Benita's Big Bad Book Pile - 2012 Version

Once again I will attempt to rid my shelves of 25 books that have been sitting around for a very long time. The books I will be reading will be anything purchased before December 31, 2011, but I want to concentrate on older books in my collection. The eligible books can also be recorded books. I will add titles to this posting when I finish them and a short review below as I get time to write it. In looking over my list of books off the shelf from last year (2011) I noticed that I listened to far more books off my shelf than what I read. That is good because I am trying to seriously reduce the numbers of recorded books in my house and move over to downloading them from the public library instead of purchasing them. Learning to download to my Nook is also one of my goals for this year.

1. House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohan - book - January 7, 2012
2. Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead - audio book - January 9, 2012
3. Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones - book - January 24, 2012
4. Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin - February 13, 2012
5. Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey - audio book - February 25, 2012
6. Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker - audio book - March 1, 2012
7. Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova - audio book - March 18, 2012
8. Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok - audio book - March 24, 2012
9. Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson - April 8, 2012
10. Emerald Atlas by John Stephens - audio book - April 11, 2012
11. Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb - audio book - April 16, 2012
12. Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier - book - April 22, 2012
13. Forgotten by Cat Patrick - audio book - May 3, 2012
14. A Murderous Procession by Ariana Franklin - book - May 6, 2012
15. Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin - book - May 11, 2011
16. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson - book - May 12, 2012
17. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson - book - May 18, 2012
18. Echo Park by Michael Connelly - audio book - May 19, 2012
19. Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - audio book - May 28, 2012
20. Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr - book - June 6, 2012
21. The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee - audio book - June 8, 2012
22. The Accidental by Ali Smith - audio book - June 19, 2012
23. Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan - book - June 20, 2012
24. As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway - audio book & book - July 11, 2012
25. Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin - audio book - July 21, 2012
26. Songs For the Butcher's Daughter by Peter Manseau - book - July 22, 2012
27. Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer - book - July 28, 2012
28. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester - audio book - August 4, 2012
29. Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell - book - August 9, 2012
30. Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry - audio book - August 12, 2012
31. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin - August 18, 2012
32. Physik Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe - audio book - August 25, 2012
33. Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley - audio book - September 9, 2012
34. Presidential Anecdotes by Paul F. Boller - book - September 15, 2012
35. Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley - audio book - September 20, 2012
36. Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson - book - September 25, 2012
37. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - audio book - October 13, 2012
38. Everything But the Coffee by Bryant Simon - book - October 17, 2012
39. Sunnyside by Glen David Gold - audio book - October 27, 2012
40. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami - book - November 2, 2012
41. Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - book - November 7, 2012
42. Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson - book - November 25, 2012
43. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin - book - December 6, 2012
44. Snow by Orhan Pamuk - audio book-December 17, 2012

Good luck, Benita.

Glad to see you back Benita. Good luck with your challenge.

House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street by William D. Cohen is one of those books about the financial disaster of 2008/09 that will make you want to go out and hit a banker. In fact the title says it all about this book. I read it because I wanted some answers about why men who drove their company into the ground should be rewarded and 450 pages later I didn't have any answer except that they were special and deserved all that money. When the CEO of the company can't explain what a credit default swap is there is real trouble in Wall Street. And then the police have the nerve to clear out Zucoti Park! What are we thinking as a country.

Anyway, Bear Stearns deserved to die, and this book was a long winded apologetic for the testosterone loaded leaders of the pack. The book was poorly written and much much too long. I realize that the author was trying to cover his behind, as he was sure that there would be law suits, but it didn't help the readabilty of this book.

I gave up on Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead. I had heard that he was a good author, but this book was flat, flat, flat. I won't buy another one of his again. Why was this book not classed as a YA novel? Two discs into the 9 disc book and there was not a single adult featured in the story. I had the recorded version and the reader brought nothing to it either. So I quit. Life is too short to spend it listening to books that aren't interesting. Even if you are trapped in a car for a thousand miles.

Lots of luck this year with your reading! May the rest of your books be better than these first two.

It's great you're here again! I'm sorry the first two books you've cleared were downers, I hope the others will be much better! At least, these two are not taking away shelf space anymore! ;)

I enjoyed reading The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones. The book is a memoir of Judith Jones life as an editor at Knopf. She had the honor and the privilege to discover Julia Childs, Edna Lewis, and Claudia Roden, and others in that illustrious company, and has become one of the guiding lights of the food world in the U. S. as a result. Her approach to food and the way that unique viewpoint carried though her life and became a general purpose philosophy and in that way she reminds me of Julia Childs. This is not a tell all about the authors she worked with kind of book. It is a tell all about food and philosophy of life and book maintains that focus throughout. This is a succinct tightly written account of one woman's life in which food played a great part and the book never loses sight of that story. This is the way memoirs should be written.

Finished the second book in George R. R. Martin's great epic fantasy series Song of Ice and Fire. This book was the second in the series and was titled Clash of Kings. I really like this series but find that they are exhausting to read even though I have to say it was an extraordinary ride. I couldn't put it down and carried my Nook around with me for a long time while I was reading it. I don't know if I will hurry to read any more of that series or not. They are so filled with gore and disgusting behavior. I realize that books have to have villains, but enough is enough. Does Martin lay awake at night trying to think of the most disgusting ways to kill people or what? I know that war is hell, and I didn't think that I had a problem with reading blood and guts, but maybe I am just getting old and tired and finding these books just over-the-top when it comes to describing execution scenes. I had the same problem when I read The Snowman by Jo Nesbo and decided that was the last one of his books I was reading as they were crossing a line in to just plain shock value horror that I couldn't take. I won't say that I won't ever read another of his books, but it will be a good long time. I do want to finish reading the series by Martin, but my poor blood soaked mind needs a rest so I will wait to read the next one.

