WHAT ARE YOU READING? - Part 5

A little bit earlier than usual but as it is the middle of the year, we may as well.

How is your 2020 reading summer (winter if you are down under) looking like - do you look forward to some special books?

Come over, grab a drink (temperature, alcohol level and type are left to you to decide on) and tell us what you are reading.

I'm reading Bring up the Bodies and would like to read the last one yet this summer. Otherwise, no plans except for my book club selections.

I am about to finish Stealing Heaven by Marion Meade. It is a fine evocation of a story of anguish and lifelong love.

I am in the middle of The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, since I wanted to read the next part of The Leatherstocking Tales.

I have cued up for next a Flavia de Luce mystery, and the first of the Benni Harper mysteries, Fool's Puzzle by Earlene Fowler.

I have some non-fiction from the library, and next of the Trollope Barchester Chronicles. I also have gotten the next two volumes in the Six-Gun Tarot trilogy. I have a ton of others on my bed, the first part of my TBR pile.

I've set up a thread for a group read of Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive over here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/322042#

I am reading Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels which describes Hasidic Jews (about whom I knew very little) who go against the grain and break out and away from the strict codes of their Hasidic community. This was a qualitative dissertation study that turned into a book. I usually don't read "published" dissertation research but this one seems interesting and has been on my TBR shelf for awhile.

I plan to read books for the July Challenges this month. Probably a historical mystery and also Library on Wheels about the first bookmobile.

>5 LadyoftheLodge: July Challenges?

My next book is The Beetle Leg by John Hawkes published in 1951.

I finished Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist's Fight to Make the Media Look More like America by Dorothy Butler Gilliam. I was about to say that the headline across the top of this important book's front cover says it all: "A memoir by the first black woman reporter at the Washington Post. But, really, that bit of copy, while accurate, only tells part of the story. For while Gilliams was, indeed, when hired in 1961, the first black woman reporter at the Post, the role she has played and the work she has done to advance the cause of black representation both in American's newsrooms and on the pages of those publications, goes far beyond the role that the words "first black woman reporter" convey.

Gilliam's career spans the Civil Rights era of the late 50s and 60s through the Black Power movement and all the way through to the present day. She began her career as a typist for the black weekly, the Louisville Defender in the mid-50s but was soon editing and writing stories. In 1957 she was working for the Tri-State Defender when, at the age of 21, she went to Little Rock to cover the tumultuous, violent, hate-filled proceedings of the attempts to integrate the public schools there. She went to work for the The Washington Post, as mentioned, in 1961, and as a Post reporter went to Oxford, Mississippi, to cover the equally violent and ugly events around James Meredith's attempts to become the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi. She spent several years as a beat reporter in Washington, retired for several years to raise her three daughters and support her husband's growing art career, and then returned to the Post as the editor of the newly expanded and influential Style section that covered a wide range of artistic and cultural issues in the city. And that's the short list of her accomplishments.

There are points at which I thought Gilliam's writing needed more detail and a better organization, particularly in the book's first third. But overall, I'll just say that Gilliam is an extremely admirable person, a tough fighter, who is reporting a crucial story.

This is the short version of this review! Check out my threads on Club Read or the 50-Book Challenge groups, or the book's work page, to read the full-length treatment. :)

After a couple of non-fiction books, I'll be heading back to fiction next via An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.

I just finished Mario Puzo's The Godfather and started Things Fall Apart and My life.

I've finished Howard Jacobson's Live a Little, and have picked up Kent Haruf's Eventide (and am not regretting taking so long to follow up Plainsong, as I've mostly forgotten what happened in it).

In between my main reads I'm also dipping in and out of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by DFW, which I've found I'm getting more out of if I read it in stints of 1 or 2 essays at a time.

I'm still busy with Tim Blanning's Frederick the Great, and I've also still got at least two of my South African pile on the go, The black people: and whence they came and Poppie Nongena.

And The bell jar on audio.

>6 AnnieMod: LT 2020 Category Challenges for July

I finished The Runaway Beignet and Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels. Also My Life in Thirty Seven Therapies for NetGalley, which I do not recommend.

I finished The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin yesterday and followed it up today with a couple of quickie picture books: Bookshelf by Alex Johnson and You're Only Old Once! by Dr. Seuss, which I think I was finally old enough for.

Next up is First Love, Last Rites, a story collection by Ian McEwan.

.I just finished The Ashes of London, a historical mystery, which was OK. Started Apeirogon by Colum McCann.

Just finished Natsuo Kirino's Intrusion (French translation title as this has not been translated into English yet) which I thought was going to be a thriller so unfortunately it took a while for my brain to transition to the fact that it is not but ultimately I enjoyed this book which ended up being about the suppression of women by the male ego and what love means within that.

I finally finished bell hooks's All About Love: New Visions, which we talked about at a Zoom meeting of my book club on Thursday. It just wasn't the book for me—I don't love self-help, which it largely read like to me, and I plain old wasn't in the mood for something like this—but I did like her chapter on mourning and grief, and some of her thoughts on power were interesting. Still reading The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History and liking his wide-lens historical overview a lot.

My library hold of The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison came in, but I'm thinking of letting it roll over for another hold cycle. I have a couple of other books lined up—another Iris Murdoch for my second book club that should be showing up this week, and (shudder) PDF galley for a Bloom Q&A that I ought to get going on so I'm not doing an 11th-hour interview. Then again, I hate any kind of "should" when it comes to my reading, so I may just keep it and dip in and out. I'll see where my mood takes me.

I am reading Charmed by the Cook's Kids for NetGalley, which I am enjoying so far.

Today I started by reading for the Lost Children Archive group read (come check it out, if it interests. Link here). I started with Tell Me How It Ends, Luiselli's essays she wrote while trying to write the novel.

I finished Purgatorio, but am strangely distant on it after finishing. I also finished Love's Labour's Lost, which was terrific.

Also reading Dune, Over by the River by William Maxwell and I'm listening to Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff, a decent follow up the Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, which I read in May.

I just finished the excellent Bring Up the Bodies. I'm taking a break from the Tudors and moving to WWII Ethiopia in The Shadow King

Back to the Elizabethans and a sonnet collection by Samuel Daniel: Delia and Complaints of Rosamond

Reading Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters.... so good.

