Cariola's 2009 Reading

Hello, everyone. Glad to find a few free minutes to catch up on all your posts and start my own thread.

One of my New Year's resolutions will be to STOP acquiring new books (but I suspect that I will break that one quickly). If my reading pace could keep up with my acquisition pace, no problem. But my TBRs are slowly (in truth, maybe rapidly?) nudging me out of my house. It was a bit of an embarrassment to have my daughter, who came for Thanksgiving, look around and say, "I guess you don't need any new books for Christmas, do you?" I will probably try to do a purge over Christmas break--but I'm never too successful at that, I'm afraid.

My reading always slows down at the end of the school year, when student papers take priority. I've been picking at Sorry for about a month, reading 5 or 6 pages at night before falling asleep.

I'm looking forward to all your reviews and suggestions. Great group idea, avaland!

How could she ask that? New books are always needed:-)

Cariola, I share your pain. I have 'dipped into' most of the books I own, but what percentage have I actually read all the way through? If only time travel were not just the stuff of science fiction - then you could mark student papers AND travel back in time a few hours to read your book...

If I was a superhero my superpower would definitely be to stop time ...

Cariola,

I too have resolved to acquire no more books until I have scaled Mount TBR and come down the other side. This is the first time in my life that I've owned more than 10 books that I haven't read. This is also the first year I've been seriously involved with LT. Is there a connection I wonder? Is Tim actually a CIA operative who has designed LT as a way of turning the entire world into helpless book addicts, who will do anything (and I do mean anything) for a book fix?

"book fix" - that about sums it up...

Book Mooch and PBS have also contributed to my addiction.

I will be trying to clear away two review books before classes begin again, so my first two reads of 2009 will likely be Firmin by Sam Savage (although I may finish this by 12/31) and Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

the tennis partner was excellent - well it combined public health/medicine and tennis in a well written autobiographical tragedy, so it conjoined several of my interests in one book.

I just finished my first book of 2009. Let me preface my comments by saying that this was an Early Review book and NOT something that I would normally have chosen for myself.



Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage

I expected this story of a book shop rat who devours texts and learns to read to be a kind of literary satire. Instead, it was a rather sad commentary on human nature and civilization. Firmin longs to connect with the human world, but, alas, he is only a rat. The one friend he does make treats him more like a pet than an equal--and then he dies, leaving Firmin to struggle for existence in his dying neighborhood. I gave it a generous three stars. It wasn't bad, but I don't care much for fantasy, the genre that may fit it best.

The cutesy bite mark in the side of the book got to be a major irritation since it made it difficult to grasp the book properly while reading.

I confess that I listened to this book on audio--John Lee was an extraordinary reader. The novel is in the form of a first-person narrative written in a letter to the Chinese premier. The narrator (known as The White Tiger) relates how he rose from being a poor, lower caste Indian to the driver for a wealthy family, from a wanted murderer to a Bangalore entrepreneur. Full of insights into life in modern-day India, his story is sad, funny, witty, shocking--you name it. All told in a fascinating voice.

The White Tiger won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

John Lee is one of my favorite readers--I have purchased audiobooks because of him. Have you listened to Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres? I enjoyed both the book, and Lee's reading of it, very much.

Yes, I did listen to Birds Without Wings--but I really didn't care for it.

>12 cabegley: I also listened to Birds Without Wings and enjoyed it. Alas, my days of audio books seem to be in the past. I've no long commute anymore:-(

I was quite disappointed with Firmin as well. Given the lavish praise the book received I expected something much better. I do like fantasy (although I am really picky there), but this book was mediocre at best.

>15 urania1:: avaland, you could listen to books on your iPod as you do housework. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!

>15 urania1: but first I have to be doing housework ha ha ha ha ha.

Is Firmin meant to be an adult book? Who blurbed it, out of curiosity?

>17 avaland:, yes, precisely. Hence my guffaws.

>17 avaland: Definitely not for kids--Firmin goes to porn flicks, for one thing, and his brother gets squished by a truck.

I'd tell you who blurbed it, but it's in the other room and, as you know, I'm hobbling with a walker. When I get there later, I'll try to remember to look.

I won't allow hobbling on my account! Do stay put and enjoy whatever you are doing...reading?

I sent my copy of Firmin to recycling, so I can't tell you who blurbed it. I don't keep mediocre books unless I have a research interest in them. Bookshelf space is to hard to come by around here.

>20 avaland: Reading . . . but in prep for syllabi, unfortunately. Classes start next Monday.

>21 urania1: Mine has already been snapped up by some eager but hapless Book Moocher.

>17 avaland: Cover blurbs on Firmin are by Philip Pullman, Karen Joy Fowler, the LA Times, and Publisher's Weekly. Inside: some of the same, repeated, plus Jeffrey Frank of The Columninst, Kirkus Review, and Literary Journal.

Fowler: "Surprising and moving meditation on the advantages (and disadvantages) of an entirely fictional life. Eloquent and witty, Firmin speaks for the book-loving rodent in all of us."

(snort)

Firman = Fur + Vermin? Geez, that makes Ratatouille sound clever.

Pullman and Fowler are both overrated, IMO, though I liked Fowler's Austen book club novel. Pullman is just dullsville (does anybody say that anymore)?

Cariola, love your blurbs with the pictures.

>24 nohrt4me: Supposedly it can also mean "Fur Man."

I've never read any Pullman since, as stated, I don't enjoy fantasy.

Thank you for the compliment; I have to credit avaland for the idea of adding book covers.

The Literary Ghost: great contemporary ghost stories edited by Larry Dale.

Here's one I picked up on avaland's recommendation; I was looking for a good ghost story to use in an Intro to Lit course. It's a collection of "ghost" stories by authors whose names are familiar (Mavis Gallant, Tim O'Brien, A. S. Byatt, Joyce Carol Oates), as well as some who are unfamiliar. I put "ghost" in quotation marks because not all of these stories feature ghosts that are the usual entities we might think of; some of them are memories, practical jokes, nightmares, premonitions. Nevertheless, it was an interesting collection of styles and takes on the topic of haunting/being haunted, in its broadest sense.

#24: I thought the first volume of "His Dark Materials", The Golden Compass / Northern Lights, was very good. The second and third books were less good, as the author's agenda started to overwhelm the narrative. (This isn't a comment on the agenda, only on its effect on the fiction.)

>27 timjones: I agree with Tim re: Pullman. It's not the kind of fantasy I'm into (I'm more of a magical realism kind of gal) but I loved the first book and enjoyed the subsequent two somewhat less.

>24 nohrt4me: I enjoy Fowler, but I started with Sarah Canary which is a strangely thoughtful book about perception. I've read all of hers except for her first collection. Sarah Canary is still my fave and her best, imo.

Pullman (sorry to continue discussion off the topic of cariola's reads) was long on magical spectacle (sad given that he has a real talent for character development) and short on cogent ideas, but that's just my opinion.

I'm still fuzzy about his "agenda"; as a Catholic, I wasn't offended by his criticism of the bureaucracy and control imposed by top-down hierarchies (though, if you take a look at Catholic or Anglican bishops in real life, it refutes the notion that conspiracies of control are fairly easy to manage; always a certain number of renegades and malcontents to keep things honest).

As for being some sort of atheist manifesto, well, that part of it seemed confused and based on a poor understanding of monotheistic theology.

#25, thanks for the lead on other Fowler books. Haven't read others, and "Sarah Canary" sounds interesting!

A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunsmore

Set in pre-World War I England, this dark novel of a dysfunctional family centers on young Catherine. She and her brother Rob were raised by their rather cold maternal grandfather after their mother deserted the family and their father died while in an asylum. The situation leaves Cathy and Rob extraordinarily close--eventually too close. Secrets, loneliness, the ghosts of the past, the the extremes to which we go to preserve our self-image and our own sanity--Dunmore deals with them all in her exquisitely atmospheric prose.

This week my reading for classes has included:

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Swing" by Mary Ladd Gavell
"Ode: Intimation of Immortality" by William Wordsworth
Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

Oh Titus, another excellent play. Have you seen the film?

Yes, I'm using it in my class. The old BBC version is pretty dreadful.

Afterimage by Helen Humphreys

An engaging novel set in Victorian England that explores the relationships between mistress and maid, husband and wife, photographer and subject. Humphreys portrays perfectly the ambiguous situation of Annie Phelan, the Dashell's Irish maid, who understands her tenuous position in the household yet is drawn into friendship with both her master and mistress.

isn't Titus Shakespeare's slasher play? w/ the torture and violence supposed to be occurring on stage? (decades since i read it, so a good chance of misremembering).

Well, that's one way to look at it, and Shakespeare definitely was trying to appeal to an audience whose idea of enteretainment included bearbaiting and public executions. But it also has a lot to say about the body politic, blind loyalty, the citizen's duty to the state, the power of words v. the power of actions, etc.

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.

Reread for a class that I'm teaching, "Imitations of Immortality." Some of the students were a bit lost. I still wish there was a better film version available than the old Richard Burton one.

Just finished rereading Richard III for my Shakespeare class.

A wicked little gem of a play. And great lines. I want to play the wicked Richard some day. Perhaps, I will go upstairs and get the film. This may be the night for a Shakespeare fest as I am all alone this evening . . . except for the two Welsh terrorists, but they're off plotting who knows what mischief right now. I am sure I do not want to know since their mischief invariably involves me.

Do the Welsh terrorists wear their leeks on St. Davy's Day?

Glad to see that I'm not the only one NOT watching the Super Bowl. Instead, I'm grading a stack of "letters to Faustus" (an assignment I always give my students with the play) and then watching an episode of MI-5 (I'm up to Series 4).

>40 Cariola: Cariola, I am sorry to report that the Welsh terrorists-in-residence prefer to leak on St. Davy's Day.

P.S. Damn the Superbowl, warp speed away!!!

You weren't alone in NOT watching the Superbowl. I can't imagine caring less about something. I was sick with a cold and flopped on the sofa and watched The Wings of a Dove. I really like Helena Bonham-Carter and the sets and costumes in the movie are beautiful.

42> Oh, that's a great film. I love Henry James.

I didn't watch it either. We had the TV on and flipped over to it a couple of times, but then my husband & I got totally immersed in a fascinating C-SPAN interview with Gwen Ifill. Yes, we're nerds.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

I could have done without the sci fi story embedded in the novel (yes, I know it relates to the main story, but I just found it really annoying). Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading about the troubled, intertwined lives of sisters Laura and Iris. Atwood did a fine job of recreating the world of a small Canadian town in the Depression and World War II eras, especially that of the narrator, Iris Chase Griffin, who marries a wealthy older man in order to provide for her sister and finds herself controlled by her ambitious, high society husband and his snooty sister. Secrets and lies--family dysfunction at its finest!

I felt the same way about the sci-fi. I don't normally read that type of literature, and found myself skimming those sections.

#47: I liked the sci-fi story as well as the realistic story, even though I think Margaret Atwood was taking the mickey out of some of her critics in the SF community - for those who don't read SF, that was a particularly lurid breed of pulp SF she was writing - not really representative of the genre at its best!

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

Reread for my Shakespeare course.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Reread for my "Imitations of Immortality" course. The students are really enjoying it!

My boy friend and I read Blind Assasin together, aloud, a chapter or two at sitting. It was fun.

>50 ciridan: Maybe that made the sci-fi parts easier to swallow!

I am very much enjoying my current reads, Blindspot, a novel set in 1760s Boston, and Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s Ethiopia.

Just downloaded two new audiobooks that I'm looking forward to: Drood by Dan Simmons and The Women by T. C. Boyle (no touchstone for this one yet).

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson.

OK, this one made me conclude that I just don't like magical realism. It's the second Winterson that I've read, and it did nothing for me. I enjoyed the sections about Jordan and his mother in 17th century England, and Winterson's style is fine enough, but I guess I'm just not a magical realism, sci-fi, fantasy reader (with a few exceptions).

Blindspot is turning out to be a bit of a disappointment. It's historical fiction, which I enjoy, but there's way too much romance thrown in for my taste. The last third of the book is brimming with details of sexual encounters that I'd rather not know. And it's even creepier because I'm listening to the audiobook--and because the novel was co-written by two history professors. On the book's webpage, they describe how they would furiously send chapters and sections back and forth via email; one can only imagine!

#52: Sexing the Cherry was one of my favorite reads last year, but I swoon for magic realism, and I thought the structure was really interesting. I can definitely see how it wouldn't be for everyone!

Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lapore.

As stated above, this one started out as an intriguing historical novel, but the story got lost in romance and sex. By the time I got to the end, I really didn't care what happened to the main characters. I just wanted them to get a room--and leave me out of it!

Great review, Deborah. I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I think people will think I'm a prude when I write comments like that, but that's not it at all. I just don't care about a lot of those details. Anyway, I know prudishness isn't a problem for you.

Thanks for the review, Deborah! It made me laugh out loud. Incidentally, I agree with you and Joyce.

You win the review of the week award, Deborah. You made me laugh too.

