Rebeccanyc Reads in 2011, Part 2

I am starting anew thread here, and will list the books discussed in this thread in this post, with the most recent first. A star means it's a favorite book. The next post lists the books I read earlier in the year, discussed in my first Club Read 2011 thread.

81. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann* (reread)
80. Yalta: The Price of Peace by S. M. Plokhy
79. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons* (reread)
78. I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan by Pap Khouma
77. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes*
76. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay*
75. Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin*
74. The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Challenged Planet by Heidi Cullen
73. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson*
72. The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
71. They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy*
70. They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy*
69. The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante*
68. The Bride from Odessa by Edgardo Cozarinsky
67. The Mangan Inheritance by Brian Moore
66. They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy*
65. Classic Crimes by William Roughead*
64. An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel
63. A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel*
62. Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics edited by Lawrence Block
61. The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns*
60. The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinsky*
59. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
58. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes*
57. Manhattan Noir edited by Lawrence Block
56. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante*
55. We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
54. Sisters by a River by Barbara Comyns*
53. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa
52. In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa
51. The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns*
50. The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio*
49. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole*
48. Once upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell*
47. A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong'o*
46. The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov*
45. Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories: Selected by the Authorby Arthur Conan Doyle*
44. Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
43. Five Bells by Gail Jones
42. The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer*
41. Gulag by Anne Applebaum*

This is the list of books I read earlier this year discussed in my first Club Read 2011 thread.

40. Faith by Jennifer Haigh
39. Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette
38. The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak
37. A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block
36. The Eichmann Trial by Deborah Lipstadt
35. Life and a Half by Sony Labou Tansi
34. Ice Road by Gillian Slovo
33. The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago*
32. The Looking Glass War by John le Carré
31. A Murder of Quality by John le Carré
30. Call for the Dead by John le Carré
29. Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov*
28. Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution by Caroline Fraser
27. The Fierce and Beautiful World by Andrei Platonov
26. Nineteen Eighty-Three by David Peace*
25. Nineteen Eighty by David Peace*
24. Nineteen Seventy-Seven by David Peace*
23. Nineteen Seventy-Fourby David Peace*
22. Iphigenia in Forest Hills by Janet Malcolm
21. Irretrievable by Theodor Fontane
20. Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich
19. Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa
18. Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns*
17. The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns*
16. Open City by Teju Cole
15. The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier*
14. Bogeywoman by Jaimy Gordon
13. Matagiri by Ngugi wa Thiong'o*
12. Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns*
11. Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem*
10. Conquered City by Victor Serge*
9. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak*
8. Just Kids by Patti Smith*
7. She Drove without Stopping by Jaimy Gordon*
6. The Maias by José Maria Eça de Queirós
5. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
4. Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel*
3. Every Day Is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel
2. Tun-huang by Yasushi Inoue
1. Bait: Four Stories by Mahasweta Devi

41. Gulag by Anne Applebaum

Gulag is an eye-opening thought-provoking, comprehensive, nuanced, and readable examination of the Soviet Union's network of forced labor camps, from their origins in 1917 in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution (with a look back at earlier Russian uses of slave labor and exile), through their rise and fall, largely under Stalin, to their adaptations in the 1980s eras of glasnost and perestroika. Applebaum had access to secret Soviet documents preserved in their archives, the records Gulag administrators needed to keep to operate the camps (as opposed to the more public political reports), but what makes this book so compelling is not only her impressive scholarship but also her quotes from the prisoners themselves -- from their memoirs, from interviews, and from literary works. Their testimony, and the quotes from poets and other writers that begin each chapter, bring life to grim, and still not well known, evil of the 20th century.

Applebaum brackets a lengthy middle section on prisoners' experiences in the camps -- from arrest, prison, and transport to food and living quarters, work, punishment, survival strategies, and rebellion, with special looks at guards, women and children, and the dying -- with historical sections covering the periods 1917 to 1939 and 1940 to 1986. This allows her to delve into the actual lives of prisoners while also exploring the political, historical, and economic forces behind the origins, expansion, and fall of the camps. Without fanfare or drama, she vividly illustrates both the magnitude and the telling details of the monstrosity that was the Gulag This is essential and horrifying.

In the introduction and final chapters, Applebaum tries to put the Gulag, and her history of it, in context. She analyzes some of the reasons why the evils of the forced labor camps, particularly at their peak under Stalin, are not as well known in the west, nor taken as seriously, as the evils of the Nazis and Hitler. She explores the attitudes of contemporary Russians and people from neighboring countries (those that were part of the former Soviet Union and those that were under its domination) towards remembering, documenting, and studying the camps. She points out that this lack of interest in remembering can have consequences in the present, citing in particular the Chechen experience. She notes that she doesn't discuss the parallel system of internal exile, which affected millions more people and their families.

And, reluctantly and with many caveats, she takes a stab at the numbers, estimating that some 18 million Soviet citizens passed through the camps between 1929 and 1953 and that there were also perhaps 6 million exiles, 4 million POWs, and 700,000 postwar detainees, for a total of 28.7 million people who experienced the camps. She explains that there are so many ways of looking at the question of how many died, and such inadequate data, that it is difficult to come up with totals. In the camps themselves? More than 2.7 million. In political executions, more, maybe a lot more, than 786,000. Under the entire Soviet regime, "unnecessary" deaths are "pure conjecture," but could range anywhere from 10 or 12 to 20 million.

In the end, Applebaum focuses on humanity and the individual. Noting that "statistics can never fully describe what happened. Neither can the archival documents on which so much of this book has been based," she gives the "last word" to a writer and former camp inmate, Lev Razgon, who, upon seeing his own archival file at the age of 82, wrote: "I can remember and recall them, each one. And if I remained alive, then it is my duty to do so."

42. The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer

This dark satire explores a difficult marriage and the demands of parenthood through the eyes and voice of a depressed and possibly somewhat delusional wife, the mother of an unnamed huge number of children by a variety of fathers, whose husband is, obviously to the reader and less obviously, at least some of the time, to the narrator, wildly unfaithful. The two things that make this a compelling read are the narrator's voice, completely unsentimental, sometimes very funny, and always wickedly perceptive, even of her own situation, and Mortimer's wonderful ear for dialogue throughout the novel. The beginning section in which the narrator talks to a completely obtuse and very Freudian psychiatrist is terrific (and, speaking of Freud, what to make of the glass tower she and her husband are building in the country?). Much of this novel, including its most horrifying part, is a thinly disguised fictionalization of Mortimer's own life but, unlike the protagonist narrator, she was able to create something from the pain and loneliness of her marriage and her life.

Excellent review of Gulag rebecca. It is one I will keep in mind if I want to know more about the Gulag system.

Gulag took a broader look at the system than did The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn's work was more personal including saying where some of the criminals (moral criminals in the system, not the ones condemned by the Soviet system) lived at the time of the writing. Applebaum does him the favor of treating his reporting with respect. The three volumes of Solzhenitsyn's experiment are imposing, but as I got momentum in them, I just kept going with them until I was done, and I recommend them.

Robert

Thanks, Barry. Robert, I do have The Gulag Archipelago but it does seem daunting and at any rate I'm not up for reading more about the Gulag right now! I see that Anne Applebaum wrote the foreword for the edition I have.

I see a Barbara Comyns on your reading list. I must have missed that one when you read it. Her name came up last week when, at an author event, someone asked China Miéville what he'd been reading that he could recommend. His answers were Barbara Comyns, Helen Oyeyemi, Michael Cisco, and African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou. Have you read other Comyns's titles, or just this one; and if so, which would you recommend to start with.

Lois, after I read Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, which I bought largely because of the irresistible title, I was so taken by it that I bought The Vet's Daughter and Our Spoons Came from Woolworths. I loved all of them,and they are all quite different, but whether or not it's because I read it first, I am partial to WWC&WWD. I bought it from a new, small publisher called the Dorothy Project, and I heard about it here on LT. I will definitely be looking for her other work, although I believe a lot of it is sadly out of print.

I really liked your review of Gulag, Rebecca. Have you perchance seen that new movie (well, it's only recently been released in South Africa), The Way Back? It's about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian gulag, and then walk all the way to India. Not the greatest movie in the world, but it was an interesting look at a true life story. It is based on a book, The Long Walk, if anyone is interested.

Interestingly, Applebaum mentions that book in her discussion of escapes, and there are questions about the accuracy of the story told in it. She writes:
"Finally, there is the case of Slavomir Rawicz, whose memoir, The Long Walk, contains the most spectacular and moving description of an escape in all of Gulag literature. . . . Unfortunately, several attempts to verify the story -- which bears a striking resemblance to a Rudyard Kipling short story, "The Man Who Was" -- have come to nothing. The Long Walk is a superbly told story, even if it never happened. Its convincing realism may well serve as a lesson to all who try to write a factual history of escapes from the Gulag."

Very interesting. I see on the Wikipedia page that since Gulag was published, 'In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Gliński's claims have been questioned by various sources.' Seems we have a little James Frey-like action going on here.

Interesting indeed! I guess we'll never know the truth, but it apparently makes a great story, true or not. Thanks for stopping by.

43. Five Bells by Gail Jones

In this poetic novel, Jones meditates on memory, especially memories of childhood and of loved ones who are dead or far away, through the stories and back stories of four people who converge on Sydney's Circular Quay on a stunningly sunny day. Very little happens in this novel, other than the lyrically expressed thoughts of Ellie, a rural western Australian delighted to now be living in a diverse, vibrant city; James, her lover from their school years together, who is seeking her now to try to cope with a tragedy that has befallen him; Pei Xing, a middle-aged Chinese woman, living in Sydney for 15 years, who was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution; and Catherine, a young Irish woman escaping her traditional family in Dublin and mourning the death of her brother. Sydney itself is another character in the story: the reader gains a vivid impression of its varied neighborhoods and cosmopolitan allure.

Several images and themes wind through the novel -- snow, Doctor Zhivago, translation, migrating birds, and especially water. I am grateful to amandameale for sending me a copy of Kenneth Slessor's iconic poem, "Five Bells," because it helped me think about the very watery nature of this book, as well as its undercurrent of sadness and death. Despite the emphasis on the sparkling, glorious, sunshine, there is the pull of the water, from the trips on the ferry, to a Chinese water clock that emphasizes the continuous nature of time (as opposed to the measured segments indicated by a western clock or watch), to the death by drowning of Magritte's mother, and more. There are also references to art and music, and I have to confess I didn't really know what to make of all of these images and themes, some of which seemed a little forced, as did the (SPOILER ALERT) fact that class of schoolchildren was taken camping on a beach with only one adult supervising. However, overall, I found the novel lyrical and moving.

I had just finished reading Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra, when I got caught up on your thread. Your review enticed me to segue into Gulag: A History. I read the intro and the first chapter last night. Although I feel a bit as though I'm reading a graduate thesis, well salted with quotes from the academic firmament, she has me hooked. As you say, it is very readable, and the subject matter is so compelling. After reading Tsar, I wish there were more photos: the places she describes are so stark and other worldly. Amazing that although the camps held 2 million people at any one time, 18 million passed through the system at some point. Mind-boggling.

Yes, more photos would have been great. Another book you might like is Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, a look at Siberia today by a wonderful writer. As I said in my review last year, it encompasses "the history of Siberia (and Russia) from the Mongol tribes to the gulag and beyond, including a compelling chapter on the Decembrists; natural history from mosquitoes to ravens to reindeer to sables (with fascinating information about the historic fur trade) and geology from permafrost to oil wells; Russian literature and culture; Russian technology, especially cars and roads; and of course people of all sorts."

Have finished the first section of Gulag and finding it fascinating. She is a very good writer. (I should go back and reread the intro to find out why it rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps I was cranky and needed an ice pack.) Although I've read a lot of Solzhenitzyn, Ginzberg, etc., this provides a big picture and perspective that you don't get from the memoirs themselves. I also like how she doesn't try and fill in the gaps with her own hypotheses; she shows where there are gaps in the documentation or contradictions and offers a range of possibilities for the reader to mull over.

I don't read a lot of travelogues typically, but I will have to try Travels in Siberia. It's such a fascinating place. When I was a kid, I had a pen pal in Archangelsk. I wish we had stayed in touch.

travels in Siberia is a lot more than a travelogue, which I don't really read either.

