RidgewayGirl Reads in 2022, Third Quarter

Dies ist die Fortführung des Themas RidgewayGirl Reads in 2022, Second Quarter.

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RidgewayGirl Reads in 2022, Third Quarter

1RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Okt. 13, 2022, 3:36 pm

Enjoying my first summer in the Midwest! The garden is a constant source of surprise and delight.



As for reading plans, I remain committed to nothing but whim and inclination.



Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

3cindydavid4
Jul. 1, 2022, 5:59 pm

>1 RidgewayGirl: I remain committed to nothing but whim and inclination.

back in the day on an earlier online reading group, we all had taglines, some quote or something that identified us . This is definitely a NATLBSB, not a tagline but should be. Id pick it for sure!

7RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 28, 2022, 11:05 am

United States
Alexandra Andrews (Who is Maud Dixon?)
Elif Batuman (Either/Or)
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (Likes)
Lan Samantha Chang (The Family Chao)
Dan Chaon (Sleepwalk)
Kate Christensen (In the Drink)
Eli Cranor (Don't Know Tough)
John Darnielle (Devil House)
Anthony Doerr (Cloud Cuckoo Land)
Jennifer Egan (The Candy House)
Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
Alison Espach (Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance)
Alison Fairbrother (The Catch)
Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Woman of Light)
Ellen Feldman (Paris Never Leaves You)
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Xochitl Gonzalez (Olga Dies Dreaming)
Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie)
Lauren Groff (Matrix)
Jennifer Haigh (Mercy Street)
Julia May Jonas (Vladimir)
Stephen Graham Jones (My Heart is a Chainsaw)
Joseph Kanon (The Berlin Exchange)
Lily King (The Pleasing Hour)
Jean Hanff Korelitz (The Latecomer)
Erika Krouse (Tell Me Everything)
J. Robert Lennon (Subdivision)
Winnie M. Li (Complicit)
Ling Ma (Bliss Montage: Stories) (country of residence)
Sara Majka (Cities I've Never Lived In)
Derek B. Miller (How to Find Your Way in the Dark)
Keith Lee Morris (Travelers Rest)
Caitlin Mullen (Please See Us)
Stewart O'Nan (Ocean State)
Ruth Ozeki (The Book of Form and Emptiness)
Tom Perrotta (Tracy Flick Can't Win)
Jo Piazza (We Are Not Like Them)
Christine Pride (We Are Not Like Them)
Gary Shteyngart (Our Country Friends) (country of residence)
Karin Slaughter (Girl, Forgotten)
Amber Sparks (And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges)
Leigh Stein (Self Care)
Simone St. James (The Sun Down Motel)
Susan Straight (Mecca)
Justin Taylor (Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever)
Anne Tyler (French Braid)
Weike Wang (Joan is Okay) (country of residence)
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns)

11RidgewayGirl
Jul. 1, 2022, 6:18 pm

Happy Canada Day, everyone! Welcome to this new thread.

12mdoris
Jul. 1, 2022, 9:27 pm

It is great to follow your reading. Happy new thread Kay!

13RidgewayGirl
Jul. 1, 2022, 10:45 pm

>3 cindydavid4: Hi, Cindy, I almost missed your post. It would certainly be an accurate motto for me.

>12 mdoris: Thanks, Mary. Now to catch up on reviews...

14MissBrangwen
Jul. 2, 2022, 3:25 am

Happy New Thread! I like your set-up using different criteria to list the books you've read.

15BLBera
Jul. 2, 2022, 10:40 am

Happy new thread, Kay. I look forward to following your third quarter reading.

16RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Jul. 2, 2022, 1:05 pm

>14 MissBrangwen: I do like a list.

>15 BLBera: Thanks, Beth.

17RidgewayGirl
Jul. 3, 2022, 4:53 pm



But once I had managed to calm my grandmother and remove myself from the house, everything was easier than I had anticipated. The taxi driver already knew how to get to the bus station. Once you got there, it was basically people's job to answer your questions about bus schedules. You didn't have to explain anything, or account for anything, or manifest love. If anyone got annoyed at you, they couldn't cry, or scream at you, or accuse you of offending them, and at any point you could just leave. It was totally different from being in your family.

It's Selin's sophomore year and she's still dreaming about Ivan. But she's also more involved in the world, with friends and roommates and classmates constantly around her. And she's thinking as much as ever; looking at Kierkegaard's comparison of the aesthetic life and the ethical life, although really she's looking at his definition of the aesthetic life.

