continuity between them was always there - in their beliefs, language(s) and practices. And no matter how you look at it and which dates you prefer, the history of Ancient Mesopotamia spans half the written history of humanity.

You do not need to know anything about the region - the course serves as a perfectly good introduction. If you do know things, it can be an overview (and I suspect you still will learn new things). Podany peppers the story with her own memories of excavation and research - which makes the lectures even better - learning how things are discovered and how a single discovery turns the story on its head makes one understand the whole problem with Ancient History even more. And despite the huge amount of material, it is not just the story of the political entities - it is a story of the peoples and the civilizations of one of the places where urban civilizations began (and of course, it is a story of their neighbors - as the centuries progressed, more and more of them show up and become important). The lectures have all the names everyone had heard of and a lot of name which only a student of the era would know. But they never feel overwhelming.

The Audible version of the course comes with a PDF which has the highlights, the spelling of the names and kingdoms, a lot of maps (relevant maps per lecture) and an extensive bibliography (per lecture and overall).

I really enjoyed that course. Highly recommended.

The complete list of lectures:
1. Uncovering Near Eastern Civilization
2. Natufian Villagers and Early Settlements
3. Neolithic Farming, Trade, and Pottery
4. Eridu and Other Towns in the Ubaid Period
5. Uruk, the World’s Biggest City
6. Mesopotamia’s First Kings and the Military
7. Early Dynastic Workers and Worshipers
8. Lugalzagesi of Umma and Sargon of Akkad
9. Akkadian Empire Arts and Gods
10. The Fall of Akkad and Gudea of Lagash
11. Ur III Households, Accounts, and Ziggurats
12. Migrants and Old Assyrian Merchants
13. Royalty and Palace Intrigue at Mari
14. War and Society in Hammurabi’s Time
15. Justice in the Old Babylonian Period
16. The Hana Kingdom and Clues to a Dark Age
17. Princess Tadu-Hepa, Diplomacy, and Marriage
18. Land Grants and Royal Favor in Mittani
19. The Late Bronze Age and the End of Peace
20. Assyria Ascending
21. Ashurbanipal’s Library and Gilgamesh
22. Neo-Assyrian Empire, Warfare, and Collapse
23. Babylon and the New Year’s Festival
24. End of the Neo-Babylonian Empire

50. The Fall of Koli by M. R. Carey

Type: Novel, 166k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: Rampart Trilogy (3)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: paperback
Publisher: Orbit
Reading dates: 26 February 2022 - 5 March 2022

I am always worried when a series I am enjoying publishes its last book. I should not have worried here.

Just when you think that the world in this series cannot get weirder, we get crazy robots, clones and the Arthurian legends mixed in with everything else we already had. And despite that, Carey not just manages to close the story properly and clean up all the dangling threads but to find a finish which brings closure to everyone.

Koli and company finally find the truth about the signal that sent them on the whole adventure to start with - and despite their hopes, it turns out to be quite different from what they could have imagined. Before long, they get in trouble - except that this time it is not just Koli, Monono, Ursala and Cup that are about to lose everything - they manage to kick off a world invasion. And just when things look absolutely hopeless, our stellar team pulls another rabbit out from their collective hats and turn the tables on everyone. Meanwhile, back in Mythen Rood, things deteriorate even worse than they do for Koli - the chances of the village surviving seem to get lower by the day.

100 pages before the end of the book, I was not sure how Carey can get wrap up all the threads - he was still opening new ones at that point. And yet, he managed to - he even managed to pull a final twist which was unexpected but absolutely logical.

I really enjoyed the whole trilogy -- and I think that Carey found the perfect length for the story - maybe some parts could have been cut but... even the ones which seemed unimportant ended up helping in these last chapters and making the end possible. But you should not try to read this novel on its own - it will work even less as a standalone than the second one.

Volume 1 review: https://www.librarything.com/work/23920529/reviews/196161443
Volume 2 review: https://www.librarything.com/work/24842081/reviews/204221483

 
51/52. Death and Relaxation and Dues and Don’ts by Devon Monk

Type: Novel, 99k words + a story (~50 pages)
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2016 and 2019?
Series: Ordinary Magic (1) and (0.5)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Format: ebook
Publisher: Odd House Press
Reading dates: 27 February 2022 - 6 March 2022 (8 March 2022 for the story)

Ordinary, Oregon is just a small coastal town, known mainly for its yearly rhubarb festival. At least in the human world anyway. It is also the place where gods can shed their power for a bit and take a vacation and where all the creatures are welcome to move in. There is only one condition (for them all): find a job, even if you are bad at it. And of course, they all are mortal while in town.

A year ago Delaney Reed became the police chief after her father, who was the old chief, died. Her two sisters are also policewomen - and all 3 also have special powers allowing them to deal with the supernatural community. The festival security is about to stretch the already understaffed police department resources. Add an ex boyfriend, who seems to want Delaney back, and Ryder, a man she used to be in love with and who had just returned back to town and that last thing Delaney needs a dead god on hands. Unfortunately for her, that's exactly what she gets - so on top of everything else, she needs to find a mortal to accept the god power. Hilarity ensues.

The book is pure fluff - Delaney seems to lose all her brain cells when Ryder or Cooper (the ex) come anywhere near her (and she spends half of the rest of the time pining for Ryder). And yet somehow the whole thing works - I wanted to hit her on the head for missing the obvious multiple times (but she did have an excuse in this book) so we will see how it goes in the next day. But even if it remains the same way, I would still read the next novel.

Once I finished the first novel in the series, I realized that there is a prequel (which seems to have been published later; the story itself is set 6 months before the first novel) and is available from the author's website. The resident Valkyrie is in the middle of organizing yet another event and someone slips in a cursed object - in a place where the mortals can find it. Which is a very very bad idea - they have no idea that magic (or gods, or creatures) exist. So a search starts - with some of the people in it clueless at what exactly it is they are looking for and how dangerous is. The end made me laugh - and the story definitely works a lot better after you had read at least the first novel.

53. By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Type: Novel, ??k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2001
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: hardcover
Publisher: New Press
Reading dates: 6 March 2022 - 9 March 2022

A man flees his home country to escape persecution. Another one fled years earlier. And then Fate puts them together - twice - once back home on Zanzibar, and now in England. That's the main premise of this short novel - but behind the almost mundane story of refugees and finding one's home, Gurnah manages to tell a story of Zanzibar and a story about the power of memories and perceptions.

Zanzibar is not a locality most people will be familiar with - I suspect the name will be familiar but other from that, it is usually just one of those places that you never think about. The part of this novel which take place there paint a picture which will stay with me for a long time (and which made me wonder again what were the Omanis doing there at all) and which may be better than almost any history text you can find about these times. But it is also a personal story - we see the island through the eyes of the two men - both of which fled the island, each for their own reason and yet, they both made the decision to do it. And if it is not enough to remind you about the power of telling a story, the dependence of a narrator when you are told a story, Gurnah reinforces us by having the two men remember the same times and places... and remember them differently. Even if you add them up, you still seem to miss pieces of the puzzle - and that's what this is all about - every story has a lot of sides and when we live through a time, we get one side only.

And that duality and difference is there in everything - in how the two men became refugees, in how they adapted to the changes, in how they keep their memories for home (and what they actually want to keep), even in who they meet when they went away from Zanzibar. It is like one of those carnival mirrors - it seems like it is the same story but in reality, it is 2 different story - in a sea of separate stories. Being a refugee is not a story in itself; it is part of one's story, changing with the particulars of the individual. And yes, there are the mundane parts of the stories of both men - the stolen box, the German pen-friend, the room in the squalid house - the mundane is as much part of being human as is the exotic and interesting after all.

There had been a lot of decades in the last years about refugees and memories of home and finding your place in a new country. This is one of the more memorable ones I've read - even if being a refugee is at the front of the story, it is just part of it, almost getting lost behind the story about what a person tells themselves about their own life.

That is the first novel by Gurnah which I read and I probably would not have picked it up if he had not won the Nobel prize - there are a lot of authors out there and he was not exactly popular (the day the Nobel was announced, my local library had a single copy of a single book by him (this one, the copy I read after waiting for it since the announcement - quite a lot of people beat me to requesting it that day...; the library had added quite a few more since then). I plan to explore what else he had written now - because regardless of how I got to read this novel, I really liked his way of writing.

54. Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena, translated from the Spanish by Katie Whittemore

Type: Novel, 39k words (which is a bit too short for a novel usually but being non-speculative, it passes)
Original Language: Spanish
Original Publication: 2017 (Spanish) as Últimas palabras en la tierra; 2021 in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: paperback
Publisher: Open Letter
Reading dates: 10 March 2022 - 10 March 2022

The story of an author who is exiled from his native Peru and finds refuge in Spain and his writing and who loses his life to a disease shortly after his work finally gets acknowledges by his peers and the public.

He always believed himself to be a poet - despite writing novels as well, he was a poet. He helped create a minor poetic movement in Mexico and tried to keep it alive even when he moved to Catalonia, he refused to sell himself to the magazines and publishers and change how he was writing, even when he had to be supported by his wife. The story has two parts - the first is the almost linear story as told by another author in Spain and the poet's wife; the second one is seemingly told by the ghost of our main character. Both parts thread both through the present and the past - building an image of a creator who does not really care if people like him (or his work). Until they do - and then, when he finally embraces the world, when he finally gets the family he always wanted and the fame which always eluded him, Fate decides that it is time for the final curtain.

If that outline sounds familiar, replace Peru with Chile and it may get what you have at the back of your mind closer. If it still does not click, check a short biography of Roberto Bolaño (even Wikipedia will be enough to show you what you need). Javier Serena's poet is a thinly disguised version of the Chilean author - and once that clicks, you can see even more in this very short novel - things unsaid, things just hinted at suddenly have a real life connection and mean more. But even if you never connect the dots, even if you take the novel just as an invention of the author, it still works - because the shadow (and ghost) of Bolaño just add to a story that is already there, fully formed and independent.

Highly recommended.

55. Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated from the French by Alexia Trigo

Type: Novel, 64k words
Original Language: French
Original Publication: 2015 (French) as Terre ceinte; 2021 in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: ebook
Publisher: Europa Editions
Reading dates: 10 March 2022 - 11 March 2022

In the imaginary town of Kalep, somewhere on the Atlantic coast of the Sahel, the Islamists (here called "the Brotherhood") had taken over - despite the country's attempt to dislodge them. A group of friends decide to show that they are not ready to accept that - by publishing a journal.

That's the main premise of this novel. The author is from Senegal and this novel had won quite a lot of awards (both in French and in English). And even if awards are not always an indication of quality, they got it right here.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr has a very distinctive way of introducing his characters - while most writers will immediately tell you if you had already met the spouse or the brother of a newly introduced character, he tells you the story as if they are unrelated until the relationship either becomes important for the story or they just end up in the same place and not spelling/showing it becomes hard. I don't think it is an attempt at secrecy - it is more of a "that could have happened to anyone, not just to the doctor's wife" kind of thing.

The story opens with an execution - a young couple is killed for daring to fall in love (and follow up on their love). That makes the circle of friends decide to publish their journal (and gives us one part of the narration). That also makes the two mothers who lost their children start sending each other letters - some of them very private, some of them discussing what they see in their towns (which often ties to the other narrative). Sarr adds yet another voice - the voice of the commander of the Islamist troops Abdel Karim Konaté (it is unclear if the name is randomly chosen - there is a Malian politician by that name who was in the government around that time). And then there are the inhabitants of Kalep - we meet quite a lot of them, and sometimes it takes awhile to find out who connects to whom and how. But the connections are there - even where you least expect - and by the end of the novel, it becomes obvious that there is no "we" and "them" - everyone is connected in one way or another. And yet, there is evil and there is good.

It is a brutal novel - that initial execution feels almost like an appetizer as the novel continues. The scariest part is that it can happen - there is nothing in it that is impossible. And I cannot even imagine how much more urgent and possible it sounded in 2015 when it was published, with ISIS at the height of their power a continent away.

56. A Short History of Monsters by Jose Padua

Type: Poetry Collection
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2019
Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize Collection (2019 Winner of the prize)
Genre: Poetry
Format: paperback
Publisher: The University of Arkansas Press
Reading dates: 13 March 2022 - 13 March 2022

40 poems in 90 pages, organized in 4 sections. My plan was to read a section per day - and then I realized I was reading the last poem - I could not stop. It was a part of one of the first poems in this collection, called "Pulp Fiction", that seems to hold at least some of the keys to the whole collection (or even the author):

"It's been said that the truth will set you free,
but whenever I speak the truth no one believes it,
and whenever I hear the truth it makes me feel like a prisoner
on death row.

So, I tell stories to keep the truth alive without telling it.
So I create truth to keep me from becoming history:"

And that the whole collection is all about - a (semi-)autobiographic parts and invented pasts and futures merge with bizarre landscapes and images (nothing scarier than what Barbie may be thinking while sitting in her dollhouse). And all of them require just words - Padua doesn't play with the form of the poems or their position on the page - you don't need to see it (as many modern poets seem to require you to these days) and you don't need to try to decipher the line breaks and weird stops.

But then, he is a veteran of the New York's spoken-word literary scene (as the very short biography at the end of the book will tell you) and that explains a lot. These are not exercises of poetic form and invention - these are poems to tell people, stories in a poetic form. It is also nice to have a collection which is rooted in society and the present but without retelling you the news or containing all the rage towards the present (although there is some rage in the poems but there is also a lot of hope).

Billy Collins, the editor of the collection and the judge for the prize it won, has a very nice introduction both about the contest and about this collection. But don't read it before you read the collection -- I am so used to not trusting introduction that I skipped it and came back (and then reread the collection again after that).

57. Spidertouch by Alex Thomson

Type: Novel, 88k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy
Format: paperback
Publisher: Angry Robot
Reading dates: 13 March 2022 - 14 March 2022

130 years ago Val Kedić fell to the Keda. The new rules renamed the city, forced the population to build them an island in the middle of the city and proceeded to treat them as almost slaves - almost everyone is kept without anything while the rules live in splendor. And in order to keep the population calm, the Keda use the children - every child with a family is sent to work in the mines between the ages of 11 and 18. That makes sure that they come back with broken spirit - and any time when a parent does anything which the rulers do not like, it is their kid that gets punished.

And if that was not nightmarish enough, the Keda do not seem to be able to speak (later in the book, one of the characters dreams of making the Keda learn tonguespeak (aka actual speech) but that seems like an impossibility from everything else we are told). They communicate with what the citizens call fingerspeak - a touch language where the fingers of the speaker touch, squeeze, tap and so on the forearm of the listener, with 2 metal bands on the arm to assist with the possible words. That requires someone from the population to understand and translate (or how would you rule them?) in both directions so the guild of the translators was born.

When the novel opens, we meet Razvan - one of the best translators in the Guild (there is a very limited number of them for various reasons), with a son in the mines and who is just trying to survive. Before long another tribe/peoples show up intent on defeating the Keda and getting the city and the stage for the novel is set.

So what happens when you rule a city where you cannot hear and speak (let alone understand) the language of the streets and the streets decide that it is time for revolution, using the disruption of the enemy coming in? You rely on your translators. And then some of them decide that they had enough - nothing like a bit of a linguistic subterfuge to kick start the revolution - and things start unraveling. But even in the middle of all that, there is an enemy at the gate and they don't seem to care much about who is who - they want the city. Where would your loyalties be in that situation - the evil you know or the one you don't?

The world has no modern technology (the city does not, it does not seem that the horde that shows up has any either) but there is some form of alchemy so the whole novel has a medieval feel to it. The parts which deal with the language are fascinating (no brushing away the fact that a touch language's grammar works very differently from a spoken one). The sections when Razvan showed us the past and his own history added to the build-up of the novel nicely. A lot of the twists actually worked and did not feel either too expected or coming out of the blue.

And yet, something felt off in the novel as a whole. Part of it is the almost invincibility of the people who had to survive for a plan to work (characters died but... they were never that important). Part of it is that the good guys seemed too good to be believable in places (plus the whole "noone trusts me but I do the best and now everyone does"). It almost felt like a great setting for a novel which just did not have an interesting story to tell - the story felt almost formulaic if you remove the fingerspeak. And yet, I am happy I read it - despite its deficiencies, the linguistic part of the world is fascinating.

58. A History of Modern Oman by Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout

Type: Non-Fiction
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2015
Series: N/A
Genre: History, Modern History
Format: ebook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Reading dates: 11 March 2022 - 15 March 2022

When I read Celestial Bodies last year, I realized how little I know about Oman - I could find it on a map, I knew its capital and I knew that it is an Arab Muslim absolute monarchy and a non-OPEC oil producer. And that was about it. I could not even tell you if they are Shia or Sunni Muslims (as it turned out, the answer is none of the above - they are mostly Ibadi which unlike Wahhabism is not a Sunni or Shia sect (Wahhabism is Sunni) but on the same level as the two big ones). I don't remember if the novel mentioned Zanzibar or if I found about it being an Omani possession for awhile while checking other details from the book but that made me go and check my maps again - they are not exactly next to each other and Oman is not exactly one of the big colonizers that ended up with possessions all over the oceans. You don't need to know even that to enjoy Celestial Bodies but I feel uncomfortable when a war or an uprising is mentioned and I cannot figure out when in time it happened, at least down to a decade or 2 around the actual date (with Oman, I would have been hard-pressed to make a distinction between events in the 1950s from ones in the 1850s). So I looked around for a book about it, marked a few and got distracted. Then I read By the Sea which deals with the final expulsion of the Omani from Zanzibar and decided it is time to get un-distracted. Except that Oman is not exactly popular - they don't invade their neighbors, they seem to be getting along with everyone and most of the books I was finding were dealing with very specific events - and I really wanted a relatively modern general history (nothing against books such as Phillips's Oman: A History (and I may still decide to read it for the background) but it is from 1971 and the country had changed a lot since then and the western understanding of the region had changed a bit).

So where do you start the history of modern Oman? The authors settle on 1932 as the start of the modern history but they go back to 1749, the year when the first Al Bu Said Imam was elected as Imam (the dynasty which still holds the power) to fill in the background which is required to understand what happens post 1932. And even then they go back even from that - to the changes which the appearance of the Europeans brought to the Indian ocean and the internal struggles that led to the Al Saids taking power. Starting in 1932 means that modern Oman had had only 2 sultans in its history - Said bin Taimur (until he was deposed in 1970) and then his son Qaboos bin Said (now, they had had 3, Qaboos bin Said died in January 2020). After reading the book, that distinction makes sense - the history of these last 2 rulers is indeed very different from what came before that.

The history is interesting (even though if you are not used to the names, they can get a bit confusing but then the procession of Charles and Henry in Western European history is not much easier to untangle - at least here noone changes their name 3 times in the same year). I am still not entirely sure why the Omani ended up on Zanzibar initially (1698 is a bit before the scope of this book so it was just touched upon and it has to do with trade and wins and the Indian Ocean and the nearby African coast (and slaves)) but at least the later events on the island (or islands really) started making a lot more sense (the Omani Sultanate even moved its capital to Zanzibar for awhile in mid 19th century before the two countries were split (not without the help of the British - is there anything they had not partitioned?) and they were never again to be under the control of the same rulers. But that does not make the Zanzibari history less important for Oman - so the authors proceed to keep track of the double story until much later and well into the 20th century (and the expelled Omanis in the revolution of 1964 still had a role to play in the 1970 coup d'état in Oman (and its aftermath).

But that story, the story of Zanzibar and Oman, was the story of the merchants of the coastal areas in Oman. The interior belonged to the Imams - and the story developed differently. Since the mid 1850s, the country had been know as "Muscat and Oman" (or the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman in some eras), showing the internal division more clearly than anything else could; the name won't change to "Sultanate of Oman" until 1970.

And that's what made Oman so different from most of its neighbors - between the Ibadi Imams and the Sultans which were more merchants than politicians, the country went in a radically different direction than the rest of the Arab world through history. They never became British protectorate as pretty much anyone else in the area (although the British were there and interfered a lot). They kept their peace and diplomatic relationship with Iran through all the upheavals in the area. The Omani are one of the keeps of the Strait of Hormuz (and for big parts of their history, they actually controlled both sides, before selling the side that do not sit on the Arabian peninsula to Pakistan in 1958. Considering that the Strait of Hormuz is the only way for anyone from the Persian Gulf to leave and cross into the Indian ocean and the fact that all of the countries in the Gulf need the tankers carrying their oil out to actually leave the Gulf, that made Oman the mediator in the area more often than not. So it played its role - it kept the peace with Iran, it even tried to keep diplomatic relations with Israel when all other Arab countries cut them (and succeeded... for awhile).

But despite all the differences, it is still an oil state. They discovered it later than elsewhere but the country did change once that happened. It never got the high risers of some of its neighbors (partially because it was still working on its basic infrastructure, partially because it did not want to) and it kept its traditional dress even when they travel abroad (although as it turns out that is not exactly true - the "traditional" clothes we all are used to see were a modern invention designed to unify the country in the 1970s and make the different tribes and peoples appear less different).

And then there were some surprises - Oman had women in high positions before any other Gulf state. Its political structures are still getting changed and they are away from what you would call democratic as the West understands the term but the authors make the point that just because something worked elsewhere, it does not need to work here as well. Oman has its own traditions of consultation which don't exist in the same form almost anywhere. Despite the imams and the very heavy Ibadi influence, the Islam taught in schools is non-sectarian. Things are slowly moving towards a more modern state - one which probably won't copy its structure from the West but then... why should it.

Of course there is a lot in the book about the wars and rebellions which made the modern Oman - they don't exactly live in the most peaceful part of the world - Yemen next door had collapsed as a state (and Oman had had issues with them historically in the province closest to them) and the Saudis had always taken exception to the neighbor who does not like their brand of religion (aka the wahhabism) and does not want to adopt it.

At the end of the book, they try to make some predictions for the future in their 21st century chapter. The book was published in 2015, written mostly in 2014 and that is important to remember because this is when ISIS was consolidating its power (and declared its Caliphate up in the same area which had always been a problem in the region). Some of their prediction were spot on (they list 3 people as the possible next Sultan and one of them did succeed), they noted that the way succession works will probably change (this was the only Arab monarchy which did not have a Crown prince; the first thing the new Sultan did in 2020 was to declare one). Some were too vague or are still in play. None was wrong.

So at the end, I liked the book as it served its purpose although I do have two issues with it:
- there were 3 maps: Oman, Oman in the Gulf and Oman in the Indian Ocean. This book could have used a LOT more maps, especially historical ones showing the state of borders and cities and what's not.
- the authors have the very annoying habit to cite other books at length and to remind you that they talked about something in chapter 2 or that they will talk about in chapter 5 (while you are in chapter 3 for example). None of these is usually a big deal but there was a section in the middle of the book which felt as if that is all they were doing for pages upon pages.

The biggest problem I have now is that I want more details and I suspect I may end up reading more about Oman. But this history is a pretty good introduction and overview.

59. The Darkness Knows by Arnaldur Indridason, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

Type: Novel, 83K words
Original Language: Icelandic
Original Publication: 2017 in Icelandic as Myrkrið veit; 2021 in English
Series: Konráð (1)
Genre: Crime
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Reading dates: 14 March 2022 - 16 March 2022

This may be the beginning of a series but if you had read some of Indridason's recent novels, you had already met the main character Konrád - in The Shadow District. If you had not read it and plan to, you may want to do that before you continue here - the main story is not spoiled but a lot of the additional ones, especially the ones around Konrád, get revisited. This story opens a few months after the first one, Konrád is still retired, mourns the loss of his wife and still had done nothing to solve the murder of his own father all those years ago.

But that is not what he ends up solving in this book. 30 years ago, a young man called Sigurvin disappeared. The police, with Konrád as the lead detective, was pretty sure he was dead but they could not prove it and the man they believed to have killed him never admitted. And now, with one of the glaciers slowly melting, the body of the missing man shows up, turning the very cold case into a frozen one (ok... I could not resist).

The police expect an easy solution but the "killer" keeps refusing to admit to the murder. Meanwhile, Konrád is visited by the sister of a man who died a few years earlier and who may have had information our detective never got. Even without the extra scene that the readers got (and the police did not), it is obvious that these two cases are connected - and Konrád resolves to try to solve Villi's death which looks less and less as the accident it was recorded as.

Before long the first of the alibis from 30 years ago shatters and the foundation of the old case crumbles and old lies emerge. But it is not a fat moving case - it moves slow and methodically, even when the police does not much care (but at least they do not block Konrád - plus he is trying to solve Villi's death, not Sigurvin's. The end is as surprising as it it is logical - but then Indridason knows how to write tight plots. We do get some interesting details of Iceland in the mid 80s but even they don't offset the slowness.

But as much as I like his style, this novel could have been half its length and possibly worked better. Yes, lulling you into believing that you know what happened and then pulling the rug under you repeatedly, is part of the charm of the novel but the constant slowing down got a bit annoying at one point. It is not a bad story and it make you wonder about witnesses and who can be trusted. I still plan to check the rest of the series if they get translated - but I hope that the tempo will speed up a bit in the next one.

60. The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

Type: Novel, 82k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy, Myths-based
Format: paperback
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Reading dates: 16 March 2022 - 17 March 2022

That novel was delightful. It was not what I expected - in an attempt to find a parallel in known works of fiction, the publisher (and some of the blurbers) sold the story somewhat short - while I can see why they used these comparisons, they need a qualification (which is missing) and can attract readers who may not care for much of the story.

Aisha is not the normal girl from Mombassa, Kenya - she has Hadhrami ancestry, her mother's birth was shrouded (and so was her short life because of that) in scandal and her father treated her like a boy early in her life, taking her to the sea with him. Until he stopped and now Aisha needs to behave like a girl under the tutelage of her grandmother. Which is not how she would like to spend her life. And one day, her father does not come back from the sea. What follows is an adventure across the Indian ocean as no other - because in the world of Aisha, all mythical figures are alive and well and in order to save her father, she needs to defeat monsters and dead ships and sunken statues. But that is not her first touch with the magical - the talking cat which help her find a boat has this distinction. Neither is the sea journey the whole story - it ends in the middle of the book and once she is back in Mombassa, things get even weirder.

The book is full of the fantastical - from the sea monsters and the talking cat to the man who can cut the sea from a man's heart and the talking crows and the djinn (or something like that anyway) who finally decides to check who Aisha is. And if this was all this story was about, it would have been a nice fantasy novel. But Khadija Abdalla Bajaber treats that as if it is part of normal life so she builds Aisha and her family's life in the novel, showing us a glimpse of the real Mombassa (the author, just like Aisha is Hadhrami), with all its weirdness, with its mix of Kenyan and Arab culture, with the expectations of a woman at the verge of womanhood (although part of the reason why Aisha does not seem to have options is because she does not like to study and is not overly religious - her grandmother reminds her of that and the fact that if she cared for either, the family would have found the money). But all Aisha wants is the ocean.

I don't know much about Kenyan, Mombassan (because it appears that it has its own - supplementing the bigger national one) or Hadhrami mythologies. I am not sure which parts of the tale came from old legends and which came from the author's imagination. I recognized a few things (the stolen shadow, the sunken statue) but I am sure I missed a lot of references. But it ultimately does not matter. It is a coming of age story steeped into myths and reality; colored by the ocean and Mombassa.

The novel won't be for everyone - its blend of fantastical and real can get too mixed-up for most people's tastes. Although if one wants, one can read some of what happens as an allegory - although I am not sure all the fantastical elements can be carried that way - you will lose something of the tale if you try. But at the bottom of all this is the story of a girl who wants something different from what she can have - and is ready to fight for it.

The novel won the inaugural Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize in 2018 (it is given for a manuscript written in English or a non-published translation into English). Graywolf expect to publish the winner for 2019 later this year and if is anything like this one in quality, I really want to read it.

Enjoying your reviews, especially the history ones. Zanzibar sounds such an exotic place. I knew it was near Africa, but did not realise it was an archipelago . Even the pictures on the internet make it look exotic and then there is Stand on Zanzibar

>15 baswood: That's partially why I had to check a map again - Oman is on the wrong side of the Arabian peninsula. And yet, somehow it happened. The more I dig into history, the more it looks like humanity had indeed been very resourceful all over the place. And Stand on Zanzibar had been on my TBR since forever - probably about time to move it up.

>15 baswood: >16 AnnieMod: And then there’s always Sansibar, oder der letzte Grund (a.k.a. Flight to afar), which is set in the Baltic and not about Zanzibar at all, except in a metaphorical sense…

>17 thorold: True. Had not read that one either (the Brunner had really been on my TBR for far too long... and I tend to like classic SF).

Way back when, we used to play a game - write down a country, city, village (Bulgaria only on this category), river, island, mountain/peak and I don't remember what else (and it kept changing - there were authors, novels, poems, kings, sportsmen, TV series, movies, actors - depending on when we played and with whom) and starting with whatever letter is picked. If 2 or more people picked the same, they get 0 points on the category; you get 1 for an unique choice. Zanzibar was popular with any new player... old ones knew to go elsewhere (although you could win the point with it if everyone else decided to go for exotics - it was a calculated risk sometimes) :) We were all also very good at solving crosswords puzzles because of these games ;)

>18 AnnieMod: That sounds like Scattergories, a game we played a lot in my family.

I am so inspired by the breadth of your reading (and listening): the Great Courses, VSIs, Coursera. If only I had more hours in the day! So many interesting things to learn about and study.

>19 labfs39: Maybe? I am pretty sure the kids in the Bulgaria did not invent it but where it came from is unclear. But it did not require anything but a pen and paper and could be played in big groups so it was popular. It was always fun when someone came up with a river/island noone had heard of and someone had to run and grab an atlas to make sure it existed. Or the phone directory for villages (each village had a separate phone code, listed in the directory). For all I know, a geography teacher somewhere started the whole thing as a quiz/review mechanism and it just took a life on its own. :)

We all wish we had more time. :) Living alone helps on the audio things - I tend to have something running while doing chores around the house or doing other tasks that really do not require much of my attention or while I am walking outside - the Great Courses work for that (and if I get distracted, I just re-listen). Then I just review the pdf once in awhile. It’s the now mounting TBR they cause that is going to be a challenge. :)

Hi Annie - Gurnah is an author I would like to explore as well. You have read so many interesting books lately. The House of Rust is another I would like to explore. As always, great comments.

>21 BLBera: Hey Beth. I just finished another Gurnah book last night (review in a bit - I have a few more to catch up on before that one) and I am glad I started where I started. Not that I did not like Memory of Departure at the end but... I would not have rushed to explore him as fast if I started with that one. "The House of Rust" was indeed a nice surprise (but it IS quirky) :)

61. Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett

Type: Novella, just under 40k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2019
Series: N/A
Genre: Fantasy, Shakespeare
Format: paperback
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 17 March 2022 - 18 March 2022

At the end of Shakespeare's Tempest, the previously stranded Prospero and Miranda were ready to go back to Milan, with Prospero having relinquished his magic. Katharine Duckett takes up the story at the moment when they enter Milan (although she does catch us up on what happened in between).

The original play had always contained a lot of conflicting information - we know that Prospero was the good guy because he told us (and Miranda) so but his actions during and before the play makes the reader wonder. In fact everything we know outside of what we see during the play is Prospero's version of events - either directly or by what he had told his daughter. The fact that they sent her away when they exiled him seems to be giving some credence to his story but the doubts always linger. Even Caliban's wrong doings are only presented by what Prospero says about them.

Duckett plays exactly on that ambiguity - what if Prospero was not the maligned innocent and actually was an awful man and Antonio was not the villain in the piece (Miranda being sent to an almost certain death as a toddler notwithstanding)? So here is part of the same story we thought we know - from Caliban's punishment for something he never did, through Miranda realizing what a monster her father is (and always had been) to her finally starting to think for herself - for the first time in her life.

