Laytonwoman3rd ups the ante for 2009

I've been reading close to 75 books a year for the last two (and probably before that when I wasn't keeping score). So I'm moving my posting from the 50 Book Challenge Thread to this one for 2009.
Here is a link to my thread for 2008 and This is where I talked about my reading in 2007.

TICKER MOVED TO Current thread with updated list.

I am going to try keeping a running total here for quick reference.

1. Fingersmith
2. Rough Weather
3. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
4. The American Journey of Barack Obama
5. All Mortal Flesh
6. Cold Comfort Farm
7. Tenney's Landing
8. Embers
9. Partners in Crime
10. Giraffe
11. With Malice Toward Some
12. The Maytrees
13. The Innocent Man
14. Bread-Givers by Anzia Yezierska
15. House of Fallen Leaves (Sons of Weostahn) by Holly Wendt
16. All the Poems of Muriel Spark
17. The Mercedes Coffin by Faye Kellerman
18. Coalseam Poems from the Anthracite Region
19. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. Thunderstruck by Erik Larson
21. Soul Songs by C. M. Callahan
22. Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener by M. C. Beaton
23. Night and Day by Robert B. Parker
24. My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
25, The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby

Welcome to the group LW3!

Good luck, Linda. Check out an easy book once in a while.

Ignore the two below from me. I was trying to post earlier when LT was having some problems. I thought it was not posting, so I ended up posting thrice!

Welcome to the group!

Oh, great ticker!

yeah, I like the idea of the ticker in your Challenge thread - beats having to remember all the places you want to update each time!

Welcome to the 75 group. We'll enjoy seeing what you read and expect our TBR piles to reap the benefits! :-)

It's only me, snooping around the high-rent district here (I'm still down in the 50 group with the other slow readers). So when are you going to post a book for all your fans?

nyuck nyuck, Brain...she's too busy reading

I am here too, LW3! Can't wait to read your 2009 thread!

Crikey, people! It's one day in....and I've had company. ALL the company. Expect to concentrate on reading over the weekend, though.

snooping around the high rent district

I love it, BrainFlakes, I love it--made my entire week.

After considerable consideration, the completion of due diligence, and speaking with my astrologer, I have decided to race you on Faulkner's Collected Stories. Since you've given me a three-hundred page lead, I won't require you to read with one eye tied behind your back. So let the contest begin:

LW3 vs. Escargot

Charlie

Three bucks on the snail

Just lurking!!

>16 BrainFlakes: You encourage me to call in sick from work today...

#19: Aren't you feeling ill? I can feel the fever from here . . . (book fever, that is)

The thought of work often makes me feel ill. But nevertheless, here I am...

I remember that! After we came back from Alabama, my former colleagues kidded me about coming back. I said "Are you joking?" Of course, now things are getting dicey in the publishing/distribution business, like everything else.

But I would like to know why I still get up at 7 every morning? Oh, yes, that cat insists on breakfast!

#17 LOL—That's rich.

1. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters A story worthy of Dickens, and I think I wish he'd written it. It's hard to say much about it without spoilers. I occasionally felt the story was propped up by the surprises the author had in store for the reader, and that it was necessary for her characters to be less than complete in order for her to pull it off. Once the first plot twist was revealed, I found myself too aware of the author and what she might be up to to lose myself completely in the story. That said, however, this was a highly enjoyable read (except for the madhouse bit, which felt rather trite). Waters is masterful at description and atmosphere.

I read The Sound and the Fury in a college English class years and years ago, and so had lots of help figuring out the chronology, and what events were being referred to etc. It didn't grab me emotionally though. I reread it a few months ago and it got me in the gut. This may be one you have to read more than once.

Kelly, I don't know what you will expect from me, but I'm game...and I'm thrilled you're going to plunge into The Sound and the Fury. Somehow, I doubt that you will find it all that difficult.
Aruba, welcome to my thread. I agree with you completely---S&F definitely rewards re-reading. In fact, one time when I read it, I reached the end and immediately started over. It was a treat.

2. Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker
Quintessential Spenser, with plenty of Hawk. Loved it.

3. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie A beautiful little book with a lot of story packed into its 184 pages. This is the tale of two young men sent to the Western mountains of China for "re-education" during Mao's Cultural Revolution. But it isn't about politics, it's about life. Despite being taken from their families (who were declared "enemies of the people") and put to work at some of the slimiest and most dangerous peasant labor in the small mountain village, the boys find even this world has treasures in store for them. They meet the seamstress of the title, and naturally they both fall in love with her, but there is really no competition for her favors. They find a stash of Western literature translated into Chinese, and occupy themselves with reading and re-telling the stories. They get re-educated, all right, but not in any way that the Party would approve. In the process, they also re-educate the little seamstress, in ways that surprise them in the end. The tone of this novel was quite light, despite the sometimes dreadfully serious subject matter. The Los Angeles Times Book Review called it a "delicate, and often hilarious, tale." I found parts of it almost farcical, in a M.A.S.H.-like sort of way, but never hilarious.

#28 Thanks for the fine review and the tip. Buying new books for me is costing my wife a fortune, but she doesn't mind because it keeps me out of trouble.

>28 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks LW3 nice review.
Our library has a translation of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, so I put it on the TBR pile.

4. The American Journey of Barack Obama by the editors of LIFE Magazine. (I don't know why the touchstone says Vogue Knitting! When you click on the link the correct information comes up...) A typical LIFE compilation, with lots of photographs. This was published after Obama won the nomination, but before the election results were known. A nice coffee table book, and a good read on the eve of the Inauguration. However, some of the photos are spoiled by being spread over two pages, so that something gets lost in the spinal crease. I would rather have had them smaller, and intact. The best part of the text are several essays on specific topics---race, faith, the world's take on Obama---by Gay Talese, Bob Greene, Nancy Gibbs, and others, including my favorite..."Immigrant Song" written by Andrei Codrescu.

5. All Mortal Flesh by Julia Spencer-Fleming What a ripping good read. This series just gets better with each book. At the moment there is only one left...and I'm going to restrain myself from picking it up immediately, because then by the end of this week, I'd be done with Russ and Clare, and have to wait an indeterminate time until Spencer-Fleming does it again, and I don't want that!

#31: Smart move, Linda, holding back on the last Spencer-Fleming book! I know exactly what you mean. I'm in mourning until the next one comes out.

#31 & 32

I'm only up to To Darkness and to Death and I'm holding off also, But the new one is supposed to come out soon so I'd better get cracking! A friend introduced me to this series last year and I have loved them.

Carolyn, the latest one came out in June, I Shall Not Want, and Spencer-Fleming's website hasn't been updated since. I hope she's hard at work on No. 7!!

>31 laytonwoman3rd: & ff: What makes these Spencer-Fleming books so good?

#35: She has unusual protagonists--one of them is an ex-Army helicopter pilot turned Epsicopal priest--the female one. The male one is a small-town (upper New York state) sheriff. Her characterizations are particularly good--very believable. As the books have progressed, so have her main protagonists. Teh dialgoue is particularly good. She writes beautifully of hte New York landscape, countryside, towns.

Her plots are also very good, and that lady sure can write exciting denouements! Great, great page-turning endings.

What makes her protagonists interesting is that the situations around them keep changing--she is able to maintan interest in the two of them by moving them on and through their relationship. I've seen so many other really good series writers in the genre, such as Jane Haddam, bog down at this point. Spencer-Fleming doesn't.

She doesn't leave her protagonists nicely wrapped up at the end of each novel--they're always in an ambiguous position. And because she is so good with them, you really get involved with them and are really eager to find out what happens next.

And let me tell you, folks, that is particularly true of Book 6!! Aaagh! Waiting is HARD.

>36 Joycepa:: Interesting you should mention Jane Haddam. I loved her series when it first started and was zipping through them. But, as time progressed, Gregor and Bennis went nowhere. It began to feel artificially stalled and I eventually stopped reading the series. I saw a new one in the book store a couple months ago, picked it up and the two of them were still not certain where they were headed. Too bad, I loved the books when I started them.

Perhaps I'll give these a try.

Tad: that's exactly what I meant. I still read the Haddam series, because I do like the stable of recurring characters and the plots are always intriguing, but the stalled relationship between Gregor and Bennis--is that wedding ever going to take place ever?--is utterly maddening and really has taken away from the series.

Have no such worries about the first 6 books in Spencer-Fleming's series!

I was sure that #6 was going to be the last one and then.....

TadAd, to add to what Joycepa said, she tells a good rip-snorting story, in addition to creating really good characterisations. It is refreshing to read a mystery where you actually come to care and get involved with the characters, where what happens to them matters. I remember one scene where Russ was looking at Clare through her kitchen window before he knocks - she is dancing and singing while she cooks, shuffling back and forth in front of the stove to the music. It's these little details, these accurate realities that Spencer-Fleming does so well.

#39: Right you are,tiffin. Last night, as I was reading Penman's Time and Chance, I was reflecting on the fact that while Penman isn't all that spectacular a writer, she is a great story-teller. And then I remembered someone in a writer's group I used to belong to remarking that in her writing courses, a distinction was made between those who were good writers--who knew the tricks of the trade, who were able to craft good sentences, dialogue, description, etc--and those who were good story tellers. The great fiction is when both talents are combined in the same person. I think Spencer-Fleming is exactly as you've described--a great story teller and a very, very good writer.

Haddam can be both but she is erratic and lately she is irritating with her main characters. Another one who combines both was Magdalen Nabb in her Marshal Guarnaccia series--she was absolutely one of the best, without exception. Still another is Andrea Camilleri (who has a teriffic translator), the creator of Inspector Montalbano. Michael Connolly, Dennis Lehane--they're the ones who can do both, although I must say I'm really tired of Harry Bosch. Martha Grimes (if you ignore her last book which was awful)--there's quite a list, actually. Spencer-Fleming is right up there with the best of them, so far.

>40 Joycepa:: I read the first 13 Martha Grimes, plus #16 and #18 (just checked my library), but somehow, I've gotten tired of Jury. I don't know if I just need a break or whether I'm done with her.

I haven't tried any of those others. I don't really think of myself a mystery reader. However, that may be a misconception on my part as I have over 900 books tagged that way and I do enjoy them. I tend to find one I like and then read the whole series, but I don't really search out new authors. Perhaps I should change that.

#41: I'm exactly the same way! I find one I like and then do the series, wait for the latest. I realized when I moved here that I was going to have to change that, since I didn't have a library handy to check out new authors. While I didn't join LT for that reason, oddly enough, I rapidly realized that that would be just as important--the discovery of new authors and books--as my original reason, which was to catalog my library (what was left of it) for the first time ever.

I have discovered several new authors (well, some are pretty old but new to me). That's what I like about LT and my friends here. Thanks, Linda. and only 70 to go, nice start.