I'm adding Gulag to my wishlist--it sounds fascinating. I've met a few people in my life who showed up in Canada after 50 or more years of being missing in the Soviet Union, so this has particular interest to me.

My family are all big fans of The Long Walk but it always sounded a bit James Frey like to me (as someone aptly pointed out). But one day I'll get to it.

Gulag is indeed fascinating, and Applebaum did a great job of combining the voices of the prisoners with the data from the archives. I had never realized the extent to which the gulag was intended to be an economic engine for the Soviet Union as well as a prison system.

44. Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo

I found this book, a police procedural mystery/thriller striving for social, political, and religious significance, frustrating. It tells the story of a low-level, seemingly somewhat dim-witted, prosecutor who has been reassigned at his own request from Lima, where he has lived and worked for many years, to the highland Peruvian town of Ayachuco, where he was born, where he continues to talk to his long-dead mother, and where he is given the case of a particularly brutal murder. Could the Shining Path/Sendero Luminoso have returned just in time for the spectacular Holy Week celebration that brings thousands of tourists from the more sophisticated, whiter coastal regions to this largely indigenous area, bringing in money for the local business owners? Then he finds the police and military are determined to show that Sendero Luminoso is no more, despite evidence to the contrary. They have certainly killed many people; could they be behind this too? The prosecutor, initially interested only in the correct way to file reports, becomes surprisingly more determined to figure out what is really going on, as the murders and the danger mount. Unfortunately, I didn't find his efforts or the mystery that engaging, and the social/political/religious angles, and the historical significance of Ayachuco, which would have been more interesting, seemed (to me, anyway) tacked on and not fully integrated into the novel.

But, perhaps I didn't warm to it because I had read here on LT that the novel treads similar ground to Vargas Llosa's Death in the Andes. Well, yes and no. Both involve a character from the coastal/more sophisticated regions of Peru (a low-level police/military officer in one, a low-level prosecutor in the other) who encounters the local highlands population and mysterious goings-on, possibly related to the Shining Path. But there the comparison ends. Roncagliolo's efforts are simply no match for he complexity, imagination, fun, creepiness, and great writing of Vargas Llosa.

Roncagliolo's efforts are simply no match for he complexity, imagination, fun, creepiness, and great writing of Vargas Llosa.

I agree completely. And my comment about it being similar to Death in the Andes should have been limited to what you had mentioned above. I'm really surprised and very disappointed that it won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize over Visitation and other worthy finalists.

I finished Gulag today and thought it was amazingly informative, interesting, and well-researched. Thank you for recommending it!

#8, 9 Barbara Comyns is a Virago author. If you two hang around with any of the collectors of those editions, (*nod, nod, wink, wink) you might get lucky with a duplicate one day.

Lisa, you read that so fast!!! I spent weeks on it. Glad you appreciated it as much as I did.

Linda, I can't imagine who those collectors might be (nod, nod, wink, wink), but I'm sure they are most kind and generous. Have to find some of those Comyns books I haven't read, though -- in fact, I am just about to order The Juniper Tree, which is the only other one Amazon has.

Sisters by a River and The Skin Chairs at abebooks.com. (Yes, I am an enabler, I know.)

I was going to write that you are something much worse than that, Linda, but you are much too nice a person for me to to do that. Just went to abe and ordered!

RIP Patrick Leigh Fermor, author, among other works, of the fascinating stories of his walk across Europe just before World War II, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, two of my all-time favorite books. Now, alas, we will never hear the tale of the final leg of that journey which took him all the way to what was then Constantinople. Far more than travel writing, these books are unsurpassed in their breadth and depth from history to art to natural history to unforgettable characters to romance to a picture of a world about to be forever changed. He also was quite the war hero, capturing a German general in Greece and reciting Latin poetry with him.

ETA Just learned on Suzanne/chatterbox's thread that Leigh Fermor was making final changes to the manuscript of that final volume, so we will be able to read it. As she put it, "a very large cloud does have a silver lining."

#28 Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese has long been a favourite of mine - yes RIP Patrick Lee Fermor.

#28, Well, Rebecca, you've done it again---added a previously unknown author to my Must Read list.

45. Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories: Selected by the Author by Arthur Conan Doyle

I have long treasured my 1938 edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, which belonged to my grandfather and which I devoured well over 40 years ago as a child recovering from the measles. However, its tome-like bulk and aging thin pages have deterred me from rereading it. So how could I pass up this collection, originally selected by the author for a 1927 issue of the Strand Magazine as his twelve favorites?

Of course I was happy that the story I remember most vividly, "The Speckled Band," was number one in the list, followed by one I remember almost as well, "The Red-Headed League," and then by others, including the famous story in which Conan Doyle tried to get rid of Sherlock Holmes, as well as the one in he wrote when popular protest encouraged him to bring Holmes back. Some came back to me as I read them and there were a few that I had completely forgotten. But the happiest surprise was that I enjoyed these stories just as much as I did when I first read them, perhaps more because I could appreciate the writing, characterization, and portrait of a time gone by as much as the plots and detective work. A fun read.

46. The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov

This is a remarkable book, difficult to read and difficult to write about. In it, Platonov tries to recreate the world of the Soviet Union during the period of forced collectivization and the terror famine, not by describing it but by thrusting the reader into the midst of the chaos, unreality, and horror. A metaphorical fable, full of allusions to and direct quotes from both Stalinist proclamations and Orthodox liturgy (none of which I would have recognized without the translator's notes), it tells the tale of the building of a huge pit designed to support a home for the world's proletariat, a pit which keeps getting bigger and bigger with no building built, as well as a collectivized village from which the "kulaks" ("rich" peasants) are being "liquidated" and in which a bear is the hardest worker. Several characters come and go, including the apparent protagonist (although he disappears for part of the book) Voschev, who comes upon the pit after being fired from his job for thinking too much. Death is as normal as life in this novel; images of coffins abound, and many characters contemplate or even plan for their deaths, tired of and bored with living. At the same time, Voschev for one continues to search for truth and to value the meaning of individual lives.

The translator, in his helpful afterword, describes the book as being the one in which Platonov "did the most violence to language," and it is certainly true that his word choice is often startling and even confusing. I find myself thinking about this book now that I've finished it and trying to understand it, but if I hadn't earlier read and enjoyed the author's Soul and Other Stories, and known that this novel is considered his masterpiece, I probably would not have continued to read it, because the almost randomness of what happens makes it hard to figure out what is going on.

A very nice and useful review of The Foundation Pit, Rebecca. I'll remember your comments when I do get to it.

My local Borders is now out of Patrick Leigh Fermor's NYRB books, so I'll look for them in SF next week, or NYC next month.

You can always order directly from NYRB online. Sometimes they offer discounts, although probably not now when there's probably a run on PLF.

47. A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

"Uhuru" means "freedom" in Swahili and, as this book starts, Uhuru, Kenya's day of independence from British colonial rule, is four days away. In a village in the Kenyan highlands, and in a neighboring small town, people prepare for the great day while several characters reflect on and converse about their experiences during the Emergency, the struggle for freedom that the British savagely attempted to put down and called the Mau Mau uprising. This is a novel about the aftermath of war and colonial rule.

Ngũgĩ explores the choices people make in times of conflict and, above all, betrayal -- personal, political, romantic, sexual. He is a wonderful story-teller, creating vivid, troubled characters, dramatizing the brutality and horror of the Emergency (imprisonment, torture, murder, destruction of villages) as well as the nature of life in a small village, and bringing excitement and suspense to the novel. This is all done so well that the small amount of history review and politics didn't bother me. It is an early work of Ngũgĩ's, but much more complex and interesting than his earlier The River Between.

A Grain of Wheat sounds interesting, and I added it to my list. I just read Partitions by Amit Majmudar, which is about the days after the end of British colonial rule in India. It too does not get into history, politics, or religion, but focuses on human relationships during a violent time of political change over. You might look for it. I received it as an ER book, and it is due to be released June 21.

Thanks, Lisa. Partitions does sound interesting. Actually, A Grain of Wheat definitely involves history, politics, and religion, but they are for the most part well integrated into the novel itself. This isn't my favorite Ngũgĩ (Wizard of the Crow is, probably followed by Petals of Blood), but it is well worth reading.

I read A Grain of Wheat at university, and I kind of preferred it to Wizard of the Crow, because the writing seemed tighter to me. Not that I hated Wizard: it just seemed a little bloated by page 700.

#31, have you seen the recent BBC series Sherlock? It's not a direct dramatisation of the stories but an imagining of what it might be like if Holmes and Watson were alive, and investigating, in modern London. So, for example, Watson is recently back from being an army doctor not in India, but Afghanistan (and Holmes works this out from his first sight of him); and the crimes and detection are contemporary. I really enjoyed it, and even my mum (who loathes any messing around with the classics) raved about it.

48. Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell

A deeply unsettling, thrilling, poetic, and inspiring novel, Once upon a River tells the story of teenaged Margo Crane, after her father is shot dead trying to protect her (after she shot at her uncle who a year earlier had lured her into a shed and had not completely unwilling sex with her) and she sets off up Michigan's Stark River, in her boat The River Rose, in search of the mother who abandoned her and her own identity. Margo is a wonderful character, confident and mostly fearless, an amazing shot, a lover of the river and the natural world, an almost feral child (the book is dedicated "to all the children raised by wolves"), a young woman comfortable with her own sexuality, and a deeply wounded person who tries hard to understand herself. Through the course of the novel, she encounters people who are thinking only of themselves, people trying to take advantage of her (although she can give as good as she gets, no victim she), and eventually people who are able to help her -- once she is able to allow herself to let them.

Margo is, of course, mourning her father (as well as her grandfather, who taught her much of the river and outdoor lore and who left her his boat), puzzling over her mother's abandonment, estranged from the extended family she grew up with, and fearful of being forced either into foster care or to live with her aunt and uncle. At the same time, she is faced with the very real challenge of survival: emotional and psychological as well as physical. Her search for her own identity is mirrored by the different names different people call her: Margaret, Margaret Louise, Maggie, River Princess, and so on. The descriptions of the river, of shooting, of animals and their behavior, and of skinning dead animals are compelling. Campbell is a wonderful writer, the novel is stunning, and I could barely put it down.

I discovered Campbell last year after Lois/avaland recommended her short story collection, American Salvage, and went on to read her two earlier works as well. It always fun to see a writer getting better and better.

>39 wandering_star:: A small correction: Watson was also a soldier in Afghanistan in the original, which strikes me as quite an example of "the more things change..."

And I second the recommendation. I was dubious about how well a modern-day version of Holmes would work, but the answer turns out to be surprisingly well.

#39, 41 Thanks for the recommendation, wandering_star and for the correction, bragan, a correction which I was going to make myself. I've just added the series to my Netflix queue. And, along the lines of "the more things change . . ," reading Tolstoy's Hadji Murat made me realize that the Russians' problems with the Chechens go way back..

41, 42, I didn't know that - it's a long time since I have read the stories. How interesting!

I wouldn't have remembered it either (from 40 plus years ago) -- I have the advantage of having read this collection within the past week!

Very intrigued by the possible "river and outdoor lore" in Once Upon a River. I recently purchased American Salvage, hopefully I'll actually read it some time soon-ish.

Hope you enjoy Bonnie Jo Campbell as much as I do. American Salvage was very impressive.

Well, I've been a long time getting back here!
>9 rebeccanyc:, 24, 25 (I was put on to Dorothy by Martin @ Dalkey Archive. He said, "my wife is starting a publishing project...") Anywoo, thanks for the recommendation.

I think I'm going to have to get the Campbell, but zeus knows when I'll get to it.... it sounds irresistible.

#40, 45, 46

Adding to my review of Once upon a River, for other Campbell fans, some parts of the novel rang a bell, and I went back to American Salvage and Women and Other Animals, her earlier story collection, and saw that some parts of Once upon a River are adapted from stories in those two books (although they have different protagonists and differ in other ways).

Since I have time on my hands (translation: I am avoiding chores I need to do), and it is almost half-way through the year, I thought I'd take a look at the books I've read so far. Including the 48 I've finished and the two I'm actively reading and may finish before the end of the month, here's what it looks like.

5, or 10% were nonfiction, a low percentage for me due to my taking a long time to read Gulag.

20, or 40% were by women.

17, or 34%, were global fiction (defined as not from the US, UK, Canada, or Australia): of these, 3 were by Africans, 2 by Asians, 3 by South Americans, 4 by Russians, and 5 by other Europeans.