I did end up letting my hold on the Ralph Ellison letters revert for another cycle (it goes to the next person on the holds list, then back to me—thank you, NYPL, for instituting that failsafe) because along with The Great Influenza I'm now reading Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton (Penguin Random House is doing a book club covering about 15 pages a week, and I own the book already, AND finally watched Hamilton for the first time, so... if not now, when?) and I just started Iris Murdoch's The Bell because I realized my Iris Murdoch Fan Girls book club is meeting next week. So I've got lots of reading going on.

>23 lisapeet: We can defer loans in my library as well, Lisa. I love that. Your currently reading all sounds great. I might search out the influenza book.

Losing track a bit, but I seem to have finished all those I mentioned in >12 thorold: (Tim Blanning's Frederick the Great, The black people: and whence they came and Poppie Nongena on paper, plus a re-read of The bell jar on audio). All very interesting!

This morning I finished W F Hermans's dark seventies campus-farce Uit talloos veel miljoenen from the lower reaches of my TBR pile.

I'm part way through Propaganda by monuments & other stories by Ivan Vladislavić on paper and I've started the Polish gay romance Swimming in the dark on audio. I've still got an André Brink and a Nadine Gordimer on the borrowed pile, one of those will probably be next, or maybe another East German novel...

I am reading Harvey Holds His Own which is a children's book, and The Gown by Jennifer Robson.

I am reading The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton

I finished the wonderful novel, An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones. My review is on my CR thread. Next up for me will be Lou Gehrig: The Lost Memoir edited by Alan D. Gaff, a recent birthday present from my darling wife.

I've recently finished Beyond the Kingdoms by Chris Colfer, book four in the Land of Stories series of kids' novels, which made me laugh, and am now reading A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt--And Why They Shouldn't by William B. Irvine, about which I am going to have some rather insulting things to say when I'm done.

Finished Tell Me How It Ends and started Lost Children Archive (both rereads) for the same group read. I also started Shadows on the Rock, Willa Cather’s novel on 1697 Quebec City, for a Litsy group read.

Otherwise, all the same (see last paragraph of >19 dchaikin: )

I’m busy with Hermann Kant’s Die Aula, another East German blockbuster from the sixties. Quite fun, but rather overshadowed by knowing about Kant’s subsequent career as the consummate culture-apparatchik. Took a little side-trip into Angus Wilson’s Everything you need to know about Zola but were afraid to ask yesterday, and I’ve also started Magda Szabó’s Abigail, having remembered just in time that it’s our next book club read...

I finished Harvey Holds His Own (The Harvey Stories) by Colleen Nelson for NetGalley. I am reading Death on Windmill Way and The Gown.

I'm really enjoying The Royal Abduls by Ramiza Shamoun Koya, a recently-published novel about an Indian-American family in the US.

I am about to start Spartacus The book by Howard Fast. It's from my 1951 pile.

I finished Death on Windmill Way, which had far too much detail for me. I noted it is a repub from a past version with a different title and cover. Currently reading Christmas in Bayberry. I need a little Christmas right this very minute!

I raced through the endearing memoir/bio The Lost Memoir by Lou Gehrig, as edited (with a biographical essay) by Alan D. Gaff. This was a birthday gift from my loving wife.

Seems like I'm in a non-fiction patch (mostly) these days, as I've just begun City of Soldiers: A Year of Life, Death, and Survival in Afghanistan by Kate Fearon.

Finished reading Brasil: Construtor de Ruínas, by Eliane Brum, portuguese edition. A book about brazilian contemporary politics. Review in my thread.

Finished Die Aula, and spent much of the weekend on Jonathan Coe's lovely BS Johnson bio, Like a fiery elephant.

Since I haven't been able to go sailing for a while, I'm now reading Eens ging de zee hier tekeer, a recent Dutch book about the human consequences of the closing-off of the Zuiderzee in 1932.

And I've still got Abigail and Swimming in the dark on the go in the background.

>34 baswood: This is the moment when we all chorus "I am (about to start) Spartacus" :-)

We all remember the famous scene from the 1960 movie Spartacus. Kirk Douglas plays the famous slave leader. A Roman general announces to a group of former slaves that unless they identify Spartacus they will all be crucified. Spartacus prepares to speak up but then all around him others stand to declare: “I am Spartacus!”

It is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of human solidarity and heroism. The scene was written by Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted and sent to jail for refusing to name his fellow Hollywood scriptwriters, actors and directors as members or supporters of the Communist Party. Once out of prison he wrote under false names for the film industry, but it wasn’t until 1960 that director Stanley Kubrick and actor Kirk Douglas had the courage to publically credit Trumbo as the writer of Spartacus.

Well I have finished Spartacus and he never got the chance to say I am Spartacus in Fast's novel.

I am starting (tomorrow: because today is a French reading day) The Sea Around us by Rachel Carson which of course was published in 1951.

I finished The Shadow King with mixed feelings.

I started Afterlife, Julia Alvarez's new novel.

I finished Christmas in Bayberry for NetGalley, which was a fun and feel-good kind of book, although predictable. Still reading The Gown by J. Robeson.

Finished the mesmerizing Snow Hunters, still reading a collection of linked stories from Jason Brown, but have also taken up the latest Anne Holt crime novel, A Grave for Two (a new series for this author).

I finished Iris Murdoch's The Bell for my book club last night, which I really enjoyed (both the book and the meeting)—is anyone else these days writing books like hers? She really gets at that kind of secret sauce of narrative and plot and rumination and action.

Still reading both The Great Influenza and Alexander Hamilton (which I'm far behind the weekly reading on, and can catch up now), but I've also started The Baddest Bitch in the Room, since I'm interviewing Sophia Chang for Bloom next week. Never let it be said I read in a rut, OK?

I finally finished The Golden Notebook and read Lost Children Archive. Then the hold I had forgotten I placed on The Obelisk Gate came in so I read that followed by The Stone Sky.

I finished the wonderful Afterlife and started The Glass Hotel, which I have been waiting for.

Just finished The Gown by Jennifer Robson and now I am reading An Amish Mother's Secret Past by Jo Ann Brown and An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Amy Vanderhoof.

Well, I had to give up on City of Soldiers: A Year of Life, Death, and Survival in Afghanistan by Kate Fearon. Both the topic and the author led me to believe that the book would be fascinating, but, sadly, I was not finding it so.

