kidzdoc's back for more in 2013: part 4

  




Currently reading:

  

Kafka On the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín

Completed books: (TBR = To Be Read book, purchased prior to 1/1/12)

January:
1. Quiet London by Siobhan Wall (review)
2. The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul (review)
3. Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif (review)
4. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (review)
5. Pediatric Advanced Life Support Provider Manual by Leon Chameides, MD (review)
6. Communion Town by Sam Thompson (review)
7. Damascus by Joshua Mohr (TBR) (review)
8. The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash (review)
9. Inspiring Quotes: The Greatest Quotes of Martin Luther King Junior by Martin Luther King, Jr. (review)
10. A Happy Death by Albert Camus (review)
11. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco

February:
12. Great House by Nicole Krauss (TBR) (review)
13. In the House of the Interpreter by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (review)
14. Bill Veeck's Crosstown Classic by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn (review)
15. Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski (TBR) (review)
16. Big Machine by Victor LaValle (TBR) (review)
17. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (review)
18. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (review)
19. The Other City by Michal Ajvaz (TBR)
20. A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson
21. Domestic Work by Natasha Trethewey
22. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
23. Vertical Motion by Can Xue (TBR)

March:
24. Liquidation by Imre Kertész (TBR)
25. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman (TBR)
26. Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah (TBR)
27. Dream of Ding Village by Yan LIanke (TBR)
28. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
29. The Jokers by Albert Cossery

April:
30. All My Friends by Marie NDiaye (review)
31. Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey (review)
32. Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey (review)
33. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (review)
34. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (TBR)
35. Pow! by Mo Yan
36. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
37. There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe
38. Burmese Days by George Orwell
39. Requiem: A Hallucination by Antonio Tabucchi
40. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

May:
41. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (TBR)
42. The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo (TBR)
43. Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn (TBR)
44. Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn (TBR)
45. Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn (TBR)
46. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre
47. Why Me? : A Doctor Looks at the Book of Job by Diane M. Komp, M.D. (TBR)
48. The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
49. Skios by Michael Frayn
50. The Aftermath of War by Jean-Paul Sartre
51. Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares & Silvina Ocampo

June:
52. The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner (review)
53. The Alienist by Machado de Assis
54. The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell (TBR)
55. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (review)

July:
56. Enon by Paul Harding (review)
57. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
58. The Amen Corner by James Baldwin (review)
59. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (review)
60. The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh (review)
61. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
62. The Blue Riband: The Piccadilly Line by Peter York (review)
63. Drift: The Hammersmith & City Line by Philippe Parreno (review)
64. A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire (review)
65. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

August:
66. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toíbín
67. What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube: The District Line by John Lanchester (review)
68. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (review)
69. The 32 Stops: The Central Line by Danny Dorling (review)
70. The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal (TBR) (review)
71. Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano (TBR) (review)
72. 419 by Will Ferguson (review)
73. The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah (TBR) (review)
74. Harvest by Jim Crace (review)
75. Massacre River by René Philoctète (TBR) (review)
76. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (review)
77. The Return by Dany Laferrière
78. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (review)

September:
79. The American Plague by Molly Caldwell Crosby (review)
80. A Northern Line Minute: The Northern Line by William Leith
81. The Kills by Richard House (review)
82. Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty by Alain Mabanckou
83. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
84. Mind the Child: The Victoria Line by Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company
85. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
86. Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum
87. The Remarkable Story of Great Ormond Street Hospital by Kevin Telfer
88. The African by JMG Le Clézio

October:
89. Fighting for Life by S. Josephine Baker
90. Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra
91. A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line by John O'Farrell
92. The Drugs Don't Work: A Global Threat by Professor Dame Sally Davies
93. Great Battles: The Battle of Isandlwana by Saul David
94. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
95. The Sea Close By by Albert Camus
96. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
97. Earthbound: The Bakerloo Line by Paul Morley
98. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
99. Chimerica by Lucy Kirkwood
100. The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
101. Adult Supervision by Sarah Rutherford
102. Appetite (Pitt Poetry Series) by Aaron Smith

November:
103. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
104. Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares
105. A Good Parcel of English Soil: The Metropolitan Line by Richard Mabey
106. Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo: The Waterloo and City Line by Leanne Shapton
107. At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
108. The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto
109. When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963 by Bob Huffaker
110. Lost New Orleans by Mary Cable
111. Angel Agnes: The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport by Charles Wesley Alexander
112. Paradises by Iosi Havilio
113. Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou
114. Buttoned-Up: The East London Line by Fantastic Man

December:
115. A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó
116. Heads and Straights: The Circle Line by Lucy Wadham
117. Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh
118. The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka
119. The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico by Antonio Tabucchi
120. The Woman of Porto Pim by Antonio Tabucchi
121. Prize Fight: The Race and the Rivalry to be the First in Science by Morton Meyers
122. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
123. Top 10 of London: 250 Lists About London That Will Simply Amaze You! by Alexander Ash
124. Good Offices by Evelio Rosero
125. The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière

Books acquired in 2013: (✔ = completed book, bold = purchased book)

April:
1. The Eleven by Pierre Michon (5 January; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔
2. Place of Mind by Richard Blanco (21 January; Kindle e-book) ✔
3. A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson (29 January; Kindle e-book) ✔

February:
4. Old Man Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (15 February; Kindle e-book)
5. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid (15 February; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔

March:
6. The Return by Dany Laferrière (1 March; Alibris)
7. Brazil Red by Jean-Christophe Rufin (7 March; Alibris)
8. Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey (9 March; free e-book) ✔
9. Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam (16 March; Kindle e-book)
10. All My Friends by Marie NDiaye (16 March; ARC copy received from avaland) ✔
11. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (17 March; Barnes & Noble) ✔
12. Burmese Days by George Orwell (17 March; Barnes & Noble) ✔
13. Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau (17 March; Barnes & Noble)
14. Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi (17 March; Barnes & Noble)
15. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (19 March; LT Early Reviewers book) ✔
16. The Outsider by Albert Camus (21 March; The Book Depository)
17. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (24 March; Kindle e-book)
18. The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber (24 March; Kindle e-book)

April:
19. Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey (1 April; free e-book) ✔
20. El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
21. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
22. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (7 April; Barnes & Noble) ✔
23. There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra by Chinua Achebe (7 April; Barnes & Noble) ✔
24. Crock-Pot Slow Cooker Bible (7 April; Barnes & Noble)
25. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks (16 April; Barnes & Noble)
26. The Crow Road by Iain Banks (16 April; Barnes & Noble)
27. Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug by Peter Pringle (21 April; Strand Book Store)
28. Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke (21 April; Strand Book Store)
29. Requiem: A Hallucination by Antonio Tabucchi (21 April; Strand Book Store) ✔
30. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe (21 April; Strand Book Store) ✔
31. All Decent Animals by Oonya Kempadoo (21 April; Strand Book Store)
32. Julius Caesar (Modern Library Classics) by William Shakespeare (21 April; Greenlight Bookstore)
33. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (21 April; Greenlight Bookstore)
34. Firefly by Severo Sarduy (22 April; gift from Caroline)
35. The Gate by François Bizot (27 April; Kindle e-book)
36. In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz (28 April; Kindle e-book)

May:
37. You Were Never in Chicago by Neil Steinberg (1 May; free e-book from the University of Chicago Press)
38. Hack: Stories from a Cab by Dmitry Samarov (8 May; free e-book from the University of Chicago Press)
39. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (15 May; Amazon UK)
40. The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (15 May; Amazon UK)
41. The Remarkable Story of Great Ormond Street Hospital by Kevin Telfer (15 May; Amazon UK)
42. Basti by Intizar Husain (18 May; Joseph Fox Bookshop)
43. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (18 May; Joseph Fox Bookshop)
44. What to Feed Your Baby: Cost-Conscious Nutrition for Your Infant by Stanley A. Cohen, M.D. (20 May; advance review copy)
45. Where There's Love, There's Hate by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
46. The Bottom of the Jar by Adellatif Laâbi (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
47. Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
48. And Still the Earth by Ignácio de Loyola Brandão (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
49. Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
50. Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
51. The Girl with the Golden Parasol by Uday Prakash (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
52. Salt by Earl Lovelace (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
53. A Muslim Suicide by Bensalem Himmich (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
54. The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
55. Southern Cross the Dog by Bill Cheng (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
56. Raised from the Ground by José Saramago (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
57. From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra (26 May; City Lights Bookstore)
58. Ten White Geese by Gerbrand Bakker (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
59. A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
60. Percival Everett by Virgil Russell: A Novel by Percival Everett (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
61. Algerian Chronicles by Albert Camus (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
62. Blacks In and Out of the Left by Michael C. Dawson (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
63. The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History, and the Challenge of Bebop by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)
64. Mingus Speaks by John F. Goodman (29 May; City Lights Bookstore)

June:
65. The Alienist by Machado de Assis (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore) ✔
66. Ways of Going Home by Alejandro Zambra (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
67. Satantango by László Krasznahorkai (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
68. The World Is Moving Around Me: A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake by Dany Laferrière (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
69. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
70. City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
71. On the Imperial Highway: New and Selected Poems by Jayne Cortez (1 Jun; City Lights Bookstore)
72. Engine Empire: Poems by Cathy Park Hong (1 Jun; City Lights Bookshop)
73. Disposable People by Ezekel Alan (2 Jun; Amazon Kindle e-book)
74. Sons for the Return Home by Albert Wendt (8 Jun; Amazon Kindle e-book (free))
75. The Secret River by Kate Grenville (11 Jun; gift book from Paul Cranswick)
76. Enon by Paul Harding (12 Jun; May LT Early Reviewer book)
77. The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke by Yuzan Daidoji (19 Jun; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
78. What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri, MD (19 Jun; Harvard Book Store)
79. The Dark Road by Ma Jian (19 Jun; Harvard Book Store)
80. Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
81. AIDS at 30: A History by Victoria A. Harden (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
82. Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
83. She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir (19 Jun; The Harvard Coop)
84. The Quiet American by Graham Greene (19 Jun; Raven Used Books)
85. Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua (19 Jun; Raven Used Books)
86. Regeneration by Pat Barker (20 Jun; gift book from Caroline)

July:
87. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (4 Jul; Amazon Kindle e-book)
88. My Struggle: Book Two by Karl Ove Knausgaard (14 Jul; Archipelago Books)
89. The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico by Antonio Tabucchi (14 Jul; Archipelago Books)
90. The Woman of Porto Pim by Antonio Tabucchi (14 Jul; Archipelago Books)
91. Country Boy by Richard Hillyer (16 Jul; Slightly Foxed Bookshop)
92. Wreaking by James Scudamore (16 Jul; Slightly Foxed Bookshop)
93. Perfect by Rachel Joyce (16 Jul; Slightly Foxed Bookshop)
94. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (16 Jul; Slightly Foxed Bookshop)
95. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (16 Jul; South Kensington Books)
96. Othello by William Shakespeare (16 Jul; South Kensington Books)
97. The Blue Riband: The Piccadilly Line by Peter York (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
98. Fireflies by Shiva Naipaul (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
99. North of South: An African Journey by Shiva Naipaul (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
100. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
101. Between Friends by Amos Oz (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
102. The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee (17 Jul; Foyles Bookshop)
103. The Amen Corner by James Baldwin (20 Jul; National Theatre Bookshop)
104. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (20 Jul; Waterloo Bridge stalls, South Bank, London)
105. The Reprieve by Jean-Paul Sartre (20 Jul; Waterloo Bridge stalls, South Bank, London
106. The Night Alive by Conor Mc Pherson (24 Jul; National Theatre Bookshop)
107. The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh (24 Jul; National Theatre Bookshop) ✔
108. East-West: Penguin Underground Lines (24 Jul; Kindle e-book) ✔

August:
109. 419 by Will Ferguson (9 Aug; LTER book)
110. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (9 Aug; The Book Depository)
111. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (12 Aug; Amazon UK)
112. Unexploded by Alison MacLeod (12 Aug; Amazon UK)
113. South to a Very Old Place by Albert Murray (19 Aug; Amazon Kindle book)

September:
114. Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney (1 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
115. The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwartz-Bart (8 Sep; Book Culture)
116. The Sculptors of Mapungubwe by Zakes Mda (8 Sep; Book Culture)
117. Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh (8 Sep; Book Culture)
118. Hypothermia by Alvaro Enrigue (8 Sep; Book Culture)
119. Rice: Poems by Nikky Finney (8 Sep; Book Culture)
120. We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement by Akinyele Omowale Umoja (8 Sep; Book Culture)
121. Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare by Josh Blackman (8 Sep; Book Culture)
122. The Omni-Americans: Black Experience And American Culture by Albert Murray (12 Sep; Strand Book Store)
123. The Hero and the Blues by Albert Murray (12 Sep; Strand Book Store)
124. Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation by Ray Suarez (19 Sep; History Book Club)
125. Fighting for Life by S. Josephine Baker (19 Sep; New York Review Books)
126. Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and their Doctors by David Mendel (19 Sep; New York Review Books)
127. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (23 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
128. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (23 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
129. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (24 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
130. The African by JMG Le Clézio (30 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
131. For the Public Good: Forced Sterilization and the Fight for Compensation by Belle Boggs (30 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)
132. The Drugs Don't Work: A Global Threat by Professor Dame Sally Davies (30 Sep; Amazon Kindle e-book)

October:
133. Spring Tides by Jacques Poulin (2 Oct; Archipelago Books)
134. The Rule of Barbarism by Abdellatif Laâbi (2 Oct; Archipelago Books)
135. Melancholy by Jon Fosse (4 Oct; Amazon.com)
136. Aliss at the Fire by Jon Fosse (7 Oct; Amazon.com)
137. Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink (10 Oct; LT Early Reviewers book)
138. Great Battles: The Battle of Isandlwana by Saul David (10 Oct; Kindle e-book)
139. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (14 Oct; National Theatre Bookshop)
140. Edward II by Christopher Marlowe (14 Oct; National Theatre Bookshop)
141. Liolà by Luigi Pirandello (14 Oct; National Theatre Bookshop)
142. The Empty Space by Peter Brook (14 Oct; South Bank Book Market)
143. Lost New Orleans by Mary Cable (14 Oct; South Bank Book Market)
144. Quarantine by Jim Crace (14 Oct; South Bank Book Market)
145. Worthless Men by Andrew Cowan (14 Oct; South Bank Book Market)
146. Everyman Mapguides Barcelona (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
147. Secret Barcelona: Jonglez Guide (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
148. Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
149. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
150. The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
151. On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
152. The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
153. Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
154. A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó (15 Oct; Daunt Books)
155. London by Tube: A History of Underground Station Names by David Revill (15 Oct; Kindle e-book)
156. The Sea Close By by Albert Camus (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
157. Archipelago by Monique Roffey (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
158. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
159. The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
160. Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
161. Black Vodka by Deborah Levy (16 Oct; Topping and Company Booksellers)
162. Roads to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom (19 Oct; London Review Bookshop)
163. No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod (19 Oct; London Review Bookshop)
164. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (19 Oct; London Review Bookshop)
165. Paradises by Iosi Havilio (19 Oct; London Review Bookshop)
166. Truth: Philosophy in Transit by John D. Caputo (19 Oct; Watermark Books)
167. Born Weird by Andrew Kaufman (19 Oct; Watermark Books)
168. You Can't Say That: Memoirs by Ken Livingstone (19 Oct; Watermark Books)
169. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (19 Oct; Watermark Books)
170. Chimerica by Lucy Kirkwood (23 Oct; Kindle e-book)
171. Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (23 Oct; Kindle e-book)

2013 reading goals (✔ = completed goal):

1. Booker Prize group
     a. Finish reading the 2012 longlist
          8. Communion Town by Sam Thompson
          9. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
          10. Skios by Michael Frayn
     b. Read the entire 2013 longlist
          1. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
          2. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
          3. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
          4. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
          5. Harvest by Jim Crace
          6. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson
          7. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

2. 2013 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature ✔
     a. Finish the shortlist in advance of the award ceremony in late January
          Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash

3. Orange January/July group
     a. Read selected books from the shortlist of the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction (WPF) in advance of the prize ceremony
          Bring Up the Bodies by Hilarly Mantel (read in 2012)
          NW by Zadie Smith (read in 2012)
          Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
     b. Read 8-12 or more books nominated for the Orange Prize or the WPF in any year, or novels written by women which would be eligible for the prize
          Great House by Nicole Krauss
          Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
          The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna
          Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

4. Reading Globally group
     a. Read 3 or more books for each 2013 quarterly challenge
          *Central & Eastern European literature
               Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski
               The Other City by Michal Ajvaz
               Liquidation by Imre Kertész
          *Southeast Asian literature
               Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
               Burmese Days by George Orwell
               The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo
          *Francophone literature
               A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire
               The German Mujahid by Boualem Sansal
               Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano
               Massacre River by René Philoctète
               The Return by Dany Laferrière
          *South American literature
     b. Read 6 or more books for the 2012 4th quarter challenge, China & neighboring countries
          Vertical Motion by Can Xue
          Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke
          Pow! by Mo Yan

5. Author Theme Reads group
     a. Read 2-3 books by Simone de Beauvoir

6. Literary Centennials group
     a. Read books by Albert Camus throughout the year
          A Happy Death

7. Patrick White 100th 101st Anniversary challenge
     a. Read at least 1 of the 3 books that I own and was supposed to have read last year

8. Medicine group
     a. Read 12 or more books on medicine, science and public health throughout the year
          A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson
          Palliative Medicine in the UK c. 1970-2010 by Caroline Overy and E.M. Tansey
          Childhood Asthma and Beyond by Lois Reynolds and E.M. Tansey
          Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients by Ben Goldacre
          The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner

9. African/African American Literature group
     a. Read 20 or more works of fiction from the African diaspora
          1. Big Machine by Victor LaValle
          2. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman
          3. Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah
          4. All My Friends by Marie NDiaye
          5. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
          6. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe
          7. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna
          8. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
          9. The Amen Corner by James Baldwin
          10. A Season in the Congo by Aimé Césaire
          11. Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano
          12. Massacre River by René Philoctète

10. Read Mo Yan group
     a. Read 2-3 books written by Mo Yan
          Pow!

11. Other
     a. Read books longlisted or selected as finalists for these other literary prizes:
          * Wellcome Trust Book Prize (medicine in literature)
               Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
          * National Book Award
          * Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards (African diaspora)
     b. Read more books spontaneously from my TBR collection:
          The Chip-Chip Gatherers by Shiva Naipaul
          Damascus by Joshua Mohr
          The Jokers by Albert Cossery
          Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn
          Bad News by Edward St. Aubyn
          Some Hope by Edward St Aubyn
          A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

Planned reads for August (subject to change):

Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother - completed
NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
Helen Bynum, Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis - reading
Albert Camus, Algerian Chronicles - reading
Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries - completed
Stan Cohen, What to Feed Your Baby
Jim Crace, Harvest - completed
Assia Djebar, Children of the New World
Danny Dorling, The 32 Stops: The Central Line - completed
Will Ferguson, 419 - completed
Richard House, The Kills
Dany Laferrière, The Return - completed
John Lanchester, What We Talk About When We Talk About the Tube: The District Line - completed
Alison MacLeod, Unexploded - reading
Léonora Miano, Dark Heart of the Night - completed
Charlotte Mendelson, Almost English - completed
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being
René Philoctète, Massacre River - completed
Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart - completed
Boualem Sansal, The German Mujahid - completed
Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary - completed

I found Eleanor Catton's previous novel, The Rehearsal, to be interesting and unusual. I'm looking forward to finding out what you think of her new one.