I liked the idea of the story although I am not sure I liked the execution as much. Miranda is way too modern and knowledgeable in certain things (and way too naive in others) in seemingly random moments - not badly enough to grate but still noticeable in some parts. Using dream walking to get us to see the past seemed like a good idea but felt a lot like the author just had no idea how to get Miranda to see the truth so dreams it is (noone dreams all their life every night...). I did not even mind her getting in love - her love for Ferdinand was born on an enchanted island when she had known a total of 2 people in her life. But then Dorothea felt almost like a deus-ex-machina in some places.

I did not really dislike the story and I am happy I read it but at the end I was left wanting something more. Maybe a different structure would have helped. Maybe a bit more reality (despite it being a fantasy story) would have helped (in places it felt as one-toned as a fairy tale for very young children). And I am not entirely sure how much my impressions were colored by the fact that this is probably the Shakespearean play I like the least - both as a story and in the way it was told.

62. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Type: Novel, 358k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1850
Series: N/A
Genre: Victorian
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Easton Press
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 19 March 2022

This is not the first time I had read David Copperfield, it probably won't be the last either. There is always something new to see and discover - as verbose as Dickens tends to be, he also knows how to use these words and he builds such memorable characters that revisiting them is always bound to make you notice something more about them. As in most of his novels, it is the secondary characters that shine - David and his love life can be dull at times but there is always someone else in the frame - his aunt and Mr. Dick, the Peggotty family and Ms. Mowcher; the Micawbers and Agnes; Emily and Martha. Even the villains are full blooded - cruel, awful and despicable but oh so human. There is only one exception in the whole book and it is Dora - and even that makes sense to some extent - it almost feels like a protection mechanism from an older David who is trying to reconcile the love of his youth with all he had learned about himself - so she needs to become a perfect ghost, a presence which does not contradict his own heart.

One thing I never appreciated was how skillful Dickens is with the timing of the actions in the novel - modern editions rarely mark the serialization breaks. The edition I read had the original layout of the serialization (including the advertisements) and having to stop at the end of each installment (to either look at the ads or leaf through them to get to the next part) made me see the novel in a somewhat new light. It was always a novel of redemption for anyone even remotely good - even the incorrigible rascal Mr. Micawber manages to find his niche. It was always a novel of contrasts - Dora to Agnes, Mr. Murdstone to Mr. Peggotty, Uriah to Mrs. Micawber (in some things anyway - they both kept repeating what they are but only one of them meant it), Betsey Trotwood to Mrs. Steerforth - the more you look, the more pairs you will find. But reading the novel in its original installments added another layer to it - with contrasts (good/bad) between different installments and sometimes in the actions inside of the same one; with the choice of which characters to revisit in the same installment - some of those chapters which may sound almost as fill-in and removable in the novel, suddenly appear a lot more logical - they are fill-ins but they are necessary so that the installments work the way they were designed.

It was also interesting to see all the advertisements from those days - from books to alpaca umbrellas (what's with that?), from snake oil medicines to clothes (one of these even had a poem written in almost every installment). The world had changed a lot since then but some of the ads could be written for something today and still work... most of them around the "fast cure" and "solve your problems" variety and I am not entirely sure what that says about humanity.

Your recent reading is very interesting. I've read one book by Gurnah (Gravel Heart) and I enjoyed it, especially the introduction to a world I know next to nothing about. I should pick up another one soon. And I've made note of Brotherhood, your review was excellent.

63. Billy Summers by Stephen King

Type: Novel, 165k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Crime
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
Reading dates: 18 March 2022 - 20 March 2022

Billy Summers is an assassin for higher. He has a moral code, he never kills people he does not consider bad but he is still a killer. And now he is looking for a last job, a swan song if you want - one more bad man put down and then Billy will disappear into the sunset.

We all had read those novels (and watched these films) - that never ends up well. But so had Billy - so he is careful. But he cannot resist that job by a long-time customer - a job that will set him really free. Not that he needs the money (but who cannot use the money). And even if his sixth sense keeps telling him that something is weird he decides to do the job. And as expected, things don't really go as expected.

But that is not all what the book is about. Hidden inside of it is another story - the one of life in Red Bluff, a small town in the South, under the Dixie line (we never learn where the town is). And another - the story of a boy who sees his sister killed and end up in foster care and then in the army, learning not to trust. When that boy ends up in Red Bluff, now as an assassin ready to retire, the two cultures and experiences clash - and yet they work. And even in the sleepy town, there is crime and when one of its victims end up at Billy's door, he decides to help - first from self-interest and then because it is just the right thing to do. Because everyone deserves a chance of redemption - and maybe helping Alice is Billy's. Or maybe she just need someone to make her life a bit more secure. At the end it does not matter - things change, people grow up and trust is something you need to win.

The story of the past shows up in the form of a book which Billy is writing and that adds another layer of the narrative voice - how much if what he writes is true as written needs to become part of one's reading considerations. The story we get in the book parallels the story of the real life in the novel almost completely - the dark times of the boy contrast with his almost happy life in a suburb; the young man's experiences in the army overshadow the gangster war he seems to have found himself into in the here and now. With all that darkness, you would expect a very dark novel - and in some ways it is. But somehow it managed to still be a nice one.

I am not sure what I think about the last twist - King pulled it off perfectly and it makes sense but it felt a bit gimmicky. But then the whole novel is constructed in such a way that it feels almost normal.

King's style had always worked for me - even when his plots or heroes had issues, the storytelling part always worked. I don't like all his novels and stories equally but even the worst of them have something of that magic that keeps you coming for more. And this one is not an exception. But it also feels a bit too long, like that story that your grandmother had been telling you for the last hour and you just wish to ask for the end so you can go to bed. But just as with your Grandma, you keep listening because it somehow works.

>25 RidgewayGirl: I own Gravel Heart - it was $1.99 at one point in December so I figured "why not?". But I decided to start with the only one the library had when he won the Nobel - felt like something tells me where to start :) I hope to get to this one this year.

Wow! You've been busy reading good books and writing great reviews, Annie. I'm glad that you enjoyed By the Sea. I also took advantage of a sale last year on the Kindle version of Gravel Heart by Gurnah, and I'll probably read it this summer.

I'm glad that you liked Brotherhood, as it's another book I intend to get to this year.

>28 kidzdoc: Just keep in mind that it is very dark and bad things happen to people so it may be hard to read through some places.

Before getting back to books reviewing, I actually watched a movie on Sunday - for the first time since... August probably.

"King of Thieves" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5789976/) - the 2018 heist movie based on the actual Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary. Which I liked - a lot. Very British.

Looking at reviews of it online after I watched it (because I wanted to see what people do not like about it - it does not have the best of ratings), its main problem for a lot of people seems to be that it is "not funny enough to be a comedy, not exciting enough to be a thriller, not interesting or convincing enough to have any documentary value" or words to that effect. Which is a fair statement but... since when do we need to fit a movie in a single category for it to be enjoyable. Part of why I liked it was exactly because you never knew if someone will do something funny next minute or if it will get extremely serious. And despite knowing where the movie must go (as with any real life event-based movies), it managed to keep one guessing on what will happen. Not that it could not have been edited a bit tighter but...

Which made me think about books and movies which do not fit single categories and how underrated they tend to be usually.

Plus you get Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Ray Winstone, Michael Gambon and Paul Whitehouse in the same movie and they can just read the grocery list for all I care - it probably will be interesting (and funny) enough. The fact that the movie highlighted that they are old as opposed to presenting them as 80 years old who can run in the jungle or something (as a US heist movie would have probably tried to) made it even better (nothing like a bunch of old crooks preparing for a job and comparing their pills or one of them requiring an insulin shot in the middle of trying to drill into a safe...) :)

The other main cast member (Charlie Cox) is an interesting case as well. He is outplayed for most of the movie - but then anyone would be if you have at least 1 of the above list in every one of your scenes (and usually more than one) - but then he often got outplayed like that in his own series ("Daredevil") anyway so nothing new there - although it kinda made sense there. So had you asked me 30 minutes before the end of the movie, I'd pointed to him as the weakest part of the movie. Except... it did make sense at the end - and looking back, it is mostly the same as in Daredevil - he feels like he is the wrong place and absolutely miscast and getting underestimated. Until he is not.

Back to books - but I had been thinking about the movie so figured I may as well write some things about it.

>23 AnnieMod: Re: Miranda in Milan: I liked the idea of the story although I am not sure I liked the execution as much.

I know that feeling well. I love a retelling, or a story inspired by a classic, etc. and so on in all the forms I find. When they are done well, they're so very good (The Hours by Michael Cunningham and Bridget Jones's Diary are two that come immediately to mind). Usually for me they fall under the "nice try" umbrella.

Still, this one sounds like one I might need to try. The Tempest was one of my favourite of Shakespeare's.

>30 Nickelini: I did not dislike it - it has its issues but... it is readable (way better than Dunbar, nowhere near as good as A Thousand Acres for example although it is not a fair comparison really - these two were reimagings/retellings and not continuations). If you like Tempest, you may like some parts of it more than I did (or less for others). And it is short :) It does flow logically with the play and does not contradict it without explaining the contradiction - which is more than some others do. So there is that at least.

>31 AnnieMod: That's encouraging! I'll look for it

>18 AnnieMod: We also used to play this, just called it Categories. I don't remember if it was more common to have fixed categories or to just choose them on the spot.

I just played it the other night in Turkish with a group of language learners. In Turkish they call it "İsim, Şehir, Hayvan, Bitki" which means Name, City, Animal, Plant. We played it with slightly different categories - name, animal, plant, "thing", and country. "Thing" is a normal category in the game but it's a little weird for foreigners because Turks have some sort of innate understanding of what sorts of things are acceptable. To most of the rest of us, any noun will do, but since the word eşya also doubles for "furniture" it's supposed to be something that would kind of be inside a house/building (so not an actual building or form of transportation or something large like that), but also not anything permanent-ish like a wall. Refrigerator, plate, radiator, curtain: yes. Door, wall, window: no.

>33 ursula: that’s interesting. It would have been extremely useful to play when I was learning any of my languages but we never did - it was strictly a Bulgarian/non-school and child’s thing for some reason. And as such, I had never really played it since my mid teens. :)

Took me a little while to catch up here. Enjoyed the variety of stuff you read in March. I’m especially interested in >7 AnnieMod:, >8 AnnieMod:, & > 9 (By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Last Words on Earth by Javier Serena, Brotherhood by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr). And, of course, enjoyed your review of David Copperfield, which I’m getting back into.

64. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated from the Italian by G. H. McWilliam

Type: Collection, 379K words, 100 stories (101+framing one actually)
Original Language: Italian
Original Publication: 1353 in Italian as Decameron; 1972 (revised 1995) for this translation in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Classical
Format: paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading dates: 31 January 2022 - 21 March 2022

When the plague hits Florence in 1348, 7 women and 3 men decide to escape the city and retire to the countryside -- and once there they tell each other stories. 10 days, most of them with a specific topic, each of the 10 youths tell a story of love, hate and whatever else they can think of. But the book is not just the stories - there is also a framing story around them, complete with the reactions of the people who are not telling the story, with songs, with details about the countryside and there is Boccaccio - defending his own work and adding an extra story to Day 4 (incomplete around to him; actually complete if you compare it to the rest of the stories).

Very few of the stories are original ones - some had been moved in time or space, some had been mixed together but they are mostly preexisting stories from the existing literature at the time - in Latin, French and Italian; some of it translated into the language from more exotic languages (including Arabic tales). How familiar that had been for the people reading the book in the Middle Ages is unclear; these days one is a lot more likely to have heard one of the books and stories which had used Boccaccio's tales as their base - from Chaucer through Shakespeare and to the authors of today, everyone had been borrowing parts of stories (and occasionally complete ones) and made them their own.

But despite that, the collection is worth reading. Not all stories worked for me (but then this would be impossible considering the number of stories). There were some disturbing elements (women being punished for not accepting the love of a man; both men and women managing to get in bed with someone by misrepresenting themselves and still getting a happy end; making jokes of what is essentially the village idiot), there were heartbreaking stories and there is human cunning and cruelty. The attacks on the church and its representatives was not exactly unexpected but still a lot more pronounced than I expected.

As the days progressed, the stories got occasionally repetitive -- especially when the topic was too concrete, it felt like the same story wa told over and over again. It helped to let the stories breathe a bit. The irregular lengths did not help much with planning either.

The translator G. H. McWilliam added a lot of geographical, historical and linguistical notes (combined with notes on the sources for each story) which are not essential but put the stories in context (and can be amusing at times - especially when he comments on earlier editions and translators). His introduction is also extremely informative although as usual, it really should not be read as an introduction unless you want the few surprising stories to get spoiled for you.

At the end I liked the book quite a lot. But one needs to be prepared for it - it is a 14th century book after all - as progressive it might have been, it is still almost 7 centuries old at this point. So there is the occasional story which is sexist enough to make you want to grind your teeth, there are the not so occasional notes and hints towards the fragility of women (although there are also some strong women), there are the behaviors which are creepy and borderline criminal and yet considered normal in the book. But then that is part of the charm in reading old literature - the world had changed and these books are the only mirror we have into the past. And then, especially with books which had been as popular as this one for centuries, it is always fun to recognize a plot you had read elsewhere (and that's where the notes on the sources also helped - showing how the stories traveled from book to book and from writer to writer and culture to culture).

65. The Calendar Man by Christoffer Petersen

Type: Novel, ??k words, 246 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2018
Series: Dark Advent (1) / Petra Piitalaat Jensen (1)
Genre: Crime; SF
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Aarluuk Press
Reading dates: 20 March 2022 - 22 March 2022

When the author starts his introduction of a novel with the sentence "This is not a book", one starts wondering what exactly they are going to read. The explanation after that makes it clear that the book is designed as a Scandinavian Julekalendar - usually a radio or TV series which runs in the first 24 days of December and lead into Christmas (and usually contains at least a hint that the holiday may not actually happen).

Set in 2042 in Greenland (the author also makes sure to tell you that it is not science fiction (because there is not enough technology - which a) is not necessary and b) is not true), it uses a lot of characters known from the author's other works (he claims that there are no spoilers but a quick look at his other books show that this is not entirely true either). I am not sure if it was a good place to start with the author's books but that's what I had so that's what I started with.

Petra Jensen, the Police Commissioner in Nuuk, Greenland is grieving - her partner had recently died so she is on leave. But then a murder seems to be connected to her - so she gets called back to assist. Meanwhile, Greenland is voting for its independence, the Dutch colony is trying to make a life for themselves after fleeing their flooded motherland and the Chinese are doing their own thing in their own established community connected to the local mines. Due to the structure of the novel, there is a single event happening in each chapter/day - a found body, a conversation, a reveal. It made the novel both episodic and fast moving - which was interesting to a point but did not allow the development of more complex lines of inquiry - leaving the plot somewhat simplistic despite all the shifts and surprises.

There is a certain charm in the way the story is told - I am still not sure if it is enough to offset the restraints that the structure enforced. I found myself wanting more details in places - in some places it felt that the police is slowing down just because moving fast was impossible. But if you read the novel with that structure in mind, it works... to a point.

I will probably pick up some of his other books - Greenland is a fascinating setting and the local details are fascinating (and are probably closer to reality in the books not set in the future). Not sure I would recommend this novel as an introduction though - unless you are interested in or curious about the format.

>37 AnnieMod: Dutch? I thought Greenland belonged to Denmark? I’ve read a bunch of his books but not this one.

66. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri

Type: Novel, 29k words (way too short for a novel but it says it is a novel)
Original Language: Italian
Original Publication: 2018 in Italian as Dore mi trovo, 2021 in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Knopf
Reading dates: 22 March 2022 - 23 March 2022

A novel in scenes. At first glance, there are no connections between the short chapters which make up this very short novel except for the main character (who is also our narrator). But then the connections slowly start building up - the same person shows up, the same feeling connects two separate stories across the pages.

And yet, the novel remains just loosely connected. It is like glimpses into the life of the narrator - an Italian woman in her mid-40s who shows us glimpses of her life - at home, on the street, at work. It feels almost as if the reader is intruding into a private life - and in a way that is the idea I suspect. The novel does have an end the story leads to - it is not a slice of life exactly even if it feels that way for most of the text.

Short novels can work - when they have the complexity of a novel. This feels like a long story and less as a novel - which also made it somewhat disappointing but also very hard to judge. If I had gone into it not expecting a novel, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more. I loved the language, I liked the emotion but its marketing really failed the book.

>38 dianeham: It does and that's who they are trying to get independent from in the book - but the Dutch needed a place to go so they formed a climate colony in Greenland under an agreement with Denmark to assist with their home country getting a bit flooded... It is set in 2042 after all... :)

67. Memory of Departure by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Type: Novel, 61k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1987
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: Kindle
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Reading dates: 24 March 2022 - 24 March 2022

The narrator of this novel had lived all of his life in a seaside town somewhere in East Africa (the country is never named but considering his travels and some of the other details in the novel, if can only be Tanzania). And here he is, having finished school in the first years of independence from the British and getting stuck in time because the results of the exams which will determine his future are held by the new country in an attempt to somehow control the youth. So he is aimlessly spending his days trying not to lose all hope of escaping his home, remembering his childhood (which was anything but happy) and waiting for something to change - the exam results to come out, a passport to be issued so he can visit his uncle in Nairobi, anything to break the monotony.

The start of the novel is brutal, with raw language which is almost vulgar. Its description of what happened to our narrator and his brother really highlights that the problem of post-colonialism had always been a problem of colonialism first - independence does not change anything but the rulers. And then there is Nairobi, Kenya and the stark difference between the two cities and countries - although admittedly, the squalid seaside town and the capital are as different as the narrator's home and his uncle's.

First novels can be tricky - especially when one reads them after they had read later works by the author. Knowing what Abdulrazak Gurnah is going to write in the future allows you to see some of the beginnings of his style and stories in this novel; without that knowledge I suspect I would not have liked the novel as much as I did. But even without that, it is a decent novel.

At the end it is a coming of age novel from an author who is still finding his craft - you can see where it is going but the ideas which will define some later novels are either just hinted at or underdeveloped. In a way, we see the narrator growing up and learning that the world is bigger than his town at the same time as the author tries to find out what works.

>40 AnnieMod: 😮 ooohhh

68. Winter in Sokcho by Élisa Shua Dusapin, translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Type: Novella, 21k words
Original Language: French
Original Publication: 2016 in French as Hiver à Sokcho; 2020 in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: ebook
Publisher: Open Letter (2021)
Reading dates: 25 March 2022 - 25 March 2022

Sokcho is a seaside town in the Northern part of South Korea - busy and full of people in summer and desolate and almost abandoned in winter. The narrator of this story had lived there all her life. When we meet her she works in a local hotel (doing pretty much anything needed) and tries to decide what she wants to do with her life - moving in with her boyfriend does not seem to be the answer, especially when he moves to Seoul. And in the middle of this dead season a French cartoonist shows up and takes a room in the hotel. Before long their two lives become entangled - he needs a driver, she is drawn towards him - partially because her father was French, partially because of something she cannot understand.

But neither the narrator, nor the cartoonist are the main characters in this story - Sokcho overshadows them both. While the human characters feel as if they were just sketched, the town is there in all its beauty; with its traditional culture and empty streets. And between the author and the translator, the language makes you want to stop and listen (although I wish there was a dictionary/notes in some places). How close is that description to the real town is unclear. But it does not matter. With the author being French Korean just as her narrator is(albeit one living in the other culture), I suspect that at least part of the story is based on her real life.

If you feel like reading a relatively short and very melancholy book about a town by the sea, steeped in Korean culture, give this one a try. It probably won't work for everyone but I enjoyed it.

>2 AnnieMod:, >13 AnnieMod: Indridason. Did you know there is a film (DVD) of his Jar City? We happened to watch it again last night, it's excellent. And Erlunder is much the same as in the book (great scene of him tucking into a sheep's head lunch). I have never been able to find more (I do like to watch productions of some of the crime series I have read)

>7 AnnieMod:, >41 AnnieMod: Loved your reviews of Gurnah. I've read all of his books, part of my past obsession with Africa. I had to get some of his from the UK back then. It's nice to revisit them through your reviews.

You are such a great reader, so versatile!

>43 AnnieMod: Ugh. I want to read this so much, and your review is not helping me maintain my book-buying embargo until all my books are unpacked.

>44 avaland: The Icelandic movie? I am (vaguely) aware of its existence but never watched it. I think it was a one off. I am not much for TV and movies (lately anyway - I go through phases) but I like series/movies based on my detectives as well (I actually met Brunetti for example first in the German series - the books came much later).

The problem with versatility in one's reading is that I never seem to be getting back to the authors I really enjoy :) So I am trying to get that controlled a bit and actually read my "rainy day" authors. We shall see if that will succeed...

>45 RidgewayGirl: Well, it is short :) Be a rebel, break an embargo! :) Or check the library? If not - it shall wait for you to unpack (said the person who had not finished unpacking for the last 6 years...)

>36 AnnieMod: there’s Boccaccio. I’m glad you read Decameron along with me and glad you enjoyed it.

I’m less forgiving than you about the sexism because it’s much worse than the stuff around him (Dante, Petrarch) or some of his main sources (Ovid). So I don’t see him as progressive in that aspect. And I felt be made it a lot worse because he sets himself up to be non-sexist, the way his book is dedicated (even if it’s a kind of sarcasm). I can’t help imagining he just had some personal issues that came out in the work.

Lots of other good stuff you have been reading. Noting the Gurnah and that take on Korea.

>48 dchaikin: Well, the rest were poets, Boccaccio went for prose, with a lot less symbolism and with different rules. Not that he could not be as bad in his poetry... Plus anyone claiming not to be something is usually the something. And don't get me started with scorned men (Congreve may have had things to say about women's fury but men can be as bad). In a way, I was a lot more concerned with the "I will deceive you and rape you and you will still like me" than the sexism and the underhand way he treated women in some tales (including giving some of the speeches about the frailty of women to a woman...)

I try to switch off the 21st century part of my brain for authors like that -- if a modern writer does that, I will be all on his case. 14th century? Well... It makes it easier to enjoy older books (try to read 50s SF without ignoring that...) and I do tend to enjoy them when I do not try to imagine them written yesterday. Plus... sexism has a lot of different ways to manifest. For one reason or another, Boccaccio's does not rub me as bad as some others - even when it is blatant. Maybe because I expect it. Maybe because the style kinda mutes it. Maybe because I had read one too many ultra-feminist reinterpretations of a classic novel (and I tend to find these too.... preachy in a bad way). Who knows. But then anyone makes their choices on what works for them.

I appreciate your ability take it as it is. I'm not sure it's a 21-st century brain thing. I think we have 1300's expectations on a 1300's writer, at least as far as we can imagine it. But certainly our acceptance of what we read varies. There is a lot to be gained by being tolerant...a lot more enjoyment to be had of the oddities of writing over different times and mindsets.

Maybe not. I am not sure what it is so I call if 21st century brain because it kinda makes sense to me. :)

You’ve made me wonder though - I cannot remember making a decision to read that way - it just feel the “right” way to do things. Was I taught to read that way when we started working on non-children books? Did I take some explanations of how to appreciate older literature in elementary school and extrapolate and somehow made it my way? I honestly have no idea. I did not grow in a family of readers (Mom is in a way but she did not have time to read much when I was growing and she is somewhat picky on her reading - no speculative genres at all for example) but I grew up around books (because Mom thought it was important). So in a lot of ways I had to find my own way around reading and books. For a while I thought that’s valid for everyone so all the “modern reevaluations” baffled me. These days I understand that people’s reading is a much more nuanced thing and that everyone has their own way and as long as they don’t decide to explain to me how wrong I am, these ways can lead to interesting conversations.

Oh well. Everyone’s life experience is different so expecting our reactions to something we read to be is a bit unrealistic. :)

69. Trashlands by Alison Stine

Type: Novel, 95k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Dystopian, Apocalyptic, SF
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Mira
Reading dates: 24 March 2022 - 26 March 2022

I loved Stine's adult novel debut Road Out of Winter. So when I saw that she has another book out, in the same genre no less, I was really excited. And unfortunately my expectations turned out to be much higher than what the book provided. It is not a bad book per se, it is probably better than a lot of the books in the genre but after the previous one, it is a letdown.

The two novels are not related - in the first one the spring never came; in this one the water come and flooded what it could. They both are set in the same area though - the Appalachian are in the USA, one of the poorest places in the country today (and that plays into both novels).

When the waters washed out the East Coast, everyone who could move, went into the interior of the country. The people who could not ended up stuck where they were - and that includes most people who were already trapped in the poverty/opiates net in the Appalachians. When the ban on plastics was enabled, people started recycling a lot more and by the time we catch up with the story, most of the plastic had been recycled over and over and the particles left are everywhere. And deep into the Appalachian region, people survive by scavenging the plastic that is still recyclable. Of course, people being people, someone managed to find a way to become more important than everyone else so the Trashlands is born - a dance/strip club in the middle of a big area of trash.

The novel actually did not start badly - the introduction of Coral and her family, the slow reveal of how the world looks like now, the stolen child - it all had a potential. Then a journalist from the big city showed up and things started going downhill, all the way to the end which managed to get all the correct people at the correct place at the correct time - almost fairy tale style.

Still, the novel has interesting moments and ideas and I suspect that at least part of the idea was to show that love conquers all but it felt almost like a checklist being implemented - things were just stringed together (especially late in the novel) without building the connections needed for them to make sense. A knight on a white horse (sans horse) and a maiden in distress to fall for him (well, not a maiden) are really too cliche to work without some heavy lifting from the author - and that novel simply lacked that.

I still plan to check the next novel Stine writes but I hope she finds again that special thing which made the first novel so much better than this one.

70. River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

Type: Novella, 37k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2017
Series: River of Teeth (1)
Genre: science fiction, alternate history
Format: paperback
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 27 March 2022 - 27 March 2022

Set in the 1890s in an alternate America, this novella should have been a lot of fun. There are hippos (because a few decades earlier, the US government imported them to help with hunger then things got a bit weird, some of them escaped and tuned feral and bayous of Louisiana were never the same). There are characters which have complicated back histories and even more complicated loyalties. There is a villain (or 3). And yet something did not really work.

It is a western - with everyone riding hippos and set in Louisiana and on the rivers and not in the prairies but it follows the usual patterns of any western. A charismatic leader collects a bunch of not really law-abiding citizens for a mission - to eradicate the feral hippos. Not everyone wants that to happen of course - someone had found a way to use the situation for his gains. Add a few twists on loyalties (old and new) and a bunch of hungry hippos and that should have been a campy funny western.

I am not sure if the problem is that this novella was overwritten or if it actually needed more space. The pacing was just so uneven and even outright wrong in some places that I kept wondering if it needed a good editor or if the author shied away from making it a short novel and stuck into the novella length to fit the publisher as opposed to following where the story wanted to go. And then there were the characters - they had back stories which were fun but their current actions did not always make sense - even if they were supposed to be surprising - they felt more like types than like actual characters and when that got combined with the back stories, it clashed badly.

There are more stories in this setting and I suspect I will check them sooner or later - the world is fascinating. But the novella as a whole is not really working...

PS: Apparently there was indeed a plan at one point to import hippos. See https://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/ for details.

71. Hard Reboot by Django Wexler

Type: Novella, 30k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: paperback
Publisher: Tor.com
Reading dates: 27 March 2022 - 27 March 2022

Battle between mecha giant robots driven by people. A clueless tourist who manages to get herself way over her head. A love story. And an underdog who really cannot win... or can she?

Somewhere far in the future, after a few empires across the stars had come and gone (violently), Earth had turned into the backwaters of the galaxy (as it usually seems to happen). Noone cares that it is the birthplace of mankind - everyone comes for the mecha fights. But due to all the wars, the skies are full of malware so even if everyone relies on electronics and "chips" in their brains, when they come to Earth, these need to be disconnected (or your brain gets fried). So when a young historian lands on Earth for the first time, she is a bit unprepared for not having her helper in her head and gets easily tricked into betting money she does not have. Of course she will try to solve that quickly and quietly - with predictable results. Meanwhile, one of the mecha pilots is trying to stay independent - fighting against the House and everyone - with even more predictable results. Of course the two misfits will end up together.

Cliched? Sure. Predictable? Sure. But there are just enough details of the worlds of the historian and the pilot, enough details in their characters to make the story work - you know where it is going but you still worry if it will get there and you wait to see what else can go wrong. Even the goriness of a few deaths does not take away from the general feeling of absolute fun.

72. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Type: Novel, 175k words (which may include the introduction)
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1862
Series: N/A
Genre: Crime, Classic
Format: paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading dates: 23 March 2022 - 30 March 2022

An old man who had given up all hope for love falls in love and marries a governess who seems to have no history. A young man comes back from Australia, having made his fortune, just to learn that his wife had died just a little time ago. If you cannot see where this story is going, you just had not read enough books (or watched enough movies). Surprisingly enough, that turns out NOT to be the big secret of the novel - and that's part of the charm of the novel.

And just when you think that the novel will be all about unmasking the young Lady Audley (or her successful attempt in hiding her secrets), a man disappears, presumed killed - and she seems to be in the center of that mystery as well. As the book progress she manages to get herself into more and more situations which at least hint of her having even worse secrets. The big problem of course is that if anyone accuses of anything, it is her husband who will suffer - so the nephew who decides to try to get to the bottom of the murder, needs to connect every single dot in his story before he can even try to articulate his suspicions.

And off he goes - pulling and digging and trying to convince himself that he is really right - except that he is restrained by both the Victorian era norms and the mundane - no Sherlock Holmesesian ability to ignore everything else in this novel. Meanwhile our villain is living the life she always wanted - cherished, getting anything she wants and pretending to be the perfect wife.

Braddon's style can appear almost sluggish to a modern reader - but the action never stops. Every incident leads to something new, building the case against the pretty Lucy (who may appear innocent but we can see her true colors early on in some of the actions which noone else in the house sees). And somewhere among all that, even a love story manages to develop.

The introduction in the Penguin edition by Jenny Bourne Taylor and Russell Crofts is very useful in getting some of the ideas and the importance of certain facts which you just may know nothing about (and there are also some notes). It also does things properly by warning the reader before the spoilers start so one can choose if they want to read it at the start or come back later (immediately after that warning, the big secret is revealed and pretty much the whole action and all surprises are laid out so if one decide to continue reading the introduction despite the warning, they cannot blame anyone but themselves).

I really enjoyed this novel - there were times when I wish Braddon had allowed some of her characters to talk to each other and it got a bit tiresome in some parts to have everyone crying out all the time instead of just talking but those are just quibbles. It may not have the control of the language that Dickens and some of the other Victorians have but it is nevertheless fun to read.

73. Cyber Mage by Saad Z. Hossain

Type: Novel, 116k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A but part of the author's shared universe
Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Format: paperback
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
Reading dates: 26 March 2022 - 2 April 2022

If you end up in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2089, you won't recognize the city (not that you will recognize any other major city...). Humanity had managed to screw up the atmosphere so much that the only way to actually survive is to populate everyone's bodies with biological nanotech which can control the climate locally - as long as there are enough of them. So Dhaka is in a really good shape - the old overpopulation problem had turned into its salvation when the world was taken over by corporations and then the global climate apocalypse wrecked havoc with everyone's lives. Add to that the jinns (who are very real indeed) and you just got your crash introduction to the world of this novel.

Add a gamer (a really good one) who is also a hacker and his friends. Add a few AIs. Add a guy who seems to be invincible and keeps cutting people's heads. Add the Russian mafia, hidden servers (collapsing small countries leave infrastructure behind), a missing space station (nope, nothing fancy - it is our well known space station) and a boy with a crush and things start getting interesting really quickly - even before things escalate into an almost war.