In its simplest form, the aesthetic life involved seducing and abandoning young girls and making them go crazy. This is what I had learned from books. There was a problem of application: what did you do if you were a young girl? Nadja had been a girl, and had tried to live an aesthetic life. That had involved her being seduced and abandoned and going crazy. But that had been then. What were you supposed to do now: seduce and abandon men? Was that what feminism had made possible? Something about the idea didn't feel aesthetic. Just think of the angry, complaining men.

Either/Or spans Selin's sophomore year, just as The Idiot (which should be read first) took Selin through her freshman year at Harvard. Selin is still figuring things out, but she's making progress and it was just so fun to be able to witness her as she muddles through, making some choices that made me worry, but always with that quiet off-beat humor that makes her such a good protagonist. I like Elif Batuman's writing and I'm looking forward to Selin's junior year.

18labfs39
Jul. 4, 2022, 8:30 pm

Happy New Thread, Kay! I'm glad you are enjoying your gardens. I've been in my house almost two years now, and I'm still discovering new plants.

>17 RidgewayGirl: Batuman sounds interesting. I'm intrigued by The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them.

19lisapeet
Jul. 4, 2022, 8:33 pm

Hi, new thread! You've got some great books lined up. And this has been my happiest summer in the garden in 19 years... something about it just felt abundant and lush. Wishing you the same in yours.

20RidgewayGirl
Jul. 6, 2022, 1:03 pm

>18 labfs39: Lisa, I do love books set in academia and her novels about Selin's college years are so, so good. I have a copy of The Possessed and am saving it for a rainy day.

>19 lisapeet: And the garden is so fun! I'd spent years turning the front yard in our old house into a garden that I loved and it was hard to leave it -- I'd planted eighty tulip bulbs last fall and never saw the result of that, but this garden has had decades and decades of careful tending, so that it's all lush chaos. I spend a fair amount of time out there just learning what is where, and pulling the obvious weeds.

21avaland
Jul. 7, 2022, 6:23 am

Just having a peek in the new house....

22Cariola
Jul. 7, 2022, 7:00 pm

You have so many books on your lists that I've been thinking about. here's one for you: Companion Piece by Ali Smith. Just brilliant.

23RidgewayGirl
Jul. 8, 2022, 4:56 pm

>21 avaland: Welcome, Lois! You'll see a lot of books you recognize, I'm sure.

>22 Cariola: I read the first in the quartet, loved it and have carefully collected all four with the intention of reading them straight through. I'll have to add a fifth book!

24RidgewayGirl
Jul. 8, 2022, 4:56 pm



Cities I've Never Lived In by Sara Majka is a collection of short stories that are all narrated by solitary people living melancholic lives. The writing is extraordinarily beautiful, but the stories in the first half of the book are all essentially static, with little to nothing happening and the paragraphs often seem randomly ordered or feature abrupt changes in time and place, as though the author just added random paragraphs together to form a story. Yes, each paragraph was beautifully structured and well-written, but it turns out I need a little more forward momentum from my fiction.

The second half of the collection were a few stories that were connected in that the narrator was the same. While there were many scenes and encounters that were unexplained, having the same narrator gave the stories a feeling of progress and I enjoyed them a lot more, even if the protagonist was aimless and had trouble connecting with other people. Despite my reservations about this collection, Majka is a promising writer and I will certainly pay attention to anything she writes.

25RidgewayGirl
Jul. 9, 2022, 5:57 pm



Bitter Orange Tree by Omani writer Jokha Alharthi tells the story of a young woman attending an English university, where her friends are other foreigners, some also Muslim, some not. When she hears news that the woman she considers her grandmother has died, she is filled with regret for not giving her more of her time and affection while she could. While Zuhur becomes involved in the problems faced by her friends, she also spends time thinking about the life of her grandmother, whose life included both struggle and sacrifice.

This is a novel about women living within Islamic cultural constraints, but it isn't a novel about rebellion or breaking free. Zuhur and her two best friends, sisters from Pakistan, are content to live lives as they are expected to, although one sister decides to demand her own choice of husband. And for Zuhur's grandmother, it was never a question of choices, but of making the best of the life she was given. The different cultural perspectives and attitudes made for fascinating reading. The novel illuminated ordinary life in Oman in a way accessible to the Western reader, but not in a way that simplifies things.

26labfs39
Jul. 9, 2022, 7:47 pm

>25 RidgewayGirl: I don't think I've read anything by an Omani writer. This intrigues.

27RidgewayGirl
Jul. 9, 2022, 10:28 pm

>26 labfs39: Lisa, that's why I picked this one up.

28BLBera
Jul. 10, 2022, 9:57 am

>25 RidgewayGirl: This does sound good. Great comments.

29raton-liseur
Jul. 12, 2022, 5:17 am

>25 RidgewayGirl: It sounds very interesting, and by an author fro a country I've never book-visited. Thanks for putting this on my radar, and for your gentle review.