*waves* Just dropping in and claiming a spot.

>5 RidgewayGirl: I have The Rehearsal, but I haven't read it yet. The Luminaries is very good so far, and the early reviews of it have been very good to excellent; most think it will make this year's Booker Prize longlist. It's set in the South Island of New Zealand in 1866, mainly in the town of Hotilika during the gold rush, and the primary theme so far is a murder mystery that involves several of the leading men in town. It's a tome at 832 pages (UK edition; the US edition won't be published until Oct 15), and I'm less than 1/4 of the way through, but I hope to finish it by Sunday.

>6 laytonwoman3rd: Hi, Linda! It's good to see you here, as always. :-)

Have decided to ignore the 200 unread posts on your last thread since my last visit, and jump in here while it's do-able (with regret for the recommendations I know I'll have missed in those 200 posts...) I really enjoyed The Rehearsal and didn't know she had another one out so was excited to read your post...until I got to the part about the 832 pages. I have so little time (and energy) to read at the moment, that would take me the rest of the year! That said, I could do with something unputdownable, so if it's a compelling read it might be just what I need. I await your final verdict!

Hi, Rachel! Here's a quick summary of my last thread, which began in early July:

* I had a splendid two week visit to London in mid-July, as I met up with several LTers and bought plenty of books. I saw five plays, and was most impressed with A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic, and Othello at the National Theatre.

* I'm midway through this year's Booker Prize longlist, which has been good so far. Here's my current ranking:

1. Harvest by Jim Crace
2. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
3. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
4. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
5. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
13. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

*My favorite books of the third quarter to date, in addition to Harvest, TransAtlantic and The Testament of Mary, are, in order, A Fine Balance, The German Mujahid and The Last Brother. Americanah was also very good, but not as much as I would have hoped. I've reviewed nearly all of the books I've read this quarter, along with the plays I mentioned above after I read the scripts.

I've just finished Part One of The Luminaries, and after 362 pages I'd say that unputdownable is an apt descriptor of it. I still have a long way to go (470 pages), but I'm completely hooked and I should finish it by tomorrow afternoon or evening, hopefully in time to write a review by Sunday night.

Aren't you lovely! Thank you. I'll note your favourites and add them to my wishlist - you're always a reliable source! I'm glad you liked The Last Brother, and I'm delighted to see it's now owned by 216 LTers; I know that's not many in the grand scheme of things, but I was the first, and I'm so glad the word is spreading about such a wonderful book. (I loved A Fine Balance, too).

Fabulous review of the performance of A Season in the Congo, btw.

>10 rachbxl: You're welcome, Rachel! Thanks for the lovely compliments, and for recommending The Last Brother to me and the rest of us. Your thread has been one of my favorites since I joined Club Read, although it's a very dangerous one for my wish list.

BTW, I just finished The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, and I thought it was brilliant up until the last few pages; if LT would let me I'd give it 4.7 stars. Right now I'd put it at the top of my Booker longlist ranking, ahead of Harvest by a whisker. I'll review it later today or tomorrow, after I think about it a bit more.

Got your costume all ready for next week's DragonCon in Atlanta? ****runs away and hides****

****peeks out from behind couch**** Is it safe yet?

Actually, there are several of the authors that I would be interested in hearing although I haven't read their books. And, the LT thing would be fun.

ETA: Whoops--meant to post this on the 75'er's thread. Will do so now.

>12 streamsong: Ha! No, I'll be leaving town (again) on Saturday, to spend two weeks with my parents in the Philadelphia area. I don't read fantasy or SF, so I wouldn't go even if I was going to stay here.

Oh...that also means that I'll miss the Decatur Book Festival, which is also held on Labor Day Weekend in the city of Decatur, which is the first town east of central Atlanta. It usually has 200 or more authors, and I'm sure that there are authors that I would have wanted to see. Checking...Richard Blanco, who read the inaugural poem in January...John Lewis, the civil rights leader who also serves as our US congressman...the poet Carl Phillips...Manil Suri...and Kevin Young, who teaches here at Emory. Hmm, that isn't many authors I would want to see, out of a total of 300. I won't change my plans for next weekend in that case.

Book #78: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

    

My rating:

'There's no charity in a gold town. If it looks like charity, look again.'

This astonishing historical novel opens in Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866, a gold mining town along the West Coast of the South Island. Founded two years previously, Hokitika is in the midst of a population boom, as prospectors, hoteliers and other businessmen have flocked there after news of its vast riches and promise of easy wealth has reached people living within and outside of New Zealand. One of those men is Walter Moody, a young Englishman who is trained in law but seeks gold to provide him with material comfort and the start of a new life. He arrives in town after a harrowing and emotionally distressing voyage at sea, and after he checks in at a local hotel he proceeds to its smoking room, where he hopes to unwind with a pipe and a stiff drink. Upon his arrival he notices that 12 men are already there, who appear to be from different backgrounds but also seem to have gathered in secret for a particular reason. The atmosphere in the room is tense and troubled upon his entry, but in his agitated state Moody doesn't sense that he has disturbed them. He is approached by one of the men, while the others appear to direct their attention toward their conversation, and after slowly gaining their confidence the men begin to share their intertwined stories with Moody, and the reason for their confidential meeting.

The story is centered around several mysterious and apparently interconnected occurrences that took place two weeks previously on a single night, including the death of a hermit in a shack overlooking town, the disappearance of a young man who has struck it rich in a gold mine, and the apparent near suicide of the town's most alluring prostitute. Every man in the room claims to be innocent of any direct involvement, yet they all appear to share some responsibility in the events that led up to these crimes, and each one fears that he may be accused and held accountable.

The reader learns more about these 12 men, Moody, and several other key players, as the story takes on a more defined shape. However, just as it seems to become more clear new twists arise and relationships emerge between previously unconnected characters, which made the tale more compelling and delightfully puzzling. I exclaimed out loud numerous times at various points ("Wait, what?" "Whoa!", etc.), and except for one relatively dead spot near the novel's midway point I was captivated from the first page to the last.

No review could adequately convey the intricacy and complexity of this novel, along with its numerous subplots and themes, and Catton's ability to maintain its momentum through 832 pages was akin to a performer riding a fast moving rollercoaster while juggling various objects of different sizes for hours on end. My biggest critique is its ending, which felt rushed and overly tidy, and despite its length I would have preferred for it to have been extended by another 50-100 pages.

The Luminaries is a masterful literary symphony, and a work of historical fiction that compares favorably with similarly superb novels such as The Children's Book, The Stranger's Child and The Glass Room. There are few books of this size that I would love to start reading again immediately after finishing it, but this is one of them, and young Ms Catton is to commended for a brilliant novel that should be a strong contender for this year's Booker Prize.

Wow! That sounds fascinating!

It was, Rebecca. I was looking forward to reading The Luminaries, especially after I met up with Rachael (FlossieT) in London last month, on the afternoon that the Booker Prize longlist was announced. You may remember that she interviewed Eleanor Catton for Belletrista in 2009, after her debut novel The Rehearsal was published; that book won a couple of minor literary prizes and was chosen as a finalist for several major ones, including the Orange Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Catton briefly referred to her next book, which I assume ultimately became The Luminaries, at the end of the interview, and Rachael said last month that the buzz she had heard from colleagues who had read it was very positive. It hadn't been published before I left London, and I just received my copy from Amazon UK last week, otherwise I would have read it much sooner. I'd say that A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry is my favorite novel I've read this year, but The Luminaries is the most gripping and unputdownable one.

BTW, The Luminaries won't be published in the US until October 15th, the day that the winner of the Booker Prize will be announced.

You've pushed The Luminaries from a book to keep an eye out for to one that I'll have to get soon. I'm happy to be in Germany, as I can get it immediately from amazon.de. I'll have to take a closer look at the Booker longlist to see if there are other books I'd like to read now.

Thanks, Kay. Of the seven longlisted books so far I've enjoyed all but The Spinning Heart and Almost English. I'll plan to read Unexploded by Alison MacLeod this week, and start The Kills by Richard House in early September.

I just ordered the paperback from the Book Depository via ABEBooks; the regular Book Depository web site lists it as unavailable.

Well done, Rebecca. I'm surprised that a paperback edition of The Luminaries is available, since the UK hardback edition published by Granta was only published this month. From what I saw on Amazon UK this is a special export edition, which was also published by Granta. It only took me four days to read it, and I read the last 500+ pages within a 24 hour time period, so I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

Agreeing with Rebecca, The Luminaries does sound fascinating.

The Luminaries does indeed sound intriguing. It's available in Canada from Amazon.ca ($21.94) on September 24, but I can order it from the Book Depository today (29.20 $CAN)

>21 NanaCC: Thanks, Colleen. After I posted my review on LT's home page and on Amazon US, I was tickled to notice that the review in the New Zealand Herald, the one on Amazon and mine all shared the same adjective: astonishing.

>22 Nickelini: I definitely think you would enjoy The Luminaries, Joyce. I look forward to your comments about it.

Great review of The Luminaries Darryl. No rush to read it though. I will wait for the dust to settle and for a copy to show up in the second hand racks.

Good idea, Barry. I'm glad that you liked my review.

I will look for The Luminaries. You are so very, very positive about it.

PS, I like the new photos at the top of your thread, especially the one on the right.

>26 edwinbcn: I hope that you do read The Luminaries, Edwin. Yes, I was very impressed with it, and I literally put aside my weekend plans to finish it this morning, as I was completely hooked. Not all of the reviews of it have been positive, but the ones I've read that have been are similar to mine in their effusive praise of it. I don't expect that everyone will enjoy it as much as I did, and the one other LTer I know well who has commented about it liked it somewhat less (she gave it four stars).

>27 edwinbcn: I'm glad that you liked the photos. I don't know if anyone noticed that I had a theme in mind in the opening photos of my threads, a tribute to childhood literacy, which started with a newborn baby in the first one, a toddler reading an adult book in the second, schoolkids reading the same book in the third, and two teenagers in this one.

Enjoyed your enthusiasm about The Luminaries. Is it just me or our your more positive about this Booker long list than in previous years?

Also, I'm catching up on a few weeks (or roughly a zillion posts). Awesome reviews especially of Massacre River and The German Mujahid. The Last Brother has been on my wishlist for a while, so thanks for the reminder.

I've loved your cover photos, but did not notice the theme. Cool.

>29 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. That's a very good question about my enthusiasm for this year's Booker longlist. I loved the 2009 longlist, as did many others, which featured outstanding novels such as Wolf Hall, The Glass Room, The Children's Book, Love and Summer, Summertime, Heliopolis, and The Quickening Maze. The following year was far less rewarding, and 2011 was a complete disaster, except for The Sense of an Ending and The Stranger's Child. 2012 represented a return to form, with superb books such as Bring Up the Bodies and The Garden of Evening Mists, but I didn't come close to my goal of finishing the shortlist by the time of the prize announcement or the longlist by year's end.

This year, particularly because I'm the primary administrator (and head cheerleader) of LT's Booker Prize group, I wanted to do a better job in reading this year's longlist and leading or at least actively participating in the discussion about the chosen books, and ideally I wanted to read the entire Booker Dozen by October 15th, when the prize will be announced. So far I'm on track to do that; assuming that I finish my next longlisted book, Unexploded by Alison MacLeod by the weekend, I'll have read eight of the 13 titles, which gives me 1-1/2 months to read the remaining five books.

My last thread here did fly by, thanks to the accounts of my London travels, book and theatre reviews, and especially comments from other Club Readers. It should slow down from now until mid-October, when I'll make a return trip to London. I'm glad that you enjoyed my reviews of Massacre River and The German Mujahid, and I hope that you're able to locate and read them soon.

>despite its length I would have preferred for it to have been extended
Wonderful review of The Luminaries; despite its length I've wishlisted it :)

Planned reads for September (subject to change):

Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company, Mind the Child: The Victoria Line
NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
Helen Bynum, Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis
Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History
Assia Djebar, Children of the New World
Richard House, The Kills
Abdellatif Laâbi, The Bottom of the Jar
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Patrick Leith, A Northern Line Minute: The Northern Line
Yan Lianke, Lenin's Kisses
Alain Mabanckou, Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty
Albert Murray, South to a Very Old Place

>32 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. The Luminaries is a relatively quick read despite its length. I read it in just over three days, and I covered the last 500+ pages in a little over 24 hours.

All caught up again Daryl - good to be here - your threads are so interesting. I enjoyed your perspectives on London - the theatre visits, the Tube, and everything else!

Loved your review of "The Audience". It's been a big success for all concerned. Not sure now if it happened before, during, or after your visit, but in case you didn't know I thought I'd mention that Dame Helen was at the centre of a very 21st century media frenzy after one recent performance... It was Saturday afternoon and there was a very loud and lively drumming performance going on outside the Gielgud Theatre:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22423586

Not every day you get to see old Queenie on the street in her twinset and pearls shouting "Shut the **** up" at a bunch of hairy drummers!

Back to the books, and I wanted to say thanks for the heartfelt Albert murray obituary. He is a very interesting man that I'd like to learn more of - I've added South to a Very Old Place which looks like a very special book.

Great review of Massacre River as well, which I've also added. I loved your review of The Last Brother too but I don't think I'll read that one.

Fabulous review of The Luminaries, Darryl. I will keep it on my Kindle wishlist to remind me to buy it when it comes out.

>11 kidzdoc: Ha! I'm afraid it's been quite a while since my thread was a danger to anyone's TBR list, though...

You've definitely got me interested in The Luminaries now - plot sounds great, and a long book that reads quickly would be perfect right now. Am currently enjoying (really enjoying) The Song of Achilles, which I think was one of your recommendations?

>35 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul! I'm glad that you enjoyed my London travelogue. I'll return to the capital in mid-October, to see more plays and meet up with LT friends.

The Audience was brilliant; I only wish I could have seen it on the stage. I would have paid dearly to have the opportunity to see Helen Mirren cuss out those drummers! Thanks for sharing that story.

I wish I had had the opportunity to meet or see Albert Murray in person. I'll read more of his work in the coming year.

I look forward to your comments about Massacre River.

>36 Linda92007: Thanks, Linda. The Luminaries will likely be my top choice to win this year's Booker Prize after I finish the shortlist.

>37 rachbxl: The Luminaries is a great vacation read. You're right, I did recommend The Song of Achilles, which was my favorite book from last year's Orange Prize shortlist.

It's a bit late, but I'm in the process of trying to organize a LT NYC meet up on Sunday, Sep 8, the weekend after next. I'll spend the next two weeks with my parents in suburban Philadelphia starting on Saturday, so I could take the train into the city for brunch, book shopping, etc. that day. If anyone is interested and can make it please let me know, either on this thread or as a private message.

After a marathon read, I'm caught up on this thread (I still have your 75 books one to go). Like many others, I always enjoy your reviews but find them hazardous to my TBR list. It's a good problem to have. I too enjoyed The Last Brother and loved The Song of Achilles which I read in May. Although I dread picking up another doorstop, The Luminaries sounds too good to pass up. Have fun in Philly.

Thanks, Lisa! I'm glad that you also enjoyed The Last Brother and The Song of Achilles, and I think you'll like The Luminaries as well. I've been nursing an upper respiratory infection the past few days at my parents' house, but I'll probably go to NYC tomorrow, Philadelphia on Friday, and return to NYC on Sunday for a LibraryThing meet up.

The Luminaries sounds fascinating. Hope you feel better soon and enjoy the meet up!

Book #79: The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby



My rating:

The fever attacked each person in the Angevine family, one after the other, until none were well enough to help the others. It hit suddenly in the form of a piercing headache and painful sensitivity to light, like looking into a white sun. At that point, the patient could still hope that it was not yellow fever, maybe just a headache from the heat. But the pain worsened, crippling movement and burning the skin. The fever rose to 104, maybe 105 degrees, and bones felt as though they had been cracked. The kidneys stopped functioning, poisoning the body. Abdominal cramps began in the final days of illness as the patient vomited black blood brought on by internal hemorrhaging. The victim became a palate of hideous color: Red blood ran from the gums, eyes and nose. The tongue swelled, turning purple. Black vomit roiled. And the skin grew a deep gold, the whites of the eyes turning brilliant yellow.