>31 laytonwoman3rd: All this discussion of Spencer-Fleming - I had to add the series to my wishlist. I'm always on the hunt for well-written mysteries (so many are, well, crappy) so it's good to see the high recommendations here.

6. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons A delightful witty tale (set in the "near future" when written in 1932) of the efforts of Flora Poste (poverty-stricken in a genteel sort of way) to civilize her earthy eccentric cousins, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, Sussex, where she has decided to live after her parents died leaving her a meager income of 100 pounds a year. Not only must she deal with a slew of Biblically named male cousins (whose wives stay in the village to avoid the wrath of Aunt Ada Doom), but there are the animals---a bull named Big Business, and cows called Aimless, Feckless, Pointless and Graceless, one of whom is always misplacing a hoof or a leg. Daft, altogether. I enjoyed it a lot.

#45. Daft, altogether. I enjoyed it a lot.

Freudian slip?

Linda,

Since you enjoyed the book, I highly recommend the film of the same name. I bought it on the recommendation of Cariola last year, and even my totally non-literary husband enjoyed it.

Isn't #6 a fun read? Even though I knew that she had written it to send up that genre, I thought it was brilliant in its own right (or write, as John Lennon said). I want a tee shirt with either "Who let out Big Business" or "There's something nasty in the woodshed!" on it.

#45: I keep trying to remember whether or not I've read Cold Comfort Farm, and after several reviews, I've decided that regardless, I have to get it! And the DVD.

Big Business--I love it.

Cold Comfort Farm has been added to my wishlist. Thanks for the great review!

When I read Cold Comfort Farm a few years ago, I couldn't believe I had waited so long to read it! It's now one of my all-time favorites, and I've already reread it once. The movie, available from Netflix, actually does a pretty good job.

I have added the movie to my Netflix queue. The "Big Business" cracked me up because that's our dog's magic phrase to make her stop sniffin' around and pick her spot when we walk her.

Yeah, see, I had to stop you from making that mistake!

I've been trying to obtain Cold Comfort Farm from my library but it is a book that has been lost. I guess I'll have to buy it, based on all these great reviews.

Thanks.

With all the hype here about Cold Comfort Farm, I'll just have to add it to my TBR thread. I'll never catch up!

#46 I freely admit I'm daft, if that's what you're getting at!

Hello daft, this is warped speaking. After reading your succinctly informative review, those last two sentences just jumped out of my fingers as they blazed across the keyboard.

>45 laytonwoman3rd:: I'd forgotten all about the cows!! We read Cold Comfort Farm at school, and I don't think I really appreciated it properly at the time. Mind you, my experience is coloured by the fact that our teacher insisted on us also first reading swathes of the "turgid rural peasantry" genre it was satirising... so by the time we actually got to the book itself I think I'd had quite enough and failed to see the funny side. When I saw the film years later, I actually began to see more in the book.

Hi, Flossie. (I hesitate to mention that my grandmother had a cow named...oh never mind.)

Welcome to my thread! Yeah, teachers can dampen the pleasantest reading experiences, can't they? I trust my offspring (who you've also visited, I see) is doing a better job than some of the ones I had years ago.

7. Tenney's Landing by Catherine Tudish
A satisfying collection of short stories by an author I know nothing about, other than what's on the dust jacket blurbs. She taught writing and lit at Harvard for a while. These stories are about very normal people in a western Pennsylvania river town in the right now (although there is a Prologue giving the 18th century history of how the town was settled.) I enjoyed most of them a lot. One made me tear up a little, another made me feel like every single person in it was someone I once knew, and I could imagine myself as the main character in the last and best of them...good reading.

She was quite a scary lady. We were all fairly relieved when she went on maternity leave just before Easter. Just one of the many reasons I could never be a teacher - I'd either be that scary lady or the quivering lump on the floor who doesn't last two weeks.

Now I have to go off and make another LT connection to work out who your offspring is.... my brain is shot to pieces at the moment. And I always used to claim that "making connections" was a special talent of mine!!

..and actually: in NZ, I had the best-ever primary-school teacher (in terms of nurturing interest in boooks). Have def. posted about her on another LT thread, but she read us Madeleine L'Engle and Roald Dahl, and probably loads more besides. She was also a dead ringer for the Grand High Witch.

Does your offspring plan on teaching after she finishes at Tennessee? Mine does - now - she would have been shocked years ago to think that she would ever follow in her father's footsteps - now she comes to him for advice.

> 61 Oh, Flossie---didn't mean to tax your brain. Lycomayflower is my daughter. I had just been on her thread, and saw that you had commented there.

>63 koalamom: I don't know, Sharleen. I think she enjoys it, especially now that she has the opportunity to teach creative writing rather than just freshman composition. It will probably depend a good deal on the job market...she might give the Domestic Goddess gig a shot for a while.

OK, Kelly. There's always G in my cupboard, although I may be low on the T this time of year. I find a little sour mash more appropriate for dealing with the Compsons, myself.

scott is having fun with job market right now - lot of talent, not many positions - always something he doesn't have!

sarah is teaching a literature course now and very joyful (the blurty post notwithstanding!!!)

#64. Domestic Goddess: is that PC for "housewife" or "couch spud"?

>68 BrainFlakes: See, I have to be careful, 'cause when she reads this thread she's apt to send me a howler...
I think I'll say nae more on the subject for public consumption.

Why do I suspect her to be fully capable of sending a howler and by owl, no less.

Found you here Linda via Cold Comfort Farm. Recommending another British humour classic, The Towers of Trebizond.

Thanks for the recommendation, Pam. I had not heard of that book, somehow. Puzzling, since I see a high number of the members of "that other group" have it in their libraries. (So did Ernest Hemingway--the things you learn here!)

Linda - I cannot believe I have been missing out on your thread for a whole MONTH. Starring it now so I can keep an eye on you. Your thread is a pleasure to read so far.

I also want to get to The Towers of Trebizond Pam. That has been waiting for a read for years. Glad to see you recommend it.

The Towers of Trebizond sounds like a must read! I may have to change my Classics category to "Oldies but Goodies" because I'm finding several older books on threads this month that I want to read but that don't fit the traditional term "Classic". Cold Comfort Farm would be another one I've never read and now really want to.

Technically what is a "Classic"? I have a stack of books for my 999 that I consider classic. I hope I am right.

"I sawr something NASTY in the woodshed."

Cold Comfort Farm is a one-of-a-kind treasure. So glad you enjoyed the movie version, alcottacre.

#75: Koalamom, I have no idea what the literary world's definition of 'classic' is, but for our Classics thread, we count anything published before 1960 - a rather loose definition, in point of fact.

I get the sense that "classic" lit has come to refer to any book which is over 100 years old (roughly the same model as is used with antiques). Classics only used to mean ancient Greek or Roman writings but common usage has changed that perspective, perhaps because in North America we don't have anything written beyond a few hundred years. Vintage has come to refer to anything from the 30s through the sixties in the world of collectibles - I haven't heard books referred to quite this way. They tend to be referred to under headings like "the war years", "between the wars", or by their decade, "the twenties, thirties, seventies, etc." So I would call Dickens a classic but not early Vonnegut.

For my tabs, I refer to anything prior to 1900 by its century, i.e., 18th C. English Lit. Anything after 1900 gets termed "modern", i.e., Modern English Lit.

OK, I guess I'll continue to go with what I perceive as Classic and if anyone wants to check on me they can read my 100 challenge thread!

But anybody who has read my posts before will know for me a Classic is one that I get through but barely!!!

8. Embers by Sandor Marai

This novel held great promise for me. It was set in a part of the world that fascinates me; it purports to explore the "big questions" of friendship, love and courage; it had been praised by readers whose judgment I trust. It started out well, too. At his family castle in the Hungarian forest, Henrik, or "The General" awaits the arrival of Konrad, "The Captain", and reminisces about the past. As 10-year old boys from very different worlds, Henrik and Konrad met at a military academy in Vienna, and became inseparable friends. Yet we learn that something has separated them, and that they are about to meet for the first time in 41 years. The reason is a mystery, and for a time the author tantalizes the reader with that mystery in a very skillful manner. Yet very early on I began to dislike the tone, and marked a passage or two with snarky little comments. This one, for instance, ---And yet, beyond their roles and their lives in society, beyond the women, something else, something more powerful made itself felt. A feeling known only to men. A feeling called friendship. Once the General's guest actually made his appearance, I felt the book very quickly turned from suspenseful novel to self-indulgent screed on the nature of friendship, passion, guilt, truth. Little nuggets of the old story were scattered through the General's repetitive philosophical musings, but I grew very impatient and eventually stopped caring about what really happened all those years ago. As Henrik did all the talking, we never understand why Konrad returned to meet him again. It certainly could not have been to explain or defend himself, as he made no attempt to do either. The General talks at length about seeking revenge, but (and this is a SPOILER, I suppose), the author violates, quite literally, Chekov's rule that if a gun appears in Act 1, it had better go off in Act III. Embers had an excellent first act, but I should have left during the intermission.

I'm interested in learning more about Embers..the book cover is so pretty...What is the story line?

#81. I have to agree that LW3's review is a bit scanty and somewhat uninformative, but I bet she got caught doing her review at work--which means the detention closet.

BrainFlakes (love your name)

detention closet is fine, as long as their is plenty of light and many books to read.

>82 BrainFlakes: Charlie understands me very well. I managed not to get caught, but I was delayed in completing the review. I've edited the post now.

Great review, Linda!

#84. I just knew you would come through with a review and phew, it's one less book I have to worry about reading.

You must work in an office that expects you to work--some filthy place reminiscent of Dickens, perhaps?

Just be glad that she has the skills of Artful Dodging.

>86 BrainFlakes: In fact, I'm supposed to be composing a memo from the bosses about the increasing misuse of company time by crawling around on the internet, making personal calls on cell phones, and leaving the office for candy, soda, meter-feeding, etc. All these things are considered BAD, apparently. No mention made of composing book reviews..."whew".

#87. Excellent repartee, Joyce!

#88. Do you have to raise your hand when you want to go to the . . . never mind.

I'm in something of a daze from reading the vicious backlash of The Bosses against the Working Class--and why. Gawd--a memo, for heaven's sake! What could be worse--to do, that is.

Hey, but you can have fun with it, Linda. Charlie, we should help her compose it, don't you think?

Where's our Creative Writer, lycomayflower, AKA Laura, when we need her?

#90. Miss Flower, which drives Linda nuts when I call Laura that, is busy reading Stephenie Meyer trash. I have yet to go over there and comment on it.

ETA: I misspelled Meyer's screwy first name spelling.

Yes, I did read her review. Well, all I gotta say is I do love my trashy police procedurals, although I'm taking a break from bodies piling up in the cities in favor of bodies piling up in front of parapets, ditches, breastworks, stone walls, rail fences and the like. Much more efficient body count.