30RidgewayGirl
Jul. 12, 2022, 6:48 pm

>28 BLBera: Thanks, Beth.

>29 raton-liseur: Thanks, r-l. I grabbed it entirely based on not having encountered an Omani author before and it was an interesting and illuminating book.

31RidgewayGirl
Jul. 12, 2022, 6:48 pm



Is it possible to be married with children and still not be a family? Johanna marries Salo after he's survived an accident in which two other people died, making him a kind of tragic figure in her eyes. And while she throws herself into caring for him, making a home and then in longing for children, Salo mainly cares about the paintings he's finding. And when, with a great deal of medical help, they end up with three infants, it doesn't draw Salo into Johanna's dream of a family, and the children themselves don't like each other, leaving home as quickly as possible and although two of the siblings end up at the same university, they simply don't acknowledge each other, with disastrous results. When Johanna is left with an empty nest and discovers something unsettling about Salo, she reacts by adding a fourth child to the mix. Raised essentially as an only child, will she be able to create a family out of these individuals who don't even like each other?

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz is the story of a family, from the middle of the last century until just a few years ago. It's well-written, very well paced and a wonderful look at New York City at a specific time for a specific social caste. There's an old school feel to the character studies, even as they exist in very modern circumstances. Each character is fully explored, and the author takes time to let them spread their wings. And into this solid novel, that was so satisfying to read, there's a ton of art and while I'm generally happy with my life as it is, I'd love to be a wealthy dude in the early 1960s, just grabbing all the interesting paintings no one cared about and stashing it in the warehouse down in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that everyone is convinced will never be worth anything.

32lisapeet
Jul. 13, 2022, 10:29 am

>31 RidgewayGirl: I'm looking forward to that one. It sounds just different enough.

33RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Jul. 13, 2022, 11:53 am

>32 lisapeet: You'll probably appreciate the descriptions of New York through the past half century more than I did, since you have first-hand knowledge. I liked Korelitz's previous book, The Plot, but this is just so much more substantial than a fun thriller.

34RidgewayGirl
Jul. 14, 2022, 5:05 pm



Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse is a combination memoir and true crime reportage that normally annoys me as they feel artificially smashed together, neither being a meaty enough subject for an entire book. But Tell Me Everything is an exception to this pattern, the connection between the author's life and the crime she's telling us about are clear and work together in a way that makes both facets of the story stronger.

Krouse got an offer of a job to become a private investigator for a lawyer at a point when her employment was temp work. She struggled to find her feet in her new profession, but as she became more involved in the case the lawyer was involved with, that of suing a university for Title IX violations in cases where sexual assault by athletes is enabled and hidden by coaching staff, she becomes more assured and determined to help the case. It's a complex case and Krouse's involvement contributes small portion of the evidence collected, but her own history makes this case personal for her.

Krouse writes well and this is a fascinating, if occasionally hard to read, story. I rushed through this book much faster than I'd planned to and learned quite a bit about how the legal system works. There's a painful honesty to Krouse's account and I'm impressed at her bravery in telling her story as well as the determination she showed in helping to hold an institution accountable.

35wandering_star
Jul. 14, 2022, 7:27 pm

You're starting this thread with a series of very interesting books!

36RidgewayGirl
Jul. 14, 2022, 8:53 pm

>35 wandering_star: I am having a very good reading year. It was off to a slow start, but I've been very happy with the books. And Lessons In Chemistry does have a somewhat light tone to it, for example, the dog has his own thoughts about things, but it tackles the misogyny of the time very directly and without glossing over what was done and how women were harmed.

37RidgewayGirl
Jul. 15, 2022, 6:44 pm



Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine by Anna Reid is a broad overview of the history, culture and politics of that large part of Eastern Europe called Ukraine. It's a fairly short book, and so it is also necessarily shallow, as it moves from the first Cossacks riding across the plains to the mid-nineties. Published well before the current war, or even the beginning of hostilities in the Donbas or the re-annexation of Crimea, it was nevertheless a good way to orient myself with the bare basics. While most of the book is a chronological look at Ukrainian history, with a side trip into the stories of Ukrainian writers and musicians, the final chapters are about subjects of interest in the mid-nineties, dealing with topics like the Chernobyl meltdown and Crimea.

Despite this being pretty much exactly what I wanted, given my near total ignorance about that part of the world, it still took me a long time to read. Ukraine was subject to the interests of the Turks, Russians and the Poles for a very long time and there were also the Cossacks riding around. Villages, especially Jewish villages, were pillaged and burnt at a disheartening rate. And between the way peasants were treated, Pogroms and the various wars that swept over the land, it's remarkable that Ukrainians have managed to forge a national identity. This was a useful book for me, and one that became more interesting in the second half, but for anyone who already has a fair understanding of the region, it would probably be a waste of time.