:)

You're right, I'm no prude. I'm one of those who actually LIKED On Chesil Beach. It was full of sexual details--but those were essential to make the point of the novel and to develop the characters. In Blindspot, it was so obviously meant to titillate, and both the promising story and the intriguing characters fell by the wayside.

Whew - one NOT for the TBR pile. I am totally with you on the gratuitous sex - sometimes I think writers think it will sell more books. It can seriously detract.

Sorry to hear Blindspot was so bad. I've enjoyed Jill Lepore's nonfiction, both New York Burning, about slavery in early New York City, and her New Yorker essays. But people who write good nonfiction can't always make the switch to fiction.

The Moorland Cottage by Elizabeth Gaskell.

A short 1850 novel by the author of one of my favorites, North and South. This is the simple story of the Browne and Buxton families. The widowed Mrs. Browne is having trouble making ends meet, and she places her hopes on her son Edward, who eventually decides to become a lawyer. It's very sad to see how she prefers the selfish Edward to her devoted daughter Maggie, who can do no right in her mother's eyes. Mrs. Browne cultivates a connection with the Buxton's, a wealthy landowner and his widowed sister-in-law. The novel is as much about class and social ambition as it is about dysfunctional family dynamics. Nowhere near as good as Gaskell's longer novels, but a fast and engaging read.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

What a wonderful novel, and what fine writing. (NO SPOILERS--all of what follows is on the book jacket). It's narrated by Marion, one of a set of conjoined twins born to a nun (who goes into labor without anyone knowing it) in an Ethiopian mission hospital in the 1960s; their father, everyone suspects, is the chief surgeon, who promptly runs off when he fails to operate to save the distressed mother. The twins, Marion and Shiva, joined only by a fleshy bridge at the head, are separated at birth and raised by two Indian doctors who work at the hospital.

The novel gives fascinating insights into the cultural and political situation in Ethiopia, as well as developing unforgettable characters and unforgettable but believable relationships that move across time and space. If I had to make one criticism, it would be that Verghese, a doctor himself, sometimes get a bit too caught up in the details of diagnosis and surgery; these sections can drag for the non-medical expert reader. But this is a very small flaw in an otherwise fine novel.

That defintely sounds like one for the pile, Deborah. Thanks for the great review.

cutting For Stone is in our library system but hasn't been accessioned yet; did get a hold on my own country so should get get that one soon.

I've read, and recommend Verghese's My Own Country and The Tennis Partner. I've been wanting to read Cutting for Stone, since every review I've read of it has been positive, but I've been trying to wait til it comes out in paperback. Don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to hold out!

The Women by T. C. Boyle

Biofiction focused on the women in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. The narrator--at least the initial narrator--is a fictional Japanese apprentice to the architect. Actually, the narration is wobbly; since Tadashi doesn't arrive at Taliesin until the 1940s, when Wright was settled with his third wife, Olgivvanna, it's hard to imagine him as the narrator of earlier events (but then who is?). There's a lot of jumping around. At one moment, we're being told about Tadashi being sent to an internment camp; the next, we're in 1914 Chicago. One moment we're hearing about the tragedy of Mamah Cheney; the next, we're in Paris with the future Mrs. Wright #2. This is not really confusing, but I don't really see the point or connecting thread in the ruptured chronology. And since Tadashi comes and goes (he's absent from the last part of the book), it's never quite clear why Boyle created him as the initial narrator, other than to make the point that although Wright appeared to be liberal minded, he had some racist sentiments at heart.

I've always had a fascination with Wright. I read Nancy Horan's novel, Loving Frank, about a year ago and didn't think too much of it. While Boyle's novel is the better of the two, I'm only giving it 3.5 stars.

Secondhand World by Katherine Min.

Isa (short for Isadora), the narrator of this book, is the teenaged daughter of Korean immigrants. In many ways, it's a typical coming of age story, one that, like so many second generation American novels, depicts a teen resentful of her ethnic heritage and her parents' ways. Isa rebels in a number of ways: socially, sexually, academically. And she learns that her parents hide secrets and dreams as well.

Overall, this was just an OK (but quick) read. It was a bit hard at times to empathize with the main character, which always makes a novel more difficult to appreciate.

Dark Roots: Stories by Cate Kennedy.

I read about 75 pages of this one before giving up on it. The stories were, to me, dull and dry, with dull, dry characters that I cared nothing about. It seemed like the author was making an effort to be avant garde. It just didn't work for me.

Hmm, looks like I had a thing going for parted hair this week!

Othello by William Shakespeare



Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Just reread these two for classes that I am teaching. I'm getting really tired of Othello and will be teaching a ddifferent tragedy next fall.

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

Not what I expected at all--and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not much of a one for political thrillers, assassination stories, novels focused on the military, etc. I don't even remember what provoked me to pick up this one--maybe the Booker list--but I'm glad that I did. What takes it far beyond being a "special interest" novel is the imagatively drawn characters and the wonderful, distinctive narrative voice. At various times, the novel is funny, horrific, poignant, and thrilling. Highly recommended. I'm looking forward to Hanif's next novel.

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

Beautifully written heartbreaker of a story. At the beginning of the novel, Alice Raikes gets off a train in Edinburgh to visit her sisters. She makes a stop in the loo, sees something that disturbs her, and hops the next train back to London with no explanation. When she arrives, she steps off the curb into the path of an approaching vehicle.

From this moment, the novel meanders through time, from Alice's parents' engagment to the near present, and the focal point continually shifts--sometimes it's Alice, sometimes her mother Ann or her grandmother Elspeth, sometimes one of her sisters, Kirsty or Beth. As the family keeps a vigil by Alice's bedside, secrets, regrets, and lost opportunities are slowly revealed, and we come to understand just what brought Alice to this point.

I enjoyed O'Farrell's The Vanishing of Esme Lennox, but this one tops it by far.

Deborah - Congratulations on the Hot Review for After You'd Gone!

>74 Talbin:: I saw that, too, and it was an excellent review. Gave it a thumbs-up!

Thank you, everyone. Wish I had seen it! It has been an absolutely horrible week, and I needed some pats on the head.

>76 Cariola:: It's still there, if you have "hot reviews" enabled on your homepage. It's #4 or so on the list at the moment. So go pat yourself on the head !!

It is/was a good review and gave it a thumbs up too.

I did see it yesterday. Thanks!

An excellent review, for sure! After You'd Gone was amongst my favorite reads last year - great to see that you enjoyed it as much as I did.

After You'd Gone is going on my wishlist. Thanks for the review, Deborah!

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.



Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.

Both rereads for classes that I am teaching. I wish there was a decent film version of the former; I have three of them (1932, 1941 and one from the 1970s with Jack Palance), bu they all distort the story. The whole point of the novel is how the mystery gradually unfolds: it's told from the lawyer Utterson's point of view, and he becomes a sort of misguided amateur detective, trying to figure out who Hyde is and what the nature of Hyde's relationship with Jekyll is. The movies are all "objectively" told from Jekyll's viewpoint, killing any suspense. Not to mention throwing in a fiancee and making Jekyll a younger man (he's in his fifties in the book).

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry.

My thoughts on this one are mixed. I might have rated it higher, but the unrealistic conclusion--a bit of a deus ex machina--lowered my opinion. Barry creates a fascinating character (or should I say victim?) in Roseann, a 100-year old woman who has spent most of her life in an asylum that is about to close. The story is told from two points of view: Roseann's, mostly in the form of pages she has written and concealed; and Dr. Green, who is in charge of assessing Roseann for either release or transfer to another institution. The cruelty and prejudice of mid-20th century rural Ireland permeates the novel, and at times, the suffering of Roseann is almost too harsh to believe. I was left to wonder whether and how one person (Mrs. McNulty, Roseann's one-time mother-in-law) could have had such moral power over an entire town. Perhaps Barry was trying a little too hard to write a hand-wringingly tragic Irish novel, so it seems he decided to leave his readers with an impossibly happily ever after ending.

Deborah - Isn't it disappointing when a book doesn't live up to your expectations? I was immediately drawn in by the premise, which could have made a fascinating novel in the right hands.

>84 Talbin: It wasn't awful (I gave it three stars for the writing style), but it could have been so much better.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

Classic Victorian lesbian vampire novella that I am teaching in my "Imitations of Immortality" course.

Deborah - I haven't heard of Carmilla before - did it come before or after Stoker's Dracula? Is it any good?

It came before Dracula: 1872. I had never heard of LeFanu before, but he is supposedly "the father of the modern ghost story." Stoker borrowed a lot of what we now consider classic elements of vampire stories from this short novella. I never found Dracula to be a very engaging read, so I'm enjoying this one. It's interesting to find both the vampire and the victim are female--lots to discuss in class about Victorian ideas about friendship and sexuality. You can find the text online. It's not very long, but I enjoyed it.

i haven't read them - but didn't ghosts often figure prominently in the pre-Victorian gothic/romantics tales (Mrs. Radcliffe, Clara Reeve et al.)?

Those would be the MOTHERS of the ghost story!

One thing Le Fanu is noted for is that his ghosts/creepy characters have a greater psychological dimension and rely less on physical embodiments.

>72 Cariola: >73 Cariola:, Cariola, my fingers are in my ears. I 'm not listening (or reading your reviews of those two books). I have been enabled enough by certain people on this thread. Really, I am not going to succumb . . . .

>91 urania1: Oh, but you SHOULD!

Get thee behind me Cariola ;-)

That does it, Carmilla is on the wishlist.

Deborah, if ever you get the chance, read Green Tea, a short ghost story by LeFanu. It is a classic in its genre, and quite well known.

Q & A: A Novel by Vikas Swarup (a.k.a. Slumdog Millionaire).

I haven't seen the movie yet, so I can't say how the book compares. (It will be showing on campus in two weeks.) A good but not great novel about an uneducated young man who is accused of cheating to win the Indian equivalent of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" because no one can believe that he would know so many answers otherwise. Swarup uses an interesting structure: as Ram Mohammed Thomas reviews the show's tapes with his lawyer, he relates the events in his life that led to his knowing the correct answer for each. Although his story is one of cruelty and hardship, his optimism and good nature persist. The ending is full of happy coincidences and a few surprises.

For anyone interested, Carmilla is readily available online.

>95 aluvalibri: Thanks for the recommendation. I'm very interested to read more of Le Fanu's work

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.

I'm rereading this one for my Shakespeare class. It's always fun.

A Number by Caryl Churchill.

An awesome little play, ostensibly about a man who learns that he has been cloned and that there are at least 19 others out there just like him. In conversations with his father, the truth gradually unravels: he himself IS a clone, the "second chance" for his father, who botched things the first time around. In the father's conversations with Bernard 2, Bernard 1, and another clone, Michael Black, Churchill raises serious questions about the ethics of genetic tampering, nature v. nurture, psychic connections, father-son relationships, personal identity, and family secrets.

I taught this one in my "Imitations of Immortality" class. The students were put off by the style at first, but when we started reading it in class, they caught on and really got into it.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

Just finished rereading this one for my Shakespeare class. Summer is almost here--time for my own reading agenda.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn.

There are just too many coincidences and impossible events in the plot; the world isn't THAT small a place, not even in Civil War America. Jacob Rappaport, a young Jewish New Yorker, runs away from the life his father has planned for him and joins the Union army. Somehow, the officers find out that his uncle is the head of a Southern plot to kill Lincoln and assign him to be a spy and an assassin. He does the job so well--not out of devotion to the Union, but in hopes of a promotion--that he's given yet another assignment, this time to marry into a suspected Jewish family. I won't reveal any more of the plot, but apparently Horn intended to highlight the confict between Jacob's faith and his duty. To me, he seemed more like an aimless, ungrounded man drifting through a series of events. Not badly written, but I gave it only 3.5 out of 5 stars.

>99 Cariola:, Cariola, A Number sounds really interesting. Thanks for pointing it out!

Vis a vis Le Fanu, I started reading his Uncle Silas last night. Midway through the third chapter, I crawled under the bed covers from sheer fright. I think a great many things will be going bump in the night, and I don't like that French governess one bit. French governesses always cause trouble.

Music and Silence by Rose Tremain.

Is it possible for Rose Tremain to write a BAD book? From my experience so far, the answer would have to be "No." Music and Silence is absolutely exquisite. Tremain gets just right the mix of opulence and stringency, melancholy and joy, hope and despair that war with one another in the 17th century court of King Chistian of Denmark. All of her characters may not be likeable (the selfish Kristin, for one, and Tillson's second wife Mordalena, for another); but each one is unique and fascinating in his or her own right. What is Music and Silence about? The disappointment of love--and the perseverance of love. The power of art and the power of words. Family dynamics that can almost destroy its members yet somehow manages to pull them together. The influence of the past and the persistence of memory. And so much more. To give you any more details, if you haven't read this beautiful novel, would spoil the experience. Highly recommended!

Music and Silence won the 1999 Whitbread Prize.

(Edited for typo.)