29, or 58% were by writers I'd never read before (for a total of 21 new authors, since this includes multiple books by several authors, not just the first one I read): of these, 10 were inspired by LT and 7 have inspired me to seek out additional works by the same authors.

So, what does this tell me? Probably not a lot, since I tend to read opportunistically, but interestingly this is not far different from the breakdown of my books for all of last year.

I am very grateful to LT for helping me find new authors to read and giving me a place to talk about them!

49. Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole

Like the Geniza, the crowded storeroom for discarded documents written in Hebrew characters (although in many languages) in the attic of an old Cairo synagogue, this wonderful book is filled with a multiplicity of discoveries, from insights into the medieval development of the Jewish religion, including a variety of sects, to poetry from the cultural flowering in Muslim-ruled Spain, to business transactions, to personal letters; and, like the palimpsests that were found in the Geniza, it reveals its treasures on two levels, that of the scholars who found, lived with, and deciphered the finds from the Geniza and that of the Jews of old Cairo, or Fustat, whose daily activities sprang to life from these old pages.

In the middle ages, Cairo/Fustat was at the center of the Jewish world, with travelers, students and scholars, traders, poets and others passing through from Spain in the west to Jerusalem and even India in the west. As a result, their writings ended up in the Geniza where they sat for centuries until the late 1800s when two British women showed a document, written in Hebrew, that they had bought in Cairo, to Cambridge scholar Solomon Schecter. While some other material from the Geniza had filtered out earlier, Dr. Schecter immediately and dramatically realized its value and traveled to Cairo where he convinced the rabbi in charge of the old synagogue to let him take whatever he wanted. Since then, the study of these documents has kept scholars happily busy, investigating what seems to be an inexhaustible treasure trove of information on religion, history, poetry, the relationships between Jews and Muslims, cultural life, daily life, personal relationships and dramas, language, and much much more, from the 10th through the 13th centuries, a time when the vast majority of Jews lived largely peaceably in what was largely a Muslim world. In their preoccupations with family and business, love and death, celebrations and study, they seem a lot like us.

Fascinating as these medieval Jews are, the true heroes of this book are the scholars, and Hoffman and Cole characterize each of them and their work so brilliantly and readably that they too spring to life from the pages of this book. Buried as they were in the dusty and often smelly documents, obsessed with their research, demanding of their students, uncaring about their own health, they are the ones who figured out the connections between one scrap of paper and another, and between all this information and the larger threads of history and culture and religion.

Not only did I learn a lot about the life of Jews in the medieval middle east, but I also came away with a new appreciation of scholarship. The work of understanding the treasures of the Cairo Geniza continues to this day.

Fascinating review of what sounds like a fascinating book. I visited Cairo in 2006, so this sounds like something that I would really be interested in. I'm also immensely intrigued by anything to do with medieval history.

I have heard about this book before; your review puts it on the wishlist. Thanks!

Have you read Sisters of Sinai? It's the true story of two sisters who travel to the Middle East to search for some important early Christian writings and spend their lifetimes becoming experts in their field, despite institutions like Oxford not allowing female students. I thought it a fascinating look at two women who challenge Victorian mores and the rivalries and challenges that accompany scholarship in the field of religious archaeology.

Rebecca, excellent review of Sacred Trash another one on my to buy list. Club read 2011 is getting expensive tonight.

Just to agree that Sacred Trash sounds like my kind of book. Have you read In An Antique Land by Amitav Ghosh? It's a memoir (and my favourite book of his) but there is also a thread about documents which were found in a similar - or perhaps the same - Geniza.

Thank you all for stopping by. Sacred Trash is not only fascinating but also extremely well written. Sisters of Sinai sounds intriguing, and so does the Ghosh, although I have to confess I am probably the only person on LT who didn't like Sea of Poppies, the only book by him I have read

I haven't read Sea Of Poppies but I have read most of his other fiction, and I think his books are always interesting but his characters are poorly drawn, especially the women. (That's why the memoir is my favourite). However, I said that once before on LT and got a ... somewhat frosty reception!

Oops! It wasn't Sea of Poppies that I read; it was The Hungry Tide. So much for trying to post on LT from my iphone. I enjoyed the sense of place Ghosh created but I felt it was way too didactic and that the plot and characters were designed to serve the political and environmental points he wanted to make.

>48 rebeccanyc: funny you should say that, because based on your review, I thought the story reminded me a bit of American Salvage and that's why I went for it. It's in the great pile. As you know, I loved American Salvage. Sometimes we do really click on the same book.

eta: it reminded me of the story of the young girl who was always deer hunting (was that it?) and she confronted her uncle at a big family gathering... you know the one, I think (I don't want to give to much away)

Yes, that's the one, Lois. Good memory! And not only do I know you loved American Salvage, I know you were the one who recommended it to me and thereby got me started reading everything by Bonnie Jo Campbell. I'm pleased to see that Once upon a River is showing up in every bookstore I visit; glad to see she's getting recognition and publisher support.

You're pressing all my buttons with Sacred Trash - Cairo, Judaism, Muslim Spain...

I second the recommendation of In an Antique Land - fascinating book.

Glad to get another recommendation of In an Antique Land since I ordered it yesterday!

50. The Prospector by J.M.G. Le Clézio

For the most part I found this book riveting and hauntingly beautiful, but at times I just wanted to shake the narrator and tell him to stop mooning around. The novel starts with the narrator, Alexis L'Etang, reflecting on his idyllic childhood, particularly in the year 1892 when he was 8, on the island of Mauritius. With his mother and sister, he reads and becomes engrossed in mythic tales; with his father he learns about the stars and the Unknown Corsair, who left clues to a treasure buried on a nearby island; with his childhood friend, Denis, from a family of freed slaves, he explores the amazingly beautiful natural wonders of the island and goes out on a boat for the first time. Of course, such a paradise cannot last, and Alexis spends the remainder of the book trying to recapture it, first by compulsively continuing his father's obsession with finding the treasure of the Unknown Corsair and then through his own obsession with Ouma, a beautiful and mysterious member of an isolated indigenous group. The spell is broken when Alexis serves in the first world war, a world utterly different from Mauritius in every respect, but of course he returns.

But the book is not really about this plot. It is really a paean to the natural world -- unspoiled landscapes, the stars, birds and plants, weather, and above all the sea -- and an exploration of how we search for meaning and purpose. Le Clézio is a wonderful writer who drew me in with his language and the images of this almost mythic tropical world; the section depicting the power of a hurricane is dramatic, and the many portraits of the sea and its power over humans are compelling. The book also examines, mostly subtly, the impact of colonialism and racism.

For most of the book, I was completely drawn in to Alexis's world and his quest (and I must agree with the other LT reviewer who said that the English title is not a good reflection of what Alexis is doing, that he is much more a searcher as in the French title than a prospector as in the English). But the World War I section, the ambiguous character of Ouma (who at times seems real and at times doesn't), and the novel's conclusion all left me puzzled as to how they fit with the rest of the book. In the end, the novel made me think, and that's good.

>59 rebeccanyc: Oh, yes, I can remember "some" of quite a few of the stories. Snatches, really.

Catching up here to read about Bonnie Jo Campbell* and in the process got interested in Travels in Siberia and Sacred Trash. Thank you for such interesting reviews!

* >48 rebeccanyc:, 58
the emergence of similar characters/stories in Campbell's different works reminds me of Jo Ann Beard's essays and novel. Like you with Campbell, I loved reading more, but can imagine an opposite experience with lesser writers.

Nice review of The Prospector, Rebecca. As you know I'm reading it this weekend, so I'll be interested to see how well I like it.

51. The Juniper Tree by Barbara Comyns

I could hardly put down this subtly unsettling novel, but it is difficult to review it without giving away some of the secrets and surprises that it slowly reveals. Bella Winter, an unwed mother with an initially disfiguring facial scar, a miserable childhood, and a terrible relationship with her mother, encounters a beautiful woman who cuts her finger peeling an apple, letting her blood fall on the snow, when she goes to look for a job. Soon her luck begins to change: she enjoys her work running a second-rate antique store and she and her daughter get drawn into the lives of the beautiful woman and her husband who live in a lovely home with grounds that include the titular juniper tree. As Bella's life starts to improve, the reader can't help feeling that something bad is going to happen, and even that Bella may not be a completely reliable narrator. And of course, something bad does happen, and then Bella's life changes in way that the reader knows will come to no good end, and then something even worse happens, and then, somehow, Bella's life becomes calmer, as if the spell that had been cast on her is finally broken.

I've loved Barbara Comyns since I read Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead and this book, which was one of her last and was written after a gap of nearly 20 years, is no exception, although it feels a little different from the other works by her that I've read. In it, with all her acute psychological perception, clever depictions of a variety of secondary characters, and spare, intense writing style, Comyns creates what is really a fairy tale while examining the life and choices of one woman.

52. In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa
53. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa

I'm a big fan of Mario Vargas Llosa but I found that I admired these two books, which are unlike any of his others that I've read, more than I liked them. The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto is a sequel to In Praise of the Stepmother, written nearly 10 years later, and I liked it better.

In Praise of the Stepmother begins the story of Don Rigoberto, a middle-aged and not very attractive man, his beautiful younger second wife Lucrecia, and his devilishly angelic son Alfonso, known as Fonchito. An insurance executive by day, Don Rigoberto is an art connoisseur and erotic explorer by night, as well as man obsessively devoted to the care of his own body, care described, in some cases, in more detail than I enjoyed. The story revolves around the seduction of Lucrecia by Fonchito, and its aftermath, interwoven with Rigoberto's and Lucrecia's erotic exploits which are modeled after paintings that are actually printed in the book. Through this story, shocking in some respects, Vargas Llosa explores the ideas of imagination and creativity, and their link to the erotic.

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, which takes place after Rigoberto and Lucrecia have separated, is more complex, interweaving Rigoberto's erotic fantasies with the writings in his notebooks -- comments on art, theater, and music, as well as unsent letters that expound on his belief that individual creativity, even what we would call fetishism, is vastly superior to mass, popular culture -- and with a plot in which Fonchito, obsessed with the art and life of Egon Schiele, now schemes to bring Lucrecia and Rigoberto back together. This book too explores the many facets of creativity, individualism, imagination, and mystery. I was impressed, as always, by Vargas Llosa's writing, but I wish I enjoyed it more.

I think I'll pass on these, but I would like to try a MVL book, as *head hanging in shame*, I have never read any. Which of his books would you recommend as a first?

Lisa, my very favorite is The War of the End of the World, but it is both a tome and typical of the MVL style of writing from multiple points of view often within the same paragraph so it takes some getting used to. Conversation in the Cathedral, which many consider his masterpiece, is similar in size and complexity. Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service is laugh-out-loud funny, and Death in the Andes is shorter and quite intriguing. I also enjoyed The Green House, The Storyteller, and to a lesser extent The Feast of the Goat. I've reviewed all of these on their work pages, and you can also go the Author Theme Reads group which is reading MVL as its year-long author this year, giving me an excuse to read more of him.

>69 rebeccanyc: - I'm surprised you didn't mention Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. I think it is his most approachable novel, warm and funny, but I also recognise that it may be his most atypical one. It alternates between the lives of the characters and the scripts. (In the Hollywood film adaptation Keanu Reeves plays the character based on MVL).

Thanks for the wealth of suggestions, Rebecca. The War of the End of the World was already on my list, but I just requested Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service from the library. Although it may not be MVL's best work, I'm trying to work more humorous books into my reading.

Isn't there a way to favorite a post? I would like to save #69, but can't figure out how to do it. Hmmm

Click on more at the bottom of the message, then on Add to favorites.

Robert

Thank you! I thought it had something to do with clicking on the post number. Got it now.

It used to have to do with the number. Then talk wasn't good enough. So they fixed it. This was among the things fixed.

Robert

#70, turnerd I still haven't read Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, so alas I have no opinion. (Sorry I originally addressed this to Lisa; I obviously wasn't reading carefully!)

54. Sisters by a River by Barbara Comyns

The first book by Barbara Comyns, this is largely autobiographical, written for her children, and written in the voice of a child, complete with spelling errors and a child's perspective (although with some references to teenage years and later). The spelling errors, which the introduction to my edition says were preserved and even amplified by the publisher, take some getting used to, but after a while I stopped noticing them (well, I noticed them but I accepted them).