>91 BrainFlakes: Oh, do go, Charlie. She neglected to mention that she felt she had to read Twilight because so many of her students are fans, and she needs to know what they're reading. I told her I didn't know she was teaching 14 year olds...

>90 Joycepa: I would dearly LOVE help with this stupid memo. I've been stalling on it for over a week. Will it help you to understand the circumstances I work under if I tell you that the support staff (secretaries, paralegals and billing personnel) must punch a time clock?

Omygawd, Linda, Charlie is right--you work for whathisname, Scrooge. Are you limited in the amount of electricity you can use for your lighting? Do they keep track of the number of computer key strokes you use in your work? Chained to the desks? The mind boggles at the thought of time cards for professional staff.

Who makes their coffee? I can tell you a couple of rather effective but basically harmless chemicals to put in it that will have no lasting effect but believe me, will keep them close to the executive outhouse for, say, 12 hours! Little tricks you learn in grad school in biochemistry. :-)

What bugs me the most about the whole work situation is that there is no one with people skills in charge of anything. There is no question that some employees are taking advantage of their situation; but everyone knows who they are, and they should be dealt with on an individual basis. This "office memo" thing has been a source of irritation to several of us long-timers over and over again. Whenever the bosses perceive a problem they think they have to find a blanket solution. So they lay down the law, insult everyone, plunge morale into the mines, and the perpetrators lay low for a while, then gradually go right back to their old habits. No one has ever been fired for incompetence, and believe me there have been (and still are) some excellent candidates. Loyalty and competence are recognized, however, and sometimes even rewarded. It's an odd little world.

You know, that situation has developed over the past 20 years or so in many work places, where management has decided it has to be careful in order to avoid law suits. you're correct in assuming that these people have no real skills for that kind of job. the best supervisor I ever had in a career that spanned almost 40 years was an ex-Army Corps of Engineers colonel who served in Vietnam and was in Cambodia during that time. I had decided to hate him on general principles when I heard he was going to be our new supervisor; he wound up being a mentor and close friend who earned my complete respect and trust. The way he handled supervisees of all stripes--and I was no picnic, believe me--was a model for me, certainly.

There are very few who have the skills necessary to really do well in today's environment.

#80: I read Embers in January, LW3, and felt very much the same as you. Ah, I noted the very same passage, and it bugged me too!

*SPOILER*
Re Embers: I took that passage as a vivid indication that the General hadn't really realised anything, despite having sat and stewed about it all for decades. The fact that he did most of the talking WAS the point, for me: extremely intelligent but also overpowering and controlling. That he didn't attribute a depth of emotional range to a woman was very telling in the failure of his marriage and emotional relationships. The two people who had loved him most had never stood a chance against the force of his personality because he would never be able to understand the artist or the woman. His nurse gave me a bit of trouble because she was still very much there at the end but she was more like a succubus to him. The consummate soldier, with courage and tactical skills, he could not manoeuvre the minefield of human emotions and wasn't aware of this flaw in himself. Anyway...blah blah blah....that was the point of the book, for me. I thought the tale was very subtle, which was deceptive because Henrik wasn't.

Tiffin, you may be right about the subtlety. The man was so one dimensional that I simply couldn't care. I kept tripping over the pothole left by Konrad's failure to engage Henrik at all, as well as his lack of motivation---WHY did he return to submit himself to that onslaught? I also wonder, although the prose seemed to flow well enough, whether the double translation I read lost something. After I finished the book I noticed that while it was written in Hungarian, my copy was translated into English from the German.

Mine was translated from Hungarian into English and was beautifully done by Carol Brown Janeway. I thought Konrad might have gone back to see if anything had changed in his friend, whom he had both loved and betrayed, for a kind of closure in his life. Krisztina escaped by dying. But no, Henrik was still immutably himself. So Konrad left, probably thinking that his flight and escape were vindicated. Marai left that up to our imaginations, I think.

Check the inside cover of that book, tiffin. That's the one I have, and I understood the information there to mean that Janeway translated it from the German. I could be misreading it. I don't have it handy.

Heavens, you're right! That'll teach me to make sweeping and unsubstantiated statements!

LOL!

>95 laytonwoman3rd: Do you work in my building? That sounds soooo familiar.

A question about working downtown - Do you like the view across Washington Ave? I hear a lot of people don't!

I definitely do NOT. I think what they did to the landscaping over there was almost as criminal as what's been happening inside the courthouse in our sister county. (Sorry, the rest of you---inside stuff.)

9. Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie A Tommy and Tuppence romp. This is really a collection of interconnected short stories centered around the International Detective Agency...a front of sorts where Tommy takes on the identity of Mr. Theodore Blunt, the former proprietor, at the request of "The Chief", in order to find out just what nefarious spy-related hijinks Blunt may have been up to, contrary to His Majesty's best interests. Most of the adventures Mr. and Mrs. Tommy get up to have nothing to do with international intrigue, but one or two of them involve "Russian devils" the mysterious "blue letters", and the warned-of Number 16. Their detection techniques in each story are supposed to be based on the methods of some famous literary detective. Unfortunately, the only ones I recognized, even after being clued in, were Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. That was a very minor quibble for me, however. This was a lot of fun to read. It was the last appearance for these Christie characters, I believe.

Which Sister county--Luzerne?

Yup. Don't suppose it's made the international news, but two county judges and the Court Administrator (so far) have been indicted and entered into plea agreements over some pretty reprehensible carryings-on. I could find you a news link if you'd like to read about it.

10. Giraffe by J. M. Ledgard A beautiful book, with a very difficult ending. It took me three days to read the last 40 pages or so, because I could only take it in small doses. Even though the core event of this story is no secret from the beginning (it's all over the blurbs and descriptions), the realization of it comes in context with gut-grinding power. This book will be the one to beat for best read of the year.
My review is here

I'm trying to figure out if I have the stomach to read this. I avoid like the plague stories of animal cruelty and killing. yet I've read you review and others who just rave about this book, so maybe I'll do it. Maybe.

>109 citizenkelly: Thanks, Carolyn. I think my disappointment with Embers was not so much the maleness of it, but the failure of the STORY. One of my favorite authors for pure recreational reading is Robert B. Parker---can't get more macho than that. But I understand and accept his characters on a level I couldn't get to with the General and Konrad.

Wow, I've had the audiobook of Giraffe for about three years. Maybe it's time to pull that one out next.

Linda
I saw your post regarding Giraffe on another thread and added it to my tbr pile at the time. Now, I have second throughs. Actually, I'm likw Joyce, I'm feeling sad just reading the review. I just cannot take it when animals are harmed. But, yet the way you write about the book it just seems like a must read....

#115: I know--that's exactly how I feel about the whole thing! Really torn when normally I would dismiss it as something that is definitely not for me. I mean I have a fit when fictional animals are killed instantly off-screen!

Kill off a few thousand soldiers in a battle? No problem--I can read about that for hours. Harm one whisker on a cat's head or ruffle a feather on a hawk's tail? I'm devastated.

There is no way on earth that I could read Giraffe. Black Beauty and Old Yeller scarred me permanently when I was young. Sorry, Linda. Can't touch that one with a barge pole.

Joyce, Linda, Tui--I understand your reluctance. I doubt if I'd pick it up myself based on reading my own review. I can't explain what drew me to this book when I found it at my local second-hand bookstore. The cover is beautiful; I had an up close amazed moment with a giraffe when my daughter was quite young and I took her to what they called a "Pet Expo" (giraffes ain't pets, people) at the local armory. That great creature bent its neck down toward me, and I saw those exquisite eyelashes, and I just melted. So how did I bring myself to read this book knowing how it was going to end? I just don't know.

Joyce

message 116...Well said! My feelings exactly.

I believe that the hollywood set and all the violence on tv has made me somewhat immune to the killings in movies, etc. But, still when I even think that an animal may be harmed, I turn off the tv or look the other way during the movie.

Having just read a very bleak French book A Sun For Dying, I am going to pass on this one for the moment. Thanks for the great review, Linda.

I'm with the others. Whilst it sounds an interesting and touching read, and one that possibly should be read, I don't think I could stomach it. I recently read Out Stealing Horses and an event near the beginning of that was unpleasant, although some people probably wouldn't even have felt it. I was much less disturbed by the event that directly followed it, involving people.

(Wow is it tricky to write about something in a book without giving spoilers!)

#121: I know what you mean, having just read the book--and agree with you.

ETA: almost forgot: #117: About Black Beauty--yes! My parents took me to see the movie and I cried and cried. They were really distressed with me, coming from a Depression generation where humans suffered a great deal. But even then I couldn't take the stupid cruelty to animals.

I still have nightmares about reading details in the paper over 15 years ago how a group of kids tortured a cat. Not to mention that scene in Sula (or is it The Bluest Eye?) Since then, I've had to avoid anything that hints of animal abuse. I even turn off the SPCA ads on TV.

I think that's why I haven't gotten to Giraffe yet.

I have to agree that I cannot read anything about cruelty to animals, fictional or not. Despite your full review, I just know I couldn't get through it.

If I need a good cry, I'll read something inanimate--like my income tax returns (I may have mentioned them somewhere else).

>125 citizenkelly: I lurve you.

For those of you who do not even like the thought of animal cruelty, death or harm, may I suggest a very quick read of Roald Dahl? I finished The Magic Finger a few days ago. It was delightful. The main character used her 'magic finger' on her neighbors who hunted and killed animals.

LW3, as much as I would like to join citizenkelly in solidarity with reading Giraffe, there is absolutely no way I would make it through the book. I admit the reviews are intriguing, but I saw one that said the book is not for the squeamish, and I decidedly am.

11. With Malice Toward Some by Peg Halsey
This one was just for fun. Written as a diary detailing approximately 6 months of temporary ex-pat life in Devonshire, with side trips to Scandinavia, Paris, and London, in 1938. Parts of this are just hysterical, not so much in the anecdotes themselves, but in the author's descriptions of ordinary things. The English countryside comes off very fine--("The countryside around Stratford is green and plenteous..Cushioned with trees and padded with hedgerows, it runs up into little mattress slopes...the thatched houses rest on their gardens like cuff-links on jeweler's cotton"; the weather and food not so well--"Devonshire weather, though not cold, is unendurably damp...I walk furiously to keep warm, and when not walking, I live in a six-foot semi-circle in front of the drawing room fire"; "I suppose the English {feel} that American women spend too much time and energy on their clothes...But what do Englishwomen spend their time and energy on instead? I ask it, who have eaten their cooking."; and the gentry...well, "the gentry will not melt in hell". Relaxing fare.

#130: That one does sound fun! I will look for it.

I'm glad that you read for fun--that's why I read 5½ Harold Porter books. Excuse me. Harry Potter.