Deborah, it will be one of my very next reads, as soon as I am done with the Early Reviewers book I am reading.

I am sure that you will love it! I've had it for quite awhile and remember amandameale (who is a musician) raving about it as well.

Glad you enjoyed Music & Silence. It is indeed a fab book.

Music and Silence sounds wonderful - it's been added to my ever-growing wishlist.

Oh yes, I can't wait to read that one Deborah!

According to Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge

The story of poet, critic, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson's friendship with Mrs. Hester Thrale. Despite the title, only some chapters are told from the point of view of Mrs. Thrale's daughter, known affectionately as "Queeney." I had heard a lot of praise for the historical novel. While it was well-written, overall, I thought it was just OK.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

An ambitious novel (maybe a bit too ambitious) that attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the 20th century and our own times with a focus on violence, nationalism, mobility, and the effects of each on two extended and related families. The story is carried from the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Nagasaki (1945) through post-9/11 paranoia, mainly by Hiroko Tanaka Ashraf. As a young woman, she was scarred by the bomb that also took the lives of her German fiance and her father. The event sets her on a journey in search of peace that takes her to India, Turkey, Pakistan, and, finally, the United States. Some of her moves are by choice, others accidental or enforced, but she remains always, somehow, connected to the family of her lost fiance. There's no happy ending here, but no great tragedy either, just a bleak prospect: "Outside, the world went on."

How Do I Love Thee? by Nancy Moser.

One can only hope that Ellizabeth Barrett Browning's life was not really as dull and that EBB herself was not so unlikeable as Moser had made them. I have several other books by this author in my stacks. I see some skimming and swapping in my near future.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (published in the UK as The Other Hand).

It was hard to know just what to expect of this book. It's one of those that tells you on the jacket that you are in for a lot of surprises, we don't want to spoil it by telling you much, and please don't give anything away. For the life of me, I'm not sure I understand why there needed to be all this mystery. It's the story of a young Nigerian woman who, at the beginning of the novel, has been "unofficially" released from a detention center in England. Among her few belongings are the driver's license and business card of Andrew Rourke, a reporter that she tells us she had met on a beach in Nigeria several years earlier. She makes her way to his home, and the story becomes one told alternately by Little Bee and Rourke's wife, Sarah.

So I won't really give away any more. We learn what has happened to Little Bee in Nigeria, how Sarah and her husband first came to be involved with her, and how Little Bee becomes a part of the llife of Sarah and her four-year old son, Charlie (otherwise known as Batman for the costume he literally lives in). And it becomes, in the end, a story of redemption, sacrifice, and understanding. Cleave has a charmingly lyrical style that particularly suits his central character.

4 out of five stars.

Is How Do I Love Thee? a biography, or a fictionalized account of her life? Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster is a fictionalized account of the Brownings' married life, as told from the pov of Elizabeth's maid. I remember Elizabeth was portrayed as somewhat self-absorbed, but not unlikeable. I enjoyed it, though I'm not sure how accurate it is.

113> It is fiction, but it includes excerpts from her and Robert's letters and her poems. It starts when she is convalescing in Torquay and her brother ("Bro") is drowned in a boating accident and ends shortly after the marriage. It seems she just wallows in self-invoked guilt, melodrama, and self-pity throughout the entire novel.

How was Lady's Maid? It's in my stacks somewhere.

The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine.

This book does exactly what the author must have intended: it alerts its audience to a shocking world that we generally know little of, the world of child prostitution. The novel is purportedly "written" by 15-year old Batuk, who was sold into prostitution by her father at the age of nine. The one delight in her life is her ability to read and write, which she learned as a TB patient at a missionary hospital. Batuk records the memories of her life back home in an Indian farming village as well as the horrific details of her life over the past six years. Levine's story is the story of many children with whom he has come in contact in the course of his work, and it is particularly affecting because we see what promise this child, in a different environment, might have fulfilled. The voice he creates for Batuk is believable, never self-pitying, always pragmatic. And that makes the novel all the more hauntingly sad. I found myself unable to put this one down and unable to forget it once I had finished it.

As I was reading this thread, something struck me about the covers - virtually all of the books written by women have a picture of a woman on the front; the male authored books vary more. Does this contribute to men not reading novels by female authors?

Re Le Fanu - his work can be quite variable. At one point he was editing, and writing the majority of, an Irish newspaper as well as his fiction, which resulted in a decline in the standard of his fiction, his novels especially. The two classic works are Uncle Silas, highly recommended, fantastic novel; and In a Glass Darkly, which contains Camilla among other stories. The other book I would recommend is The Purcell Papers, which collects early short stories, including Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter, which was adapted so effectively by the BBC that even after two decades I can remember it.

116> That's an interesting observation. In those written by women, of course, the main characters or narrators tend to be women (although All Other Nights features a male character and Blindspot shifts between two narrators, one male and one female). The odd woman out is Music and Silence: the lute player in the novel is a man, yet the cover depicts a woman. I'd guess you're right that many men would not be drawn to a cover like most of the above. Why is it that a woman on the cover seems to suggest that the book is a romance, even when it's not?

Thanks for the Le Fanu suggestions. I had never heard of him until I started looking for classic vampire stories for my class, but I'd be interested in reading more of his work.

Mr. Darcy's Diary by Amanda Grange.

Spring is here, and I'm trying to do some housecleaning by breezing through some books that are on other people's swap site wish lists. I've read some very good spin-offs, sequels, and prequels to Pride and Prejudice, but, unfortunately, this isn't one of them. If you've read Austen's original and have seen any of the film versions, you'll find nothing new here. Grange adds no new insights into either Darcy's character or the backstory. "His" diary entries are merely restatements of what happens and what is said in the Austen original, fleshed out by a few emotions made obvious by Colin Firth, Matthew McFayden, and others on screen.

On to better things (I hope). But at least it's nice to see my TBR mountain depleting (she says, even as she orders more books on PBS and Book Mooch).

Amish Grace by Donald Kraybill et al.

A lovely book, but a bit repetitive. The authors begin with the "phenomena" of forgiveness following the schoolhouse shooting of ten young girls in October of 2005. Unfortunately, school shootings are nothing new in the US, and although this one was more shocking because of the peaceful targeted community, what seemed to capture the attention of the press and of people around the world was the Amish community's quickness to forgive the killer and his family. The authors retell stories of Amish forgiveness, both in the aftermath of this tragedy and earlier ones, while setting the culture in religious and historical context. They also contrast the Amish belief in following strictly the teachings of Jesus with popular contemporary evangelists and so-called Christian politicians (including George Bush).

Deborah, what a lot of reading you are doing! Some really interesting books here, thanks for chronicling them for us.

>119 Cariola:: I've heard of that book; Kraybill is quite an expert on Amish culture. I can't tell ... did you like the book?

Four out of five stars. (I guess I should start including ratings.) Interesting and inspiring, but a bit repetitive, and since I've had a class in which we studied the Amish, and since I live in the vicinity of Nickel Mines (about an hour away), there was a lot of familiar info. I sped through it in less than a day.

Are you familiar with the documentary, The Devil's Playground http://worldfilm.about.com/cs/films/fr/devilplayground.htm ?

It's about the rite of Rumspringa when Amish teenagers are encouraged to experience the "world" before they make an adult committment to the Amish way of life. There are many Amish and Mennonites here in Sarasota, and the film actually shows with a couple of kids settling here.

Yes, I've seen it. Pretty interesting!

I read another book, Rumspringa, about 2 years ago. It was pretty interesting, too. Like Cariola, I live quite near an Amish community and buy my milk & eggs from an Amish farm. There's a certain fascination with their culture here, I think.

#114--Cariola--I quite enjoyed Lady's Maid, although I don't retain a very clear memory of it. One interesting aspect was its depiction of the relationship between the servants and the master/mistress--in an Upstairs/Downstairs kind of way.

(By the way, I'm a Deborah too).

126> Hi, Deborah!

The servants' lives HAD to be more interesting than EBB's!

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.

I was up until 3 a.m. last night finishing this novel; I just couldn't sleep without knowing how it ended. It is definitely one of my best reads so far this year. Goolrick creates two intriguing and believable characters in Ralph and Catherine, the northern Wisconsin mogul and his mail-order wife, and he is especially adept at giving them interior lives. Although they initially seem like opposites, we soon learn that they share pasts flawed by misplaced love, tragedy, and self-loathing. Goolrick so successsfully sets forth these characters and their stories that the novel's twists and turns, while often unexpected, never seem unbelievable. The spareness of his style is a perfect complement to the empty white landscape of the Wisconsin winter and to the empty lives of Ralph, Catherine, and Antonio. But don't let this fool you: A Reliable Wife is hauntingly, lyrically beautiful as well. And beneath both the landscape and the seemingly empty lives lies the promise and dread of something more.

I was so affected by this novel that I probably won't be picking up anything new to read for a day or two. I'm just not ready to leave it yet.

5 out of 5 stars.

Well, that is quite a recommendation!

Great review! I'll add this to my wish list, and to my gift list; my best friend's wife lives in south central Wisconsin (Madison), and would love this book.

>>>128 Cariola:. Cariola - I can't top your review, but I can pile on and say I loved it and found myself riveted by it as well.

Deborah - that is quite a recommendation. I am intrigued.

Wow! I don't see too many 5 star reviews from you; definitely making a note of this one.

5 stars! It immediately goes on my wish list!!

Plain Jane by Laurien Gardner

This is the kind of light historical fiction that I occasionally read when I'm not in the mood for concentrating too hard. Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII, is perhaps the one about whom we know the least. Gardiner gives her a fairly interesting personality, but there are no new insights here.

3 out of 5 stars.

All Souls by Christine Schutt.

I got about 60 pages in before giving up on this one. Too many silly, self-indulgent characters about whom I didn't care. I have too many books in my TBR stacks to waste any more time on this one.

1.5 out of 5.

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr.

Not as good as I had hoped, but still a fairly enjoyable read. Birkin, a somewhat shell-shocked World War I vet, is sent to a remote English town to restore a mural in the local church. Thanks to the receptiveness of the locals, he almost feels a part of life again--and then it is time for him to move along.

I agree with you, Deborah. I enjoyed the book but, in consideration of the enthusiastic comments I heard from many friends about it, I would have expected much more.

Hmmm ... I have this on my shelf due to similar enthusiastic comments. At least it's a short read!

I liked All Souls well enough at the time I read it, but looking back, I can't say that it was all that great.

(By the way, can you please, PLEASE stop reading so many interesting books? Me poor TBR list cannot keep up!)

I have put A Number on my wishlist. Unfortunately, I am on a book-purchasing diet right now. Something to do with the latest fad diet called The New Austerity. I don't like this diet at all.

141> The original production starred Daniel Craig (as all three sons) and Michael Gambon. I would have loved to have seen it!

lindsacl, For what it's worth, I loved A Month in the Country -- an understated book with more depth about people than may first be apparent.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway.

What a sad, hopeful, horrific, and beautiful book. Yes, I know there seem to be a lot of contradictions in that sentence, but that is exactly how Galloway presents the experience of living (or maybe just surviving) in a once-great city under siege. The frame of the novel is based on a real story of a cellist who plays Albinoni's Adagio on the site where twenty-two people waiting in line for bread were killed by a mortar attack. He has vowed to play every day for twenty-two days in their honor. He never explains his reason for putting himself in the line of sniper fire, nor do the people who stand listening to him. (In fact, he is more of a peripheral character.) But it's clear that they are trying to hold on to some last scraps of decency and civilization in a city where they have to walk for miles just to get water, risking being shot by snipers at every intersection, and where dead bodies lying in the street are such a common sight that everyone just steps over them. The book made me think about the little things that we take for granted every day, and of the fragility of life and the pointlessness of war. An absolutely stunning novel. Highly recommended.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

This is the first novel by Waters that I've read, although I've seen dramatizations of three of them. Let me begin by saying that I listened to the audibook version; the reader was good, but maybe I would have been less disappointed if I had read it in print . . . but maybe not. It's just that I've been hearing people rave about Waters, and for me, this was just another a run-of-the-mill psychological mystery with Gothic overtones. The focus of the story is The Hundreds, the Ayres family mansion, and it's narrated by Dr. Farraday, who first visited and became enthralled with the house as a young boy. Now he has become the family doctor and eventually a close family friend. The Ayreses are having difficulty keeping up the estate, and Roderick, the current owner and heir, who has suffered a severe wartime injury, seems to be losing his mind. But is there, as Roderick claims, some malevolent force within the house that is bent on destroying the family? The rest of the book explores this possibility and details strange events that our narrator rationally explains away. We're somewhat left to make the conclusion for ourselves.

Although Waters give a fine picture of the post-World War II decaying aristocracy and the working of a troubled mind, and her writing is fine enough, I just wasn't blown away by The Little Stranger. For me, it really dragged on at several points, and I was almost getting impatient to be done with it.

The Siege of London by Henry James.

A typical Jamesian novella about a beautiful American with a shady past trying to break into London society.