During a trip to New Orleans for a medical conference last month I and several colleagues visited Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, the city's oldest public cemetery, which has been featured in several books and movies. It contained numerous tombs from the 19th century; the one that struck me the most was the Ferguson tomb, which listed the names of three children that died on consecutive days due to yellow fever in 1878: one day old Sercy and 22 month old Mary Love on August 30, and four year old Edwin Given, on August 31.



After I pointed out the Ferguson tomb to my friends we stood in front of it for a minute in quiet reflection and mourning for the deaths of three young siblings in such a short space of time, and how it must have affected their parents. I read more about yellow fever in New Orleans after we returned home, and learned that the worst epidemic in the United States took place in 1878, which killed thousands of people in New Orleans and Memphis. I remembered that I owned The American Plague, and made plans to read it this month.

In The American Plague, Molly Caldwell Crosby focuses on two major topics: the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, and the efforts of Dr. Walter Reed and his fellow researchers to determine the cause of that dreaded disease, risking their own lives and health in doing so.

In 1878 Memphis was one of the major cities of the southern United States, as it was a transportation hub for steamboats from New Orleans to the south and the Ohio Valley to the north that arrived there via the Mississippi River, and trains that came from all over the country. It prided itself on its diversity and rich culture, and it served as the last major southern city between the developed eastern US and the largely untamed frontier that extended from Arkansas just across the Mississippi River westward to California. However, the city was also in severe financial difficulty, due to corrupt local politicians and the national Panic of 1873, which hit the South especially hard. As a result, the city was filled with thousands of people who migrated there from small towns, and the city's sanitation and water supply were public health hazards to all Memphians.

Ships coming to southern cities like Memphis, New Orleans and Charleston from Cuba and other Caribbean countries were supposed to be kept in quarantine for 40 days some distance away from the cities' ports, so that the crews could be observed for signs of yellow fever, malaria, cholera and other transmissible diseases. However, local business and civic leaders put pressure on government and public health officials to relax these standards; that, in combination with a lack of understanding of epidemic disease by medical and public health professionals, climates that were hospitable to Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that served as the insect vector for transmission of yellow fever from one person to another, and the high susceptibility of Caucasians to serious and fatal disease in comparison to people of African descent, led to frequent epidemics during the later half of the 19th century.

The 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis was the worst of all, due to a combination of hot weather, frequent rains that allowed mosquitoes to breed and survive in higher than usual numbers, and a worse than usual yellow fever outbreak in Cuba. As news of the extent of the epidemic spread Memphians who had the means to do so fled the city by the thousands, decreasing the city's population from 47,000 to 19,000 in a matter of weeks. Of those who remained, 17,000 contracted yellow fever, and over 5,000 of them died. The mortality rate for whites who contracted yellow fever was approximately 70%, versus 8% for blacks, many of whom were previously exposed to the virus in the Caribbean and Africa. Those four years of age and under were particularly hard hit, including the Ferguson children mentioned above.

The author uses archived letters, books and media to provide a vivid portrait of the "city of corpses", told by nurses and doctors who tended the ill, many of whom succumbed to the plague itself. After the epidemic was finally over in autumn 1878 the city, which was the second largest in the South after New Orleans, never recovered spiritually or financially, as many of the wealthiest Memphians moved elsewhere, and immigrants from other states and countries chose other places to live.

The second part of the book describes the tireless and heroic efforts by Major Walter Reed and his colleagues in the United States Army to determine the mode of transmission of yellow fever, through experiments conducted primarily in Cuba at the turn of the century. Although it would be many years until the yellow fever virus could be identified, their work conclusively determined that Aedes aegypti was the insect vector that permitted the disease to be passed from person to person. Several researchers and soldiers died of yellow fever or were left permanently disabled by it. As one doctor wrote, "I can think of no other disease who killed so many scientists studying it."

Crosby closes the book with a brief discussion of the yellow fever vaccine and the disease, which still exists in South America and Africa. Aedes aegypti is a common species in the southern US (and I can personally attest to its presence in Atlanta), so this country is at risk for yellow fever epidemics in the future, due to easy travel, a lack of knowledge of the symptoms of the illness in nearly all US medical professionals, who have never seen a case of the disease, and the preponderance of an unvaccinated and unprotected population.

The American Plague is a superb book about the 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Memphis and the work and personal sacrifice that led to the discovery of its mode of transmission and the development of an effective vaccine against the causative virus. Other topics are only lightly discussed, such as the epidemic of the same year in New Orleans and other cities in the Mississippi Valley, which killed a total of 20,000 people, the 1793 epidemic that decimated Philadelphia, and current efforts to control yellow fever in South America and Africa. It reads like a well written novel, making it a very enjoyable and enlightening book, and it is highly recommended to all readers.

Interesting! I knew nothing about Yellow Fever, although I think I may have been vaccinated for it when I went to Papua New Guinea. (Not sure--it was 30 years ago after all. )

I knew less about yellow fever than I rightly should have, so this was an enlightening read for me. I feel as though I should get the yellow fever vaccine ASAP, though.

You might like this story, Darryl . . . my brother and his family lived in Papua New Guinea for 8 years, and contracted malaria while they were there. A year or so after returning to Canada, my sister-in-law had a relapse (second bout? Not sure what you call it). She knew exactly what to do and got herself to emerg at the general hospital in the city of 110,000 people they lived in. She had to tell the doctors what to do as none of them had ever seen malaria before. Every doctor in the hospital came by to visit her to see their first case of malaria. Just doin' her bit to help the medical profession!

Fascinating history lesson of The Yellow Plague, The Untold story of Yellow Fever I was vaccinated against yellow fever back in the 1970's when I travelled to India. That description of the yellow fever attacking the Angevin family at the start of your review is truly horrific.

Great story about your SIL's malaria relapse, Joyce! I can absolutely believe that. We see a handful of cases at my hospital every year, including one a couple of weeks ago, due to Atlanta's international population that includes immigrants from Africa, India and elsewhere in Asia. I don't personally see enough cases (one every 2-3 years or so) to feel comfortable with it, but fortunately our ID (infectious disease) specialists see a good number of patients and know how to manage the disease.

Thanks, Barry. That segment came from the book's preface, in which an ex-slave came to the house of his former owners, the Angevine family, who were all stricken with yellow fever. It was one of the most vivid and horrifying sections of the book, but there are several more taken from accounts of nurses and physicians that tended to the sick in Memphis during the 1878 epidemic that are nearly as frightening.

Great review, Darryl! I immediately put The Yellow Plague on my TBR list. I read and enjoyed The Great Influenza and The Ghost Map a few years ago, so I'm sure I'll find this one interesting as well. This summer while in Rouen, we visited the plague cemetery. I happened to be reading Camus' The Plague at the same time. It's a creepy place with carvings of grave-digging implements and skulls, etc. There's even a desiccated black cat preserved in the wall with a convenient window so you can view it.

Fascinating review of The American Plague Daryl!

>50 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa! I own The Great Influenza and The Ghost Map, but I haven't read either book yet. Must change that.

Nice photo of the plague cemetery in Rouen. I'd like to see plague cemeteries when I return to Europe next year, and I'll check to see if any exist in London, as I'll return there in a little over a month.

>51 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul!

There's a bunch of mass burial plague pits in many parts of London, but most of them relate to the earlier Black Death I think.

Yes, the cemetery in Rouen is a mass grave from the Bubonic Plague not Yellow.

>53 Polaris-: That's what I was thinking, Paul. I don't believe that yellow fever ever struck England, probably because its relatively cool climate wasn't hospitable to Aedes aegypti or other types of mosquitoes that can harbor the yellow fever virus.

>54 labfs39: And I would assume the same would hold true for most of France, Lisa, especially a northern city like Rouen. I wouldn't be surprised if there were small scale outbreaks in Marseille, though.

Great review, Darryl. I've read that with climate change, more tropical species of insects, including mosquitoes, will find it hospitable further north, so we may no longer think of some diseases as tropical ones.

Thanks, Rebecca. IMO it's not at all inconceivable that we could start seeing outbreaks of diseases such as yellow fever and malaria in the southern US in our lifetimes, especially if temperatures rise and rainfall amounts increase. The yellow fever virus has also been mentioned as a biological weapon, as essentially no one outside of the endemic areas of the northern half of South America and central Africa has any innate protection against it. If memory serves me correctly there have been sporadic cases of malaria in the Deep South that were acquired within the country, although the only cases I've seen were in children that recently traveled from endemic areas.

So, kidzdoc, I have a question.
If someone has had yellow fever do they develop immunity to the disease? Does the disease have any long term effects?

I come from Southern Illinois where the mosquitoes were plentiful. One of the wonderful things about So. California was its near total lack of the pesky critters. Until the financial downturn and a whole bunch of people's houses were foreclosed on. They'd move but the swimming pools in the backyard were often not drained. All of a sudden, we had mosquitoes here too! YUCK!

>58 avidmom: According to the CDC's web page on yellow fever (http://www.cdc.gov/yellowfever/):

   • The majority of infected persons will be asymptomatic or have mild disease with complete recovery.

   • In persons who become symptomatic but recover, weakness and fatigue may last several months.

   • Among those who develop severe disease, 20% - 50% may die.

   • Those who recover from yellow fever generally have lasting immunity against subsequent infection.

So, this also contradicts what I stated on my 75 Books thread, that most cases of yellow fever cause moderate to severe illness or are fatal. I implied that there wouldn't be many people actively infected with yellow fever who would be out in public, as most would be too ill to do so. And, as a result, there would be fever infected people for the yellow fever mosquito to bite, and thus it would be less likely that the virus would be easily passed from infected to susceptible individuals. Wrong!

I don't think I've seen a single mosquito in California. I've visited San Francisco at least 25 times since 1998, but I've only been to SoCal twice, both times for short visits to LA. Fortunately for you Aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito, is only prevalent in significant numbers in the Deep South, extending from east Texas to South Carolina.

This year's shortlist was announced this morning:

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Harvest by Jim Crace
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

I thought that The Luminaries, Harvest and The Testament of Mary would make the cut, and I'm pleased that The Lowland was also included. I'm very surprised that TransAtlantic wasn't chosen, and that We Need New Names and A Tale for the Time Being were.

I'm over halfway through The Kills, which is over 1000 pages in length. I'll probably put it aside for now, and focus on the three shortlisted books I haven't read, the ones by Bulawayo and Ozeki, which are both on my Kindle, and the one by Lahiri, which I'll pick up in NYC on Wednesday.

Official release: Man Booker Shortlist 2013

Book #81: The Kills by Richard House

   

My rating:

This omnibus consists of four books, which were released separately before this version was published. In book 1, Sutler, the main character is introduced: he is Stephen Lawrence Sutler, a British civilian contractor who works for HOSCO International, which builds facilities primarily in the Middle East and Asia, and is funded and supported by Western governments. He is sent to Amrah City in Iraq to oversee the conversion of a burn pit, used to incinerate waste from American and British military operations, into a free standing and fully equipped city, albeit one in the middle of the desert that is hundreds of miles away from other sizable cities in that country. Sutler, who uses an alibi given to him by his superior in place of his real name, is injured in an attack on the compound, and is ordered by his boss to make himself scarce, due to shady practices by HOSCO that leads the US and British governments and the media to charge him with the theft of over $50 million. He escapes to Turkey on foot, and begins a most unlikely misadventure that involves two journalists, a university professor capturing the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey, and the professor's lover and student research assistant.

In book 2, The Massive, the focus is on the operation in Amrah City, along with the sad sack American men who work there. Book 3, The Kill, is a completely unrelated novel that is read by several characters in books 1 and 2, which is a gruesome murder mystery set in Naples in which several characters pay for their incredibly stupid choices with their lives. The last book, The Hit, involves a bizarre search for "Sutler Three", which contains some of the most insipid dialogue I've ever read in a Booker Prize nominated novel, such as this excerpt:

He's ready for her after the lesson when she comes out of the building. Rike looks quickly up and down the street as if she might be ready for him also. As soon as she passes by the café he steps forward, strides, in pace, right behind her.
   'Take the book.'
   She turns to face him, rolls her eyes. 'You again.'
   'Take the book.'
   'No.'
   'Take it.'
   'No.'
   'Take it. Take it. Take it. Take it.'
   She doesn't respond. In fact, she's not even bothered by him. She isn't threatened at all.
   'Take the book. Take the book. Take the book.'

The book is supplemented by online video and audio content, which is meant to provide insight into the characters' lives outside of the book's text.

In an interview, House mentions that he was inspired by Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666, a long work that consists of four major sections, and this book appears to be an attempt to duplicate its structure. Unfortunately it doesn't come close to 2666, as it is nearly completely devoid of any coherent plot or significant character development, and it is filled with uninteresting and at times poorly written dialogue that must make Bolaño spin madly in his grave at the thought of this book being compared to his. The last two books were almost completely irrelevant to the first two, and the supplemental multimedia content was an unnecessary diversion that added nothing to my appreciation of the novel.

The Kills is a curious and disappointing choice for this year's Booker Prize longlist, and at just over 1000 pages it was a complete waste of time, money and paper, making it one of the worst Booker nominated novels I've ever read.

Maybe the conversation is supposed to be:

'TakeLike the book.'
She turns to face him, rolls her eyes. 'You again.'
'TakeLike the book.'
'No.'
'Take Like it.'
'No.'

"A complete waste of time, money and paper."
How does a book like that get two stars?

I'd be leary of any book that came with "supplemental" online material.

>62 avidmom: In my 75 Books thread I mentioned that I was thinking of bringing The Kills with me when I return to London next month, finding the judge who first recommend this book, and repeatedly shriek "Take the book!" at him.

The only other person who has rated this book (Deern) also intensely disliked it. She gave it 3-1/2 stars initially, but since then she has dropped her rating to 2-1/2 stars. I may drop my rating by another half star in the next few days as well.

The Kills does have its fans, along with several positive reviews in the British press. However, I'm not a fan of genre fiction (thrillers, SF, fantasy, YA, etc.), so other readers may like it far better than I did. I don't think it has sufficient literary merit to warrant consideration for the Booker Prize, though.

making it one of the worst Booker nominated novels I've ever read. That bad Darryl? I do love a bad review: thumbed.

Is The Kills worse than Vernon God Little? If so, it might win!

Darryl - I know you're not reading the Giller prize nominees anymore (I don't either!), but the long list was announced today and I thought you might be interested anyway:

Going Home Again by Dennis Bock (HarperCollins Canada)
The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
Hellgoing by Lynn Coady (House of Anansi Press)
Cataract City by Craig Davidson (Doubleday Canada)
How to Get Along with Women by Elisabeth de Mariaffi (Invisible Publishing)
Extraordinary by David Gilmour (Patrick Crean Editions)
Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady (Doubleday Canada)
October 1970 by Louis Hamelin; Wayne Grady, trans. (Anansi)
The Son of a Certain Woman by Wayne Johnston (Knopf Canada)
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud (Knopf Canada)
Caught by Lisa Moore (Anansi)
The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta (HarperCollins Canada)
Minister Without Portfolio by Michael Winter (Hamish Hamilton Canada)

The Giller shortlist will be announced Oct. 8, with the winner being named Nov. 5. This year’s jury comprises Atwood*, novelist Esi Edugyan (winner or the 2011 Giller for Half-Blood Blues), and Brooklyn-based novelist Jonathan Lethem (Dissident Gardens).

- See more at: http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/authors/boyden-messud-land-on-giller...

*Margaret Atwood's latest, Maddaddam obviously is ineligible since she's a judge.

>64 baswood: The Kills was definitely that bad, Barry. I would have been a bit more generous with my rating if it was 700-800 pages shorter, though.

>65 RidgewayGirl: I haven't read Vernon God Little, so I can't compare it to The Kills, Kay. Nothing I've heard about that book makes me want to read it.

>66 Nickelini: Thanks for posting the Giller Prize longlist, Joyce. Have you read any of these books?

Speaking of literary prizes, this week marks the announcement of the longlists for the National Book Awards. The National Book Foundation has adopted a Booker Prize like format for the first time this year, with longlists of 10 books to be released this week for each of the four awards, followed by a shortlist of five that will be released in mid October and the selection of the winning books in a prize ceremony in mid November. The longlist for the NBA for Young People's Literature was released yesterday:

   Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp
   Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
   Lisa Graff, A Tangle of Knots
   Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince
   Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck
   David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
   Tom McNeal, Far Far Away
   Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone
   Anne Ursu, The Real Boy
   Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints

More info: 2013 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST FOR YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

The longlist for the NBA Award for Poetry was announced earlier this morning:

   Frank Bidart, Metaphysical Dog
   Roger Bonair-Agard, Bury My Clothes
   Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion
   Andrei Codrescu, So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems: 1968-2012
   Brenda Hillman, Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire
   Adrian Matejka, The Big Smoke
   Diane Raptosh, American Amnesiac
   Matt Rasmussen, Black Aperture
   Martha Ronk, Transfer of Qualities
   Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems

More info: 2013 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST FOR POETRY

Thanks for posting the Giller Prize longlist, Joyce. Have you read any of these books?

Ha ha! I was going to say that I hadn't even heard of any of them, but that's not quite true. I've seen the Lisa Moore at the bookshops, and it interests me, and I actually own The Orenda which is a very rare occurrence for me--I almost never buy new books in hardcover.

Here's the longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction, which was announced earlier today:

   T.D. Allman, Finding Florida: The True Story of the Sunshine State
   Gretel Ehrlich, Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami
   Scott C. Johnson, The Wolf and the Watchman: A Father, a Son, and the CIA
   Jill Lepore, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
   Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields
   James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
   George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
   Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832
   Terry Teachout, Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington
   Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief

Thanks for posting the National Book Award lists, Darryl. I'm a big fan of Jill Lepore (nonfiction list), but haven't seen this book in the stores yet. I've heard of some of the other books or authors, but haven't read any of them.