Fearon's resume is indeed impressive. From Northern Ireland, Fearon was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Women's coalition and in that capacity one of the driving forces of the Good Friday Agreement that helped quell the Troubles in that country. She'd worked for seven years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, helping to build political parties and working on what became the Dayton Agreement, the Bosnian peace accords. She was in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010 as the Governance Advisor on rule of law issues to the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team. So, given all that, how could this memoir of her time in Helmand not be compelling? Well, the way Fearon managed that was to have a very poor grasp on what readers would be interested in about her time there. She fills up page after page with descriptions of her living conditions inside the diplomatic compound: what her room was like, what she ate, meal by meal, what the weather was like. Also, the logistics of travel, waiting around for military flights to different parts of the country, with constant delays and cancellations, are described in exhaustive detail. Even the conversations she describes with the Afghanis she comes in contact with, both men and women, are mainly to do with how they dress and what they eat. Fearon does pay attention to womens' distressing lot in this world, but not in great enough depth to make me feel like I was learning much I didn't know already. These are the sorts of details that would be quite welcome as context setting information, if that's all they were being used for. But unfortunately, there is so little description of the actual work she was there to perform that it began to feel that the memoir was all husk and no substance. She was in Helmond to try to help the people learn about and develop a representative style of government in order to counter the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban, who had just been driven out of the area. Talk about an uphill battle, a culture clash! But Fearon provides so little detail about the actual work that the reading experience became frustrating, and I found myself simply skimming paragraph after paragraph of food and topography descriptions. I gave up at page 125 of a 300-page book. Maybe the second half is better, but I was out of patience. Fearon needed an editor to tell her to redirect her attention, but evidently at Interlink Books, there was no such person forthcoming. It's too bad, additionally, because on a sentence level, Fearon's writing is just fine.

So now I've taken up the third segment of my 3-part birthday present from my wife. The first two segments were the Lou Gehrig memoir I reported on earlier and the new Bob Dylan CD. The third is Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 by Marc Bloch. Bloch was a French historian and a veteran of the trenches of World War I who returned to active duty upon the declaration of war with Germany in 1939, serving as a logistical officer. Immediately upon the French surrender in June 1940, Bloch sat down to write this scathing description of what he saw as the reasons for the lightning quick French defeat. The work sat in hiding, unpublished of course, during the years of the German occupation, but was published soon after the war. Bloch, in the meantime, became active in the French resistance, and was captured and executed a year before the war's end. Historian Waverly Root, in his The Secret History of the War, the first book I finished this year, speaks to the issue of the causes of the French defeat extensively. Root essentially believed that the French leaders were defeatist and basically fascists, happier with the idea of a German victory than with the continuation of the French Republic. As I had described this with my wife while reading this book, after hearing about the Bloch book thought it would be of interest to me. So far (30 pages in), it is enormously so. Bloch's ideas seem to be more or less along the same lines as Root's, and it will be interesting to read his full treatise on the subject.

>47 rocketjk: in Memories if the Future Hustvedt tells about a memoir she ghost wrote for someone. She mentions how the woman gave her a 60 page draft to begin. A little later Hustvedt tells how she took a 59-page section of the draft and reduced it to a half-page paragraph. 🙂 Maybe Fearon should have consulted her...

I’ve started Titus Andronicus. Also on audio I finished the interesting but certainly imperfect Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, and then this morning started The Blazing World - the somewhat recent novel by Siri Hustvedt, not the 17th-century scifi play by Margaret Cavendish, a subject of the book (who, with her husband, was a sponsor of Ben Jonson)

>48 dchaikin: Yes, a half-page paragraph and then instructions to expand that half page into five pages. Throughout the 125 pages I read, Fearon did things like give the reader three pages on how she got to a teaching session about governance (again, the idea was to teach Afganis about western style government and justice systems as a way of countering Taliban influence, a topic obviously both interesting and fraught with all sorts of stumbling blocks and mine fields) with a large group, a page on the beauty of the desert she flew over, a page and a half on the meal served during the meeting's lunch break, another page on the dress and appearance of the participants and then say something like, "The conference goes well. The participants are attentive and eager to learn." And that's it.

>47 rocketjk: I wonder what the genesis of the book was. It sounds like perhaps she was offered the deal just based on her interesting life and ended up basically turning in a diary.

>50 janemarieprice: Yes, I've wondered about the same question. The book is published by Interlink Books, which is, according to the back cover, "An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc." I took a look at the company's website, which lists an impressive array of books on history, culture and politics. In fact, over in the Questions for Avid Readers thread here on CR, I mentioned Interlink during the discussion of small presses just before I began reading Fearon's memoir and got back a very positive response from CR member avaland. But there is also a link on the company's website for "Submissions." While the cover seems to be professionally designed, I'm wondering whether this book is more in the way of a self-published effort than something Fearon would have gotten a contract for from the publisher. Interlink might have decided to publish the book based on, as you say, her interesting life and the book's fascinating premise, but it seems clear to me that Fearon didn't have a real editor working with her to help her with content decisions. Sentence-level, the writing is fine, and I only came upon one or two typos in the 125 pages I read. All conjecture on my part, of course, but it was also a bit of a red flag to me that I couldn't find a single review online and that only 4 LT members have the book in their libraries. One is me (though my copy is going to the Goodwill and my LT listing will get the dread "released" tag that I give for books I give away after reading), another is a public collection curated by The Markaz, Arts Center for the Greater Middle East, and the other two are private members. All this tells me that not only did Interlink not help Fearon with editing, they didn't help her with promotion, either.

Sorry, all. I know this is now a lot of copy for a book that I only read a third of, but it's kind of fascinating to me how a book written by a clearly vastly accomplished and interesting person on a subject that ought to be compelling could have gone so (in my opinion) wrong without anybody stepping in to help keep the project on the rails.

I finished Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940 by Marc Bloch, a fascinating, extremely informed and in some cases first-hand account of the lightning-quick German victory over France in June 1940.

Staying with World War 2 but moving into the realm of fiction, I've now started The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna, a classic of Finnish literature about the War of Continuation between Finland and Russia, 1941-1944.

I just started Dear Edward; it seems like it will be a page turner.

Just finished An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof, currently reading His Pretend Amish Bride for NetGalley.

I’m really enjoying Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips, a superb first novel with a fascinating setting: Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula (I had to look it up). In an all-too-rare foray into non-fiction I’m also reading Jenni Murray’s Votes for Women! The Pioneers and Heroines of Female Suffrage. And last night I started Llamadas telefónicas, a book of short stories by Roberto Bolaño.

>55 rachbxl: I loved the setting in Disappearing Earth!

I finished Dear Edward, which was better than I had expected. I just started All Adults Here, my first by Emma Straub.