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

A charming novel set in the Yorkshire countryside, devoid of the usual darkness typical of other Hardy novels, such as Jude the Obscure, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, and others. As always, his characters are well rounded, displaying very human flaws that make them all the more endearing. Fancy Day, despite her love for Dick Dewey, can't resist flattery and a chance to show herself off; Dick himself has a bit of a jealous streak. But overall, Hardy creates that wonderful sense of community and slower-paced days that we seem to long for in our times.

Four out of five stars.

Maybe I will give Under the Greenwood Tree another chance at some point. I tried reading it several years ago but could never manage to get beyond the first 20 pages (and I am a Hardy fan).

The Outlander by Gil Adamson.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel about a young woman on the run in the Canadian wilderness, ca. 1903. Never quite fitting into the accepted role for women of her day, the heroine, Mary Boulton, comes into her own, finding strengths and desires that she never knew she had as she flees from the avenging brothers of the husband she murdered. Along the way, she meets a series of fascinating characters. The Outlander is not quite a western and certainly not a murder mystery; it's more of a wilderness adventure and the story of a woman discovering herself.

Adamson, also a poet, has the ability to put us inside her heroine's mind, and her descriptions are vivid and highly sensory. My only quibble is that I wish she hadn't continued to call Mary "the widow" throughout the entire novel. If you give your character a name, use it! (Especially when "the widow" is not how Mary would identify herself, nor does anyone else label her "the widow" once she changes from her mourning weeds, which happens early in the novel.)

I've been listening to the BBC Radio4 reading of The Outlander in installments and I am really enjoying it.

Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

Late 18th-century satire of the British landlords in Ireland, supposedly written by a trusty old servant. The author's glossary and the editor's notes take up almost as many pages as this short novel!



Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf

Memoirs of Woolf's early life, written for her nephew. Probably a lot more interesting for Woolf scholars than for the average reader.

Why Bird Sing: A Journey Through the Mystery of Bird Song by David Rothenberg.

I really wanted to like this book, but it was at times too touchy-feely, Kumbaya for my taste (e.g., the author goes to an aviary to play his saxophone with the birds)--and at times other times, too boringly scientific. I know the author was trying to mix hard research with his personal observations, but for me, the blend didn't work.

Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes by Shoba Narayan.

Memoir of a young woman raised in India who emigrated to the US. Each chapter explains how the events described revolve around a particular food or recipe. The memoir itself is fairly interesting but nothing too unique; the recipes all include some ingredient that can only be found at your local Indian market (which not all of us have).

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Faulks's vivid prose captures better than any other novel I've read the experience of being a soldier in the trenches in World War I. Stephen Wraysford, recovering from a passionate romance that didn't work out as planned, finds himself, like so many other young men, struggling to survive in the tunnels, trenches, and fields of France. The descriptions of battles, bodies, and wounds are horrific; I couldn't help but think what a sanitized view of warfare we are given today. In the midst of it all, Stephen is torn between wanting to withdraw into himself--why make friends with a man who might be blown to bits beside you the next day?--and to retain a measure of humanity. There's a second story line, set in the late 1970s, as Stephen's granddaughter uncovers a series of family secrets; but it's the reality of war that makes this novel memorable.

Sounds like you loved that book as much as I did. Very moving, wasn't it?

155> Yes, although surprisingly it was the war details and not the romance that moved me. I don't think I will ever get over the description of what happened to Weir.

These Three Remain: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy by Pamela Aidan

I enjoyed the first book in this trilogy that tells the story of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view; the second, not so much. Thus I put off for awhile getting around to the third installment--but it was, by far, the best of the three. Aidan does a good job of maintaining the tone and times of Austen, and here she gives us some believable insights into what Darcy was thinking and feeling as he pondered whether or not to propose to Elizabeth, his response to her reaction, and what he does in the time following, all of which change him into the man he had always hoped to be. Aidan links back to some of the more fanciful events in the second book, making them, in retrospect, more acceptable. Overall, I quite enjoyed this series.

4 out of 5 stars.

The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith.

Written mostly by well-known authors (Smith, Edwidge Danticat, David Mitchell, Jonathan Zafran Foer, ZZ Packer, Nick Hornsby, etc.), these stories are a pretty mediocre bunch overall. Each writer was asked to submit a story (well, two of them are graphic stories, I guess) about one character, and the proceeds go to a charity. A good concept, and a good cause. The characters and styles are diverse, but most of the stories left me flat; the best are perhaps "Frank" by A. L. Kennedy and "Donal Webster" by Colm Toibin--but they aren't exactly "uppers." A few years ago I read a similar charity collection edited by Hornsby, and that one was even less successful. (Hopefully these authors aren't donating work that hasn't been accepted elsewhere.)

i need to note the books you've enjoyed and i haven't read. When I HAVE read the books you review, there's a v. high concordance between what we've liked. But you've been a lot more profligate in yr reading so i can leach off of your reading speed to look for likely winners. (at least w/ modern novels; i'm crap at enjoying a lot of pre-Dickens 19th C stuff, which is a failing of mine).

159> Yes, I do go back and forth between contemporary and classic novels and historical fiction (the last of which I've found few men enjoy, so I'm not surprised). Summer is usually my catch up time as I'm too busy during the academic year to read more than one or two books per month, aside from what I'm rereading to teach.

Vivaldi's Virgins by Barbara Quick.

(Note to self: Avoid any book written by an author who wears a flower in her hair in the cover photo.)

The comparison to Girl with a Pearl Earring is GREATLY exaggerated! I was disappointed in this book--too much adolescent angst and silliness, too little Vivaldi and Venice. I also found the writing style rather precious, and the device of the letters to a nonexistent mother just didn't work for me. Maybe it gets better, but I gave up on it halfway through.

(Note to self: Avoid any book written by an author who wears a flower in her hair in the cover photo.)

Good tip!

Not to mention the alliteration in the title AND the setting. Too much.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book. In the 1950s, a young Irish girl, Eilis Lacey, is sent to America to make her way in the world. Most of the book details her adjustment to her new life, her relationships with her fellow lodgers, and her falling in love. In the last third, a family tragedy calls Eilis back hometo Enniscorthy, where she is faced with new challenges and the decision of whether or not to return to Brooklyn. I won't give away the story (I hate reviews that do that!), so all I will say is that I really started to dislike Eilis at this point, and I found the conclusion abrupt and dissatisfying as she seems to make her decisions for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to know more about how things turn out for her, but Toibin left me hanging.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

A beautifully written novel, the first in Barker's "Regeneration Trilogy" (the third volume won the Booker Prize). Set in a war hospital in Engliand during World War I, the story revolves around several patients and physicians, including the poet Siegfried Sassoon. After serving honorably, Sassoon wrote an anti-war statement, which he asked an MP to read in session. His friend and fellow officer Robert Graves, knowing that Sassoon would be facing a court martial, claims the statement was due to battle fatigue and has him sent to Craiglockhaven for treatment. Dr. Rivers's task is to get Sassoon to agree to return to the front. A fascinating look at the social pressure put on young men during the war, as well as the effects of the war and of the treatment of the psychological scars it caused.

I listened to this one on audio, read wonderfully by Peter Firth, and I will be moving on to the next two volumes, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road.

I'm planning to read the series too -- but probably not for several months. I am on a quest to read all Booker winners but don't want to read The Ghost Road until I've read the first two. Glad to see you enjoyed this.

Regeneration looks great. I'll have to find it.

Just dropping in to second your recommendation of Regeneration, Cariola, and to recommend the next two volumes as well. I'm reading another Barker at the moment, Life Class, set at the same time and also excellent.

168> I also have Life Class and plan to get to that one following the series.

Deborah -- we watched the film version of Regeneration in my 20th century Brit lit class this past term. I really enjoyed it and thought both the casting and the sets/costumes were well done. As for the books, I own the trilogy, but don't know when I'll have time to fit them in. Sounds like they're a great read.

(the film is called Behind the Lines, I think)

170> I put it in my Netflix queue just yesterday; glad to hear that it's a good one. Anything with Jeremy Irons in it has to be good!

Hmmm. Now I'm curious what movie you've got in your Netflix queue--Jeremy Irons isn't in the one I'm talking about. It stars Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) and James Wilby (lots of British stuff). I agree that Jeremy Irons is great, though.

Ack, you are correct, it's Jonathan Pryce. Don't know why I get those two mixed up. All they have in common is that they are both tall, thin, and British.

James Wilby--I've seen him in a lot of things, including Jarman's 'Edward II' and a Merchant-Ivory, 'Maurice.' He also had a little part in the first season of 'The Tudors' (he got beheaded) and played the snobbish Redcoat who wanted to marry Cora in 'Last of the Mohicans' (but he ended up a good guy by making a big sacrifice).

He also had a little part in the first season of 'The Tudors' (he got beheaded)

I just hate that when that happens.

Water by Bapsi Sidhwa. (Not the right touchstone; it's not on the list, although it is listed on LT.)

Having seen the film version of Water last year, I was eager to read the novel. It takes place in the 1930s in India. Chuyia, age six, is married to a man in his forties. Per custom, she is allowed to remain at home until she reaches puberty. However, two years later, her husband falls ill with typhoid, and since it is a wife's duty to be by a dying husband's side, her father takes her to the in-laws' home. When her husband dies, Chuyia is sent to a widows' ashram where she will spend the rest of her life because widows--especially young widows--are a danger to society. The rest of the novel edtails her adjustment to her new life, her relationships with the other widows, and her contact with the outside world for which she yearns.

The story is a striking one, However, the writing, I felt, left something to be desired. It seemed flat--not in the way one would right simply to tell a child's story, just flat.

Cousin Phillis by Elizabeth Gaskell. (Actually, the book I read is not listed on LT: Cousin Phillis and Other Stories; it's an Oxford World Classic.)

This collections was mixed--and a bit repetitive. Bad children, long suffering parents, moments of redemption and forgiveness. I'm not sure if Gaskell wrote these before some of her well-known novels or at the same time, but I did note a lot of similarity in characters and themes. The selfish, debt-ridden son in "The Crooked Branch," for example, was the same type as the son in The Moorland Cottage, and his faithful, sacrificing fiancee/cousin was a match for that young man's sister. "Lois the Witch" was a stereotypical tale of the witch craze in Salem, where jealousy and religious fanaticism turn into false accusations; it made me conclude that Gaskell is much better in familiar territory. While not really bad, this collection made me wish I had spent my time reading or rereading one of her better developed novels.
____________



Twilight by Stephenie Mayer

OK, let me explain; obviously, this is not my usual fare. I'm co-editing an issue of a journal with a biologist. The topic is 'Vampires and Other Bloodsuckers.' Obviously, he's doing the leeches and bats, and I will be overseeing the submissions on vampires in literature and culture. Since I have to write an introductory essay, I felt that I HAD to read one of these wildly popular novels. (I'll probably also watch Season 1 of True Blood and will read The Historian.)

So . . . what did I think of the book that started the phenomenon? In short, it was pretty awful. First, it brought back a lot of painful memories of high school--which may be the reason that so many young people relate to it, but it's an era I'd sooner forget. Second, I hated Bella, the main character; talk about a superiority complex! Her inner dialogue about what dorks everyone else is, from ALL the boys who were after her to the girls trying to befriend her, got tiresome. Third, it's full of cliches. The jock, the cheerleader, the geeky guy, the quiet Native American, the flighty mother. And cliche situations, too, such as Bella falling for Edward simply because he doesn't seem interested in her when every other male in sight is trying to ingratiate himself to her. (Ah, the mystique of the unobtainable!) Fourth, there's a lot of downright silliness; Edward's skin sparkles, for one thing, and he can also stop a speeding truck with a single hand. (This weekend, I'd been watching some Michael Jackson tributes, and I couldn't help but connect his 'Thriller' line, "I'm not like other guys," to Twilight's Edward. But at least Jackson was an original talent.) Fifth, the writing style is facile.

I've been reading a lot of other critiques of the series. One is that it has "Mormon overtones," not only in the abstinence message but in the way men and women relate to one another. I'll need to do a little more checking up on that.

I'm willing to give the novel at least one star, simply for the fact that, like the Harry Potter series, it has gotten a lot of young people to read for pleasure who otherwise wouldn't. (Let me say that I've never read a Harry Potter book, but I'm hoping that they are better written than this.) I have the second book in the series awaiting, but I think it's going straight to a swap site.

I can't really bring myself to spend precious time reading the Twilight series, I'm afraid. That said, my daughter was just enthralled, for which I am extremely grateful. During her last few weeks in Americorps last year, someone lent her the series, and she started reading again. She's always been enthralled with vampires (her all-time favorite movie is Lost Boys), and these books just captured her imagination at a time when she needed some distraction. So, I agree -- anything that gets young people reading is OK with me.

177> Maybe you can move your daughter on to the early Ann Rice/Vampire Lestat novels when she finishes Twilight--they're much better written! (I heard an interview with Meyer, who says she's done with Bella. The next novel tells the story from Edward's POV, and then she's on to other things.)