I suspect that some of parts of the book will resonate better with someone who plays video games - I found some of the passages describing the game play a bit boring. But even with that, the novel manages to be hilarious. And if you had read the author's earlier The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday, you may even realize before it becomes clear in the text who one of the characters is. The book is also a continuation of Djinn City (which I had not read yet) - set decades later but still sharing a few characters (and possibly spoiling some of the earlier book). I plan to go chase that one now.

Hossain's mixing of jinns and technology sounds like a possible disaster but he manages to make it work marvelously.

74. Abandoned in Death by J. D. Robb

Type: Novel, 99k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2022
Series: In Death (54)
Genre: Crime, Science Fiction, Romance
Format: hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Reading dates: 3 April 2022 - 5 April 2022

If you are 54 books into a series (and that counts only the novels; there are also at least 11 novellas) and you are still reading the new books as soon as they are out, you either like the series or you are paid to do it. As I am not paid to read anything (I wish...), I really don't need to mention that I like the series.

One morning a body is found on a bench, holding a scrawled message "Bad Mommy" - a woman who seems to have fallen off time and landed in the future - everything about her is old-fashioned - her clothes, her hair. Except she is not - until a few days earlier she was just a normal modern woman - before disappearing. The reader actually knows a lot more that Eve at that point because we get not only the chapters from the perspective of the killer but also parts of chapters showing the past which led him to the current state.

Before long the book turns into the usual cat and mouse game - Eve is sure there are other women being abducted and about to die so the team works non-stop to try to stop the killer. A few red herrings later and the killer ends up being a surprising one (it was about time for this kind of a twist in the series but it still was surprising).

The novel won't win any awards in any of its genres but it is a decent entry into the series. Not sure if it can work as a standalone (the author stopped doing heavy introductions of her characters awhile back so they can look almost cardboard-y without the backstory). And I tend to overlook and forgive things in long running series - the backstory carries a lot of weight.

Note on timing - Eve and Roarke are about to celebrate their 3rd anniversary - which means that the 54 novels fit in 3 years (2058-2061). As all of them are dated somewhere in the books, that is not hard to work out if one tries to but still... this series can continue forever with this speed. Not that I mind.

75. Home Front: The Complete BBC Radio Collection: Volume 1 by Katie Hims, Sebastian Baczkiewicz, Sarah Daniels, Shaun McKenna

Type: Audio Drama
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 4 August 2014 - 30 October 2015
Genre: Historical fiction
Format: audio
Publisher: BBC
Length: 38 hours and 24 minutes
Reading dates: 1 February 2022 - 7 April 2022

Back in 2014, BBC produced a series to commemorate WWI - 561 episodes (~11 minutes each except for 1 which was 45 minutes), in 15 seasons, each airing exactly 100 years after the day it covers and running from 4 August 2014 to 9 November 2018 (with breaks - episodes were only aired in Monday-Friday and there were breaks between the seasons). It is the fictionalized story of Britain during the war - the people who stayed behind and had to keep living - despite the war. A lot of the storylines revolve around the war but there are enough additional ones (people keep leaving their lives after all) to make the whole thing even more interesting.

I had been planning to pick that one up for awhile (I've listened to the first season a few times) and apparently that was the time. The collection has the first 5 seasons, covering the time between 4 August 2014 and 30 October 2015.

Each episode is from the viewpoint of a single character but as they are interconnected (in the same locale anyway), the rest of them are in the story as well. But the change of perspective makes the story work better - the maid and the rich people who employ her see the world differently; the widow who can barely make her rent has different priorities compared to the local councilor.

The main story is the war - people leave for it, people die, refugees show up, people disappear, soldiers come back wounded, people volunteer time and money and anything in between. But among all that is Britain of 1914-1915 with the class society slowly eroding, women and worker rights activists starting to show up, spiritualism makes an appearance as a major belief and among all that people still fall in love, have babies and occasionally die outside of the war itself (and some who are considered death reappear).

4 of the first 5 series (1-2 and 4-5) are set in the sea resort of Folkestone where the fighting in France can often be heard and where the infrastructure built for tourists ends up being useful for the war preparation. The 3rd series is set in Tynemouth - where the local factories and shipyards are slowly converting to assist the war. Of course people do not stay static so characters from the two locations meet and merge occasionally once we meet them all.

The audiodrama has a big cast which can get confusing at times but the authors and the actors manage to make sure that you do not get lost in the narrative. It can get a bit tedious in some parts (because life can be like that) but overall it is an enjoyable way to spend some time with a story. I plan to continue with the next volume (the next 5 series) soon.

The (whole?) series is available for free from BBC in both individual episodes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047qhc2/episodes/player and in the weekly omnibuses: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dv1g4/episodes/player

And that is the last one waiting a review and I am all caught up. Again. Any bets how long that will last before I hopelessly fall behind again?


76. The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk by Edward St. Aubyn

Type: Omnibus of 4 novels, 40k+47k+39k+70k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1992;1992;1994;2005
Series: Patrick Melrose (1-4)
Genre: Contemporary
Format: paperback
Publisher: Picador USA (2012)
Reading dates: 27 March 2022 - 9 April 2022

When I read Dunbar last year, I disliked the novel (for various reasons) but really liked the author's style of writing. So what better way to see if other novels work better for me than to grab an omnibus of the first 4 novels in his most recognizable series (there are a total of 5 novels in the series) - especially when the first 3 are his first 3 novels ever (and the other one is his 6th). And I am glad that I did.

The first 3 novels have similar structure - they happen within a very short period (a day for the first and the third, a day and 2 nights for the second). They are just glimpses into the life of the protagonist of the series - Patrick Melrose although we do get caught up on what else happened since the last time we saw him. The whole series is semi-autobiographical - just like his character, St. Aubyn is part of the English upper-class, spent a lot of his childhood in the family house in France and he managed to live in interesting times.

Never Mind takes place in France where David and Eleanor Melrose are about to have one of their dinner parties. It is the mid 1960s, Patrick is 5 and as most 5 years olds is fascinated with the garden (and spends as much time as he can there). Both parents are unstable (each in their own way; the father had proven to be outright sadistic when he wants to be) and all of the guests which are preparing for the party have their own dysfunctions. You can almost feel sorry for most of them but somehow the novel manages to be funny, almost hilarious and I found often thinking that someone really deserves whatever happened to them. And as is not unusual, noone seems to like anyone else. Patrick is almost an outsider in this first novel - too young to be really a part of a party (but not too young to be abused - the only regret David shows after that is that he won't be able to talk with anybody about raping his own son - people apparently change the topic if you try to talk about something like that). There is a stark contrast between the abandoned and abused child and the party; between the girl who almost escapes and the trapped Eleanor.

Bad News moves 17 years into the future with 22 years old Patrick getting a phone call about the death of his father. The call sends him to New York to collect the ashes and what follows is a 36 hours of drugs (and attempts to score drugs). The unhappy childhood had left its sign and Patrick is addicted to pretty much anything under the Sun (and had become very good of controlling his moods with drugs - until he miscalculates how much heroin and cocaine to take at least). Despite the topic, the novel is funny in that weird way that does not make you laugh all the time but you cannot stop smiling (and laughing at times). Patrick is the center of this novel - and as we mostly stay with him, we don't really get a lot of updates on what happened in the last 17 years besides the basics - his parents divorce, Patrick's addiction.

That back story shows up in full force in Some Hope which is almost a mirror of the first novel except that Patrick is now 30 and the party is not thrown by his parents but by Bridget, the girl who almost escaped in the first novel. The boy from the first novel finally tells his story to his best friend - warts and all, after having finally escaped the never ending cycle of the drugs (and replaced them with women and alcohol as one does). Meanwhile the party ends up in an almost comedic farce with the French Ambassador being humiliated by Princess Margaret and a lot of people doing things they should not (and lying about a lot of it). As funny as some of that was, I liked the much subtler humor in the previous novels a lot more.

The three novels together form a cohesive trilogy - and close the loops - at the end Patrick's story is finally revealed and a lot of old demons are exorcised. But then, there is still Eleanor.

And that's who the 4th novel (Mother's Milk) deals with. It break the "day in the life" structure and instead shows us 4 months - 4 subsequent Augusts. It is now 2000, Patrick is in his 40, with a wife and children - and trying to make ends meet because somewhere along the lone money just ran out. The first 3 parts mirror the trilogy in its narrators in a way - the middle part is told by Patrick, the others have him there as an adjacent element. We are back to France at the start of the novel; the last month will be in New York because somewhere along the line, even the house is lost. And then there is Eleanor - who is in a really bad shape but still manages to make the wrong choices somehow - as she seems to always do (except when she finally divorced anyway). Patrick's life had turned a full circle - from the man who cares only about himself, he how has a family (which he may not always like), a dying mother and sobriety. A lot of the funny moments here don't work if you had not read the first 3 novels - it may appear to be a standalone but it plays on the first novels heavily and some elements are funny only in contrast to the past.

And now I need to find the 5th novel and read the end of the story.

The series won't be for everyone - the mix of brutality and humor can be interesting to take. But the language and style of writing somehow unites the them in a way I did not expect. So read at your own risk but if you ask me, give St. Aubyn a chance to enchant you.

Wow! Well done on reading and reviewing, Annie!

>58 AnnieMod: Home Front sounds really interesting, Annie. I don't listen to podcasts/audiobooks much anymore (I no longer commute, which is when I did all my listening), but this one is tempting.

>61 labfs39: It is episodic in a good way so you can try and see if it works out without the commitment to finish it - plus the episodes are short enough not to require a lot of time. It is addictive though - you always want to see what happens next and the update of the story you are interested in can be a few weeks away. And sometimes a mystery takes a few series to get a resolution - it’s not the usual “we need to wrap up in an episode/series” kind of series (which I also like sometimes) but just a slice of life series running through the whole war with warts and all. :) Just like real life.

I am planning to get to the 6th series soon(ish).

>51 AnnieMod: I meant to get to you on this post, but travel and family stuff got in the way. Your personal evolution is interesting. I think that I've noticed readers read with contemporary expectations, and I think that I've always thought that was silly. But not sure on either account, actually. Truly reading an author from the perspective their own time is very difficult, and prone to huge error...and very hard to, you know, verify how much we might have it wrong or right.

(One thing I have certainly noticed is how author's take historical characters, give them contemporary mindsets, and present them as ahead of their time, and therefore admirably brilliant personalities.)

On a different note, enjoyed all your reviews (and good job catching up!). I wish I had gotten to Lady Audley's Secret, but it wasn't possible. I find myself very interested in the Home Front series after reading your post. And you have me interested the Patrick Melrose novels too.

hey guys

>63 dchaikin: Don't get me started on the "21st century mind in a 18th century body" and the like. At least if you go speculative, you have time travel and taking over people's minds and all that but most of these are usually historical novels and annoy me to no end. And dealing with known historical figures, that just cheapens them... :)

I don't claim to know what it was to live in 14th century Italy. Noone can. So my idea of what was normal may be as twisted as the ideas of someone expecting 21st century sensibilities. I just make my own educated guess (not always consciously) based on what I had read before about the period (and about any other historical period) and go with that. I agree, we will never know... :)

I read for pleasure but I also like exploring older literature because there are a lot of good stories in there. I like good stories - I rarely care who wrote the story (except for making sure I read the authors I enjoy) or if the story is modern in any sense of the word so I am a lot more likely to overlook/ignore or just excuse almost anything if the story works. Which I admit is a bit old-fashioned but then it is my reading. I am struggling a bit with the modern idea that who wrote the story and who the characters are is more important than the story itself - which is an oversimplification of the problem of diversity of course but as with everything, some people get it too far (not to be mistaken with people looking for the good stories out there which had been overlooked)...

"Lady Audley's Secret" will be here if you decide to check on her later. :)

>60 kidzdoc: Thanks :)

>65 AnnieMod: I'm very much interested in the author and very uncomfortable if I don't have a context. :) I like to imagine the writer writing the story, and imagine what they are trying to accomplish, and what their biggest challenges were and how well they pulled it off. (And, of course, I want to be surprised as how well they did.) Of course, it's always nice to be carried away and forget that. But their success or failure it's also so interesting to me. (I think I watch baseball with a similar mindset.)

And, yes, I'm sure her secret will wait, Audley's.

And while working on a few books, I managed to finish a magazine. I've realized that I enjoy older magazines a lot more than I do the current crop of them so I am not sure how much 2022 magazines I will read this year...


77. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 13, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (managing editor)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 5 April 2022 - 18 April 2022

Michael Gilbert opens the issue with "Dangerous Game", a part of his Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens series of stories. When a man is found burned to death, the two British Intelligence men need to find not just what happened but why - the ex-soldier had been helping them deal with problems from across the border in Ireland. The cat and mouse game slowly reveals buries secrets until the very end. The end was fitting the crime in a way you know cannot work in the real life but still works in spy stories..

William Brittain adds another series story: "Mr. Strang Interprets a Picture", featuring the high school science teacher Leonard Strang who really dislikes his current assignment - visiting the elementary schools which are feeding his school with students. Meanwhile, the local bank had been robbed a few days earlier - and the police have no clues. The two events may not connect on the surface but kids always see more than they know (and more than people think they do) - even when they cannot really explain what they saw exactly.

John C. Boland's "Reunion in Baineville" is an almost predictable revenge story - once upon a time, the crooked local sheriff sent the protagonist to jail and now he is back. I am not sure I really liked the story (and I know I really disliked the protagonist).

Barbara Williamson's "Shadows in the Attic" could have been a lot better if we got any idea of why the action happened at that point and not years earlier. Even when someone snaps seemingly out of the blue, there is always an event that leads to it (or a string of them) and that was just not there in the story.

"Blackmail Boogie" by J. M. Kelly is the first of the two music-related stories in the issue. A musician who works as a PI to make ends meet is asked to help a fellow player - and manages to dispense some musical advice in addition to solving his other issues. It is a nice story but it went exactly where it was supposed to (but then not all stories can have surprising ends or they will stop being surprising).

The second music story ("The Cry of a Violin" by Seymour Shubin) has another musician as a narrator - this one with a place in a prestigious orchestra - who tells us that he is not jealous of the young musicians he plays with but isn't he actually? Unreliable narrator is nothing new in crime fiction but even with that in mind, this story really did not work for me.

Bill Pronzini gets us back to the late 1890s with "The Hanging Man". The titular victim seems to be unknown to the small town where he finds his death and the local deputies end up tracking his last movements to get to the truth. Of course, Pronzini does have an extra twist up his sleeve for the end of the story.

Ta Huang Chi stays in the past with "The Vanished Ships". In 1925, ships seems to disappear in calm seas - they just never arrive where they are supposed to and noone ever hears of them. Until the officer of one of the missing ships show up dead - and detective David Fang is asked to look into the issue. The author does a good job in working in enough details so the whole story does not get predictable.

The two first stories play on known tropes: Ronald S. Wilkinson's "The Way It Is" (the 581st) has a modern time PI who seem to have read a few more detective novels he should have - and never learned what he had to from them. Jim Flanagan's "Taps for Willie" (the 582nd) introduces us to a guy who can be a crook but he is definitely not stupid. From the two of them, I liked the second one a lot more.

Bryce Walton's "Chance for Freedom" is one of those stories where you are never sure if what you are seeing is what the reality is (but then what do you expect from the story about an actor in a mental institution).

The issue is closed by stories by 3 of the big names of the genre (or ones which are still/already big names in 2022 anyway):
- The Peter Lovesey reprint (the 1973 "The Bathroom" from the Winter’s Crimes 5 anthology, here under the title "A Bride in the Bath") has a book of true crime stories and a woman who thinks she got what she wanted. It is a nicely crafted story if a bit predictable.
- Lawrence Block's non-series story "Going Through the Motions" is a story I had read before and is one of these stories which relies on the twist at the end. A girl is abducted and her father reaches to his best friend for help. Reading the story after I knew how it ends made me see how Block hinted and led to the solution without revealing it though so I am glad I reread it even after I recognized it.
- The obligatory Edward D. Hoch story is a Nick Velvet one: "The Theft of the Red Balloon". Nick gets way over his head as usual. I like the whole series about Velvet and that is one of the calm stories in it (despite things exploding).

The usual non-fiction completes the issue as usual - the first part of the Gilbert interview (completed in the next issue), an appreciation essay for the actress Barbara Stanwyck, the forthcoming books and conventions notes and the Jon L. Breen review column (I've heard of just one of the books reviewed...).The poetry is in the form of the short and cheeky detectiverses which are always a delight (and there were a lot of them).

A nice issue overall.

>66 dchaikin: I've seen your lists so I am aware of that :) I tend to be less interested in the author (although I like to know when and where they lived for general context - you know, those flap/back covers bios that most books have) that of the book - until I decide I like an author a lot (and even then, I am very likely not to read their biography until I had read most of their fiction. Then I like to read some of the books people had written about them and their craft (that's why I like the Norton Critical editions and similar works for example - I can read the work and then read about it and about the author and whatever else is deemed important to include).

Neither way is more valid than the other - everyone approaches what they read in their own way. :)

Congratulations on getting caught up!

>58 AnnieMod: I am definitely going to seek out Home Front. I am having trouble these days finding enought audio I want to listen to at the library, and my monthly audible credit isn't enough to supplement (plus I find it hard to choose.) Thanks!

>69 markon: Check the BBC site (and app) - if you like audiodrama, you may be able to supplement there (their "audio books/readings" are usually abridged so depending on how you think about it, that may or may not work for you - so heads up; their drama is usually good and there is a lot of it available for free).

And then there are podcasts of course - a lot of drama is hiding there as well. Not enough straight readings of course but audio-plays and serials? :)

78. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden

Type: Novel, 75k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1939
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary
Format: paperback
Publisher: Open Road Media (2020)
Reading dates: 10 April 2022 - 23 April 2022

The palace in Mopu had always been used by women - it was built as a harem palace and everyone remembers it as such. Tucked in the Indian Hymalayas, near Darjeeling, in a valley under Kangchenjunga, it belongs to the ruler, the General, of one of the princely states that still exist alongside the Indian Raj in the 1930s. After the death of the last princess to live there, the ruler decides to find a better use for the remote palace so offers it to the religious orders. The first tenants, an order of monks, open a school and then give up within a few months. When this novel opens, a different order, one of Anglican nuns, is about to build their new life there - opening a school and clinic for the women and children of the valley.

Sister Clodagh, the Irish Anglican nun, is the youngest Sister Superior of the order and is sent to the remote mountain with 4 more nuns - some of them a lot more experienced than she is, some of them really young. It takes them days to even reach the palace - and when they arrive, the buildings still need repairs and new buildings need to be built. The fact that the General tries to help by paying the villagers to come to the clinic and the school does not help much either.

But that is not the main story of the novel - even if that is the center of it. It is a novel of survival - physical but mostly mental. Nothing happens as anyone expects; the nuns who believe that they are prepared for it slowly realize that the mountain has its own rules and no amount of determination can change some of the realities. Alone in the mountain, alongside the superstitious villagers, with the mountain looming over them, everyone needs to reexamine their beliefs - even nuns. Clodagh, who is the main character and whose thoughts we get to see, is so strongly reminded of her native Ireland that she seems to return back in time at times. The other nuns face their own demons and change - while the mountain remains there, unchanged, unreachable. In a way, the novel really asks the question if belief in God is enough to allow you to deal with anything life throws at you - or if there is something bigger, even when you had promised your life to God - and that is explored not just with the nuns but also with the uncle of the current General - who is as unmovable as the mountain itself.

The mountain is really the main character of the novel - despite all the people (and there are a few more colorful characters in addition to the nuns), the mountain overshadows everything they do. Godden's descriptions of it highlight that - they make you feel as if you were there and saw it.

It is a slow novel - while there is quite a lot of action in it, it happens almost without you realizing it - you are too busy watching the birds which keep circling and still cannot reach the top, too busy just looking at the mountains around you. But at the same time the people we meet and their stories are important - because they are changed by the mountain. And as surprising as it can be in a novel like that, sex plays a major role in it - in multiple ways (none of them being vulgar or pornographic in any way). It is a novel about people's thoughts and feelings and a novel about Nature.

>71 AnnieMod: I'm intrigued. I'll look for a copy.

>71 AnnieMod: Interesting. I'm adding it to my wishlist.

>72 RidgewayGirl: >73 labfs39: There is a new-ish reprint because of the FX/BBC series from 2020 - so finding a copy should be easier than a few years ago.

79. Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson, translated from the German by Damion Searls

Type: Novel, 663k words
Original Language: German
Original Publication: 1970–1983 as "Jahrestage 1-4: Aus dem Leben von Gesine Cresspahl"; 2018 in English
Series: Jahrestage (1-4)
Genre: Contemporary
Format: ebook
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Reading dates: 1 January 2022 - 30 April 2022

A novel in 4 parts or a tetralogy of novels - either description can work. It is closer to being a single novel though - despite the changes between the parts which make it possible to see where the novel was split, it is really one long narrative. Or a few of them really - because there is more than one story in there.

On the surface, the novel looks like a diary - an entry for every day from 21 August 1967 to 21 August 1968 - 368 entries (one which serves as a prelude/introduction and then one for every single day of the period). Their lengths differ and their structure evolves as the novel continues but aside from some random remarks, the novel runs two parallel stories - one in Germany, where we meet Gesine Cresspahl's family and see the rise of Nazism in Jerichow, a fictional town in the Mecklenburg in Northern Germany (destined to end up in East Germany after WWII), through the eyes of the town citizens and the second one in 1967/1968 in New York where Gesine had ended up with her now 10 (later 11) years old daughter Marie.

The two stories are told differently. The German one is told by Gesine, talking to Marie (with interjections from ghosts who really want to talk to Gesine). The later parts of the story are things she knows and remembers but the earlier ones are the stories as they were told to her or that she surmised - and the she wants to share. There is also the author, Uwe Johnson in there, who occasionally takes over but it is always what Gesine wants to tell (she even scolds the author a few times about where he is taking the story). Between Gesine choosing what to mention and the stories being just heard by her, there is a double layer of unreliable narrators in the whole story and yet, it is "a story" of the times and as such it is fascinating. I'd admit that I found the story in the first 2 parts a lot more compelling (albeit not easier to hear) than the one in the later 2 parts (the post WWII story) - there are parts in these later entries which felt almost boring. Towards the end of the novel, these entries also change a bit - while earlier the story went mostly linear, now we get to hear the end of the stories, even when we will meet the protagonists later in the linear story of the past.

The US side of the story is not a straightforward either - it is told in a combination of newspaper articles (from The New York Times - the aunt as Gesine and Marie call her), stories from Gesine's professional life and stories of her life with Marie. If you have any idea of modern European history, the end date of the book should make it clear where this story is heading although with Czechoslovakia barely mentioned in the early parts, it is unclear for a moment if we are dealing with a "meanwhile in" story or a story that needs to end in Prague. In the early entries, most of the entries which we see are about Vietnam, crime in New York, Stalin's daughter memoirs and interviews and so on - topics which will be interesting to anyone living in New York. But slowly, other news start tricking in to us - news of Czechoslovakia, especially with the start of 1968. Slowly, Vietnam takes a second seat, sometimes not mentioned for days on end - not because the newspaper stopped the coverage but because Gesine finds other topics more interesting. Early on, you may be lulled into thinking that we get a picture of New York and the world from the NYT perspective but it was always what Gesine found interesting. Both stories share that - they are the story as seen by Gesine, by way of the NYT in the case of things outside of her daily routine.

These two stories are intricately bound inside each daily entry - the newspaper and day to day ones of the 1967/68 world match the dates; the German ones follow linearly from where Gesine left off the previous day. There is no connection between the two stories besides one being the past of the other or any rhyme or rhythm on why a certain part of the German story was told at a specific time. Although it is not entirely true that there is no connection - there are the ghosts/voices in Gesine's head, there is also Marie, especially in the last 2 parts, asking for the story and driving part of it (although in the third part, there was a point when she felt like a narrative device and not as a child - the author needed a way to work around the fact that Gesine now knew the story and to make sure we still have an unreliable narrator situation going on). Each entry has its own structure - some stay in just one of the timelines, most of them have a story in both, with no visual differentiation - a paragraph ends and we switch times. Add to this the constant switch between the first and third person narration and the novel could get confusing in places (especially when the two timelines get switched multiple times in the same page). It requires you to pay attention although by the middle of the novel, it felt almost natural and by the end, I almost stopped noticing the jumps - habit took over and my brain just sorted the story where it belonged. That may also had been helped by me abandoning the plan to try to read day per day or week per week and reading it as any other novel instead.

And in this long narrative, the omissions sometimes speak louder than the story. Take for example Gesine and Jakob's love story - we hear everything about her pining about him as a girl but she just sketches the change from friends to lovers. You would think that if there was one story the Gesine will want to tell to Jakob's daughter, it will be that one. And yet - she demurs. Is it because Marie knows the story? Or is there another thing going on? There is a sentence in there, almost at the very end, an almost throwaway one ("I can't believe how completely we all trusted Jakob!") in a paragraph talking about Jakob trying to protect Gesine which hints at something else and I am not sure I would have really paid attention to it if I did not know the plot of the very first novel by Johnson (Speculations about Jakob). That earlier novel fills the gap that this bigger novel leaves open - in the same way how the real history events fill gaps in the the rest of the story - not because they are not important but because they are too important and already known.

If you check the author's biography, you will notice that there are a lot of parts where his story matches Gesine's (but also a lot where it does not). It does make you wonder how much of what we read about is real and how much is invented, where reality ends and the novel begins. But then it does not really matter - the novel is a chronicle of the rise of Nazism and chronicle of the Prague Spring (the first through the stories a girl born in mid 1930s knows; the later mainly through the eyes of the New York Times). Mixed into them is the personal story of a mother and a daughter in New York, of New York and USA of 1967/68 (between Vietnam, MLK and Bobby Kennedy, one may be almost forgiven for not paying that much attention to events in Prague). There is a historical novel, a novel of contemporary events and a novel of manners rolled into one. And what stays with you are the people - Gesine and Marie, Cresspahl and Jakob, D.E. and Francine, Anita and Lisbeth... and many many more. The times and history are characters of the story but they do not take over the pure human story. And because of that, the end managed to shock me - not the very end (famous last words came to mind when reading these last sentences) but the events of a few days earlier, the ones that make sure that Gesine is too distracted to pay attention to the world news. I knew that this story does not have a happy ending but even like that, the August 1968 entries came as a surprise - an end not without hope but still...

I can keep talking about this novel for a very long time. There are a lot of things which I want to point to (the bank, de Rosny, the New York of 1968, Marie (when not used as a narrative device at least), the people of Jerichow and New York - they all are worth mentioning and there is so much more that you can say about the story). But then there is no way to really cover everything, even on the surface so I will leave it at that. And I am planning to track down that early novel and read it.

If you are in the mood for a very long story which takes a long time to form, give this one a chance. It may drag in places and I am still not sure that the connection between the different stories is strong enough to carry it as a unified whole and if it would not have been better as a strictly linear story (and with less jumping between the first and third person narration) but even with that in mind, it is still worth reading.

I was hoping not to get into may with almost finished books but Anniversaries is a slow read and the last two stories of this one spilled into May so... May it is :)


80. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 1967, edited by Ellery Queen (editor-in-chief)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1967
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 19 April 2022 - 1 May 2022

At this point, EQMM is still printing both reprints (its very first issue was reprints only) and new stories (lately it rarely reprints stories except for special cases). This one has 10 new stories and 5 reprints per the cover but there are really 6 reprints (the Maigret story is billed as "first publication in USA" which makes it new and not a reprint).

James Yaffe opens the issue with Mom and the Haunted Mink - a story in his "Mom" series in which a New York Homicide detective shares his complicated cases with his Mom - a Bronx housewife - and usually gets a solution from her. That one is not an exception and the reason why none of the men in the Homicide department got anywhere was that they just have no idea how women think (and how they shop). It is a period piece, it could not have worked even a decade later (I think) but that is part of the charm of some of these old issues - there are these time capsules in some stories which when done properly can be entertaining as opposed to merely dated. I am not sure how that one worked in 1967 but in 2022, it made me smile at how far we had gotten from that point. Or had we?

The second story is one of the reprints, originally published in "Royal Magazine, February 1928" as "Ingots of Gold" and here published as Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon (by Agatha Christie of course). It is not one of my favorite Miss Marple stories because the solution really relies on a character being an idiot (or almost) but then most of Miss Marple stories deal with her just understanding people and seeing through their pretensions.

Donald E. Westlake continues the topic of how people present themselves in The Sweetest Man in the World which went into a direction I really did not expect - it was obvious that there is a trick somewhere with the insurance but the final solution managed to surprise me in a good way.

The second reprint is the first of the two Victorian stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (originally published in "New England Magazine, January 1892"). I've read the story before and it is more psychological horror than anything else and despite its age, it still does not sound dated (although it is still a period piece).

The next story is again a reprint, this one from only 2 years earlier: Ellery Queen's The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln’s Clue (originally published in June 1965, as "Abraham Lincoln’s Clue"). A man tries to sell a valuable book but unable to decide who to sell it, he starts a competition, hides the book and dies. His heiress calls Ellery to come and try to find the book - and he cannot resist the challenge. The solution of where the book was hiding was an amusing piece of detection as usual in Queen's stories but as is often the case, that is not the end of the story. That ending act annoyed me a bit - there were way too many people involved for noone realizing some of the story before. Still worth it for the detection part though.

Richard Deming's The Jolly Jugglers, Retired proves that underestimating people just because they are retired often leads to major troubles for the people doing the underestimating (thus tying with the Miss Marple and the Mom story above in some ways).

Joseph Mathewson's A Stranger’s Tale has one of those editorial introductions which is there to tell you that, yes, this story breaks every rule in the book but... here it is. In this case, it is about twins, apparently a big no-no in crime fiction (really?). Except that them being twins is hardly relevant in the story and the big reveals are practically telegraphed. It is not a bad story but it would have probably worked better with slightly different setup of its framing story.

And while the previous story shows how predictable stories should not be handled, Hugh Pentecost's The Monster of Lakeview (an Uncle George story) shows how to make a predictable story enjoyable and almost surprising in places. Maybe it was a wishful thinking on my part on where the story should go (and it did) and maybe that story could have only worked with this ending. It is a period piece as much as the Mom's story is - the way the mentally delayed son is treated by everyone is decidedly dated but in the context of the story, it is not unreadable.

The second recent reprint is Bubble Bath No. 3 by Margery Allingham (originally published in July 1956 in the UK Argosy "Three Is a Lucky Number"). A man, who had already killed two wives, is about to kill a third one. Saying anything else about that story is going to give away the surprise. It is a tight short story which works beautifully.

The next story, The Strange Adventure of Charles Homer by Frank Sisk is one of those stories which is too clever for its own good. It is a speculative/fantastic story (which is not obvious until almost the end - and while I do not mind this kind of stories, they can feel like cheating when there are not enough clues for you to expect it; that's where the "too clever" comes into play - there are some clues but it is never clear if they are just word play or point to something more sinister... until the end). I really disliked the way the story went - even if it should have been one of my favorite ones. Probably it was the wrong expectations, possibly it was the style.

The next story has one of the longest introductions in this issue (and it also has a postscript). It is the second Victorian story in this issue: The Pair of Gloves, usually attributed to Charles Dickens (original publication in Household Words, 14 September 1850). It is billed as "the first plainclothes procedural" and it is more of a vignette or a part of a story than a real story - there is a murder and there is detection (and somewhat clever one at that) but the story is more concerned with the detection than with the murder. So technically it is indeed an early procedural (and some later authors probably can learn some of it) although it is not entirely a story. As with most of the works published in "Household Words", the story/article was not attributed and based on some additional data, there is a chance that it was not Dickens's really but one of the Dickens/Wilkie Collins collaborations (that's what the postscript is about; the introduction deals with the development of London police and early stories about these detectives).