What happened to the other book-and-a-half, Charlie??

12. The Maytrees by Annie Dillard Annie Dillard is an acquired taste, and I thought that I had acquired it. I started Pilgrim at Tinker Creek many years ago, and couldn't get into it. Then I picked it up again a few years ago, and virtually drowned in it. I read An American Childhood with great pleasure. When I started The Maytrees late last year and wasn't pulled in, I decided I needed to wait until life was quieter, or my mood was, or something. I re-started it a few weeks ago, and was ripping right along until I hit a snag in the plot line that made me want to throw things. I put it aside, to deliberate whether I wanted to continue. Waffled. Read a few more chapters. Almost decided to give it up. Read other LT reviews. Counted the pages left. Decided by god to finish the thing. So I did.
As another LT'er wrote here, it works best as a book-length poem, rather than a novel. There is amazing imagery here. And insight into the human heart. But there are many many sentences that just don't say anything I can grasp. Syntax to Dillard is a plaything, and sometimes she breaks a window with it. If you blink your eyes, you'll miss the story. I want story. I closed the book dissatisfied with both the author and myself. I suspect I may one day revisit this novel. A second reading might be just what it needs.

I have read both An American Childhood and Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek as well as Teaching a Stone to Talk and enjoyed them all, but I did not realize she had written a novel as well. I am going to have to look for that one!

The question you posed in #133 is answered by the first paragraph of your #134 review: mood, not the right time, whatever. The first half of the sixth book seemed dark and dreary, devoid of the humor and "magic" of the other five. I will finish it eventually, but the part I read was little more than a set-up for the grand finale.

Counted the pages left.

Gee, I wish I knew how many times I've done that.

lw3 and brain: another count the pages lefter. Oh that made me laugh

13. The Innocent Man by John Grisham Grisham's non-fiction account of the tragic life of a man wrongfully convicted of a murder he had nothing to do with, through a truly appalling combination of unethical police tactics, ineffective legal representation and incompetent judicial conduct. Not only was the innocent man of the title sent to death row on the basis of fabricated testimony and a coerced confession, without a single item of real evidence to tie him to the crime, but several other men suffered a similar fate at the hands of the police department and district attorney's office of Ada, Oklahoma. In this book we learn of three victims of that system who were ultimately exonerated by DNA evidence after spending years in prison. Two others remain in jail, despite strong indications that their arrests and convictions were based on "evidence" and junk science of an equally flimsy nature. There are plenty of heroes and villains in this work, and it's definitely stranger than a lot of fiction. An engrossing read.

Linda
Thanks for your great review of the John Grisham book. Was it a frustrating story line and did that detract from the book?

No, Linda, I didn't find it frustrating. It was fairly clear right along that some justice was eventually going to prevail. And Grisham's pacing was terrific, just like in his better novels. But I still think I'll do my best to steer clear of Ada, Oklahoma!

Thanks for the clarity re. the Grisham book.
Also, I wanted to say that your review regarding the book Giraffe has haunted me and I decided that I will read the book. I was able to obtain a copy via bookcloseouts.com for a very reasonable price.

I read The Innocent Man last year and I agree with LW3: it was engrossing and not difficult at all. Grisham sticks to facts without the added tawdriness of "true crime" writers like Ann Rule.

I think the book's subtitle says it pretty well: "Murder and Injustice in a Small Town."

I read The Innocent Man when it first came out several years ago ,although I had read no Grisham to that point (and have not read any since for that matter) because I live only about 100 miles from Ada. I thought it was, in LW3's words, 'an engrossing read'.

14. Bread-Givers by Anzia Yezierska Melodramatic tale of the life of Polish Jewish immigrants in New York, told by the youngest daughter, Sara, who fights to rise above the poverty, chauvinism and ignorance the rest of her family takes for granted. It was a fast read, or I would have given it up. The characters are one-dimensional, unsympathetic, and don't learn anything from experience. I'm turning to Isaac Bashevis Singer next, and quickly, for what I expect to be a richer, more full-blooded story of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, The Family Moskat.

@144 Huh. I seem to recall enjoying Bread Givers. Not the best thing I ever read, but interesting anyway.

This is REALLY throwing a line out there blindly in the waters, fishing for a response. For weeks, off and on, I have been trying to thin of the name of a non-fiction book I must have read 30 years ago, on the subject of Jewish immigrant experience in the US, I'm pretty sure limited to New York. Written by a well-known US writer--John ???

Anybody got a clue? Especially, Linda, if you're reading in the area.

Joyce, two that come to mind are World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe, and The Rest of Us by Stephen Birmingham. Something tells me neither is what you are trying to remember. I'll keep thinking.

>145 lycomayflower: Does your copy have those black & white photos from some 1920's movie scattered through it? They really added to the melodramatic character of the story---I kept expecting someone to get tied to a railroad track.

World of Our FAthers is it. I kept thinking of John Irving, only it's Irving Howe.

Thanks, Linda.

Linda, I read The Family Moskat many years ago (actually in a Yiddish literature in translation course I took in college) and I remember enjoying it but not much else! Let us know what you think.

@147 No, no pictures in my copy at all.

This is a very interesting conversation regarding the Jewish immigration experience in US. I'm currently reading Briar Rose by Jane Yolen, a story of a granddaughter searching her grandmother's past. I highly recommend this book.

>148 Joycepa: Oh, good!
>149 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, I managed 30 pages last night before sleep overtook me, and it's amazing. Already the main character is very similar to the father in Bread Givers, just as Old World, just as demeaning to the women in his life, just as imperious, but more real somehow. I don't like him, but I want to read about him.

Linda
I haven't read Bread Givers bu will do so. And, I Rebecca, I will be sure to read The Family Moskat. JoycePA, it seems I'm always adding your reads to my list...Thanks (I think)..I'm smiling.

When Howe's book came out in the 70s, I was on a quest, I suppose you'd call it, to understand what really happened to my generation--1st generation Italian-Americans. I had plenty of first-hand experience of Italian immigrants, but no way to understand what that meant for me, really. Howe's book was excellent, as I've always believed that the Jewish and Italian experiences and life styles were very similar.

One of the things that infuriates me about most movies about Itlainas that aren't about the Mafia is the syrupy to the point of gluey way Italians of my generation in particular are portrayed. Yech! I have never recognized anyone I knew from those movies, either the immigrants or first-generation. Before Howe's book, I always felt as if Jewish families were getting the same sickening artificial syrup treatment; after reading his book, I was sure of it.

One criticism is that it focus nearly entirely on NY Jews and their experiences, but that was a plus for me since my family came from New York; nearly all of the Italians and many of the Jews I knew who were immigrants or first generation came from New York. So for me it was a plus. I could very easily translate the Jewish immigrant experience to the Italian one, and his analysis of the dilemmas that first generation Jewish children experienced were right on, as far as this Italian-American first generation child was concerned.

It was yet another book that somehow didn't make it in one or more of my earlier moves; I really want it back in my library.

Joyce
It is interesting that you write about the similarities between the Jewish and Italian immigrant experience. The book/novel I mentioned above, Briar Rose mentions this as well.

And, as I mentioned previously, having grown up near an Italian village, my experience of these wonderful, loving people was so different than the false images presented in film and even in the not so funny jokes!

Just popping in to put "The Discussion of the Day Award" ribbon up here. I have just relished reading all of your comments about the books and personal reactions to the Jewish and Italian immigrant experience.

That particular "immigrant experience" has always fascinated me. My ancestors were neither Jewish nor Italian, and they did not settle in New York City (at least not the ones I know about). But something draws me to the Lower East Side at the turn of the century. (I wish I didn't feel the need to define that phrase, now that another century has turned. But you all know which one I mean.)

I think "Gangs of New York" did a fine job with one aspect of the Irish experience.

The whole immigrant experience is part of what has turned me into a cynic about human behavior. First came the Germans and Scandinavians (after the English, of course), who were certainly discriminated against by the "native" Americans (and we aren't talking about the likes of Cherokees). They in turn, were the ones who tried hard to keep the Irish "in their place". After that came the Italians and others, such as the large Jewish immigration from central Europe--but Poles and so on--and what did the Irish do? Three guesses and none of them count.

So--what did my ethnic group do during the Civil Right era? I watched with sick disgust as the Italians of Cicero, Illinois jeered and shouted racial epithets during the civil rights marches there. You better believe there was and still is prejudice in that community--both against blacks and a strong anti-Semitism. The latter always struck me as strange in the Italian community and the only way I could get my hands on it was to view it as a family fight--very great similarities there.

And lest we miss any chance--in Los Angeles, when I was working, I watched African-Americans do their best to keep the Hispanics--at that time, mainly Mexicans--in the menial jobs while they held what higher status jobs any of them were allowed to hold.

Because of experience I've had as a community organizer and working in various movements, I've thought a lot about power and the stupid way disenfranchised groups will battle each other and among themselves for the utterly illusory holding of such "power". It's why in the past 20 years, I've refused to work in any movement, for any group, because every single one of them, without exception, is alike, bar none, in my rather extensive experience. Nobody learns.

That as it may be, trying to understand the immigrant experience of my own ethnic group has contributed, I suppose, to the way I look at power struggles of any type.

ETA: I've probably written a post similar or nearly identical to this before--probably will again if the subject comes up. I have to say watching that TV news program in '64, I believe, was one of the defining moments of my life, an absolutely searing experience. So it comes up.

For those interested in the 19th/early 20th immigrant experience in New York's lower east side, and immigrant experiences in general, there is a fabulous museum in New York called the Tenement Museum. It recreates apartments of real immigrant families from various ethnic groups at various times who actually lived in the tenement building which houses the museum. Through guided tours and other programs, the Museum tries to connect today's visitors, including today's immigrants, with the experiences of earlier immigrants and the social, health, and other issues they faced. The shop also has a remarkable collection of books although, sadly, only a few are featured on the web site.

ETA This page includes a list of books about lower east side history and a link to a longer list (sadly, however, that link doesn't seem to work).

Wow - this is a cool discussion which I am enjoying +++. Just have no knowledge of the subject to contribute so will continue to lurk.

#159: The Tenement Museum looks really cool--but I don't think I'll get there. But thanks for the list of books--those I can access!

Excellent observations, Joyce. I know you're right. Any degree of power, real or perceived, must be protected against assault from below!

Thanks for that link, Rebecca. Another must-visit location in your fair city to put on my list.

Well, you have to let me know when you come here!

I will surely do so. No immediate plans---waiting for better weather!

An excellent novel about the immigrant experience in NYC in the early 20th century is Call it Sleep by Henry Roth. I recommend it to everyone.

I can second (third? fourth?) the recommendations for The Family Moskat. My favorite book of Singer's on the life of Polish Jews is The Manor and the Estate though.