38dchaikin
Jul. 15, 2022, 11:15 pm

>37 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a terrific short intro.

39BLBera
Jul. 16, 2022, 8:08 am

>37 RidgewayGirl: This sounds like it would be a good one for me, as well. I don't know a lot about Ukraine.

40RidgewayGirl
Jul. 16, 2022, 1:15 pm

>38 dchaikin: It's very much a broad overview, but touched on the differences between the regions, as well as many things like religious beliefs, literature and myth-making. If you have a good grasp of Ukrainian history, this might be a bit boring, but I was learning so much with every single page. There's a breezy tone to it, which made the density of the information easier to ingest.

>39 BLBera: I have found what I learned from it helpful a few times when reading news articles. I feel more oriented. It was a worthwhile read for me and now I'm going to go read fiction for a while.

41dchaikin
Jul. 16, 2022, 1:23 pm

>40 RidgewayGirl: I don't have a grasp on Ukrainian history.

42labfs39
Jul. 16, 2022, 1:53 pm

>37 RidgewayGirl: I will look for this as well. This week I ordered Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by one of my favorite historians, Anne Applebaum. Narrower in focus, but I think it will be helpful as well. Someone on social media lit into my sister for alluding to the famine. This person believes it never happened and is Western propaganda. How do you respond to people like that??

43cindydavid4
Jul. 16, 2022, 3:37 pm

you don't ; they are blind. Like the turks who say the armendian genocide neve happened. I just saw that book at my local store and want to get it. Also intereted in the book >37 RidgewayGirl: mentioned. I know some about the famine, the forced migrations, a lot about the nazi massacres added by the Ukrainian soldiers. but there is much I can learn from these books I think

44RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Jul. 16, 2022, 3:42 pm

>41 dchaikin: My entire knowledge was based on Timothy Snyder's book about the Holodomar and then the Holocaust and some random stuff about pogroms. None of it made Ukraine sound like a place people would take pride in, so it was good to find out other things.

>42 labfs39: Lisa, I don't even know. There seems to be a pro-Russian disinformation campaign going on regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of denials about established historical events certainly. Making it more important to have a grasp of history than ever.

>44 RidgewayGirl: It's certainly a tendency of nationalists everywhere to deny the atrocities perpetuated by one's own country. We've certainly seen some of that here in the US.

45RidgewayGirl
Jul. 19, 2022, 5:25 pm



in Complicit Sarah is teaching screenwriting at a local college when she is contacted by a young and famous journalist making a name for himself revealing the bad behavior of powerful men. She's reluctant to speak with him, but when she does she finds herself telling her story. After graduating from Columbia, she finds a job as an intern at a small production company and, by making herself indispensable, works her way up to associate producer. During one exiting meeting during the Cannes Film Festival, the production company joins with a British billionaire, who gives them the money and connections to dramatically scale up their company. Before long, Sarah's in charge of producing a movie in LA and finding out that being good at her job is no protection, for herself or others.

I read Winnie M. Li's debut novel, which was based on her own experiences and while I didn't think that the book was entirely successful, it was brave and it left me with no doubt in my mind that Li wrote well and that she was willing to take risks in her writing. I was excited to see that she'd written Complicit and I was eager to see what she was going to do with the #MeToo theme. At first, I thought she was going to closely follow the story of one woman's experience reported in Ronan Farrow's book, especially given how the journalist was a stand-in for Farrow, but Li quickly went off into a different direction, one that allowed her to create a much more nuanced story. Once again, Li was brave in her choices and the resulting story was complex and thought-provoking. She also went into detail about what it takes to get a movie from an initial screenplay to the finished product, which was fascinating. I was impressed with this novel and I'm excited to see what Li writes next.

46RidgewayGirl
Jul. 22, 2022, 6:30 pm



"I could use another drink," she says. She only had a few before closing, and then one while she cleaned up. I say I'll have one too and she eyes me, deciding whether to start in on the question of if I need another. I don't, probably, no, I know I don't, but if she doesn't start in--she doesn't--I will have what I want, which is different from what I need: what a surprise.

The characters in Justin Taylor's short story collection, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever are generally young, working menial jobs and are definitely not hipsters living in Brooklyn. From a lonely teenage asked to do something unpleasant by the uncle who had welcomed him into his family, to a guy working at the deli counter who is involved with a married woman, each story looks at all the ways people connect and fail to connect with each other. As in any collection, some stories are better than others, but all are well-written and even the less successful stories are trying to do something interesting.