Surely as long as this book is it can count for two off of my book shelves? I guess not, but boy are these hefty tomes!

Wow that makes me think if I should go on reading the series?
But: Fortunately in Germany any of the American tombs was split into two, so when I read A Clash of Kings it will actually be two books! ;)

Yes, Martin certainly does know his way around an execution. I've read the first three in the series and so far Clash of Kings was my least favorite. The next one, A Storm of Swords, is dripping with gorey death but the ride continues full force and the various plot lines get really intricate. What I really loved about it was the development of the characters; particularly Jamie, Tyrion, Danearys, and John. I say keep reading, but take a significant break between books, and brace yourself for more of the ick factor.

Finished listening to the recorded version of Oh the Glory of It All by San Francisco rich kid Sean Wilsey. This is an example of a celebrity tell-all memoir, and of a book that should have been edited and pruned to about half the size that it is. The last quarter of the book is worth reading, the rest just rambles about a rotten childhood. At the end of the book the author states that it was all about finding his father and getting to know him, but you sure couldn't tell that by reading it. My book discussion group is reading memoirs and I wanted to read a tell-all celebrity memoir. I had this one sitting around the house and knew that in its day it caused a scandal in San Francisco society. I can see why after reading it, but mostly it is about a socialite childhood, a testosterone overloaded teen age angst period that results in clashes with parents and fellow students, and then getting back on track and becoming a nice person. Should have been the end of the story instead of rambling on for 400 pages.

I read this because I wanted to read one of these celebrity tell-all memoirs that are so popular right now. Frankly, I found this book boring and wanted to quit reading. I forced myself to finish it because I really wanted to know what catches people about this type of book. I never did find out why so many people like them. It is not a genre to which I ascribe much importance and will not waste my time on them in the future. However, the last quarter of this book was much more interesting than the first three quarters leading me to conclude that it should have been pruned to half its length.

Listened to Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker. What a fine book! I just love Westerns when they are written this well. I am sad that this will be the last one of these books since Parker died about two years ago. (I think this one was published posthumously.) Parker has created fine characters in Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch, and returned them to the beginning by staging the last of these books in the town of Appaloosa - the place it all began.

The short review of this book would be - An action book with enough bonhomie to help the reader get a sense of what holds the friendship of Virgil and Everett together. For good measure a little warrior philosophy is thrown in along with a healthy dose of irony and dead-pan humor to meld the novella into one readable, or in this case listenable, book. As I said, too bad there won't be more of them.

Listened to Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova while driving to and from Kansas during spring break. I have to say that I enjoyed this one even though many readers and most critics did not share my view. I can't help but wonder that if the huge success of Kostova's first book didn't set some exceptionally high marks for any succeeding books she might write. While this book has it's faults I have to applaud the author for tackling a difficult subject using painting as the vehicle to explore the questions she asks. The book explores the difficult topic of what is creativity? Is it obsession or unfocused compulsion? Or is it an obsession that can be focused and disciplined to create something of value? I agree that the plot develops slowly and drags along for a long time. However, about two-thirds of the way into the book the pace picks up and the mystery carries the story along to a satisfying conclusion. This isn't a bad book, but it isn't a blockbuster either. A workmanlike effort of average rating that would have benefited from a good trimming from a good editor.

Finished listening to Girl In Translation by Jean Kwok this weekend. This was only an average book. In my opinion the publisher goofed on this one. It was a YA book. It had a YA heroine - she was 11 when she came to the U. S. and the book ended when she as 18. Even though the book was told by an adult looking back over her teen years, this was clearly a book about teenage angst as well as being an immigrant coming-of-age story. At the heart of this novel was a Horatio Alger story about an immigrant girl who starts out with all the disadvantages and still manages to make good in the land of opportunity, and even manages to make a better life for her mother as well. All of this by herself. With no help from adults.

The book was full of stock characters and never really managed to rise above a certain level of mediocrity. It brought nothing new to the table and was far too predictable. Should have been a YA book. It might have won a Newbery or Prinz award.

Easter Sunday at the swimming pool with the ending of Warmth of Other Suns in sight. A great way to spend a holiday. I actually finished reading this book while at the pool. It is sort of cheating to call this a book-off-the-shelf because I purchased it in November of 2011, but anything that came into my collection before January 1 counts as a BOTS, so here it is. This one is a selection for my real time book discussion group, but I had planned on reading it at some point anyway.

It is a good book and a great read. It suffers from poor editing because the author endlessly repeats herself. At times it seems that she has written different sections of the book at different times and then pasted them all together to make a super long whole. At one point a whole half a page was exactly the same thing that she said a few chapters before. Not word-for-word, but the same ideas. This should have been edited. I am sure that editing alone would have shortened the book by a good twenty pages. Also the endnotes/footnotes are a mess. To hard to figure out and not in an easy to look at format. These are technical issues, but even if the book is narrative non-fiction it should have been given a better editing. On the upside - it does have an index.

This book has accolades aplenty already so I won't add to the volumes written about it. I rated this one a 4 stars book. Immensely readable that reminds me of Studs Terkel at his best.