Still reading the latest Anne Holt crime novel before bed, but am reading also from Wesley McNair's 2017 poetry collection The Unfastening.

I have also randomly pulled of the shelf Mary Beth Norton's latest history: 1774: The Long Year of Revolution which focuses interestingly, not on the rebels, but the loyalists. It will be a long read, me thinks.

I finished Sophia Chang's The Baddest Bitch in the Room, which ended up being less about the hidden corners of the music industry and more of a woman-coming-into-her-own memoir. But the setting and players were fun—Chang managed members of the Wu-Tang clan and other hip-hop stars, and was very immersed in that world as well as being partnered for many years with a Buddhist monk, who's the father of her two kids—and I liked her candor about sex, money, friendship, and professional power. I'm interviewing her for Bloom on Friday, so now I'm thinking about some non-obvious questions.

Back to The Great Influenza now.

Finished A Cottage Wedding for NetGalley. This is a cute and clean novel from Hallmark, predictable and would make a good TV show.

Currently reading Finding Love at Hedgehog Hollow by Jessica Redland--another cute story, but the main character annoys me as she lets people run roughshod over her repeatedly and then gets her feelings hurt. This is the second book I have read recently with a female main character with that same tendency. I wish they would just stand up for themselves.

I seem to have finished another half-a-dozen books since I last posted here just over a week ago, even though I've been out and about quite a bit. So much for "reading fewer books"! The only respect in which my reading has taken a hit from being able to travel a bit more is that I'm not getting anywhere with audiobooks. The challenge of managing facemask, headphones and glasses with only one pair of ears to hang them all on is just a bit too daunting...

Anyway, I've just finished La colmena, a long-stay resident on my TBR shelf, and I'm currently reading another Gordimer collection, Livingstone's companions. Also working my way slowly through Thomas Bernhard's Collected verse.

I finished the Finnish classic war novel, The Unknown Soldier by Väinö Linna and posted a full review on my CR thread. Next up for me will be In the Distance by Hernán Díaz, a Pulitzer Prize finalist the year the award went to Less.

Finished Apeirogon. I'm almost done with The Henna Artist. I broke down and bought two books I've been looking forward to and am anxious to move on to them: Hamnet and The Pull of the Stars.

>57 avaland: ...But I got distracted and am reading Jennifer Palamieri's slim book, She Proclaims....

I recently finished Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay and Artificial Condition (book two of The Muderbot Diaries) by Martha Wells. I've now just started The Broken Kingdoms (book two of the Inheritance trilogy) by N. K. Jemisin.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. It's amazing and I expect it to shoot to the top of my Best of 2020 list.

>65 Cariola: I loved Hamnet as well. O'Farrell is becoming one of my favorites.

I'm reading Under Ground, historical fiction set on the Iron Range in Minnesota in the early 20th century.

My next book will be The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

Hold the smelling salts - I've finally come to after taking 3 weeks to read the slimmest of Austen novels (Northanger Abbey). Boy - that inexplicably took forever.

I think I'll pick up Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 next. Let's hope she's not prophesying anything apocalyptic or this could be a torturous read during Coronavirus (although perhaps not quite as torturous as waiting for one of Austen's characters to do something more exciting than dropping her new favourite glove).

I just finished It Cannoli Be Murder by Catherine Bruns. I am currently reading Dancing in Combat Boots which is a series of stories about women in World War II, based on actual experiences of people personally known to the author or interviewed by her. I think I bought this book at Pearl Harbor.

I've just finished a more obscure Trollope novel, Castle Richmond and a feminist novel, The Woman in the Photograph.

Now I'm reading Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit, a series of essays/musings on the history of walking. It's lovely.

I'm also reading Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. I found this author on the recently released long list for the Booker Prize. Her book on the list is a continuation of two previous novels so I'm starting with the first. Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean author and her book follows the life of a girl growing up in 1960s Rhodesia. It's fascinating and very engaging to read. I'm only about 40 pages in and think it's safe to say that I'll highly recommend it!

I read What You Wish For by Katherine Center. I thought it would be a fun read because it was about teachers, but it was awful. Not worth the time. I am glad at least one reviewer agreed with me. I am now reading Behind the Frame by Tracy Gardner (no touchstone) and finishing Dancing in Combat Boots.

Once again I'm putting The Great Influenza to the side for a bit because my library hold of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration came in. I really am on a nonfiction kick lately. But I've wanted to read this one for ages, and since Wilkerson's got a new one out (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents), I figured no time like the present. Mostly I've just got an itchy trigger finger, and that one has been getting some backlist love.

I loved The Warmth of Other Suns, Lisa. Wilkerson takes a few characters to illustrate the Great Migration. I learned a lot I didn't know about our history.

I finished My Dark Vanessa and started a very short Kawabata whom I haven’t read in 20 years or so as he is not my favorite and not easy to read. But I thought that maybe with my increased experience in life and all matters Japanese it’d be a good chance to revisit his work.

>70 japaul22: It's a long time since I read it, but I really liked Nervous Conditions.

I've just started Subduction by Kristen Millares Young. I'm only a few pages in, but I want to get back to it - a good sign.

>70 japaul22: I will echo rachbxl to say the same about Nervous Conditions.

>70 japaul22: And I'll add that Nervous Conditions is one of the better discoveries on the 1001 list. :)

>77 ELiz_M: oh I had no idea it was on there!! Bonus!

Hey, does anyone remember the title of the Nonfiction book about Hurricane Katrina that a bunch of you read a few years ago?

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink ?

I'm reading Which Lilith?: Feminist Writers Re-Create The World's First Woman edited by Enid Dame, Lily Rivlin, and Henny Wenkart. I found it while browsing the shelves looking for as many books as I could fit in my library bag on the last day before the library closed back in March, and while it looks like a long, imposing read, I'm actually moving through it pretty quickly.

It's an anthology of essays, poetry, short stories, and less easily categorized works, all intended as midrash, by Jewish feminists grappling with the figure of Lilith, the first woman and Adam's fist wife as imagined in Jewish midrash as an explanation for the discrepancy between the two creation stories in Genesis.

I was aware of Lilith, of course, and her controversial place in Jewish culture - I've read about her before, and flipped through various editions of the Jewish women's magazine that bears her name - but I've never done much in depth study or reading on the topic before.

It's absolutely fascinating. Some of the included works resonate more with me than others, and a lot of it is very much of its unique moment in history, the late 1990s, but I'm really enjoying it. So far, one contribution I've really enjoyed is Sue D. Burton's piece "Lilith at the Red Sea."