Judge has nothing to do with this story. He wasn't even at home. We let ourselves in, swiped a six-pack from his fridge, and went back to Joe Brown's. Judge is simply a character on whom I can't help but dwell some. Something pulls my thoughts back his way. He inspires loathing so pure, to be silent about it seems no less a crime than denying love.

47cindydavid4
Jul. 22, 2022, 7:59 pm

>46 RidgewayGirl: ok that last quote sold me!

48lisapeet
Jul. 23, 2022, 2:36 pm

>46 RidgewayGirl: I've had that on my shelves for about a dozen years... got it at my first or second BookExpo, I think. I'll have to dig it out.

49RidgewayGirl
Jul. 23, 2022, 4:53 pm

>48 lisapeet: Lisa, my own records say that it's been on my shelf for ten years. With the move, I put all my short story collections in one place, in the hopes of reading more of them.

50BLBera
Jul. 24, 2022, 12:48 pm

Complicit sounds like one I would like, Kay. I'm not familiar with Li and am always looking for new authors to try.

The Taylor stories also sound good. Great comments.

51RidgewayGirl
Jul. 24, 2022, 2:17 pm

>50 BLBera: Li's an interesting author -- she wrote her first novel as a way of processing her own rape and in the novel she writes from both the POV of the victim and the rapist, which didn't quite work for me, but it was certainly courageous. This novel was much better written and worked well and it was good to see how much she's improved as a writer. If you like details about the film industry, you'll probably like this one as much as I did.

52RidgewayGirl
Jul. 30, 2022, 5:09 pm



We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama is the story of three women across two generations, all Tibetan refugees. First, two sisters make the difficult walk into Nepal with their parents soon after the Red Army arrives in their part of Tibet. They end up in a camp that becomes a permanent community, one sister dutiful and who stays, and the other who does well in school, so well that the community works to get her to higher education in India, an experience she finds overwhelming. Then there is the daughter of a sister, who attends university in Toronto, living with the aunt who reached Toronto before she did and who becomes involved in trying to repatriate an artifact she sees in a wealthy Canadian's home.

We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies is a vivid portrayal of what life is like for refugees and for their children, who always feel their strongest connection to a place they can't even visit. This is a book set in the Tibetan communities of Nepal and Canada, but written for western readers; explaining cultural practices and how it feels to live as a permanent exile. The plot, involving a stolen artifact and star-crossed lovers was fun, even if it lost a little momentum at the end.

53labfs39
Jul. 30, 2022, 9:28 pm

>52 RidgewayGirl: Sounds interesting, Kay. I think I would like this one.

54RidgewayGirl
Aug. 3, 2022, 5:54 pm



Riley and Jen were best friends from when Jen was first dropped off at the daycare run by Riley's grandmother and that friendship lasted all through high school. And now, in their thirties, although they drifted apart, now that Riley's back in Philadelphia, they are picking up where they left off, sharing the same inside jokes and long history. But things have also changed. Riley is coming off of a long relationship and a reporter with a local news team, and Jen is an expectant mother and married to a police officer. And when Jen's husband in involved in the shooting death of a Black boy and Riley is assigned to cover the story, that Jen is white and Riley is black becomes a thing that divides them in ways they'd never talked about before.

We Are Not Like Them is the kind of ripped-from-the-headlines novel I usually avoid, but this was for my book club and so I picked it up and found myself liking it quite a bit. It helps that this was written by two authors, Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, and together they managed to make both characters feel fully well-rounded and the novel dug into the story from different angles that embraced complexity and conflict, while also really celebrating female friendship. Piazza has written several books and Pride's background in journalism gave authenticity to Riley's experiences. Towards the end of the book, it felt like the authors were intent on just tying up all the loose threads and the ending felt a little to easy given the sheer intractability of the characters up to that point, but kudos to the authors for being willing to directly address the issue of race in America in a way that is approachable yet unwilling to let the reader get comfortable.

55raton-liseur
Aug. 6, 2022, 1:28 pm

>54 RidgewayGirl: I like the way you wrote your review. Riley and Jen are friends, etc, etc. And it's only in the last line that you state that one of them is white and the other one is black. Interesting to see how this simple fact should be insignificant, but does change everything: their friendship and how we readers will look at this friendship.
Is it the same in the book? (Although I figured after that the cover reveals more than I thought at first glance).

56RidgewayGirl
Aug. 6, 2022, 4:35 pm

>55 raton-liseur: In the book it's clear from the beginning, but also clear that when they were children, the issue of race was non-existent. And it was a non-issue much longer for Jen, because being White means not having to look at how racism works unless you want to. There's an interesting afterword in the book from the two authors who talk about how writing this book did strain their friendship, which isn't something they'd anticipated when they started out.