Comyns pulls us into the world of the narrator: six sisters, a neglectful and somewhat extravagant mother who becomes deaf, an angry grandmother, a drunk and worried father, lots of animals, some carefree times but more times when she gets in a boat and paddles away or hides in the "engin room" where grown-ups can't/don't go; and above all the River Avon. Her prose is almost hypnotic; horrifying and disturbing events are described in the same tone as fun and joyous ones; and despite the beauty of the river and the green light under the ash tree, the reader can't help but feel a sense of impending doom. Indeed, the narrator refers occasionally to her father's death, so at the same time that she tells the story from the child's perspective, she is also making it clear that she is no longer a child. The novel is structured as vignettes that build to become a whole story. All in all, it is a remarkable achievement.

Having read other works by Comyns, I particularly enjoyed seeing where some of the ideas and images in her other novels come from, especially, for example, in my favorite, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead.

I tried to buy Who Was Changed at the Indie bookstore where I shop, but they didn't have it, so I have finally placed a hold on it at the library. After all I've heard about it, I am quite excited to finally get my hands on a copy!

I'll eventually get to my Comyns books. They are by the bed (where they've been for a month or more), but I will get to them (with you and China Mieville recommending them now...)

Today is my fifth LT anniversary! It is hard for me to believe that five years have gone by, five years that have been enriched by "meeting" many of you and learning about books and authors I never would have read otherwise. Thank you, Lois/avaland, for inviting me to the first Club Read, and to all the rest of you, too numerous for me to mention individually, for sharing your reading and thoughts with me. Here's to the next five years!

de-lurking to wish you a happy thingaversary, Rebecca! I wonder if you could recall how you first came to join LT. I'm also dying to know how you're liking We, the Drowned. -- Jenny

Congratulations! Are you planning to purchase the customary book-a-year in celebration? If so, any thoughts on what you will get?

Happy LT anniversary, Rebecca! I'm also curious to see if you're planning to buy any books to celebrate the day.

>81 labfs39: So, that's five books she has to buy? Any excuse...

Thanks, Lisa, Darryl, and Lois. I have indeed just treated myself to five new books. Not sure when I'll get around to reading them, though, since I have so many other books on the TBR!

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum
News from the World by Paula Fox
When the World Spoke French by Marc Fumaroli
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky
The Antichrist by Joseph Roth

I have The Poisoner's Handbook very near the top of my TBR stack, Rebecca. (Note your touchstone is not Blum's but another with the same title.) Maybe when I get finished with The Knife Man I'll move right on to that one, leaping over a century or so of forensic history.

That's weird, Linda. I thought I fixed that touchstone when I first posted, but I have now. I'm reading Low Life, Luc Sante's book about late 19th and early 20th century New York now, so this should be a nice follow up.

I have that one waiting for me, too!

Happy Thingamaversary!

Happy LT anniversary! (A little late, but still...)

The Poisoner's Handbook sounds like a great read. I'll look forward to your review when you get around to reading it.

55. We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

Oh, how this book went on and on and on . . . a frustrating mixture of fascinating, exciting adventure and boring looks at small town life, interesting portrayals of the world and unrealistic, overly analyzed characters, insight into life as a sailor and unbelievably coincidental plot elements.

Part of the problem stems from Jensen's goal of telling the story of a town, Marstal, a small island that produced many of Denmark's sailors and ships, over the course of a century from the 1840s through the end of the second world war, through the stories of some its residents, while at the same time recreating the world of sail and its conversion to the world of steam. It is an ambitious idea, but it doesn't quite work. The most engaging moments are the tales of seafaring -- to Australia, Tasmania, Samoa on the one hand and to Newfoundland and Greenland on the other -- and the depiction of the work of sailors, life aboard ship, and the roles of the captain, first mate, and other ranks. These parts were compelling and un-put-downable.

These tales over the century are linked through a few characters, and by Jensen's use of the first person plural, "we," to create a kind of Greek chorus of the townspeople, observing and commenting on the characters and their lives in Marstal. This, and a lot of what happens in the town itself, is, for me, where the book breaks down. The beginning of the novel, which deals at length with a sadistic schoolteacher, seemed mostly pointless; the discovery of a human skull in the waters around the island seemed unnecessarily melodramatic (as does the role of a shrunken head earlier in the story); and the difficult-to-believe but endlessly explained psychology of one of the women in town and her actions a distraction. All of these (and more) detracted from the rest of the book for me, as did the author's attempts at character analysis in general, the feeling that he was trying to create a plot that could encompass all the interesting stories he found out about late 19th and early 20th century shipping and sailing, and his frequent and obvious foreshadowing. He can hit you over the head making his points.

I don't mean to completely knock this book, because I did read the whole thing and I found parts of it, especially the parts about the sea, truly compelling. I just wish the author had had a good tough editor.

Excellent review of We, the Drowned, Rebecca. I did have my eye on this one, but I'll pass on it after reading your thoughts about it.

56. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante

This is a lively, informative, and fun look at the underside of downtown New York City from approximately 1840 to 1920, chock full of gangs, corrupt politicians and policemen, bars, drugs, prostitutes, theaters of varying degrees of nonrespectablility, graft, crime, cons, would-be reformers, and more. Sante combines detailed research, including many quotes from writers and songs of the period, with compassion for the lack of choices facing poor people and a feeling for the continuity between then and now. Both the people and the gangs had fabulous nicknames: one of my favorites was the Dead Rabbits gang, "dead" being slang for "best" and "rabbit' for "tough guy." On the other hand, we continue to use a lot of the slang that originated then: Sante cites blarney, kicking the bucket, pal, and swag, among others.

I find New York City history endlessly fascinating, and one of the things that most intrigued me about this book was that the author and I both lived on the old lower east side (renamed by the real estate business as the East Village and Alphabet City and now hopelessly gentrified, largely by the expansion of NYU) in the late 70s and the 80s, a time when change was beginning there. He explains that living there, among the old tenements, got him interested in the less well known history of the area.

Sante doesn't dwell of the "plus ça change" aspects of the stories he tells, and in fact he is so immersed in the details of the period they aren't obvious, and yet . . . we still have poor people, criminals, corruption, theater, bars, drugs, prostitutes, gangs and would-be reformers. The form may change, technology may intervene, but human nature and social realities are still with us.

57. Manhattan Noir edited by Lawrence Block

A nice light antidote to the heat, this collection contains stories, mostly but not exclusively crime stories, connected to different neighborhoods of Manhattan -- although, to my way of thinking, most didn't capture the feel of the neighborhood but just took place there. As with any collection, I liked some stories better than others, but some were really gripping.

58. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

Over the years, I've read many books about war, both fiction and nonfiction, and some of them remain among my favorite books: War and Peace, Life and Fate, The Guns of August, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example. But this is the first book I've read that made me feel I was trudging along with the soldier on the ground (or, in this case, the Marine), in his muddy boots, with feet eaten up by jungle rot, without enough food or water, on and on through the buffalo grass, up the ridges, down into the valleys, with fear if not downright terror in every step.

But the book is so much more than a vivid description of the horrific reality of jungle warfare. Despite the dozens of characters, Marlantes brings several key ones to life, fears, flaws, nobility, and all, and allows them to develop and grow as the novel proceeds. He dramatically illustrates the lunacy of ordering missions that will look better to the powers-that-be in Washington and to the media, rather than ones that might achieve a military objective (whatever that might be in the context of the Vietnam war), including the variety of ways in which higher-up officers in the field, many with experience in Korea or even World War II, react to these pressures. He portrays the proud heritage of the Marine Corps, and how it does or doesn't play out in the mud and jungle of Vietnam. He doesn't shy away from showing the racial and class divides that were as prevalent in the armed forces as they were back at home, or the practice of fragging (killing officers). Perhaps most compellingly, he shows men fearing death, watching their friends die, and wondering about what it means to kill. This is a very rich, complex novel.

Thanks to Lisa/labsf39, I learned that Marlantes was using the Parzifal myth to structure the novel. I read up on Parzifal and that definitely helped me understand some of the plot developments, as well as the theme of the growth of the warrior into manhood. I think I would have enjoyed reading the book almost as much without knowing this, but it definitely added to my appreciation.

Very nice review, Rebecca, although you didn't need to mention me. I think you are right in that I read the book without knowing anything about the Parzival myth and enjoyed it very much. Knowing about the myth just added another layer of appreciation and explained the sword stuff.

>94 rebeccanyc: Nice review, Rebecca. The book sounds intriguing!

Excellent review

Thank you, Lisa, Lois, and Dan, and I was glad to thank you in the review, Lisa; you added to my appreciation of the book.

I bought this book a few months ago, and so to my dismay that James Patterson has a blurb on the inside page recommending it. Your review has assuaged my fears that I had bought a dud. Thank you!

59. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum

A lively and informative book about the origins of forensic medicine in New York City in the early years of the 20th century, The Poisoner's Handbook interweaves the story of two crusading and pioneering men, the city's first chief medical examiner Charles Norris and his deputy, toxicologist Alexander Gettler, with stories of classic murders by poison and information about the chemistry of a variety of poisons, including chloroform, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide and more. Blum is an award-winning science journalist, and she skillfully juggles these elements against a backdrop of what was happening in the larger world, most prominently Prohibition which dramatically increased the number of deaths from alcohol, both standard alcohol when it could be obtained and the plethora of alcohols contaminated, accidentally or deliberately, with other substances.

Blum shows how what we now take for granted as forensic medicine came into being as the science of chemistry developed and as Norris and Gettler steadfastly learned about different poisons and established systems and standards for integrating scientific information into trials. In the chapter on radium, and in various other places, she touches on the failure of government to regulate the chemicals of the era, despite evidence that they were killing workers and consumers. In that respect, we still have far to go. Although we no longer find arsenic, radium, and other such poisons in our cosmetics or over-the-counter medicines, do we really know what today's chemicals are doing to us?

I am in a bit of a book funk: despite having a bunch of serious and/or long books that I'm eager to read on my TBR, I can't seem to bring myself to read them. So I'm trying the method of reading shorter and/or lighter books to see if I can get myself into reading the books I planned to read over the summer when I had time for long books.

Oh, the famous book-funk. I guess most of us get hit by it sooner or later. The good thing is, it always goes away. but the books will still be there :-)
Btw, The Poisoner's Handbook looks fascinating, but it's a strange book-title to ask for in a book-shop, I guess...

Thanks, Monica.

I wonder how much of our book funks (and I've had many) are caused when we don't want to read the books we think we should read, rather than what we want to read. I think that is what happens with kids sometimes. There are parents who offer their children only certain types of books, and then wonder why their kids don't like to read. I even talked to a parent recently who doesn't allow her child to reread a book. How sad!

Anyway, I hope your funk passes soon.

# 104 - Maybe. It's sad that a child cannot (re-)read the books he or she wants. I used to read some books over and over again and enjoyed it every time.
My "cure" seems to be to read some feel-good-book that'll make me want to scream eventually and long for the good stuff. It's like an antidote. I guess one can only take in as many serious books until the funk takes over...

A case of the cure being worse than the illness. :-)

Interesting idea, Lisa. That's true for one book I planned to read this summer, but unless I'm deluding myself I really do want to read the books I think I want to read, but I seem to be going for the lighter stuff. And how sad to not let kids reread favorite books; I think I might try rereading one of the books I like to reread from time to time like Cold Comfort Farm, The Straight and Narrow Path, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle to see if that gets me back in a reading mood.

Hi Rebecca just noticed your thread and popped on to say hello. Matterhorn is near the top of my TBR list and your lucid and informative review will certainly serve to promote it further. I also admit to getting stuck with Carsten Jensen which I have put on hold for a while. Noticed from your 2010 and 2011 lists that we do have a lot of reading matter in common and it will be interesting following you progress!

#107 Oh, I didn't mean that they were books we never want to read. I was thinking of myself. When I plan to read x, y, and z, I often find myself in a funk after x, because I really want to be reading q at the moment! I'm not very successful at planning my reading because of this. Thank goodness I am usually able to find a book that suits the mood I'm in at the moment, and if I can't, I'll try rereading an old standby (as Monica) suggests, or even a YA book or fantasy.

Off to check out the books you like to reread. They must be good!

I know how you feel actually. I was reading x, y and z and having a great time with it and wanted to keep going on that streak but felt I HAD to read something else which totally killed my reading streak as it put me on an entirely different branch. (Or alphabet to continue the metaphor.) Now I'm in a funk reading nothing at all! How exasperating!