Linda
Your thread generates some very good conversations.

In reading the responses about human behavior and ethic groups, etc., even if we are of the same background, in my case Welsh and English, and while the skin color and culture may be the same, there is still nasty mean spiritedness.

By the way, these same ugly people had some choice words for Italians and I learned every one by the time I was four-five years old. I then embraced the Italians and have always considered myself an "Italian wanna be."

Here is my story posted on Peter's list last night in relation to books that had a great influence on us and why:

-------------------------------------------------

Peter

Hands down...my all time favorite book that continues to influence me is Harper Lee's masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird.

An incredible high school English teacher taught the text of this book in such a compelling fashion that to this day, when I read the pages, I hear his voice. He was small, thin, self conscious and seemed to know about not fitting in. When he discussed the book, he became self assured, more assertive, larger, more confident.

My sleepy NE Pennsylvania town was "Lilly white." Thus when I read the book, I did not have a broad knowledge base of racial bigotry. However I was very much aware of class distinction. While some may glamorize small town living, the underbelly of my little town was the nasty, gossipy comments by the haves directed toward the have nots.

Alas, I was a precocious child of the "have nots" who was sensitive enough to be hurt, but scrappy enough to hold my head high.

I found a wonderful cast of heros in Harper Lee's book -- the noble lawyer/father Atticus Finch, his in your face, tom boy daughter Scout, the reclusive Boo Radley about whom all matter of superstitious slaunder was directed, and the innocent black man Tom Robinson, accused of a crime he did not commit, and who, like all children born on the wrong side of town, are assumed bad, guilty and not quite worthy.

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone ever fits in.

Oh yes, I know all the words. The only time I have ever struck anyone in anger was when I was about 12 years old. We lived in an Irish neighborhood, the only Italians there, and some jerk of a skinny kid said one of those words about my baby brother--then 6 years old, now 66, 6' 2" and 200+ lbs.

I decked that lousy little runt with a lucky punch to the side of the jaw--caught him totally off balance and down he went to my enormous satisfaction. Given the circumstances, pacifist that I am, I'd do it again--NOBODY talks that way about MY baby brother (who thinks the whole incident hysterically funny). I did get a certain reputation in the neighborhood.

Not sure if I've already told this story--I know I mentioned it to someone when I had to read the riot act to my brother last year about some "jokes" he was passing around about Middle Easterners. Same sort of trash we heard when we were kids about us. I reamed, steamed and dry cleaned my brother--not sure the satellite was able to handle the sizzling electrons between here and Arizona. I didn't hear from him for weeks. No apology but no more "jokes", either. We're half Calabrian, and the subtle approach doesn't work with that half--more on the order of a 2 by 4. I assumed he was speaking from the Calabrian half and acted accordingly.

I'm lovin' all this discussion! There were many Italian families in the community where I went to school from sixth grade on, but they were all far removed from immigrant status by that time. There were a lot of Polish families there too, but again, assimiliation was the rule, except for an occasional ancient Babushka in the back bedroom. Ethnic foods were rare (pizza and kielbasa belonged to everybody). Everybody was an American. Although the "wop" and "polack" epithets were bandied about, they didn't mean anything more than "moron" and "spastic" did--they were just generalized insults and I was well grown up before it dawned on me that they were ethnic slurs. The fact that I was a "country kid" set me apart more than anyone's ethnic background did. I started my education in a one-room, eight-grade school in the middle of nowhere. At the end of my fifth grade year, the school was closed, and the next year all us "country kids" were bussed to Town to the central school, a HUGE place containing K through 12 in a three-story building, with a gymnasium, a cafeteria, and two bathrooms on each floor. We were subject to all kinds of name-calling, practical jokes and mean tricks. The school made no provisions for orientation, and we were all like fish out of water. Until a couple years later, when another batch of outsiders came in for the first time, and WE belonged, and THEY didn't. (Personally, I've worn my "Stump-jumper" label with pride all my life. Most of those "townies" couldn't even swim!!)

Both my kids and my brother's are Americans--they can't make any claim to even Italian-Americans! Assimilation is just a fact in the US, and overall, I think it's for the best.

You're a generation removed from me, Linda--I think my oldest is your age! LOL.

168: What is a stump-jumper?

I'm going to guess that a stump-jumper is a hick from the sticks, a hayseed, a country bumpkin, and a rube.

What am I missing, LW3?

apple knocker, yokel, rustic

#172. I must have had a concussion when I fell off the turnip truck: How in tarnation did I forget yokel?

Clodhopper, hillbilly, s**t kicker, sodbuster...

S**t kicker? That doesn't even make sense!

Being a native small-town Iowan living in Chicago and often surrounded by New Englanders, I can usually tell when people are thinking those words, even if nobody ever says them. They're far more subtle and prefer to make fun of the fact that I say "pop" instead of "soda". Because there is of course only one correct name for carbonated beverages.

#175: Canadians say pop too, or soft drinks. Never soda. I've seen bumper stickers around here: Did you eat today? Thank a farmer. ;)

There's some great discussions going on in this thread! I took a class on the history of immigration in the US last semester and I really enjoyed one of the books we read, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. It's got chapters on many different immigrant groups, including Jewish, Italian, and Irish, as well as blacks and Asians. It also reads fairly easily for a history book, IMO.

#146: Joyce, I know I am late in joining the discussion, but I have read a couple of very good books regarding the Jewish immigration experience that I can recommend. The first is by Mary Antin called The Promised Land. The second specifically deals with Jewish immigration in New York City and is called The Promised City. It is excellent, dealing with all aspects of a Jewish immigrant's life.

Stasia, it wasn't the Jewish experience per se as much as it was that that was the only book at the time--we're talking late 70s--that explained my own experience to me and showed me that I was not alone in the type of conflicts I was having with my parents (every generation has conflicts). By the time Howe's book came out, I was 40, I'd married a 4th generation American whose parents had come from Ponca City Oklahoma and who lived in the Los Angeles area, I had gone to a small private school in PA rather than Penn State, where everyone else in Scranton who did go to college went and that was an eye-opener for a lower middle-class Italian innocent on a scholarship--all kinds of things that no one I knew back in Scranton had done--not then. I knew that I was in some sort of cultural never-never land, and I wanted to understand exactly what that was--I had the symptoms down clearly but wasn't sure of the origins, exactly.

Howe's book blew some stereotypes as well. I grew up in a (for that time) a typical immigrant Italian household--you can't even imagine how narrow, how prejudiced that was, although my father, from northern Italy, was less so. The Irish, our main enemies given the political struggles going on at the time, all drank up their paychecks and beat their wives. But we lived in an Irish neighborhood; our next door neighbor, Mr. Beebe, was the principal of the local grade school and his wife had been a teacher. I knew for a fact there was no wife-beating going on in our neighborhood--and also knew for a fact that Italian friends of ours did indeed hit their wives. Same with the Jews--I won't go into that--but the Jewish kids I went to high school with were, I now know, solid middle class, and were all the best students (except for one Italian kid who sneaked in). At that time, in the early 50s, Scranton most certainly was divided along religious lines--Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish--and no one crossed those lines. Catholics ate lunch with Catholics, Protestants with Protestants, etc. I couldn't join the most elite sorority because it was only for Protestants, for example. I, of course, naturally, had as one of my closest friends a Jewish young woman named Judy--after nearly 60 years, I forget her last name. But we were good friends, and I knew about her family just as she knew about mine. So I knew that what I was hearing at home was BS.

One last bit, that I have enjoyed remembering: decades after I'd moved away, on a visit to my mother, she revealed to me that she and Mrs. Beebe had been talking recently--this had to have been nearly 40 years after we'd moved into the neighborhood, and Mrs. Beebe had told my mother that when the Irish neighborhood learned that an Italian family was going to move in, no one was quite certain that that was a good thing. I knew instantly that even after all that time, our neighbor was being tactful--what she meant was that all the Irish were afraid that a bunch of dark-skinned, dirty, greasy little Italians with a bunch of squalling, stepping-stone kids were going to lower the lace-curtain (as they used to call respectable Irish in those days) tone of the neighborhood and bring in who knew what crime.

I howled with laughter--I couldn't talk I laughed so hard--puzzling and certainly insulting my mother who had no idea that I thought it was the perfect comeuppance for everything I had ever heard about the Irish in my home as I was growing up.

I also realized that contrary to Italian prejudice the rich in Scranton were not the Jews but the Protestants. Right straight along historical-cultural lines. But that realization came later, and I never paid any attention to the drivel that I heard around me.

Italy became a nation under one government late, in the latter part of the 19th century, divided up among Austria, the papal states, and in the south, a monarchy imposed by the French much earlier. Italy still is a very tribal place, and growing worse, for that matter. You can read it in Donna Leon's books, for example. The Venetians detest the Milanese (no decent Venetian or other Italian can understand the lisp with which the Milanese distort Italian), the Sicilians are all crude when they aren't mafiosi, Florence is full of dilettantes, and everyone hates the Romans. That tribalism, which extended to every other ethnic group imaginable, certainly came over with the Italians of that day, and in our house, absolutely no one could be trusted, really, except another Italian--and I had seen plenty of examples where that trust was misplaced. So I grew up free of all those prejudices simply because they didn't fit the world around me. I think I was born a scientist!

I will never forget the look on my mother's face the first time I brought Judy home with me after school. But she was quite polite, I'll give her that much.

Howe's book, describing the poverty and the generational conflicts, was enormously comforting. I'm sure that there are many other good books. I suppose that I want it out of sentimental reasons if nothing else, and because it was and still is a good basic book on the subject.

I haven't thought about exactly this aspect for a long time, and I'm afraid I've hijacked Linda's thread here. However, I'm always extremely interested in the Outsider experience. I might add that I learned an enormous amount from my in-laws who were every bit as prejudiced in their own ways as my own parents, about growing up. I'll never forget the day, years after I was married, that my father-in-law took me aside and obviously distressed, blurted out, totally ashamed, that there was "Indian blood" in the family. By that time I knew all about it, had even met Bob's paternal grandmother and had been hounding him to get her oral history (which he never did).

I do carry on.

#179: I became interested in the immigrant experience because my grandfather on my father's side immigrated to America from Belgium just before WWI. (My mother's family has been here forever - names on Plymouth Rock and "Indian blood" as well).

I'm not sure that poor Linda's thread is the place to do it, Stasia, but i'd sure like to hear, somehow, about his experiences--add to my collection, since I don't have any Belgian stories! :-)

#181: Unfortunately, I do not have any to share. He never spoke of it when I was a child and died before I was old enough really to understand that he even had an 'immigrant experience.' I think that is one of the reasons I became interested - trying to understand that part of my family history.

My brother and I are the only ones left of our immediate family on my father's side, which is the immigrant side. On my mother's side, I have a whole bunch of cousins lifting near Scranton, Mayfield, and points near there, but they are now 2nd generation. All my uncles and aunts are dead.

Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh is a novel that looks at a Polish-Italian immigrant family in a Pennsylvania coal mining town in the years before and after World War II, and the varying reactions of the adult children to the company town they grew up in. I read it after being amazed by Haigh's most recent novel, The Condition; it is an earlier work and isn't as complex and insightful, but I nonetheless enjoyed it.

Thanks for the reference, Rebecca--very likely to be around my home town of Scranton. I'm very interested and will add that to the list.

Ye gods, I haven't thought about some of this stuff for decades!

Just thought I'd pop in and say... I read Briar Rose a few years back and enjoyed it. I thought it was unique and intriguing. That is all, carry on!

Linda
Thanks for letting us highjack your thread. I am relishing the great conversations and amount of open, honest sharing happening here.

I have one more book to add to the immigrant experience. kira-kira by Cynthia Kadohata is a superbly crafted book centering around the Japanese-American experience in rural Georgia. Realizing that we all have varied tastes in books, I usually do not get on a soap box, but this one is a MUST read.

>175 wunderkind: Sure it does...it refers to walking through barnyards and pastures...

The rest of you...I'm loving all this immigration discussion. I had much the same situation as Stasia...even though my grandmother's older siblings were born in the "Old Country", I never knew much about it, and neither did my father. When I got interested, my grandmother was gone, and I questioned my Dad, but he said as far as he could remember, he never heard a word of Slovak spoken, nor were there any customs, traditions or even foods that could be traced back there. You'd think a stray phrase or two might have survived, but no. On his father's side, my Dad's family was German (or maybe Dutch), and they had been in this country much longer...I don't know anything about when they came here, but believe my great-grandfather was born in this country in 1816.

(Joyce, you have to say "Mayfeelt" or your lose your local cred!)

ETA: Need I mention that I've added oodles of books to my Must Read List from all your posts? Thank you all.

As some of you may already realize, from my daughter's ID here, on my mother's side I can trace my family back to its arrival on the Mayflower. I think my mother's generation was the first to marry anyone who had a name that didn't sound profoundly English. And Protestant goes without saying. When my mother's youngest brother announced that he was marrying an Italian Catholic girl, my grandmother (so I'm told) sat down and sobbed. But to her credit, she almost immediately pulled herself together and never made any reference to the subject again. Teetotaller that she was, she even sipped champagne at their wedding----from a teaspoon.

Linda, I LOVE the story about your uncle and your grandmother--exactly parallels the utter dismay when I announced that I was marrying this non-Italian (all else was irrelevant) from --where? Oklahoma? I'm not sure any of my family really knew where that was! Except it wasn't Mayfeelt! And yes, I do know how to pronounce it. I still have cousins there or near there. My grandfather lived there his entire life in the US--died in his own bed.

i just adore stories like that! I just chuckle away. I think that's the real genius of the US--the fact that the assimilation occurred in that fashion--and that fast! Within a generation. A lot was lost, as you mentioned about your Dad, but overall, it was a good thing. The old enmities, animosities are gone--of course, to be replaced by new ones, but at least no one is killing anyone (anymore) over ethnicity. Worth the losses, I think.

@188 You don't mention that some of the "Dutchness" survived the assimilation process even down to my generation despite being the branch of the family that was here longer. (I'm thinking of things like yelling "Raus!" (rather than, say, "scram") when chasing bratty children away from pies cooling on the kitchen counter and our pride (mostly) in our "Dutch" stubbornness, thickheadedness, and occasional wrenched syntax.) Why you suppose that is? Seems to indicate initial pride or at least acceptance of the heritage on the Dutch side but not the Slovak. Hayna or no?

>190 lycomayflower: Well, it would have been pretty hard for this bunch



to deny their heritage, wouldn't it??
(That's my grandfather seated in the middle there, for those readers not related to us.)

I also think it has something to do with the fact that all the first generation people on the Slovak side died early. My grandmother was an orphan at 11; her sister was 15 and their brother was 19. And living out there in the boonies, they were not part of any ethnic Slovak community; in fact, as you know, both sisters married into that Snyder tribe, so the German/Dutch element sort of took over, I suppose.

But don't forget that "brat" is Slovak for brother!

How I do love that picture! (Weren't you going to get a copy made for me?)

What an absolutely fantastic picture! Oh, wow!

Thanks, Joyce...we're mighty fond of it in the family. Those are "The Snyder Boys" -- eight brothers (a ninth did not survive infancy). My grandfather was born in 1863, died in 1932. I know the big fellow on the right in the back row (Uncle Bill) died in 1925, so this picture was taken some time before that.
>192 lycomayflower: Yeah, yeah--you'll have it.

I think Uncle Bill looks German, but your grandfather definitely looks Slovene.

That is a great photo, Linda. Do I detect a set of twins? And eight boys didn't get into much trouble as lads, did they?

No, no twins. The two who look like they might be (Charlie (!) and Leroy) were born 16 months apart. Don't get me started on the stories, Charlie. One of my favorites is that they used to mount a wagon scale, and tip it over a ton, without the little fellow on the right in front, who was rather a lightweight compared to the rest. (He's the baby.)

What an incredible photo!

Just chiming in..What a Fantastic Thread! Funny, sad, everything in between. Some of you should be authors, if you aren't already! I have been late catching up and have been absolutely gripped.

>195 Joycepa: Interesting observation, Joyce. As far as I can determine, though, there is nothing but German/Dutch and English in those "boys". Two of them (my grandfather included) married Slovak (not Slovene---different country) women, but their mother was of English origins, I think. Her name was Elizabeth Ray and I don't know anything about her family, but I make the assumption based on the surname.

>199 profilerSR: welcome to my thread, profiler. Glad you've enjoyed our chatter.

My grandfather was sort of ostracized from this family for marrying that Irish woman. His family was German. I guess that is what happens when you live in a melting pot like our country. She was accepted eventually - I remember the Brayer family picnics with all his brothers and sisters (5 girls and three boys - the boys all came last).

And I don't think my mom's folks really liked her marrying a Catholic, but that too passed. My dad got on well with his in-laws, but then he helped give them a granddaughter (me - and the first of only two), so I guess they forgave him!

#200: I know that you said they were German/Dutch, but I took one look at those cheekbones and said Slovak--yes you're right, Slovene is a totally different country. I suppose, too, it depends on what part of Germany the ancestors came from.

Well, I can only say that the household I grew up in represented the extremes of the American experience.

Mom--her father's family came over on the Mayflower; impressive family tree, mostly English with a little French and Cherokee thrown in; he was a corporate lawyer. Until the depression hit, they had a live-in maid, nanny, chauffeur. My grandmother came over from Belfast as a two-year old. She followed her mother, who left Ireland after the scandal of a divorce.

(I can still remember the fit my grandma threw when one of my cousin's married a Catholic; she called their firstborn "that little Papist kid.")

Dad--youngest of seven children of Polish immigrants; his father worked first as a coal miner, then as a janitor. They were Catholic, of course--in contrast to my mom's Scots-Irish Presbyterian background.

There was a lot of tension in the household. I only realized when I got older that a lot of it had to do with my parents trying to keep up with my mom's siblings--which was impossible, really. My dad worked hard, but he was a tool maker; one of my mom's sister's was married to the son of the company owner, another married a dentist, and her brother was a hospital administrator.

>189 Joycepa:: "...but at least no one is killing anyone (anymore) over ethnicity..."

Joyce, there are places in this country where I think that statement would not be true.

I'll agree that things have gotten better, but not that they've gotten good. My background is similar to Cariola's: mom daughter of a well-respected judge, servants, etc....dad out of western PA coal miners, railroad hands and truck drivers. You'd think that would breed understanding but, when my Scottish/German self got engaged to my Russian/Baltic/Jewish wife, a few eyebrows got raised. And it wasn't one-sided...a few times when they thought I couldn't hear, "goyische" got bandied about by her side, even though they are as non-observant as they come.

In a way, that chose our house for us. Pre-kids, we lived in a fairly homogeneous community but, when the kids came, we moved to a town chosen for its diversity, heavy on ethnic backgrounds...both long-time (Italian, Polish and Slovak waves) and modern (Indian, Middle Eastern waves)...and religious melting pot. We'd like our kids to grow up thinking this is normal.

On the whole Protestant/Catholic thing, there's a fun family story.

My great-great grandfather was a Knepper and Kneppers were staunchly Brethren. He married a McCarthy, staunchly Catholic.

The story is that he agreed that, if the first son could be raised Protestant, all subsequent children (there were 15) could be raised as Catholics. We've never been able to confirm or deny this story but there's no denying our branch (descended from the first son) is all Presbyterian and Reform, while we have a number of distant Catholic cousins. :-)

15. House of Fallen Leaves by Holly Wendt

Books, remember books? This is a thread about books.

I have finished Holly's manuscript, and I am in awe of her command of ancient Scandinavian legend, geography, history and weaponry; of medieval life and language; and on, and on... Of course, given my ignorance of many of these things, I could be deceived. But I don't think so. There are two interwoven stories here. The first is told from the point of view of Ǽsch, a solitary island-dwelling exile from Geatland who rescues the wounded Wiglaf, survivor of the dragon assault that resulted in the death of Beowulf. The second is narrated in the first person by lay brother Beclaf, who spends his days in a monastic scriptorium during the reign of Canute, and who we understand to be the first to record Beowulf's heroic tale, which his mother used to sing. In each case we learn traumatic details of the childhood and youth of the main characters, for whom wyrd has something else in store than the lives they thought they were raised for. Bearing in mind that this was a only a first full draft, I think there is something quite amazing going on here. I look forward to owning a signed first edition of this work one of these days.

#206. I'm glad you liked the manuscript, Linda, and extra good luck to Holly.

Linda, I think there might be books on your kitchen table but at your place there would also be mugs of tea and great conversations like this.

House of Fallen Leaves sounds amazing. I want a copy too.

Did I mention that she also makes the world's best homemade caramels?

Homemade caramels?!? *drool*

She who? Holly? Heavens.

Yes, Holly. And eclairs, and mittens, and bento lunches and other food to die for...