Princess Zawadsky's Third Act Curtain introduces us to an actor who finds himself in front of a gun... while being unable to actually do what the guy with the gun wants. What follows is a perfect dark comedy which made me laugh. And that continued with the very clever Mystery, Movie Style by Joan Kapp which seems simplistic on the surface but is so well done so the old tale of a robber breaking in just to surprise another robber gets a few twists which makes you wonder what the reality really is.

Inspector Maigret Directs by Georges Simenon (translated by J. E. Malcolm from the French 1955 story "Vente à la bougie" and originally published by the UK Argosy in November 1961 under the he title "Under the Hammer" - the magazine only gives a copyright of 1961; all other details from Galactic Central) deals with a murder - by having Maigret make everyone repeat their actions over and over again. It is not a bad story but it is not one of Simenon's best either and it just does not do much in the lineup it is in.

William Brittain closes the issue with its first "Mr. Strang" story Mr. Strang Gives a Lecture. The science teacher's car is used for a robbery and the teacher decides to prove that the police is wrong. As this is the first time Mr. Strang and Detective Roberts meet, the policeman is anything but happy with the man trying to tell him how to do his job (in later stories he is no less annoyed but he knows that the teacher is usually right). I am not sure if I would have liked this story as much as I did if I had not read another one from the same series before - knowing how the teacher works makes the early parts of the story more understandable than they might have been if I'd never read a story about him. As it is, he comes up as a modern Miss Marple in some ways - and that is what makes him charming (although Brittain is nowhere near Christie in his abilities - despite being known for writing pastiches - including ones in Christie's style).

The non-fiction is just a list of the best books of the previous year (most of them virtually unknown today except for lesser novels of known authors and In Cold Blood in the true crime section) with minor comments for some of them and a list of the current monthly editions in the genre (because of course in 1967 that was still somewhat possible).

I greatly enjoyed my trip down memory lane with this old issue of EQMM.

And another one that should have made April but the schedule went a but weird so I just finished it today.


81. Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity by David Christian

Type: Audio Lectures
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2008
Genre: History
Format: audio/Audible
Publisher: The Great Courses; (History -> Civilization & Culture)
Length: 48 lectures; 24 hrs and 26 mins ; Course book: 290 pages
Reading dates: 3 March 2022 - 2 May 2022

One of the official definitions of Big History is: "an academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present" (copied from Wikipedia in this case). The main idea is that the history of humanity or even of Earth is part of something bigger and not an isolated story - so looking at it on its own misses some of the long trends. The lecturer, David Christian, invented the term "Big History" while teaching one of the first such courses at Macquarie University (and he talks about it in these lectures as well) so there is probably no better lecturers for this topic. The biggest issue of the course is its length - it is just too short for its broad theme (even if that is part of the point of the whole discipline) so quite often I want to hear more than is in these lectured - more about the history, more about the people, more anecdotes from the first time he taught the class or from his other research - as weird as this may be for a 24+ hours set of lectures. Of course, as most of the courses in this series, it has a very long bibliography so one can go and explore - and I suspect I will - and here I was planning on these courses helping to reduce some of my TBR.

So what is the course about? It starts with a Big Bang and then slowly start moving from there. On its path to humanity, all sciences get born (you do not have chemistry before the first elements for example; botany until the first vegetation shows up and so on). That's part of what the whole point is - history is not an isolated science, it steps on the shoulders of earlier disciplines and cannot exist without them and the usual separation of the sciences while useful for some things (due to the difference in how you look at them and study them) hides the big picture.

Humans don't show up until lecture 21 (of 48); the first literate civilization (Sumer) shows up at lecture 30; the Industrial Revolution does not show up until lecture 41. That trend continues in the 2 lectures about the future as well - human history may be the important one in the short term but in the long term, things look different (and even in the short one, there is a lot more than humanity to consider).

The lectures can get very technical in places - it is an overview but if one does not understand most of the basic science, it can be a steep learning curve in some places, especially before humanity shows up (after which there isn't much left besides our history).

The recordings are from 2008 so some of its science is not exactly current - 13 years is a long time in some disciplines. At the time when they were recorded the Large Hadron Collider was just being finished so you get a warning to watch out for it because it has the ability to teach us a lot about the universe (and that turned out to be correct of course). But despite that, it is worth listening to - catching up with what is new once you have the base is not that hard after all.

If you rather read a book instead of listening (or in addition to the audio), Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History covers the same ground (and each audio lecture is tied to a specific chapter in the book as essential reading (sometimes combined with other books).

The lectures list:
1. What Is Big History?
2. Moving Across Multiple Scales
3. Simplicity and Complexity
4. Evidence and the Nature of Science
5. Threshold 1: Origins of Big Bang Cosmology
6. How Did Everything Begin?
7. Threshold 2: The First Stars and Galaxies
8. Threshold 3: Making Chemical Elements
9. Threshold 4: The Earth and the Solar System
10. The Early Earth: A Short History
11. Plate Tectonics and the Earth’s Geography
12. Threshold 5: Life
13. Darwin and Natural Selection
14. The Evidence for Natural Selection
15. The Origins of Life
16. Life on Earth: Single-celled Organisms
17. Life on Earth: Multi-celled Organisms
18. Hominines
19. Evidence on Hominine Evolution
20. Threshold 6: What Makes Humans Different?
21. Homo sapiens: The First Humans
22. Paleolithic Lifeways
23. Change in the Paleolithic Era
24. Threshold 7: Agriculture
25. The Origins of Agriculture
26. The First Agrarian Societies
27. Power and Its Origins
28. Early Power Structures
29. From Villages to Cities
30. Sumer: The First Agrarian Civilization
31. Agrarian Civilizations in Other Regions
32. The World That Agrarian Civilizations Made
33. Long Trends: Expansion and State Power
34. Long Trends: Rates of Innovation
35. Long Trends: Disease and Malthusian Cycles
36. Comparing the World Zones
37. The Americas in the Later Agrarian Era
38. Threshold 8: The Modern Revolution
39. The Medieval Malthusian Cycle, 500–1350
40. The Early Modern Cycle, 1350–1700
41. Breakthrough: The Industrial Revolution
42. Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900
43. The 20th Century
44. The World That the Modern Revolution Made
45. Human History and the Biosphere
46. The Next 100 Years
47. The Next Millennium and the Remote Future
48. Big History: Humans in the Cosmos

I'm always amazed at the breadth of your interests, Annie. Kudos on another Great Course under your belt.

>75 AnnieMod: Great review, Annie. I'm slightly disheartened that the last 2 volumes are less engaging as it's not easy going as a reading project at the best of times, but I'm hanging in there.

>79 AlisonY: You may want to take that with a small pinch of salt - as with most novels of that type, personal experiences can overshadow some things. Post-WWII Eastern Europe is what I was born into (much later than this story -- my Mom is a year younger than Marie) - so some of those stories either skewed too close to other stories I know or were just more of the same I had read since the changes (when separating fact from fiction was (and still is) a bit of a challenge). For someone who had not spent their teens and twenties in a country trying to make sense of the post-WWII period in Eastern Europe? That may be different.

But the novel does have a visible change in how the narrative works and I do not think it is just my better familiarity with both the 1940s German story and the 1968 story. It is the times which Gesine remembers (as opposed to being told stories about) so if it had not changed, it would have been more artificial. :)

>78 labfs39: I wish I was not interested in so many things - would make my life so much easier....

82. The Life and Letters of John Keats by Joanna Richardson

Type: Non-Fiction
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Series: N/A
Genre: Biography
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Folio Society
Reading dates: 3 April 2022 - 3 May 2022

If you expect a modern biography, you will be disappointed. The title of the book tells you exactly what it is - it is a chronology of the life of Keats, told mainly by letters and poetry, with the author providing the connections where required and summarizing letters which are not included (usually the ones to Keats but some parts of his as well) and with almost no analysis (which is a major requirement for a modern biography - thus my first sentence.

It is a short book - its 165 pages makes you expect an easy read. But they are so full of letters written in the early 19th century and poetry excerpts and complete sonnets (and occasionally other poems) that you end up slowing down (and I ended up looking up the poetry which was mentioned but not cited).

I'd admit that Keats is not one of my favorite poets - I like some of his work but the Romantics had never clicked properly with me. Most of what I knew about his life before this book was what I got from a biographical sketch in a textbook a long time ago and the radio drama Writ in Water by Angus Graham-Campbell which dramatized the poet's last months to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his death in 2021 (it is available from the BBC site here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sj88).

Early in the book, the letters are mainly about Keats (and his circle), as the book progresses, the only letters which get cited (with a few notable exceptions such as Shelley's letter inviting Keats to Pisa) are the poet's own words. And they don't always paint him in the best light - he is possessive and jealous with the woman who is supposed to become his wife; at the same time he is generous where his brother is concerned. His letters (and the poetry which they often contain) make him look a lot more like a human being and a lot less like the banner poet of the times, dying tragically young and never seeing his own success.

Richardson makes a valiant effort to explain the connection between the different people who show up in the letters - but I found myself rechecking some names when they popped up again in the narrative. If you are aware of the literary circles of the times, that may work a bit better I suspect but even if you are not entirely sure who is who exactly, the letters speak for themselves. Somewhere in there, there are also a lot of details on how a poet of these times was working - from copying poems into clean copies for publishing to scribbling poetry in other books and random pieces of paper. It also makes you wonder how much more poetry did the poets of the era create and is now lost because it was never published and noone bothered to save the pieces.

The volume won't replace a biography of the poet but the letters give you a new appreciation of what we had lost - even the most mundane letters are full of beautiful writing (and the ones to Fanny are especially poetic). It did not make me a big fan of Keats but it showed me a side of his writing which made me look again at poems I had not looked at for decades and which I probably would not have looked at again.

83. Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Pickett Country by C. J. Box

Type: Collection, 10 stories
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Series: Partially in Joe Pickett
Genre: crime, modern western
Format: hardcover
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Reading dates: 1 May 2022 - 4 May 2022

The subtitle may sound a bit misleading - while of the stories are set in Wyoming (or are related to it in some way), only 4 of the 10 are actually set in the Joe Pickett series.

The collection opens with One-Car Bridge which deals with one of the absentee-owner's huge farms in Wyoming. Except that this owner has his own ideas of what is possible - and does not care about anyone else but himself. Joe Pickett's attempts to help the manager of the ranch... and that ends up in a way noone expects.

Pirates of Yellowstone shows what happens when people are tricked into moving halfway across the world and left without a job.

The End of Jim and Ezra gets us back in time with two beaver trappers who get trapped into the mountains by the snows and need to share a cabin for the winter. Having roommates is never easy... try it when you cannot leave the room.

The Master Falconer is the second Pickett story although as the title makes it clear if you had read the series so far, it is really a Nate Romanowski story. When the Saudis show up in the mountain to try to convince Nate to help them with something, Nate is not amused - either by them not accepting the 'no' or by what follows next. The end of the story made me laugh - Nate is always an interesting character.

Every Day Is a Good Day on the River starts as a nice fishing story which ends up being anything but - guides may be seen as part of the river but they are people and people had pasts (and sometimes futures).

Pronghorns of the Third Reich is one of the stories based on a real story. Back in 1936, a Wyoming photographer captures and put a few pronghorn antelopes on a plane and takes them to zoos around the country, including sending a few on the Hindenburg to the Berlin Zoo. Apparently this did happen. Box takes that story creates a story around it by swapping who actually distributed the animals - a man who used to have a partner but decided to do this one thing on his own. The result was one very wealthy man and one who ended up in poverty. Now, years later, the descendant of the cheated man decides to get even - and things get out of control quickly.

In Dull Knife Joe Pickett decides to do whatever it takes to try to find justice for a woman who is found dead in a frozen lake - especially when he finally learns who left her there. Let's just say that falling on the ice while naked in temperatures under 0 is never a good idea.

Le sauvage noble (The Noble Savage) is the only story that does not take place in the state of Wyoming - it takes us to Paris where the Wild Wild West show in Disneyland had hired real Indians. Add women who fall for the exotic and the clash of cultures and things get a bit complicated. In his introduction Box mentions that you may want to take a shower after reading this story and he is not off mark on that - humanity can be really really weird sometimes and noone in this story comes out as a nice person - or anywhere near a good person.

On the other hand, Blood Knot, the shortest story in the collection, is all about the passing of generations and the love for Nature - and exactly because it is so short, it works. It is sweet and heartbreaking and if you have good memories with or about your grandparents and it does not make you think of them, I will be very surprised.

The closing story, Shots Fired: A Requiem for Ander Esti, is the last Joe Pickett story and we also see another character we had met before - Bryce Pendergast (the guy who was sprayed with bear spray by Joe in "Breaking Point" when the warden was attacked). But even if Bryce becomes important for the story, the main character is really Ander Esti, the Basque sheepherder who everyone likes to hire - and who everyone likes. Until one day he shoots at a car out of nowhere and Joe goes to investigate and ends up in trouble as usual.

Overall an enjoyable collection even though there no really outstanding stories - they are mostly good stories though. If you are reading the series of Joe Pickett novels, you can skip this collection and if you had never read the author, the collection is probably not a good place to start - I like his style in the longer works more.

And the not reading part, after finishing the History of Israel courses in Coursera earlier this year (https://www.librarything.com/topic/338036#7792341 if you missed my note), I was looking for something else and decided to stay with Israel for a bit longer with another course there again: "Israel State and Society" by Hebrew University of Jerusalem (https://www.coursera.org/learn/israel) - it seemed like a good addition to the history one. The fact are of course the same - but the interpretation is different when you look at it via the lens of sociology and other social sciences.

It is very different from the other courses I had taken - instead of a single lecturer (or a team of them), each lecture is by a different person - a specialist in the field the lecture is about, usually both teaching and publishing on the topic with a frame by the main instructors who introduces the topic and the speaker and then summaries and connects the lectures to each other at the end. The very first lecture is a conversation in Hebrew (there are English subtitles); the rest are lectures in English. And as is often the case, it is both the weakest and the strongest feature of the class - while the material is always good, the presentations wildly vary between the presenters, making some lectures a lot more interesting than others (sometimes the topic also influences that of course but when you have a not so interesting topic combined with a lecturer who either just reads from a paper in front of them or recites their lecture by rote, it can be used as a cure for insomnia; on the other hand, a lecturer who knows how to do their job, it works a lot better). And there are some gems in there - the second lecture (which is technically Week 3 because of the introduction week) "Building a nation, constructing a memory: on sacred time and space in the Israeli society" has the lecturer taking a cameraman and going up to the monuments she is talking about and showing where and how things are situated (plus she is an engaging speaker). And some lectures (such as the 12th one "Is there an Israeli identity?") made me raise my eyebrow often - if anyone who does not live in Israel tries to say a lot of what is in this lecture, they may be called a lot of not very polite names.

There are some other frustrating elements in this course: there is a list of Recommended Readings (and some of them are referenced in the lectures sending you there for more details) but access to them is granted only if you are enrolled into the University - and most of them are not available for free unless you have access to an institution that can get you the access. And that is compounded by a few of the tests which require you to have read the articles (although as it is only 1 question per test, it is not really a blocker - but it is still annoying).

Despite that though, there are some very interesting parts in it and even the less interesting ones were informational and I am glad I worked through it. It helps to know the history before you go for it - it does refer to the history often and requires you to at least know the main events. Plus if you do not care about the course being marked as completed, you can just listen to the lectures you care about.

Now leaving Israel alone (at least for now) and moving to China with Harvard's ChinaX courses over on EdX: https://www.edx.org/chinax-chinas-past-present-future (starting with the first "China’s Political and Intellectual Foundations: From Sage Kings to Confucius" https://www.edx.org/course/chinas-political-and-intellectual-foundations-fr-2).

>71 AnnieMod: this is a terrific review and you got me very interested into a book I’ve never heard of (Black Narcissus)

>75 AnnieMod: enjoyed your take on Uwe and very interesting about his earlier novel. I’ll start Book 2 maybe Sunday night.

>77 AnnieMod: oh… I have his book and I meant to read that gigantic thing like ten years ago. And I haven’t touched it. The lecture series sounds great

I enjoyed all your posts, and you’re having such a cool reading year, but I had to get those three comments out. Very interesting about the course your taking.

>77 AnnieMod: An amazing review of that course!

>84 dchaikin: The Maps of Time book? I am debating if I want to read it (I mean - I know I want to, I am just not sure if I want to spend the time with it just now as opposed to going back to some of my other neglected projects). Big History is an interesting way to look at things - although it seems to ruffle a lot of feathers occasionally (because apparently claiming that two different sciences are really stages of the same thing is offensive? or something like that). In a way, it used to be the norm - look at all those early scientists -- then the fields got too big and everything split. :)

Godden is a criminally underappreciated author. Her sister even more.

My copy of that early novel about Gesine just arrived here so I will be reading that at some point soon-ish.

>85 avaland: :) Thanks!

Finally catching up with your great thread, here. Thanks for all the reading and reviews. I have read two of Robb's "In Death" books and enjoyed them both.

>75 AnnieMod: Great review of Anniversaries. More and more of you are persuading me that I need to put this onto my list of very long novels to read soon…

Мy resolve to read just one book at a time* lasted less than a day and I ended up reading a poetry anthology last night (Dexter's shenanigans in the second volume of The Law and the Lady got on my nerves so I had to switch for a bit).

*Not counting the current magazine/journal/stories collection/essays collection I am slowly working through.


84. I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan with photographs by Seamus Murphy, translation and commentary by Eliza Griswold

Type: Poetry Anthology
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Series: N/A
Genre: Poetry
Format: paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Reading dates: 5 May 2022 - 5 May 2022

Landays are short poems (usually sang and not recited) which have exactly 22 syllables - 9 in their first line and 13 in the second one, and always finish with -na or -ma. They don't get written and invented as much as they get changed and modified with time - they are part of the oral tradition of the Pashtun women who live mainly in Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. As girls in these area get pulled out from school very young and get locked into a house until they get married (after which they get locked in a different house), these poems become their only connection to the external world and to any kind of knowledge. There are some landays sang by men but most of them are only ever uttered by women. And they get adapted - most women know hundreds of them and by replacing words and contexts, they can be made relevant in many situations - the old ones singing of the British are not about the Americans, technology slowly shows up in them (these days they get exchanged as text messages or on facebook or other online platforms - the author traced a series of them on a facebook page which would have taken decades to get changed that way in the old world but now took hours). And even if they are everywhere, most women hide them - they are considered a bad thing in the very strict Islamic world of Afghanistan; the drums that were used to keep the rhythm while women sang them to each other had been outlawed and women can get in serious trouble when they sing them.

Eliza Griswold decided to collect some of these poems because of a young woman who set herself on fire to escape her world. That young woman used to belong to an illegal female literary group which uses the radio to share poetry - their own, landays and anything in between. Meeting the women who sing them in the middle of a war zone was never going to be easy (and with her not speaking the language, her translators were young women and in the society they live in, they often needed to be explained what some of the more baudy poems said.) Getting the women to trust her enough to actually share them was even harder. And then came the translation - because of their very formal requirement on length, they are usually almost obscure and trying to render them in English (or any other language) is not easy (even if you do not try to keep the number of syllables in tact - which these translations don't). The process was a kind of double translation - the translator into English, word by word, then Griswold into something which is understandable as English. That process meant discarding some which just could not work in English - too flowery, too abstract or too hard to figure out.

So what do the Pashtun women sing about? Pretty much everything. Some of these couplets are almost pornographic (in a flowery way mostly). Some of them are violent and wish for someone's death. Some of them describe the stark reality they live in. And some are optimistic and hopeful. Griswold adds notes on the symbolism and meaning of some of the images in a lot of these small poems. Her notes also trace how these were found and heard, painting a picture of the life of the women of the country. Seamus Murphy adds a lot of photographs of Afghanistan in the early 21st century - a country in the middle of a war. I wish some of these were not just black and white - while for some the lack of color enhances them, some probably would be a lot more effective if they were in color.

The poems themselves are not that impressive as poetry, not in English anyway. They sound almost mundane or like clever puns. But add to that their back story, add the story of the women who sing them and they become a lot more. They are the literature of a population which is essentially illiterate and kept that way; the voice of the women who have no other voice that anyone bothers to listen to. And they tell the stories of their lives - of the fact that a Pashtun woman should never show that she is in love (or she is considered a fallen woman), of their inability to sing (singers are considered to be prostitutes), of their longings and desires - and not only from the romantic types. They are the couplets that mothers sing when their sons get killed in the war or when they disappear in a jail. These are the words that allow the voiceless to scream.

Even if you do not care about the poetry, the book is worth it because of the background and the photographs. But don't dismiss these short poems - they stay with you and haunt you. Some will make you chuckle, some will make you laugh and some will make your heart bleed. But then, isn't that exactly how poetry is supposed to work?

>87 rocketjk: Robb's series is one of my guilty pleasures - they may not be great literature but I enjoy them.

>88 thorold: :) You should. It has issues but it is an interesting experiment of a novel.

>86 AnnieMod: - yes Maps of Time. As long as he doesn't ruffle my feathers...

I enjoy your reviews so much, Annie. I've added several to my WL.

>90 AnnieMod: I also enjoy Robb's series and often skim re-read them if I feel like something to read that I don't have to work too hard at.

>92 BLBera: Thanks. :) I am never sure if I should say sorry or you are welcome :)

>93 rhian_of_oz: Yeah - I have a few of the middle ones on kindle and they are handy for that.

In unrelated news, I have a birthday today (41 for the curious) and so far it is going much much better than last year’s (although that’s a very low bar - I started my day last year in ER and ended it in a hospital bed).

>75 AnnieMod: I'm not sure if I'm ever going to find the time to read Anniversaries, but I'm really enjoying doing it vicariously through you.

Happy birthday! I hope you are able to celebrate.

>94 AnnieMod: Oh yes, I forgot to say—Happy Birthday, and may this one be an improvement over the last by several orders of magnitude.

>95 lisapeet: It does take awhile. Part of why I pushed to finish it was that it was taking over my reading anyway - I’d be reading something else and it was calling to me. Once you get info it, it can be addictive. But if it is very very long. :)

>96 BLBera:, >97 lisapeet: Thanks! :)

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Annie

>99 labfs39: and >100 dianeham:

Thanks! Just came back from a nice dinner. :)

Enjoyed catching up with your thread today.

Happy Birthday! May this entire year be an improvement on the last one.

>102 baswood: :)

>103 RidgewayGirl: Thanks! :)

85. The Law and the Lady by Wilkie Collins

Type: Novel, 140k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1875
Series: N/A
Genre: Detective, Sensational novel, Victorian
Format: paperback
Publisher: Oxford Classics
Reading dates: 2 May 2022 - 6 May 2022

The later Collins novels are less successful than his 1860s ones. Not commercially - he was very well paid in those days - but the novels lost the sharpness that makes Moonstone or Woman in White really great novels. On the other hand, he used his almost independence (everyone wanted his work so he could write almost anything) to experiment - with varying success.

If you are expecting a realistic novel, you probably won't like some parts of this novel. Not that anything supernatural happens - but the novel plays with the Gothic very strongly (with not just one but two houses that will fit into the genre) and with the Dexter/Ariel relationship (although in places this leaves even the Gothic and goes straight into horror - even more than Shakespeare's Prospero/Ariel - if anything the the treatment of Ariel here is a mix between these of Ariel and Caliban in the play, with the gender flipped into female). That change of gender is there in the whole novel although it is a lot less obvious that with Dexter/Ariel a lot of the characters exhibit some characteristics that go against the accepted gender roles in these days - Valeria wants to investigate while her husbands runs away, Benjamin is meek and submissive, the Major, albeit being a Don Juan, is a gossiping busybody. And yet, outside of the grotesque of the Dexter household, the non-usual behavior is just pushing at the norms, without flipping them completely. On the other hand the disability differences (mental vs physical until it turns out that it is both on both sides) are so exaggerated that I was not sure if Collins was trying for a parody or for horror or for something in between.

When a novel starts with a woman promising to submit to her new husband and then have her disobey him within the week, you really have no idea what to expect. But then Valeria really cannot stand not learning the truth - even if it cost her everything. She needs to know what secret Eustace keeps and why he used an assumed name - or her happiness is not worth it. Considering the socio-economic status of everyone involved in the novel, there are conceivable only three reasons for Eustace's behavior: craziness in the male line, a suspect death or illegitimacy. Early in the novel any of these can fit.

The publishing in the Victorian era was pretty rigid - most new novels were coming out as three volumes edition and all novels had to fit the format (that was changing but not fast enough for Collins's work). While I was reading this one I was wondering if he would not have cut a lot of the superfluous material if he had a chance. Despite being originally serialized in The Graphic, it still conforms to the 3-volumes format - in the first Valeria learns that there is a secret, in the second she learns all about the secret and in the third the truth comes out. The weakest part is the second volume - while I enjoyed the reading of the court recordings (through the eyes of Valeria), the whole Dexter story was bizarre (even if one expected the Gothic undertones and nothing earlier in the book was pointing to them).

Collins chose to write the story as if told by an older Valeria. Someone else may have been able to pull it off but here Valeria is more of an ideal than a woman and she just does not feel real very often - things happen, we are invested into the story but Valeria feels more like a narrator than a participant. It does add a level of unreliable narration which pays off in places but writing women's voices is not one of the Collins's strengths here. It did make me wonder if what seems like a pushing of the gender roles in society is not a part of that weird writing of Valeria though - did her memories enhanced some of it?

Despite it being a very uneven novel (the middle is barely readable in places), I ended up liking it quite a lot. It is important for the evolution of the detective genre because it contains one of the first women detectives. But important and likeable are not synonyms and looking at it from that perspective actually makes the novel less of what it is. It is the mix of the Gothic and the detective fiction that makes this one enjoyable (if you like both genres anyway - I suspect fans of only one of those genres may really dislike it). Throw in some legal drama (checking some notes and/or commentaries on Scottish law when the topic arises is useful in understanding what the whole fuss is about in places) and it gets things even more confused. The mix is not perfect and it often leaves one wondering what was Collins trying to do but when the parts click together, it works well enough.

I also wonder if the end was not done in that way to appease the readers. On one hand it looks like a betrayal - the independent woman decides to submit. But if you look at the story, she never meant to be independent and at that point that was the logical thing for her to do. As much as Valeria ended up being a detective (of a type) and an independent woman, she never stopped wanting to be a wife. And in her world, reconciling the two was not easy, especially when your husband is Eustace Macallan (the less we say about him, the better).

If you had never read Collins, don't start here. But if you had read his major novels, this one may be worth checking - despite its issues.

86. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 1970, edited by Ellery Queen (editor-in-chief)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1970
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 1 May 2022 - 6 May 2022

And back in time again with another one from the stack of magazines around the house.

13 stories, 4 of them reprints (one of them an unidentified one at the time) plus the first ever The Jury Box column.

Edward D. Hoch opens the issue with one of his Captain Leopold stories: The Rainy-Day Bandit (at this point Hoch is already a prolific author but his unbroken (and probably unbeatable) streak of 35 years of having a story in each issue of EQMM had not started yet - it starts 3 years later, in May 1973). A string of robberies had been baffling the police for a long time and it is an almost chance encounter that finally solves it. It is a nicely crafted story as is usual for Hoch. Although if the name of the main character is changed, it still can work and I tend to prefer his series stories where that is not true.

Lael J. Littke's Mrs. Twiller Takes a Trip, the only speculative story in the issue, shows what a bad idea it is to underestimate little old ladies... regardless if who you are. The fact that Hell is under a mall should not surprise anyone either.

Holly Roth's The Girl Who Saw Too Much (originally in The American Magazine, August 1956) is one of the two short novels (long novelettes/short novellas really) in this issue. A damsel in distress gets two protectors but every time someone turns, new information changes the idea of what she really saw. It is a bit dated and the blushing hero is a bit too much to take in places but it is a nice story otherwise.

Josh Pachter's E.Q. Griffen’s Second Case reintroduces us to Ellery Queen Griffen - named after the the mystery writer Ellery Queen (as are all the children of Inspector Griffen - they all carry the name of a mystery writer of note). The young man convinces the Inspector to help trying to break a murderer - everyone seems sure that he is the guilty party but noone can prove it. The story's solution is designed on the "GI Story" by the actual Queen and in the process spoils the earlier story (although in a way it is the opposite of the Queen story which defeats the story idea a bit. The author is apparently extremely young at the time and it shows).

And then the magazine followed with Ellery Queen's GI Story (originally from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August 1954). If you are reading the magazine, read this one before the previous one -- it is a much better story and it does not deserve to be spoiled by the previous one. Ellery is called to try to help figure out who killed a man even though the police is pretty sure they know who (but cannot prove it).

The two First stories are both short and competent without shiningl Dante Stirpe's Granma’s Insomnia is a trick story whose punch line pays off (even if you expect it) and Mary Barrett's The Silver Saltcellar is a small reminder that being too ordered may sometimes be a problem. Both are exactly as short as they should be for them to work.

Isaac Asimov follows them with his first story in EQMM - the numerical enigma A Problem of Numbers which requires some chemistry knowledge to solve (if you decide to try on your own). It is a nice little story, with no speculative elements.

And then comes The Jury Box by John Dickson Carr, the very first installment of the review column that is still being published in every issue of the magazine. He mentions only 4 books (3 new, 1 a reprint) and spends the first page of the column explaining why such columns rarely contain strongly negative reviews and why his won't be different). For anyone interested, the 4 books are Death at the Chase by Michael Innes, The Pushbutton Butterfly by Kin Platt, Assignment - White Rajah by Edward S. Aarons and The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne.

The next 3 stories are again short: Phil Richards's Play It Safe has a man escape from prison with a solid plan (which seems to actually work for a bit), Frank Sisk's Mr. Blot and Mr. Blister deals with two men who are connected to the same woman (forget about a woman scorned, a man scorned is at least as dangerous) and the third reprint of the issue, Brett Halliday's Murder in Miami featuring Mike Shayne is offered as a puzzle story (with the end being published at the end of the magazine - and you could have solved it indeed - the clues are spelled out). A woman is dead and everyone seems to have an alibi. (It is not marked as new on the cover but it is copyrighted 1970 so not sure where it was reprinted from - if at all). All three are enjoyable and well written.

The second short novel/novella is James Powell's Coins in the Frascati Fountain (one of his Ambrose Ganelon stories) gets us into the tiny principality of San Sebastiano where Ambrose Ganelon IV is trying to keep the family detective agency afloat (not very successfully). There is another company trying to shoulder in (led by the men responsible for earlier Ganelons deaths), there are money missing from a fountain and all kinds of weirdness. The whole series is much closer to pulps than to the modern stories but I enjoy it usually - and this story was not an exception. It can sound a bit silly and its humor can be a bit on the nose though.

The last story, marked as newly discovered and not printed before (although the magazine does admit that it is true only as far as they had been able to discover) is Gerald Kersh's The Scar (Galactic Central traced it back to The Bystander, April 7 1937). A guy with a scar on his head starts telling the story of the scar and gets a bit distracted along the way. The end made me laugh - I had met people like that. I wonder if there is a later story connected to this one.

Overall another solid issue.

87. Thrilling Science Fiction, June 1974, edited by Sol Cohen (uncredited in the magazine)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1974 (reprint magazine)
Genre: science fiction
Format: digest
Reading dates: 7 May 2022 - 9 May 2022

And after running around the last 2 days (which meant short times for reading - so picking up the stories and not the novel), I finished yet another magazine. I don't even remember where this one came from - I suspect it was part of a bundle I got at some point (it is sometimes cheaper to get a big bundle of old magazines that happen to contain you want than to buy the 3 you want individually so I have some weird comics and magazines around the house).