I also could not crack open Twilight, despite hearing rave reviews from my 16 year old a couple of years ago. She devoured the series - so it must have a special appeal to teen girls and 'speak' to their experiences or something. She is quite a serious reader, generally, but she did say it was a guilty read and suggested I would hate it.

Also, a shame to read about Brooklyn - I had high hopes that it would be a 'classic' after reading The Master

I agree with you - the cover of the Quick book is perhaps a tip-off (too schmatzy looking), but sometimes the covers can be completely deceiving. I have a rule that if the cover is cut away in any manner, or has ridging or glitter, it is probably a dud, but this rule is never absolute. Also, if the accolades/blurpers come from Elle, People or a movie star, I will probably hate it.

Cariola,

I have not read the Twilight series . . . am boycotting. However, I do love a good vampire story/film. I thoroughly enjoyed The Historian. The writer grew up in Knoxville and attended Webb School, our local approximation of a prep school for day students. My favorite vampire movies include:

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu - one of my favorite movies of all time - simply brilliant
The Hunger Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon - stylish
Near Dark - Deliverance meets Stoker - gritty

and last and least

The Lost Boys - sappy but with flashes of humor

I think you will enjoy The Historian, certainly more than the Meyers' book! I liked The Historian and I really hate books with supernatural themes (I even struggle with magic realism unless exceptionally well done). That said, I have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies waiting for me to read next. I couldn't resist the title or the premise.

I liked The Hunger too -- can't miss with Deneuve.
I had mixed feelings about The Historian -- it started out well, but I thought it got a bit tedious and predictable by the end.

There's nothing much better than the version of Dracula with Frank Langella. He made vampires sexy!

I have a B-list vampire movie with Jude Law in my Netflix Instant queue and will be watching it soon.

Urania, Kosteva went to my alma mater, the University of Michigan, for her MFA. I believe we are fellow Hopwood Award winners. I've heard mixed reviews of the book, but the advance she got while still in grad school was truly astonishing.

>183 Cariola:, Have you seen/read Let the Right One In? It is a Swedish book/movie (I believe the film is available on Netflix instant viewing) that is a slightly different take on the whole vampire thing. Might provide a break from the drek - I'll admit it, I've read a bunch of YA vampire novels, but most of them suck and I find myself wondering why I wasted that hour or so. I had heard people rave about the Twilight series - I was quite disappointed with the books but for some reason I had to read them all. By the time I finished the fourth one, I wanted to light the whole stack on fire.

i've been wanting to see let the right one in for a while now. But we've gone off of our netflix viewing for a while now and need to start watching some good flix again.

Oh, I'll have to try that one. Thanks!

I taught (or tried to teach) a series of vampire stories in a gen ed lit class last semester. Most of the students, who had been weaned on Twilight, thought they were too violent. They want their vampires clean and romantic. They did seem to like the classic Carmilla, however.

(It's funny, LT must have something against Twilight; the touchstones have never worked!

>187 Cariola:, LOL, perhaps it is a small way of discouraging the proliferation of Twilight (whoa, it worked!)-related groups. My gentleman friend said to me the other day that - although he's never read the books, everything he's ever heard about them leads him to believe that - they are "fan-fiction for people who are too lazy to write their own fan-fiction." Having actually read all four books, I think that is a particularly apt description!

Another one who like The Historian here. I particularly enjoyed the traveling-through-Europe parts.

Wow, I had a lot to catch up on here! re >175 Cariola: have you seen the filmmaker's other two films in the trilogy--- "Earth" and "Fire"?

190> No, I didn't even know there WAS a trilogy. Funny it wasn't mentioned anywhere on the book jacket. Hopefully Netflix carries them. Thanks!

Netflix has them--and I realize that I actually have seen 'Fire.'

The Outcast by Sadie Jones.

I got so caught up in The Outcast that I stayed up until 3:30 last night finishing it. That says something for the power of the book--even though, in terms of content, it is probably the most depressing book I've ever read. The novel starts in 1957, as Lewis has just been released from prison and returns home. We flash back to 1945, with seven-year old Lewis and his mother taking the train to London to meet his father, who has long been away in the war. Dad turns out to be . . . well, not exactly an affectionate father; and things go from bad to worse a few years later when Lewis's mother dies. (No spoilers or details, I promise!) Different sections of the novel cover pivotal events in the years in between and in the weeks following Lewis's return. There's only a sliver of happiness in the ending, so if you're looking for a light summer read, don't pick up this one.

My main criticism is that it is a bit hard to believe that so many characters could be so cruel and downright abusive with no one seeming to notice or care and everyone blaming a ten-year old boy for his own misery. I know that the setting was 1945-57, but even then people might question some of the things that happen to Lewis. No one seems to figure out that his quietness has something to do with the fact that he witnessed his mother's death or that he's angry that his father remarries only five months later? Still, the author's ability to evoke a visceral response in her reader is the novel's strength. She made me physically experience the sadness and anxiety and hopelessness that Lewis must have experienced.

Love Falls by Esther Freud

Initially, this book sucked me in. I was very interested in young Lara's first trip to Italy with the father she barely knew, and I was hoping to learn more as their relationship grew. Unfortunately, it didn't. About 60 pages in, it becomes the story of a rather wimpy, emotionally self-indulgent teenager who is obsessed with a beautiful rich boy . . . I felt like I was back in Twilight, reading Bella's cheesey descriptions of Edward. (Lara's decriptions of Lulu are almost as bad!) Her idolization of the idle--and generally mean and stupid--rich soon got to be a bore, and I couldn't wait to finish this one and turn it over to some poor sucker who wishlisted it on a swap site. The only plus I can give it is that Freud does a fine job of creating the feel of an Italian summer and of describing the surroundings in which Lara finds herself.

Granta 97: Best of the Young American Novelists 2.

A plethora of well-known writers contributed short stories: Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, ZZ Packer, Nicole Krauss, Karen Russell, Dara Horn, and others. Unfortunately, most of the stories were just not to my taste. They seemes to be trying a bit too hard to be avant garde, kinky, "new," which meant that the main characters just didn't engage me.

They seem to be trying too hard

That's a problem I have with a lot -- but not all -- of the younger writers I've read in the past several years. I hope they'll outgrow it.

The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker.

This is the second novel in Barker's 'Regeneration' trilogy. As such, it reads a bit like a transitional novel and doesn't quite stand on its own as well as the first, Regeneration. I'm hoping that the final installment, The Ghost Road, will raise the bar again.

In The Eye in the Door, psychiatrist Dr. Rivers and several of his patients, including Billy Pryor and Siegfried Sassoon, return, and we find out what each has been doing since leaving Craiglockhart, the Scottish war hospital for soldiers suffering mental trauma. Barker explores a myriad of questions concerning loyalty to one's country, family, and friends. Because the setting has moved to London, she is able to expand her scope to include British society outside the confines of the hospital. (One of the themes is the persecution of homosexuals; one character notes how strange it is that the war encourages love between men as a motivation to fight, yet at the same time. those in charge want to set parameters on the kind of love that is acceptable.) Through Pryor, who has joined military intelligence, we see the corruption of the justice system and the conditions of prisons, and Rivers's visits to his colleague (aptly named Dr. Head) provide insight into what now seem like primitive forms of treatment for psychological problems. Overriding all is the power of the war machine and its efforts to keep providing bodies to fill the trenches. And, of course, the devastating effect of the war on individual lives.

Our library doesn't have Birdsong - i may splurge and buy it. We do have Engleby and Charlotte Gray on hand - any opinions on either one?

I will never forget that scene of a man dying on the wire, and what happens to him afterwards.

Sorry, I haven't read either of those yet. I have Girl at the Lion d'Or in my TBR stacks.

I've read Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, and Girl at the Lion d'Or and thought Birdsong was far & away the best. I enjoyed Charlotte Gray and felt Girl at the Lion d'Or was the weakest.

Bob, Birdsong is worth the splurge. You could probably find it used on Amazon, Alibris, etc. too.

The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

The third installment of Barker's "Regeneration" trilogy (and a Booker Prize winner), The Ghost Road was a bit of a disappointment. I'm not exactly sure why, although I think that Dr. Rivers's digressive reminiscences about his time in Melanesia may have had something to do with it. I'm sure Barker included them to make a comment on human nature, who is civilized and who is not, etc., but it really didn't work for me. Pryor, Sassoon, Owen, and a new character, Hallett, are considered well enough to return to the front, each to devastating results--Barker's comment, again, on the insatiable war machine. I'm not sorry that I read all three books, but I could as easily have stopped after the wonderful Regeneration.

Irish Girls Are Back in Town by Cecelia Ahearn et al.

A rather lackluster collection of stories by some of Ireland's best known female writers (Maeve Binchy, Patricia Scanlon, Marita Conlon-McKenna, etc.).

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.

This was a bit of a departure from the usual book I read, but I'd heard good things about it from some fellow LTers, and the fact that this was an audiobook read quite delightfully by Hugh Laurie made it all the more appealing. However, I found it only mildly amusing. At times it reminded me of vacations taken as a child, when my dad would never admit that we were lost or that he didn't know how to do something, however much of a botch he made of it (like trying to pitch a tent after midnight in the rain with only the car headlights to see by). Both the plot and the characters were a bit slim; Montmorency, the fox terrier, was probably the most interesting. Don't get me wrong: it wasn't bad, it's just not a book that will stick with me for long. If you're looking for a bit of light humor that you can read or listen to in a few hours, you might enjoy it more than I did.

Granta 107.

Most recent issue of Granta, this one features European writing--some fiction, some memoir. A mixed bag, but interesting overall. Mary Gitskill's piece on her lost cat and the disadvantaged children in her life was the bext.



Life Class by Pat Barker.

Barker takes yet another approach to World War I. She begins with a group of young people attending art school. Paul is constantly told by the teacher that he has no talent, while Eleanor wins scholarship after scholarship. Yet the war disrupts everyone's lives. Too ill with asthma to enlist, Paul volunteers for ambulance duty. Barker questions the pressure for everyone to "do their bit" while pondering whether art is really a frivolous pursuit or has a place in time of war. In the end, everyone is changed--some for the better, some, well, maybe not so much.

The Hero's Walk by Anita Rau Badami

I don't know why I left this one on the TBR shelf for so long, but I'm very glad that I finally got around to reading it. Badami effectively recreates the world of a middle-class Indian family and their struggles. Sripathi, the 50-something father, disillusioned by his job as a jingle-writer for an advertising company, spends his free time writing letter to the editor under pseudonym. Cowed by his traditional, domineering mother, he nevertheless resents his children's moves towards modernism. He considers Arun's dedication to activism a waste of time, and nine years ago he cut off his daughter Maya, a university student in Toronto, for breaking off plans for an arranged marriage and marrying a Westerner. Sripathi's 40-ish sister, Putti, would love to marry and stop being a burden, but their mother selfishly has rejected every suitor as "not good enough"--although her motive is obviously to keep her daughter as her virtual slave. Nirmala, Sripathi's wife, is resourceful and kind--but also passive. The family is thrown into turmoil by a phone call from Canada that Sripathi can't ingore: the granddaughter he has never met, 7-year old Nandana, has been tragically orphaned.

This is a family that is familiar and at the same time foreign to Western readers--a refreshing difference from many novels about Asian family life that rely on the exotic alone to engage the reader. Srithpathi's dilemma--yearning for the old while recognizing the opportunities in the new--is one with which we can all empathize. Badami's fine style, interesting story, and believable characters result in an enjoyable, highly recommended novel.

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan.

Probably the most boring novel I've ever read by Ian McEwan, whose work I usually love. Jeremy plans to write a memoir of his mother-in-law June, and most of the novel recounts stories that she and her husband Bernard told him of their courtship, early marriage, honeymoon in France (where she encounters two black dogs), membership in the Communist party; June's odd spiritual quest, which leads her to a life alone on the southern coast of France; etc., etc. The only thing I can imagine that might be more boring would be reading the memoir that Jeremy hoped to write.

Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym.

This was the first Pym novel I've read, and it wasn't quite what I expected. I had heard that her books were quite funny; this one had its moments, but, overall, I found it rather sad. It focuses on the relationships among four 60-something co-workers: Marcia, who keeps her private life very much to herself (it consists mainly of storing and organizing milk bottles and plastic bags); Letty, whose plans to move in with a longtime friend after her retirement are sidetracked; Edwin, who spends his spare time going from church to church; and Norman, a lifelong bachelor with a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Overall, I enjoyed this quiet little book and felt that the characters, while quirky, were very believable (we've all known one or more of them, I'm sure). I will likely be picking up more Pyms in the future.

Quartet in Autumn is not representative of Pym's oeuvre. I recommend Crampton Hodnet.

And I'd recommend Excellent Women (haven't read Crampton Hodnet yet). I really liked Quartet in Autumn; I agree with your comments.

Deborah - what is the title of #205? It looks like something I want to read.

#210> It is The Hero's Walk, Karen.