I listened to Emerald Atlas by John Stephens and enjoyed every minute of this book. This is one of those rare fantasy novels for children that has everything that kids want and need in a book. It is suspenseful with humor. It has action but doesn't drown in violence. It has a wonderful plot that involves an intelligent use of time travel. This book is not condescending, or patronizing to children. It would be a perfect read aloud for school teachers. It will work particularly well with kids up to grade 6.

The plot centers around three siblings who are orphans. They don't know it, but they are important in the magical world. In this book Kate, the eldest, finds a book called the Emerald Atlas and thus, the ability to time travel. There is an evil witch, a daring rescue of helpless children, and dwarfs, the most noble of beings.

More people should read this book and get the word out about it. It is the first in a trilogy, and I can't wait for the next two.

I listened to The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb. This is first of all a sports book. It is about running, and about amateur sports and the rise of professionalism in the sports world. The author does a good job of tying together the three main contenders for the mile record in the 1950's and the race for the sub-four minute mile. Waiting for this barrier to be broken was one of the great sporting quests of the twentieth century. The author does a good job of taking the reader back to that time and getting us to feel the excitement of watching and waiting for the four minute barrier to fall. This is not the best sports book I have read, but the author did a good job of bringing all the threads together and putting them into some kind of order. Today the name of Roger Bannister, the least developed character of the three major contenders, is well know, but it is clear that without the other two pushing the record forward Bannister would not have been the first. It is amazing that all three men trained and ran in a day when they all had to go to school, serve in the military, pass medical exams, etc. In other words, they produced some of the greatest running in history without the aid of special diets, trainers, and, for the most part, without coaches. It is a reminder the way things were. And since I am from Kansas, it doesn't hurt that one of the contenders was from Kansas.

I finished reading The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier. This is one book where the title says it all. It is not a comprehensive look at science at all. Rather it does what the title says, it skims the surfaces of physics, chemistry, biology, and even some basics of mathematics, which are incontrovertibly linked to the sciences. After reading this book I think that I am much better versed in the basics of science, and for that reason would rate this book rather high in the list of technical books on these subjects that I have read. The author takes a lighthearted approach to the subjects that makes them very accessible to a lay audience. The topics are then liberally salted with quotes from experts and examples for the reader to make sure that they grasp the basic concepts that are the bedrock of the sciences. Perhaps the most important thing she does is lay the groundwork for scientific thinking and reasoning. This is not an equation but a way of thinking about the word and as such it is so very important. However, this process gets short shrift in our education system, so the first three chapters of this book should be required reading for every K-5 teacher in the country. If I were to criticize anything about this book, it is that the humor and the snappy and breezy literation, at times, becomes wearing. In defense of the author, this isn't a lyrical historical tome like those of Daniel Boorstein so she is forgiven for her literary indiscretions.

Finished Forgotten by Cat Patrick yesterday. This is one book that should be forgotten. A girl who can only "remember" the future and not the past, and lives her life through her notebooks, but still know how to do Math? How does that work? The implausible plot is only part of the problem. The other part is the heroine is a self-righteous prig who goes around making decisions for her friends using the excuse that she is making their life better. Never-the-less, the author shows talent as a writer. She managed to get me to listen to this book all the way to the end. I just hope that she will rely on her writing talent and get the services of a good editor. Both of these should help her avoid the pitfalls of a bad plot and overly earnest teenagers.

I finished A Murderous Procession by Ariana Franklin. This is the fourth and last of the Mistress of the Art of Death series by Franklin. I am sorry that it will be the last, as the author died in January. I have read all four of these books and there isn't a stinker among 'em. The books are set in England during the Middle Ages. Henry II once again calls upon his friends, Adelia, a physician trained at the medical school in Salerno, and Rowley, the Bishop of St. Albans, who happens to be Adelia's lover. The mission is to escort Henry's daughter, Joanna, to her marriage to the King of Sicily. Unfortunately, there is a serial killer among the people in the entourage. This serial killer is after Adelia and but he doesn't mind killing anybody who gets in his way or who is connected to Adelia. The book brings in some new characters and returns some characters from previous novels who haven't been in the picture for awhile. The is a good way for the author to keep refreshing the series. The novel is full of adventure, romance, and thrills aplenty. I stayed up late two nights in a row just to finish this one. I highly recommend this series for its historical content as well as the mystery.

Finding George Orwell in Burma is a refreshing and compelling book that is equal parts travel book, literary criticism, and political commentary on colonialism and totalitarianism. I have not read Orwell, l aside from Animal Farm, which almost every High School student in the U. S. is compelled to read, so the parts of the book where the author compared what Orwell had written with what has happened in Burma was very interesting. I have not visited Burma, and so the descriptions of the country were evocative, intriguing, and ultimately enticing. I picked up this book because it had good reviews in professional literature, but also because recent events in Burma, made me think this would be a timely read. It was. There is a little bit of history in the book as well as the observations made by the author that helped to explain some of the things I hear about in the news. This is a very worthwhile informative book that manages to blend literary criticism with political commentary and travelogue. If offers plenty of insight and explanation written in a very succinct style.

This book languished on my shelf for almost two years, even though I had it checked out from Gorgas, before I finally got around to reading it. I pulled it off the shelf because of the recent events in Burma. The release of Aung Son Sou Kyi and the new elections might make this look at current life in Burma out-of-date, but even if so the literary criticism would still be relevant.