A reprint magazine, with stories and articles mainly from "Amazing" (with one from "Fantastic Stories of Imagination"), spanning from 1954 to 1964. A few of them show their age badly - although for the most part even in the dated stories, the overall story kinda works.

Isaac Asimov: Genius in the Candy Store by Sam Moskowitz (originally in Amazing Stories, April 1962) opens the issue with a portrait of the multi-talented author. It contains spoilers if you had not read some of the stories and novels mentioned but they are needed to make the points the author is trying to make. I probably enjoyed this one (and the other essay in the magazine) more than any of the stories.

Goodbye, Atlantis! by Poul Anderson (originally in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, August 1961) is a cautionary tale about trying to meddle in things you do not understand. The title makes you think of a specific island - without it, the connection is not that clear in the text (although one can surmise it).

In Battleground by William Morrison (originally in Amazing Stories, November 1954), a doctor who is a bit too scalpel-happy ends up almost causing a catastrophe on a global scale - it may be a good idea not to cut people before you scan them - just in case they are not exactly people. The idea of the story is great but the execution is so dated (the nurse's submission and how she is treated) that it mares the story.

Hang Head, Vandal! by Mark Clifton (originally in Amazing Stories, April 1962) is another cautionary tale - this time about scientists who only see their own field (it curiously ties into the Big History lectures I finished listening to recently). Nothing more destructive than humanity among the stars (no surprises there considering what we are doing to our own planet).

The second article of the issue is a third in a series of articles about possible colonization of the Solar system. This one (The Alien Worlds by Ben Bova (originally in Amazing Stories, September 1964)) deals with everything that is not the Moon, Mars and Venus. It is 1964 science but except for some refinements in the numbers, it is still valid. Did you know that it is actually cheaper fuel-wise to have a round trip to Mercury than to Venus? (as far as I tell, this is still the case).

No Star Is Safe by P. F. Costello (originally in Amazing Stories, September 1954) annoyed me more than any other of the stories in the issue. A man survives calamity in space - or so everyone believes. Except that there was a bigger story which he decided to hide because he wanted to solve on his own. And then we have a heiress who sticks by our now permanently drunk hero, forgives him when he steals her ship (and even makes him coffee - more than once - the first time may have been ironic but...), professes not to understand anything about money and plays the clueless beauty on the hero's arm up to and including becoming the damsel in distress). There is a kernel of a nice storyline under all that but it gets drown under all that (and then the end is so cliched and predictable even for 1954 that it made me almost sorry that I read the story at all).

Question of Comfort by Les Collins aka Les Cole(originally in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1959) is a clever play on the alien on Earth (it is obvious from very early on), complete with using the problems of translation (finding matching concepts is not very easy sometimes even on Earth; using that to one's advantage when the languages are not from the same planet is a clever way to deal with new environments). It does have dated elements (although it can be argued that as it is the alien telling the story, he may have picked these up from the media at the times). And the very end manages to surprise - being an alien is not really the big reveal (which is why it is so thinly hidden earlier).

The last story, the shortest of them all, Kimo by Al Sevcik (originally in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, August 1958) is also probably the best. A goat shepherd sees weird lights and get sick and because of that misses his trip to the nearby town for a few years. When he is sure he is dying, he decides to die among people and start looking for them - except they are all gone. Until he sees a light and tries to reach it. As we see the story as Kimo sees it, we don't get any explanations of what happened (and why) but it is not hard to figure out. I rarely like "Last man on Earth" stories but this one was very well done (even if it is just last man in the area - it does sound final).

I am really glad that SF had moved on from this type of writing is female characters (although admittedly the really bad stories are the earlier ones; the later ones are either clean or at least not obvious enough to distract). I won't comment much on the misspelling of the title of the last story both on the cover and on the contents page (it is properly named on the title page of the story and that is the character names so Kim does not even make sense) or what a mess the type-setters did with the Bova article (pages references not updated, two parts which belongs on different pages put on the same page but the reference for the next page left over and somewhere in all that fitting, a sentence was half-printed only). Such things happen I guess :)

88. Robert B. Parker's The Bridge by Robert Knott

Type: Novel, 65k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014
Series: Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch (7)
Genre: Western
Format: hardcover
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Reading dates: 7 May 2022 - 9 May 2022

The third novel in the continuation of the series (and 7th overall) finds Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch back in Appaloosa. They had just rebuilt the house Allie managed to burn to the ground in a cooking incident and are waiting for the weather to turn into winter - it is the second day of November and the hot weather is a bit surprising. The sheriff and his deputies are taking care of the town (which had grown considerably in the last couple of years) and our territorial marshal and his deputy are taking a break from the law.

Until a bridge is blown up at least - the biggest bridge in the area, just months before being finished explodes and falls down into the river. Meanwhile a traveling troupe shows up in town, the sheriff and two of his deputies go out of town on an errand and don't return and Everett falls in love again - this time with Séraphine, a futures teller who seems to really be able to see the future.

And just then the weather finally turns, stranding the troupe in town (without them even be able to set their tents in the foul weather) and Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch are off trying to figure out what happened with the bridge and where did the sheriff go.

On the plus side, Knott finally decided to stop trying to emulate Parker's style and instead started to develop his own - it pays homage to the original but without trying to sound like it (or not too often anyway - some of the dialog still seemed to try for it). It may not work completely but it sounds better and makes the story a lot more readable. He is nowhere near Atkins and I am not sure he will ever get there but the novel does not feel like a bad pastiche.

On the minus side is the story - the pacing is just wrong. I liked the final twist - it is a bit unusual for a western but who said that all westerns should be the same (even if technically the end is just a spin on an old tale everyone expected). But getting there was uneven - Séraphine being used as a deus-ex-machina to essentially kick start the proceeding and the butler's decision at the end of the novel felt like an author who had no idea how to tie the novel together. Séraphine was more of a narrative device through the novel and less of a character and unless Knott plans on bringing her back to town, it was just lazy writing (or unsuccessful anyway).

Overall I liked this one a bit more than the previous novel - it is nowhere near perfect (or objectively good) and if it was not about characters I like, I probably would have not continued with the series. But then the previous one was such a mess that the bar was very low. As it is, I plan to stick a bit longer and see where we are going.

PS: The novel can work as an entry into the series - short of a few repeated characters here and there (and none of them show up here), the series is more of a "The adventures of" type of a series than a proper sequential one -- Cole and Hitch never change and the only thing marking the order is how big Appaloosa is or what Allie had been up to (and what adventures they mention). The back story really does not come into play. While I prefer the modern type of series where the characters show some growth, I don't mind the old style ones occasionally.

Interesting review of The Law and the lady which I did not know existed until I read your review.

>109 baswood: It is one of the two books this quarter in the Victorian threads :) And it is an unusual book.

>105 AnnieMod: Great review. I wonder how many readers understood those distinctions between Scottish and English law.

>111 SassyLassy: Now, then or in-between?

(mild spoilers below...)
Collins does add some explanations (for Valeria's sake - she knows less than we do about it as it seems) but I think he does rely on the public knowing about the current sensational trials and recognizing them in the book (incidentally, there is another gender reversal in that but unlike the ones in the novel, this one is needed for the novel to work at all - Valeria's only reason to do all she does is so she can be a wife and that does not work in that era with the accused being a woman). I also wondered for a bit how much the "poison is a woman's weapon" played into the subconsciousness (or consciousness) of the Victorians (because Collins does play on that in the novel a bit I think) and if all the reversals in the novel were at least partially so that everyone involved can be under suspicion without being discounted outright. The usage of the poison for other things apparently was well known in the newspapers at the time.

As for the now and in-between, maybe what is in the novel was enough but it helped me to read some of the notes - both for the beauty treatments and for the actual trials.

>112 AnnieMod: You're right that Collins felt the need to add the explanations for the differences in the law, especially when it comes to verdicts. I think he also played on English attitudes towards Scotland and its people, a theme that lurks in lots of Victorian fiction. Sometimes with Collins though, I get the hopeful feeling he himself doesn't believe these sentiments.
I found it most pronounced when Valeria Woodville, being English, is unable to accept the validity of such a verdict. She called it cowardly, vowing to "...change that underhand Scotch Verdict of Not Proven into an honest English verdict of Not Guilty"*

Poison does appear in other novels by Collins, whether intentional or not. Poor Miss Finch would be one. As you say, in the case of The Law and the Lady, his readers would certainly have been familiar with the trial in Scotland of Madeleine Smith, and the controversial verdict there, and it would have been lurking at a conscious or subconscious level.

>105 AnnieMod: I agree that Valeria was never meant to be an independent woman; she wanted that role of adoring wife.

______
* from my review, emphasis mine

>113 SassyLassy: Yeah, I think that most of the authors played on the attitude of the English towards almost everyone else at the time. Valeria, having grown up in the vicarage in the North, is both more innocent than most of the Collins heroines (at least in terms of world experience) and in a way less accepting that them (when you are not exposed to anything but a certain very narrow way of life, you get that way) - she starts with a very monochromatic worldview - things are either good or bad. Which is also why she is the only one who persists in trying to untangle the truth - the verdict does not fit into her world of black and white.

>84 dchaikin: Very interesting!

Would love to have you post on the current "Avid Reader" question is about one's SF (and dystopias, utopians...) reading.

>115 avaland: I am not sure if you meant >83 AnnieMod: or anything else in this reference...

Just posted - I was keeping low profile online over the weekend - taking a break from the world for the most part.

89. The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by N. K. Sandars

Type: Poem/Poetical Cycle
Original Language: Akkadian, Sumerian and a few other languages from the area
Original Publication: 1200-900 BC for the final versions; 1700 BC (Akkadian version) and 2250-2000 BC (Sumerian poems)
Series: N/A
Genre: classics
Format: paperback
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Reading dates: 9 May 2022 - 11 May 2022

In December 1872, George Smith attended a meeting of the newly created Society of Biblical Archeology. For the previous few decades archeologists had been finding more and more of the tablets which had cuneiform writing on them and the specialists were starting to decipher them - finding both the expected household records but also the lines of poetry and myths and all kinds of other things noone expected. And George Smith was about to change the state of the known world overnight - because what he announced at this meeting was nothing less than a record of the Flood, with a man being told how to build a boat and how to save his family and everything else living. That record was at least a few centuries older than even the oldest known records that made up the Bible. And that already very old and unexpected copy was itself a copy of a much older record.

Thus began the uncovering of a literary mystery which proved that the Greeks did not invent literature (as everyone believed at that point). Because that story of the Flood was part of the Akkadian version of Gilgamesh - which was itself based on a series of Sumerian poems about Bilgames (the Akkadian name remained the one in use even when the older sources were found). That initial story was incomplete so everyone kept looking for more parts of the story (just to get the scale, on a single dig, they would often find 40K or more tablets) and pieces started showing up. But not all of them matched - there were the best copies from the buried library of Ashurbanipal (everyone had heard about the Alexandria library and the tragedy of its destruction in 48 BC; the same happened at the end of the Assyrian rule in 612 BC in Nineveh - except that the fires that destroyed Alexandria acrtually helped preserve the tablets here) but there were also versions of a different sequence which somewhat matched but were obviously different. And then there were versions showing up in tablets in all known languages in the area - mainly Sumerian, Akkadian (mainly Babylonian versions) and Hittite but a few of the smaller languages also helped preserve versions. The poem was popular - its 12 tablets were copied and recopied, sometimes parts of the story were moved around (as most of these were essentially passages on the same tablet, one may wonder if this was not a 'printing' error - someone started copying the wrong part first and decided to leave it like that).

Soon the scholars started to see the patterns and realize that they are dealing with two really different versions - so they started to group these different versions producing the what is now known as the Standard version (the best preserved copy is the Ashurbanipal's one (specifically assembled for his library with new translations where needed) but with a lot of additions from elsewhere) and the old Babylonian version. Add to this the set of Sumerian early poems which gave the start of the whole thing and a few tablets in various languages which seem like retellings and you get mist of what we have. Even with all the fitting and all the pieces and jigsaw puzzles being solved, we have only ~2/3rd of the full poem (and for awhile the work was especially tedious because the fragments are all over the world, in different museums and universities and it could take years before someone in Berlin realized that they have a piece which adds 40 lines to an existing known US fragment for example.

But even the best preserved tablets (incidentally the Flood one) are fragmentary - there are missing parts and not all of them can be filled by other tablets. So parts of the story are still somewhat of a puzzle. And then there is the problem of the 12th tablet which simply does not fit - it is a direct translation of one of the existing Sumerian poems and one wonders briefly if maybe there were more of these translated or if they grabbed the wrong tablet to translate (as there is a better fitting poem which does not make it into the Akkadian versions - the one with the death of Gilgamesh). Of course the scholars will probably explain why this is unlikely but as I am not one, I just wonder.

So when you look to read the poem in the 21st century and you read a language with more than one translation, you need to decide which one to read. They seem to be in three broad categories:
- The scholarly ones - where the text is as it was found, translated directly from the languages they existed in, with the normal Akkadian way of expression and with the lacunae unfilled and marked.
- The middle ground ones - where the poem is smoothed over so that it reads better but it is still a fresh translation (sometimes with a bit of help from older ones)
- The pure literary ones - most of these done based on older translations and not based on the actual stories; some of them so far removed from the material that the are more interpretations than they are translations in any meaningful way (but then the modern idea of a translation being exact reproduction into another language is really a modern one).

I fully expected to fall into a translation of one of the first two types but the scholar ones are entertaining if you know the story and the second type seem to be the rarest ones (and for the most part the older ones). And age is somewhat important here because the older the translation, the less of the missing parts that had been found later it contains. So how do you decide what to read? You get a few copies and see which one you like the best of course. So here I was sitting one weekend with 7 different versions of the poem and deciding which one to start with - as it seems like reading all of them will be fun (then I realized I have a few more versions in various anthologies). And the one I decided was the best to start with was the least likely of them all - the prose compilation of N. K. Sandars (also known as the shorter or the older Penguin Classics edition - it got superseded but the scholarly edition by Andrew George in 1999) - not only it is from the third type but it is also in prose. But it is a perfect way to read the story.

So what is the story about? Meet Gilgamesh - a king of Uruk (who as it turned out existed and at least some of this epic appears to be true). Unlike the usual later heroes, he ends up on a journey after his people call to the Gods to stop his oppression - so the Gods create him a companion, Enkidu, and the two friends go have some adventures - walk a lot, kill something's guardian, annoy a God or three, you know - the usual heroic stuff. The poem is all about searching for immortality - first of one's name, later, after Enkidu dies, of one's actual body. Along the way Gilgamesh meets the man who survived the Flood, manages to get close to immortality (some of the funnier parts of the poem are about how he is close but every time he manages not to get it) and to find peace at the end. And this is where the 11th tablet ends. Sandars choses to ignore the 12th and instead to add the old Sumerian poem about the death of Gilgamesh as the end of her story (and this is my minor issue with this version: the religions of the area were not like later religion which insist that it is their ways or the highway (or hell) - instead when two different groups of people with different gods met, they just merged the pantheons. When there were repetitions, they just merged two different gods; when there were none, they just renamed them to match their languages (that's how Sumerian Inanna became Ishtar in the Akkadian/Babylonian pantheon for example). As a result, the stories of most gods and heroes got a bit confused in the retellings and mergings but as a whole, the pantheon held as a unity - and sometimes the clues of where the story originated was in which gods were around. Take for example Marduk. The versions we have from the poem are mostly Babylonian but Marduk is nowhere to be seen. Instead it is the Akkadian gods and heroes which are in play here - thus the dating to earlier days (later confirmed archeologically and so on). But back to the problem with that last chapter - it is a translation from Sumerian. Everything else is from Akkadian. So a few Sumerian versions of people we had heard of show up - the glossary at the end connects them but as this is supposed to be a unified text, it is a bit weird (the one that got me was Tammuz/Dumuzi - I may not even had realized that these are names we had seen before if I did not know about this particular name). But that is a minor gripe).

Early on, the belief was that the Bible stories were copied in some ways from these. But the current scholarship holds that they were all based on even older stories, coming from the pre-literate days of the Mesopotamian civilization - and all later stories in the area drew from them and made them their own (and that's why they are slightly different).

The introduction in this edition is very useful but as usual, if you had not read the story/poem before, it will spoil all the surprises. I actually read the story twice - with the introduction read in the middle - I missed things in the first reading but then I probably missed things in the second one as well. And I still plan to read other versions of this poem.

>117 AnnieMod: I read this a few years backed and enjoyed both the stories themselves and the backstories about the discoveries and everything else.

90. China in Ten Words by Yu Hua, translated from the Chinese by Allan H. Barr

Type: Non-fiction
Original Language: Chinese
Original Publication: 2010 in French (as La Chine en dix mots); 2011 in Taiwan(as 十个词汇里的中国 (simplified Chinese); 十個詞彙裡的中國 (traditional Chinese); 2011 in English
Series: N/A
Genre: Personal story?
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Pantheon
Reading dates: 11 May 2022 - 12 May 2022

Yu Hua takes 10 words which define the thinking of the modern Chinese people and takes us on a trip down memory lane - both his and his country's - defining and illustrating the words. Born in 1960, he ended up in school during most of the Cultural revolution and that shaped how he looks at language and words - their meaning changes and gets redefined but the old meanings never get forgotten.

If you are expecting a history of modern China, look somewhere else. Yes, there is a lot of history in this book but it is a mix between personal recollections and personal observations of other stories than a proper story. The 10 essays (some of them more connected with each others that others) all start with the Cultural revolution and end up today (well, the today of 2010) and they all draw comparisons between the two eras that should be as different from each other as humanly possible. And yet, they are not. Because they are old part of the same.

Some of the anecdotes being told were amusing (how to find a book to read in China when all books were banned and burned for example or where to find a cold place in a hot day), some made me rethink what I thought I knew about China (hitting a teacher was something I did not expect - especially in a society known for teacher' veneration). They all add up to a picture of a China that Yu Hua wants us to see. And that is as important to remember as is what we do actually see in the text.

The book was banned in China (it is still not published there - the Chinese version is published in Taiwan; parts of it were reworked into a different book in 2015 and that was published). And that is not surprising - the China of this book is ugly and not what the leadership would like to present to the world.

One thing that he mentions as part of his exploration of the words usage in Chinese but which is also highlighted by his choice of words is how the same words may hint at different things depending on who uses them. The last two "copycat" and "bamboozle", especially the last one, have very different connotations in English that some of the ones that apparently are there in Chinese (but also some similar ones). And for others, the meaning comes from history. That made me thing about my struggle with English occasionally (less and less as time passes and I live in an English speaking country now) - when I see a word or an expression from the prism of my Bulgarian viewpoint.

And just as a last note, at the very end of the essay about Reading , I found one of the best definitions of literature I had seen lately:

"If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own."

He was talking about the German poet Heine - but I suspect that any reader has their own example of this.

Not a perfect book by any means (and the constant bringing up of the Cultural revolution as a parallel of the current times did get a bit annoying at parts and made me wonder if it was designed to provoke) but an entertaining one nevertheless.

------

So why am I reading this book just now? Because I have the impulse control of a toddler in a pastry shop, that's why. Up in >83 AnnieMod:, I mentioned ChinaX. In addition to the 10 history classes, there is also a Book club - which I had planned NOT to touch until I get through the history. Except that... see the start of the paragraph. So here I am, happily working through: "ChinaX Book Club: Five Authors, Five Books, Five Views of China" (https://pll.harvard.edu/course/chinax-book-club-five-authors-five-books-five-views-china?delta=2 / https://www.edx.org/course/chinax-book-club-five-authors-five-books-five-views-o... which means reading 5 books from or about China in the next 5 weeks (edx free/audit track only allows you to have access to the materials for as many weeks as the class is supposed to run for). Each module has an introduction to the author and book by David Wang (Edward C. Henderson Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University), an interview with the author (this one was in Chinese - with subtitles) and a discussion between Wang and some of his students/research assistants/something like that. Not a good idea to listen to any of that before reading the book... I actually enjoyed the first part quite a lot so the next 4 weeks, you will see me reading
Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke
Waiting by Ha Jin (originally in English but there is a good reason for it to be one of the 5)
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi
in some order (probably the same as listed here unless a book needs to go back to the library or had not arrived yet for the couple the library does not have). And then I may stick with Chinese literature for a bit longer because each of these modules ends with a recommendation list for further reading... And that is on top of some older Chinese books which made it to the top of my list because of the history class (which I will talk about more in a few days when I finish the last module there).

So the thread will probably get very Chinese for a bit (although I also found the Arthurian book I had misplaced and I have the big pile of pre-Greek books next to my bed so it may get interesting). Which does not mean this is all I plan to read but stay tuned for that. So we shall see what happens next around here.

>118 rocketjk: I think I spent more time reading about it and deciding which version to read than I spent reading it. Plus >4 AnnieMod: gave me a bit more background to add to the one from the introduction (mostly adding details to things like how the pantheon worked with so many peoples at the same vicinity for example).

And after visiting the past and the present, off to the future for a quick check with the Alliance side of the Alliance/Union universe.


91. Rimrunners by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Novel, ??k words, 280 pages
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1989
Series: The Company Wars: Publishing order (3), The Company Wars (5), Alliance-Union Universe (5), Alliance-Union Universe: Publishing order (23 -- although this is missing the Morgaine books...)
Genre: Science fiction
Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: Popular Library
Reading dates: 12 May 2022 - 15 May 2022

After telling the story of the future, Cherryh returns back in time in the immediate aftermath of the Company wars. Elizabeth (Bet) Yeager used to be a marine in the Maziani fleet (the Earth fleet) and when the Fleet pulled out of Pell, she got stranded there with no papers and no options (or history she cared to share - in the aftermath of the wars, the Fleet is regarded as pirates and worse and even hinting at an association with them is a bad idea). A captain gives her a job for a while but then has to leave her on Thule Station - one of the Hinder stars which ended up on the path of oblivion in the aftermath of the new discoveries and the Union/Alliance split. But at least this gives her papers - not an uncommon case after the massive destruction - there were people left with nothing from all sides of the conflict.

And here is where we find her - waiting for a ship to hire on so she can leave the dying Thule - and not having much luck. Meanwhile she survives the best she can, mostly starving, but still remains convinced that her day will come so taking a local job is not an option - that would kick her off from the top of the priority list for the next ship that comes along. And just when she is sure she can see her future changing, a weird ship shows up and despite her misgivings, she needs to change her plans - not only because the previous option seems to not be a real option anymore but because there are two dead bodies which she cannot really explain).

So what happens when the universe's most damaged marine meets the man who is nicknamed NG (for "not good")? Love happens, that's what. Not that either of them will admit it. Or even think of it. Except that Bet has a secret and NG is way beyond caring - until he does. In a way, the whole novel is a love story between two damaged people. But at the same time, that story just gives the background for the story of the ship and the aftermath of the war and yet another chapter in the history of the Alliance.

We rarely see the command of the ship (except when they are being nasty) and we see the story from Bet's eyes. So we learn things about the ship when she does, we think about them in the way she does. And she is just a grunt - a machinist on paper who has very little former training. She is not looking for a family or love but that is what she finds on the ship - albeit in an unusual way.

It's a story of redemption and a story about people. Because for all the space around them, the characters we get to see and love are the ones that keep the whole story together - to the final chapter where things finally get clarified, we finally get our answers... and then we need to leave Bet and NG and the rest of the guys behind. But none of them is the same person they were at the start of the novel. And we have yet another piece from the puzzle that is the Alliance.

The book can be read as a standalone - as usual Cherryh starts with the pseudo-document that gives you the basic outline of where are and then Bet supplies all other needed details. But it works better as a continuation of Downbelow Station and Merchanter's Luck - not because of the story line but because of the details - they give you background that makes it easier to understand some choices (and the treatment of the drugs during jump tie with the Chanur novels - as usual adding to the pieces from there so between the two, you get a better idea of how that works. And that is not unusual for Cherryh's writing in this series).

>119 AnnieMod: Really like the sound of this book. As for the course, I've read two of the five books, and if they are anything to go by, it will be a great course. Looking forward to following it on your thread.

>122 SassyLassy: It is not long and even if it has issues, I found it interesting enough. Plus I tend to like personal stories which show you the history of a place -- they add color to the history narratives.

The course adds some context which was not that important for the 10 words (being non fiction and all) but still added some analysis and ideas I may have missed. So it is useful - plus it makes it less likely I get distracted and not read the books (and they all look interesting enough). So we shall see. :)

92. At Last by Edward St. Aubyn

Type: Novel, 53k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2012
Series: Patrick Melrose (5)
Genre: Contemporary
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Reading dates: 15 May 2022 - 16 May 2022

The last time we saw the dysfunctional Melrose family was at the end of Mother's Milk when Eleanor, in severe mental and physical decline, played with the idea of leaving the world via suicide but just as in any other case (except for her divorce), she changed her mind at the very last moment. A year and a half later, she finally dies and the novel, the last of the series, is set in a single day - her funeral.

The novel is not dated but Nancy provides the exact date (Prince Charles' second wedding) and Mary mentions that Eleanor died on Easter Sunday so here we are on 9 April 2005, assembling for the last time to see how Patrick had managed to mess up his life again (and to attend the funeral of course).

As usual in these novels, the time between the previous book and this one is mentioned in memories and conversations (and this time we get even more history both about David (making him even more horrendous than he already was) and about the Jonson sisters (Eleanor's part of the family). I really like how that last part was handled - while Nancy kept complaining about the lack of funds and how she was swindled out of her money, Patrick gets to learn that his mother has more secrets than one expected and that even if the house in France is truly lost, his mother's family still had another card to play in the game that is Patrick's life.

Almost everyone we met at the first books is dead now except for Nicholas Pratt - the man who always found excuses for David. The marriage between Mary and Patrick is also dead although after him spending some time in a mental hospital and finally kicking off all addictions, he is a functional co-parent and human being for probably the first time in his life.

Most of the novel deals with the past and with how people perceive other people - everyone in the room has their memories of Eleanor and none of them really match with each other - everyone saw what they wanted and needed in her (or what they were forced to). Listening to them gets Patrick that additional nudge towards sanity that had eluded him even after all the substances were gone from his bloodstream. And as usual, there are enough moments which make you at least smile - sometimes because you are happy that did not happen to you, sometimes because St. Aubyn really knows how to be funny even in the middle of a serious novel.

The book can be read as a standalone but I suspect that it will appear either shocking for the sake of being shocking in some places or its characters would just appear as first drafts of people. The previous 4 novels give this one the background - even with its dead people - Victor may be gone but Erasmus is here to provide the philosophy; Anne being dead is almost expected now with Eleanor being dead (she was always the one which almost highlighted what a miserable woman Eleanor was by just being there and being herself). And then there is Nick...

If there is one part which was a bit weak, that was the very end. Not because Patrick's acceptance and almost understanding of the abuse he grew up with (if you did not see that one coming, you were not paying attention) but with the very convenient penultimate act which made sure that the last connection was severed (not that it could have happened to a better man but still). Added to the earlier news from the States, it felt too forced. It fits the story, it was needed for the story to end but... real life rarely works that way and it felt almost like a fairy tale ending - all the villains get their justice.

And yet, it works because it allows for hope to finally shine into Patrick's life and the novel ends on a high end - with a door opening towards a new happier life. Too bad we won't hear of it -- happy Patrick is probably not as interesting as the one we met in these 5 novels but I will miss him.

If you had read the first 4 novels, you really should read this one. If you had not, the series is worth reading - even if it is not always an easy read.

>89 AnnieMod: enjoyed reading all the background to The epic of Gilgamesh, N K Sanders I know the story from the Oratorio by Bohuslav Martinû

>125 baswood: I found the story about it more interesting than the epic itself (don't get me wrong - Gilgamesh is a great story on its own but we all had read a lot of it in other works by now so you need to remember that nope, this is not a cliche, this is not stealing from another place, this predates the rest... by a couple of millennia at least).

Bohuslav Martinů is a name I had not heard in ages. I like his works for piano (but them I am partial to classical music for piano or with a piano). I have the "Martinů: Piano Concertos Nos 1-5, Concertino H. 269" (https://www.supraphon.com/album/423-martinu-piano-concertos-nos-1-5-concertino-h-269) somewhere -- let me see if I can find the disks (although I think I may have the MP3s as well as a last resort).

Once I made a point to finish a magazine before moving to the next one, the pile of my old story magazines is slowly going down. Another one done:


93. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 15, 1981, v78 #1, Whole No. 455, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (managing editor)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 11 May 2022 - 17 May 2022

12 stories, one of them a reprint. Four authors I know (Hoch, Richie, Powell and Gilbert), 8 which are ether new for me (or I do not remember them well).

Ernest Savage opens the issue with a series story (in the Sam Train series) called The Best Man in Town. Sam Train, a 19 years veteran of the San Francisco police, now a PI (a lot of these in crime fiction) is asked to look after the seemingly random death of a rich boy. He knows it is not random (because otherwise he cannot help - so even if he does not know, he hopes) so he starts digging. The direction of the story was obvious almost from the start, the end - not so much. The execution carried the story though - even when you knew what comes next.

Jack Ritchie's Body Check has a killer who is not getting paid until the body of his latest victim is found. Then things get an almost comical direction. Short and well done and keeps you guessing through almost the whole story.

In Mary Amlaw's The Old Lady Keeps Cool, a woman is absolutely resolute that she will reach 100, preferably in her own home, despite all the nagging from her descendants -- one way or another. You can cross her at your own peril - and if she decides you want to kill her, you may get surprised by her actions.

The only reprint in the issue, Michael Gilbert's Source Seven from the August 29, 1953 issue of "John Bull" is another series story, this time a Patrick Petrella one. Set early in the protagonist career, when he was still just a Constable, it has him assist with the investigation of one of the sources of drugs which had flooded London. For a story written in the 50s, it sounds refreshingly non-dated. According to a list I saw, this may be the first published Petrella story.

Phyllis Benson gives us the 580th "First" story with On the Upgrade Curve - a neat western about a pair of guys guarding the payroll and dealing with Kelly's gang which plagues the train route. You can see that there is going to be a twist somewhere, I did not expect it to be what it ended up being (which is always a good surprise in this kind of stories).

And on the hill of that one, come a "Second Story" Richard Grant's Commute to Murder. A twist on the "husband hires someone to kill his wife while he is at work" trope -- which worked better than I expected.

James Powell follows with another Ganelon storyBlind Man’s Cuff set in the Principality principality of San Sebastiano: this one set in 1932 and having Ambrose Ganelon III investigating the death of a blind man and as usual finding more than he expected. In the middle of this investigation, Ambrose Ganelon II tells him another story from his own investigations, that one being from 1892, connected to the first because of the blindness of the first victim in the later story. The more Ganelon stories I read, the more I like them.

George Baxt follows with Show Me a Hero where a man is tired from his wife (because she had gotten fat) and is trying to get himself out from his marriage. There is a young side piece of course. But there is also the kind of language which will make this story un-publishable today - Baxt's idea of what happens when a woman adds 80 pounds on her frame is laughable if it was not annoying (no, your eyes don't get lost when you laugh unless you somehow carried a lot of that extra weight on your head...). There were some murders of course and there is a very annoying neighbor who is shrewd at one moment and totally obtuse in another. And then the final reveal clinches it - it is a badly done story, almost designed to mock obese people. This type of story can work occasionally but it needs proper handling and Baxt lack the subtlety here.

The non-fiction in this issue is nestled after this story:
- R. E. Porter's "The Crime Beat" with the usual news from the crime publishing world (a lot of reference works being published - things that these days will be websites; a surprising note at the bottom is the forthcoming publication of the horror novel Cujo (I would have expected it over in the sister magazine Alfred Hitchcock's but not in EQMM).
- Chris Steinbrunner's "Bloody Visions" talks about the various movie versions of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (the Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange had just come out in March thus giving the topic of the TV/movies column for this issue)
- The second part of a Jack Richie interview (I seem to be reading these 2-part interviews always in the wrong order - which is not a problem as it might be with a story for example). One of the good mystery writers out there explains how he used to think reading mysteries were beneath him for awhile (plus other things about where he had lived and where he wants to live and so on).
-Jon L. Breen's "The Jury Box" which talks about pseudonyms and reviews 8 books (I've heard of only 2 of them).