Deborah, I have a copy of Pym's Excellent Women that I was just about to put on BM, would you like it? (if you do, best leave a note on my profile page or send me an email)

Yay! Another Badami fan.

73. Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess of Bedford by Leslie Lawson.

Lucy, Countess of Bedford was one of the most brilliant, powerful, and influential women in the early court of James I. Married to the young Earl of Bedford at only 13, she suffered a series of miscarriages and infant deaths, near financial ruin due to the couple's extravagant lifestyle, and the shame of political exile following her husband's participation in the Essex Rebellion. But when Queen Elizabeth was nearing death, Lucy and her mother raced to Scotland to accompany the new queen to London. This began a friendship that placed Lucy at the center of power, enabling her to sue for offices, favors, and commisions for her friends and clients. She was a featured performer in the Jacobean court masques and was patroness to John Donne (she owned Twickenham), Ben Jonson, John Florio, Samuel Daniel and others. As a Sidney cousin, her political and artistic circle included many powerful figures: William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke; his mother, the Countess of Pembroke, Robert Sidney and his daughter, Lady Mary Wroth; Sir John Harrington; and many others. Though we know that Lucy was also a poet, none of her work survives--in fact, not much aside from her court activities is known about her life. Lawson brings together the facts here with some intriguing speculation.

The Countess sounds fascinating. Thanks for the review - she's been added to my wishlist.

The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert.

Seiffert's Afterwards was one of my top books last year, so I was eager to read more of her work. This is her debut novel, and while it's not as polished as Afterwards, it is still a moving and finely written book. The novel is divided into three sections and three stories:

1) In 1944 Berlin, Helmut, a young photographer's assistant, persistently supports the Fuhrer until he sees--and secretly snaps--scenes he had never expected imagined.

2) As the Russian, American, and British troops begin to occupy Germany, Lore--her age is never given, but she seems to be about 15--is left in charge of her four younger siblings with instructions to take them on a long and desperate journey from Bavaria to their grandmother's house in Hamburg.

3) In 1998, Micha is obsessed with the concern that his Nazi grandfather might have executed Jews in Belarus during the war. A teacher, he is disturbed by the fact that German children are taught to empathize with the victims and survivors but never to consider that their loved ones were the perpetrators.

The links between the stories, aside from the war in Germany, are a bit hard to make. Are the photographs Lore sees posted those taken by Helmut? Is Michael somehow related to Lore's family? In the end, it doesn't really matter. Seiffert has taken a different route from most who write about the Holocaust and the Nazi regime: instead of focusing on victims, she recreates this world through the eyes of average people who have been caught up in the historical moment. As in Afterwards, she questions the concept of war and what it does to human beings.

Highly recommended.

Cariola - I've been following along your thread but haven't post before. Excellent list of books and reviews. I'm finally inspired to post after reading your comments on, and then your review of Afterwards. Nice review, sounds fascinating.

Cariola,

You're a bad, bad influence. I lack the words to express your perfidy in tempting sweet, innocent, little readers down the irreversible path of book addiction. Afterwards is on Kindle and caught in your web of words, I was unable to resist the lure of "1-click." I hope you feel guilty.

216> Thank you so much! I've enjoyed many of your reviews as well.

217> Nope, no guilt at all in pushing you towards a wonderful read!

Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rocheford by Julia Fox.

You've heard of Anne Boleyn, you've heard of Mary Boleyn The Other Boleyn Girl, but have you heard of Jane Boleyn? (Maybe--if you're a fan of 'The Tudors.') Jane Parker was the wife and widow of George Boleyn, who was beheaded for treason, accused of having slept with his sister Anne. Part of her "infamy" is that she gave evidence that helped to convict her husband, saying that he had told her that the king was unable to perform sexually. But the greater part comes later. With Cromwell's help, Jane was able to spring back from financial ruin and public shame. She retained a portion of her jointure lands and remained a member of the ladies-in-waiting for the next three queens (Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Katherine Howard). But as lady of the bedchamber to Katherine, she obviously knew of the young queen's adultery and was even perhaps an accomplice. Like her husband, the "infamous Lady Rocheford" ended up with her head on the block.

This biography is relatively sympathetic to Jane, who seems to have been caught in a double bind in the case of Katherine Howard. She could say nothing or deny everything, but if she confessed what she knew, she would be guilty of not revealing the information sooner. While not the exciting read that it promised to be (or maybe I've just read too much about the Tudors), Fox does create a sense of what the court must have been like for noblewomen trying to please fathers, uncles, husbands, counselors, kings, and queens. I have to agree, however, with other LT readers who complain about Fox's admittedly unfounded speculations and that much of the filler is rehashed material.

Granta 106: Fiction Special

Lots of big names (Ha Jin, Nicola Barker, Paul Auster, Amy Bloom), but none of these stories particularly thrilled me. I did enjoy John Banville's "objet trouve" (a small musical sphere from Arles) and Jhumpa Lahiri's interview with Mavis Gallant. I do love the cover on this one.Lots of big names (Ha Jin, Nicola Barker, Paul Auster, Amy Bloom), but none of these stories particularly thrilled me. I did enjoy John Banville's "objet trouve" (a small musical sphere from Arles) and Jhumpa Lahiri's interview with Mavis Gallant. I do love the cover on this one.

No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym.

I am absolutely charmed by Barbara Pym! No Fond Return of Love was the perfect end-of-summer book for me. I love Pym's focus on "little" characters and "small" events and the way she relates both with humor and affection. These are the sorts of people we pass by every day, often without notice, yet their lives, too, hold a drama of their own, and Pym tells and interweaves their stories deliciously. Here, she begins at a small summer conference for editors and researchers. Dulcie Mainwaring, an indexer whose engagement was recently broken off, kindly but persistently all but forces her friendship upon Viola Dace, also an indexer, but one who prefers to call herself a researcher. Dulcie is immediately attracted to Alwyn Forbes, a scholarly editor whose marriage is on the rocks and with whom Viola (his indexer) claims to have had a fling. The lives of these three characters are thrown together in unexpected ways when Viola moves into Dulcie's home, Alwyn forms a passion for Dulcie's young niece, and Dulcie quietly "stalks" the man of her dreams.

This description really doesn't do the novel justice. It's in the little things that Pym excels--the tongue in cheek or offhand comment; the expression of feelings; a character's internal debate. All I can say is that this novel had me smiling all the way through, and I hated to leave the characters. I've become a big fan of Pym's and have seven more of her novels now waiting at the top of my TBR stacks.

Read Crampton Hodnet, my favorite Pym book - a sly academic satire.

It's the next one on my list, per your recommendation.

>221 Cariola:: I have that one on my shelves, Deborah. Excellent review!

Another Pym fan here! (waves hand)

Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym.

One of Pym's earliest novels, Crampton Hodnet doesn't quite equal No Fond Return of Love; still, it is delightful and shows the promise of what's to come. Set in Oxford, it's not quite what I would call an academic novel; the university is more of a background for the novel's tighly knit social world. One of the main characters, Francis Cleveland, is a professor of sixteenth-century English poetry, and although a number of his students (notably a young woman named Barbara Bird) and colleagues figure into the story, the novel focuses not on academic rivalry but--like most of Pym's work--on the relationships and distances between family members, friends, and neighbors.

Pym is a master of the light touch, particularly when she makes her readers privy to the thoughts and observations of her characters. For example, when Margaret Cleveland notices that her husband (who has taken Miss Bird to tea and sent he a bouquet of lilies--without telling his wife) looks unwell, her immediate question is:

"Have you got indigestion?"
"I don't think so," he answered shortly.
"Then it must be the effect of the British Museum," she said.
That was exactly it, thought Francis, suddenly blaming it all on the British Museum. Everyone knew that libraries had an unnatural atmosphere that made people behave oddly. He felt that he had somehow made a mess of things this afternoon. But of course he was not used to dealing with situations like this; he had no practice. He had wasted his time in libraries, doing research about things that were no good to anybody. He thought of his companions in the Bodleian: Arnold Penge, Edward Killigrew, Professor Lopping . . . They wouldn't have done any better either. Probably not as well. This thought was some consolation to him, and he began to feel quite pleased with himself.

Or this little gem of an observed conversation. The aged Miss Doggett and her companion, Miss Morrow, discuss her grandneice Anthea's having made "a good impression" on her boyfriend's mother, Lady Beddoes:

"I believe she is very easy to get on with," said Miss Morrow.
"Well, she has that graciousness of manner that one would expect," said Miss Doggett, who did not somehow like the idea of her companion's finding someone of Lady Beddoes's position 'very easy to get on with.' "You see, Anthea is really nobody on her mother's side," she went on, "and even the Clevelands can hardly compare with the Beddoeses."
"But Anthea is such a sweet girl," protested Miss Morrow. "Anyone would like her. And Lady Beddoes's father was only an English professor teaching in Warsaw. She told Anthea."
"Miss Morrow, I don't think you understand these things," said Miss Doggett.
"No, I don't think I do,"said Miss Morrow humbly.
"It would be a splendid thing for Anthea, really splendid," purred Miss Doggett. "I wouldn't have thought she had so much sense."
But sense is just what a girl in love doesn't have, thought Miss Morrow, who didn't understand such things.

The Crampton Hodnet of the title is a nonexistent village created by the new young vicar, Mr. Latimer, to explain a suspicious absence; he claims to have been called to give a sermon in place of an ailing friend. It's the first of many lies, untold truths, and misunderstandings at the heart of the novel. Pym excels here, as in her other novels, at the little dramas in the lives of seemingly little people.

Overall, Crampton Hodnet is a charming novel that I read with a continual smile on my face.

I love Miss Morrow. People overlook her, but she quietly and in a gently sly way has their number.
And alas, I noted you have just rated all of the Robertson Davies books. I kept hoping he would write one more novel before he kicked the bucket or at a least have several unpublished but delectable manuscripts waiting.

Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope.

The third volume in Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, Doctor Thorne is, for the most part, a typical tale of young lovers separated by the rigid class distinctions of Victorian England. Frank Gresham, whose father has mismanaged the family fortune and is on the verge of losing his beloved estate, is expected to marry for money, but he has long loved Mary Thorne, the titleless, penniless niece of the local doctor. It all turns out well for them in the end, of course, as in such novels it usually does; but it's the many sidetracks and delightful characterizations and the way these are all intertwined that make Doctor Thorne so enjoyable. The dipsomaniac Sir Roger Scatchard, for example, a murderer who did his time, made a fortune in the railroads, and was granted a baronetcy, and his lovable, unaffected wife, Lady Scatchard, who enjoyed life much more as a wet nurse. Lady Gresham, who would willingly marry her children to nobodies--as long as they came with enough cash to save the estate. The down-to-earth Miss Dunstable, heir to the Oil of Lebanon fortune, who knows a golddigger when she sees one and encourages Frank to go with his heart. Uber-snob Amelia DeCourcey, who persuades her cousin Augusta Gresham that it is her duty to rejct the proposal of the lawyer, Mr. Gazeby--and then promptly marries him herself. Doctor Thorne himself takes the part of the voice of reason throughout. While not quite as enjoyable as The Warden or Barchester Towers, partly because of its predictable plot, Doctor Thorne is still a fine read.

Oh Trollope. I love his work, particularly the Barchester Chronicles and the Pallisers. Have you seen the BBC productions that were done - in the 1980s I believe. Geraldine McEwan's performance as Mrs. Proudie is brilliant. My favorite in the series is The Last Chronicle of Barchester. Trollope provides highbrow, literary soap opera - the best of all worlds :-)

229> Yes, I have the DVD of The Barchester Chronicles. Alan Rickman (swoon!) plays Rev. Obadiah Slope. I also love the dramtization of The Way We Live Now. I moved on to Framley Parsonage last night--so far, so good!

I haven't seen The Way We Live Now.

Oh, it's definitely a must-see!

>232 Cariola: yes, agree, a must-see. Also He Knew He Was Right worthwhile (but not a fave)

He Knew He Was Right struck me as a mediocre text. I cannot imagine how it could be made into an interesting film/series.

>234 urania1: mediocre, that probably describes the film. I'll watch any costume drama once. . .

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.

I read this novel when it first came out and just reread it for a class that I'm teaching. I can't say that I enjoyed it as much the second time around, but at least it is accessible to my students. Chevalier does create a believable narrator with a great depth, but the character of Vermeer falls a bit short. Still, the novel opened up a lot of discussion about the lives of women in the 17th century, class and status, and art. The new edition includes a fine full-color insert of all the Vermeer paintings described by Griet in the novel---very helpful!

(This has nothing wahtsoever to do with Girl with a Pearl Earring, but I just want to throw in that I'm dying to see Jane Campion's new film, 'Bright Star,' about Keats and Fanny Brawne.)

Way back when, I read Girl with a Pearl Earring while sitting in a bookstore coffee shop. I was not impressed; however, I did find it interesting that it spawned a new "genre" of writing about characters in pictures. I love Jane Campion. She's a fabulous director. I can think of tons of books that I wish she would turn into movies - Jane Eyre for one.