57BLBera
Aug. 7, 2022, 10:54 am

>52 RidgewayGirl:, >54 RidgewayGirl: Both of these sound interesting, Kay. How was the discussion?

58RidgewayGirl
Aug. 7, 2022, 1:51 pm

>57 BLBera: About as awkward as any discussion about race in a group of well-meaning white women. But much better than one book group discussion in a previous book club where we all discovered that one woman was very angry about how her son couldn't wear his Confederate flag outfit to school any more. That was an interesting discussion I would have gladly missed! And then she never showed up at that book club again.

But of course these kinds of discussions are important. There's a scene in the novel where the white character defends herself by saying that her best friend is Black and therefore how could she be racist and we talked about how that is a natural reaction to being challenged and also a bad reaction that should be avoided since it really isn't proof of anything.

59RidgewayGirl
Aug. 7, 2022, 2:23 pm



Ellie's father is a famous poet. He is no longer married to her mother, and is on his third family, but Ellie knows he loves her best, after all his most famous poem, the one published in anthologies and assigned to high school students, is about the two of them tossing his old baseball back and forth. And she's worked hard to keep his attention. She's the one he can talk to, the one who remains focused on him, who makes sure her conversation is witty and interesting.

And then her father dies unexpectedly. And he has left a list of small, meaningful bequests. Ellie is sure that the old baseball he keeps on his desk will be hers, after all it has such meaning for the two of them. But the ball is left to someone named L. Taylor and she is handed a cheap novelty tie rack as her inheritance. Ellie's mourning for her father is now complicated by this final insult and the self-appointed task of finding L. Taylor to discover why her father loved them more than her.

The Catch is Alison Fairbrother's first novel, but it doesn't read like a debut novel. It's tightly structured and deliberate in what it's doing. Ellie is a young woman who feels both like she's going places with her job writing articles for a start-up internet news site and that she's spinning her wheels. She's in love, but the man is older and married so can the relationship be an honest one? I really liked this novel -- it's part of that literary sub-genres about young women making disastrous mistakes -- a sort of mirror image of the more-established WMFuN* -- but in this case, Ellie has friends and family who love her and she's more thoughtful than the usual protagonist spinning out of control. This was the kind of novel I will never tire of and I'm looking forward to Fairbrother's next one.

* White Male Fuck-up Novel

60cindydavid4
Bearbeitet: Aug. 7, 2022, 9:00 pm

wow. I had a friend whose mom gave her rabbi cards with acheivments about her kids. She asked that he read them to us when she passed. He did so. To sister. to brother. My friend asked, did mom write about her? the rabbi was very shaken looked and had to say no. She ran out of the room not sure she even went to the funeral. What a horrible thing to do. Does Ellie find out why her father did this? Or should I just read it? It does sound really good

61RidgewayGirl
Aug. 7, 2022, 9:57 pm

>60 cindydavid4: It is really good and I'm not going to tell you and spoil the book.

62wandering_star
Aug. 7, 2022, 10:21 pm

All these last three sound really interesting.

63cindydavid4
Aug. 7, 2022, 10:35 pm

>61 RidgewayGirl: Understood! its on my list!!

64cindydavid4
Aug. 7, 2022, 10:39 pm

hee justs saw this review "An onion doesn’t have this many layers! A young woman’s search for herself which begins as a journey to discover who her father was. If you’re looking for mystery, drama or romance… skip this one. It’s very well written. I rest my case."

just bumped this to the top of my list!

65RidgewayGirl
Aug. 7, 2022, 10:40 pm

>62 wandering_star: I've really been enjoying my reading lately.

>63 cindydavid4: I'd love to hear what you think of it when you do get around to reading it.

66lisapeet
Aug. 8, 2022, 9:20 pm

That sounds really good. On the list it goes.

67BLBera
Aug. 9, 2022, 10:38 am

The Catch sounds really good. I just read one about a young woman finding herself that I also thought was better than I expected. I have a hard time taking angst in a white privileged twenty something too seriously.

68RidgewayGirl
Aug. 9, 2022, 2:32 pm

>64 cindydavid4: Oh, that is a good review! If I hadn't already read The Catch, I'd be adding it to my wishlist.

>66 lisapeet: It feels like there are just a ton of good books being published right now. It's hard to figure out what to pull out of that flood of enticing books. I just obtained a copy of Difficult People that you reviewed recently.

>67 BLBera: The main character is white and her father valued education, so yes, she is privileged, but it's not like a minor poet on his third wife had any money worth mentioning. I do like that kind of novel quite a bit, though, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. Since I have a limited ability to read about well-off middle-aged men filled with ennui, I get your antipathy for a character-type.