I really like the Jackson Brodie books by Kate Atkinson and since May was declared the Murder and Mayhem month by Mark, I put the last two of these books on my to read list for this month. I finished When Will There Be Good News? and it is a winner. The author has a quirky sense of humor and she imbues her characters with this same quality. This makes them fun to read, even while bad things happen to them. In this book all triumph in the end - except for our hero.

I am also attracted to the author's style. She creates lots of separate threads of stories at the beginning and then gradually brings them together. This could be very frustrating for the uninitiated Atkinson reader, but I love it. I start looking for the threads early on and have great fun watching the author bring them all together. As an added bonus - in this book the author has created some really memorable female characters who don't really need Jackson's help, as they manage well on their own. He just cleans things up for them. It doesn't hurt that the BBC production of these books was so very well done. I rated this book at four stars as they just keep getting better and better.

You're intriging me to read this books! I will look out for them on BM!

Finished the latest Jackson Brodie book by Kate Atkinson. This one was Started Early, Took My Dog. Like all of the others in this series it features strong women characters who come through hardships and make fateful decisions, some good some bad, but always from a position of strength, determination, and stouthearted character. This book features a retired woman police detective who is not pretty. Rather she is over weight and plain. She has never married or had children though she desired both. She is a staunch defender of women and their rights because she has had to live through the sexism of the police department in which she worked. She managed to make it to the rank of police detective without the help and aid of the "good old boys club" and has had to watch incompetent or, at best, mediocre, men get promoted over her. She makes a decision early on in the book and then lives with the consequences. The other main character in the book is Tilly, the aged actress, who likewise made a decision early in her life, and has lived with the consequences. She is rapidly sinking into Alzheimer's disease and as a result reality for her is a bit foggy. This too has consequences. As with all of the Jackson Brodie books, watching the threads and paths of all the characters converge is the great mystery at the heart of the novel. As Jackson Brodie says "A consequence is just an explanation waiting to happen."

I finished listening to Echo Park. This is book 12 in the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly. This was a book about a cold case left over from Bosch's first round as police detective back in 1993. It involves police corruption and a serial killer. This novel is exciting, but placed next to the Jackson Brodie mysteries of Kate Atkinson it is simple and uncomplicated. A standard murder mystery. It was a good book to listen to in the car as it was interesting and tense at times. However, it was not the all involving and intriguing character study or mystery as some other mysteries I have read.

I ran across a cheap recorded version of The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid at the giant used book store, 2nd & Charles, in Birmingham, AL a few weeks ago. I knew I had this book on my shelves and thought it would be a fast way to get it off and out, so I purchased the recorded version. Technically it was a novella so it didn't take long to get done. This story is set in Lahore, Pakistan and is told in the form of a monologue. The action is between an American education Pakistani and an American businessman. It is never clear in the story if the American is really a businessman or if he has some nefarious purpose for being in Pakistan. It is implied that his business is less than open, but the reader never knows for sure. The problem with this book is not the plotting or the character development. It is the form. It is very hard to sustain interest in one long monologue and this book flags. It is a good thing it is short because it was almost unsustainable as it was. I found the book to be without much tension and thought the main character boring, self-serving, and insistent. His company was not that with which I would spend time or with whom I would consent to eat a meal. If the American in this story was more than a naive businessman this novella would have been even shorter and probably less boring.

Finally finished Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr and breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over. What this book does right is give the reader a sense of time and place. The time - 1890's and the place - New York City. The author creates that world so well that the reader feels like they stepped into the whirling social life of the time complete with late night dinners at Delmonico's, and the racing season and casino at Saratoga. Given that the expectations for the story are high, but the novel never delivers. Like many sequels this book is not nearly as good as the first in this series. First of all, it is way too long and too loosely constructed. It lacks the tightness and tension of the first novel. About half-way through this novel I thought about giving up on it, but I did want to find out what happened to one of the new characters introduced to the story, so I opted to stay with it. I also found it patronizing to the bad guy, who in this story was a woman. I can forgive that problem given that in the 1890's there was no depth of knowledge regarding postpartum depression, or any other psychosis for that matter. To keep the book within the historical limits of the setting the author probably had to present the story and the characters in that way. Even so this book could have used some serious editing. Put simply it was a long slog to the end.

On my way to the airport to start my journey to El Paso, TX. I finished The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee. I really liked this book. It is my first ficition book of the year to get 5 stars. It discusses a tough topic - collaboration in wartime. In some ways it reminded me of Five Quarters of the Orange in that it was willing to talk about something that has been hidden for so many years. In this case it was of collaboration of the Chinese with the Japanese and of collaboration with the Japanese by the British citizens. While some inmates of the prison camp were clearly collaborating, some were coerced using fair means and foul. This book shows how the lines of both collaboration and coercion were often blurred catching people in the middle. I listened to this book and liked the narrator. I also had a hard copy and found myself reading it when I got out of the car because I was so interested in the story.

I think I had a little of the same problem with the Caleb Carr I read - incredible atmo, less incredible story and characters.

I finished Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan and loved it. This is one of the best books I have read this year. It is an excellent example of narrative non-fiction. Instead of a narrative flow that tells the story of the whole great big event, the author choose to tell the story by breaking into the personal stories of different families who lived in the heart of the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. This technique allowed him to concentrate on the effect of the natural disaster on the people who lived through it. If it has any faults it is that it might be long on story and short on analysis. There is a short conclusion at the end that does sort of tie the facts to the individual stories, but I could have used more analysis to complete the picture. I also would have liked to read some of the results of the replanting of the grasslands and if the soil conservation methods employed worked. Other than those small details this is an excellent book and worth reading.