When I finish, I'd like to follow this up with something more current on the same topic, to see where the conversation is now, 22 years later. It won't be right away, though. I already have a bag full of library books to get through and return as it is, and I'm eager to get to all of them.

>79 ELiz_M: yes, thank you!

>78 japaul22: I've read a fair number of them so happy to recommend if there's something in particular you're looking for.
Breach of Faith and The Great Deluge were two good comprehensive narratives - Faith more reportage style and Deluge more historical.
For more human interest focus Zeitoun and Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans were excellent. And a couple of excellent collections from a nice small press: Where We Know and Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans

>82 janemarieprice: thank you - I was thinking of it for a possible nonfiction book club selection. So whatever is readable and appealing to a wider swath of people would be great.

I finished In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize finalist novel from 2018. I've added my 1909 Harvard Classics edition of Nine Greek Dramas to my "between book" rotation and I've started reading Æschylus' "Agamemnon" from the collection. The translation by E. D. A Morshead is quite enjoyable. If I've ever read any of these classic plays before, I can't remember the experience. I'm looking forward to gradually going through them over the next few months.

>83 japaul22: I'd recommend Zeitoun or Nine Lives then. The two historical ones are really long so might be a bit of a slog. For book clubs I'd think something with more human / character element makes for a nicer discussion. Zeitoun is one of the Voices of Witness series which are really good, follows a Syrian-American who is rescuing people in boats and then gets picked up by homeland security and the struggles to get him out. Nine Lives follows 9 different people in the decades leading up to Katrina and then what happens to them during and immediately after the storm. That one gives a good sense of the culture of the city I thought.

There are several others that I haven't gotten to yet as well that could be good. As >79 ELiz_M: said Five Days at Memorial details working in the hospital during the storm and is supposed to be pretty harrowing. 1 Dead in the Attic also got a lot of recommendations.

>70 japaul22: etc. Tsitsi Dangarembga — I read This mournable body a couple of months ago, without realising when I started that it was the third part of a trilogy. Didn’t seem to matter much — the gaps between writing the three books are so long that she took it for granted we’d all have forgotten what came before and summarised as she went along anyway. But I do want to go back and read the earlier ones now!

At the moment I’m reading Angus Wilson’s unlikely venture into coffee-table country, The world of Charles Dickens, Han Kang’s Human acts, and probably a couple of other things I’ve lost track of, there seem to be a lot of books lying around this week...

>85 janemarieprice: Thank you! That's very helpful about the Hurricane Katrina books.

Zeitoun would be a good discussion book, I think, because of what happened after. He and his wife are no longer together after some domestic violence accusations, which complicates the discussion.

I just started Valentine.

I just finished Under Ground, an historical novel set on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota in 1916. The events were based on things that happened during the strike and I found the IWW stuff and the beginnings of labor's organizing to be fascinating.

I'm finishing Kawabata's Dandelions tonight but unless it suddenly blows me away in the last few pages this will be a one star read for me. So boring. I gave another chance to Kawabata and I think that's the last.

>84 rocketjk: How did you like In the Distance, Jerry? That was one of my impulse COVID ebook purchases (I think I'm extra susceptible to the ebook deals now that I'm not working in the office with all the physical books floating around to take home). ETA: Nevermind, I saw your review on your thread. Sounds interesting and worthwhile, at any rate.

>88 BLBera: Ditto Valentine—not something I would have picked up except for the setting, which is around where my husband grew up, but it sounded like it could be one of those quiet gems.

>89 lilisin: Pun intended? It was a good one either way.

>91 lisapeet:

No pun intended but it does make me look quite clever, doesn't it!

>91 lisapeet: Hi, Lisa. I found In the Distance enjoyable overall and very well written, though I had certain reservations. Lot's of people have been less reserved than I in their praise, but since you asked, I've posted a review on my CR thread, which you'll find here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/315099#7229370

ETA: Whoops! Just saw your own edit. Interesting and worthwhile, yes.

I'm leaving the central coast of Italy and The Breaking of a Wave with Fabio Genovesi, and going to visit Oyinkan Braithwaite in Nigeria and My Sister, the Serial Killer.

As mentioned earlier, I've added my 1909 edition of the Harvard Library volume Nine Greek Dramas to my reading rotation. I have so far read and enjoyed "Agamemnon" and "The Libation Bearers," the first two plays in "The House of Atreus" trilogy by Aeschylus. I'm looking forward to gradually reading through the remaining seven plays over the next few months.

And now from the "They Can't All Be Classics" Department, as I've started Naked She Died, the second book in an obscure mystery series starring Sergeant Giff Speer. My copy is a first edition pulp paperback published in 1962.

I finished Valentine, a solid first novel and will start The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue's new novel about the Spanish flu.

I finished Dancing in Combat Boots and Before the Crown which is a historical novel about Elizabeth and Phillip's courting and marriage. It is okay, kind of reads like a movie script. Also finished Finding Hemingway which was tedious and much to long. The characters were annoying. This book was written by a male, and the female lead character did not seem realistic to me, more like a guy personality in a female character.

Currently reading Dumpling Days and Feet on the Street.

I've recently finished a surprisingly good Early Reviewers book, All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team by Christina Soontornvat and the not-surprisingly good (because it won awards and got lots of hype) Normal People by Sally Rooney.

I am now reading Vampires of the Scarlet Order by David Lee Summers, which is pretty terrible, but is, as they say, "of local interest." I did not know that the mountain visible out of my living room window had a vampire under it!

I finished Naked She Died by Don Tracy. Published in 1962, this is a fun pulp mystery, the second in Tracy's series featuring undercover MP Giff Speer. Next up will be Sudden Death, a 2017 novel by Mexican author Alvaro Enrigue.

I finished Dumpling Days by Grace Lin and Feet on the Street by Ray Blount Jr. Now reading The Boat Girls by Margaret Mayhew.

I just started A Children's Bible.

I've started August Folly by Angela Thirkell, and today am focusing on Olivia Newton-John's memoir, Don't Stop Believin'. I'm 1/3 of the way through and finding it somewhat interesting but atrociously written. My editing hand started twitching on page 2. Expect a good hate review on my thread in a few days.

I'm making a push to finish the appallingly-long Malena es un nombre de tango, which has been on my TBR self for years. Two or three more days of sweltering heat on the balcony should allow me to finish it.