#175 - i'm getting something of the same reaction to Bapsi Sidwa's Cracking India. There is much about the novel that is fascinating in a social and historical sense. But the novel is supposedly being seen through the POV of an 8 yr old girl at this critical juncture in the history of S. Asia and her perceptions move rapidly from childlike to exceptionally mature and then back which is disconcerting. And the writing is fine - but the POV doesn't hold true to what i assume is meant to be the naive purity of vision that an 8 yr old would bring to world breaking events. Still, there's enough of interest that i imagine i'll finish.

238> I might look into that one . . . but then again, there are so many really GOOD Indian writers . . .

>238 bobmcconnaughey: Poor Bapsi ;-)

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym.

Another charming novel set mostly in rural England, ca. 1930's. Jane and Prudence became friends at Oxford, despite a difference of about 10 years in their ages, and have kept up their friendship through the years. Now Jane has just settled into a new parish with her husband Nicholas while Prudence, still attractive but pushing thirty, wonders if she will ever find true love. The novel centers around Jane--her difficulty fitting in to the new town, her efforts at matchmaking for Prudence, her reminiscences of working on the seventeenth-century poets at Oxford, etc. She is quite the character--bright and independent-minded, a modern woman but concerned that she isn't fitting properly into the role of a vicar's wife. Several characters from Crampton Hodnet reappear, including the domineering Miss Doggett and her delighfully understated but sly companion, Miss Jessie Morrow.

--Though Bapsi, for her sins and virtues is Pakistani.

Sorry, my mistake.

But there are so many GOOD Pakistani writers . . .

I'm going to have to look out for some Barbara Pym - her books sound wonderful! Thanks!

Her books ARE wonderful!

Her books ARE WONDERFUL!!!!

>245 aluvalibri:, 246: what they said!

Whoah, calm down, you lot - I'm convinced!!! Running off to look on Book Depository right now!

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope.

Framley Parsonage, the penultimate book in the Barsetshire Chronicles, covers familiar territory and brings back a number of characters from earlier novels: Dr. Thorne, his niece Mary (now Mary Gresham), Miss Dunstable (whom I was particularly glad to meet again), the Grantleys and the Arabins, for starters. Of course, new characters also appear, primarily the Ludlows and the Robartses, and the setting shifts between rural towns and London.

While I enjoyed this novel, I need a Trollope break before going on to the final installment. I feel a bit overloaded with snobbish mothers who come between their sons and the worthy but common young women they love, male golddiggers trolling for wives, and cads who bring their friends to financial ruin.

83. The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman.

Well, I tried to like this book. I really tried. But I found it full of cliches and characters about whom, for the most part, I just didn't care. Elizabeth, the grad student, was particularly whiney, pathetic, and unlikeable (not to mention that the "formula" of a grad student making an important discovery has been done to death since Possession). There's just too much going on, too many stories, most of them not very interesting and most of them left hanging. The novel is awash with Eastern stereotypes (the sly eunuch, the jealous favored wife, the aging concubine, etc.). Once you get a picture of what goes on in the harem (mostly the women bathing, plucking, and perfuming in preparation for a possible evening with the sultan), you don't really need to hear it over and over again.

Well, the cover is a pretty colour. At least it has that.

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuko.

This book is a reread for me, but I'm giving it much closer attention because I am teaching it as well. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking, understated, and very short novel about a Japanese-American family's evacuation and internment during World War II, based on true accounts. As I expected, few students in my class even knew that the US had evacuated these families and put them into what were, in effect, concentration camps. (The family in the story actually spent the first 4.5 months living in racetrack stalls while the camp barracks were being built.) Like the Nazi prisoners, they could take only what they could carry. Their homes were ransacked while they were gone, and they lived under guard inside walls topped with barbed wire.

The story is told in four chapters, each one from the point of view of one character. They are given no names, just "the woman," "the girl," "the boy," and "the man"--a device that at once makes them universal and nonentities--and each section is told in a unique voice.

A truly wonderful book. I was surprised that my students didn't like it as well as the last book, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

249, I wish Miss Dunstable had her own book. Her story really intrigues me.

252, added to my wishlist -thanks!

>252 Cariola:: That one is added to the list! I don't remember what you teach, but a side note might be the case of Korematsu v. United States in which the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the order that required the internment of the Japanese Americans. Fred Korematsu never gave up trying to have that opinion reversed. Here is a link to a Wiki page that gives bare bones information and analysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

The problem, of course, is that your students did not know it occurred. Hence, I think, the lax attitude in the U.S. to attempts to restrict the freedom of some based upon nationality or religious affiliation. Fred Korematsu was still alive and filed an amicus brief in Rasul v. Bush.

Oops, sorry for the political ramblings, but the Korematsu case is interesting!

Edited for spelling

Cariola -- the Otsuko book sounds fascinating. Do you think your students might have had trouble identifying with the anonymous characters?

254> I actually showed them some excerpts from a DVD, 'Unfinished Business,' that focused on the three test cases brought before the Supreme Court. The film also had footage of the evacuations and the camps.

The students are doing short presentations in pairs. One is going to look at the rounding up of Americans of Middle Eastern descent after 9/11.

It's a general education Intro to Lit course, but we're pretty free to do what we want with it. These days, just getting students to read is hard enough, so I've tried to choose some books that I hope they will find interesting. The only classic they will read is Frankenstein, with which I've always had success.

Jane, although they don't have names, each is a unique individual with a unique. There is no confusion among them. At 18-20, one would hope that they don't need names to identify with the characters' situation!

The Silent Sin by Anja Sicking

A short and rather unsatisfying Dutch historical novel. Dismissed from her great aunt's household following her sister's disgrace, Anna takes a post as a servant to M. de Malapert, a bachelor music seller. She's attracted to him; he'd rather cavort with the boys. She's almost 30 but seems to have no understanding of what's going on until the authorities start rounding up "suspects."

>252 Cariola:, "As I expected, few students in my class even knew that the US had evacuated these families and put them into what were, in effect, concentration camps." Really? That is amazing to me. Why are we taught such sh*t for history? This does sound like a wonderful book.

The ROTC guys were right on it, however!

We had a brief discussion of the Japanese internment camps in history but not until much later into high school. Of course it took until high school to have a history class which made it past the Civil War - as one teacher put it "History keeps happening, and the class stays the same length."

I am adding a bunch of rereads; these are books I have reread and taught this semester.

86. Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare. His most brutal, violent tragedy. (The students loved it.)

87. Richard III by William Shakespeare.

88. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. It has been awhile since I taught this play.

89. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Awesome! So much to talk about when teaching this one--multiple themes, structure, foils, etc.

The Girls: a novel by Lori Lansens.

I know that I'm in the minority here, but I thought this book was rather dreadful. The structural concept is a good one: conjoined twins writing their autobiography in alternating and quite different voices. But that's about the only positive thing I have to say about the book. I really had to drag myself through this one because of the content, which was calculated to shock (e.g., one of them actually gets pregnant while the guy is making out with the other) and to manipulate the reader's emotions (e.g., repetitive maudlin whining for the daughter given up for adoption). If I had to read one more time about Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash mooning at each other and saying "You," I was going to hurl. It was just TOO cute. Call me heartless, but this was "girlie drek" at its worst.

Just had to say that I read Rush Home Road by the same author based upon some rave reviews in other places on LT, and found that it was also a little "too, too". Not as bad as your description of The Girls: a novel, but it looks like this is just an author to skip.

>263 Cariola:: Oh, don't hold back, Cariola! Tell us how you really feel! ;-)
I read this earlier in the year and liked it quite a lot ... but, as I read your review, I could also see your point of view.

The Autobiography of Henry VIII with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George.

What a wonderful book! At the beginning, Henry has died, and Will has found the diary he supposedly kept since his youth. He sends it to the daughter of Anne Boleyn's sister Mary, who he believes is in truth Henry's daughter. Will, whose father died when he was very young, does this because he believes that a child should know his or her father.

George has really done her research, but instead of plodding through history, she gives Henry a realistic voice that is at times maddening, at other times sympathetic; in other words, she turns this huge historical figure into a man, like others, with both strengths and weaknesses. The interjections by Will, who, despite his cynical tone, obviously loved Henry, give us further insights into his character. Along the way, she gives us a delightful picture of life, love, and politics at the Tudor court.

I'm so glad you liked Henry the VIII, Deborah. I read it and loved it when I read it back in the early 90s, but I kinda wondered if I still would since I'm so much more sophisticated now (snort). I think it's her best book.

Another one for my wish list...

I can't stand Lori Lansens. Her books should have Recycle Immediately! Do Not Read! stamped on their covers. Vis à vis the George novel, it sounds interesting. I haven't read it because I am always so disappointed by novels about Shakespeare. No Bed for Bacon is the sole exception. it is hysterically funny and has lots of inside jokes.

269> I'll have to look for that one, urania.

The George is much, much better than those horrible Shakespeare novels by Grace Tiffany et al. The Robert Nye ones made me want to tear out my hair.

>270 Cariola: Cariola,

I would have ripped out my hair while reading Nye except I was bald at the time. I thought about ripping out my oncologist's hair . . . but . . .

Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal.

I enjoyed the film version of Hrabal's I Served the King of England, so I thought I'd give this little book a try. I could not get through it; I stopped after about 20 pages. The entire book is a single long, rambling sentence that jumps from one topic to another, from a woman's retrieving her glass eye from under and theatre seat and popping it back in to why a shoemaker can pick his nose all day and a baker can't to red pumps. I know that is what the author intended as a kind of stylistic experiment, a post-surreal stream of consciousness, but it didn't work for me. I found it more irritating than amusing.

>272 Cariola:: ew. I think I can give that one a miss!

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

Katri Kling is an outsider in the small Swedish town of Västerby. While everyone agrees that the yellow-eyed young woman with the huge nameless dog is capable and conscientious, her cold, direct manner is offputting. But Katri has a plan for herself and, even moreso, for her younger brother Mats. Through small acts of apparent kindness--delivering the mail, dropping off groceries--she weasels her way into the life of Anna Aemelin, a wealthy spinster who paints illustrations for children's books, until it seems that she is indispensible. In no time at all, the novel has shifted into an understated thriller as Anna not only becomes dependent upon Katri but begins to lose the things, connections and beliefs that comprise her own identity. But Jansson saves some surprises for the final chapters.

I loved the author's clear, clean style that so well matches the icy winter landscape and that not only sets the tone but complements Katri's personality. Yet the novel has its lyrical moments as well; in that, it reminded me of Linda Olsson's Astrid and Veronica. (Perhaps this is typical of Scandinavian writers; perhaps it is the effect of those long dark winters and the late spring sun.) Jansson also plays with fairy tale, myth, and folklore. For example, in an early moment, Anna suddenly recognizes Katri's rare smile as an illustration from one of her childhood books: the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

This powerful little book was just what I needed to get away from the stress of the end-of-semester crunch. It grabbed me from the beginning, and I wolfed it down quickly. I will be looking for more of Jansson's adult work.

Oh boy - another one to add to my NYRB classics collection!

The Children's Book by A. S. Byatt.

What can I possibly say about this book that hasn't been said by other reviewers, on LT and elsewhere? It's a collection of fantasies--not just Olive Wellwood's evolving children's stories and Stern's marionette shows, but the fantasies lived out by the adults in the decades leading up to the first World War. The exposé of these fantasies is at the heart of the novel. Olive and Humphrey believe in the fantasy of free love: that it causes no jealousy between spouses, nor that it damages any of the seven children in their household, born from various liaisons yet raised to believe they are true siblings. Love, sad to say, does not conquer all, and some in the novel who give it too freely pay a heavy price. Another fantasy: that freedom allows children to grow up happy and full of potential; but freedom taken too far borders upon neglect, and not all children are by nature independent. Another set of fantasies: that art can change the course of world events, and that genius is always to be indulged for its own sake. The list goes on and on. Like the characters' fantasy lives, Olive Wellwood's stories are delightfully magical on the surface yet dark and dangerous underneath.

The novel's style and structure are inseparable, both building on the possibilities and threats in the space between fantasy and reality, between the Victorian age and the new post-world war period. Some readers have complained about excessive details in the first part of the novel; others complain about the brevity of the last. I feel this is intentional on Byatt's part, a verbal realization of the changing cultural and political milieu. The late Victorian period was still addicted to rigid social morés and manners, embellishment of one's person and one's home, etc.--and, as such, it gave birth to a myriad of reactionary movements, most of them equally pompous in their moral (or amoral) certitude. On the other hand, the rapid and extensive devastation of the war, a political killing machine gone amuck, left people back home stunned and empty--as reflected in Byatt's quickfire, almost callous list of the young men, fantasy-world Fludds and Cains and Wellwoods, cut down by a reality beyond their once-imagined control. Like Stern's marionettes, the novel's human characters live in a fantasy world, unaware of the strings that manipulate their actions.