I Perl Ruled The Accidental by Ali Smith. I had heard that Smith was a really good author, and that this book was nominated for the Booker Prize, so was really anxious to read this work. It was awful. I listened to two CD's and thought it would get better. It didn't. I went to the library and got the book thinking that would help. It didn't. 89 pages, and 3 CD's into the book I finally quit. It will take me awhile to think about reading another of her books, but I can't imagine that an author with her reputation could write a worse book. But then I say that about Phillip Roth and yet everybody else likes him and continues to read his stuff. Why? Maybe she is the same kind of author.

Too bad about a no good book - happens to me all the time - esp. with the audiobooks - although that is because I am limited to what the two local libraries I use have.....so it gets very random.

I finished listening to As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway. I got this book years ago at an ALA Summer Conference and really wanted to read it. However, I kept putting it back on the pile. This book is a real mind bender. Is it a murder mystery puzzle or is it just a mind bender about a teenager full of typical teenage angst? I think that its very ambiguousness is part of the story.

The story starts out with the high school boy meets intriguing pretty high school girl. She challenges him mentally and physically and thereby expands his world. Then one day she disappears. The only clue is a dress laid out perfectly on the the white ice next to a hole in the ice. Is she dead? Or has she simply disappeared as the boy thinks with the hope that she will return? In many ways this is a study in grief and life in a family with a mother and father who have never gotten past their own grief. It is also filled with the typical teenage angst stuff. The thing is that it is written in such a way that it has great appeal as a puzzler as well as a psychological study.

I thought that I would listen to a recorded version faster than reading the book. I finally found a recorded version of the book for a reasonable prize so ordered it. To my surprise the copy was a withdrawn copy from the Lawrence Kansas Public Library. Go figure!

I finished listening to Hothouse Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire by Margot Berwin. I am one of the few librarians that will admit to reading Harlequin Romances. This book is not a Harlequin Romance but it is a Romance Novel. It turned out to be rather fun. Only the romance part was annoying. In-other-words, the book would have had a fine plot without the romance with a secondary character. The book was filled with lots of folk and botanical information about the nine plants and the finding of them in the jungles. In my opinion it did not need the romance part as a driver. The author had a fine book going and could have found a better way to drive the plot to a conclusion. For this reason I rated it as an average book even if I did like the plot and the information in it.

The Book Discussion Group title for August is Songs For the Butcher's Daughter by Peter Manseau. This was a book about dying languages, or archaic languages, and what happens to the people who speak those languages. In this case the language is Yiddish. At one point there was a thriving Yiddish language network of publishers, radio stations, etc. in the U. S. now the language is about dead. As it says in the book, Berlin put the language up against the wall and Jerusalem killed it. The decision by the Israeli government to use Hebrew as the national language instead of Yiddish sang the death song of Yiddish. I found this part of the book fascinating and I am sure it will generate lots of discussion. However, other plot parts were very thin and at times I found myself frustrated and as exasperated with the hero as the heroine was with him. He was simply irresponsible and what he did was inexcusable. He should have been tried. This irresponsibility irritated me as I have seen far to much of that kind of behavior in the last week. Perhaps by the time the group gets around to discussing this I will feel more charitable towards him.

Devil's Peak by Deon Meyer turned out to be a wonderful read, but it didn't start out that way. I pulled this book out of my TBR pile when I heard that the BBC and hired Sean Bean to star in the BBC mystery production of this title. That in itself was enough to make me read it, but up until about 2/3's of the way through the book I wondered why. Up to that point it was a fairly standard police procedural with a prototype hero that had been better done by other authors. Wallander comes to mind. Then, when I thought I knew where it was going, all of a sudden, the plot got twisty on me. From that point on I could not put the book down.

Meyer builds this story slowly, ... from desperate pieces, in much the same way as Kate Atksinson does in the early Jackson Brodie series. Meyer takes the stories of three different people and weaves these seemingly unrelated pieces into a whole connected story that evolves and eventually engrosses the reader. For the patient reader the wait is worth it, but I am afraid that many people won't wait that long, and therein lies the rub. Meyer writes in Afrikaans and the books have to be translated. (as far as I can tell this is a good translation) This makes him an important new voice in the world of literature. I am happy to recommend this book to readers and will read more of his books.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester is my August volcano book for this year. (Many of the world's most famous volcanic eruptions occurred in August so I try to read a volcano book during August.) I have had this recorded version on my shelves for a long long time and finally took it off the shelf so that I could listen to it while driving back to Kansas. It was read by the author and as with his other recordings and his lectures it was very well done. There is no doubt about it, Winchester can tell a great story. He makes all kinds of connections to things that on the surface would not seem to be closely related to a volcanic explosion, ... and he makes it interesting. It is only at the end when he really stretches the limits of plausibility when he connects the explosion to the rise of radical Islamic terrorism in Indonesia to the explosion. He does make the connection but I doubt its veracity. Aside from that it is a fine effort and very entertaining for a long drive. I did have to consult the book because I really needed a map. Fortunately maps and other diagrams abound in this book. They are a great help.

The novel Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell was recommended to me by my father. He learned of it from some of his Czech Club buddies because they felt it addresses many of the immigrant issues of the day. I thought it would be a sappy overly- romantic novel. I was wrong. In fact there were parts that were so good I could not stop reading because I wanted the protagonists to get their union. It was exciting reading.