Take a look

16. All the Poems of Muriel Spark Three or four of these poems struck me as remarkable. "The Victoria Falls" roared like a mighty cascade; "The Yellow Book" was filled with vivid images; "The Card Party" wickedly good; "The Nativity" clever and profound. Others were simply incomprehensible to me--"A Visit", "Conundrum"--and I know I missed many classical references that would have helped me understand others better. (I confess to having entirely skipped the last section, entitled "From the Latin".) It's been much too long since I studied poetry; what little I once knew of form and meter is long gone. (I can recognize a villanelle when it's called a villanelle.) It's clear to me, though, that Spark was working in many different verse forms over the 55 years covered by this collection. It seems to me quite an impressive body of poetry from a woman I previously knew only as a novelist. One of my favorite poems is entitled "Authors' Ghosts" in which she proposes that authors come back from the dead to revise their works, leaving readers to wonder "Where did this ending come from? I recall quite another." In her introduction, Dame Muriel relates a visit with W. H. Auden, in which she caught him "touching up" some poems he had written as a much younger man. Reminded me of Faulkner, who used so many of his characters in more than one book, and sometimes retold the same story, with significant differences, from one book to another. When asked about these inconsistencies, his response was something like "I know more about people now than I did when I started writing". If I catch him in here some night "touching up" one of his novels, I'll let you all know.

#213. I like the idea of "Authors' Ghost," and who knows: maybe it's true. And of course you're right about Faulkner--I'm about to review his short stories.

Others were simply incomprehensible to me ...

Thank the poetry gods that I'm not the only one.

Oh, you are most definitely not the only one. Spark admitted in her introduction that when she went back to some of the poems she had written 30 or 40 years before, she had no idea what she was getting at. And
Here's another poet chiming in

#215. Boy, you're quick on the up-take, whatever that means. I agree with Freas: to paraphrase, one must read through a lot of dreck to find the emotional-inducing gem. Reading a poem out loud isn't such a bad idea, either: hearing the words is quite different than reading word symbols on a page.

You are way up on another plane in reading material than me. But I am trying - I do have two "classics" on my 999 and a third is almost finished, but I just can't see myself getting where you are soon, but LT has broadened my repertoire a bit. Thanks.

Your review was-----poetic. I haven't read poetry in years--I felt I didn't have the brain power to understand and absorb an idea or emotion when a writer distills it to its simplest essence. But your review has certainly inspired me to try again. Thank you.

@ 215

Donnie! (Why do I keep losing his webpage? I swear I used to have it bookmarked . . . . )

>216 BrainFlakes:, 219 Well, I take no credit for being able to cite Don Freas in a heartbeat. I DO have his website bookmarked, and the first time I read what he says there about poetry I felt completely validated in my own response to much verse that I've read, voluntarily and otherwise, over the years. As long as we're still on the subject, I believe Marianne Moore expresses it very well too.

Don is a fine poet, a hell of a sculptor in wood and a really really nice guy. (Oh, did I mention he's related to us??) Laura, have you looked at his NEW ZEALAND collection lately? ;>)

@ 220 I have looked at it in the past. Is, how you say, freaking amazing. Makes me wish he didn't live on the other side of the country, ya know?

laytonwoman3rd

Thanks for the two links to poetry. Marianne Moore is one of my favorites--probably because both my parents loved her work so I got a "double whammy" when I was young. ;-) Don Freas is new to me--I will be looking for his work now. I love discovering new poets!

Carolyn -- Some of Don Freas's poems are there on his website. He's self-published, and I'm pretty sure the only way you can read the majority of his work is to buy his chapbooks directly from him. (The books themselves are works of art.) I'd be thrilled to think I introduced him to a wider audience. I've been trying!

17. The Mercedes Coffin by Faye Kellerman. This was better than the last Decker/Lazarus outing, but still less enjoyable than earlier books in the series. Once again, Kellerman used the element of a recent crime being tied to one many years old and unsolved. Too many potential suspects, too many theories, not enough evidence and procedure, not enough editing. If you are not familiar with these books, I highly recommend the first half dozen or so. There are worthwhile reads among the next several, as well. This one is No. 17, and having been disappointed with the last two, I think I'm done. I think the series has "petered" out.

#224. The same thing has happened to Jonathan, only much sooner than the 17th. Sadly, I've given up on both.

>226 laytonwoman3rd: I never read him with the same devotion as I did his wife, but I did enjoy several of the Alex Delaware books. There's only so much enjoyment I can get out of reading about psychopaths...

18. Coalseam: Poems from the Anthracite Region A collection of works by several authors, including Jay Parini, W. S. Merwin, and Gerald Stern. The "anthracite region" covers a lot of territory through parts of seven counties in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania, but the experience of working the deep mines and living in company towns was much the same everywhere. Dirty, dangerous, stifling and dehumanizing. The subject matter doesn't seem to lend itself to poetic treatment. These poems are fascinating, evocative, but almost every one of them would work better for me if it weren't posing as verse. As usual, though, one or two stand out. This fragment of "Walking the Anthracite" by Harry Humes, will stay with me:

"It could be the rim of the world,
the rocks breathing summer,
the copperheads coiled brilliant
near the huckleberry bushes.”

And this image from "My Mother at Evening" (also by Humes) cannot be improved upon:

“…at the end of his shift
he’d come up from the pit in the gunboat,
face black, lips and tongue pink as her peonies,
and not stopping at the washroom,
walk down to the railroad tracks
and wait for a train to hop.”

When we were in college, my husband and I took a course in folklore; as his final project, my husband collected oral histories from people in his hometown who remembered the mining days. These poems reminded me of that project, which I hadn't thought about for years, and one of the most "poetic" of the works in Coalseam, "Making Soap" by Nancy Deisroth, could have been transcribed verbatim from one of my husband's old interview tapes. It has the perfect speech rhythm of an old woman explaining how she made her own strong soap from lye and bacon fat. Impossible to take a piece of it out as a sample---it needs to be read entire, preferably aloud.

how can reading about psychopaths ever get boring?? :)

Oh, I didn't say it was boring!

#226: Wow, does this evoke memories! Only copperhead I ever saw was when I went huckleberry picking. And my grandfather and one uncle worked in the coal mines--the description of the miner's face is straight out of my mother's stories. Mayfield was a company town back then.

I may have to get this book, although I never buy books of poetry.

#223 LW3

Thanks for the link to Don Freas's website. I had a good time browsing it and I have tagged it so I can go back. I plan to buy one of his books--when my self-imposed "no buying books" time is up--after Lent! Do you have a favorite? I'll read it for my 999 challenge.

>230 MusicMom41: Testimonial By Nature contains my favorite of his poems, "As If This", which you can read in its entirety on the site.

Linda
I'm going to buy a copy of Coalseam: Poems from the Anthracite Region for my husband. Years ago, his grand father was a supervisor of a mine Joliet, PA. In addition, one of his uncles died in a mining accident.

I should get a sales commission--that's two copies sold!

I put it on my TBR list - so I guess that might be three?

At this rate, Linda, you may be able to quit your day job. Or your night job. Whichever.

>234 koalamom: Does the historical society own a copy of it? They should.

don't know - i can ask

19. Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton A beautiful, classic story of two men, one black, one white, who share a country, a tragedy, and a hope. I first read this in high school, when I surely was not equipped to understand or appreciate it. Yet I did remember something of the "feel" of the book...the almost serene poignancy of the story, and Stephen Kumalo's profound love of the land despite the inability of his people to prosper on it under existing conditions. I don't recall whether any attempt was made to place this novel in historical context when I read it first. It would have been quite obvious then, twenty years after the book's publication, that the commonalities discovered by the two bereaved men in this novel were not holding sway over race relations in South Africa. The action takes place two years before the Nationalist Party came to power there, leading to the system of fully institutionalized racism known as apartheid. It is not, therefore, as many of the reviews here would have it, a novel "about apartheid". It is, to some extent, about the injustice of the treatment of native Africans by the whites in control, and it certainly illuminates social issues of its particular time and place. But it is mostly about the human heart, and I think it works best on a non-political level, as an exploration of human dignity. The language is lovely, and moving, often in the style of oral story-telling, with repeated phrases, like the refrain of a song or poem. I have been meaning to re-read it for some time, and am very glad that I did.

What a wonderful review. I have never read Cry, the Beloved Country but it is on my "TBR in 2009" list. I'm now really eager to get to it!

#238: Cry,The Beloved Country was on my memorable reads list for 2008 for all the reasons you mentioned. It is a great book and I am glad to hear that it stands up to re-reading.

Maybe I should check this out - OK, it's going on my TBR list.

Good review, lw3.
ETA: wish you'd put it through as a formal review, so I give you a thumbs up for it.

> 242 Thanks. 'Tisn't my own book, so it's not in my catalog, so I can't post a review.

>241 koalamom: Sure, Sharleen. You can have it as soon as I return it to the library, later today!

#243: Tisn't my own book, so it's not in my catalog, so I can't post a review.

???? Since when doesn't a library book count?

you only put reviews out on books that belong to you? is that a rule I don't know about?

i was actually thinking about ordering a book from another library, so when it come in I'll have to look for that one too. Of course that means the ones on my shelves will stay unread a while longer and the booksale is April 25!

It is true, ladies. If the book is not in your own catalog, you cannot put a review of it on the book page. I have entered a couple books into my catalog even though they weren't in my possession, just so I could add a review. I didn't do so with this one, because I didn't think I had anything so original to say about it.

It's true that a book much be in your LT catalog to be able to review it. And if you review something and then delete it, your review gets deleted as well. That's why some people (me included) put library books and such in their catalog along with books physically owned. When collections comes along - any day now! - we'll be able to lump owned books and library books, etc into individual collections within our catalogs to be able to sort all this out.

Yes, that's right! I remember now--there was book I really hated, so I gave it away, deleted it from my personal catalogue--and away went the review as well.

Well, all right--why can't you enter library books into your personal catalogue, tag them as such--and write a review?

That's what I do, Joyce. I have about 3 like that. I use "Lib." as the tag, along with my usual classifications.

It really seems a shame, not to put library books in--so many people do the majority of their reading out of the library (as did I in another lifetime)--kind of discriminatory against library readers.

Nothing prevents you from putting a library book into your own catalog...I just don't usually do it.

In fact, 166 out of 576 books in my catalog are from the library and one is borrowed. I use the tags "library" and "borrowed" to distinguish them from the ones I own (which are tagged "mine").

I never knew about this rule. I do state in my profile that the books in my catalog are ones I probably no longer own, but have read. I only review recently read books - and then only after I read them and I make no distinction to the source of ownership. Most of the book si have read recently end up in my donation box so I don't have them physically now anyway. Since I am used to this, I'll just keep doing it.

>253 koalamom:: koalamom, there are no "rules," per se. How you use your catalog is a personal preference. Linda's preference is NOT to include library books. I personally think she's wacko. But that's just me ;-)

#254: No, not just you! :-)

I figured and I know Linda - she brought me into LT in the first place.

Linda
Here's to the "wackos" of the world, of which I am a BIG time member. I don't know, maybe it is a Linda kinda thing.

I guess I would be included in the 'wackos' club, too. The books in my library are the ones I actually own, but the majority of my reading comes from the public library, whose books I do not put in my catalog.

BTW - My name is not Linda. Maybe I should change it :)

I'm a quasi whacko then: I only have 3 library books I slid in because I really wanted to review/remember them. Not a purist, however.