And, finally, here's the longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:

Tom Drury, Pacific
Elizabeth Graver, The End of the Point
Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
Alice McDermott, Someone
Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge
George Saunders, Tenth of December
Joan Silber, Fools

You're welcome, Rebecca. I don't any of the books on any of the four longlists, but I will buy The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri when it finally comes out in the US next week, as it's also on the Booker Prize shortlist. I had intended to see James McBride speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia last week about his novel The Good Lord Bird, but I decided not to go because of the storms that hit the Northeast on Thursday. I'd like to read those two books, along with A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Bleeding Edge, and possibly Tenth of December. I'd love to read the entire longlist before the NBAs are announced, but I seriously doubt I'll get to more than half of them in the next two months.

I've been on the wait list at the library for A Constellation of Vital Phenomena for weeks. I heard an interesting review of it some time ago. Today I heard a not so flattering review of Bleeding Edge by Meg Wolitzer on NPR. Doesn't sound like something I would enjoy.

Oh, good. The Execution of Noa P. Singleton didn't make the longlist. It's a stinker of a book and I kept running into it in speculation as to what would be nominated. Also, hooray for The Tenth of December. Saunders manages to be imaginative with structure and setting, while keeping a heart in these stories. There's one about a woman going to look at a dog that is just heartbreaking.

Well, I've heard of some of the books on that fiction list, at least, but haven't read any of them. But then, the only US fiction published in 2013 I've read this year is News from Heaven by Jennifer Haigh, which I greatly enjoyed.

>73 labfs39: I'll probably download A Constellation of Vital Phenomena to my Kindle, although I may buy it from Barnes & Noble this weekend if it's significantly discounted from the list price. I'll definitely buy The Good Lord Bird, and I'll still probably buy Bleeding Edge despite its less than favorable reviews. I noticed that Jonathan Lethem reviewed it in this past Sunday's NYT Book Review, but I haven't read it yet.

>74 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad to hear that you liked Tenth of December, Kay. I'll probably read it in November or, fittingly, in December.

>75 rebeccanyc: I entirely missed your review of News from Heaven, Rebecca. Its setting in western Pennsylvania is of interest to me, so I'll probably look at it when I go book shopping this weekend or early next week.

Hmm; have I read any American fiction published this year? Checking...yes, I've read A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aranson, and Enon by Paul Harding, but I didn't like either book. I'm not sure if Americanah or TransAtlantic count, as both Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Colum McCann live in the US but, obviously, were born outside of the US. Interestingly, and disappointingly, neither book was chosen for the National Book Award for Fiction longlist.

Darryl, I am a fan of Jennifer Haigh, and the stories and characters in News from Heaven tie in with some of the characters in Baker Towers, about the same now down-on-its-heels coal-mining town. But I think News from Heaven can stand on its own. I know you don't read much contemporary US fiction, but you might like this one.

>77 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. I've just downloaded a sample of News from Heaven to my Kindle, and I've added it to my Amazon wish list.

If what you downloaded is the first story in News from Heaven (to some extent the stories are linked, but each can be read independently), it might not give you a real feeling for the book because it takes place when a Bakerton girl goes to New York City and the other stories largely take place in Bakerton.

I finished A Tale for the Time Being early this morning. I didn't like it. Toward the end of the book one peripheral character said to Ruth, the novelist who is one of the two most central characters of this book, and her husband "Excuse me for asking, but have you guys been smoking pot?" I smirked, as I had wondered earlier if Ruth Ozeki was on something when she wrote this book. I'll give it 2½ stars and rank it just ahead of We Need New Names on my Booker shortlist ranking, as it was slightly more accomplished than that one. Neither book deserved to be on the longlist, nonetheless the shortlist, IMO.

Longlist ranking:
   1. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
   2. Harvest by Jim Crace
   3. TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
   4. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
   5. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
   6. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
   7. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
   8. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
   9. Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson
   10. The Kills by Richard House

Shortlist ranking:
   1. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
   2. Harvest by Jim Crace
   3. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
   4. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
   5. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

The Lowland will finally be released in the US on Tuesday, so I'll get it then, and complete the shortlist by the end of the month. My inner completist is urging me to read the other two longlisted books, Unexploded by Alison MacLeod (which I own) and The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (which I don't have), but based on comments from Nathalie, Suz and others I seriously doubt that I'll like either book.

So far I'd say that this year's longlist is a disappointing one overall, as I've only liked five of the 10 books I've read so far.

"So far I'd say that this year's longlist is a disappointing one overall"

That is so sad.

>79 rebeccanyc: You're right, Rebecca. The Kindle sample of News from Heaven that I downloaded is entitled "Beast and Bird", which seems to be the first story and is set in New York. I'm not yet ready to buy the book, since I already have a plate full of books to read for the last quarter of the year, including at least 8-10 for the upcoming Reading Globally theme.

It's better than the 2011 Booker shortlist, though!

>81 NanaCC: It is a bit sad, Colleen. I expected more from this group of judges, and several worthy books were left off of the longlist, including The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna and Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. To me it seems as though the judges focused on variety and diversity, and as a result the overall quality of these books suffered as a result.

>83 RidgewayGirl: Absolutely right, Kay! The 2011 Booker shortlist was utterly dreadful.

The Colombian author Álvaro Mutis died yesterday in Mexico City, at the age of 90. The winner of the 2001 Miguel de Cervantes Prize and the 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, he was best known for his work The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, published by New York Review Books in the US, a collection of seven novellas about Maqroll the Gaviero, a bumbling but lovable wanderer. I read this omnibus several years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Guardian: Álvaro Mutis Jaramillo, Colombian writer and poet, dies aged 90

I've had The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll on the TBR for years; I had forgotten that you liked it so much. I hate it when it takes an author's death to get me to take a book off the TBR.

hmmm The American Plauge intrigues me - I was born in Memphis, Baptist Hospital, altho shortly ;) after the plague. WLed that one.

46 - Nick - how did they get to live in Papua? I love reading about that place for some reason and about Borneo Eric Hansen Stranger in the Forest is one of my all time favorites. especially when I was teaching sexuality - fascinating stuff

59 - Darryl we have plenty of mosquitos in El Dorado County (northern California). Maybe not as many in Sacramento because we have abatement.

62 - Brilliant!

Trying to get caught up more so going to post now and keep reading thread.

Interesting nominees - I couldn't get through Going Clear - seemed so silly.

Flamethrowers was an early review book for me and I only gave it four stars.

>86 rebeccanyc: Larry (lriley, who may have been a Club Read member at one time and is one of my favorite resources for international literature) also enjoyed The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, Rebecca. Hopefully some will read it for the fourth quarter Reading Globally challenge.

>87 mkboylan: Hi, Merrikay! The American Plague contains interesting details about the history of Memphis before and after the devastating 1871 yellow fever epidemic, so I think you'll especially appreciate it.

I had to look up the location of El Dorado County, since I hadn't heard of it, and I see that it's located between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. Nice!

I liked avidmom's comment, too.

I doubt that I'll read any books from the NBA for Nonfiction longlist, with the possible exception of the Duke Ellington biography. I just read several LT reviews of Flamethrowers; I have absolutely no interest in reading it.

Hey Daryl - just catching up again. Thanks for posting the NBA longlists. Don't think I'll read anything from the non-fiction list any time soon, though like you the Duke Ellington bio is probably the most likely for me. I'd like to read Terry Teachout's Pops first though. (Have you read But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer by the way? It may well be of interest to you. I found it pretty beguiling - and certainly very original.

I like the look of George Saunders' Tenth of December and Joan Silber's Fools from the fiction list.

You're welcome, Paul (sorry for the late reply!). I haven't read But Beautiful; I just looked at your review, and it definitely sounds like something I would enjoy. Onto the wish list it goes.

Thanks for posting all these lists. They make me think I really should read some recently published novels. But too bad the Booker list seems hit and miss.

I'm catching up and wanted to say that that was a fascinating review of The American Plague. I had no idea about this aspect of Memphis history.

Alice Munro is the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.

Glad tidings for certain, Darryl. Thanks for keeping us up to date.

>92 dchaikin: You're welcome, Dan. I have read some exceptional contemporary novels, many of which have come from Booker Prize longlists in recent years. I'd most highly recommend The Luminaries, Harvest and TransAtlantic from this year's longlist.

I'm glad that you liked my review of The American Plague. I didn't know anything about the history of Memphis, and before reading this book I viewed it as a second-tier Southern city, one far more similar to Birmingham, AL and Jackson, MS than Atlanta or New Orleans, so I found it especially interesting that the main cause of its demise was the devastating 1871 yellow fever epidemic.

>94 laytonwoman3rd: You're welcome, Linda! And thanks for your recommendation of The View from Castle Rock; I'll look for it after I arrive in London on Saturday.

I'm reading TransAtlantic now and am really enjoying it. I read the first section to my SO, who studied aeronautical engineering, and he liked it as well. I have The Luminaries as well (thank you for the review), but as it's somewhat less portable, it will have to wait until I finish the other doorstop I'm currently reading.

>96 RidgewayGirl: I'm eager to get your take on TransAtlantic, Kay. I was disappointed that it didn't make the shortlist, but even if it had it would have finished higher than third on my rank list, behind The Luminaries and Harvest.

I have badly neglected this thread over the past two weeks, mainly due to the trip I took to London last week. I arrived there on the 12th, and left this past Monday. While I was there I met eight LTers from the 75 Books group in London, Cambridge and Ely, saw six plays, went to two museums, and bought 30 books. First, here's a list of the books I brought back with me on Monday:

14 October, National Theatre Bookshop:
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
Liolà by Luigi Pirandello

14 October, South Bank Book Market (also known as the secondhand book stalls under the Waterloo Bridge):
The Empty Space by Peter Brook
Lost New Orleans by Mary Cable
Quarantine by Jim Crace
Worthless Men by Andrew Cowan

15 October, Daunt Books (Marylebone High Street):
Everyman Mapguides Barcelona
Secret Barcelona: Jonglez Guide
Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto
On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein
The Devil that Danced on the Water by Aminatta Forna
Small Circle of Beings by Damon Galgut
A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó

16 October, Topping and Company Booksellers, Ely:
The Sea Close By by Albert Camus
Archipelago by Monique Roffey
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos
Black Vodka by Deborah Levy

19 October, London Review Bookshop:
Roads to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom
No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Paradises by Iosi Havilio

19 October, Watermark Books (London King's Cross Station):
Truth: Philosophy in Transit by John D. Caputo
Born Weird by Andrew Kaufman
You Can't Say That: Memoirs by Ken Livingstone
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

The plays I saw were The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (13 Oct), Chimerica (14 Oct), Much Ado About Nothing (15 Oct), The World of Extreme Happiness (18 Oct), A Doll's House (19 Oct) and Adult Supervision (20 Oct). I'm in the process of writing reviews of these plays, which I'll post here.

I arrived in London on Saturday October 12th, and I didn't do anything that day. I met Fliss (flissp) on Sunday, and we went to see The Drowned Man in London. Here's my review:

The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable

This performance by the award winning Punchdrunk company was set in the Temple Studios near Paddington Station, a large four story building which was originally designed to be the British outpost for Republic Pictures, a major Hollywood film company. The studios operated throughout the postwar years until they abruptly closed in 1962, and the building has been largely unoccupied since then.



The members of the audience were given Carnival masks to wear as they entered into the performance space. Each was instructed to remain silent, and encouraged to separate themselves from their companions, in order to experience the play on an individual basis. I attended the performance with Fliss, and within five minutes we were separated from each other until it ended.





The four stories of the building served as the performance space. The rooms included decrepit studios, which were eerily lit, smoky and so dark in some places that it was difficult to see more than a few feet in front of you, along with musty hotel rooms, a small movie theater, deserted offices containing items from the 1940s and 1950s, gaudy dressing rooms with burlesque clothing, a doctor's office and waiting area, and various bizarre items including trailer homes, a wrecked 1950s automobile which contained the body of a woman killed in an accident, shrines that were very similar to the Day of the Dead altars from Mexican culture, and chicken cages. The spooky atmosphere was enhanced by ominous, booming orchestral music. The audience wandered randomly from room to room and floor to floor, and the silence added to the perplexity and absurdity of the space.





After a half hour or so actors began to appear within the rooms, who did not wear masks, unlike the audience members or the staff that manned the rooms like attendants in museums. Each would enact a scene solo or with one or more other actors, then proceed to another space, as the audience chased after them. There were no seats, and little if any separation between the actors and the audience, who frequently had to part to let the actors pass and were sometimes included in the performance as an actor fell into someone's arms or led someone astray by the hand. There wasn't a clear plot, but the larger theme was the manner in which Hollywood film companies promised actors fame and wealth, used them for their own means, and discarded them like rubbish haphazardly thrown out of a moving automobile. Meaningless sex and alcohol and drug use were rampant, as actors and directors conspired to abuse and lie to each other for personal gain.

The Drowned Man was easily the most unique theater performance I've ever attended, and I wouldn't have gone to see it if Fliss hadn't suggested it. It was bewildering, frustrating, and weird, but overall it was an enjoyable and definitely unforgettable experience, and one that I'm glad to have seen.

sometimes it's good to wander into those bewildering and weird experiences -- as long as they are in relatively safe spaces.

On Monday I met Bryony (BBGirl55), and we spent an hour or so viewing the paintings created between 1700-1900 in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. We had lunch at a nearby pub, then walked to Parliament Square and across Westminster Bridge to buy books at the National Theatre Bookshop and South Bank Book Market, the secondhand book stalls under the Waterloo Bridge close to the National Theatre, before we crossed back over the Thames and parted near Covent Garden.

Here are the two photos Bryony and I took when we met on Monday. First, Bryony outside of the Covent Garden Underground station just before we parted:



And me on Parliament Square, beneath the statue of Nelson Mandela:



That evening I saw the highly lauded play Chimerica at the Harold Pinter Theatre in the West End. Here's my review:

Chimerica by Lucy Kirkwood
Harold Pinter Theatre, London

  

My rating:

This play, which has received rave reviews in the London press, ended its second run at the Harold Pinter Theatre in Soho last week, after a very successful initial run at the Almeida Theatre this summer. The term Chimerica was created by authors Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick, which was meant to describe the mutually dependent but uneasy and tense relationship between China and the United States.



In the play Chimerica, the key character is the so-called "Tank Man", who stood in front of a line of tanks during the Tiananmen Square uprising and massacre that took place in 1989, and who became a worldwide symbol for the bravery exhibited by ordinary Chinese citizens who stood up for freedom and against government repression on that fateful day. Joe Schofield (played by Stephen Campbell Moore) was a 19 year old American photographer who was in a hotel room overlooking the square that day, and his photograph of the Tank Man gained him immediate fame. The performance opens with that dramatic scene, then fast forwards to 2012, as Joe has become a self-righteous and idealistic yet jaded photojournalist for a New York based magazine. In the final days of the 2012 US presidential campaign he decides to embark on a quest for the Tank Man, with the help of Mel Stanwick (Sean Gilder), his bombastic and even more crude journalist buddy, and Zhang Lin (Benedict Wong), a teacher who participated in the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square as an 18 year old student along with his new wife Liuli (Elizabeth Chan), where he first met Joe. Joe views the Tank Man as one of the great heroes of the 20th century, and after he receives a tip that he is now living in NYC he embarks on a crusade to uncover his hidden identity and restore him to his rightful place as a great man, by any means necessary. On a plane ride from New York to Beijing he and Mel meet Tessa Kendrick (Claudie Blakely), a British consultant for a large company seeking to establish itself in the Chinese market, and the two become off and on lovers.



The action swings rapidly back and forth between the US and China throughout the play, as Zhang Lin has flashbacks to that tragic day in 1989. Zhang tries to help Joe in his single minded quest, as he simultaneously protests against the government and its policies, putting his career and life in serious danger. Joe and Mel pursue one lead after another to find the Tank Man, and Joe's efforts put his career and his relationship with Tessa in jeopardy.



Although I thought Chimerica was very well done I didn't enjoy it as much as the critics did, due to my dislike of Joe's self centered and at time immature behavior and the shallowness of Tessa, although Lucy Kirkwood clearly intended for them to be portrayed in this manner and the actors did a superb job of playing their roles effectively. Nonetheless it was a play that covered a lot of ground and pulled no punches, while providing no easy answers to the difficult relationship between the two superpowers, its heroes and ordinary citizens who speak out against injustice and for personal freedom.

On Wednesday I traveled by train from King's Cross station to Ely, a small town in Cambridgeshire about 15 miles north of Cambridge, where I spent several pleasurable hours with Rhian (SandDune). She met me at Ely station, and from there we walked into town along the river. We visited Ely Cathedral, bought books at Topping & Company Booksellers, and had lunch at the Almonry.

Here are some photos from that outing to Ely.

The Cutter Inn, alongside the River Ouse:



A standard houseboat on the river:



A not so standard houseboat, which is covered in willow and adorned with sculptures made from willow:



The original portion of the Ely Cathedral, which was initially constructed over 1000 years ago:



More photos of the exterior of the cathedral:





Rhian approaching the main entrance of the cathedral. On the door to the left was posted the sign warning visitors that 600 schoolchildren were inside:



Topping & Company Booksellers of Ely:



Rhian and I having coffee in the bookshop:



Entrance to the Almonry, where we had lunch:



Some photos of the interior of the Ely Cathedral, none of which can do justice to seeing it in person:











Finally, a house I particularly liked on the walk back from Ely Cathedral:

>100 janeajones: Seeing The Drowned Man was a most unusual experience, Jane. I always see one or two plays with Fliss whenever I travel to London, usually at the National Theatre, and this play was sponsored by the NT. I would never have chosen to see it on my own, and I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did if she didn't accompany me, even though we were separated for almost all of the performance. We met again on Saturday, to see A Doll's House in London and have dinner with Rachael (FlossieT) in Cambridge, so we had a chance to talk about The Drowned Man immediately after we saw it and again the following Saturday. I'll post a review of A Doll's House and photos of our unusual dinner no later than this weekend.