Henry T. Parry's The Final Secret has a man who spend years in jail come back to try to prove his innocence - because he still claims he is not a killer. Old town secrets and maps make this story better than I expected it to be. And I liked the ending.

Celia Fremlin's Anything May Happen introduces us to a widow whose only fun in life is in the cruises she takes twice a year since her husband dies. Part of her enjoyment is her ability to make people trust her while on board of the ship. Too bad she never learned how to recognize kindred souls. It was not a really original story but the execution and the end make it a nice version of an old trope.

Lionel Booker's The Big Break is set in Hollywood where knowing the business is as important as being a good actor (if not more important really). When a man dies, another one is set to take the fall - unless a friend manages to find out what really happened.

Edward D. Hoch closes the issue with another series story: Captain Leopold Goes Fishing. The one time the Captain and Lieutenant Fletcher take a vacation together, they manage to get themselves in the middle of a crime. Of course, that may not have happened if a smuggler paid more attention to who he was dealing with... The story starts as two distinct narratives (the smuggler and the vacation ones) but as it is a story, it is obvious they need to merge and it is almost obvious how exactly. A nice story - but not one of my favorite Hoch stories (I am rarely impressed by the Leopold stories - they are good stories but they almost never shine).

An overall good issue despite the Baxt story...

PS: If anyone is interested, the 8 books being reviewed here are:
1. Death in a Tenured Position by Amanda Cross aka the scholar Carolyn Heilbrun
2. "Steal Big" by Patrick Mann (who also writes as Leslie Waller) - the book does not seem to even be in LT?
3. Carpenter, Detective by Hamilton T. Caine (aka Stephen L. Smoke)
4. The Last Crime by John Domatilla who is known to be a pseudonym but it is unclear whose (although the reviewer does have a guess) - that is one of the two I had heard of before.
5. Paragon Walk by Anne Perry (the second familiar one)
6. Trouble for Tallon by John Ball
7. A Flight of Lies by Gavin Scott
8. Weep for Her by Sara Woods

>126 AnnieMod: Reminds me of the story about the high school kid, doing a book report on The Lord of the Rings...who summed it up with "This story is full of cliches! Elves, dwarves, evil overlords...He could have put some kind of twist on them, at least."

>128 jjmcgaffey: Well, at least I knew to watch out for THAT. :) I've spent way too much time telling people that "nope, that author did not copy from this one - the perceived copy is 40 years later than the other one" or something along these lines... Good stories get told over and over and over... from the myths to today.

You know - that's why I like the Mesopotamian way of dealing with Gods and heroes and what's not - oh, you have ones we don't have? Now we also have them - the more the merrier. ;)

>124 AnnieMod: I have The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels, the omnibus of the five. Do you think they're tolerable to read straight through? Though of course there's no rule that I can't stop in between volumes.

>130 lisapeet: I read the first 4 straight through (see >59 AnnieMod:) and the only reason I did not read that one immediately was that I did not have it. Kinda straight through anyway - I was reading other books between the different volumes and in parallel mainly so I can separate them in my head.

I needed something in between them so they don't run together in my mind - but that is because I know that I tend to get a bit carried away and I mix up novels in the same series if I am not careful. Although I suspect that would not have been a problem here - Patrick changes enough for them not to run into each other.

But it also depends on how much self-destruction you can take at the same time...

And a not exactly reading post again (see >83 AnnieMod: for the previous installment). When I posted that one, I was mid module 3 of the HarvardX "China’s Political and Intellectual Foundations: From Sage Kings to Confucius" class over on edx (I've done module 1 a few years ago and never continued so did not share until I was sure I am doing the whole thing).

ChinaX is a survey of Chinese history in 52 modules/units, split into 10 courses of 4 to 8 modules. Each course is designed for a 15 weeks schedule although it is also designed to be somewhat light (aka 1-3 hours per week and that includes some writings and a lot of assignments you cannot see if you do not pay for the class). So in reality, a course is probably going to take you as many weeks as the number of modules/units inside of it - unless you get into extracurricular reading anyway... Or you can even cover at least that first class in a few days if you decide to... It works better in smaller doses IMO - giving some times to the ideas to percolate in your brain. But everyone is different.

Had you ever had a textbook which looks so easy when you open the first chapters and then you realize that even that first general information chapter is deceptively deep? The first module is like that - the two professors are pretty much chatting about the project and China and so on and it looks as if you do not get any new information until you realize that you actually know a lot more than you used to.

Units 2-3 deal with the very early history of China (the pottery sections although there are more bronzes and oracle bones than pottery here), the 4th is a single article about the nature of China (and a discussion of it), the 5th and 6th get you through the Zhou period which means the 5 Classics plus Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi (in some form of their names -- that's get complicated fast) plus the history of the area where it all happens. It is an overview so there aren't that many details but it is a very good overview and it synthesizes well.

Units 2 and 3 are very visual - a lot of closeups to artifacts and pointing things out and talking to museum curators and what's not. Most videos are under 5 minutes (some as short as 1 minute) but there are quite a lot of them and the free quizzes after a lot of them are useful to make sure you got the main point. These modules still feel light though - you learn a lot but...

Of course, early Chinese history can be told two-ways - via the documents and written histories and via its artifacts. Module 2 and 3 deal with both, with different graduate student dealing with each and with comparisons and pointing out what is available and from where. The presentation drives the story in your head -- for such short videos, these can pack a lot.

Units 5-6 are what actually convinced me I need to stick with the whole thing. Short videos highlighting the important points and readings from the various books and authors give you a nice overview of the Confucianism, Daoism and the rest of the philosophies competing for attention at the times. In addition to the course videos, it also included 3 lectures by Michael Puett from his "Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory" Harvard class. More about that below.

The readings are included - Harvard got an agreement from the publishers of the source books to reproduce 150 pages each from the 2 volumes of "Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., volume 1 and 2 (Columbia UP, 2000 and 2001)." (which is ~1/6th from each book). So all you need is the class - there is nothing else you need to obtain (unless you want to... because there are more readings in these books (these other 5/6ths...) and then there are also the complete books of course.

Back to the "Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory": https://pll.harvard.edu/course/path-happiness-what-chinese-philosophy-teaches-us... is its online version. I am still debating if I want to get that done first or go to the second ChinaX class. Which knowing myself will mean reading the source material as well.

A few links: The maps for this course are here: https://worldmap.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=6e3d05a5dab24d6c... (click on contents in the left menu and you will get the ability to overlay various maps on top of each other

Notes for all 52 modules by one of the students from the first iteration (when all as done for the first time): https://courses.edx.org/assets/courseware/v1/dfab1f749ab0d47f8473ff2ca39ece31/as... - That gives probably the best idea for the scope of the whole thing. What is missing here are a lot of the visuals and the readings - and these are notes, not transcripts).

The short version of all of that: Apparently I will be doing a lot of Chinese history in my foreseeable future.

The only thing I am a bit unhappy about is the lack of a reading list (and they explain why but still). If you need a book to go with it, the syllabus says "If you want to supplement your study, Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 2nd ed. (Cambridge UP, 2010), is a text that accompanies the sections and discussions by providing essential chronological survey information." The Third edition of that book is coming out this summer so I think I will wait for that.

On the other hand, between the Sources book and the one above, there is a big enough bibliography so... there is that.

>117 AnnieMod: Thanks for all the context info. I read Gilgamesh (well, one version) but it didn't do much for me, it's hard to connect with literature from a world and time so far away. But I do find the history fascinating. Maybe I should try reading another version.

>132 AnnieMod: Wow, what an ambitious and interesting program!

>133 FlorenceArt: I am not sure that a different translation will help much. It may have some beautiful writing in some versions but the story itself won't change much. It is not just too early and in a world very different from our own but it is also the source story (directly or not) to a lot of later stories - I had fun figuring out what things map to (Enkidu's seduction has the same source material/original legends as Man's fall in the Bible I'd think for example). It can feel a bit underwhelming (although I think everyone should read it). But if you keep an eye on my readings, I plan to read more versions so we shall see. :)

94. Pyre by Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan

Type: Novel, 54k words
Original Language: Tamil
Original Publication: 2013 (Tamil) as பூக்குழி (Pookkuzhi); 2016 in English (this translation; Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Books India)
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary, romance
Format: paperback
Publisher: Black Cat, imprint of Grove Atlantic (2022)
Reading dates: 21 May 2022 - 21 May 2022

Saroja and Kumaresan are young, naive and in love. And that usually spells problems - depending on when and where, the problems are different but the story is almost always the same. Except for the endings - sometimes it is a "happily even after", sometimes not so much. So how about a story set in rural Tamil Nadu in India in the early 1980s?

The text is not dated explicitly but we are told that Kumaresan was sorry that he was not a year younger - he had to leave school after 11 years and the 12th was introduced a year too late for him. That maps with the Indian school reforms of the late 70s and as that had happened a handful of years before the main story, it gives some idea of the timeframe. Other from that we know it is a somewhat modern tale because there are cars and radios that can show pictures and the British are nowhere to be seen but other from that, the tale can happen at almost any time - remove these parts and the story still works.

So what causes the problems for our young lovers? They belong to different castes. Saroja grew up in a town - taking care of her brother and father, spending her days in their one-room house (when not delivering them lunch), waiting to be married. Kumaresan grew up in a village in the Tamil Nadu where people are dirt poor and stick to the old ways. They meet when Kumaresan moves to the town so he can make some money and while learning how to make and sell soda, he convinces himself that he can marry Saroja and his mother and village will accept her. So they elope and return to the village, where things do not go exactly as any of them expected. And things are not helped by his decision to hide the difference in caste and to insist that they are the same caste - despite the difference in their skin tones and the fact that this is easy to check.

I am not sure if Kumaresan was just too optimistic and naive or if he was so used to being accepted and loved that it never crossed his mind that his mother, family and village may not accept his choice. Even when the initial reaction shows that he underestimated their reaction, he still does not realize just how badly things can turn out - refusing to return to the town with his new bride, going on with his life as if people would just forget and forgive and let him be.

Most of the story is told from Saroja's side - with us seeing her thoughts and memories. In these memories we see the two of them falling in love and courting but in her reality we see her dealing with a mother-in-law who thinks she is a witch (and worse) and a village which is not ready to accept her. She cannot even understand them half of the time - their Tamil is different from hers and the local dialect sounds almost like a different language (we also see Kumaresan struggling with that in the town and yet, when he brings her home, he never thinks for a second that this may be a problem). Kumaresan is mostly oblivious to Saroja's suffering - but then we have some hints that his mother behaves a bit better when he is around - Saroja wants her mother-in-law to explode in front of him so he can see what she lives through. The shock of living in an isolated hut in the middle of nowhere when she is used to the modern world does not help things much either. But she tries to hide even from herself how much this marriage had been a mistake - she is still in love, she still hopes that their love will be enough but she is losing her naivete and she is starting to realize that she cannot live there and that they need to find another way.

The end was almost expected. The author chose not to show us the very end - it is implied but there is enough of ambiguity to allow for a different interpretation. I usually dislike open endings but this one works (and depends on how you want to read it, it may not even be an open one - the implication is strong enough to count as a fact if one so chooses).

We are never told which caste is the higher one. Indian readers possibly would know that but even if you don't, it is never a question of grades - they are different so that's all that matters. Kumaresan's refusal to accept the reality and understand his mother's viewpoint drives the story towards its end. And right there, in the crossfire between tradition and love, between stubbornness and pride, is sitting Saroja - the naive young bride who just wants to be happy.

It is an interesting story of a place I don't know much about. I knew it won't be a happy story when I started reading it but I did not expect it to be as sad as it turned out to be. But I could not stop reading - the story, as predictable as it can be, has enough local color to make it worth reading. The author's choice of non-linear story (we get a lot of the action in memories from a year or a day ago) makes the narrative a bit jumpy and while it works in some places, it feels like an interruption in others (almost like an ad in the middle of a movie - you want it to end so you can get back to the story). Despite that, I was never sorry I picked up the book.

PS: A note on the cover - maybe whoever designs covers need to read the books they are designing the covers for. The bicycle is indeed important for the story but she never sits in front of him... so maybe when looking for an image of a couple on a bicycle, someone should have noticed that...

>135 AnnieMod: Making note of this. Your review makes me think I'd enjoy it.

95. In Case of Emergency by Mahsa Mohebali, translated from Persian/Farsi by Mariam Rahmani

Type: Novel (a bit too short but...), 37k words
Original Language: Persian/Farsi
Original Publication: 2008 (Persian/Farsi) as نگران نباش (Negarān nabāsh, literally translated as "Don't worry"); 2021 in English (this translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary, apocalyptic(~ish)
Format: paperback
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (2021)
Reading dates: 22 May 2022 - 22 May 2022

One night the tremors just started - Earth seems to be trying to dislodge Tehran from its place, throwing one earthquake after another - none of them being the big one but everyone panics that it is coming. So as the morning dawns, everyone is preparing to leave the city and flee to somewhere safer. And in the middle of that, Shadi, a young woman from a wealthy family, decides that she needs to find drugs - he stash is very low and she is about to go into withdrawal. So while everyone is leaving, she dons male clothes and goes out to see if she can find her friends (and dealers).

While the city slowly (and not slowly) falls apart around her, she leads us on a tour across Tehran - from visiting a friend who chose that day to try to kill himself again to her oldest friend. And while we watch the crowds, we get the backstory of addiction and neglect, of revolution and resistance. Once upon a time, her mother was saved from being arrested during the revolution by Shadi's father - a university professor who is more interested in his students than in his family (we never get to meet him, we only hear of him). They get married, have 3 kids (Shadi is the middle one, the only girl) and still live together in the big house (complete with the paternal grandmother (which is losing her mind) and her maid (who does not speak Farsi)). But while they are comfortable at home, their children end up as different from each other as possible - the oldest is the Golden boy, Shadi is an addict and the youngest is a drug dealer (but not of opium which is Shadi's poison).

So here we are, at the start of the day in which everyone flees Tehran, with Shadi on a hunt for her drugs. Remove Tehran and you get Patrick Melrose's chase of oblivion in Edward St. Aubyn's Bad News - the two novels are very similar in their tone and in the self-destructive behavior of the main characters, both of them having grown up wealthy (Shadi was never abused - so her falling into the same trap has other reasons). I am not sure if the author read St. Aubyn's novel and got influenced by it or it is one of these weird cases where two authors get the same idea (St. Aubyn is partially writing from experience and real life stories tend to repeat themselves).

Somewhere in that mad dash across Tehran, we see Iran in a light which we rarely do - depression, addiction and apathy combined with the old revolutionaries (now parents and grown up) make up a picture which apparently was bad enough for the book to be censored a few times in Iran.

Talking about censorship, the translator's note made me raise my brow a bit. The novel is full of coarse and vulgar language (Shadi is especially foul mounted but so are all the people who she meets) which is very different from any other Farsi novel I had ever read. As it turned out, the original has a lot less of it because the censors would not have allowed it so the translator made the choice to add to the language and make most of the word choices coarser, partially to de-censor the book and partially because the America audience that she was translating for is used to a lot coarser language and she was looking to translate the meaning and depth of difference - which will be lost if the novel stayed at the level it was written in Farsi. My first reaction to this explanation was negative - but I had been thinking about it and it does make some sense -- translating cross-cultures sometimes loses the cultural impact and in this novel, this is important. The author was apparently consulted but how much the translation matches the intent is not entirely clear.

So did we get a translation or an interpretation of this novel into English? That may be a bit debatable. I suspect that a different translator may look at this differently and make different choices. But at the same time, looking at the novel as a whole, it suits the narrative - in the ears of someone who reads mainly Western books anyway. It is designed to shock but then the shock thresholds are different and the translation tried to reach the same one, despite the cultural differences.

I ended up liking the novel - not because Shadi is especially likeable but because she is not. She is a lost rich girl which just happens to live in Tehran where she needs to dress as a man to move freely and where if you have money, drugs are everywhere (there are some notes about the opium issues in the country in the same Translator note I was talking about above). And that is what makes this story work for me - she is in a different place, some of the things she does are different but at the same time it is a story that can happen anywhere, making the locality one of the main characters.

We never learn how the story ends - the novel has an ending because the drug-finding trip ends but the bigger story is wide open. It feels like we saw the story of one person in the big city and if we zoom into another one, we can get another story. And another. And over them all is the Tehran falling apart - from the tremors in the novel but they are pretty easily seen as a metaphor for the problems of the real city - at least if one so wishes to see them.

An interesting novel about the side of a country we do not hear much about - the news reports are full of stories of Iran but as any other country and culture, what it shows to the world is just one side of the story. How realistic this novel is is beyond the point - there are enough parts that click well enough to ensure that you know that it is not all invented, even if all characters and actions are.

96. The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Steffan Ros, translated from the Welsh by Manon Steffan Ros

Type: Novella/short novel, 28k words
Original Language: Welsh
Original Publication: 2018 (Welsh) as Llyfr Glas Nebo; 2021 in English (this translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: Post-apocalyptic
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Reading dates: 22 May 2022 - 23 May 2022

At first, the news were not that alarming - bombs went off in American cities. For Rowenna and her son Dylan, tucked in rural Wales, this is half a world away - although she was worried enough to go and buy all the food she could. Then the power went off and never came back. Then the local power plant (or something in that direction) went up and the clouds brought radiation sickness. But this is not where this book starts. That was all in the past, in 2018, when Dylan was 6, when The End came. Now he is 14 and for the last 8 years he had lived with his mother in their isolated house - never meeting anyone besides the neighbors who left in the first months of the new world. For all he knows, the two of them are the last people on Earth (well, not exactly - because there is Mona, his 2 years old sister and he learned a few months ago that that would have required at least one more person to be alive. But he will never ask - because when his mother does not like a question, she closes up - and that hurts).

If one knows anything about Welsh legends, they would recognize what the title of the book is playing on - the Red Book of Hergest and the Black Book of Carmarthen preserved enough of the legends in the same way this book preserves the chronicles of these times (if you do not recognize the reference, Dylan will tell you pretty early in the books). The first chapter starts with Dylan telling us how they found the notebook he is now writing in -- because this whole book is a diary, written by two people - Rowenna and Dylan. Early on, he writes about their now-and-here, she writes about the past - including The End. But that division soon melts away and both of them write about whatever they feel like writing about. And that's how we finally learn what happened - although we never get the full picture - Rowenna never knew the bigger story so we never do either. It is a story of survival and finding the will to continue, to preserve your life. But somewhere in there is also a love song for the Welsh language and literature - because when she is sure that everything is over, Rowenna saves books, despite not being a big reader) - both in English and in Welsh. She even learns to love again her mother tongue - she was reared up speaking Welsh but she stopped using it because her teachers wanted the book Welsh and hers was the lived-in version so she just gave up. The book is full if these almost randomly thrown ideas which make you think about the world we live in.

The short novel (novella really) is heartbreaking at times although in a few places it felt forced - the author was looking for the emotion instead of letting the prose elicit it. And the end managed to surprise me - if I knew it was coming, I would have thought of it was a hopeful end but reading it at the end of the story, it felt like a nightmare made real. I had to stop and think of my reaction to it - it did nor make any sense on the surface. And yet it does - because the story turns on its head the concept of what is normal and good - and makes you wonder if the world we live in is really worth saving if it gets to that.

It is a depressing book on so many levels. The story of survival, of a child growing into an adult overnight and of a mother, who even in that world finds a way to punish is not always an easy read (not that Rowenna is a bad mother but she is a person and getting stuck with someone who depends on you, seeing that someone grow up long before his time takes its toll). But at the same time it is a not so bad way to make the reader look into their own life and figure out what is really important. And to make you slow down and appreciate what you have.

The story's style is deceptively easy - as all of it is written by a boy who learned his language from books and from a woman who never wrote anything since school (and was not a big reader either). So there is some simplicity in the language which may make the whole narrative sound almost shallow. I do not know how that sounded in Welsh but as the book was translated into English by the author, I assume that this was intentional (although I am not that sure about the places where it seemed to slip a bit). But that language sells the story even more than the narrative does - because it fits, you can imagine both Rowenna and her son and you wonder if you could have survived if that happened to you. And when a book makes you think that way, the book did its job (even if it has issues and is not perfect).

>136 RidgewayGirl: Probably. While I was reading, I was thinking that this will probably work for the more literary-minded members of the group, especially the ones that also participate in the Reading Globally (as I had mentioned more than once, I can read literary but given a choice, I gravitate towards the genres). I enjoyed it anyway :)

>138 AnnieMod: Interesting book, thanks for the thorough review. I think I'd like to stay away from the "heart-breaking" and "depressing" post-apocalyptic and dystopian stuff for a while (famous last words).

>140 avaland: Yeah, I can understand that. I am not a fan of the genre at the best of times (I like some of it but its proliferation in the last decade or so had been too much) but this one works (despite some issues I have with it). Plus how many books will have a character seriously asking why the Bible should be accepted as a serious book while Harry Potter is supposed to be just a story (and that actually making sense in the context of the story -- far future stories notwithstanding - things like that do happen here) :)

>141 AnnieMod: :-)

97. Red Sorghum: A Novel of China by Mo Yan, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt

Type: Novel, 134k words
Original Language: Chinese
Original Publication: 1987 (Chinese) as 红高粱家族 as a novel, 1986 as 5 novellas; 1993 in English (this translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: Historical, Mythology-related
Format: paperback
Publisher: Penguin
Reading dates: 16 May 2022 - 26 May 2022

Originally published as 5 separate novellas, the novel can feel a bit disjointed in places - the main timeline in each of them is slightly different and that changes how the story inside of each segment works. But the novel has a unified overall structure - each of the stories weaves in and out of different timelines (sometimes multiple times on the same page) and ends up fitting like a puzzle - every part of the stories fit in its own place and by the time you finish the novel, you have the story of a family from the early 20th century to the 80s. It is heavier on the earlier part of the stories - the story of Grandma in the 20s and the Father's story in the 30s and early 40s dominate the story; the story of the narrator which spans the 60s-80s are there mostly for comparison and in short notes. The more you know of Chinese history, the more you will get from some of these glimpses into these periods -- without at least a basic idea, some of their importance can be lost.

But it is not just a historical novel - it weaves in a lot of mythology into the narrative. Sometimes it is hard to draw the line between the real and the unreal and between the mythological and the historical. Add the constant shift between the timelines (and in one of the chapters in the viewpoint - the story about the dogs is so full of allusions and metaphors that I was never sure if it is part of the novel really or if it was added just as a commentary. On the other hand, it actually connects with the main story and allows some additional comparisons and insights which add to the tapestry of the novel).

In a way, it is as much the story of a family as it is a story of a country. From Grandma, still proud with her golden lotuses (bound feet), through the rebels fighting against Japan (although it seemed to fight more internally than with the imperial army) and into the modern times, the family changes as China changes. That's where the story really shines - the family sounds unconventional but is connected to the traditions of the times in so many ways that you can almost see where the traditional turns into a new thing. It is this constant change that ends up the main thread that connects the disjointed parts of the story - and a lot of that change was almost hidden into the colors through the story - keeping track of what colors are mentioned and where helps with the understanding of the story. These two threads, the constant change and the colors, are there to the very end - from the ghost of the Second Grandma who makes a point to come back from the grave to condemn the narrator for spending so much time in the city to that very last stalk of red sorghum which somehow survived the change to higher yielding varietals - it all came back down to tradition and change, to the new and the old. And depending on how you want to read certain parts, you may get a different idea of which side the narrator (or the author) is on.

It is not an easy novel to read through - between the time jumps (some predictable, some feeling as if the author wrote the stories and then cut them into pieces and just inserted one into the other in random places), the constant stories starting with their ends (we were told what happened before we were told the story of that event) and the gory details in some parts of the story, it required a certain state of mind. Keeping track of the various stories became easier as the novel progressed and as the reader gets more familiar with the people (some of which had different names in different periods - and the author made the distinction clear so one had to follow these and connect the dots when the timelines intersected), the story started to feel less of a jumble. But sometimes it still seemed more like a literary exercise than a novel - while the story is in there, the modernistic style felt a bit too overwhelming. It adds to the uneasiness that the novel projects and was probably designed with that in mind but I wonder if a bit less jumbled story, even if it was still not completely linear, would not have served the underlying story better. But considering that it was published in the form of separate stories in various magazines and that it is the first novel of the author play somewhat into this - the different chapters/novellas have their own internal cohesiveness.

I am still not entirely sure if I liked the novel. There is enough in it that I enjoyed so I am not sorry that I read it but I found it heavy going in places where I least expected. It could have used some notes and a glossary - while some elements were supposed to be explained in the novel (and they were), the initial audience of the novel would have recognized some of the references in the Chinese text.

98. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, April 1967, edited by Ellery Queen (editor-in-chief)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1967
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 18 May 2022 - 27 May 2022

The next magazine on the pile ended up being a 1967 one again - and the one immediately after the one discussed in >76 AnnieMod:. I rarely read things out of order (even when they are not connected) but I keep resisting reordering the pile so at this point I just pull a random magazine out of it when I am done with the previous one.

4 reprints and 8 new stories (plus a poem and Boucher's Best Mysteries of the Month column) make up another enjoyable installment of the magazine. No "First Story" in this issue which is unusual.

Julian Symons opens the issue with The Crimson Coach Murders (originally published in The Evening Standard in 1960 as "The Summer Holiday Murders"). The English countryside proves to be as deadly as usual when people start dying while on a coach tour. As expected there are both a real policeman and an amateur detective (this time a novelist) and enough red herrings to keep the story interesting.

Robert Bloch's The Living Dead has an actor playing his role a bit too convincingly (that's also the only story in this issue I had read before and even if I knew where it was going, the end still works).

Edward D. Hoch adds a Rand story with The Spy Who Came Out of the Night. He is sent to Switzerland to deal with a Russian spy. The Chinese get involved and before long things start getting really weird - everyone is a spy so nothing is what it looks. It is a good story although almost 50 years later some elements feel very dated (while some prove that some things just never change).

Jacqueline Cutlip's The Trouble of Murder ended up more enjoyable than I expected from its start. An old man gets killed for what he owns - and the killer ends up with a few very nasty surprises. Moral of the story: crime does not pay.

Lenore Glen Offord's poem Memoirs of a Mystery Critic reprinted from "Mystery Writers Annual 1966" is entertaining.

Cornell Woolrich provides another of the reprints: The Case of the Talking Eyes from the September 1939 issue of Dime Detective Magazine, here simply called The Talking Eyes. A woman is paralyzed after an accident and all she can move are her eyes. That is bad enough but Mrs. Janet Miller had made her peace with her condition and had found a reason to live. Until someone decides to snatch that reason - leaving her as the only witness. It is a tightly woven story and despite it being longer than the usual stories in the magazine, Woolrich manages to make every word count.

The next two stories go together: Sir Ordwey Views the Body by Rhoda Lys Storey is a pastiche which tries to emulate Sayers' style but ends up almost a parody. The most interesting part of it is deciphering all the names - and even that is provided at the end of the story - they are all anagrams. The story itself is weak (with or without the connection) and the usual style of Wimsey which it tries to imitate ends up sounding almost buffoony.

That pastiche story is not helped much by the story that follows: The Queen’s Squarea reprint of an actual Lord Peter Wimsey story by Dorothy L. Sayers (originally published in the December 23 1932 issue of The Radio Times). Just as in the pastiche, a body is discovered and it seems to be an impossible crime. As this one happens during a mask ball, everyone expects that the solution will be the usual swap of clothes but as usual Sayers do not disappoint and manages to pull off another credible solution. And even if it is not the most original story, it works even better after the pastiche preceding it.

Jim Thompson's Exactly What Happened introduces us to a man who thinks he has the perfect plan. It is a very short story and as usual at this length, it relies on a surprise at the end. And it pulls it off.

The last of the reprints is H. R. Wakefield's 1940 story I Recognised the Voice (here called The Voice in the Inner Ear). A man tells a story to another one, the latter with a reputation of having something like a sixth sense. The story is mildly speculative (there is a hint of it) and while the inner story was mildly interesting I found the whole thing unsatisfying (and I usually like stories inside stories).

L. J. Beeston's Melodramatic Interlude features another story inside of a story - this one about an old betrayal and revenge. Add some good music and a woman and it works a lot better than the previous one. The end made me laugh - not because it is funny but because of course it had to end this way.

Christopher Anvil's The Problem Solver and the Burned Letter is one his "Richard Verner, Heuristician" stories. A man dies and one of his two sons seems to be in frame for the murder - except that Verner is convinced that something just does not add up. It is a nice story of detection although I found the detective (I am sorry, the heuristician) a bit too clever in a bad way.

Lawrence Treat's P as in Payoff is a story about a jaded police detective who ends up working on (and solving) a robbery case that was not even his own - and losing some free entertainment tickets in the process. It is a light-hearted story, perfect to close the issue with.

99. Devils and Details by Devon Monk

Type: Novel, 96k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2016
Series: Ordinary Magic (2)
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Format: ebook
Publisher: Odd House Press
Reading dates: 26 May 2022 - 29 May 2022

Back to Ordinary, Oregon where the Gods go on vacation (after storing their powers safely). Except that the "safely" part kinda gets a bit complicated when the powers get stolen. When a vampire is found dead (in what appears to be an old ritual which should not have been possible anymore), Delaney has her hands full. Add to this Ryder (who has a secret - even if you had never read a novel of this genre before, you should have started guessing that Delaney's and Ryder's secrets are essentially parts of the same big secret - the existence of supernatural life. Thankfully Monk decided to cut the whole thing short so the two of them finally have their heart-to-heard conversation and get some misunderstandings cleared making it possible for Delaney to stop pining after him and for him to stop playing the tragic hero).

In the meantime, things escalate both in the case of the missing powers and in the vampire's death. Before the novel is over, a werewolf is almost dead, another vampire is missing and the powers are found - but that comes with a surprising twist for Ryder (because he just had to get tied to the town a bit more securely after all - the series demands it). And the resident Valkyrie manages to get everyone to do her bidding as usual.

It is still fluff and I occasionally want to hit a character (or three) and tell them to turn on their brains but it is still an enjoyable series and a nice palate cleaner between heavy books.

One note though: some of the actions in this novel makes it impossible for the prequel to actually work in the timeline. Yes, there are enough creatures who can change people's memories to make it vaguely possible but Delaney made a point multiple times that they do not do that to her so... I am not sure how it can fit. But that is a minor grumble.

And then it was June :)


100. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 25, 1981, edited by Eleanor Sullivan (managing editor)

Type: Magazine
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1981
Genre: mystery/crime
Format: digest
Reading dates: 28 May 2022 - 4 June 2022

As I was working through my Chinese book club thingie, I was apparently reading through my magazines faster than through the books for awhile. The next on the pile was a 1981 issue (the 4th of the 1981 issues I am reading this year). Somewhere between 1971 and 1981, the fiction had changed from two-columns to 1 column text (I prefer the 2 columns one); the non-fiction had been 1 column earlier but had now switched places and is in 2 columns. I probably can find out when exactly but it will be more fun if I find it while working through the magazines.

All covers anywhere have an address label - so does the copy I have and removing it will damage the magazine so I am just leaving it be. So the cover is whatever is available :)

10 stories, one of them a reprint (which I read in 2021 in another book as luck will have it) plus the usual non-fiction.

Clark Howard opens the issue with Top Con with a story set inside of a prison where you should really be very careful about who you trust. The author managed to surprise me - it was obvious that there will be a twist somewhere but I did not expect it to go that way.