>102 Nickelini: Can't wait! Whenever someone mentions Olivia Newton-John (which is not all that often, in my experience...) I have to think of my old physics tutor and his confidence that he could impress "the younger generation" by being able to claim to be a friend of her grandfather. Which always fell a bit flat, because we (physics undergraduates in the early 80s) all knew about Max Born, but only had a very vague idea of who she was. I doubt if any of us had seen Grease.

Reading Madeline Albright's latest, Hell and Other Destinations: A 21st Century Memoir and a since I have finished the latest Anne Holt, I have started the crime novel Where Evil Lies by Jorgen Brekke. I read and very much enjoyed some years back (2011) his Dreamless which was one of two available back then in the states.

I finished and loved A Children's Bible and am starting Olive Again.

I just finished Off the Shelf which was an easy read, now on to A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber.

Oops, impulsively, and out of curiosity, I picked up Olaf Olafsson's short story collection, Valentines: Stories and six stories later....

Rick Harsch's book The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas arrived in the post today, also From here to Eternity and I am reading Le Hussard Sur Le Toit - That should keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. (Boris the spider appears in bottom left corner of my desk - he is not looking too well, I think Covid-19 has finally got him)

>103 thorold: on my TBR self for years — hmmmm. Freudian slip, or what? :-)

Another balcony day today, so I finished Malena and couldn't resist moving on to Ali Smith's Summer, which arrived the other day with the ink practically still wet. Excellent! I'm tempted to re-read all four of them now...

>108 baswood: Ah, Barry, you make me nostalgic for my early reading years! When I was 12, having read all youth books in the house, I took on my father's ratty paperback war novels, which included From Here to Eternity. Why anyone would want to read novels about a war they were in (nostalgia?), is beyond me; however, the collection kept me busy for one summer. My parents did catch me reading The Dirty Dozen and took it away with some finger-wagging. However, the next time they went grocery shopping together, I hunted it down and finished it. I re-read some of these books in the 70s.

>110 avaland: Sounds like something I did! I had two older sisters and I would sneak their books off the shelves to read when I was home alone or when no one was watching what I was doing. Think here of The Harrad Experiment and Boys and Girls Together and John Lennon In His Own Write.

>111 LadyoftheLodge: Ohhh I almost forgot about The Harrad Experiment. I boosted that from my parents' shelves (not that they were paying attention to what I was reading... hi, 1970s!). I remember thinking it was racy, but not racy enough (hi, Fear of Flying!)

I just finished Molecules: The Elements and the Architecture of Everything by Theodore Gray, which was just as fun and interesting as his earlier book about the elements, and have now started in on The Secret History by Donna Tartt. My expectations of that are very, very high based on everything I've heard about it, but boy are the first few pages promising!

I finished the wonderful Sudden Death by Mexican author Alvaro Enrique, a whimsical yet sobering (as if any of us need philosophical sobering these days) novel about power, religious and cultural domination and tennis. My full review is up on my personal CR thread. After several enjoyable novels of various kinds, I'm moving back to non-fiction now to read Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War by Tom Wheeler.

I'm reading The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste which I found on the Booker long list that just came out. It is set during the 1930s as Italy takes over Ethiopia. It's extremely well-written, but violent, I suppose as you'd expect for a book in a war setting.

I'm also reading Stranger in the Shogun's City, a new non-fiction work that uses the extensive letters of a woman named Tsuneno to recreate life in Japan in the early 1800s.

After Summer and the Aussie farming saga Big Red, I've moved on to a bit more virtual tourism, with the second of Henry Havard's 1870s travel books about the Netherlands, Les frontières menacées. Fun!

>114 rocketjk: Yes, Sudden death was quite a book!

I am reading Our Yanks and A Stroke of Malice.

As I feared, my library checkout of The Warmth of Other Suns expired before I finished, and I'm not sure I want to shell out for a copy just for the last 50 pages. I put another hold on it, but I'm currently looking at at least a couple of months. Fortunately those last few chapters probably won't suffer terribly from a little hiatus—I'm at the point where Wilkerson is wrapping up the stories of the three people she tracks throughout the book—but who knows, I may break down.

At any rate, my Iris Murdoch book club meets in six days so now I've just started A Fairly Honourable Defeat, which should ease the pain a bit.

Weird down reading month, but I finally finished something, The Blazing World, on audio. It becomes more nuanced than I anticipated in some ways. Actually I finished a paper book too, last week, Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather.

Tomorrow, on audio, I'll start Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, read with a strong Scottish accent (not by the author). This will start my 2020 booker list run. I won't finish in time for the prize, but will try to finish before the 2021 list comes out.

I've just started Bowie's Books: The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Changed His Life by John O'Connell. So far so good - ticks two of my big boxes!

Finished the Olafsson collection which was very good, tried to start an early Paul Yoon collection but I suspect my timing is off. No matter, the four books I ordered from the bookstore came in, so new and shiny....

I've finished The temple of the Golden Pavilion and Le procés-verbal in the last few days. That feels like enough angry young men to last me until the end of the canicule, so I'm moving on to the Aussie novel Bobbin' Up, which is from the same period but seems to be angry young women instead...

Getting behind with reviews because of the current heat-wave, but will try to catch up shortly.

I'm rereading Midnight's Children for my book club.

I finished Our Yanks (great way to learn history!) and still reading A Stroke of Malice. I just started Steadfast Mercy for NetGalley. It is sort of depressing so far, but will keep reading.

Today I finished All Adults Here by Emma Straub, and tonight or tomorrow I’ll finish Val McDermid’s Cross and Burn, two very different books but which both satisfy my current need for stories I can lose myself in. I’ve just started Writers and Lovers by Lily King. I’m not far in, but it looks like it might be another.

>125 rachbxl: I loved Writers & Lovers. I think it's one of my favorites so far this year.

Yesterday I finished my reread of Lost Children Archive and today I finished Titus Andronicus for a group read. And last night I cracked open Despair by Vladimir Nabokov - the first non-audiobook I have started since July 12. Maybe this will mark a change in my personal reading atmosphere.

I've been struggling with my usual literary fiction lately so I went to the bookstore looking for nonfiction and this book ended up yelling at me, yes! you want to read me!, so I read A Serial Killer's Daughter by Kerri Rawson. I'm not sure why it yelled at me so hard to pick it up but it was the right fit and kept me engaged. I felt true sorrow for Kerri as she had to deal with her father being the BTK killer.

>126 BLBera: when I ‘saw’ it at the library (ebook) I remembered that you and Kay both really liked it. I’m about halfway through now and very much enjoying it.