Thanks for posting all of this, Darryl, including the photos. Sounds like a great trip!

Love reading about your theatre tips and your meetings with fellow LTers

The Drowned man - A Hollywood experience sounds like excellent theatre and what a great idea that the audience should be masked rather than the players.

Love seeing the meetup pics and all of the others. Really enjoy the play review and hearing about the purchases and bookstores.

Yes, I'd like to agree with the above ^. I always feel so clever when I'm reading your theatre reviews and enjoy your forays to foreign places - especially when it's to my old home city. Glad you went to the original Daunt - isn't it a lovely book shop? What a good idea also to do the book stalls under Waterloo Bridge on the walk to the National. I love those stalls, but it always seems that I never have time to stop and properly browse - judging by your impressive haul you obviously did! Lost New Orleans looks a very nice find, and I like the look of On Brick Lane, which I've wishlisted.

Now lucky me - BBC4's fantastic 'Arena' arts strand is starting a 2 part 50th anniversary special on the National Theatre tonight - maybe it'll be on BBC America soon?

Darryl I enjoyed your lush travel recap.

"The Drowned Man" reminds me of a partnership about ten years ago between Celebrity Cruise Lines and Cirque du Soleil that created a surreal "Bar at the Edge of the World" where Cirque performers interacted with guests. Maybe it was too unstructured; it just seemed uncomfortable and weird and was phased out relatively quickly.

Stopping in to take a peek at what you've been reading. I'm glad you mentioned Rachael's superb 2009 interview with Catton in Belletrista. I thought of it immediately when I heard the news of the award.

>104 rebeccanyc: You're welcome, Rebecca. I still have four plays to review, which I'll get to over the next week.

>105 baswood: Thanks, Barry. There's more to come, including more photos. I love visiting London and meeting up with LTers who live in or near there, and I plan to go several more times next year.

>106 mkboylan: Thanks, Merrikay! I've wanted to visit Daunt Books for awhile, and Heather (souloftherose) and I loved our visit there. The London Review Bookshop is probably my favorite independent bookstore there, and Foyles is the megastore that I like best.

>107 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul. Yes, Daunt Books is a superb bookshop. We both liked how the books were separated by country, with travel books mixed in with fiction and nonfiction books. I plan to visit Barcelona next year, and she will be going with her family to Uganda in December, and we each easily found guide books, travelogues and works of fiction about these destinations in one spot.

I often visit the stalls under the Waterloo Bridge on weekend afternoons, just before I see a play at the nearby National Theatre.

I'll read both Lost New Orleans and On Brick Lane soon. NOLA was my home for the better part of three years, and I want to read more about the historically diverse areas of London, including Hackney and the East End. I've owned Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair for a couple of years, but I haven't finished reading it yet.

The 50th Anniversary celebration of the National Theatre is being broadcast in the US to select theaters, via NT Live (http://ntlive.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/43033-50-years-on-stage). Unfortunately my local cinema, which is showing the rebroadcast of the production of Othello that I saw at the NT this summer today, isn't one of them.

>108 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. "Bar at the Edge of the World" does sound similar to "The Drowned Man", except that the performance I saw was well attended and has been getting great reviews in the London press.

>109 avaland: Rachael has gotten a lot of mileage out of the articles she wrote for Belletrista, especially the interview of Eleanor Catton. She was supposed to have joined a group of us to see Much Ado About Nothing at The Old Vic on the 15th, but she had to cancel because she received an invitation to Ellie's Granta Books party that night, which was the evening of the Booker Prize announcement. She did meet us in Southwark just before the play started, and we met her for dinner last Saturday night in Cambridge, after Fliss (flissp) and I saw A Doll's House in London. Rachael said that the party was a blast, especially since Ellie (rightfully) won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries, and she had to stay at someone's house after it ended in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, as she missed the last train from King's Cross station to Cambridge, where she lives.

Rachael is also one of the judges for the upcoming Costa First Book Award (more info here), so she's been busy reading through the 40+ books that have nominated for it. She's had to give up LT, due to her work responsibilities at The London Review of Books, her non-work related literary projects and her busy family life (husband and three children), so I'm glad that we became friends before she had to drop out of our club.

>110 kidzdoc: Thanks for that update, Darryl.

Book 96: Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death at a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink



My rating:



In 1926 the Southern Baptist Convention sponsored the building of a new hospital in the Uptown section of New Orleans. The Southern Baptist Hospital, known by locals as "Baptist", was an impressive building that combined the amenities of a grand hotel with the latest technologies found in the best hospitals. Its primary mission was to provide the best medical and spiritual care to the poor of the city, in order to glorify God and His great works, in a cheerful and uplifting atmosphere. Charity cases were accepted upon referral from local Baptist churches, whose congregations collected donations to help defray the cost of the free care their members received. This offer was not extended to all New Orleanians, however, as African Americans were not accepted as patients at Baptist until 1968.

Within weeks of its opening Baptist experienced its first weather related crisis, as flood waters from a severe storm flowed into the hospital's basement, which resulted in moderate damage and loss of medical supplies, although no patients or staff were affected by it. The city's ancient sewer system was long known to be inadequate in removing heavy rainfall that resulted from tropical storms, particularly in the sections of town that lay at or below sea level. However, the improvements that would have been needed to address this problem were extremely costly, and neither the state legislature or the residents of Louisiana were willing to pay for them. The Flood Control Act of 1928 was passed in the aftermath of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, which put the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of projects to reduce flooding in prone areas such as New Orleans, and the city's drainage capacity was greatly increased as a result. However, these efforts provided little benefit to the neighborhood where Baptist was located, which continued to flood routinely after moderate rainfalls.



In 1990 Baptist merged with Mercy Hospital, located in the Mid-City section of New Orleans, to form Mercy-Baptist Medical Center. Five years later Tenet Healthcare Corporation, a Dallas based, investor owned and profit driven company founded by three lawyers, acquired the two hospitals of Mercy-Baptist, and Baptist was renamed Memorial Medical Center the following year. LifeCare Hospitals of New Orleans, a non-Tenet organization which provided acute inpatient care to critically ill and severely debilitated patients, leased the seventh floor of Memorial Medical Center. Many of the LifeCare patients were on mechanical ventilation, which is commonly referred to as life support.

As Hurricane Katrina approached the United States, hospitals in flood prone areas in southeastern Louisiana and elsewhere made preparations and in some cases evacuated patients to what were believed to be safer areas. Several LifeCare patients in Chalmette, a city in low lying St. Bernard Parish, were moved to "LifeCare Baptist" within Memorial Medical Center. Other hospitals were equally proactive, including Charity Hospital, the city's massive public hospital, where only three patients died during the days following Katrina. In the case of Memorial Medical Center, whose top management was far removed from the path of the hurricane, the response to the crisis was slow and woefully inadequate, particularly after the levees in New Orleans broke after Katrina had passed, which unleashed massive and never before seen flooding that knocked out electrical power to Memorial.



Memorial found itself cut off from outside help, as temperatures inside reached as high as 110 degrees and care for the sickest patients became nearly impossible, especially the LifeCare patients that depended on electricity to power mechanical ventilators and IV line pumps that delivered life sustaining medications. The hospital's administrators and medical staff, not knowing when help would arrive, due to limited communication with Tenet and with local, state and federal government officials, were faced with the extremely difficult decision of how their patients should be managed and in which order they should be evacuated. In a reversal of the usual triage system, it was decided to remove the patients who could be most easily transported and were the least sick first, in the thought that they would be most likely to survive the journey and the unknown conditions that awaited them on the outside. The most critically ill patients, those who had DNR orders and those who could not be easily loaded onto helicopters or airboats were saved for last. On day five outside help in sufficient numbers arrived, and a mass evacuation of patients and staff finally began. Memorial's hospital administrators and medical staff found themselves under extreme external pressure to evacuate the hospital completely and leave no living patients behind, as several critically ill, extremely fragile and difficult to transport patients remained on the wards.

After the flood waters receded, investigators found 45 bodies at Memorial, several of whom appeared to have died suddenly and under unusual circumstances on the day that the hospital was completely evacuated.

Five Days at Memorial provides a thorough account of what happened at Memorial Medical Center during that harrowing and hellish time, using the accounts of the medical staff, administrators, patients and families who were there, and the aftermath after the extent of the tragedy became apparent. Sheri Fink, a physician and journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2010 for her ProPublica articleThe Deadly Choices at Memorial, has done a masterful job in exploring this story in an unbiased manner, including the ethical dilemmas that the administrators and medical staff faced in deciding who should be evacuated first, and what care the sickest patients should receive under the most extreme conditions that any health care provider should ever have to face. Fink leaves it to the reader to decide the guilt or innocence of the physician and two nurses who faced criminal charges, as the top brass at Tenet and government officials who abandoned the staff and patients at Memorial and placed them in an impossible situation were not punished. It also reads like a well written adventure novel, which made it a book that was nearly impossible to put down, and one that will be accessible to readers of all backgrounds. Five Days at Memorial will likely end up as my favorite non-fiction book of 2013, and it should be a strong candidate for a Pulitzer Prize or a National Book Award in 2014.

High praise from you, Darryl, in a great review.

Love your pictures of your London trip.

oh man I'm still number 22 on the waiting list for this, but the library has 13 copies, out for three weeks each, so I prefer to think I am really number 1.69230769 on the list and will have it in less than three weeks.

Tantalizing review. Not going to give us your verdict? I suppose I have to hold mine until I read it, but I doubt it will change.

Incredible that those on the front lines, who faced the problems, were faced with criminal charges and those at the top, who finally could care less, were exonerated. What does this say about our bureaucratic system?

Wait.....doesn't that mean I am a little close minded? hmmmm.......Well, it would take a lot to make me judge the people who went through Katrina.

Um never mind. What Jane said.

What a shocking story! Thanks for providing the background information as well.

ETA Sheri Fink had an op-ed piece in the New York Times about Hurricane Sandy's impact on medical care in New York City.

Thanks for that link Rebecca. Excellent line: Priorities create reality.

I saw the author interviewed somewhere (Daily Show? PBS?) What an upsetting story! Great review.

Great review Darry. I can understand why the story as written sounded like an adventure story. How do you make those sorts of decisions under those circumstances, when you have no military training.

Fantastic review Daryl - I so want to read this!

ETA - And great pictures as well.

>112 kidzdoc: What a nightmare! It sounds like a great book, though and a very, very important story that needs to be told.

Your review of Five Days at Memorial makes it an irresistible read for me, Darryl. How people perform under pressure is a fascinating subject, and how they are judged afterward for that performance is something that needs a lot more study and consideration.

And, btw, I've gone back through your "travelogue" photos a few times....they are so lovely and inviting. The houseboats are especially intriguing. I'd love to take a holiday on one, I think.

Darryl a fine, fine review. For-profit healthcare -- even the peripherals of it such as pharmaceuticals, devices, insurance -- concerns me. I've avoided the book because I know the basics about the situation and figure I'd get unduly frustrated/angry knowing more. But your review tempts me.

>111 avaland: You're welcome, Lois.

>113 NanaCC: Thanks, Colleen. I'll finish post more photos and theater reviews from my trip to London. later this week.

>114 mkboylan: No, Merrikay, I hadn't planned to post my thoughts about the actions of the medical staff at Memorial, to avoid spoiling it for those who might read the book, and because I have a hard time judging them, given the difficult situation that they faced.

Oh...I read on someone else's thread recently that LT now has a new feature, in which you can post spoiler comments between brackets, using "spoiler" and "/spoiler" between the brackets, similar to "strike" and "/strike", etc. Let's see:

I predict that the winner of this year's baseball World Series will be the Boston Red Sox.

It works!

>115 janeajones: Incredible that those on the front lines, who faced the problems, were faced with criminal charges and those at the top, who finally could care less, were exonerated.

Sadly enough I'm not surprised that the administrative muckety-mucks at Tenet and in the local, state and federal government were not held accountable for what happened in New Orleans and at Memorial, post-Katrina. If I remember correctly, the head of FEMA (Michael Brown, or "Brownie" as he was infamously referred to by President Dubya), lost his job, but nearly everyone else escaped any significant punishment or reprimand.

>118 rebeccanyc: Thanks for posting that Op-Ed article by Sheri Fink about Hurricane Sandy, Rebecca; I haven't read it yet.

>120 Nickelini: I'll have to look for that interview of Sheri Fink, Joyce. Thanks for mentioning it.

>121 baswood: How do you make those sorts of decisions under those circumstances, when you have no military training.

Exactly, Barry. Toward the end of the book the author mentions the relatively new field of disaster medicine, in which doctors are taught what to do in the most extreme situations. The hospital I work at had a mock Code Orange drill in the ER a couple of years ago, in which high school students volunteered to be the victims of an accident that seriously injured several dozen passengers on a school bus. (Code Orange is the hospital emergency code for a disaster or when mass casualties occur.) Even though it was a drill it was still chaotic and stressful, although it pales in comparison to what the medical staff at Memorial encountered during those five days.

>122 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul! I hope that you can find Five Days in Memorial in the UK.

>123 avidmom: It is an important story, avidmom, and Sheri Fink did a great job of describing it. I remember reading about it in the media when the story became public, and it was of special interest to me. As I've probably mentioned I lived in New Orleans for most of a three year period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and two of my cousins worked at the hospital when I lived there, as they and their mother lived very close by.

>124 laytonwoman3rd: How people perform under pressure is a fascinating subject, and how they are judged afterward for that performance is something that needs a lot more study and consideration.

I completely agree, Linda. I occasionally have to work under extreme conditions, such as last Friday, when I was given 18 new patients (14 ER admissions, two PICU transfers and two inpatient consultations) in a six hour period, from 2-8 pm. It was hideous and stressful, but it bears no comparison to what happened at Memorial.

>125 detailmuse: Thanks, MJ. Yes, I'm also concerned by for profit healthcare, and I'm fortunate to work for an organization that is a non-profit one. Tenet, by the way, is still in operation, although it sold off the hospitals it owned in southern Louisiana afte Katrina.

Thanks for the information about the spoiler alert thing.... very cool.

I'm also concerned by for profit healthcare,
This morning I woke up and saw a news story about a website callled MediBid (or something like that) where patients actually go and bid for surgery, etc. ! Seriously. There was also an interview with Dr. Makary, author of Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You on as well. There's another one for the wishlist!

>127 avidmom: I've had my eye on Unaccountable for a while, avidmom. I'll look for it on my next book shopping trip.

I've been slow to post my London travelogue from last month, so I'll make it a point to catch up over the next week.

On Tuesday the 15th at 4 pm I met Heather (souloftherose) and Luci (elkiedee) at the main branch of Daunt Books, the famed travel bookshop, located on Marylebone High Street close to Madame Tussauds wax museum. I had never been there, and when Heather mentioned that she was also interested in going and had never been it made for an easy decision to meet there.



The exterior of the bookshop was striking, but the interior was even better. I had seen numerous pictures of the shop, but seeing it in person filled me with awe.



The bookshop's collection is organized geographically, with European countries on the main level, the United Kingdom on the upper level, and remainder of the world's countries in the basement. Each country has its own separate section, and within each section the books are organized by region and city, regardless of genre. I bought four books about Barcelona that were sitting alongside each other: two guidebooks, Everyman Mapguides Barcelona and Secret Barcelona; one nonfiction book, Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín; and one novel, A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó, an author from Barcelona.

I left with a total of nine books, along with a lovely blue Daunt Books bag. Heather found several books about Uganda, for her upcoming trip there. Luci, the most frugal of the three of us, visited an Oxfam bookshop a few doors down.

We didn't take any photos, as we were in a hurry to get to Southwark by 5:30 pm, to meet Jenny (lunacat) and Lesley, a friend of a friend of Rachael's (FlossieT), for dinner and drinks before we saw Much Ado About Nothing at The Old Vic, near Waterloo Station. We met at The Cut Bar, a popular bar and restaurant located within the building that houses The Young Vic, located a short distance away from The Old Vic.



Rachael was originally supposed to join us to see the play, but she received an invitation to the Granta Books party for Eleanor Catton that evening, as the 15th was the night of the Booker Prize announcement; Lesley went in her place instead. Rachael did meet us briefly before the play started, which was very nice of her considering that she had to rush from her office in Bloomsbury south across the Thames, and then hurry back north to make it to the party.

This was my first visit to the nearly 200 year old theatre, and it was a visual treat.

On to the play and script:

Book #103: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare



My rating:

A short background for the 0.1% of you who aren't familiar with the story (which included me until last month):

Much Ado About Nothing, which is believed to have been written between 1598 and 1599, is considered to be one of Shakespeare's best comedies, which combines sharp wit with jealousy, love and honor. The setting is the Sicilian city of Messina, where its governor Leonato, welcomes an army of Spaniards after a successful battle. The soldiers are led by Don Pedro, whose closest companions are Claudio, a young man who has distinguished himself in battle, and Benedick, a witty but cynical bachelor who vows never to marry. Don John, Don Pedro's black hearted brother who has recently gained his way back into his brother's good graces, is also part of the army, along with his friends Borachio and Conrade. Claudio falls hopelessly in love with Hero, Leonato's only child, a lovely and innocent girl who is equally enamored of him, and the two obtain permission to marry. As Don John and his henchmen conspire to disrupt the wedding, others engage in an equally devious plot to unite Benedick and Beatrice, Hero's acid tongued and clever but beautiful cousin, who engage in a near constant battle of wills until each expresses affection for the other.