In Jack Ritchie's Win Some, Lose Some, Detective Sergeant Henry H. Turnbuckle is called at the scene of what looks like a suspicious death - a woman got locked into a safe and died before anyone found her. It is a nice story of reasoning and detection, with a minimal cast of suspects and with enough details to make it enjoyable.

In A Woman Waits for Me by William Bankier a plastic surgeon in the middle of a middle-life crisis is trying to find a new life in Britain - and then meets two women - one older and plain and the other young and beautiful and more importantly, part of a theatrical group. You see, our protagonist always wanted to be an actor so he sees that a chance. Complications follow. While it was almost clear from the start where the story is going, the path to the end was entertaining enough not to become boring.

In Reg Bretnor's Wonder Cure a somewhat crazy criminal (a psychopath with family connections) is frozen so that one day when the doctors find cure for his condition, he can be cured and allowed to live a normal life. It was supposed to be a perfect plan and it worked - at least the part of defrosted anyway. The reality he ended up it may not have been exactly what he had in mind though. It is a very short story and that makes it compact enough for the story to work.

In A Matter of Conscience by Gary Alexander, a public defender refuses to toe the company line and just condemn a teenager for the murder of his whole family which left the boy, at 15, as the sole heir of a vast fortune. David Clay decides to find out what really happened even if noone else cared - and before long a tragic tale of domestic mental abuse and neglect emerges. By the end you almost do not care about who murdered the family - the tragedy of the living overshadows the ones of the dead (although we do get a resolution to that as well). The tale of obsession with money and status at the expense of one's real life connections is as old the world - and it is always a hard one to read.

A Harmless Vanity by Theda O. Henle starts with a triangle - a wife, a husband, a younger woman. You will ask yourself why this story is in a mystery and crime magazine until the very last paragraph which not only answers that but also makes you look back at what you just read and finally understand what happened (unless you were paying more attention to the details than I did apparently - the clues are in the story but it lulls you into missing them because at the time, it appears to be a different type of story altogether).

The Shanghai Gold Bars by Ta Huang Chi, the 575th first story, introduces us to Feng Da-wei, born in 1900, in the middle of the Boxers Rebellion in China and left to die when his village was exterminated. A missionary couple found him and fled with him, planning to leave him in an orphanage and ended up giving him a home. Now, 20+ years later (the actual story is not dated precisely), he is back in Shanghai, helping with the communication between the locals and the English speakers and working as a detective (among other things). When a deal goes south and money disappear he is asked to help - and he uses his knowledge of both his cultures to find out what really happened. The story is full of details of Shanghai and Chinese culture and superstitions and ended up one of my favorite stories in this issue.

The reprint by Erle Stanley Gardner is the Jerry Bane story The Affair of the Reluctant Witness from the Argosy April 1949 issue. Jerry Bane is a young man, an ex prisoner of war, who is dependent on his uncle's good will despite having a trust - the uncle makes all decisions about the money. Jerry is not exactly ready to go to work so he comes up with all kinds of weird schemes, assisted by his valet Mugs, an ex-cop with photographic memory and a missing arm. And this time it leads him to a pair of crooks, a young woman and maybe a way to get his uncle on his side (or at least off his back). I liked the story the first time I read it, I liked it this time as well - even though I recognized it from the start, it works on a reread and I enjoyed the barbs Jerry was throwing at his uncle even more this time around.

Christianna Brand's The Hand of God is a new spin on a revenge tale - a man who everyone knows killed a young woman and her baby by driving too fast is not charged because the father of the woman who saw the whole scene claimed that the driver was not at fault. As the witness was a cop, he was believed. It was always clear where this story leads but being predictable does not make it a bad one.

Edward D. Hoch, well into his unbroken stretch of having a story in every single issue of the magazine at this point, gets to close the issue with a Rand spy story The Spy and the Walrus Cipher. A Russian spy defects and will only talk to the now retired Rand. Before they manage to talk, the man dies but not before making sure that Rand knows that there is a traitor in the house. The bulk of the story is deciphering a message which is found on the dead man's body. Figuring out what the message was required knowledge of typing machines of a certain type... unless one managed to think outside of the box (it can be solved without it).

On the non-fiction side, Chris Steinbrunner talks about Little Orphan Annie's revivals in the other medias section, R. E. Porter talks about new bookstores and new clubs and zines (and one which folded before it even came out - but after the text for it was added higher on the page so the note is inserted at the bottom, under the columns), a second part of an interview with Hugh Pentecost (I seem to be always reading the second parts of these before the first ones) and Jon L. Breen adds "The Jury Box" mentioning books I mostly had never heard of.

101. Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas

Type: Novel, 171k words
Original Language: Chinese
Original Publication: 2004 (Chinese) as 受活; 2012 in English (this translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: Contemporary, Absurdist, Satire
Format: paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Reading dates: 27 May 2022 - 4 June 2022

Deep into the Balou Mountains of China is hiding the village of Liven (受活/Shouhuo in the original - the same name as the novel's title; the novel plays with its language a lot and the translator Rojas had done a marvelous job with that (or so it seems - I do not read Chinese but the English version works on the language level)). Almost all its residents are disabled in one way or another and for most of its history the world simply forgot that it existed. When the story opens in the 1990s, the residents are trying very hard to get back to that stage of being unknown and forgotten - they really do not like the world they rejoined a few years earlier.

Chief Liu, the county chief, has grand ambitions - which are somewhat curtailed by the fact that he is in charge of an insignificant region where nothing interesting happens. With the collapse of USSR, the Lenin Mausoleum is in danger of collapsing so he decides he will buy the corpse, build a new home for it in the mountains and charge a lot of money for people who come to see it - after all why wouldn't everyone want to come and see it. But all his plans to secure the money end up in disasters until he visits Liven (not for a first time apparently) and decides to create a troupe of its disabled performers - showcasing them around the region. And off they go to conquer the countryside.

The only voice of reason in the village is Grandma Mao Zhi - the informal leader of the community whose only ambition is to make sure that Liven is left alone. So despite all disagreements (and personal animosity), deals are struck and the plan seems to work. Well, for awhile anyway.

As absurd as most of the plot can sound, it is really a very thinly veiled reference to the change China was undergoing in the 90s. And through the notes, we get to see the previous few decades as well, turning the novel into almost a historical novel.

The novel is a challenging read. You do not even know how to read it at first (or ever I suspect) - there are notes which can be just clarification of words or can be long background stories. And some of those notes have notes which have notes and so on. These notes are sometimes placed at the end of a chapter and sometimes they form the next chapter but there is no rhyme or reason in where they appear in a given chapter (I suspect it was done to ensure the number of chapters but who knows). So do you read the novel in the order it is printed or do you go chasing after the notes going deeper and deeper? That is left to the reader to decide - I ended up doing both in different places depending on how much I wanted to stay with the current story. Except that not reading the notes made some of the current stories read in a different way compared to how they read when you had the backstory. And then the book constantly plays with your head - Lianke uses only odd numbers for his books and chapters and notes numbering so it often feels like you missed one somewhere... And you can miss a lot of the things hiding in the titles if you are not paying attention - for example the titles of the Books form a tree (from roots to fruit and branches). How that is supposed to be interpreted is a left to the reader to decide.

At the end it is really a story of the old vs. the new, of the traditional vs. the dreams of the cadres. It is a satire of China in the say way the science fiction tales of the Soviet and Eastern European authors managed to criticize the regime even under the strictest censure a few decades earlier. And just as with these stories, the humans are just human - warts and all. So awful things happen to people who do not deserve them and some almost supernatural occurrences happen occasionally (more in the magical realism space than going into fantasy). But the story could get very repetitive at times (especially when money calculations started - it was a deliberate mocking of the lust for money but...) and the back story was a lot more interesting than the story in the 1990s.

The novel won't work for everyone - it is too weird in ways which really do not conform with anything I can think of. You can see different Chinese and Western influences (and some Eastern European ones) but it is something different (or at least I had never read anything like that before). It felt like some of the goriness in some scenes was there almost only for the shock value of it and the whole story could have used an editor to shorten it a bit - by the end the whole thing was getting too much. But at the same time, it had interesting points to make about the treatment of the disabled and of how China had been changing since the beginning of the Revolution (the current one anyway).

The translator's note at the start of the novel is very helpful. As the novel uses the Chinese 60 years calendar, the translator decided to assist the readers by mentioning the date as we will know it the first time the year is mentioned. I wish he had added it every time or had added all mentioned years in a glossary (with a few more things in there) but in a way that added yet another layer to the puzzle box which is masquerading as a novel here.

I almost did not finish the novel - the beginning was too absurd and bizarre. But it was the back story that drew me in and by the time I realized what was happening, I was halfway through so I just decided to finish it. And even if it did not completely work for me, there were enough in there for me to look for other books by the author.

As for the choice of cover and title of the English edition... I am still not sure what this was all about (yes, it is not absolutely illogical but it also pushes you into expecting a different kind of novel in a way).

102. Waiting by Ha Jin

Type: Novel, 90k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1999
Series: N/A
Genre: Historical novel, Romance
Format: paperback
Publisher: Vintage International
Reading dates: 4 June 2022 - 5 June 2022

A Chinese novel written in English by a man who decided to stay in the West after the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. Which does not make either the novel or the author less Chinese - but it makes the novel a bit more accessible than translated novels.

My library initially shelved this into its romance section but then re-shelved under General Fiction (and never covered the old label fully so it is still vaguely visible). And I am not surprised. On the surface it looks like a romance novel. In a way it is a romance novel - in the same way Anna Karenina is a romance novel for example.

Lin Kong is trying to find a way to be with the woman he loves. He is an army doctor, living in the city but married to a woman in a distant village who he sees once a year. He never chose his bride, Shuyu - his parents arranged his marriage and he meekly accepted. He even managed to produce a daughter with her - and while she took care of his dying parents one after the other, he built his life in the city. Shuyu is old-fashioned even for the village - she has bound feet (which she is the wrong generation for - her mother's generation was supposed to be the last one to suffer with that but she was not spared, she is uneducated and unsophisticated - the wrong woman for Lin Kong in all possible ways.

And there is Manna Wu, a nurse in the same hospital, Lin Kong's sweetheart who he cannot even hold hands with or go on a walk with outside of the hospital compound because of the rules that everyone lives with. China of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s is not exactly known for allowing a lot of freedom.

So when the novel opens, Lin Kong and Shuyu are in front of a judge, after 17 years of separation, in 1983, asking for a divorce. Until Shuyu changes her mind again and the judge denies the request again. That had been happening over and over for more than a decade and Lin Kong is getting disheartened. But that's not really where the story must start - because after this interlude, we go back to 1963 to see Lin Kong becoming a doctor and falling in love and then living through all the years until we can catch up with them in 1983.

And as much as it is the story of Manna Wu and Lin Kong, it is also the a glimpse into the history of China and the relationships in it in this era - restricted, monitored, always on the verge of becoming a disaster. And the two women represent the old and the new, the traditional and the modern and in places become more symbols than actual human beings. But underneath that they are people, with feelings and regrets and the symbolic person and the real one merge into a single entity. People are people - it does not matter what ideology you believe in, love is always going to be there. But at the same time the novel is also an exploration of what happens to love when it needs to wait and what happens when people try to hang to dreams from decades ago.

In a way the novel has a happy ending but not in the way one would expect. It makes one wonder what is worth fighting for and if dreams are worth getting realized at the end. In that triangle, the weakest link is always Lin Kong - his indecisiveness ends up costing decades of the lives of both women connected to him and at the end he is the one who gets to complain. There is a lot to be said about the female characters here and the place of women in the society - the "we are all the same" of communism was always a nice slogan but never really worked like that.

I ended up liking this novel a lot. It has a melancholy feeling that works in a way I did not expect it to work - underneath the seemingly easy novel sits a meditation on love and choices, on dreams coming true too late and on human nature.

103. The Song of Everlasting Sorrow by Wang Anyi, translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan

Type: Novel, 199k words
Original Language: Chinese
Original Publication: 1995 (Chinese) as 長恨歌; 2008 in English (this translation)
Series: N/A
Genre: Historical
Format: hardcover
Publisher: Columbia University Press, Weatherhood Books on Asia
Reading dates: 5 June 2022 - 11 June 2022

The city of Shanghai had always been different - a bridge between the East and the West, with its own culture and traditions. In its longtang, people are used to living almost on top of each other and knowing everything about their neighbors.

Wang Qiyao was born in one of the houses in these alleys and in 1946, after the Japanese finally leave China is ready to conquer the world. Her tickets to fame are her beauty and her fashion sense - the first will fade with time, the latter will carry her through the next 40 years. The novel spans the 4 decades from 1946 to 1986 - from the days immediately after the war, through the creation of the PRC, the Great Leap Forward and the famine, the Cultural Revolution and the opening to the world. But it is not about the big events - they are there in the background but almost never called by name - instead we see how they change the life of Wang Qiyao and those around her instead. You do not need to know much about Chinese history to enjoy the novel but a general idea of the period and what happens in what order helps to put things into perspective.

It all starts almost like a dream - after failing to get a role in a film, Wang Qiyao ends up as the second runner up in the Miss Shanghai contest and that propels her to some fame. It looks like she is set for life when she chooses to become a concubine (an old tradition in China) but then the world changes and that one decision marks her life forever. She falls in love a few times in the decades that follow and she even manages to get a daughter but the carefree and almost naive girl of the 1940s grows into a beautiful and cold woman who uses the people she needs to (when she does not have other choices anyway) and lives her own life. Except that she never finds what she looks for - her connections never really become very close ones, one set of friends replaces another and you can almost see the echoes in the later ones - they look like a faded copy of the original. China and Shanghai change all the time but not always in the direction she needs them to go - by the time the world finally gets to some approximation of the old world, Wang Qiyao is the faded copy. And yes she keeps trying - because she just do not know how to give up. People die around her, other disappear but she is still there - the woman of Shanghai.

It is a fascinating story but the style takes awhile to get used to. It switches between lyrical and everyday all the time - sometimes inside of the same sentence. It took me awhile to place the style - despite when it was written and the time it covers, its style is closer to the Victorian novels and the Russian and French novels of the 19th century than to anything more modern. Once that clicks, once you resolve the disjointedness coming from the conflicting style and story, it becomes a lot easier to read.

The end was not really surprising - the way it happened came almost as a shock but the novel was always going to lead there - there was no other ending possible for Wang Qiyao.

I still cannot decide if the novel was overly long or if it had to be that long. The style takes awhile to grow on you but once it does, it feels almost natural - I cannot imagine Wang Qiyao's story told in any other way. You do not even need to like her - I found a lot of her actions questionable and her self-serving as a whole. But then everyone is an egoist when it gets down to their survival and Wang Qiyao manages to survive (with a bit of a help from a dead friend's gift when at the end of it. It is somewhat ironic that what makes it possible for her to survive is also what makes her story unchangeable - the author almost talks directly to her in the last pages of the novel but even that cannot change the trajectory her life had always been on).

The edition I read has two notes - a translator note at the start (which explains some changes done for readability - apparently the Chinese text was even denser, with run-on sentences and direct speech directly incorporated into the narrative with no markers where it is) and an afterword by Berry (which most publishers and editors would have called Introduction and put at the front of the book) which gives some context and details that help understand the novel better (and spoil it if you read it first).

I am not sure if I can recommend this novel - not because it is a bad one but because I really don't know who it will work for. It is not exactly literary, it is nor exactly realism and it is not exactly 19th century and somehow it is all of that and then something else which is even harder to define. And yet, I am very happy that I read it.

Terrific series of reviews. Thanks. The last novel looks like it might be the most intriguing for me. I will keep an eye out . . . Cheers!

>150 rocketjk: Possibly. It appears to be the most liked of the 4 anyway... I liked Waiting a bit more in terms of language and storytelling (although the story of the last is indeed the most appealing).

And back to the non-reading updates:

And to finish my note on "ChinaX Book Club: Five Authors, Five Books, Five Views of China" from >119 AnnieMod:

Having finished the 5 books and all the videos in the class and so on (just before my access expired), that's one more completed class, even if it does not really count as completed in the platform :)

That was an interesting experience. I've never been in a Book Club and the last time I had a class in any literature related topics was my senior year of high school so that was a departure. The class structure is pretty straight forward: 5 weeks, each week talking about one book (introduction of the author, intro of the book, close reading (some had notes from the instructors, some did not), wrap up, a glossary (which 3 of the novels could have used as part of the books - I was glad I found these before I read the novels because they were helpful and minimized my googling) and a discussion about the book (Office Hours of a type - a conversation about the book between the professor and a phd candidate from his faculty based on the discussions in the forum and whatever else questions the two of them want to discuss). Technically there is also a discussion forum but this is where edx is a bit annoying - as classes get reset every year (or every few years), when the next version (which is the same class material), the old forum is lost (or archived somewhere - I could not find it anyway). So the office hours segment had screenshots of forum posts and discussions which would have been interesting to read through (I paused the screen and read what they showed but it was not the whole threads of course) thus adding more things to consider. But oh well - for a free class, I cannot grumble too much (you won't get more if you pay for it either so...)

At the end of the class, there was a conclusion video discussing the 5 books, their times and so on and an extra bonus one with the two graduate students/phd candidates discussing other books they recommend.

Some videos were less helpful than others (plus there was one missing - somewhere in the shuffle of adding reedited material, two versions of the same segment were added instead of the others), some confirmed what I had been thinking while reading, some added context, some made me realize I missed things. Overall I enjoyed it - although I wish I had more time especially towards the end - 3 of the books ended up being a lot slower reads than I anticipated so I had to stop reading almost anything else (or run the risk of either not getting to the last videos). Technically I could have saved them and watched offline later but when I do that, I tend to put things on the "this can wait" pile and 10 years later, it is usually still there.

So where to next? Literature-wise I am seriously eyeing "Masterpieces of World Literature" https://pll.harvard.edu/course/masterpieces-of-world-literature?delta=3 (it also comes split into 2 separate classes: "Ancient Masterpieces of World Literature" https://pll.harvard.edu/course/ancient-masterpieces-world-literature?delta=2 and "Modern Masterpieces of World Literature" https://pll.harvard.edu/course/modern-masterpieces-world-literature?delta=2) for later in the year.... Although I think I will do some pre-reading when I get to them... Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, back to Chinese history on the edx classes with the second ChinaX class (Qin, Han and Buddhism) plus another Coursera class: "Introduction to Classical Music" from Yale: https://www.coursera.org/learn/introclassicalmusic (funny story about this one -- it was supposed to be my light and easy summer class so I looked at the arts section for something that looked fun... famous last words. It is challenging (I never played an instrument or sang in a choir and the 10 years of mandatory music in school is half forgotten - I still can read notes (we did some fixed-do solfege) but that is about it) but it is a lot of fun so... will talk about it more when I am done with it in a couple of months or so).

And the last of the missing reviews (before I go and finish something else and fall behind again).


104. Plague Birds by Jason Sanford

Type: Novel, 106k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Series: N/A
Genre: Science Fiction, Horror
Format: ebook
Publisher: Apex Publications
Reading dates: 2 June 2022 - 12 June 2022

While I was in the middle of all of those Chinese novels (all of them on paper), I had to deal with a few doctor visits which meant that I needed a Kindle book. So I pulled this year's Philip K. Dick Award Nominees list again and that one was available from the library (after finishing this one the only one I had not read from the list is the winner). In some ways, it actually worked perfectly with them - between the red color being everywhere and the horror, it kinda felt like a cousin to the Chinese novels.

At some time in the future humanity had almost managed to breed itself out of existence - everyone is a gene-mix with animal genes spliced and the pure human genome had been eradicated. Add AIs in the mix and humanity was not what one would think of when saying the word today. The problem with all that splicing of course is that together with the wanted elements, unwanted ones sneaked in and humanity starting devolving. Some more time passed, a few wars followed and about 10,000 years ago an agreement was finally reached: humans who want to regain their humanity leave the cities and live in villages, overseen, helped and essentially controlled by AIs, the ones who rather be free join the Hunt and live in tribes in the wild areas (and give in to their animal natures occasionally) and human-AI hybrids, called plague birds, serve as judge, jury and executioner for humanity - always working alone, always having the last word. The goal of the three-fold system (as this was called) was to allow the remaining humans to regain their humanity back but 10 millennia later things had not changed from where the started. Except that now there is a weirdly powerful organization called the Veil - and they seem to be trying to exterminate the plague birds.

This is where the story starts. The beginning of the novel can be a bit confusing in places because until you get the framework, it can go in a lot of different directions. But let's meet our protagonist - Crista, a wolf-human hybrid (there are not real humans left anywhere so everyone is a hybrid of one sort or another), minding her own business in her village. Until a plague bird dies (injured by a Veil assassin) anyway - and the AI that used to be bonded with her ends up in Crista. And just like that our wolf-girl becomes a wolf-human-AI girl and off she goes into the world, chasing the Veil.

The AI that ends up part of her is called Red Day and unlike the wolf genes which are just part of what Crista is, he is an individual entity that just lives in her blood - and can read her mind and emotions. In some ways he is more of a parasite than a symbiont but either word applies really. Once he is in Crista, he starts updating her on the world - holding a lot of the information for when she is ready. Which annoys Crista most of the time so the two of them end up in something of a stalemate often (although as she is the living organism, she controls Red Day in most things which gets him as annoyed at her as she is at him - he is really not prepared to deal with a teenage girl). On their hunt they find all kinds of weird things - from a monastery which keeps all knowledge (and whose monks are cannibalistic monsters) to other AIs; from a monster who eats people (there is a lot of people eating in the novel...) to a sentient city and a girl that is anything but. And in the process Crista not only learns a lot about her own world but also about herself (both in expected ways and unexpected ones - because she was never just a wolf-girl).

It is a very gory novel, technically a science fiction one but leaning very heavily into horror (in some ways it is as much a hybrid as Crista is a wolf-human one). Some of it seemed to be there just for the sake of being there - but then I am not much of a fan of gory horror anyway. My bigger issue with the novel though is that it there are too many overpowered AIs in the mix and in order for the story to work, they had to either end up doing something weird or for a weakness to manifest. Which worked a few times but by the end of the novel it started feeling like a cheap way out (although the very end does tie things together nicely for most of the story threads - except for one which probably was left there to allow a sequel one day if one is desired). While this kind of story can work in the shorter lengths, in a full blown novel this inability to predict what the next weakness will be ends up being a bit of a distraction - it always ends up being what it is needed to be for the story to progress and that feels very Silver Age of comics kind of writing. Which is fun on its own but is not what the rest of the story called for...

This novel is actually an extension of a short story from 2010 (which I had not read) and I suspect that at least part of these issues do not exist there. I need to find that story but based on the description in an audio version I found of it, it seems to be just the turning of Crista into a plague bird (which is the start of the novel).

At the end, it is not a bad novel and I can see why it got its Philip K. Dick Award nomination. But it did not really hold completely together for me (even if I could not stop reading it - I wanted to know what happened next but I could have lived without some of the gory details and with less of the AIs playing coy and getting suddenly vulnerable). I've read 4 of the other nominees before I read this one (the only one I had not read yet is the winner) and this one is the weakest of them all.

>148 AnnieMod: I liked Waiting, but War Trash even more. I have three other books by Ha Jin on my shelves. Your review makes me want to get to them.

>153 labfs39: I plan to return to him as a writer (to all 5 from the class (plus all others they or the class recommended or mentioned)) so we shall see. That one sounded more westernized (in its style, not in the story) than the other 3 novels (the non-fiction is non-fiction) and that made it easier to read - as much as I like exploring, a familiar style makes things easier to comprehend. Not that the Western novels are one homogeneous mass of course but as I usually dislike modernist playing with the style, they kinda have an underlying logic in them.

I have a magazine to review (and probably a book tomorrow) but in the meantime, I had been working through my two classes in the evenings and you would think that Classical Western Music (starting in the Middle ages essentially) and the Chinese Qin Dynasty (~220 BCE) would have nothing in common and yet while discussing the Cosmic Resonance Theory, there was a text (from the Huainanzi) which probably would not have made much sense to me a few weeks ago immediately (about plucking one lute string and others reacting - either on the same instrument or on others. One of them is physics, the other one is knowing how lute strings are ordered (Western lute and Chinese ones are different of course) but I don't think I would have connected the physics of sound to that comment as quickly (the Chinese class did make the connection for you if you missed it but still, that was interesting).

Serendipity... in unexpected places. Probably most people reading that are laughing (because they knew what the facts here and would have connected them) but had I seen that sentence a week ago, I would have been a bit confused until I worked it out in my head (or someone else told me). Plus all I knew about any lutes a week ago was that they have strings...

I've meant to read something by Ha Jin, just because he seems like an interesting, far-ranging author. Good reviews all around!

>143 AnnieMod: This was the first Mo Yan book I read, after having seen the amazing film. He is now one of my favourite authors, although his latest, Frog was a bit of a disappointment.
I was going to ask if you will read more by him, but you answered that further down (>154 AnnieMod:).

>147 AnnieMod: >149 AnnieMod: New to me and added to my list, which seems to have a preponderance of books from you!

>148 AnnieMod: A favourite of his, but like >153 labfs39:, I liked War Trash even better.

Enjoyed reading your thoughts on all these.

>156 lisapeet: Thanks :)

>157 SassyLassy: Sorry about the preponderance (nah... not sorry) :) I wish I did not have to read these 5 so fast after one another - but then I did not want the spoilers and wanted that class so... it kinda worked out. I may return to some of them (the books I mean, the authors I know I am returning to).

In case someone was wondering where I disappeared (I did not even post the Victorian threads until a few hours ago - sorry about that:( ), I am having a weird summer.

My plan was to disappear for 3 weeks (the last of June and the first 2 of July) - a visit to Bulgaria, off internet almost completely, visiting friends and family - all good things. That did happen (and it was great). But the week before that I managed to get my knee badly injured. Note for anyone interested: flying with an injured knee is NOT a good thing for your health. And in that mess, I forgot to mention it here (or to post some threads that needed posting...).

So here I am, back this week, all ready to get back to normal and... one of my somewhat routine followups after the hospital stay last spring discovered something that required a second look and now turned into a somewhat urgent surgery ("somewhat" as in "it can wait the two weeks scheduling needed to get me on the schedule but it should not wait much longer" so... it is scheduled now for August 5). So I will be around for the next 2 weeks but then will be off for a bit again - or around in a weird form - who knows how I will feel after it... Not sure how much reviews I will write - between work and my not so good mood because of all that, I am really not in the right head space for reviews... Plus my knee is still bothering me...

Did I mention I am having a weird summer?

>158 AnnieMod: I wondered where you got to. Glad you got to go home but sorry about the knee injury. Hope the surgery and recovery go well. Keep us posted.

>158 AnnieMod: I'm sorry to hear of your health issues, Annie. I'm glad you had a good trip home though. When were you there last? I hope you don't feel pressure about reviews, take care of yourself and we (and the books) will be here when you return to full strength.

>159 dianeham: Thanks :)

>160 labfs39: Back in 2019 - I usually go home once a year (and in some years I’ll go back to Europe and meet Mom somewhere in there - vacation for her and all that). But I try not to travel during the winter so when the world closed in March 2020, it kinda put a stop on that and then I skipped last year because of the hospital stay and the recovery after that.

I'm hoping all goes well with the surgery and that your recovery is uneventful. Despite the knee issues, I am glad you managed to get back to Bulgaria.

>162 RidgewayGirl: We shall see. At the moment I am a bit freaked out -- but that is probably normal. And yeah - I think I did more damage to the knee with the travel (which was a story of its own - between missing a connection in London and spending a night there and AA/BA losing my luggage for 6 days on the way to Bulgaria, I was just shaking my head and wondering what else can go wrong) but it is now doing a lot better finally and I am glad I did not cancel the trip. 2020 and 2021 were the first years since I moved when I did not manage to get back to Bulgaria so I needed that... :)

And back on the topic of books, skipping a few magazines and an anthology (will get back to them at some point), a couple of weeks before my trip, I had a few books in the house from the library which I wanted to read before I left: the Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction anthology was one of them (it was good but review is to follow later), the new Donna Leon and a few others. Between work, the knee and trying to get things done, I ended up not reading that much. I did finish the Leon and the Chinese anthology; the rest of the books will need to come visit me again...

So 108. Give Unto Others by Donna Leon - the 31st Commissario Brunetti novel - fell into that weird time when I barely had any time to read so a novel which would usually take me a day (or 3), took me more than a week. But that is not really because the novel was not engaging. But let's talk about the novel.

Unlike most of the series novels, this one does not start with a murder. Instead of that, an old acquaintance of Brunetti's mother comes to ask him for help with her daughter - the mother is concerned with what the son-in-law had said one day. Apparently it was a slow day/week for crime in Venice so he decides to help and even gets his usual collaborators (I mean favorite coworkers - Claudia, Vianello and Signorina Elettra) to help him. Before long a real crime is committed but things just do not add up - either in that crime or in the initial situation. So they keep digging... all the way down to the truth and its horror. If you thought that murder is the vilest crime, you may change your mind after this novel - humanity can be much more cruel than that.

It is a calm novel - Venice is still recovering from the pandemic, the tourists had not come back yet (which is both a relief and a concern for a city which relies on them) and the author chose to spend a lot more time in Brunetti's head than usual - we get details about his past (some we knew, some we did not from previous novels), we get his usual musings on the economy and Venice, we get more details than had become usual for the series about his family and their life. In a way, the book is too calm - it is not a thriller under any definition, it is barely a mystery. And yet, it works. I am not sure it can work as a standalone - most of the strong moments came from the connections to past novels and from knowing everyone. While the Brunetti novels can rarely work if you remove him and Venice, this one is especially impossible without them - even the crimes when they finally are revealed are Italian and Venetian and while not impossible elsewhere, won't work if removed to somewhere else. And their resolution needed the Brunetti style in more than one way - the imperfect Commissario who knows who he is and what he can (and cannot do) and who is first and foremost a Venetian.

A nice entry to a long running series - and now waiting on Leon to write the next one. Again.
====
And with that I was off to Bulgaria with a Kindle (and an Ipad full of movies... and a few backup books for the road because technology fails, right?). So for the next 3 weeks or so, I ended up reading through 7 of the early Brunetti novels - installments 4-10 in the series. In case you wonder - nope, they did not get boring. It is one of the series where reading the books back to back works -- there are some repeated introductions but they are not annoying and at least in that part of the series, the novels are different enough not to sound like the same old same old.

This is one of my catch up series - I started with the 20th (the newest when I looked for them back in early 2011, just after I had moved and got my first kindle). I knew the characters from the series so I was not worried about starting from nowhere (of course they are a bit different between the adaptation and the novels but they are recognizable). The plan was always to go back and read the first 19 but it was the lockdown that finally made me start them... and then I got distracted (as usual). More about these 7 in a bit... meanwhile I am reading #11 (let's see if I can keep undistracted for awhile and make some more progress with this series).

For anyone interested: Surgery was successful, pathology came up clean so all is good. I had to spend a night in the hospital on oxygen because my oxygen level refused to stabilize but by the morning things looked well so they let me go home with a ton of drugs. So far I don’t even need the good drugs so we shall see how that goes. Laparoscopic robot-assisted surgeries are a miracle as far as I am concerned.

I am moving around, everything that had to restart post surgery had restarted properly so all is good. I won’t be much around this week (rest, rest, rest) but just wanted to post that I am fine and I’ll probably poke my head in now and again. :)

Side effect: the pain killers for the surgery also helped with the knee which was still misbehaving so I am in a much better shape overall :) hopefully it gets much better while this is going on. So we shall see.

>165 AnnieMod: so glad it went well. As you say: rest, rest, rest. Do you have someone to wait on you?

>165 AnnieMod: Glad it all went well. I hope your recovery is quick and uneventful. I'm sure the required downtime is also good for your knee!