NPR recently had news segment on the literature of the conservative movement and they asked the question why there was not a similar lexicon for liberals. If there were this would be the first title on that list. This is a statement of the raison d'etra of labor unions and as a result a history of the development of the things American's love the most - the 5 day work week, the 8-hour day, etc. Things that most of us can't imagine living without. This book is a novelized form of the history of the labor movement.

The novel was originally published in 1941 by Thomas Bell who was born into a multi-generational Slovak steel mill family. It starts with one Slovak immigrant who comes to the U. S. in the 1880's and ends up working in the steel mills of the Monongahela River valley in Pennsylvania. From there it continues to tell the story through three generations of steel workers in the same family. It is an indictment of the conditions and practices of the steel magnates who repressed the formation of labor unions. While at its heart it is a labor union history, the book also raises many issues ranging from the drudge like life of the women in the novel, to the use of epitaphs to describe various immigrant groups, to the environmental damage that was done in the name of progress and industry. The novel has a message and at points I am sure that some would think it is didactic, but the author makes no apology for his views and confronts the reader who might have a differing opinion head-on.

I finished listening to Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry on the trip back to Tuscaloosa. For some reason I thought this book was about Ireland. Maybe I was thinking Irish Lace? Anyway, I was wrong. It is Ipswich Lace and the setting was Salem, Massachusetts, in the good old USA. The story revolves around modern Salem and that, of course, involves witches. It seems that modern Salem is a haven for many covens. I don't know if that is humor or irony.

The story is also about battered women and centers around one families history of dealing with abuse. The three central women to the story are Eva, the matriarch, May, the protector, and Towner, the young woman trying to put her life back together even though she suffers from disassociate disorder. There is a mystery and some folk superstitions, but essentially the story is about how these three women dealt with, and still deal with abuse. There are many twists and turns in the plot but so much of it seemed contrived and it just fell a little flat. I would class this is an upgraded chick lit type book rather than a mystery or a book dealing with the supernatural.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin is truly a window into another room full of other wonders. The title says it all. In this case the room is the country of Pakistan. The other wonders are the people and their way of life. The book is comprised of a series of short stories that are connected by a single thread. That thread is the K. K. Harouni family and estates. There is much food for thought in this book as it attempts to get inside of many of the things seen in the news about this society and culture and explain it to others. Parts of it are shocking due to the culture and parts of it are shocking due to their decadence. In that difference it also illustrates the wide variance inside of the culture of Pakistan. Parts of this book will make you cry and parts will make you shake your head in frustration, confusion, and wonder. It is hard to believe that a culture could be so filled with extremes. But then so is ours. But because we are on the inside we don't see it the same way that those on the outside looking in. The cover of my book shows a window with a man turned around to look back at the viewer. Very nice cover. Perhaps that is why I think of this book with a window instead of a room, but I do love the cover design. The stories are very well written and this book deserved all the praise that it got.

I did not plan it, but it turned out that I listened to two books about the Salem Witch Trials right in a row. I knew that the Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe was about the Salem Witches but I did not know that the earlier Lace Reader was also about the same subject. I started this one on the way back to Tuscaloosa from my summer trip to Munden right after Lace Reader. I had purchased the used copy of the recorded version from 2nd and Charles in Birmingham, but I had an ARC from an ALA since 2009 when the book was first published. I enjoyed listening to this book. The production was well done, complete with theme music. The story was a bit simplistic but it had just enough romance, mystery, and action combined with some intriguing characters that kept the reader interested.

While the two books use the same event in history they are in no way the same and the stories very divergent. I liked this one better than Lace Reader as I found it a little more refined in content and character with the plot pieces fitting together better than in Lace Reader. This book also used the dual time line technique and it worked very well for this story. The mystery is lightweight as is the characterization of the world of Academe, but the rest of the details were good enough to keep me interested.

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley was a very nice book to listen to in the car. I loved the narrator and her ability to convey different characters in different tones. However, I may not have done this book justice because I listened to it in short bursts rather than one long trip. Breaking it up like that, especially when I might not have been able to concentrate on it as I should have, gave me the feeling that the Flavia was a little annoying. Perhaps, I expected this book to WOW! me into another world because, I loaned this recorded book to my sister and niece when they were making the long drive to Kansas and they loved it. Almost everybody who has read this book has loved it. I liked it, but I did not love it. I suspect that this is my reaction and that the book is better than my perception of it.

There is no doubt that Flavia is a precocious child who has a very astute mind. She isn't a spoiled child, but she is young enough to be self-centered and concentrates on her own little world. She is in love with chemistry and blessed with a great desire to know how things work. She is willing to take them apart and dissect them in order to learn. These are her strengths and also her weaknesses. This was a good book with a great character. I can't wait to see how she grows. Like the character I found this to be a nice book, but not a great book, but I also can't wait to see how the author develops the character.

I had the same concern with The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie -- it had been talked up so much when it first came out that I was worried it would fall flat for me. It ended up that I read it while walking down the street -- it was that hard to put down. I've since read the other three, and as you suggest, the best part of the series is seeing Flavia grow and develop as a character; the mystery can be almost incidental at times. I also like the scenes with her sisters and father. Hope you like the others!

I finished reading Presidential Anecdotes by Paul F. Boller this last week. This was my bathroom book and it was easy reading in that room because each President gets a short three to four page overview and then the rest of the entry is filled with short anecdotes either about or told by that man. Some entries are longer than others, with Abraham Lincoln's the longest. Harry Truman also had a long entry. There was nothing very enlightening in the book. It is history light.