The Old Vic production stars 75 year old Vanessa Redgrave as Beatrice and 81 year old James Earl Jones as Benedick, in an odd casting of the lovers who are supposed to be much younger. However, the two stars performed brilliantly in their roles, although the supporting cast was almost entirely forgettable. The play was set during World War II, as Don Pedro and his men were part of a U.S. Army division instead of a 16th century Spanish regiment. The performance was also aided by several humorous elements, including several Boy and Girl Scouts that played the roles of Watchmen, and a delightfully decrepit elderly man that performed a hilarious dance routine and played the role of Verges, the assistant to constable Dogberry.



Overall I'd give 3 stars to the supporting cast, 4 stars to the play as a whole, thanks to Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, and 5 stars to the delightful afternoon and evening with Heather, Luci, Jenny, Lesley and Rachael.

Book #104: Asleep in the Sun by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Originally published in 1973
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Reissued by New York Review Books in 2004

  

My rating:

Lucio Bordenave lives in a modest home in a small alley, along with his wife Diana, a woman of modest beauty and frequent, unpredictable tempers, and Doña Ceferina, an older relative who serves as the couple's housekeeper but excels at stirring up trouble between them and Diana's cantankerous family. Lucio is also surrounded by meddlesome neighbors who offer less than helpful advice on his troubled marriage, and his only escape is to his room, where he earns a profitable living as a repairer of clocks.

A friend of Diana's, noting her difficult behavior, encourages Lucio to have her committed to a nearby mental institution, as the man is a close friend of the head physician there, who he thinks can help her. Lucio reluctantly does so, but almost immediately regrets his decision. When she is released weeks later she is a changed woman, happy and full of life and love for her husband, but Lucio realizes that something isn't quite right, even though likes the "new" Diana considerably better. He visits the friend who recommended Diana's institutionalization, then returns to the asylum, where he makes a discovery that is shocking to him and a threat to his marriage and to the residents of his community.

Asleep in the Sun is a surreal and allegorical novel, mixed with wry humor, menace and a touch of magical realism. This is normally the type of book that I thoroughly enjoy; however, unlike The Obscene Bird of Night, the brilliant novel by José Donoso, I found myself far less interested in Casares' characters or the plot as a whole. Part of the reason may be that I read the description of the book on its back cover, which negatively influenced my approach to the novel, as other reviewers have said. It was an moderately enjoyable read, albeit a disappointing one, and I may give it another chance in the future to see if I like it better on a second reading.

Book #105: A Good Parcel of English Soil: The Metropolitan Line by Richard Mabey



My rating:

Richard Mabey, one of England's most respected nature writers, was commissioned by Penguin to write this book for its Underground Lines series, in celebration of the London Underground's 150th anniversary in 2013. Mabey spent his childhood in Metro-land, a suburban area northwest of central London that was a creation of the Metropolitan Railway in the early 20th century. It was designed to attract city workers and their families to the benefits of pastoral life while making them dependent on the extended Metropolitan Line and the land the company purchased in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex.

  

Mabey provides a history of the Metropolitan Line, which began in 1863 as a link for city workers arriving at London's major railway terminals at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross stations, then spread outward after the company's owners realized that the poor and middle class residents of the city sought refuge out of the city to nearby villages and towns on weekends and holidays. Mabey aptly recalls his childhood in one of the Metro-land towns, and provides rich descriptions of the flora and fauna found there. Although the Metropolitan Railway bought the suburban land and created the towns of Metro-land for its own profit, most of those who relocated there did benefit from the move, as Mabey's family did when they escaped the London Blitz during World War II.

A Good Parcel of English Soil is a beautifully written and evocative book, which is easily one of the best of the Penguin Underground Lines series and one which would be appreciated by residents of suburban London as well as the casual reader.

Wow! That is one amazing bookstore!

Thanks for the reportback and gorgeous pics, Darryl. Love the bookstore, too.

I'm afraid I would lose control of my spend there and I suspect others would, too - especially for us Reading Globally! Wow!!

>133 rebeccanyc: It is, Rebecca. It's the most visually appealing bookshop I've ever visited, and I was fortunate to only leave there with nine books. That was Heather's first time to Daunt Books as well, even though she lives in suburban London, and she said that she stood in awe for several minutes after she first walked into it.

>134 akeela: You're welcome, Akeela. I haven't posted the events from two weekends ago, though; that was one of my favorite weekends of the year, along with the weekend that I spent with 15+ other LTers this spring when we met in Philadelphia.

Daunt Books would be heaven for Reading Globally participants! Heather and I wished that we had allowed more time for us to browse there, but I'm certain that we'll each go back there much more often in the future.

Yes that organization by country sounds pretty fun! Thanks for the photos. I really enjoy them. oh and yes, of course the reviews wonderful as always.

Wow! That is an amazing bookstore. Love the pictures. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Thanks for the Shakespeare review Daryl. It must have been very rewarding to see Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in those roles.

Well done for making it to Daunt. Yes, it is a beautiful book shop - arguably the most beautiful in London, and certainly one of the best. For travel writing the other two I would recommend would be Stanfords in Covent Garden (on Long Acre) - the best for all things maps and cartographic but also very good on general travel writing as well as guides - and the Travel Bookshop in Notting Hill (it features in that cheesy rom-com with Hugh Grant). (My favourite is still Joesph's Books in Golders Green - but I realise that that is probably because of the books it stocks - heavy on the Jewish and Israeli themed subjects, though it's a fine shop in general anyway - AND it has a good selection of used/remainder titles.) I'm glad I don't live too close to Daunt any more as it certainly would leave quite a dent in the wallet - it being so fabulous and not having any used books to help the £s go further.

I agree too that it would be the ideal place for Reading Globally fans, and I think their approach to displaying the stock based on country rather than subject is the right way to go for a shop specialising in travel writing.

Now I'm thinking about how I can contrive a trip to London and get in to Marylebone for that matter so I can go there again... Maybe I should plan a joint thingaversary visit for January to Daunt + Joseph's + Foyles... mmm...

>137 NanaCC: You're welcome, Colleen! I'll post the remaining pictures and descriptions over the next week.

>138 Polaris-: I'm glad that you liked my comments about Much Ado About Nothing, Paul. I found out about this production when I was in London in July, and it was the main reason that I decided to return there last month. The other five plays were well worth seeing, and it was great to meet up with old LT friends and make several new ones.

That was my seventh trip to London in the past seven years, and I'm still surprised that I had never been to Daunt Books before. I doubt that I've ever been in a more beautiful bookshop, in London or elsewhere, and it will certainly challenge the London Review Bookshop as my favorite one in the capital (although City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco is still safely atop my all time favorite bookstore list). I'll have to visit Stanfords in Covent Garden, but I thought that The Travel Bookshop closed a couple of years ago. Checking...yes, it closed in 2011:

The Travel Bookshop: Notting Hill store that inspired Hollywood film to close

I found several books at Daunt from my wish list that I hadn't found anywhere else, particularly Roads to Santiago by Cees Nooteboom, On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein and Homage to Barcelona by Colm Tóibín.

Your proposed Thingaversary trip to London in January sounds perfect!

Darryl what is it that you love so about City Lights? I just love the whole history of it and love to be there.

>140 mkboylan: From my frequent visits (well over 20) to San Francisco and to City Lights (nearly 100, I'll bet) I've become friendly with the two guys who usually open the shop on weekday mornings, Scott and Gent, who know me on a first name basis. (A couple of years ago Scott pointed me out to a European woman who was gathering information for a story about City Lights, and he described me as one of the bookshop's best customers, even though I lived over 2000 miles away.) If Scott is working that day we'll usually spend a few minutes chatting, especially if it's my first visit there on a particular trip. We're both huge jazzheads, although he's considerably more knowledgeable than I am. I generally arrive there just as the bookshop has opened, before the crowds come (as you probably know it's also a tourist attraction, particularly for Europeans visiting the city, and the guides on the tour buses that run on Columbus Avenue routinely describe it and Vesuvio's, the beatnik bar next to it). Scott generally plays avant garde jazz in the store, and invariably he'll have something on that I've never heard of. He'll tell me about it, and then we'll talk about what artists are performing in the Bay Area, and what albums and concerts we've seen since we last met. He'll also show me some books he's read and liked that I might be interested in, and I'll tell him which books I've read and especially liked recently. All that comes before I've looked at a single book!

Onto the books. City Lights, as you know, specializes in books by independent and university presses, and it always stocks books of great interest that I've never heard of or seen elsewhere (although I must give a quick shout out to the main branch of Book Culture on the Upper West Side in NYC near Columbia University, which also stocks a goodly number of books like these, as does University Press Books in Berkeley, on the edge of Cal's campus). On my first visit of a SF trip I pick out books like a child in a toy store with an unlimited expense account, until my arms are filled with books, mainly from the new nonfiction and new fiction shelves. I'll usually return there two or three days later, to grab books from the Literature in Translation and European Literature sections and the upstairs Poetry Room, and after another few days I'll make at least one more trip to browse the collection of books downstairs, and revisit the stock on the main floor to look for any new books of interest that have arrived.

Other than that City Lights is nothing special.

How I enjoyed just reading your comment above in 141!!

I've still never crossed the Atlantic to the States, but when I do I'm going to fulfill a long-held dream to visit San Francisco and the City Lights bookstore.

Sad to discover that the Travel Bookshop closed already two years ago! I used to live a 15 minute walk from there and pass by it most weeks. It was a highlight of popping down to Portobello Market. So sad that the recession has claimed so many book shops. I'll have to report back after checking the next time I'm up there whether the bargain book shop that replaced it is still going.

Darryl I only knew of City Lights through you, and so it was fun when I read in one of Billy Collins’s poems about “the bicycling poet of San Francisco whose little amusement park of a book...” -- and then looked into it and discovered A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights.

>142 Polaris-: I'm glad you liked my "review" of City Lights, Paul! San Francisco is my favorite city in the US, and I'd highly recommend a visit there, and to City Lights of course.

Despite the closure of many independent bookshops London has hundreds more than Atlanta does, even accounting for ATL's smaller size and population. Not counting the university bookstores at nearby Georgia Tech there are no longer any indies in my neighborhood of Midtown, which has roughly 30,000 residents, many if not most of whom are college educated professionals and university students who presumably would like to have a general bookstore within walking distance. Atlanta frequently appears in the annual list of America's Most Literate Cities (it ranked eighth last year), but it's hard for me to believe or understand this, given the lack of bookstores and the weak public library system here, especially in comparison to NYC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh (a great medium sized city which is a very underrated place to live, work and raise a family), and of course London.

One of these days I'll visit Notting Hill, especially the Portobello Market.

>143 detailmuse: I've seen Lawrence Ferlinghetti enter City Lights at least twice, although I haven't seen him in at least two or three years. He's very unassuming and quiet, and I wouldn't have noticed him if Scott or Gent hadn't exchanged greetings with him as I was talking with one of them. We share the same birthday (March 24th), although he has several decades on me; he'll turn 95 next year, God willing.

I'm in love with your description of Daunt...

Terrific review of Five Days at Memorial - something I know very little about. What a sad and crazy position to be in.

Book #106: Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo: The Waterloo & City Line by Leanne Shapton



My rating:

The Waterloo & City Line is easily the shortest and least used of the 11 current London Underground lines. It runs between two busy stations, Waterloo on the South Bank beneath the National Rail station and Bank in the historic heart of the capital's financial district. The trip is just under 1½ miles in length and takes barely 4 minutes, which is still longer than the similar Times Square to Grand Central Terminal shuttle along 42nd Street in Manhattan.

Waterloo-City, City-Waterloo consists of brief external descriptions and the imagined thoughts of several people riding the subway, along with mostly inscrutable diagrams that include scribbles on newspapers, large dots in meaningless configurations, and drawings of what appears to be water in motion, presumably from the River Thames, as this line passes underneath it for a portion of the short journey. The dialogues are mostly petty and mean-spirited, as all riders seem to hate their jobs, their lives and their lovers and friends, and most obsess about their attractiveness (or lack of it) and their personal miseries. The most appealing portions of the book were the two collections of photos of babies and toddlers, although all of the children were white, which was rather anachronistic in multicultural London and its diverse population of subway passengers. This was a very disappointing read, whose shallow depth matches the brief length of the Underground line it was meant to portray.

>145 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan! I should also mention that the staff members I encountered at Daunt Books were very friendly, especially the woman who took my order and asked me about Five Days at Memorial, which I was reading at the time and carried in my arm. She wrote down the title and added it to her own wish list!

Catching up on your busy week... I think I'd like to live in that bookshop. Too bad, though, that the Casares didn't live up to expectations and was partially spoiled by the back cover. Now I would find it awfully hard NOT to read the back cover even knowing that I shouldn't.

Just stopping by to say I love the pictures of the Daunt, the review of the play (James Earl Jones is great), and your description of City Lights. Hurrah for Seattle, being no. 2 on the literate city list. We used to be no. 2 behind Minneapolis, but I see DC has sprung to the top.

Ah, lovely bookshops. When I went to San Francisco I bought so many books in City Lights that I decided to ship them home, and the woman in the post office thought I'd been studying there for a year!

Daunt is great - but that Oxfam bookshop a few doors down also has some very good stuff ;-)

A review of Bookshops? there must be one somewhere, meanwhile I will continue to read Darryl's thread. Enjoying your most recent trip to London which I am living vicariously through you.

>148 StevenTX: I'm with you, Steven. I could live in Daunt Books, although I'd want to split my time between there and City Lights Bookstore.

I had high hopes for Asleep in the Sun, so I was disappointed when it didn't live up to my expectations. The Amazon description on LT is identical to the one on the back cover of the book, so I wouldn't read that either.

>149 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. Daunt Books was better than I expected (and I had high expectations of it), and I enjoyed the play and the company of old LT friends and one non-LT new friend (Lesley is on Goodreads, so hopefully she'll be interested in joining LibraryThing as well).

I can easily envision Seattle, Minneapolis and Washington being amongst the top 10 most literate cities; I can't say the same thing about Atlanta. We do have several notable colleges and universities here (Emory, Georgia Tech, Spelman, Morehouse and Georgia State, to name a few), but it isn't comparable to the cities you mentioned or Boston, NYC, San Francisco, or Chicago.

>150 wandering_star: City Lights is a very dangerous place, Margaret! I can relate completely to your story; if I didn't bring an extra bag (or sometimes two) for books I would have needed to ship my books back to Atlanta as well.

Heather and I didn't visit the Oxfam bookshop, mainly because we were pressed for time, and I didn't ask Luci what she bought there. I'll stop there the next time I visit London, as I'll definitely want to return to the Marylebone branch of Daunt Books.

>151 baswood: I posted a tongue-in-cheek "review" of City Lights Bookstore in message #141, Barry. I need to finish my London travelogue, though.

Darryl, whether you are reviewing theatre, bookshops or books, I read and enjoy all your posts. If you have given a book a good rating, I know I will enjoy it. Keep up the good work!

I just wish I could go to London as often as you do. A short visit is never enough to that wonderful city.

*delurking to wave hello*

Enjoyed your reviews of the play (does it get any better than James Earl Jones?!) and the bookstore(s). I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover but seriously, the cover for Asleep in the Sun gave me paws pause.

As always, thanks for the lovely pics. of your London travels!

>153 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne! I agree; even though I had a splendid eight day visit to London it was far too short of a stay, and I'm already thinking about my next trip to the capital.

>154 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom (nice pun!).

141 was almost as much fun as a trip to City Lights! Thanks for posting about that. What a wonderful place it is! I have to say I am still amazed at the difference in books available when I go out of town (Sacramento). Seriously, I can hardly believe the difference and I think most people are unaware of it. Made me want to go over for a visit this weekend, and tour the Greenpeace Warrior at the same time, which is there for a few days.

144 so sad to hear Atlanta's a disappointment bookstore wise. I lived there a couple of years as a child and one of my best memories is my mom taking me to used bookstores downtown and letting me choose. Then a movie at Fox I believe it was. It was about 1958 and I could ride the bus alone at the age of 10, from southeast Atlanta downtown where my mom worked. Georgia Tech vs. Georgia State is fightin words in my family by the way as we have graduates from both. I'm partial to Tech and wanted to go there but didn't get to.

I like to wander around Seattle's Left Bank Books just for the fun of reading the titles. Won't find any of THAT stuff in Sacramento Lisa.

Darryl I finished Five Days at Memorial and just could hardly say anything about it I was so tongue-tied. I thought it was amazing and was blown away by the number of different perspectives and different answers given to some of the ethical questions. Just amazing and wonderful eye-opening experience for me. So glad I read it.

Book #109: When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963 by Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix and Wes Wise.

  

My rating:

On November 21, 1963 President John F. Kennedy arrived in Texas for a two day visit, which was designed to bring together the liberal and conservative wings of the state's Democratic Party, and to gain support for Kennedy's planned campaign for re-election the following year. After successful visits to San Antonio and Houston, President Kennedy and Jackie, his lovely and even more photogenic wife, spent the night in Fort Worth. On the following day, Kennedy gave a breakfast speech in front of hundreds of supporters there, then made a short flight to Dallas, where he was to give another speech at the Dallas Trade Mart after a motorcade through the heart of the city.

Dallas had acquired a reputation for extreme right wing activity in late 1963, particularly after United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was heckled, spat on, and struck on the head by a picket sign after a speech he gave there on UN Day, barely a month before Kennedy's planned visit. Several of Kennedy's closest advisers urged him to cancel the Texas trip, or at least his visit to Dallas, as they feared for his safety. However, the President, looking ahead to the 1964 campaign, felt that it was more important to proceed with this visit.

Friday November 22nd was an unusually warm and rainy day in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but by the time Air Force One landed at Love Field the skies had cleared, and the decision was made to remove the bubble top of the presidential limousine, to allow the hundreds of thousands of Dallasites who gathered on the well publicized motorcade route to get a glimpse of the Kennedys as they proceeded from the airport to the Trade Mart.