>166 dianeham: Noone at home. I stayed at a friend’s house the day and night after they let me out of the hospital (just in case) and just came back home and I have a few people close by that I can call if I need help. Plus my fridge is full (so no cooking for at least a week and then there are always deliveries), things are in places I can reach them without straining (As I was not sure how mobile I will be) and my doctor wants me moving at least every hour so it all works out. Plus I seem to be moving fine for now (at least partially due to the drugs I am sure) :)

But I am careful not to overdo it.

>167 RidgewayGirl: Yep, hopefully.

>101 AnnieMod: Thanks for that great review. I'm a bit intrigued by what is coming out of China these days.

>165 AnnieMod: Glad your surgery went well. And I'm glad you stayed with a friend and have others around you whom you can call. XX

Rest up, Annie. I'm glad the surgery could be done laparoscopically and that all went well. Better days ahead.

>169 avaland: Lenin’s kisses I assume? Book numbers and post numbers can get really messed up when they are in the same range. If so - it is a very weird book :)

And thanks :)

>170 labfs39: Thanks. :) we will see how it feels when I slow down on the pain killers but I am just on Tylenol and ibuprofen just now and I am fine. The biggest issue may end up not overdoing it really (knock on wood that things don’t change anyway).

Glad to hear that things went/are going relatively OK, Annie. Medical stuff is always so two-steps-forward, so you sound like you're on a decent trajectory. Don't overdo, read lots! Like you need me to tell you that.

I'm glad that your procedure was a successful one, Annie.

>173 kidzdoc: Thanks Darryl!

>172 lisapeet: For some reason I seem to be unable to concentrate properly so not much reading happening. But I am doing fine otherwise - except that just when I am not allowed to lift/bend and so on, I feel like reorganizing my books :) oh well - it will need to wait. :)

I wish you a speedy recovery. It sounds like the procedure was successful. Take care.

>175 BLBera: Thanks :)

And back to reviewing - let's try to catch up in some order. Starting with an 8 in 1 -- that should help with the catching up.



109. Death and Judgment / A Venetian Reckoning by Donna Leon (87k words)
110. Acqua Alta by Donna Leon (91k words)
111. Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon (83k words)
112. A Noble Radiance by Donna Leon (74k words)
113. Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon (77k words)
114. Friends in High Places by Donna Leon (81k words)
115. A Sea of Troubles by Donna Leon (81k words)
117. Wilful Behavior by Donna Leon (92k words)

Type: Novels
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1995-2002
Series: Commissario Brunetti (4-11)
Genre: Crime
Format: ebooks
Publisher: Grove Press
Reading dates: June-July 2022

The Brunetti series is one of those weird series I found first in its TV version. Years later I discovered the books and started reading them with the 20th book in the series, always planning to go back and read the first 19. And 2 years ago, I finally got around to starting from the first one slowly. Then when this long-delayed vacation, I just grabbed the next few in the series and spent most of my vacation with Brunetti and Venice. I was a bit worried reading so many in a row (some series are not built to allow that) and I read the latest ones (the 31st) just before I left as well. Fortunately I never got bored/tired with the series so 8 books later, the only reason to switch to other books was that some things came from the library and I was back from my vacation anyway. I will be back to books 12-19 shortly (she said hoping that does not mean 2040 or something) so let's talk about books 4-11.

Death and Judgment / A Venetian Reckoning starts with a tragedy - a truck driver loses control while coming down the mountains and it turns out that the truck has a few too many passengers - trafficked women from East Europe end up dead on the mountain slopes. And then everyone forgets about them until they tie into the death of an important lawyer. In some ways this is one of the darker entries in the series - human trafficking and women abuse are never an easy topic and these lie at the heart of this novel. It is also a bit more explicit than the rest of the entries. The story ties with the Yugoslavian wars (in the worst possible ways). But the novel still has Venice as its main character - but even it is subdued under the horrors which people can inflict on other people.

Acqua Alta ties back to the very first novel of the series by re-introducing us back with Brett and Flavia Petrelli. You do not need to have read the first novel but if you had not, you will get some spoilers here. This time it is Brett who gets in trouble - someone shows up at the door and before she realizes what is happening, she is badly beaten with a message being delivered to her: skip your meeting with the museum director. Considering that she had been instrumental in bringing a Chinese exhibition to Venice and there had been some issues with some of the returned artifacts, it is not too hard to figure out that this may be related. The novel ends up tying together a tale of art, forgeries and stolen artifacts with a tale of Venice at its worst - when the acqua alta comes and covers the low floors. As is usual, the criminal action almost takes a back seat to the story about Venice - but even the crime is so Venetian than it just can not happen anywhere else.

Quietly in Their Sleep / The Death of Faith starts with a nun - or an ex-nun to be more precise. She is one of the nuns who had taken care of Brunetti's mother for awhile so when she comes with a tale of possible murder and elderly abuse, Brunetti decides to investigate, even if all he has is a woman's word. It is a quiet book - while there is death (and murder in some cases), it is an exploration of the state of elderly care and the lives of the nuns who deal with that more than anything else. Brunetti comes out a bit more morally ambiguous than usual although it feels more like Leon being more comfortable using his sense of justice (vs the law) than before. It also makes the story feel more personal on some level - stories about idealized policemen never really work properly.

A Noble Radiance is the first cold case in the series - a young man who was abducted a few years ago is finally found - dead and buried almost at the same time he disappeared. His family is pretty prominent so both the past crime and the discovery become significant, with all the politicians (including Patta) trying to either cover up things or find a solution that does not embarrass anyone. Brunetti, ignoring all that, decides to find the actual truth and reopens old wounds and secrets that probably should have stayed buried. The end makes one wonder if the whole investigation was worth it - we do learn what happened (and so do everyone else) but it makes one wish that we never did - in a somewhat calm book, the actual truth is more horrifying than it would have been elsewhere.

Fatal Remedies starts with Paola Brunetti throwing a rock at a shop window and shattering it at the middle of the night. She has her own reasons but vandalism is never an answer - even when your husband is a police commissario and your father is a Count. When the man who owns the window is killed, seemingly because of her actions and accusations, things change even for Paola - her plan was never to cause real harm - she was just trying to highlight the problem of sex-tourism (thus the shop window of the agency being broken). So Guido Brunetti and Count Falier use their separate powers and influences to try to find out what really happened - and to shied and protect Paola. By the end of the novel the rift between the spouses is closed and Brunetti finds the truth about the dead man but the novel makes one think seriously about choices and consequences.

Friends in High Places delves into the building market of Venice - suddenly it seems like Brunetti's apartment is actually illegally built - and some paperwork was never done thus leaving it into a legal limbo. Of course there is always an easy solution - get the father-in-law to assist and the paperwork will show up but Brunetti is too proud so decides to try to solve the issue using his own connections instead (one needs to appreciate the fact that everyone knows that this needs solving by connections and bribes and noone even thinks of other options...). Then the man who brought the news is found dead and Brunetti decides to dig a bit deeper - and finds not just the expected corruption but a much bigger scandal at the bottom of the building planning bureaucracy of the city. Not that one is too surprised of course. Add some money-lenders and people with no options and the story turns ugly very quickly. And yet, it stays very Venetian.

A Sea of Troubles is somewhat of a departure from the usual formula of the series. The murders that kick off the story happen on the island of Pellestrina and not in Venice proper and then Signorina Elettra ends up under cover on the island - she has relatives there, she needs a vacation so she manages to convince Brunetti that she can be useful. As usual, it is not just human actions that haunt the investigation but unlike the usual problem of bureaucracy and Venice being Venice, it is nature that seems to be going against the detective. The storm at the end of the novel reminded me of the storm in King Lear - and despite knowing that everyone had to survive (as they are in future books), it made me worry about the characters. And that says something about the writing of Donna Leon.

Willful Behavior starts with a student of Paola's asking her a legal question. Before long the story of the WWII in Venice is on the table - we get the Count Falier story and more about Brunetti's father story; we get stories from Venice and about Venice (some invented, some maybe rooted in reality). There is the murder of the student, Claudia, soon after the novel starts. There is an old man who died in a mental hospital. And there is an old woman who seems to have a lot of art which was last seen before the War. Before long the connection between these people become clear and the story proceeds, pulling the memories and the pain from the past into the present and trying to close a story that never got an ending. Except that it may never do - even if the murders get solved, the pain of the past is always going to stay with the ones who lived it.

116. Gallic Noir: Volume 1 by Pascal Garnier, translated from the French by Melanie Florence, Emily Boyce and a staff translator from Gallic Books

Type: Collection, 91k words
Original Language: French
Original Publication: 1999, 2006, 2008. Translations first published in 2012/2013
Series: N/A
Genre: Crime, Noir
Format: ebook
Publisher: Gallic Books
Reading dates: 18 July 2022 - 24 July 2022

I had been meaning to return to Pascal Garnier ever since I read Too Close to the Edge in 2016. As usual my plans got a bit sidetracked and I got distracted so I never got around to it. Until now.

This first volume of Pascal Garnier's collected noir novellas (maybe called novels in France - they tend to call shorter works novels often) contains 3 of them: "The A26", "How's the Pain?" and "The Panda Theory". While the 3 were very different from each other, they are all bleak and almost hopeless - which seems to be the usual mode for Garnier's noir tales (with some weird humor here and there, made even funnier by where it is and what happens at the time when it is used).

"The A26" (original title L'A26, 1999, translated by Melanie Florence) introduces us to two loners - a brother and a sister who live in a house where nothing had changed for decades. Some time during WWII, the sister, Yolande, had been hurt (more mentally than physically) and she reacted by closing herself in her house and never leaving it again - becoming a hoarder in the process and forcing her brother Bernard to take care of her while working for the railroads. And that's not their lives went on - up to the current times, sometime in the 90s, when a new motorway is getting built close by. Garnier takes that change and uses it to show the lives of the two siblings - making you wonder in places who is the crazier one. The seemingly sane Bernard ends up being a murderer (and worse); the sister who is always there seems to be sinking more and more into her seclusion. But somewhere there are also the Roland and Jacqueline - the old flame of Bernard and her current husband and while the siblings' minds dissolve, that old human connection becomes the trigger for the worst in them - from Yolande's memories of the past (when we learn what did happen to her) to Bernard's final delusions - it almost feels like his present and Yolande's past feed each other. The end is as expected as it is devastating. And you are only left wondering if things could have ended differently if someone somewhere had been a bit more human.

"How's the Pain?" ("Comment va la douleur ?", 2006, translated by Emily Boyce) is the lightest of the 3 novellas, even if it is dealing with a man's decision to die. Simon Marechall is about to get his last job before retirement when he ends up in a small town, too sick to continue his travel. No, it is not the kind of story where a man meets someone else and is happily ever after with them. He does meet someone, a local youth called Bernard, but their connections is closer to mentor and student (or an owner and a pet maybe). Simon needs help - he needs to drive to the seaside to finish that last job so Bernard comes at the best time - becoming his driver and in the process almost becoming Simon's son, pet and nurse (rolled into one). The older man claims to be a vermin exterminator - and that is partially true - except that the vermin he hunts can walk and talk (and that is very clear from very early in the novella if one is paying attention). What follows is almost black comedy although the style keeps is serious enough to never slide into it - the last job ends up being a bit of a mess, there is a woman with a child (and our very naive Bernard falls for both of them) and somewhere in there, Simon lives out the last days of his live. But as with most of his previous actions, his exit will be on his terms - even if it leaves other people in a bit of precarious position (the novella ends with the death - it technically also starts with it even if the act waits to the end.

"The Panda Theory" ("La théorie du panda", 2008, translation credited only to Gallic Books) starts just like the previous novella - a stranger arrives in a small town. Gabriel is a disturbed man - we learn why as the novella progresses but at the start he seems like a normal man who just has nowhere to go so he comes to a town he knows noone in and makes connections - with the receptionist, with a bistro owner (who then ends up with his worst nightmare on his hands and it is Gabriel who helps him and becomes the strong shoulder Jose needs), with a couple down on their luck. He spends his money liberally, helps people and becomes a friend (and almost a patron) to anyone he meets. Except that there is darkness underneath all that - even when he is at his best, his thoughts can be a bit disturbing. Once we know what had driven him to where he is now, we at least can understand why. But even that does not make the end less cruel. You know something must be coming but even with all the backstory the final act is shocking. And somewhere in there, there is a panda teddy-bear and if one wants to understand the story, they may want to think about the meaning of Gabriel's name.

All 3 stories are good in different ways but I liked "How's the Pain?" the most. It is the most streamlined of the 3 in some ways (all 3 use flashbacks and play with the time and sequences) but it was also the one which did not seem to try to get to worse and worse depravities as the story went along. All of them are worth reading though if you like the style and I plan to read more of these noir tales by Garnier - even when they don't entirely work for me, there is something in there that makes me want to read more.

118. Gods and Ends by Devon Monk (98k words)
119. Rock Paper Scissors: Ordinary Magic Stories by Devon Monk (72k words)

Type: Novel and Collection (3 novellas)
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2017-2018
Series: Ordinary Magic (3-4)
Genre: urban fantasy
Format: ebooks
Publisher: Odd House Press
Reading dates: 30 July 2022 - 8 August 2022

"Gods and Ends" starts where the previous book ended - with Delaney in trouble because of the bite from the ancient vampire and with Ben missing (because of the same ancient vampire). The town rallies together to help, the vampires and the werewolves find a way to work together and everyone goes after the ancient evil. Meanwhile the local yarn workers are organizing a war (with some juvenile names as organization names - while they were good for a chuckle, having them 10 times on the same page made me roll my eyes) and things get even more tangled.

The novel was supposed to be the end of a trilogy but as it often happens, the trilogy grew up (or as Monk says in her afterword, the demon Bathin showed up and took Delaney's soul in a fair bargain). Despite that, it feels like an ending - the story started in the first novel is closed (although there is a demon in town who has a soul that is not his own and we know that there is a war coming). The end of the novel does not leave the town as it found it though - in order to solve the issues, Delaney had to do something unconventional and missed something in the small print of her powers - so Ordinary becomes a bit different for awhile.

The 4th book in the series collects three novellas - each set during a holiday and each dealing with one of the sisters and her love life. The gods are mostly missing (as Delaney's trick at the end of the previous novel meant that they need to leave for an year). The rest of the community shows up here and there but the stories are more about the Reeds than about Ordinary.

"Rock Candy" takes place during October, culminating at Halloween. So what is so interesting about October you would ask? Well, there is a curse and all garden gnomes become alive... during the nights anyway. Except that the usual orderly progression of things go a bit weird when it turns out that the chief gnome had been killed. Meanwhile, the baker Hogan, who just happens to be Jean Reed's current boyfriend, has more secrets than you would expect - including the identity of his parents. So off everyone goes looking for the murderer of a garden gnome while Jean needs to decide if she wants a long term relationship (and the secret helps for a change...)

"Paper Stars" is the Christmas story. Ryder Bailey had been away on a job site and Delaney is prepared to spend the holidays on her own. Until he decides to come home - and things get complicated. By the end of the story, everyone is still alive (not without a certain demon's help), there is a dragon masquerading as a pig and everyone is back to normal. Normal for Ordinary anyway.

"Scissor Kisses" is the Valentine story but it is also the only story where there the love story is not resolved (in a way, it is a prequel for the next novel even if it is a story on its own). Myra Reed does not expect much from the holiday and having a demon show up out of nowhere (another one, Bathin at this point is a somewhat known quality) is a bit distressing. Then it turns out she needs Bathin's help to deal with the other intruder and something in Myra's heart is tugging towards the demon. In a very romantic way. Except that she is also looking at how to get her sister's soul back and banish him forever. Oh, and guess which God decides that this is the perfect time to come back? Apparently the God of Love really does not like Valentine's day.

While the 3 novellas were entertaining, I wish there was more of a difference between the three sisters' voices. Ignore what is happening and you will be hard pressed to determine which sister is telling you a story. That will probably smooth out a bit as the series progresses and it is not really a major problem even if it does not but if you read the 3 novellas back to back, it is noticeable.

120. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Type: Novella, 20K words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2021
Genre: contemporary, historical - where is the border between the two?
Format: ebook
Publisher: Grove Press
Reading dates: 3 August 2022 - 3 August 2022

Bill Furlong grew up around women - he never knew his father and when he got married, he got 5 daughters. Despite his blighted (for the times) beginnings, he managed to become a respected man in his small town in Ireland. His story could have been very different if it was for his mother - despite the shame of being a single mother, she did all she had for her son. And it paid off.

And here is Bill, making coal and wood deliveries to everyone in town, including the convent which overlooks the peaceful neighborhood. Except that the convent hides an ugly secret - unwed mothers and mothers to be are closed there, laboring for the Church for the sin of having a child.

The novella is set in 1985 - a time when you would expect that this practice had been long forgotten. Most people know it was not - there had been a lot of articles about it in the last years so the sins of the Church in Ireland had been exposed. But back in 1985, even if people knew about that (and I suspect a lot of them knew - even if they preferred not to), it was just one of those things you are supposed not to see.

In Keegan's story, chance (or something else) crosses the paths of Bill and one of those young women just before Christmas. And it is Bill's personal history that does not allow him to look the other way.

On one hand the novella is a powerful exploration of the fate of unwed mothers in Ireland - both with the story of the convent and Bill's own story. On the other hand though the story is very predictable and leaves you with the aftertaste of over-sweetened tea. You know what Bill will do before it is Christmas after all and his empathy for these girls is all but telegraphed through the novella. I am not sure why it had to be Christmas (he could have been as busy if there was a sudden cold snap in say February). Setting the story around the holidays seems like an attempt to add something more into but ends up cheapening the whole story.

It is a story that should be read and which shows the Church practices (and the Church apologists) at their worst. It is beautifully written - the language almost sings. But especially as short as it is, less would have been more here - the chosen time really robs the story of a lot of its power.

Booker Long list: 1 down. More to come.

Great review of Small Things Like These, Annie. I was quite moved by it, despite its modest length, and I hope that it is chosen for the Booker Prize shortlist next month.

>180 kidzdoc: I liked it - but it annoyed me with the time it is set in - it felt like a cheap reach for emotions and pulling into the whole "miracles happen at this time" kind of vibe. The novella does not really need it for it to work. I may have been more forgiving at a different time but at the time I read it, it just rang wrong for me.

>181 AnnieMod: I see your point, although I didn't think about that when I was reading the book.

Enjoyed reading your reviews of no.s 4-11 of the Donna Leon Venice series. Very useful for me as I can sort out those that I have not read.

>183 baswood: Part of why I started writing reviews - I remember books but in long series, separating which one is which is... missing impossible.

And I am officially a month behind on reviews. *sigh*


121. Five Uneasy Pieces by Debbi Mack

Type: Collection, 6 stories
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2013
Series: N/A
Genre: crime
Format: ebook
Publisher: Renegade Press
Reading dates: 3 August 2022 - 7 August 2022

The original collection had 5 stories thus the title. When it was reissued, Debbi Mack added a 6th story as a bonus but did not change the title thus creating yet another book where mathematics works in a weird way.

"Deadly Detour" is a detective story with the protagonist trying to be too witty and ending up caught into a sticky situation. The end was somewhat predictable but it was a nice twist anyway.

"The Right to Remain Silent" introduces us to a prosecutor who wins a case but for some reason his consciousness does not allow him to stop digging. As expected nothing is as it seems and the final twist turns the story on its head.

In "A Woman Who Thinks", a psychiatrist gets a bit too obsessed with a new patient after some similarities to an old case start emerging. Of course, everyone does have a separate agenda in the tale so things don't go very well for Dr. Fein at the end.

"The People Next Door" is a short story about a neighbor who is too curious about her neighbors - while having her own secrets. It kinda works because it is short although it almost telegraphs its twist from the start.

"Sympathy for the Devil" - an innocent and a naive wife, her best friend, a supposedly cheating husband, a seedy detective. Figuring out who tells the truth is not the easiest thing for anyone in that story. The wife was a bit too naive even for fiction - which was needed for the story to work but made it unsatisfactory in some ways.

The bonus story "The Woman Who Knew Too Little" is supposedly a parody and homage to Alfred Hitchcock. There are some hints but... it feels flat - a client lies to a detective (what a surprise!) and the detective tries to solve the case and figure out the lie. The premise is sound, the execution simply did not work for me - it relied on witty answers too much and almost none of them landed. The fact that it was full of cliches, played for the laugh too often, was expected - being a parody and all.

It was a short collection (the longest story was probably ~30 pages) but it did not make me want to find the author's other works. It is competent but none of the stories was memorable or had any real depth in them.

122. Hidden by Benedict Jacka
135. Veiled by Benedict Jacka

Type: Novels, 94k and 99k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2014 and 2015
Series: Alex Verus (5 and 6)
Genre: Urban fantasy
Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: Ace
Reading dates: 5 August 2022 - 15 August 2022 & 29 August 2022 - 31 August 2022

After Alex's past finally came out in the open, Anne and Variam had done everything to distance themselves from him. So when Anne disappears, trying to figure out what happened is not as easy as it should have been - Alex has no idea what Anne had been up to. Thankfully for everyone, Luna never broke contact.

As in all the previous books, the story requires us to learn more about the Council and the world of magic Alex lives in. I like the way Jacka gets to these details - they are part of the story and not an infodump and as Alex is somewhat of an outsider because of his old master and the past, the details come up while he is working out a problem or when he needs to learn something (usually a bit too late).

The whole novel felt a bit like a prequel - there is a story (Anne's problems, including finally learning more about her past) but even that is needed to set the story for the rest of the series (or the next few books anyway) - making sure that Alex has a family around him (the chosen type, not the blood type), everyone's backstories and histories wide open on the table, the Council and the Keepers noticing Alex (which is not always a good idea) and rumors of Richard being back finally confirmed. I don't mind these setup novels usually and this one fits the series but it also feels a bit as a slow down of the action - almost like a side quest to retrieve something which you would need in the future. On the other hand, I like the style of Jacka's writing so I don't really mind these disruptions in the main story (although technically speaking, it is not really a disruptions - people did move around to get to the places they need to be for the story to continue).

Then the next novel kept the slowed down speed of the story. Not in the action - everyone gets in trouble again but in the main storyline - Richard is still in the shadows (even if we met him at the end of the last book) and Alex is doing everything he can to ignore the fact that he is back. And the best way to do that is to become one of the Keepers (or the next close thing to it anyway).

The main plot of the novel involves an organization which supplies slaves to whoever has the money to buy them. Add magic and they are even nastier than they sound on paper. Except that as it turns out, nothing is black and white in the world and the Council is not really made of upstanding mages who never do wrong. So when the battle for White Rose starts, you never know whose side anyone is on. Alex being Alex refuses to play politics, goes after the bad people and... ends up in a pickle (as usual). The problem with taking down highly connected bad people down is that there are always worse ones behind them and the connections usually mean trouble. A lot of it. A Senior Council mage gets offended enough to threaten Alex (again) and by the end it is not really clear if all that was done, despite being noble, did not open the door for a bigger evil (which in Alex's word is of course Richard Drahk (with Morden and a few more new affiliates).

One of the things I always liked about the series is the Dark/Light concept - death mages can be Light, life mages can be Dark. It is not really about good or evil (well, most mages believe it is but being a Dark mage does not make you evil - it just marks you like someone who does not care about the rules). Alex is starting to slowly realize that he will need to make a choice finally - sitting on the sidelines and being independent does not seem like a viable option long term. But as with the Richard story, the final choice is not here yet and when it comes, it is unclear if Alex won't chose the dark side - everyone thinks he is there anyway. Meanwhile Luna has a new teacher (a dark mage) who helps with her chance magic and Anne and Variam had become firm allies with Alex after the disruptions in the previous books. Add Caldera (who may be a bit too straight-laced to become an ally but is getting there) and Landis and Alex is definitely not the lonely mage we met at the start of book 1 anymore.

123. Grandville Bête Noire by Bryan Talbot

Type: Graphic novel
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2012
Series: Grandville (3)
Genre: alternative history, fantasy
Format: hardcover
Length: 96 pages
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Reading dates: 16 August 2022

A month after the end of the previous adventure, LeBrock and Ratzi end up back in Paris, investigating the impossible death of a Parisian artist. As usual, there is a bigger story behind it - anywhere they turn, they seem to be hearing about Toad Hall. The reader knows who they are - the story started with it. But the in-history characters had no clue - and noone was talking. Add the love story finally coming to a head (again), some of the backstory explaining some of LeBrock's melancholy, the usual shenanigans in Scotland Yard and the gorgeous art and the graphic novel could have worked just based on that.

But then there are also the parallels and influences to James Bond (there are even gadgets), Wind in the Willows, Sherlock Holmes (which was always there anyway) and some other authors and works (I got some Bertie Wooster vibes in places and a few things I could not exactly place). That adds to the richness but without requiring you to have read these - if you miss the parallels, you still get a complete story.

Reviews of the earlier parts:
Part 1: https://www.librarything.com/work/8368346/reviews/83714987
Part 2: https://www.librarything.com/work/9900628/reviews/211946885 and discussion here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/338036#7747021

124. Precursor by C. J. Cherryh

Type: Novel, 152k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 1999
Series: Foreigner (4)
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: mass market paperback
Publisher: DAW
Reading dates: 16 August 2022 - 18 August 2022

Three years after the end of the previous book, the atevi had built their shuttle and have somewhat regular flights to the space station. Bren had officially become part of Tabini's court - he is more an atevi these days than human (despite his biology) although he is still the translator (the padhi) between the two cultures and he is still paid by the human side. So here he is, at the start of the novel, trying to get back to the continent after a trip home. Before long, he is bound for the space station - where things go wrong exactly at the worst time and it looks like the previous 3 years of cooperation may not be enough to help. And Bren is back to trying to translate cultures and thoughts - this time three-way - the humans on the ground, the atevi and the humans of the ship. Because when languages and the meaning of words come into play, culture and thought and biology matter.

The novel is the start of the second trilogy of the much longer series so as with the very first novel of the series, it is just the start of a story. It takes its time to get moving - we spend a lot of time in Bren's head while he is trying to puzzle out what is going on. Except that even in these moments, things move - the series was never about the big battles (and smaller skirmishes) - they are the supporting action of a story about cultures and meeting the unknown.

It took me while to warm up to this novel - it is different from the first 3 (getting Bren where he is was partially the point of the first 3 and I enjoyed the journey). It is important to remember that we get only Bren's story - we know what he knows and he can be an unreliable narrator occasionally. So some of the weirder moments (he and Jesse need these last few hours to talk after all that time?) make sense if you are Bren - the man who learned to think against his own biology and senses. By the end of it though, I was back in love with the series - in some ways this novel is better than the first 3 exactly because it has everything already established so it can tell a story. And even when you know what is coming (because by now we know that there will be surprises and Tabini does not have that many reliable people to send when he needs something), it still rings true when Bren is surprised (although he is getting better at anticipating Tabini's and Ilisidi's actions).

I am not entirely sure what the novel is setting up for (and I do not want to look up the summaries of the next novels yet). The aliens (the ones that attacked the other station) will need to come into play sooner or later and the way this trilogy is shaping, it probably will at least start in it. So onto the next novel.

125. Slow Horses by Mick Herron

Type: Novel, 96k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2010
Series: Slough House (1)
Genre: Spy
Format: paperback
Publisher: Soho Crime
Reading dates: 18 August 2022 - 20 August 2022

Another series that had been on my radar for a long time (because a new series is what I really need but my impulse control had not improved so... new series it is).

Trying to even talk about the plot will give too much away - there is a kidnapping and there are spies; there is death and there are secrets; there are people who are trying to get ahead in the game and there are people who really do not care about the game. The fact that the first group generally does not care about other people while the second group does is not exactly a surprise.

Slough House is where spies get sent when they mess up and refuse to leave. Everyone has a history, everyone has made a mistake that should have cost them their careers but something (or someone) somewhere made sure it did not. They are still part of the Service but they are considered tainted and for the most part the regular spies (and employees of the Services) consider them the slow horses - they are out to pasture, expected to give up and just leave and to do almost meaningless things until they do.

Until one day the Service decides to use one of them for a quick and easy operation against a journalist with ties to the far right and things get a bit complicated. River Cartwright decides that he wants to know more and things exactly as one would expect them to go - all kinds of weird. Before long people are dead, an operation ends up going worse than anyone dreamed it could and everyone needs to stay on their toes if they plan to survive.

The author's style is somewhat abrupt, with a lot of quick scene changes. Add a unreliable narrator or 3, internal monologues and dreams which you recognize only after they end and you never know what to believe - in the same way the characters of the novel never know where exactly they are in the big picture. But the story itself is as intimate and personal as it can get - in the middle of it is a teenager who is absolutely sure that his kidnappers will kill him. And that's one thing that will always be worth fighting for - at least for the good guys.

I really enjoyed this novel - it got almost boggled down into backstories early on but once it started moving, it kept the pace. And now I have another series I need to catch up on...

126. The Fires Beneath the Sea by Lydia Millet

Type: Novel, 63k words
Original Language: English
Original Publication: 2011
Series: Dissenters (1)
Genre: Children Fantasy (middle grade)
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Big Mouth House
Reading dates: 20 August 2022 - 21 August 2022

When Cara's mother disappeared at the beginning of summer, everyone just assumed that she left her husband and children and will show up somewhere. Everyone except the family that is - the 13-years old Cara and her brothers - 10 years old Jax and 16 years old Max and their father. Living in Cape Cod means that the siblings are used to being near the water a lot and when we meet them, the tourist season is winding down and they are preparing for the school year. Their Mom had not been heard of.

And then Cara starts seeing and hearing things - messages on pieces of drifting wood, voices from places where there should be no voices. They seem to hint at her being needed to help her own mother so she and her brothers decide to follow the instructions and end up having an adventure taking them all the way to the bottom of the ocean.

It is clear from early on that the mother and the younger brother are not exactly human - it takes awhile for the book to hint at it strongly enough to get a reader to acknowledge it but the hints are there from early on. But beneath the quest and the fantasy story, there is a more serious story about climate change and the pollution of the oceans and about what matters in life. Add the scenery of Cape Cod and the novel works in ways one would not expect. Plus there is a creepy monster of course - connected to the water and just creepy enough to make him memorable.

It is a first novel in a trilogy so the action itself feels unfinished. We never get the complete story about the mother or why she disappeared. We get some of it but at the end, the novel is almost where it started - except that we have a confirmation that the mother is alive and we got to read about an adventure. The novel just does not stand on its own - it needs the rest of the series to feel complete.

I did not expect much depth from the characters or too much development (being a middle grade novel and a first in a trilogy) but even with the low expectations, it almost felt like it was too thin. Part of it is probably because we get the story from Cara - she can be unreliable narrator and occasionally things would make sense if you remember that we are listening to the story told by a 13 years old girl. But even with that, outside of the Pouring Man (or creepy guy), everyone feels almost 2-dimensional - even the brothers despite the plethora of details.

I am not sure that I cared enough at the end to continue with the series - as much as the book kept my interest, the ending can remain open for me and I won't wonder what really happened.

>188 AnnieMod: I started Slow Horses this spring, but it didn't snag me, and I returned it to the library unfinished. Your review makes me think perhaps I should have kept going? I read until the part where they were arguing over who should have to follow the journalist.

>190 labfs39: It did start slow and disjointed but it did connect later for me. The author style is very distinctive though - so it was partially getting used to it and partially the things starting to connect finally... So not sure - I'd say to give it another try if you feel like it but I also can see how it won't work for everyone...

>179 AnnieMod: Sounds like a great book; I'm adding it to my list.

>192 avaland: :)

This thread has so many images that it loads slowly and jumps around so time to move to a new thread. All missing reviews and so on will end up in the new thread (if I get around to them - I plan to but...) :)