Completed A Stroke of Malice by Anna Lee Huber. I have read all the other books in this series and enjoyed them. For some reason, I had a hard time keeping all the male characters straight. The plot seemed really convoluted although the twists at the end were engrossing. I also became weary of the constant references to Lady Darby's pregnancy. It just wasn't necessary to keep mentioning it, once the reader was made aware of it. Maybe I am just easily annoyed lately, as the book got good reviews.

I finished up the interesting and enjoyable Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War by Tom Wheeler. This was a very interesting trip through the American Civil War with a close focus point of how the use of the telegraph gave Abraham Lincoln the ability both to communicate with far flung generals and gather information about unfolding events in real time. More importantly, due to how new telegraph technology was, Lincoln was the first head of state to have that ability. Wheeler makes the point that Lincoln's gradual ability to fully master this new communication tool and its functions is one more indication of the president's remarkable character and intelligence. He was learning these things on the fly with--because the technology was so new--no blueprint to follow and nobody to advise him as he learned.

I also complete my gradual reading through the charming essay collection Leaves in the Wind by Alfred George Gardiner (a.k.a Alpha of the Plough).

My full review of the former can be found on my own CR thread. Soon I'll have a review of the latter, as well. My next book will be John D. MacDonald's fifth Travis McGee novel, A Deadly Shade of Gold.

I finished the hugely enjoyable Bowie's Books. Up next I think will be Dorothy Whipple's They Were Sisters.

I just finished Steadfast Mercy and I am currently reading Eat, Drink, and Be Wary, both for NetGalley.

Yesterday I finished the hugely enjoyable Writers & Lovers, and this morning I’ve started Sanaë Lemoine’s debut novel The Margot Affair.

Finished Eat, Drink, and Be Wary which is a cozy culinary mystery with a very clumsy sleuth. It is okay, but too many characters and subplots marred my enjoyment of this one.

Today I finished Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl.

>136 ELiz_M: Wow, that's an accomplishment!

Finished Despair by Nabokov, and I'm not feeling despair, but feeling a little reading energy. Started a curiosity I picked up last year, Journey to Armenia & Conversation about Dante by Osip Mandelstam, about 1/4 of which is an essay about Journey by Henry Gifford (who is not the translator).

>137 lisapeet: It is not a difficult read, just long. And the NYC setting is fun. :)

I've just finished a couple of Argentinian novels, Una vez Argentina and Voltaire's calligrapher. Also read Schiller's Die Räuber, which might — or might not — be the start of a new Big Poet Project. We'll see...

Prompted by finding a couple of her other books in a little free library last week, I've picked A S Byatt's first novel, The shadow of the sun, off the shelf for a re-read.

>136 ELiz_M: Well done for taking it on! Another German classic I've never read...

I somehow got my hands on a library copy of Isabel Wilkerson's new book, Caste. Early on, I can already tell it's going to be an eye-opening and different view of American society than I had considered.

I'm also reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day to have something a little lighter!

>141 japaul22: I have read Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day several times, and also listened to audiobook version. It was delightful.

I just finished How to Start a Scandal and I am now reading Three Treats Two Many.

I have just finished Across the Zodiac well I thought I had., but 20 pages from the end of this Victorian science fiction novel I was wondering how it was all going to be wrapped up. At page 305 I got the message "end of volume 1" OH dear - the first volume seemed interminable........

>141 japaul22: Oh, Miss Pettigrew's fun. Enjoy!

Finished re-reading The shadow of the sun, which was very interesting, better than I remembered it (probably last read ca. 1991). Also another Schiller play, Fiesco.

I've started La muerte de Artemio Cruz from my TBR pile.

>143 baswood: Is it two volumes, or the more usual three? :-)

I’ve gone back to the second of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, Storia del nuovo cognome, which I was just under halfway through and enjoying when confinement hit and I got distracted. Yesterday I started Rene Denfeld’s first novel, The Enchanted, which I’m keen to read as I have enjoyed her later novels recently. And I have just found a forgotten TBR ‘shelf’ in the form of an old Kindle - I had no idea there were so many unread books on it! I have started Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum.

I seem to be jumping around quite a bit. Reading from The Best American Poetry 2019, and also newer poetry collection by Nadine Sabra Meyers. But also occasionally dipping into What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence. I read the first chapter of Madeline Albright's Hell and Other Destinations with the intent of reading more....and....at bedtime I'm still reading a Jorge Brekke crime novel.

I finished the excellent Into Thin Air a few days ago and now I'm reading the excellent My Cousin Rachel. Finally getting some good reading in after a long time of 'meh' books.

I just finished Three Treats Too Many for NetGalley. It was okay, somewhat confusing since it is third in a series and I had not read the previous two. Currently reading The Anchoress and Pioneering the Vote.

>149 LadyoftheLodge: That would be confusing!

I've just finished Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car―And How It Will Reshape Our World by Lawrence D. Burns, which wasn't entirely what I was hoping for from a book on that particular subject, but was worth reading, anyway.

Now I've just started The Kingdom of Gods, the final book in N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy.

I am reading Les Amis de Bernhard by Annemarie Schwarzenbach

I am about to start From here to Eternity by James Jones. At nearly 1000 pages it might take me an eternity to read it

I'm reading the amusing The Year of Ugly

I finished Pioneering the Vote which was somewhat dull but well-researched. I am now reading Murder at Kingscote and still reading The Anchoress.

I finished A Fairly Honourable Defeat, my third Iris Murdoch for the summer, which was both entertaining and awful (as in about awful people, not at all an awful read). Now back to The Great Influenza, the reading of which keeps getting interrupted for this and that.

I finished A Deadly Shade of Gold, the fifth book in John D. MacDonald's highly enjoyable "Travis McGee" series. Next up for me will be Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery by Leon F. Litwack, an evidently very detailed (570 pages) history of Reconstruction that was recommended to me by a friend who is closing in on her PhD in American History.

I finished a collection of two prose works by Osip Mandelstam, both written in 1933. Journey to Armenia and Conversation about Dante. And I've started The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster. I've never read Auster before.

>157 dchaikin: I haven't read much Auster, but I have read Book of Illusions and enjoyed it a lot. Plus, Auster and I went to the same high school! (not at the same time, though)

>158 rocketjk: good to know and cool about being co-alumns. A co-worker passed a box of his books to me yesterday and it included 8 books by Paul Auster, plus another Auster edited for NPR. He gave me the Book of Illusions a couple weeks ago after we talked about Siri Hustvedt, Auster's wife. So suddenly I have 13 books by Auster.