The real story here is how I got the book and I have had this book for a very long time. I purchased it because I saw the author on the Phil Donahue show back in the dark ages of time. In order to get the book I had to place the order at Varney's Bookstore in Manhattan, Kansas. When it came in they called me and I sent them a check that included the mailing costs. When they got the check they then sent me the book. Nothing fast about that way of ordering books. I must say that Amazon is a great improvement. And now years later I have finally read the book.

Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley was finished on September 20, 2012. It is more of Flavia de Luce. More of the same of what I said before.

Finished Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson. This book was better than A Good Clean Fight but not by much. When I read Piece of Cake many years ago, I loved it. I have had the rest of this series on my to-be-read list ever since, and I have to say that they were a great disappointment. I suspect that the second and third book in this series, the RAF series, were much like the first, and that what has changed is my viewpoint, or my ideas, but whatever, it is me that changed over the intervening years, rather than the author. I found the humor in these two books calloused, and that the men portrayed were displaying the classic symptoms of what we now know as, PTSD and other combat stress related psychic disorders. That made it very hard to find any sympathetic characters in either book.

This title was the third novel published in the author's RAF series, but it was the second in historical order. I found this one to much more subdued than the second, GCF, and so liked it better. The people were more understandable, but still it was very apparent that the author held a very critical view of the RAF conduct of the air war in Europe, especially from 1939 - 42. The notes at the end of the book were very helpful in understanding the difficulties of training bomber crews and teaching them to accurately bomb cities in order to be effective. The question of accuracy is one that is still controversial among historians and military history buffs. It is clear from what the author says that the RAF clearly relied on crews with inferior training as well as planes that were just plan crap. (This is also backed up in the historical record.) It is also clear that RAF Bomber Command relied on the pluck and dash of its human capital to carry the day. Neither the crews, the planes, or the rest of humanity gained anything by using this kind of thinking.

I am only counting this book on my books-off-the-shelf challenge because I have had it checked out from the library for over a year, but A Good Clean Fight had to be ILL'ed, so that one counted as a new book, rather than one off the shelf.

I haven't added much in the month of October to my list of books-off-the-shelf, but I finally finished Everything But the Coffee by Bryant Simon. I started reading this book because I was interested in the role of the coffee shop in our library. I ran across the title in an academic journal about teaching social studies. A social studies teacher had used the cups from Starbucks as a tool to teach about world politics and world geography. I thought the title sounded interesting and would help me to understand the role of the coffee shop in the library. For years I thought that our library needed a coffee shop because that would encourage students to come in and use the materials in the collection. I frequent coffee shops and what I saw was that people were using them the way they had used libraries in the past. I thought it would drag students into the library. 8 years after the coffee shop got added I HATE the thing. It didn't encourage students to use the materials in the library and I couldn't figure out why. This book helped me understand why. I was wrong. They flock to the coffee shop but don't use the collections. In fact they use them less. Everything But the Coffee is actually about the consumer and why they buy expensive overpriced coffee.

Like me, the author is a professor of business at the University of Pennsylvania and he couldn't understand why people would pay that much for middling quality coffee. He loved coffee shops and was fascinated by what he thought he saw in people using them as the new type of public space. What he found out was that Starbucks is first and foremost a money making machine and does not do anything to jeopardize that main mission. He came to the conclusion that Starbucks is a place where people go to be alone in public and are willing to pay extra for the coffee because it makes them appear cool and hip. How he came to that conclusion is very interesting reading. Turns out that according to his research what we are really buying at Starbucks is status. Holding that Starbucks coffee says that we have arrived. We are rich, we are cultured, we care about the world, and we expect the companies with which we do business to do and be the same.

There is a chapter on the bathrooms in the Starbucks book. Also about the fact that women business sales people often use it as a portable office because it has clean bathrooms and is safe. They come in - use the restroom, order coffee, sit for around using their phones and computers for about an hour, then leave. They do this at Starbucks in urban, suburban, and transportation hubs like airports. The book was a very interesting look at modern culture, and while it is about how we use space and brands in the U. S.

Everything But the Coffee, is a book about the rise of Starbucks and why Americans, and people all over the world, flock to a Starbucks store. I found it very enlightening. The author starts out to try to figure out why American's will pay 4 to 5 dollars for an overly sweet milky latte. About half-way through the book he is still convinced that the reason is because American's want to see without being seen and people are relatively anonymous when they are inside a Starbucks, but as his research progress he changes his mind and says that it is all about status. Buying an expensive cup of coffee from Starbucks says that the buyer is cool and hip. For this we are willing to pay a premium. It is a very enlightening look at American enterprise and the consumer.

Finished listening to Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson on October 13 and what a great adventure story this is. The recorded version I had was great! The narrator did a really good job in the reading. He made each character a distinct voice and yet not too different. There is a fine line between telling a story and making each character have a different "voice" and acting out each character and this reader walked that line very well. Glad to have finally "read" this classic.

I was intrigued by Stevenson's ability to create duality and sympathy in his characters. They are evil but that evil is mitigated by circumstance. It makes me want to go read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as I wonder what the author will do with them?

"Purl Ruled" Sunnyside by Glen Daivd Gold. This book was going nowhere so I ended the boredom. I wouldn't feel so bad about ending things but I bought this one. That was a chunk of money that was wasted. I don't have much to say about it. I kept at it for 150 pages and had a good start on the 6th disc, but it just was going nowhere and I didn't think it was ever going to pick up. So I ditched it. On to the next book.