#109 I'm not very successful at planning my reading because of this.

I don't even try to plan my reading*, but I usually have a general idea of which books I want to read in the near future, and I also have general ideas of types of books I want to be reading (i.e, authors I want to read more of, or general themes or streaks). Of course, this is often upset by my acquiring a new book I want to read right away! I think part of my problem is that I usually enjoy reading a couple of serious tomes over the summer because I have more time to read but this year I don't seem to be able to concentrate on anything that long or attention-demanding. I guess I'll have to give in and read comparative fluff, or at least shorter books.

I did finish a short but fun book that was recommended to me here on LT, The Moldavian Pimp, and will post a review of it soon, and am starting another Barbara Comyns, which should be a fail-safe read. (It was during a previous book funk that I read her Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, which started me seeking out all her books.)

Sorry to hear you're reading nothing at all, lilisin!

*ETA I think I am somewhat in awe of people who can/do plan their reading, but at least I know myself well enough to know that isn't for me!

#108, Thanks for stopping by, Paul. It's nice to know someone else found We, the Drowned kind of a slog! Looking forward to following your reading too -- do you have a reading thread somewhere?

>111 rebeccanyc: That's pretty much how I read too. I do usually have a couple of books going at once, so I move between them which helps avoid funk. My book funks usually have to do with stress or distraction, two things which affect how much time I might have to read or my concentration (or both). Generally, I just pick up a crime novel if I have one, or try to do read differently in some way for a while; sometimes I just rifle through magazines.

btw, rebecca, I finished the Gurnah last night. I'll eventually get around to write on it, but essentially it is a family story primarily set in the UK but with flashbacks to Zanzibar. It's centered around identity and inheritance (perhaps, 'knowing where you come from'). It's another piece of great storytelling, though perhaps not as good as his By the Sea.

#111 Of course, I immediately had to check out a book with a title as provacative as The Moldavian Pimp. After reading SqueakyChu's review, I had to check out the historical background. My goodness. Who knew? Onto the list it goes.

I know. That's the way I felt too when someone recommended it to me after I read Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas last year (tried searching my old threads, but couldn't find who recommended it, but it wasn't SqueakyChu). I will probably post a review later today or at the latest tomorrow.

I'm a sucker for good titles, but I also have a mental category of books whose titles are the best things about them, including A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle and Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean.

Rebecca, for what it's worth, I hit some kind of reading funk in March and turned to graphic novels, and ended the funk. They require less focus, but they also give your mind different things to think about, instead of just the words. And, they are just different which gave me a chance to reassess what I was reading in a different kind of light.

60. The Moldavian Pimp by Edgardo Cozarinksy

This delightfully written and yet sobering novella, harking back to the 1920s yet utterly modern, was recommended to me when I read Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas last year, and I am sorry it took me so long to get it and read it. The tales within tales start when a contemporary Argentinian student meets a dying man and acquires a treasure trove of old theater posters. This leads him to a 1920s Yiddish musical entitled "The Moldavian Pimp," and the story morphs to that of the dying man when he was young, a tango musician and possibly a gangster and pimp as well, and the two young women who were his girlfriends/wives, then switches to his son, now middle-aged and living in contemporary Paris, and then back to the student. Through these different tales, all told in beautiful, spare, elliptical prose, as well as the different times and different people, a picture of a period of Argentinian Jewish history, little known and considered shameful by the Argentinian Jewish community, comes alive, as full of questions as it is of answers, and connects to questions of prostitution today. It is a meditation, as well, on how we try to understand a history we can never really know.

In fact, there was a large and thriving group of Jewish gangsters, known as Zwi Migdal, which imported thousands of young eastern European Jewish girls to Argentina to work in brothels, many if not most under false pretenses. Who knew?

#112 Rebecca, I suppose that would be encompassed by my group thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/115911#2846933 .

Thanks, Paul. I'll go take a look.

61. The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns

This novel contains many of the ingredients I've come to recognize as typical of much of Barbara Comyns's work: a rural setting, a large family with lots of children, children left to their own devices, a mother who can't cope, lovely descriptions of nature and animals, demanding and conventional relatives, eccentric characters, weird and unsettling accidents and deaths. And yet, it is different in some ways too: longer, more complex, and more containing more character growth and even happiness. The novel takes its title from a set of chairs in the home of a neighboring general, chairs covered with human skin. The narrator, 10-year-old Frances (but clearly looking back when she is older), is both horrified and fascinated by them, wondering about the people whose skin was used. Although they only appear on a few occasions in the book, they serve as a metaphor throughout. Of course, what's always typical of Comyns's work is her psychological perceptiveness and her eye for character and natural detail. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Not read anything by Barbara Comyns but your review is intruiging and hints of the macabre a bit akin (or should that be askin) to a Roald Dahl tale of the unexpected. I'll look up the writer for sure.

62. Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics edited by Lawrence Block

They're classics for a reason: this collection, unlike the first Manhattan Noir, includes stories (and poems) that were all previously published, rather than commissioned for the anthology. While, as with any collection, I didn't like all the selections, I was impressed by a much higher percentage in this second volume. Some stories were by authors I knew, and knew it would be hard to go wrong with, like Edith Wharton, O. Henry, Langston Hughes, and more, but there were others by authors I was unfamiliar with (although I had heard of some of them) but whose work stunned me, such as amazing stories by Cornell Woolrich and Evan Hunter and others by Irwin Shaw and Donald E. Westlake. As with the earlier volume, the conceit is that each story represents a Manhattan neighborhood and, as with it, in most cases the story is just located in that neighborhood rather than being specific to it in some way. But, all in all, a fun collection.

Did this help with the reading slump?

Thanks, Lisa. It did, but I'm working my way back to the more serious stuff with a Hilary Mantel I've had on the TBR for a long time. It's an easier read than the other books I've been hoping to read; maybe that's what I need now even though usually the summer is when I like to read long serious books because I can concentrate more.

Which Mantel are you reading? I liked Life of Pi but haven't started Beatrice and Virgil yet, although I have it.

I think you're thinking of Yann Martel, who I've never read, not Hilary Mantel. I'm reading A Change of Climate, but I've already read LOTS by her, including favorites like A Place of Greater Safety, Wolf Hall, Fludd, The Giant, O'Brien, Beyond Black, and Vacant Possession.

Whoops! I only got 3 hours of sleep last night, and I'm a bit foggy. Don't mind me.

I don't think I'd even be able to read or type after three hours of sleep, Lisa. Hope you can get more sleep tonight

Two more Hilary Mantels.

63. A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

One of Hilary Mantel's achievements in this stunning novel that is partly about secrets and their repercussions within a family and across time is her ability not only to keep the major secret for more than half the book but also to show how it affects members of the family without their even knowing that there is a secret, much less what it is. The reader is puzzled and disturbed but, like the family members, doesn't know why.

A Change of Climate is the story of the Eldred family. Parents Ralph and Anna, after spending the earliest years of their marriage trying to do good in colonial Africa, return to Norfolk, close to where both grew up; Ralph continues to try to do good, bringing "Sad Cases" and "Good Souls" back to the rambling Red House where he and Anna live with their four children, one born in Africa and three in England. The novel jumps back and forth between the present (around 1980), the time in Africa, and Ralph's childhood, bringing in his sister Emma and various other characters including one daughter's boyfriend and a son's girlfriend. After Emma's married lover dies, and the elder two children return from college to the family home, secrets start to unravel, as the characters confront issues of evil and forgiveness, loss, and the present versus the past. Each character is sharply and perceptively drawn, as are their interactions.

I am a Hilary Mantel fan, and one of the things I like best about her work is that she writes a huge variety of books, not sticking to the tried and true, and inevitably some are better than others. This complex, thought-provoking novel is one of her best.

64. An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel

One of the strongest parts in this somewhat harrowing coming-of-age story is Mantel's continuing ability to highlight and dramatize the indignities of poverty, the constant awareness of poor people of class differences, and the almost complete obliviousness of richer people to them. The narrator, Carmel McBain, comes from a poor Catholic family in the north of England. We see her overbearing mother whose life's ambition is Carmel's success, her difficult friendship with Karina, a neighbor girl whose family is even poorer than hers, their escape through academic achievement first to an elite Catholic school, where they meet Julianne, a girl from a much richer family, and then to London for university where all three girls, now young women, live in the same bleak residence hall. The present of the novel is their first few months in this hall, in the early 1960s, as they confront issues of friendship, religion, boyfriends, sex, the rigors of meager meals in the residence hall and, for Carmel, the challenges of having almost no money beyond that which pays for her tuition and board. The climax is almost melodramatic, shocking, but not completely unexpected. This isn't one of my favorites of Mantel's, but it is well worth reading.

rebecca, I enjoyed your reviews of the Hilary Mantel books. I am also a big fan and think that A change of Climate is one of her best.

Thanks, Barry.

Must get my hands on A Change of Climate; already have An Experiment in Love waiting to be read. Thanks for the excellent helpful reviews, Rebecca.

65. Classic Crimes by William Roughead

William Roughead was a Scottish lawyer who practiced at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. But what really fascinated him was crime, especially murder, and especially the drama of the trials, and he became a connoisseur of Scottish murder trials, attending as many as he could and writing detailed descriptions of them for a series called Notable British Trials, as well as shorter but perhaps more literary versions, aimed at a more general audience, of ones that struck his fancy for one reason or another. This volume collects twelve of those tales, ranging from ones Roughead only read about because they happened before his time to ones he not only attended but in at least one case participated in.

In most of the stories, Roughead briefly describes the people involved in the crime and the crime itself, and its aftermath, and then devotes most of his time to how the case unfolded at the trial. What makes these stories much more than a legal tale is how Roughead tells them: he brings his "characters" to life, with insight into their personalities; he makes wonderful biting remarks that reveal pretension and stupidity; he is content to leave threads untied, as they are in real life but rarely in fictional mysteries; and his point of view is clearly though largely obliquely expressed, especially in the several cases that involve miscarriages of justice. The cases vary widely, and some are inevitably more interesting than others, but I found the book as a whole fascinating for what it revealed about life in earlier times, and how in some ways things never change. In particular, aside from the fact that people still murder for money or to get rid of their husbands or wives, I was fascinated by the way the news media of the day -- dozens and dozens of newspaper reporters, first without and then with photographers -- crowded the trials and relayed the proceedings to large and eager audiences. Sound familiar?

Roughead's writing style takes getting used to. It is old-fashioned, filled with words, and occasionally discursive and, as Luc Sante says in the introduction to the edition I read, Roughead "seldom fails to introduce a barrister without summarizing the now obscure highlights of his illustrious later career," but after a while I got into the rhythm of his prose and rather enjoyed it.

Great review of Classic Crimes, Rebecca. I've owned it for awhile, and I'll try to get to it later this year or early next year.

I'd had it for several years too, Darryl, and in my summer of needing absorbing but not too serious books, it called out to me (also because I did some book rearranging and could see it!).

Classic Crimes looks interesting. I note that The trial of Mary Blandy by William Roughead is available on Project Gutenburg.

Oh, I'll have to look for that. I checked out a couple of other Roughead books listed on his author page and they all seem to be out of print.

ETA Just checked it out. This looks like one of his trial reports, such as the ones published in Notable British Trials, as opposed to a narrative like the ones in Classic Crimes.

Just catching up, Rebecca. :-)

Thanks for stopping by, Lois.

66. They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy

I almost gave up on this book soon after I started it, because I wasn't that interested in the big party of aristocrats at a Hungarian castle in the early years of the 20th century with which it begins. But I kept at it and soon I was hooked, because Bánffy is a marvelous story teller. It is a sprawling tale, with two cousins at its center, but involving dozens of other characters and their relationships, romantic and otherwise, and politics. What makes the book so fascinating, aside from or despite the almost soap-opera-ish aspects of some of the subplots, is the look at the vanished (perhaps deservedly so) world of pre-World War I Hungary and, in particular, the often fought-over province of Transylvania, then under Hungarian rule but largely peopled by ethnic Romanians. These were the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, much written about by Austrians such as Joseph Roth, but this book is told from the Hungarian perspective, and the Hungarians very much felt themselves second-class citizens in the empire. The descriptions of political events, many presumably based on real ones, since Bánffy had himself been a politician from an ancient aristocratic family, show the futility of the political arguments of the time, all focused on the Hungarians' resentment of the Austrian rulers, completely oblivious to the changes in the world outside. (It is my understanding that the next two volumes of this trilogy lead up to and end with the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and the beginning of first world war, which was the death knell of the Austro-Hungarian empire.)