Finished another stray leftover from the Southern African binge I found lying around, André Brink's late novel The rights of desire.

I'm about halfway through Artemio Cruz, but I think I'm going to have a go at Schiller's Don Carlos today.

>159 dchaikin: Is "co-alumns" a word nowadays? It sounds more like a term from materials science than anything else.
Jerry also tried to encourage me to read more Paul Auster last year, but I didn't get very far with him. Still on the to-read list. Looking forward to hearing how you get on!

I think my only Auster so far is Moon Palace, which I read in my 20s and remember nothing of except the cover. Though that might say more about my 20s than the book. I did see him speak at a memorial service for an old family friend earlier this year (pre-covid), and just in case the adjective leonine is feeling at loose ends and needs someone to attach itself to, he would be it. I keep thinking I'd like to read The New York Trilogy sometime.

I'm starting Long Bright River.

Also started Merchant of Venice, read Act 1 today.

>146 rachbxl: I see Elena Ferrante's got a new novel out. The Times review of it at the weekend was a bit mixed.

I finished my Dorothy Whipple novel {They Were Sisters), and next will be going on to Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong about the World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. I'll see whether I twin it with a fictional read as well once I get into it.

I finished My Cousin Rachel and also Orwell's Burmese Days which was interesting as I haven't read Orwell since high school and this was his first novel.

>65 Cariola: I love all of O'Farrells books and was looking forward to Hamnet....but I think I am too distracted by the news to really appreciate it. Im not giving up, and your commet reminds me that I need to try again very soon!

>98 bragan: oh I had forgotten about All Thirteen, wanted to read it at the time, and got distracted. Will have to get it thanks for the reminder. And I am in a minority of Normal People; wanted to like it but I kept wanting for something to happen that would make the characters more human. But thats just me

I am finishing Stone sky this one is a little slower going than the first two in the trilogy but I am not putting it down. Really want to read more Jemisin now.

>110 avaland: >111 LadyoftheLodge:>112 hee did something similar; when I was 11 my sis was away at college and would spend lots of time going through her bookshelves. I remember reading Kim, and trying to read Valley of the Dolls but just not getting it. My parents were pretty cool about what I was reading but I was very embarrassed when my dad said he wanted to read it after I was finished (!)

>116 thorold: ok, I know now that i must read this book sounds fascinating!

I seem to have had a lot of distractions in the last week or two (lots of family coming and going), so books I started a week ago have been sadly ignored; but, I continue with the Best American Poetry 2019, and at bedtime, the Jorge Brekke crime novel Where Evil Lies. However, I wrote three reviews the other morning, so I'm not feeling too bad about my reading performance (yet).

>168 cindydavid4: Ha! Valley of the Dolls was on my older sister's book shelf too. I remember the cover with the pretty girls and pill capsules.

>159 dchaikin: Siri Hustvedt, Auster's wife

I did not know that, Ive read a couple of books by her! I have read some early Auster but lost track of them . Should check to see what he has out now

re Miss Pettigrew, loved the book but just now looking for more info, i found out that the book I read was a new edition of the one written in 1938! I didn't realize it was so old! It was also a movie in 2008 after the new edition came out with Frances McDormand which was an excellent adaptation

Ive been really out of sorts the last week or so, too much worry about world events, felling depressed nothing iI read is getting me out of this funk, tho I have a ton of books to chose from. Happen to notice a book on my paperback shelf let nothing you dismay which I don't remember reading. It takes place during Christmas, and the reviews looked great. Oh my not only is it fun to read, but the fact that it takes place in December makes me feel refreshingly cold what with our hottest summer on record here. Feeling better already Will have to look for more of his books

>171 LadyoftheLodge: I tried to reread it not long ago, and oh my it has not aged well!

I managed one more quick one since I managed to read it one day, the short 136 paged Petit eloge de l'errance by Akira Mizubayashi which I only liked maybe a third of it. If it had been any longer I would have abandoned it or started skim reading it. I much prefer and loved his Une langue venue d'ailleurs.

I am currently reading The House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell. I'm halfway through it and still have very little idea what the hell it is I'm reading, but it's weirdly compelling. Or maybe compellingly weird. Or both.

>167 cindydavid4: I can absolutely understand not being wowed by Normal People. I'm honestly a little surprised it worked for me as well as it did, not that I'm complaining.

The Kingdom of Gods turned out to be an incredibly strong end to the series, and I'm still kicking myself for taking this long to read more N. K. Jemisin, when I liked her Dreamblood books so much. I must be sure not to take this long to get to the Broken Earth series. I recently bought the whole trilogy and I'm very much looking forward to it. It's just the usual lament: so many books, so little time!

I had trouble with the first book of that series, but after reading the Broken Earth series, I must start again!! I suspect you'll love BE. I don't know anything about the Dreamblood series so will have to check that out. and yes, smb,slt!!! Should be our motto

I actually have a tee shirt that has that motto on it! I just finished Murder at Kingscote and currently reading The Anchoress which was a recommendation and reviewed by another LT. It is sort of weird but also compelling.

I'm continuing my odd journey through Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. I'm about halfway though and depending on my mood and attentiveness, it's either a slog or brilliant.

I've just begun The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish and Real Life by Brandon Taylor.

>178 RidgewayGirl: I saw Rachel Kadish give a talk on the experience of writing The Weight of Ink at LimmudBoston back in, I think, 2017, and it I've had it on my tbr list ever since. I've never actually got round to reading it, but I still plan to eventually. Rachel's talk was really interesting. I look forward to seeing how you like it.

This book had my name written all over it: jewish life in medieval Europe check,finding a stash of letters and documents from the same time period, check, womens fight for equality in the same period and ours check. But I really had trouble getting passed for first 50 pages. I don't think its the writing; perhaps I wasn't in the mood for it, or, perhaps I was so familiar with each of the above checks that it didn't interest me. Really tho, I think I need to try it again. I can't believe I wouldn't love it!

I loved The Weight of Ink. A friend sent me a print copy when I bemoaned the fact that my library e-book was missing a chapter, and I was thinking that was an awfully BIG book to have taking up room on my shelves, but now I'm glad I've got a copy. I'll probably end up giving it away to someone at some point, but it's a nice book to have the option of rereading, someday when time permits.

I gave up on Caste. Just finished Beheld, a novel that revolves around the first murder in Plymouth Colony, and just started Fifty Words for Rain.