Yes, the book is massive and complex, and it takes some concentration to keep track of the various characters and their relations to one another. It's the kind of book that, when you finish it, you need to think about it for awhile, and then you know that you will need to read it again to fully appreciate its genius.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

Having only finally read Possession a Romance this year, I am determined not to wait so long to read The Children's Book. Thanks for the push.

I am currently reading The Children's Book and am quite entranced. I can imagine a really beautiful Folio edition, should the society decide to publish one.

Great reviews of The True Deceiver and The Children's Book. Very tempting.

I've only read the Moomintroll books and the Summer book by Tove Jannsen. Looks like I'll have to get hold of the True Deceiver.

Yes, it was great to read two excellent, though very different, books in a row.

Lovely review of The Children's Book, Cariola!

The Fifth Servant by Kenneth Wishnia.

The kindest thing I can say is that this book might be enjoyable for someone else--but not for me. It kept screaming out, "Look at all my research!" Which is fine if you're doing research, but not if you are trying to enjoy a work of historical fiction. The research should not overwhelm a good story. It's a murder mystery set in late 16th century Prague (and I admit to not being a mystery fan), much of it taking place within the Jewish ghetto, where a merchant is wrongly accused of killing a Christian child, and a newly-arrived Polish Talmudic scholar comes to his defense. The dialogue lapses into Yiddish, Hebrew, Czech, German, and Polish (there is a rather inaddequate glossary in the back of the book)--another unnecessary demonstration of the author's education. But I got both lost in and bored by the minute details of Talmudic law and scholarship. The plot is thin and the characters rather weak, and both are overwhelmed by the pedantic details.

Proof by David Auburn.

This is a reread for me as I'm teaching the play next week. It's a short, stunning play (it won a Pulitzer) about math, madness, and family dynamics. Catherine, a brilliant mathmetician, gave up her hopes of a college education and a career to care for her mathmetician father, who had "gone bonkers." Now she wonders if she is going down the same path, and her sister Claire's oversolicitousness isn't helping. After her father's funeral, his former student finds an impossibly brilliant mathmatical proof in the professor's notebooks. The question is: who wrote it? The play is sad, witty, and, yes, hopeful, all in one.

274> I just finished my ARC of The True Deceiver and loved it. It's a shimmering little book.

Agreed! It sneaks up on you, doesn't it?

284 - Proof is gorgeous; one of my favorite plays. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read or seen it.

>283 Cariola:, I hate that too - and there are so many historical writers who do it! I am sure they feel that since they have done all the research they need to put it in... but for me the real skill lies in absorbing it into the fabric of the story.

The non-fiction equivalent is those doorstep biographies which tell you, for example, how the subject fared in his history exams when he was 15...

Quit it. No temptation right now. I've already succumbed twice today.

My students generally love Proof. It even has a rather quirky love story embedded in it.

urania, you KNOW you want it!

I love Proof too, and the film.

Regeneration too - I didn't mind Rivers and Melanesia, thought The Ghost Road picked up a bit after the eye in the door, which seemed to be trying too hard to me, on the other hand its picture of how different ranks were treated for what was then shellshock has stayed with me.

I'm just catching up with your thread, and have wishlisted The Children's Book. What a wonderful review!

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd.



After finishing this book, I'm still not sure what to make of it: it's either ingenious or a total mess. Ackroyd blends fact and fiction to come up with something new, something not quite historical fiction but not quite a fictional biography either. The premise is that, long before animating a creature, Victor Frankenstein attends Oxford University, where he meets the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Except for a short visit home to Geneva to see his sister (real sister, not, as in the novel, cousin-sister) Elizabeth, who is dying of consumption, and to attend her funeral and that of his father, the story is set in England. Frankenstein's experimentation and the final creation of life all take place in a deserted potter's barn near a Thames estuary. Shelley pops in and out, and the biographical facts surrounding his life blur into fictional events from Mary Shelley's novel. For example, the discovery of Harriet Shelley's body in the Serpentine mingles with young William's murder in Frankenstein. Here, her death is ruled not a suicide but murder: she has been strangled (like William) with a necklace (the supposed motive for William's murder) that is subsequently found in her brother's pocket (as the locket with Caroline's portrait is found in Justine's pocket, both she and Harriet's brother being framed).

What to make of this? Revising and recording in his journal the "facts" of the fictional Victor's life is a clever strategy, but I found myself a bit irritated by the distortion of Percy Shelley's biography; a good historical fiction writer would not have gone this far. As a result, I found myself puzzling over diversions from Mary Shelley's novel as if it, too, was biography. Readers who are as familiar with Frankenstein as I am may find themselves lost in a strange book, somewhere between fact and fiction (but always, predominantly fiction). But perhaps this is what Ackroyd intended: to shake up our notions of reality and of genre.

If nothing else, it's quite a ride.

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare.



Reread for one of my classes; it was tough going for the students, I'm afraid.

The Asolo Theatre did a production of The Winter's Tale last season jazzing up the scenes in Bohemia with Perdita with a lot of hippie, sixties music and costumes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D105oDdkiWI

But I don't think I'd teach it to undergrads -- I tend to stick to the great tragedies or comedies that have really good films.

I have two version of this play on DVD--neither one very good, I'm afraid.

Very interesting - loved your review of the Peter Ackroyd book. Never been much of a Frankenstein fan but your writing has really made me want to learn more! I wish I could come to your classes!!

Why, thank you, Julie! You're welcome in my class anytime.

I'd love to sit in on your class too, but I think I've said that before. I'm with your students on this one though, Deborah . . . I wasn't a fan of The Winter's Tale either. And I'd already seen it performed at our annual Bard on the Beach festival. I liked it better than Measure for Measure though. One of my assignments with The Winter's Tale was to recite 20 lines and describe how I'd stage it if I were a producer. In my version, I casted Tilda Swinton as Hermione--I think she'd make a fabulous Hermione, although I think she's fabulous in general. By the time I got through that assignment, I liked the play better.

I studied The Winter's Tale for my A-levels, and my class went to see two productions of it (it's usual in the UK for theatre companies to look at what Shakespeare plays are on that year's syllabuses - I guess you get some guaranteed audiences that way). One of them was awful - trying to be down-with-the-kids, so they did things like make Time rap his soliloquy. It was as if they were embarrassed by the play itself. Fortunately the other was by the wonderful Theatre de Complicite - it still messed around a little bit with the play (see the review) but it took the emotions seriously. And as a plus it introduced me to one of my favourite theatre companies.

>300 wandering_star:, Theatre de Complicite are great! I saw their production of Haruki Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes a few years ago.

I am so jealous! I love Murakami as well as Complicite, but I was away from the UK when that production was on, and I never got a chance to see it. .

Pinball, 1973, was Murakami's second novel, and also the second novel in his Trilogy of the Rat series. It was printed in English only for distribution in Japan and has been long out of print. There is a terrific blog called readersdiscotheque that covers novels that weave music into the story, which all Murakami's novels do. The blog uncovered a pdf of the original pocketbook edition and received Murakami's permission to make the pdf available for free (the blog has an interview with Murakami in the works). Not only can you download the novel but also all of the songs mentioned in Pinball, 1973. The cover is there, too, and it's amazing. the URL is http://readersdiscotheque.blogspot.com (if you appreciate what this blog is doing, leave a comment on the site)

I will most certainly seek out the True Deceiver - time to move beyond the Moomins' tales (as wonderful as they are! I, too, enjoyed reading Proof a great deal. Maybe it's available as an audio book performance? I don't know drama from bupkis(s), but Proof and Copenhagen which I HAVE both seen and read are fascinating examples of working drama around science/math.

And 303 - how cool is this! Thanks ever so much.

I adored The Children's Book. I t has sent me off on a tangent reading Victorian fairy stories. I have also been reading some of J.M. Barrie's novels for adults - extremely disturbing. There are scenes in The Little White Bird, for example, that border (a lot) on pedophilia.

The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys.

What a lovely little book! It's a "meditation on ice," focused on the 40 times recorded that the Thames river has frozen over. For each year, Humphreys creates a short (2-4 pages) vignette, some featuring historical figures like Queen Matilda and Bess of Hardwicke, others featuring anonymous Londoners (watermen, pubkeepers, etc.). In addition, the book is filled with fascinating illustrations, most of them from the historical periods addressed. This one is definitely a keeper!

I agree with you, Debo! It is a little jewel of a book.

Deborah - I also enjoyed the Humphrey's book and really want to explore others of hers. I am surprised she has not reached more acclaim - although I see her books are available other than in Canada.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you and your family!

308> I know what you mean--Humphreys is a very prolific writer, so it seems she would be better known. I read and enjoyed her Afterimage earlier this year and put several of her other novels on my wish list.

Looks like we have the double posting syndrome going again!

>306 Cariola:, thanks for the review. I have a friend who is a blue badge tour guide in London and am always looking for more unusual London stories for her.

>312 charbutton:, I love those London walks - the guides are always so enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Where does your friend guide?

>306 Cariola:, Great review. I had a look at Helen Humphreys to see what else she'd written and found what has to be one of my book titles of the year, Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening To Radios.

>313 wandering_star:, she does mainly round the City and the West End, often through London Walks. She also does one to the Olypmic Park through them.

The Women's Library usually has a couple of walks listed in their events which are run by another blue badge guide. I went on one around Bow that was really interesting.

London Walks is the best! I'm flying over in less than a week; hope we have time to take a few.

Both times I took students over for two weeks, we did Donald Rumbelow's Jack the Ripper walk on the first night. A big hit!

The Secret River by Kate Grenville.

An unforgettable and disturbing novel. Many reviewers here and elsewhere rightly note that The Secret River is about the white settlement of Australia--but it is so much more. There's a terrible irony in the fact that men like William Thornhill, a struggling London Waterman convicted of theft but transported instead of hanged, saw the "new" continent as a place where they could escape the dehumanization of class and poverty, yet they became the very monsters from which they had gladly fled. Initially, Thornhill is an empathetic character, a man just trying to do a little better for his wife and children. It's his craving for property, a tract of land to work and to call his own, that leads to his personal success--and to his personal tragedy. By putting his insatiable desire for the land ahead of his marriage, his children, his common sense, and even his conscience, Thornhill becomes the empty shell of a man, and we are left to ask whether the individual or the rigid class/wealth structure that is to blame. Is it personal greed or the effects of an environment in which possessing property is viewed as the only mark of a successful man? Just when Thornhill seems finally to have it all, we're left to ask if he really has anything at all.

Grenville does a splendid job of recreating the atmosphere of, first, Victorian London, and, later, the colonial towns and bush settlements of Australia. Her characters (at least the main ones) are complex and believable; and even the lesser characters are well drawn. There are scenes in the book that will haunt and disturb you and others that will just leave you shaking your head. Overall, an engaging novel, well worth reading. (Or listening to, as I did; Simon Vance is a fine reader.)

Loved that book ... glad you did, too. And I agree about the haunting scenes. I read this over a year ago and just reading that sentence brought it all back. Heavy stuff, but well-written.

>314 charbutton:, I did the Olympic Park London walk about this time last year. It was fascinating - a part of London I didn't know much about at all. Unfortunately it was FREEZING (and you know, on those walks, you spend a lot of time standing about).

>316 Cariola:, Wow, another great review. I've been resisting putting this onto my wishlist but I think it's on there now!

I also loved that book. I really appreciated your review, which brought it all back to me.

>318 wandering_star:, I live about a mile away from it - the changes that are happening in the local landscape are amazing.

I really didn't enjoy The Secret River, I found it boring. But all I find on LT are positive comments so I obviously completely missed the point! Perhaps I should give it another go.

Charbutton - it's not just you. Although I liked (but didn't love) The Secret River, it was a dud with my f2f book club. I think I was the only one who liked it.

Charlotte, the fact that everybody (or almost) liked it and you did not does not necessarily mean you missed the point!
It is just a matter of taste, I think.

Yes! Wouldn't it be boring if we all liked and disliked the same books?

>322 aluvalibri:,323 - true, but it does make me question my reading of the book when people whose opinion I respect have a completely different reaction.

>321 Nickelini:, it's good to know I'm not alone!

Don't feel badly. I'm one of the few who just couldn't get through Half of a Yellow Sun, which got raves all around.

I was really keen on The Secret River when I read it a few years ago - somehow the language really captured the times and I found it suspenseful and engrossing.

Interesting that you listened to it - my worry with listening is that it depends so much on the tone and skill of the reader and so I am very selective when it comes to that - many a fine book has been ruined by the reader, often simply because their accent is thick and unpleasant.

327> I get all of my audiobooks from audible.com, and I always listen to the samples before downloading. There have been several books that I've chosen not to listen to because I've found the reader irritating for one reason or another. (There's one particular guy that I avoid like the plague.) For instance, I want to read The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, but he reads his own audiobook and it sounds awful. So it's in my TBR stacks waiting to be read.

Audible also posts reader reviews, and they often comment on the skill of the reader, which I've found very helpful.