While the stories of the cousins and their families, their lovers and those they want to to be their lovers, their land and their financial issues are, along with the politics, the heart of the novel, I also found the parts dealing with the beauty of the Transylvanian landscape and the lives of peasants, especially those in the mountains, very interesting. What was also interesting, and depressing, was the extremely limited lives women had to lead in those times, the still existing emphasis on the role and importance of the hereditary aristocracy, and the power those aristocrats had over the lives of others.

Despite the blurbs on the copy I have, which compare Bánffy to Tolstoy, this isn't in the same literary league. Part of this may be due to the translation since the English translator (who worked with Bánffy's daughter) says in his introduction that he not only cut parts of the book because it was so long and politically detailed, but also that he realized that "a literal translation in English would give none of the quality of the original and would fail completely to give any idea of the idiom and feeling of the first years of this century in Central Europe . . . anyone tackling it would have to make an English version rather than a literal translation." Nonetheless, it is a compellingly readable story and I am eager to read the next two volumes.

Finally, the edition I read is marred by sloppy proofreading -- words missing, words where they don't belong, typos and/or missed punctuation. It's a shame.

#140 Rebecca another for the TBR mountain. Thanks for the informative and well written review

Enjoyed your review of They were counted. The life and times and period detail sound fascinating.

Thanks, Paul and Barry. Yes, Barry, the life and times and period detail are fascinating, although appalling too.

67. The Mangan Inheritance by Brian Moore

I wish I liked this book better than I did. Brian Moore is an excellent writer and knows how to pace his story and keep the reader intrigued, and for much of the novel I was right there with him as he takes the protagonist, insecure lapsed poet James Mangan, from New York City and the end of his marriage to movie star Beatrice Abbot (which led the doorman to call him "Mr. Abbot") to Montreal, where he grew up, where his father still lives, and where he finds a trove of information about his family history including his possible relationship to noted 19th century Irish poet James Clarence Mangan, and from there to Ireland where he encounters the contemporary Mangans, two families who have little but contempt for each other. As Mangan gets involved in the life of remote Drishane, where everybody knows everybody's business, it becomes clear that there's a lot he doesn't know and that some people don't want him to know it, especially when they meet him and see his face which, as he discovered in Montreal, is practically a double of that shown in an old photo that may be of the poet. The plot, with sidetracks into Mangan's erotic obsession with his 18-year-old distant cousin, then becomes distinctly melodramatic as the main secret is dramatically revealed (and somewhat credulity-stretching it is) and Mangan returns to Montreal where his search for identity comes to a close. I didn't dislike this book; in fact, it was a fun read in some ways, and maybe I just wasn't in the right mood for it.

#144 Rebecca I read The Colour of Blood a number of years ago and Lies of Silence last year. The former is one of my favourite novels period and the latter also hits the spot. On the other hand The Statement and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne are much less successful in my opinion. I haven't read The Mangan Inheritance but will get round to it eventually although his books are extremely difficult to come by in Malaysia. btw really enjoyed your review.

Thanks, Paul. I may look for those other books as I did think Moore was a good writer (and he did, by the way, a great job on the NYC scenes, really capturing the feel of the upper east side neighborhoods). The edition I read was a very recent NYRB release; shipping may be prohibitive, but you can buyit online from NYRB, as well as, of course, from Amazon et al.

68. The Bride from Odessa by Edgardo Cozarinsky

This collection of stories highlights many of the themes and ideas expressed in Cozarinsky's novel, The Moldavian Pimp, which I read and loved earlier this month. Characters move from country to country, search for their true identity and their ancestors, sometimes change their identity, feel lost in a new (or old) land, obsess over the past, and find or lose love. Like Cozarinksy himself, many character are, or were once, Jewish Argentinians, but nearly all of them (or their ancestors) wander between Europe and the "new" world. Some of the stories, such as the title one, are extremely compelling, others less so, but it is overall a fine collection and Cozarinsky is an excellent writer.

69. The Factory of Facts by Luc Sante

Before reading this book, I rarely thought about Belgium: perhaps in the context of its residents using mayonnaise on their frites or of its being geographically susceptible to invasion. But thanks to the power of Luc Sante's writing in this loosely termed memoir, I've now learned about Belgium's history, geography, art, writing, food, language(s), national character, and more, as well as about Sante's early life in Belgium and how the country stayed with him after his family immigrated to the United States, specifically to New Jersey, when he was a child. Along with all the information about Belgium (as with his Low Life, which I read and loved earlier this summer, Sante loves to pile on fact after fact, name after name, much more than the reader can retain, yet absorbing nonetheless), Sante gives lovely portraits of his parents, extended family, and the Belgian built environment; plays with language; explores the duality of immigration, part here, part there; and is generally witty and fun to read. I have become an admirer of his writing.

Interesting reads, as usual. They Were Counted sounds intesting (I've seen a lot of castles lately). I will follow your progress with Bánffy and wait to see how you like the next in the trilogy before adding it to the list.

Before reading this book, I rarely thought about Belgium. Don't you love how books bring new ideas and places into our sphere of thought? I felt so amazed when I recently read about the Albanian-speaking Italians in The Homecoming Party. How narrow our lives would be without books...

Rebecca you keep unearthing books which have to go on the TBR wishlist. As a Brit and a student of history I am somewhat ambivalent towards Belgium as Belgium was the reason we were roped into the First World War and towards the removal of the Great from Great Britain. Belgium shares with Canada politics that divide on the issue of language and was if I am not mistaken the first country to make voting legally compulsory to all citizens. 25 years ago (and 30 kilos ago) when I was cycle racing in Europe I used to dread races in Belgium where their riders were predisposed to ensure upstart foreigners did not win races there. They held suicidal races in the town squares called "kermesses" during which an elbow on a corner would ensure that you didn't get ideas above your station and actually try and win there. All in all however the nation that invented the french fries (typical of their neighbours to take credit for the efforts of other but Belgian Fries hasn't the same ring to it), and gave birth to Jacques Brel, Georges Simenon and Eddy Merkcx cannot be so bad.
Must get that book - Great review by the way.

Thanks, Lisa and Paul. Lisa, I'm currently reading the next in the Bánffy trilogy: great story-telling if not great literature. Paul, let me know what you think once you read The Factory of Facts, that is, whether it changes your opinion of Belgium at all. By the way, I never thought of Belgium as the "reason" the British got involved in World War I (after all, if Belgium weren't there, they would have had to enter the war when the Germans got to France); did you say that tongue in cheek or do I need to review my historical knowledge?

#151 Rebecca a number of years ago I ploughed through the War Memoirs of David Lloyd-George and it is a bit convoluted but his position was as follows. The French had a treaty that compelled them to come to the Aid of Russia in the event that Russia was attacked; Great Britain had a treaty with France that compelled them to come to the aid of France in the event that France was attacked. What happened was that Austro-Hungary declared war on Russia with Germany joining the former. France then declared war on Austro-Hungary and Germany. Britain were considering the argument that France was not attacked as it declared war on the other two and therefore Britain were not obliged to declare. Unfortunately the Germans had long been preparing their detailed battle plans which involved marching through Belgium to get to the French. Britain had a treaty with Belgium to come to its aid in the event that it was attacked. Germany asked permission to march through Belgium and were denied; the British asked the Germans to changed their plans but they refused as did Belgium when Britain also forebore upon them to allow the Germans passage. The Germans unable to change their plans marched into Belgium and Britain declared war. European politics was fairly complicated in those days!

Thanks, Paul. Complicated indeed, but they seem to be pretty complicated, if not as bellicose, now too! Despite all you say, I still lay the blame on the Germans, as I can't believe Britain wouldn't have gone to war once France was invaded, just across the Channel and all. Belgium's just in the wrong place!

Rebecca probably true - Lloyd-George was at pains to excuse his government's role in taking the country into the war and was written at the beginning of the 1930's when sentiment against the French insistence at Versailles on German reparations had changed to a realisation of the folly it would bring upon the future.

70. They Were Found Wanting by Miklós Bánffy
71. They Were Divided by Miklós Bánffy

These two novels complete the trilogy begun with They Were Counted and everything I said in my review of that book holds true for these as well.

They Were Found Wanting takes the protagonist, Balint Abady, his cousin Laszlo, and dozens of other characters from the years 1906 to about 1909. As with the earlier volume, their stories and romances are mixed with set pieces of huge parties and hunts, politics within Hungary and in the broader Austro-Hungarian empire, and vivid descriptions of natural environments around the country. What comes out more strongly in this volume is the self-centeredness of Hungarian politics and the internal conflicts that blind people to the larger world outside, as well as Bánffy's goal of painting a complete portrait of a complex world that no longer existed by the time he wrote the novels in the 1930s.

The final, slimmer volume, They Were Divided, covers the period up until the first world war. In this novel, the personal stories continue, as do the political maneuverings and the portraits of nature, but there is also an overwhelming sense of loss and of a period ending, both for individuals and for the country. Bánffy completed this novel in 1940, as a second world war, which would destroy what the first one hadn't, was starting to ravage Europe.

One of Bánffy's points throughout these novels is the impotence of the Hungarian legislature, tied up in partisan politics and obstructionist policies that ignore the good of the country. A reader in the US can't help but see parallels to our own Congress.

72. The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge

This short, puzzling novel follows Rose, an enigmatic young English woman, and Harold, a slightly less enigmatic middle-aged American man, as they take a road trip across the United States in the fraught months in 1968 between the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, in search of the mysterious Mr. Wheeler. Rose, who seems damaged in some way but is occasionally surprisingly perceptive, is looking for Mr. Wheeler because he was kind and helpful to her in her troubled teenage years; Harold for reasons of his own. As they travel, they encounter a variety of people and are involved in a variety of incidents; some seem shocking to the reader, but almost bounce off Rose, who lives more in the past than in the present. Although the novel reveals how much our pasts affect our present, the lasting impacts of neglect if not abuse, and how difficult it can be for people to understand and communicate with each other, it is as much about the US, and the craziness of 1968, as it is about the main characters.

The striking part of this novel for me was how Bainbridge writes. Characters act and speak as they would in real life, without any explanations to the reader, who is mystified for much of the novel as to what happened in the past and why the characters behave as they do. Even at the end, as the reader realizes we are heading straight to the Kennedy assassination (the novel stops just before it), much is still unclear.

This novel was almost but not completely finished when Bainbridge died and has been published posthumously as she left it. Although I haven't read anything else by Bainbridge, I've read a little bit about her and understand that this spare style and the lack of explanation are typical of her writing, and not an artifact of the novel being unfinished. I also read the Paris Review interview with her that is accessible from her LT author page and discovered that some of Rose's experiences come from Bainbridge's own life.

73. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

In this poetic novella, Johnson tells the tale of Robert Grainier and through him portrays both the wilderness of and the massive building in the American northwest in the early years of the 20th century. A railroad builder, lumberer, and contract hauler, who was raised by an aunt and uncle and doesn't remember his parents or where he lived in early childhood, Grainier experiences a terrible tragedy and builds and lives in a cabin in the remote Idaho mountains. He encounters other people through his work, but never becomes close to them; a dog who adopts him is his only companion for many years and at one point he wonders whether he is a hermit. Although he lives alone, with a pervasive feeling of sadness and loneliness, he is surrounded by the other living creatures of the mountains, by the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest, and by his visions of wolf-people and more. This is a portrait of a time and a place in American history, as well as a story of loss and beauty. The whistle of the train and the howling of the wolf echo through its pages.

Train Dreams is now added to my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist. Thank you.

Robert

Rebecca as usual plenty of food for thought with your excellent reviews. The first in Banffy's trilogy is on my shelves but I am trying to locate the other two just in case I am riveted by the opening book.

The Bainbridge has had very mixed reviews apparently and it seems she wasn't over keen on its release and was struggling to finish it off prior to her untimely death (evidently she had returned to the project several times over the years and still was not satisfied). She does have a good common voice and this works for her in some novels better than others. Her re-enactment novels of the Titanic and Scott Antarctic expedition don't really work for me but her stories like Bottle Factory Outing and A Quiet Life speak clearly to the reader and her characters are well drawn as a result.