Finished 1Q84 last night. I have been wanting to read this book ever since I bought it and thankfully the group read here and the fact that the Tuscaloosa Book Discussion group was reading Wind-up Bird Chronicle spurred me to drag it out and get it of the TBR list. (Since I had already read WBC, for the Tuscaloosa Book Discussion, I opted to read 1Q84 instead.) This book is one of those where nothing happens for 920 pages and yet everything happens. The main character in the book spends two months reading Proust, and at the end, I wonder if this book isn't channeling Proust, or emulating Proust, or written-in-the-style of Proust? Since I have never read Proust I don't know, but I do think this is what Proust must be like.

On Monday night, October 29, I was sitting in the Birmingham airport waiting for Mumsey to arrive. Her plane was delayed and so I was sitting in the baggage claim area reading this book. A young man came and sat down on the end of the same bench. I did not want to miss Mum so was looking up and watching the steps from time-to-time. When I did so the young man asked me if I was enjoying that book? We started talking about Murakami and he said that he had purchased1Q84 because he had read Murakami's short stories and liked them, so when this book came out he purchased it thinking it would be the same as the short stories. However, he said that he didn't even get to the end of Book 1 before he quit reading. I explained to him that the book was definitely slow going at the beginning and that it did pick up later on in the book. He said that he didn't have time to wait that long for the book to develop. I told him that it must be like reading Proust. Everybody I have talked to as a reader says that Proust is so slow to develop and gets lost in minutia. In fact, one of the characters in 1Q84 spent three months locked in an apartment reading Proust everyday. As I was saying this is struck me that perhaps Murakami is indeed mimicking Proust, (or at least channeling him), on purpose. I do wonder this is what Murakami is doing?

For me this book did not reach the heights of either Kafka or Wind-up, but it is certainly worth reading, and I will recommend it to certain readers.

Read Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot for the book discussion group. I rated it three stars. I think it was a good solid very interesting magazine article that the author tried to stretch into book length. For me it didn't work. It got boring. Then it got irritating. That family should be spanked and sent home to bed. I got tired early on of their whining about how they got cheated out of money. As for the way they were treated, in essence the children were typical of families where one family member dies young and leaves the children. Other than the fact that their mother died young they were nothing special and yet the author kept dragging them into the story. Totally ruined the book for me. Granted there are some medical ethics questions that we as a society need to answer, but that part of the story got lost in the "poor, poor pitiful me" attitude displayed by the family.

I finished up a book that has been hiding on my shelves for years. Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watsonn finally got read! The book was written by a graduate of UA's MFA in creative writing program and was nominated for a National Book Award in 2003. The author is from Meridian, Mississippi. It is one of the last selections of Alabama Author's on the Book Discussion group reading list and is our December selection. The reviews of this book say it is Southern Gothic in the style of Faulkner. I don't think it is Southern Gothic at all but it is written in the style of Faulkner. It has elements of magical realism in it. Where it falls down structurally is that it tries to do to much stylistically and therefore does none of it well. Where it excels is in the characterization and descriptions. By the time you are done with the novel you know these characters and the descriptions make you think you are right there in the scenes described. The author has a real since of place and can describe it so well. The plot doesn't work all that well, and the book ends with a whimper and no sense of surprise.

I finished reading Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. This is a children's book of Chinese folk and fairy tales that was named a Newbery Honor Book in 2009. There is a sequel to it that is just out so I decided that I had better get the first one read ASAP. This is a delightful book for reading aloud to children at bedtime or in the classroom. The book is formatted into short easily read portions that would occupy kids just long enough and keep their interest even though it is almost 300 pages. I would guess it would work for lower elementary grades. The artwork is very nice and it has a bibliography of other folk and fairy tales source books. This would make a nice gift book for people with young children.

I finished listening to Snow by Orhan Pamuk on my Christmas trip back to Kansas. This was a very interesting book about whether women in Turkey should or should not wear headscarves and was a good book with which to close out the year. There was lots in it about recent Turkish history that I did not understand but it was very relevant to what is going on in the region today. Both of these major ideas makes this an important book that should be read and makes it easy to underhand why Pamuk won the Noble Prize. It was my second Pamuk book and I am sure I will read others in the future as I think that Pamuk is as important of an author as is Rushdie. His is a unique voice in the Arabic/Muslim world and I hope that nothing happens to him because the world needs writers like him.

This was an audio book and I think it would have been better to read this book. The plot is complicated and at times overly romantic, but it works. However, I think it would have worked better if I had read it rather than listen to it. I won't make that mistake with the next Pamuk I read.

The book is set in the old northern Turkish city of Kars and involves a previously exiled Turkish poet and writer who has returned to the city of his youth. He has not been able to produce anything of worth in all the years he has lived in Germany and when he comes back he is determined to seek out the love of his life in order to marry her and take her with him back to Germany. As soon as he enters the city he is embroiled in the local politics that involves the right of women to wear, or not to wear, the headscarf. This involvement produces a flurry of new poems that once again make him a writer of national importance. Of course, it isn't that easy, and therein lies the tale.

I am closing out this year having managed to rid my shelves and my to-be-read list of 44 titles. I would have had more but I choose to read a couple of behemoths 1Q84 and Team of Rivals that took up way to much reading time in the last two months of the year. As always, there were some good books and some clinkers in the list, but that is always the case. It is still a worthy attempt to clean Up my shelves.

Hey Benita, you had a great reading year and cleared a great number of books. Do you plan to attend the ROOT-challenge this year?