Television was still in its early stage in 1963, particularly in its coverage of live events. Broadcast cameras consisted of two main types, bulky shoulder models which could capture images but not sound, and even larger ones that had to be connected to news trucks by thick wires, which took many minutes to warm up before they were ready for use. Film from cameras had to be carried back to the news studio for processing, as the use of satellites was at a primitive stage. As a result, most Americans received news coverage via newspaper and radio, until that fateful weekend.

Most of Dallas's local media were out in force to cover the President's visit, including the staff of KRLD, the city's CBS television and radio affiliates. As the news was announced that three shots had been fired at the presidential motorcade and that Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally had been seriously wounded, local and national reporters and cameramen headed en masse in a mad scramble to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the men were taken, and the Texas School Book Depository, where the shots were fired, while others reported from the Trade Mart as the crowd learned with horror what had taken place.

When the News Went Live is an excellent set of descriptions of the events on that tragic day in November, the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, his assassination by local club owner Jack Ruby two days after the president was cut down, Ruby's trial the following year, the effect that the two shootings had on the reputation of Dallas and the United States, and an analysis of how news coverage has changed in the nearly 50 years since then, as told by four members of the KRLD staff: Bob Huffaker, the television reporter who became known to millions of Americans as he described the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas City Jail live on CBS Television; Bill Mercer, who was present during the midnight news conference on Friday where Oswald was interviewed by reporters from all over the world; George Phenix, a newly minted news photographer who captured images at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Oswald's assassination, and Ruby's trial; and Wes Wise, the reporter who was approached by Ruby on the day of Kennedy's assassination, who later became mayor of Dallas, and was instrumental in helping the city's residents heal from the tragedy and in restoring its national reputation.

Huffaker, the author of many of the book's chapters, provides an excellent background of Dallas leading up to the shooting, first hand descriptions of the weekend's events with information that was new to me, and balanced analyses about the city's conservative and extreme right wing elements, along with rebuttals to the misinformation that came out about Dallasites after the shooting, especially the grevious and incorrect report by CBS News that schoolchildren had cheered when they learned of the president's assassination. Huffaker also compares the role of the media in 1963, when most cities had three major television stations and limited ability to cover breaking news stories, and the present day, in which cable news stations provide "strident hypercoverage of celebrity murder and scandal". The book closes with prescient comments by all four men, which provides a superb closure.

When the News Went Live is a valuable addition to the history of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, which provided this reader with new information about that day's events, along with background information that placed this tragic event in greater context. I would highly recommend it to all readers, but especially those who are interested in or remain deeply affected by Kennedy's premature death.

Excellent review, Darryl. I like the perspective of looking at it through the eyes of journalists who were there.

Excellent review of When the News went Live. No doubt you had planned to read this as we come up to the 50th anniversary of his death.

>156 mkboylan: Sorry that I overlooked your message from last week, Merrikay! I'm glad that you liked my "review" of City Lights Bookstore. Despite stiff competition from several bookshops in London (London Review Bookshop, Daunt Books, Foyles), NYC (Strand Book Store, Book Culture, St. Mark's Bookshop), Cambridge, MA (the Harvard Coop) and the rest of the Bay Area (Green Apple Books in SF, and University Press Bookstore, Black Oak Books and Moe's in Berkeley) it remains my #1 place to buy books, without question.

I assume you mean that the bookstores in Sacramento aren't as good as the ones in San Francisco and Berkeley, right? There also used to be a great bookshop in Palo Alto, Printers Inc., which was connected to a lovely full service cafés, and Bookshop Santa Cruz remains one of my favorites, although I haven't been there since my best friends moved from Palo Alto to Madison, Wisconsin.

Atlanta did have several excellent bookstores just before I moved in, particularly Oxford Books, which I believe was in the Peachtree Battle Shopping Plaza in Buckhead. There is one reasonably good independent bookstore, A Cappella Books, that used to be close to Little Five Points (L5P) on Moreland Avenue, which has since moved a few blocks away. However, I find the staff there to be incredibly rude and condescending, so I refuse to go there. The best indies are probably in Decatur, but I usually frequent the Barnes & Noble that's a mile or so south of L5P in a new shopping center. However, I buy far more books on any single trip to SF, London and NYC than I do in a year in Atlanta.

I live in Midtown, not far from Georgia Tech's campus, only 3 miles or so from Georgia State, and about 5 miles away from Emory, where I completed my pediatrics residency. The area has tens of thousands of college graduates, and you would think that it would be amenable to at least one good independent bookstore, but that's not the case. I should visit the indies in nearby Decatur, but I don't go there nearly as often as I should.

I applied to Tech out of high school, along with Tulane and Duke. I was accepted at Tulane, not at Duke, and I can't remember if I was accepted at GT or not (I suspect not). There were very few schools in the late 1970s that offered biomedical engineering as an undergraduate major, which is why I applied to out of state schools and only three schools altogether.

I do hope to visit Seattle (and Vancouver) soon; maybe next year?

I'm glad that you were also moved by Five Days at Memorial. It's all but certain to end up as one of my top 5 books of the year, and I'm all but certain that it's my favorite nonfiction book published in 2013.

>158 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. There will be plenty of coverage of the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination from now until next Monday, as I mentioned in my 75 Books thread, including interviews of journalists, cameramen, and others who were in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

>159 baswood: Thanks, Barry. You're absolutely right, and this book was also published to coincidence with the 50th anniversary remembrance. I also mentioned in my 75 Books thread that my first memory of childhood was seeing my mother crying on the phone as she talked to my father, who was working in Brooklyn on that Friday afternoon when Kennedy was cut down. I would have been 2½ years of age at that time, and although I had no idea why my mother was sobbing at that time my parents and I were able to deduce that it had to have been that fateful day in Dallas.

Outstanding review of When the News Went Live!

the grevious and incorrect report by CBS News that schoolchildren had cheered when they learned of the president's assassination.

I was in school at the time (7th grade) in Dallas a few miles from where the shooting took place. We learned about it when we came back from lunch and found our teacher slumped over her desk in tears. There was nothing but tears and stunned silence from all of us. Kids just sat at their desks and cried or wandered around in a stupor. Eventually we all just drifted off to our homes. There was no attempt to hold classes or even tell us what to do.

Great review of When the News Went Live. That was a time I remember very vividly. I was in high school. I remember being in study hall when a girl came rushing in crying "the president has been shot." This was an auditorium full of teenagers, and you could hear a pin drop. There wasn't a sound. A few hours later, I was in class ( I can't remember now which subject it was) when the announcement came over the loudspeaker that the president was dead. I will never forget how I felt when after about ten minutes of silence, the teacher said "OK, turn to page XXX". I am not sure if it was because he was young and didn't know how to handle it, but I think I would have expected some discussion. We went around for days in a state of shock, and the TV was on all day (well as much "all day" as there was back then - there was no tv all night, just a test pattern).

I've added When the News Went Live to my wishlist too. I was in a 7th grade classroom when the announcement came over the PA system that the president had been shot. One of the other girls screamed and said "If he dies I'll kill myself". Several other girls jumped up to hug her, and our teacher, a cocky, smart-alecky young fellow always quick with a joke, said, "If anyone feels the need to say a prayer, now is the time." That was almost as stunning as the original announcement, coming from him. I don't remember a thing about the rest of the day. I've seen and heard the Walter Cronkite announcement of Kennedy's death so many times since, but I'm fairly sure I did not see it in real time, as we just didn't have TV's in the school in those days.

The winners of this year's National Book Awards were announced last night:

Fiction: James McBride, The Good Lord Bird
Nonfiction: George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
Poetry: Mary Szybist, Incarnadine: Poems
Young People's Literature: Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck

>161 StevenTX:-163 Steven, Colleen and Lisa: thank you for your touching remembrances of 11/22/63. The different responses of your school teachers to the news was very interesting. I'm sure that none of them had any experience or were given any instruction on how to react to a sudden tragedy. The only remotely similar event prior to that would have been the death of FDR in 1945, which I think was announced on a weekday afternoon.

ETA: I just read an article that said that the news bulletin reached Seattle at 3 pm local time. So, the only children that would have been in classrooms at that time were on the West Coast, as that would have been 6 pm Eastern Time and 5 pm Central Time.

And the Booker winner is Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries. You called it!

>165 kidzdoc: "I just read an article that said that the news bulletin reached Seattle at 3 pm local time."

Darryl, I'm pretty sure that the article is wrong. It may have been just after 3 p.m. Eastern time when they announced over the PA. I am in NJ.

Yes, that can't be right...I just watched the youtube video of Walter Cronkite announcing the president had died at 2:00 p.m. "38 minutes ago"; he was in New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8Q3cqGs7I

> 167 Colleen, the time I mentioned was for the first radio bulletin of FDR's death in 1945. He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage after 1 pm Eastern Time, and died later that afternoon. The first CBS news bulletin about JFK was at roughly 1:40 pm Eastern Time (12:40 pm Dallas time), so children would have been in school in all US time zones.

Darryl, I'm sorry, I misunderstood that one. I've been reading posts too quickly trying to catch up. It has been one of those weeks.

OK, I misunderstood too...thought it was a reference to the JFK announcement.

Very good review of When The News Went Live Daryl. It sounds like an original and interesting read.

>166 RidgewayGirl: Right, Kay! I mentioned in message #129 that I was in London on the evening of the Booker Prize award ceremony, and that Rachael (FlossieT), who met us briefly before the play we saw, went to the party for Eleanor Catton. Rachael had a blast, and was able to chat with Ellie for awhile after she returned from the ceremony. I'm very glad that she won, and she certainly has a bright future ahead of her. I'll read her debut novel The Rehearsal in January.

>170 NanaCC:, 171 No problem! I probably wasn't clear enough in my post that I was referring to FDR and not JFK.

>172 Polaris-: Thanks, Paul. It was a very good, and very timely, book; today marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK.

I wasn't old enough to remember the JFK announcement, for me the comparable moment was when the Columbia exploded. I was in school, and it was the same day I was told I had been selected for an Audubon expedition. So my memory of one event is inextricably linked to the other.

The Challenger space shuttle explosion in 1986 is one of my strongest and saddest adult memories, Lisa; it's right up there with 9/11. I was working as a chemical engineering technician for a R&D facility for US naval aircraft (where my father also worked as an electrical engineer), and several co-workers and I were on our way to lunch in the center's main cafeteria when we noticed a large group of people standing quietly and watching a television set hung overhead on a wall that had live coverage of the event. Most people were dabbing their eyes or crying, as they had watched the shuttle take off and then explode 73 seconds later. We did the same after we found out what had happened, and I remember going back to my desk and seeing the reddened eyes of my boss when I returned.

I remember the 2003 Columbia disaster nearly as well. It happened pretty early on a Saturday morning, as I recall, and I was in my car listening to NPR Weekend Edition on the way back home from the supermarket when Scott Simon announced that the shuttle had broken apart. I turned on CNN as soon as I arrived at my place, and saw the shiny debris of the shuttle streaking toward earth like tiny comets.

Well, I'm old enough to remember everything from JFK on, so that's a lot of horrifying events. Since I live in NYC, 9/11 is the one that sticks most with me because I witnessed so much myself, not on TV.

You are right, Darryl, I was thinking of the Challenger in 1986, not the Columbia.

The Challenger accident is how I mark time: I registered for college the next day. I know someone who worked at Rockwell when that happened. Quite a story.

My first encounter with that kind of thing was in grade school. I was in my best friend's rec room in the basement watching Saturday morning cartoons, when there was a CBC Breaking News interruption to say that Anwar Sadat had been assassinated. I had no idea who he was, or probably even where Egypt was exactly, but I'll always remember that image of him falling among rows of empty chairs.

>176 rebeccanyc: Although I wasn't in NYC when it happened, 9/11 is still the event that sticks with me the most. As you know I grew up just on the other side of the Hudson River, in Jersey City, and the Twin Towers, the Statue of Liberty and much of the Manhattan skyline is as easily visible from there as it would be from Brooklyn or Queens. On several weekends in the late 1960s I traveled with my paternal grandfather on PATH from Journal Square to Hudson Terminal, where we watched the construction of WTC 1 and WTC 2. I also took PATH into and out of WTC Station hundreds of times from 1971-2001 when we lived in JC, and later when I worked at NYU and moved back there from 1989-91. I can still easily envision the stores in the WTC mall, and attending free concerts in or outside of the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center, including a memorable performance by Dave Brubeck. I'm sure you've taken a northbound Amtrak or NJ Transit train between Newark and New York, and have seen the Manhattan skyline on the right as you pass through the meadowlands near Seacacus; it took several years for me to not get choked up or startled when I viewed the skyline and saw the gap where the Twin Towers used to be.

Having said all that, I'm sure that 9/11 was a more traumatic event for you and other New Yorkers than it was for me as a former resident of NYC's "sixth borough".

>177 labfs39: I thought so, Lisa, which is why I mentioned the Challenger explosion along with the Columbia disaster.

>178 avidmom: I was in college at Tulane in 1981 when the first space shuttle mission took place, so that was a vivid memory for me. Several of us followed the live television coverage nearly constantly for the three days that Columbia was in the air, and I remember staying up almost all night for one or two nights.

>179 RidgewayGirl: I remember watching the news on television (probably the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite) on the day that Anwar Sadat was assassinated. I remember the observation stand where he sat, and the assassins approaching it to gun him down, but I don't remember seeing images of him falling.

I was in Atlanta in 1957 when Sputnik flew over. I watched on the news then ran outside to watch. I wanted to see it so bad I almost convinced myself I did. I was 9. Although that was exciting, not a tragedy.

Nice memory, Merrikay; and it's a great one to counteract the morbid and depressing ones we've posted. My comparable good memory is watching the CBS News television coverage of the first moon landing by Apollo 11 and its crew in the summer of 1969, when I was 8 years old.

Book #110: Lost New Orleans by Mary Cable



My rating:

Purchased from the South Bank Book Market (a.k.a. the Stalls under the Waterloo Bridge) in London, 14 Oct 2013

This coffee table book was originally published in 1980, and it describes many of the most important buildings and structures built in New Orleans from its humble founding in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to the early years of the 20th century. The author provides a brief history of the original settlement of the Crescent City along the Mississippi River, along with its subsequent transfers of power from the French Mississippi Company to France in 1722, from France to Spain in 1763, from Spain back to France in 1795, and finally from France to the United States in 1803. These frequent exchanges, along with the slave trade through the Caribbean and the influx of Cajuns from Canada in the mid 18th century, provided New Orleans with its unique blend of people and their influences on the architecture, cuisine and music of New Orleans and south Louisiana.

All but a tiny handful of the buildings erected in New Orleans' first two centuries are no longer in existence, due to several factors. Most early buildings were made of local wood, which was quite flammable, and despite its location between a massive lake and a large river the residents of the city depended on volunteer firemen, who were more likely than not to be drunken and incompetent. The often rickety and water logged buildings provided little resistance to the extreme winds and severe flooding from the Gulf Coast's frequent hurricanes and tropical storms. Finally, the flimsy brick used in construction of these early buildings would frequently erode due to the effects of humidity and moss formation, causing these structures to slowly crumble. In later years property owners and the city's fathers tore down several grand buildings, while fires destroyed many of the others, including the French Opera House and the St. Charles Hotel:





Lost New Orleans is nicely organized into sections on Transportation and Commerce; Residences; Hotels; Schools, Libraries and Places of Worship; and Places of Entertainment. It also contains dozens of superb black & white photographs, paintings and drawings of the buildings described in the text.

I found this book to be an interesting read, albeit dry in spots. This is definitely recommended for anyone interested in the early history and development of New Orleans, although the buildings depicted here will be unrecognizable to anyone familiar with the modern Crescent City.

Book #111: Angel Agnes: The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport
by Charles Wesley Alexander



My rating:

This fantastical novella describes the short life of Agnes Arnold, a young Christian woman who, having been spurned by the man she loved, decides to travel to Shreveport, Louisiana in 1873, during the height of the city's yellow fever epidemic, in order to nurse and minister to the sick and dying. Despite having no formal training in nursing, our Agnes proceeds to save lives left and right, using a simple remedy that she learned years earlier in New Orleans, along with her own abiding faith. All are amazed by her healing powers, and she is given the name "Angel Agnes" by the city's grateful residents. Her beloved travels to claim her, before he is stricken by the illness. Although grief stricken, Agnes continues to work tirelessly to save lives, before she meets her tragic end.

Book #112: Paradises by Iosi Havilio



My rating:

This novel is set mainly in modern day Buenos Aires, narrated by a woman who has moved there from a small town after her husband has died and left her and her young son destitute. She finds lodging at a rooming house, where she is befriended by a Romanian immigrant who helps her land a job at a local zoo. She subsequently moves into a nearby abandoned building, which houses a community of squatters that is headed by a woman dying of cancer, who relies on the new resident to give her intravenous injections of morphine to relieve her pain. The narrator integrates herself into the settlement and its shady characters, while maintaining close relationships with her Romanian friend and a running buddy from her old neighborhood, who has moved in with a wealthy drug addict nearby.

All three women and those around them are lonely, desperate people, bored with life and in search of temporary pleasure, in order to mask their anxieties and fears. The narrator frequently abandons her rambunctious son, as danger exists within and outside of the squatter settlement and whenever she meets up with her old friend.

Paradises was a pleasant and well written but not particularly memorable read, with characters who live on the edge of society. I didn't find them or the story to be particularly unique or enlightening, as people like these can be found in any major city in the world, but I liked this book enough that I would be willing to try other books by this author.

Interesting review of Paradises. I have another book by Iosi Havilio, Open Door, on the TBR, so I'm encouraged that you'd be willing to try other books by the author.