Thanks, Paul. That will help me as I look for other Bainbridges to read. I had to order the second two Bánffys from the UK.

Thanks for those excellent reviews, Rebecca, particularly the last novel by Beryl Bainbridge. I have a mild interest in reading Master Georgie, since it was selected as the best novel of hers that was longlisted for the Booker Prize (five of her novels were selected for the prize, but none won the award). However, this book has received low ratings by several LTers whose opinion I respect, so I doubt I'll read anything by her anytime soon.

It's always interesting when catching up here. I just read your last three reviews. In other years, I would have added Train Dreams to my wishlist based on your review, but I'm trying to limit what I add. Will keep that one in mind, however.

It's really short, Dan!

Well, i went ahead and clicked add to wishlist. :)

74. The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Challenged Planet by Heidi Cullen

Climatologist Heidi Cullen has written a chilling book about global warming by describing the effects climate change will have on people in seven regions around the globe. Although some may have heard of Dr. Cullen because she had a show on climate on the Weather Channel, I picked up the book not because I knew who she was but because the nearby Catskill Mountains had so recently been devastated by Irene, downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm just as it reached New York, but still a tremendous and dangerous rain-maker.

After initially discussing the differences between climate and weather (in a nutshell, timescale), how we can study past climate change, how prediction works, and how by testing models on the past scientists can fine-tune them to look at the future, she turns to the heart of the book: examining how climate change affects seven key regions, each with its own set of problems. In doing so, she is able to introduce the variety of problems global warming will create, and in each profile she interviews people familiar with the area and its issues,not just climate specialists, but engineers, ecologists, water experts, people working with local groups, and more. Each profile first focuses on the issues and then includes a fictional 40-year forecast, based on what is known about the area and its problems. Through this approach, she covers a broad range of impacts of global warming, while giving it a human face.

The areas and issues she profiles are: the Sahel region of Africa (famine, crop losses, water resources), the Great Barrier Reef of Australia (coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and economic challenges), the Central Valley of California (drought, regional water resources, agriculture problems), the Arctic, including both the Inuit area in Canada and Greenland, each with its own challenges (ice melt, mineral resources, a navigable Arctic circle), Dhaka and Bangladesh in general (sea level rise, floods, and what she calls "climate refugees), and New York City (hurricanes, infrastructure, sea level rise).

In her introduction, Cullen says that after one of her seminars a man came up to her, complimented her on her lecture, and asked her whether he should sell his beach house. She realized that "the scientific community had failed to communicate the threat of climate change in a way that made it real for people right now." In trying to to do just that, she has written a readable and important book.

Great review on The Weather of the Future. I actually don't read books like that anymore (and even changed my focus of study in my ecology master), because I was having trouble sleeping at night. I have a great imagination and a mind that is exceptional in coming up with worse case scenario's. Just looking at the weather outside and the news reports from all over the world is enough to let me know it is still not going in the right direction.

What I really want to know is if Heidi Cullen also speaks about solutions - both for climate change in general, as well as what to do if we can't turn things around.

Samantha_kathy, she does talk about solutions in a way. Of course, we have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions dramatically just to stay where we are, but she talks about things people can do in different regions to try to mitigate the problems that we know are coming. Some of course are more doable than others.

I too have a vivid imagination and a tendency towards worst case scenarios, so I sympathize with you!

I'm glad the book isn't all doomsday - there are too many of those in the world already. What we need is more books that point out things that we can do.

Hmmmm The weather of the future looks interesting.

75. Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin

I read this stunning trilogy partly because I admired Sorokin's strange novel The Queue, partly because it looked intriguing in the bookstore, and largely because arubabookwoman/Deborah wrote a compelling review of it here. I can add little to her outline of the trilogy, so will only briefly summarize the plot to put the rest of my comments in context.

Basically, a troubled young man with a traumatic history discovers that the meteorite that devastated a remote region of Siberia in 1908 was made of a special kind of ice that can open the hearts of a special 23,000 people -- all blond-haired and blue-eyed -- who really have been created by rays of light, and that once he finds all these people they will be able to leave the world of the earth, which they consider a mistake, and join the light. Hence, he creates the Brotherhood of the Light and over the course of nearly a century, he and his successors gather these men and women and children into the Brotherhood. It is apparently quite blissful to be a brother or sister of the light and to be able to "speak" with one's heart to other brothers and sisters; they can only eat raw foods like fruits and have no sexual desires. However, after the death of the first two children of the light -- the young man, known by the "heart name" of Bro, and his first "sister," Fer -- the ability to sense if someone is one of them is lost, and the only method of discovering if a person can "talk" with his heart involves hitting him or her violently with a hammer made of ice; thus, a lot of people are killed in the process. Not only that, but sisters and brothers seek money and power to accomplish their goal, and that power takes them inside some of the nastier regimes of the 20th century -- Hitler's and Stalin's -- as well as into the corporate hierarchy at the end of the 20th and early 21st century. By the end of the trilogy, the Brotherhood has reached a pinnacle of power and wealth.

Sorokin uses a variety of techniques to tell the story: straight narrative, "testimonies," an at first odd but later meaningful use of italics, sections that seem like reporting, and jumps back and forth in time as well. While at first the reader feels happy for Bro and Fer, gradually the efforts of the Brotherhood begin to seem insidious and their attitudes towards the other people around them cruel. As compelling as the story is on its own, it seems to me that Sorokin meant it as a metaphor for all the political and religious movements that start out with bright ideals and then succumb to the lust for power and money, the use of violence to achieve supposedly worthy goals (the end justifies the means), and the denigration of the other. In that regard, members of the brotherhood start to refer to people as "meat machines" and to make fun of their needs for food, love, friendship, and sex. Sorokin is probably most intensely commenting on the Russian revolution and subsequent events in the Soviet Union, but by putting it in an imaginary context he broadens the perspective. And while, as noted in the earlier review, there are places where the reader has to suspend disbelief, all in all this is a compelling, beautifully crafted, thought-provoking, and indeed virtuosic work.

Ice Trilogy has been on my wishlist for a while. It sounds like a very unique and cerebral work.

>171 rebeccanyc: I believe the trilogy was either dramatically read or some part of it performed at the PEN festival in NYC in April.

Wow, Lois. That would have been fascinating. I'm sure it was only part of it, because with three novels it's quite a tome.

76. The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay

This book grew on me as I read, as what seemed at first to be a somewhat comic, somewhat dated travel narrative turned into a complex and subtle novel of ideas, about religion, history, what it means to do right or wrong, love, loss, and the fate of empires. Macaulay is a marvelous and bitingly witty writer, weaving long, fascinating sentences that often wind up with surprise endings. Little bits of information scattered throughout the text end up coming together in revealing ways. The book contains a lot of classic and Anglican history, of the type that educated Britons of the first part of the 20th century would have known inside out, but that frequently sent me to Wikipedia.

The time is the early 1950s, and the novel follows the narrator, initially unnamed, as she accompanies her Aunt Dot, her aunt's camel, and her aunt's traveling companion, the Reverend the Honorable Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, on an expedition to Turkey where they have overlapping but divergent goals: leaving England, converting the Turks, liberating Turkish women, writing and illustrating books. (In fact, Macaulay is very funny about all the English people who travel places to write books about them.) Needless to say, complications ensue.

I have to admit that parts of the book, especially at the beginning, annoyed me, because they were so illustrative of prejudiced colonial attitudes. As I read more, and followed more of the thoughts of the narrator, I began to think, or hope, that she was making fun of these, but if not, they are a relic of a time and a place. There were also a couple of episodes that didn't quite seem to belong in the book, or at least I couldn't figure out why they were there.

Nonetheless, and despite the fact that this ultimately a mournful book, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first sentence of your review was enough to entice me to read The Towers of Trebizond

#175 Rebecca - this has long been on my TBR. Great review to remind me to look it up from somewhere on my shelves. Some of the english authors of that era are spectacularly prejudiced as the references to blacks and jews in Buchan's Greenmantle which I read recently exemplified. I also got the sense as you did maybe optimistically that some of the condescending remarks in the novel were meant tongue in cheek or with a sense of irony.

Good review of The Towers of Trebizond. I read this a long time ago and also fell under its charm. Sure its a little outdated, but its still great travel writing.

#175 - Hi Rebecca, that sounds like fun. I've added it to my wishlist. I'm slightly curious because you mention that the book dates from the 1950s and I thought this kind of book is typical for earlier times (before the Second World War). Also the colonial look at things sounds dated, even for that time. So how "contemporary" is the book in its own time, do you think?

Monica, perhaps "colonial" wasn't the best word to use, but various characters, at various times, still express views that make me shudder about how superior the British are to virtually everyone else, and they patronize and denigrate others, such as Turks. Even when people say they like others, there is a little hint of the kind of bigotry that used to be/still is expressed in the US when people say "But I'm not prejudiced. Some of of my best friends are ______." I may be overly harsh, but I'm sensitive to this.

But it is an interesting question as to whether it's "contemporary" in its own time. Macaulay wrote the book in her 70s, shortly before her death, and since some of the plot (such as it is) is clearly inspired by her own earlier life, it is possible that she is transposing some experiences of her own by a few decades. However, it is certainly also true that prejudice, much derived from the colonial years, was alive and well in England when I visited there in the early 70s, and literature I've read indicates that some of that hasn't changed. Nor, to be fair, has it changed completely in the US, although I would say that some, that's some, of the overt bigotry has gone under cover.

# 180 - Thanks for sharing and clarifying this, Rebecca. I have a better view now on what the book is like. I think there's a difference if a 70year-old writes a book or a 30-year-old and it makes sense now. It makes me even more curious to read the book.

"I sometimes wonder if bigotry isn't instigated by what you feel threatened by, rightfully or not? " I think that is precisely right. I worked with an otherwise wonderful woman years ago, who could not see an Asian or Indian business open in town without commenting that "they" were going to own everything soon, because "they" don't live like us, and don't mind cramming 12 people into a one-bedroom apartment, working non-stop and doing without; "their" children take all the awards at school because their parents force them to do nothing but study...etc. And yet this woman was extremely proud of her own father, who immigrated to the U.S. from Italy as a poor young man, worked hard, became a citizen and raised a fine American family that included several college graduates---exactly the kind of story "they" are writing for themselves.

Hi Rebecca, just catching up after a woefully long absence. You've been reading some great stuff, as ever, but I particularly like the sound of the Banffy. A good story well-told is sometimes just what you need, even if it's not great literature.

I agree with both of you, Monica and Linda that bigotry is "instigated by what you feel threatened by." I believe that part, maybe much, of the extreme reaction to President Obama, even though not explicitly stated as such, is racist, and that it is coming from people who are terrified because all they've had going for them is that they're white, and that they can no longer count on that. It is my hope that their children will feel differently.

And I certainly have seen bigotry elsewhere in the world. In the early nineties, when I returned from eastern Europe via Vienna, the Austrian cabdriver who took me to the airport spent the entire time complaining about all the Hungarians coming in, characterizing them as thieves, addicts, etc. It was creepy. (I've had bigoted cab drivers in NYC too, but I try to make it a policy not to argue with the person who's driving the car!)

#183 Thanks, Rachel. I was looking back over my summer reading the other day, and I realized I did read a lot of books I thoroughly enjoyed, even though they weren't of the serious and grim type I usually favor. I'm certainly glad to have a big enough TBR pile that I can find lighter stuff when I need it.

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77. What It Is Like to Go to War by Karl Marlantes

I would not have read What It Is Like to Go to War if I hadn't read Marlantes' stunning novel Matterhorn earlier this year, and I can only admire Matterhorn more now that I've read WITLTGTW. The personal, historical, psychological, spiritual, and mythological perspectives on war and warriors that Marlantes discusses with great perception and great humanity in this book offer another, lens on the themes of the novel, a more explicit and reasoned one; it is a mark of Marlentes' talent as a writer that the important issues of WITLTGTW emerge organically in Matterhorn.

Among the topics that Marlentes covers -- killing, guilt, numbness and violence, the enemy within, lying, loyalty, heroism, home, and the temple of Mars -- perhaps the most important are those affecting the soldier's attitude towards his job and his return to civilian life. Marlantes never loses sight of the fact that our military is made up largely of very young men (and now women), men who need to know what it means to kill as much as what it means to risk being killed, men who need to understand the ethical and spiritual components of being a man and being a warrior, men who have to learn to integrate their strength and violence, thrill-seeking and grief back into life at home, away from the field of battle.