Stasia, you are welcome to the " linda" club as far as I'm concerned. (Of course, "linda" means "pretty", so that would make you pretty wacko.)

to each his own, I guess

I cannot believe this conversation has been going on for two days. You're all a buncha wackos.

I guess that's why I like this place.

It's been a slow 24 hours, Charlie.

#262, so can we say you are a flaky wacko?

#263. Not for you, Joyce. And I wonder what you edited out . . .

#264. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, that's the nicest thing anyone has said about me since 1987 or 1988 . . . I forget because of all the lost flakes.

#265: Actually, Charlie, I edited in the "4", it somehow not having made it first time around.

Not so busy right now--I managed to pull a thigh muscle on Sunday, working too darn hard getting water to plants. Been living on Tylenol and splashing on large quantities of liniment, while trying to keep cool.

#260: I shall change my name henceforth to 'Stasia, aka Member of the Wacky Linda club'.

Hey, I did indeed borrow Cry, the Beloved Country from the ACL this morning. Don't know if it was the copy you borrowed 0 they had four and they were all there! It will be my next read after I finish The Princess Bride, which I got from Sarah.

Not mine---it's still riding around on the front seat of my car, waiting to be returned.

wondered!

20. Thunderstruck by Erik Larson Fascinating account of Marconi's efforts to transmit wireless signals across the Atlantic. Larson's "hook" here is the idea that, but for transmissions made possible by Marconi, a fugitive wife-killer might have managed a clean escape from England on board an ocean liner bound for North America. The Crippen murder case has been written to death (you should pardon the pun), and Larson doesn't dwell overly much on the details of the case, using it more as an element of suspense to carry the reader along. I was truly surprised to find myself so engrossed in Marconi's work...Larson handles the technical details in a very approachable way, and since Marconi himself was no scientist, nothing he did was really beyond the understanding of an intelligent layperson, when properly explained. Although he was in furious competition with some real scientists, trial and error eventually brought him success, and there's a terrific head-smacking "I coulda had a V-8" moment at the end. (SHORT waves travel better over long distances than LONG ones? Really? Then I didn't need all that sturm und drang? *smack*). I am in awe of an author who can take vast amounts of archived documents--notebooks, letters, transcripts, contracts, maps-- and turn them into a cohesive narrative like this. Very well done. My only quibble is that there should have been more photos. Each chapter is begins with one, but several times the author described a photo in detail within the text, and it made me wonder why it wasn't possible to include some of them.

Linda
This sounds like a good book. Is this the same author who also wrote Devil in the White City.
And, I haven't heard of the Crippen murder case, so now I'm very interested not only in reading Thunderstruck, but will do a google search to learn more about this nasty little wife killer.

Yes, that's the guy. I want to read another of his books, Isaac's Storm, about the great unnamed Hurricane that flattened Galveston in 1900.

oh, that looks like a good one...on to the tbr pile goes Issac's Storm Thanks for mentioning this one.

I wish I could do such a good review in one paragraph. I seem to have gotten carried away lately.

But you use sturm und drang. Laura uses bildungsroman. I'll throw in schadenfreude so we can all be German.

>275 BrainFlakes: It helps to be trying to dash it off before breakfast---focuses your attention, as it were.

I also recently read Thunderstruck and thought it was well done. I understand from others that Devil in the White City is even better.

It is a really interesting time in history - turn of the 20th century. Any other suggestions for this time period are very welcome.

I do better reviews when I am away from the computer. By the time I get here I can't even remember what I was going to say and what review I do do is not so good.

#273: Isaac's Storm is very good as are all of Larson's books. I enjoy his writing style a lot.

21. Soul Songs An unpublished collection of personal essays written by an LT friend. Clever, funny & moving. Sorry you can't all read it.

22. Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener by M. C. Beaton (Marion Chesney) A "cosy", not my usual fare, but it fit the bill yesterday when I was not up to much else. Full of sentences I would love to red pencil, stock characters, and a rather annoying principal, Mrs. Raisin, who I couldn't bring myself to root for. The title was the best part, really.

23. Night and Day by Robert B. Parker The latest Jesse Stone installment. Have I mentioned that I am in love with Jesse Stone? Yeah. Nothing in this one changes that. And there is hope that he may lick at least one of his personal demons yet. Keep writing 'em, Bob.

three in a weekend - congrats

I am really liking Cry, The Beloved Country. Thanks

I was pretty much curled up with the dog, a book and a blanket all weekend, trying to shed a nasty cold germ.

I hope you feel better soon. And, you are right, book #22 does have a catchy title.

>280 laytonwoman3rd:: Have you tried other Beaton books? I enjoyed her Hamish McBeth books. I read a number of the Agatha Raisin books but, each time she'd rise from being unlikeable, she'd just plummet back to annoying a book later, and so I stopped.

What Tad said - I like her Hamish McBeth stories but don't like Ms. Raisin.

I hope you get to feeling better soon, Linda!

you, too! maybe you can catch a cold from people you converse with over the interent - many over at the Gathering Place have been sick and my sister-in-law, too (I converse with her over Facebook)

get well soon

24. My Own Country by Abraham Verghese Well-written, highly readable medical and personal memoir by an infectious disease specialist who became the primary care physician for AIDS patients in a rural Tennessee community just as the disease was starting to make itself known in that culture. Compassionate and informative.

I loved his first novel, Cutting for Stone, which I read last month. This one is also on my wish list.

I've read nothing but good about Cutting For Stone, which is as a result on my To Buy list,and now this new book. Clearly an author to watch.

I've got Cutting for Stone on my to buy list too. I agree with your evaluation of My Own Country. In between My Own Country and Cutting For Stone, he wrote another excellent non-fiction book, The Tennis Partner, which continues the story of his career begun in My Own Country. The Tennis Partner partly focuses on his relationship with an extraordinary but tormented medical student.

All of the Verghese books are now on my tbr list. And, one of my long-term friends is a physician who practices wholistic, as well as "traditional' medicine. I'm going to obtain some the books to give to her as a present. Thanks for your recommendations.

linda, I am finishing Coalseam, thanks for setting me onto this book of poetry - I could see the places mentioned as I have been there - twas nice

25. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby This is a collection of essays on reading and other book-related topics, taken from Hornby's monthly column in the magazine "The Believer", which I had never heard of before. The selections here are from 2003/2004.

Each selection begins with two lists: Books bought and Books read. (Guess which list is longer.) Hornby is my kind of reader. He makes no apologies for buying books he admittedly will probably never read. ""Look at this month's list...What are the chances of getting through that lot? I've started the Chekhov, but the Amis and the Dylan Thomas have been put straight into their permanent home on the shelves, rather than onto any sort of temporary pending pile." He loves Tony Hoagland: "the sort of poet you dream of finding but almost never do. His work is relaxed, deceptively easy on the eye and ear, and it has jokes and unexpected little bursts of melancholic resonance. Plus, I pretty much understand all of it..." He thinks he's going to love hefty biographies, and then gets bogged down a third of the way in by the author's unrelenting thoroughness: "Please, biographers. Please, please, please. Have mercy: Select for us."

He enjoys poking fun at his bosses, in one chapter referring to them as "the twelve terrifyingly beatific young men and women who run the Believer, later as "the ninety-nine young and menacingly serene people who run the Believer, and still later as "the eighty-four chillingly ecstatic young men and women who..." At all times, apparently, they wear white robes and issue edicts difficult to obey, such as the one declaring that the Believer should contain only "acid-free literary criticism". This resulted in one month during which Hornby abandoned an Unnamed Literary Novel and an Unnamed Work of Non-Fiction, as he knew he would not be able to write honestly about either without bringing down the wrath of the Committee (comprised of "twelve rather eerie young men and women" in white robes).

There is a second book out there, entitled Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, which I now must find, and apparently Hornby is still writing these columns. The magazine is on-line, and teases us with excerpts---full text versions available by subscription. Sample a couple of them for yourself

hey a third of the way there - nice - and you even got me to read a couple from this list of yours

I have a little book spree planned two weeks from now (a little indulgence heh) and I'll definitely track that one down, I've been wanting it for ages! Thanks for the great review!

#296 - Don't forget the third book Shakespeare Wrote for Money, and I believe that his final contribution to his monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading", in "The Believer" magazine, was in September 2008.

Thanks for the information, Peter. I wasn't aware of the third book. I do see on the magazine's website that September '08 is the last entry. I thought perhaps they just didn't have all of them there.

I just reread your whole list to date and it struck me what a wild, wide and ranging assortment of books this is, the cereal box to Plato whole nine yards. Isn't being a Real Reader a glorious thing?

I am having a good time!

What the heck is a 'Real Reader' for those of us who are fakes?

Oh, no, Stasia. You're the real deal. The rest of us are just wannabe's!

#302: I kind of suspected that I was, but is there a definition for 'real reader'? Are some people who read not real readers?

BTW, LW3, you might want to consider joining the multiple thread gang. 300 messages and counting . . .

>303 alcottacre: Yeah, I think when I finish with March, I will start a new thread for the next quarter. I may have one more book on the list by Wednesday.

hahaha Stasia, oh yeah, right, you're a fake *snort*...well, a Real Reader is one who reads for the sheer love of it, in me 'umble opinion. I hadn't gone so far to think of a fake reader as the opposite term so it's wide open for interpretation but I suppose it might be someone who actively dislikes reading but must (for work, for school)? Feel free to jump in here...oh wait, it's not my thread.

#294. LT recommends Ex Libris, which I thoroughly enjoyed, along with TPS, so now I have another Linda book to read. I don't know why I waste my time looking for books on my own when all I have to do is read what you're reading.

Well, I don't know. My current read is Green Hills of Africa, and it's not impressing me any more than anything else of Hemingway's has ever done. I'm probably not going to recommend it.

Linda - I loved reading the Hornby literary forays, or more honestly, a gut reaction/memoir of his reading experiences. He disguises his intellect in self-deprecating commentary.

The only niggly annoying feeling I had, was his lack of specific negative commentary. I understand that he agreed not to negatively identify any particular books, which kinda takes away the fun of criticism, non?

#307. I only read the ones you recommend--I haven't the time left to read anything less.

BTW, I have a homework assignment for you--please tag your LoA Steinbeck so I know, out of lurker curiosity, which volumes you have.

OK... will do. I like "lurker curiosity"...ummhmmmm.

#305: Thank you for the definition, Tui!

I think the opposite of a 'Real Reader' would be a 'Forced Reader', if it is someone who actively dislikes reading but has to do it anyway.

That makes sense. A fake reader might be the person with the New Yorker mag held up high but with the Penthouse inside?

Dammit, Tui, you caught me!

Your nose just grew, Flakes...poked right through my monitor, in fact. ;)