Book #113: Blue White Red by Alain Mabanckou



My rating:

Alain Mabanckou's debut novel is narrated by Massala-Massala, a young Congolese man who is a neighbor of Moki, a slightly older man who is revered by the villagers where his parents and brothers live in luxury. Moki is a Parisian, one of the few Congolese who has emigrated to Paris and found success there. He is welcomed like royalty when he makes his annual return to his home during the dry season, as he represents the hopes and dreams of his people. He dresses in the latest Parisian fashions, hands out gifts to extended family members and friends, speaks proper French French instead of speaking in French, quotes de Maupassant, Saint-Exupéry and Baudelaire freely, causes local girls to swoon openly in his presence, and holds court at his father's home and in local bars, as he talks about the French capital, his opulent life, and what it takes to succeed there: "Paris is a big boy. Not for little kids." In the Congo, Parisians like Moki are revered, whereas Peasants, those emigrants who live in towns outside of Paris as they pursue higher education, don't dress like dandies, and associate with Congolese villagers as equals instead of as lesser beings, are viewed with disdain.

Massala-Massala decides to emigrate to Paris, and with the help of his father, his uncle and Moki, he manages to get a visa and passport, and travels by air to Paris with his idol. However, instead of the wealth and easy living that Moki has promised, he quickly discovers the truth about the sordid lives of African immigrants in France, most of whom live there illegally and in poverty, as they face the constant threat of police harassment and deportation back to their homelands. His legal visa soon expires, and he is forced to participate in the underground economy that provides him with enough money for food and lodging, but little else.

Blue White Red, named after the tricolored French flag and the winner of the 1999 Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for the best novel published in France and written by a sub-Saharan Francophone author, is an apt and biting commentary about the sordid lives of African immigrants in France and their countrymen who are caught up in the hype about the greener grass that they believe awaits them in Europe. Although it isn't as well developed as his later novels it is still a very good effort, and a valuable addition to Francophone literature.

>186 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. Open Door, like Paradises, was recently published by And Other Stories, a relatively new UK based publisher. I look forward to your comments about it.

Book #114: Buttoned-Up: The East London Line by Fantastic Man



My rating:

This is another of the dozen books in the Penguin Underground Series, written in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground in 2013. Unlike the other 11 books in the series, which are based on current Underground lines, the East London line is no longer in service, as it closed in 2007 and was replaced by London Overground services in 2010.

In keeping with the closure of the East London line, the writers of Fantastic Man, a London men's fashion magazine, eschew any mention of the past or current train services, and instead focus on the fashion sense of ordinary men and male celebrities who work and live there. The title of the book refers to the current trend of tasteful young men to wear dress shirts completely buttoned and without ties. The book contains numerous pictures of these fashion plates, along with occasional photos of East London street corners.

This book was a complete waste of my time, and it may possibly be the worst of the 11 Penguin Underground books that I've read so far.

Those London Underground books have really been a mixed bag, haven't they?

>190 RidgewayGirl: They definitely have, Kay. I blame the editors of this series, who allowed the books' authors to write anything they chose instead of focusing on the actual Underground lines themselves.

I agree with you about the Mabanckou: I enjoyed it, but it's always nice to see when a writer gets better the more he writes.

The Mabanckou sounds interesting to me tho. It is fun to see authors improve isn't it?

>192 rebeccanyc: I had completely forgotten that you had also read Blue White Red until I posted my review on Reading Globally and saw your review just above mine, Rebecca.

I don't think I reviewed his latest novel to be translated into English, Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty. I enjoyed it, and I think you would, too.

>193 mkboylan: Definitely so, Merrikay. Although it's his first novel it was only published in English translation this year.

Nice set of reviews Daryl. One and a half stars for Buttoned Up: The East London Line though? Sounds far too generous. The head of London Underground's publicity department, or whoever commissioned these anniversary publications should be sacked... Of course they probably get a ridiculous salary for enabling such mediocrity.

>194 kidzdoc: Mmm...I think you're right, Paul. It didn't make me want to tear my hair out, so I won't give it ½ star, but 1 star seems appropriate.

I can't believe that Penguin paid some of these 'writers' to come up with this rubbish.

Buttoned-up: The East London Line Are you sure this wasn't a joke Darryl, it sounds awful.

rebecca, I'm currently reading Paradises and it seems that Open Door actually introduces some of the characters in Paradises, so it would be the place to start, but I didn't have a subscription then.

I don't have a subscription plan, Sassy. I picked up Open Door because it was on the fiction display table in my favorite bookstore. I'll have to look into a subscription, but since I already have Archipelago and Open Letter subscriptions I'll probably pass.

>199 rebeccanyc: How have you liked your Open Letter subscription so far, Rebecca?

And did you get (and read) Maidenhair in your subscription?

Book #115: A Thousand Morons by Quim Monzó

  

My rating:

Quim Monzó is one of the most highly regarded contemporary Catalan authors, who has only recently been recognized in the English speaking world thanks in large part to Open Letter Books, which has published three of his books in translation in the past three years, Gasoline, Guadalajara, and A Thousand Morons. Although he has written several novels, articles and essays, he is best known in Spain and Europe for his short stories, which are generally surreal and comedic works filled with identifiable characters who find themselves in absurd situations, largely of their own doing.

A Thousand Morons, originally published in 2007, is the latest collection of short stories by Monzó to be translated into English. The first portion of the book consists of longer works, such as "Mr. Beneset", in which a man visits his somewhat unorthodox father in an old people's home, and "Love Is Eternal", about a man who decides to marry his apparently dying girlfriend, whereas most of the stories in the second part are less than five pages in length, including "Next Month's Blood", where the archangel Gabriel receives a surprise when he tells Mary that God has decided to bless her with a son, and "A Cut", in which a boy with a large neck wound is upbraided by his teacher for interrupting class and spilling blood on the floor.

Monzó excels in portraying an ordinary character in a everyday situation that slowly unfolds into a wickedly surreal one. My favorite was "Saturday", a story about a woman who progressively gets rid of everything was owned by and reminds her of her former husband, but then goes just a bit overboard in the process.

I thoroughly enjoyed this short story collection, and I look forward to reading the other three books by Monzó that I already own.

Book #116: Heads and Straights: The Circle Line by Lucy Wadham



My rating:

This is another of the books in the Penguin Underground Lines series, written in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. In keeping with many of the books in this collection, the author does not discuss the Circle Line at all, but she has written an interesting and readable book about her experiences growing up in a posh family in Chelsea in the 1970s, at a time when the neighborhood changed to a bastion of the upper middle class to one divided into Heads, the young people like Lucy and her older sisters who smoked marijuana and took heroin, attended hard rock and punk music concerts and partook in promiscuous sex, and Straights, the mostly older residents who maintained a staid 1950s lifestyle. Waldham describes her sisters and parents, but she mainly writes about her maternal grandmother, a free spirit who was influenced by her neighbor Virginia Woolf and, in turn, had both negative and positive impacts on her granddaughters. This book was just the right length to hold my attention, although I would have liked it more if she had included something about the Underground in it.

200, 202. Darryl, if you judge by the number of books from my Open Letter subscription I've read, you would think I haven't liked it. But I think I haven't read my Open Letter books in more or less the same proportion as I haven't read books I've acquired in other ways! So go figure. I do think I'm probably more interested in their books than in the ones I've been getting from Archipelago recently, so I may not renew my Archipelago subscription when it comes up (although I hate to do that, because they are doing good work and deserve support.) I'm glad you liked the Quim Monzo because I have both A Thousand Morons and Guadalajara on my TBR thanks to Open Letter.

201, Lisa, yes, I did get Maidenhair, and no, I haven't read it yet, although it is on my "hope to read sooner rather than later" shelf!

where the archangel Gabriel receives a surprise when he tells Mary that God has decided to bless her with a son,
Well, now I have to read it!

Heads and Straights sounds fun.

The circle line; my favourite London Underground line, shame the book requisitioned had nothing to say about it.

Catching up and enjoying the reviews --always stimulating here.

Hope all is well and that you can come up for air soon. Miss you on the threads.

Thanks for the notes on the Alain Mabanckou novel. How many of his have you read now? And which is your favorite? I've only read two and have decided it's probably enough. I have an entire shelf of African lit TBRs... I just read Helon Habila's first, which I thought excellent.

>204 rebeccanyc: Thanks for your comments about Open Letter Books, Rebecca. I won't subscribe to it, or to the NYRB Book Club or Archipelago Books, next year, but I'll almost certainly purchase books published by each of them next year.

I had forgotten that I had read (and reviewed) Guadalajara early last year. I gave it 3-1/2 stars at that time, but in retrospect it was probably closer to a 4 star read for me.

>205 avidmom: It was definitely a worthwhile read, avidmom. The best of the short stories in A Thousand Morons and Guadalajara were superb, but others were only mediocre IMO.

>206 mkboylan: Heads and Straights was a surprisingly good read, Merrikay.

>207 baswood: I'd probably rate the Piccadilly Line as my favorite one, Barry. I usually stay at hotels that are located close to stations on this line, e.g. Holborn, Russell Square, King's Cross St Pancras and Gloucester Road, as it makes it easy to travel with luggage from Heathrow Airport to the hotel and vice versa. I use the Circle or District Line quite a bit, since I spent the majority of my time in central London, but the subsurface lines are much slower than the deep tube lines, as you know. The Circle Line is no longer purely circular, as it now starts at Hammersmith, travels clockwise to Edgware Road, and then returns in an anticlockwise direction back to Hammersmith. So, if you want to travel in a clockwise direction from Edgware Road you have to transfer to a Hammersmith & City Line train to complete your journey, which I still find very confusing for some reason.

Although Heads and Straights made almost no mention of the Circle Line it was still a well written and enjoyable book.

>208 janeajones: Thanks, Jane.

>209 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. I'm now off from work for the next four days, but I'll work nearly all of Christmas week (Mon-Sat), and then spend the New Year's break with my parents in the Philadelphia area from next Sunday until the following Thursday. We're extremely busy at work during this time of year, and I usually don't finish my charting and billing until 8-9 pm or later. I probably won't be on LT much next week, and I doubt that I'll create a 2014 thread here or in the 75 Books group until the following week.

>210 avaland: You're welcome, Lois. I've read all five novels by Alain Mabanckou than I own. In order of personal preference: Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine, Blue White Red and African Psycho. I haven't yet read Black Bazaar, which appears to be the only other novel of his that has been translated into English so far.

I've read three novels by Mabanckou, and I would rate them Memoirs of a Porcupine, Broken Glass, and then Blue White Red.

The Kindle version of José Saramago's comedic novel Death with Interruptions, which I thoroughly enjoyed, is on sale today for $1.99 from Amazon US.

>214 kidzdoc: Oh, you enabler..... :)

>215 NanaCC: *bats eyes innocently*



Any of you who are familiar with the cartoon Pinky and the Brain from The Animaniacs series on Fox from the 1990s will remember how each show ends:

Pinky: What are we going to do tomorrow night?

The Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!

The Brain invents elaborate schemes in his mouse cage to achieve world domination, but they are either badly flawed or fatally disrupted by Pinky.

In the spirit of these two lovable lab mice, I will try once again in 2014 to take over my TBR pile, or at least a significant portion of it. In past years these schemes have been doomed to failure practically from the beginning, but next year will be different! Bwahaha!

So, my plan for next year is to read 50 books from the following lists, 10-15 or more tomes (500 pages or longer), and 30-35 shorter works (less than 500 pages). This is a first draft, so the books that are listed here will almost certainly change before January 1st.

Books to Read in 2014

Tomes (500 pages or more):
      Nicole Barker, Darkmans
      Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins
      Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
      Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
      Ralph Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting...
      Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
      Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name
      George E. Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
      A.J. Liebling, Just Enough Liebling
      David Macey, Frantz Fanon: A Biography
      Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety
      Paul Murray, Skippy Dies
      Patrick O'Brian, Picasso: A Biography
      Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul
      Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain
      Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
      William Trevor, Selected Stories
      Patrick White, The Vivisector

Non-tomes (less than 500 pages):
      Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
      Stuart Altman and David Shactman, Power, Politics and Universal Health Care: The Inside Story of a Century-Long Battle
      Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age
      Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
      Bernardo Atxaga, Obabakoak
      Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
      Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco
      Randy Christensen MD, Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them
      Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel
      Jean Echenoz, I'm Off and One Year
      Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
      Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
      Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake
      Juan Eslava Galan, The Mule
      Jerry Gentry, Grady Baby: A Year in the Life of Atlanta's Grady Hospital
      Amitav Ghosh, The Calcutta Chromosome
      Juan Goytisolo, Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife
      Juan Goytisolo, Juan the Landless
      Graham Greene, The Comedians
      Mark Harrison, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease
      Alistair Horne, Seven Ages of Paris
      Jonathan B. Imber, Trusting Doctors: The Decline of Moral Authority in American Medicine
      James Kelman, Kieron Smith, boy
      Robert Klitzman, When Doctors Become Patients
      Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book One
      Eric Lax, The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The Story of the Penicillin Miracle
      Charles Lemert, Why Niebuhr Matters
      Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith
      Juan Marsé, Lizard's Tails
      Juan Marsé, Shanghai Nights
      David A. Mendel, Proper Doctoring: A Book for Patients and their Doctors
      Simon Mawer, Mendel's Dwarf
      Claire McCarthy, Everyone's Children: A Pediatrician's Story of an Inner City Practice
      Ian McEwan, Atonement
      Andrew Miller, Pure
      Quim Monzó, The Enormity of the Tragedy
      Quim Monzó, Gasoline
      Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
      Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
      Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies
      Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood
      Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
      Cees Nooteboom, Roads To Santiago: Detours and Riddles in the Land and History of Spain
      Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost
      Laura Katz Olson, The Politics of Medicaid: Stakeholders and Welfare Medicine
      Brian Orr, MD, A Pediatrician's Journal: Caring for Children in a Broken Medical System
      George Packer, The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
      Orhan Pamuk, Snow
      Roy Porter, Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad Doctors and Lunatics
      Graham Robb, Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
      Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir
      Jean-Christophe Rufin, Brazil Red
      Colm Tóibín, Homage to Barcelona
      Giles Tremblett, Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Secret Past
      Mario Vargas Llosa, The Green House
      Richard Wright, Black Boy

I also plan read at least 12 books for my CanLit challenge, along with all of the books chosen for next year's Booker Prize longlist.

As always, the proprietor of this thread asks visitors to keep their shrieks of laughter to a minimum (this means you, Rebecca). TYIA.

Well, I can at least attest to the fact that The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat will be a pretty good read for you. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I agree, Gerard. I let my best friend's wife read it several years ago, and she loved it. I was a microbiology major in college, so this topic is a very appealing one to me as well.

That book is a perfect example of one that I've been meaning to read for several years, but haven't found time to get to it. My hope in creating these lists and posting them on my threads is that I'll be more likely to remember to read them, and not get distracted by other books or theme reads. If I can read half of the books on these lists then the year will be a successful one.

Can you set that list up like that LT Five Best of the year is set up? So we can all vote on what we want you to read first? ;) My No. 1 is Cosmopolitanism, then Power Politics and Universal Health Care, and Grady Baby.

Love a good TBR list. Have at um Darryl. But, if you don't read them all in 2014, at least you know you will another great list for 2015.

Good plan Darryl! Public admission is a wonderful motivator.

Some wonderful reading ahead for you next year. I shall also be reading Invisible Man next year as its Ralph Ellison's centenary.

>219 mkboylan: Ha, Merrikay! No, I won't do that, unfortunately; that would take away from any spontaneity I would have in choosing which book I want to read, and when. ;-)

I did post my top five reads of the year to the LT list; I chose only books that were published this year.

1. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
2. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
3. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (which appears to be a lock for the LT book of the year)
4. The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level by Jessica Wapner
5. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (my choice for the most underrecognized book of the year)

>220 dchaikin: Right, Dan. Whatever books I don't read in 2014 will be added to a similar list the following year.

>221 VivienneR: Thanks, Vivienne. You're right; by stating this goal publicly, and posting these lists at the beginning of my threads, as I plan to do next year, should make it more likely that I remember and achieve my goal.

>222 baswood: Right, Barry. I had already planned to read those two books by Ralph Ellison with the centennial of his birth in mind. I'll probably also read The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison as well.

#216 Controlling myself only because I have a mouthful of coffee and I don't want it to land on my laptop!

Seriously, some great books on your list. As you know, I think very highly of A Place of Greater Safety. I also am a huge fan of The New Jim Crow, which I found appalling and shocking (the subject, not the book), and I also really liked The Colonel, The Plague of Doves, Petals of Blood, and The Green House. I wasn't such a fan of Atonement, and I read Invisible Man and Black Boy decades ago so I know I liked them but I don't remember them at all. Several others of the books you plan to read (oops, I almost made a rude remark) sound intriguing too.

#223 I looked at the LT Top 5 list but there's no way I could narrow my best books of the year down to 5. On the list I'm working on, I have 26 "Best of the Best," although I could probably narrow that down a little. I might just post five obscure books over there.

>216 kidzdoc:

Wow, that's certainly an interesting list.

>224 rebeccanyc: Controlling myself only because I have a mouthful of coffee and I don't want it to land on my laptop!

Is that because I preemptively called you out ("this means you, Rebecca"), or because I made another list of planned reads after I repeatedly insisted that I would read spontaneously next year? :)

You get full credit for recommending A Place of Greater Safety and The Green House, both of which I'll read early next year. Atonement is the one leading novel by Ian McEwan that I haven't read yet; I'm sorry to hear that you didn't like it, though.

My top five list was a relatively easy one to create, since I limited it only to books that were published in this calendar year. The first four were easy, but it was hard to choose between several equally good books for that final spot. I decided on The Hired Man mainly because Aminatta Forna receives so little attention and recognition.

>225 edwinbcn: Thanks, Edwin!

Help - what do you mean by "I did post my top five reads of the year to the LT list" ? What LT list?

ETA - found it, here: http://www.librarything.com/list/1002/all/Top-Five-Books-of-2013#

>227 dchaikin: Ha! I was just about to post that link. I'm glad that you found it.

#226 Both!