As is now well known, Marlantes is a Yale-educated Rhodes scholar and much decorated Marine who served in Vietnam and then spent forty years working on Matterhorn and, presumably, this book too, forty years in which he eventually learned to deal with his own PTSD and thought deeply about the meaning of war and the nature of warriors. Much influenced by ideas of Jungian psychology, he focuses also on the meaning of manhood and spiritual issues. Another focus is the changing nature of war, in which soldiers are ever more removed from direct contact with the enemy, killing them from behind computer screens half a world away or, when in the actual battlefield, can hours later be talking on the phone, or e-mailing, or posting to Facebook, maintaining a kind of contact with home, and dual reality, that was unheard of in earlier conflicts.

This is a moving, personal, and yet rigorous look at important issues, especially for we in the US where we've been at war for 10 years with almost no impact on the substantial percentage of the population who live outside the regions of the country from which the volunteer army is largely drawn. Many people, as noted in other reviews here on LT, should read this book. It is clear, well written, and compelling. Nonetheless, Matterhorn, covering the same territory in fictional form, is for me a greater accomplishment.

Superb review of What It Is Like to Go to War, Rebecca! I'll look for it and/or Matterhorn this coming week.

Great discussions going on here. Sorry I've been away. I'm glad What it is Like further explicates some of the themes in Matterhorn. I've been leery of picking up his second book because Matterhorn was so amazing, and I didn't want to read a random collection of Marlantes' thoughts hastily thrown together just to sell more books while Matterhorn is hot. I'll look for WIILTGTW when it comes out in pb.

Lisa, you will recognize some of the incidents he discusses in WILTGTW from Matterhorn, and even though he does develop the themes, and in a "practical" as well as a spiritual and mythological way, I think Matterhorn is a much more remarkable achievement. But WITLTGTW is interesting in and of itself, and will find other readers than the novel, which is good.

78. I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan by Pap Khouma

This autobiographical novel takes the reader on a journey with the narrator from his home in Senegal, where he studied pottery, despite this being considered inappropriate for someone with his traditional family background, but then followed some cousins to the Ivory Coast, where he first started selling trinkets to tourists, and finally to Italy, en route, he thought, to Germany where a Senagalese fortune teller told him he should go. Through Khouma's first person tale, the reader experiences the hectic pace of the illegal immigrant's life. Even when he is not traveling to Paris, trying and failing to get into Germany, having difficulty getting back into Italy, returning briefly to Senegal, and then coming back to Italy, he is on the go: trying to buy the elephant sculptures, jewelry, shirts, and other objects; traveling to beaches and cafés and metro stations to sell them; searching for places to live that are cheap and safe; moving from town to town to find customers and escape the police. It is a hard, difficult, dangerous life, especially because Khouma and his narrator were among the first Senegalese to travel to Italy (the novel takes place in the mid-1980s and was published in 1990). Khouma also gives the reader a real sense of the brotherhood among the Senegalese immigrants, how they will mostly try to help each other even if they didn't know each other back home, although everyone is more or less equally poor and struggling. Their friendships and support of each other are largely what keep them all going. Towards the end of the novel, the Italian government gives the Senegalese immigrants papers that allow them to be documented immigrants and legally stay in Italy, but then the police oppression picks up.

I enjoyed this book for its vivid depiction of the life of these immigrants and the ways they try to stay beneath the radar of the authorities, including arriving places separately, traveling in different cars on trains, and more. I also appreciated the way it illustrates the mixed relationships between the Senegalese and the Italians, the tourists who want to buy the items the vendors are selling while the police not only try to stop them from selling (confiscating their merchandise, threatening them with jail or deportation), but also suspect them all of selling drugs; the terrible lack of treatment the narrator receives when he is very ill and goes to a hospital versus the kindness of some Italian café owners and others. Above all, the reader gets a real sense of what it is like to be very hard-working but very poor and very black and very undocumented.

In the introductory notes to the translation I read, both the translator and a Dartmouth Italian professor point out that Khouma was not only one of the first Senegalese to come to Italy but one of the first to write about the experience of African immigrants there. When he wrote the book, which was published in Italy in 1990, he had the help of an Italian journalist in shaping the stories, but he has since gone on to write other books without that kind of editorial assistance. They also point out that he was a trailblazer: other immigrants have followed in his footsteps and written perhaps more complex and novelistic works. Nonetheless, this was a compelling read.

Good review of I was an elephant salesman rebecca. I see many African salesman here in the markets (South West France) and have often wondered what their life is like. This book sounds like a good place to find out.

#190 - I also think that this sounds like an interesting read. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!

Thanks for stopping by, Barry and Rebeki. I spotted this book in a bookstore earlier this year and was so intrigued by the title that I bought it, hoping it wouldn't be one of those books whose title is the best thing about them. It was definitely an interesting and thought-provoking read, if not great literature.

79. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

A reread, and as enjoyable as ever. Comfort (no pun intended) reading at its best.

Wait...what? Rebecca reads comfort books??? I am disappointed.

BTW, you were right about The War of the End of the World. It's taking me forever to read it, but I hope to finish it later today or tomorrow.

Stressful summer + stressful fall + slight cold = comfort read!

But to make you feel better, I'm plugging away at two serious books too, Yalta by S. M. Plokhy and The Magic Mountain, which I'm rereading because I hope to learn from the people in the Salon who are reading it as a group read even though I don't consider myself quite in their league of scholarship and quipping.

And aren't you on the computer very early for someone who's on vacation in San Francisco?

But to make you feel better, I'm plugging away at two serious books too.

Whew. Okay, I do feel better.

And aren't you on the computer very early for someone who's on vacation in San Francisco?

I'm on the computer early for a normal person. However, like my father, I'm a notoriously early riser, even on weekends and holidays (I almost never sleep past 7 am, unless I am exhausted), and I always seem to wake up by 4-5 am whenever I visit San Francisco (although I do tend to wake up later when I go to London). I'll have my usual early breakfast (~7:30 am) at my favorite North Beach café, Caffè Greco, and spend a leisurely couple of hours over coffee and the Sunday NYT.

Hi Rebecca. I haven't read the 197 unread posts since I was last here but I've scrolled down your list with the asterisks. I loved Cold Comfort Farm. When I started to read it, I had no idea it was a comedy and then it just became too funny and the penny dropped.

#197 Darryl: normal people wake up after 9am. Get an eye mask and go back to bed.

Thanks for stopping by, Amanda. Always good to see you!

80, Yalta: The Price of Peace by S. M. Plokhy

In this readable, yet information-packed story of the Yalta conference that brought the aging Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin together in the waning days of the second world war, S. M. Plokhy mines newly available Soviet as well as British and US archives to provide insight into the differing perspectives on what was taking place. The heart of the book takes readers day by day through the conference, but Plokhy intersperses this with the background of issues being discussed -- from the progress of the war to the potential dismemberment of Germany to the fate of Poland and other eastern and central European countries to the war with Japan to the return of POWs to zones of influence and much more -- and some of the post-conference results.

For me, the most fascinating part was the portraits of the leaders and how they interacted with each other: Churchill sticking to some principled stands but grumpy because he thought Roosevelt and Stalin were ganging up on him and because he could see the power of the British empire fading; Roosevelt ailing but wanting to serve as the honest broker, "the judge," and committed to the creation of the United Nations; Stalin, turning on the charm with Churchill and Roosevelt while knowing all their foreign and military policies in advance through both his ongoing spying and his bugging of the palaces in which they and their advisers stayed, and while being the only one who could make decisions for the Soviet Union, not even Molotov, not even Beria, not even top generals, all of whom accompanied him to Yalta. I also found it fascinating to see the shifting alliances and to gain an understanding of how Stalin fundamentally didn't understand or trust democratic electoral systems and Churchill and Roosevelt fundamentally didn't understand Stalin and his total control over the USSR. I also was glad to learn a lot more about the conference that shaped a lot of the world I grew up in, including some of the "secret" agreements of the conference and the betrayal of some allies (especially Poland and China).

Plokhy explicitly aims to dispel some of the myths that have grown up around Yalta. He points out that with the success of the Red Army, there was probably little the US and UK could have done about Poland and the rest of eastern and central Europe at the conference or on the ground, but that it was later actions and reactions, particularly after Truman succeeded Roosevelt, that led to the harder edge of the cold war. He also points out that although it may have appeared that the Soviet Union got more of what it wanted than the US and the UK, the US did succeed on the issues that were most important to Roosevelt: the creation of the UN and the commitment of the Soviet Union to enter the war with Japan (it could not have been known, at the time of the conference in February 1945 that the creation of the atomic bomb would be successful and that it would end the war almost before the USSR had time to enter it).

There's a lot more to this book than I've had time to go into, including the portraits of the various advisers and assistants and the way Plokhy situates the conference in a longer history, but all in all it was an interesting and thought-provoking read.

Very interesting review, Rebecca.

Excellent review Rebecca. Fascinating information about the power of Stalin and the bugging of the hotels. Incredible stuff.

Now there's a book I almost certainly would not have considered reading without your description and endorsement. Sounds fascinating indeed.

Thanks, Dan, Barry, and Linda. Linda, I might not have read this book myself except that for the past several years I've been reading a lot of books, both nonfiction and fiction, about the 20th century, focusing a lot on the middle of the century, the Soviet Union, the war, etc. Although I found this book very interesting, I have read many others that are more remarkable, including Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (one of the most horrifying and important books I've read in years), Gulag by Anne Applebaum, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, Hitler and Stalin by Alan Bullock, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David M. Kennedy, Life and Fate and Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman, The Case of Comrade Tulayev and Conquered City by Victor Serge, and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, among others.

ETA And how could I have forgotten the wonderful The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov?

I have got to get a copy of Bloodlands. I've wanted to read it forever and never seem to purchase a copy (I'm sure it's something I'll want to keep). As you know, I loved Gulag, and I've been wanting to reread Hitler and Stalin for a while now. Have you read Three Who Made a Revolution by Bertram D. Wolfe? It was a favorite book of mine back when I read it in college. I have Life and Fate on my wishlist. I haven't read the Victor Serge books. Will have to go add them to my wishlist. I don't even need to know what they are about to know that if you like them, I will too!

Well, my future non-fiction Russian theme now has a wonderful list...just not sure what year I'll get around to it. Looking up more by Plokhy, I added The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to my wishlist.

Definitely get Bloodlands, Lisa, and definitely read Life and Fate. I've seen a copy of Three Who Made a Revolution at my family's house in the mountains, so I'll have to see if I can find it; I also have To the Finland Station, Stalingrad (an LT recommendation), and the entire The Gulag Archipelago, so they're all on the list for the next year or two. And thanks for the compliments, both of you.

Life and Fate has been on my wishlist for a while. I find that if a book I have wishlisted doesn't appeal to the people shopping for me, they won't buy it even though they know I WANT it. So, I'll probably soon have to grab this one for myself. Supposedly, a Books-A-Million is opening in our former Borders location at the end of this week. I'll need an excuse to check it out!

I'm going to my Indie bookstore tomorrow, I'll see if they still have a copy of Bloodlands. I've also added Stalingrad to my wishlist. I thought The Gulag Archipelago was great reading in places and authoritatively documentary in places, which slowed down my reading. A must though. Have you also read Evgenia Ginzburg's Journey Into the Whirlwind? I found it riveting. I have been trying for years to get a copy of Within the Whirland. I need to break down and look on Amazon for that one.

Touchstones are not cooperating...

81. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

This was a reread for me, and I decided to reread it now because they are having a group read of it over in Le Salon and I thought I could learn a lot from them since I've felt I missed a lot the first time I read it all the way through (four years ago). Indeed, I have found the chapter by chapter introductions there fascinating, as well as many of the comments, and thought-provoking, but I raced ahead and both started and finished it ahead of the group because there are just so many other books I want to read.

I definitely gained more insight into this dense novel both by rereading it and by having the benefit of others' comments (on the whole, more erudite than mine would have been), and particularly appreciated recognizing Mann's sly humor and seeing more complexity in the protagonist, Hans Castorp's, character. Much has been written about it, so I'm not going to say much here, except that as a novel that can be read on many levels (straightforward, psychological, political, philosophical, allegorical, etc.) it was certainly worth rereading.

Just stopping in to see what you've been reading...

Thanks for stopping by, Lois.

I have started a new thread. Please come visit.