69RidgewayGirl
Aug. 10, 2022, 2:13 pm



Mecca by Susan Straight is a novel about people living in the parts of Southern California tourists don't see, far inland from the beaches. The novel begins with Johnny Frias, who grew up on a cattle ranch outside of Mecca, California and who now rides the freeways with the CHP. His father still works the ranch, with two other aging cowboys and Frias helps out when he can, keeping a watch on the possibility of forest fires. He also hides a secret in those dry hills, that when he was a rookie officer, he killed a man and hid his body there.

Frias is one character in this richly populated novel about people living their lives in the hills to the east of Los Angeles. Straight effortlessly juggles a dozen characters and a large number of events from the pandemic and a wildfire to a missing baby and a teenage boy shot dead in the drive-thru lane of a fast food restaurant. And despite the fact that there is a lot going on, the focus always remains on the characters living in this dry, sun-soaked part of California. This was the perfect novel for summer reading -- I came up for air at the end of it a little disoriented and sad it was over. Straight has such compassion for her characters and understands them so well, that I had no trouble keeping track of who had done what and why they did the things they did. This is a solid book that is deeply rooted in a specific time and place.

70cindydavid4
Aug. 10, 2022, 4:29 pm

>69 RidgewayGirl: I read that and liked it. Reminded me of Steinbecks work. second the recommendation

71lsh63
Aug. 10, 2022, 7:14 pm

>Hi Kay! Nice review of Mecca I hope to get to it this month.

72BLBera
Aug. 10, 2022, 8:41 pm

Mecca is one of my favorite reads so far this year, Kay. I'm glad to see other fans for it. Straight does such a fine job with the place, as you pointed out in your great comments.

73RidgewayGirl
Aug. 10, 2022, 10:29 pm

>70 cindydavid4: Yes, I can see the resonance there.

>71 lsh63: Lisa, I look forward to finding out what you think of it.

>72 BLBera: Beth, your review is what pushed me to pick it up.

74RidgewayGirl
Aug. 13, 2022, 7:54 pm



Olga, born and raised in the Puerto Rican community in Brooklyn, is a successful wedding planner, adept at managing the often unreasonable expectations of New York's wealthiest brides. Her extended family is large and colorful, but her father died when she was young of an overdose and her mother left her and her brother to do political activism and only occasionally sends a letter. Olga is involved with a wealthy and newly divorced man who wants to take the next step, but she's not interested in entering his world and she's met an interesting guy in her neighborhood.

Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez is literary chick-lit, and I mean that in the best possible way. The novel is fun and expansive and written with a light touch that serves the sometimes serious subject matter well. Because along with brides behaving badly there are hurricanes and politicians being blackmailed and a lot about Puerto Rico and how it has been badly served by the United States. Olga is a wonderful introduction to a talented young author.

75RidgewayGirl
Aug. 13, 2022, 8:16 pm



You don't have to have read Election by Tom Perrotta, but you've probably seen the movie. Tracy Flick Can't Win takes place twenty years later, when Tracy, who marched off to accomplish big things, is back in town working as an assistant principal and preparing to take over as principal when the current one retires at the end of the year. But a lot of people are interested in what's going on at the high school and as the various people work to get what they want, Tracy Flick finds that she might not be a shoo-in for the job. But Tracy Flick never gives up without a fight, does she?

Is this book any good? I don't know. It's certainly fun to read and Perrotta gives voice to a wide cast of colorful characters. It's a quick read and with short chapters and a lot going on, I sailed through it. But I don't think I'll remember much about this in a few weeks, which is not necessarily a complaint; a fun, escapist read is something we all enjoy sometimes. But I do miss Perrotta's more substantial work.

76RidgewayGirl
Aug. 17, 2022, 4:07 pm



Rouge Street is a collection of three novellas by contemporary Chinese author Shuang Xuetao, all set on Yanfen Street in Shenyang, an industrial city in northwest China, not far from the border with North Korea. The novellas focus on families, especially children, living through tough times. Memories of the Cultural Revolution and even the Japanese occupation are woven into these stories and there are fantastic elements that feel folklorish in tone and meld seamlessly with the gritty, realistic setting.

I was prepared for this book to be something that felt like homework. Instead, it was a delight. Each novella was very different from the others. The first was a generational tale, the second was a folktale-feeling story involving two children who were just trying to survive in the absence of parents who were capable of caring for them, and the final novella was a noirish tale of criminals and the detective hunting them down. The novellas are also inter-connected, making this feel more cohesive that the usual collection. These novellas were a wonderful introduction to a celebrated young Chinese writer. I hope more of of his work is translated soon.

77RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Aug. 18, 2022, 5:01 am



I'd grown up without being exposed to many actual men besides teachers, who didn't really count. I had cobbled together a composite picture for myself out of the limited source material at hand. My mother had naturally weighed in heavily with the opinion that the male sex was a lower order without common sense or the capacity to behave responsibly, but Gothic novels and fairy tales had inculcated in me the equally strong but contrary expectation that either a prince of some kind would carry me off to his castle or Mr. Rochester would eventually marry me if I waited for him to go blind. By the time I was eight years old, I'd absorbed the idea that courtship and marriage happened when the perfect man came along and chose you from the lineup.

Claudia's not doing great. Almost thirty and her fabulous New York life means living in a terrible studio apartment she can't even afford, ghost-writing for a confused and abusive socialite while also working as her personal assistant, in love with her best friend, who has never given her the slightest encouragement and drinking far more than would be a good idea for a stevedore. In the Drink is Kate Christensen's first novel. It was published in 1999 and is very much a snapshot of a specific time, and it's also witty and funny in a we're-all-drowning-so-let's-have-a-laugh kind of way.

I really love this kind of novel, where a woman gets herself into a mess of her own making and her attempts to right things either works or goes disastrously wrong. Claudia was a wreck, but she was so funny in a Dorothy Parker kind of way and the author has taken the time to give her and the secondary characters real depth. I highly recommend this book for readers who like this kind of thing.

78lisapeet
Aug. 18, 2022, 8:44 am

>77 RidgewayGirl: I'm very fond of Kate Christensen. Did you read The Epicure's Lament? I think that was my favorite of hers (and though I never answered the humor question in Questions for the Avid Reader, since it turns out I don't read much in the way of outright humorous books, this was one of my all-time favorite books that made me laugh).

79BLBera
Aug. 18, 2022, 9:16 am

>77 RidgewayGirl:, >78 lisapeet: Two recommendations! I'll add these to my list.

80cindydavid4
Aug. 18, 2022, 10:53 am

see I don't read outright humours books, but there are books that make me at least smile if not laugh, I agree, that was one of them. Havent read any of her others should look to see what else looks good

81dianeham
Aug. 18, 2022, 5:36 pm

Hi, I read Subdivision after reading your review. It was very strange and very good. I’m reading another by him now Pieces for the Left Hand.

82RidgewayGirl
Aug. 18, 2022, 9:04 pm

>78 lisapeet: Lisa, this was my first book by Christensen. I've seen others that interested me, but I'd picked up In the Drink years ago and so every time I saw one of her books I would remember this one and think that I should read the book I had first and somehow that took years. But now that I've read her, I'll look for more.

>79 BLBera: Beth, Christensen is a clever writer. I loved her writing style.

>80 cindydavid4: Yes, there's a wit to this book that I really enjoyed.

>81 dianeham: Ha! Strange and good is a good description of Subdivision. I'll keep an eye on your thread to see what you think of the one you're reading now. That's quite a juxtaposition with Elizabeth Strout.

83RidgewayGirl
Aug. 21, 2022, 4:19 pm



When Ghosts Come Home is a bit different from Wiley Cash's usual fare. It's almost a historical novel, being set in the early 1980s, and Cash's ability to vividly describe a specific place (Oak Island, North Carolina) at a specific time is unchanged, but here he's primarily engaged in writing a thriller. Taking place over just a few days, this novel starts slowly before throwing all the twists and turns in at the end.

A sheriff is jolted away by the sound of a crash at the local airfield. Arriving at the scene, he finds an abandoned plane at the end of the runway and a dead body at the other end. As he tries to find out what the plane had been carrying and what happened, he's also in a heated election battle to retain his seat, an election he expects to lose and his opponent is acting like he's already won. The dead body is the son of a local high school teacher and civil rights activist, giving the racists an excuse to menace the Black community. And his daughter, still mourning a lost pregnancy, shows up, unsure of what her future holds.

This was a character-driven novel, with a protagonist not unlike a Walt Longmire, and Cash's love of setting a scene works against the genre here. But I enjoyed this look at a Carolina ocean community in the off-season and how very nice people can hold some very ugly ideas. There's a final twist at the end that I absolutely did not see coming. While I prefer Cash's more thoughtful and quiet novels, this was a lot of fun.

84RidgewayGirl
Aug. 26, 2022, 4:39 pm



Emily St. John Mandel's new novel, Sea of Tranquility, is a hard one to pigeonhole. It begins as a straight-forward historical novel about the second son of a prominent English family sent to Canada (a novel which I would have been quite happy to stay in, by the way), then changes to one set roughly near our own time and involving characters from The Glass Hotel (I was also happy to see these characters again, and from this slightly different angle) and finally a new story, one that will eventually, and wonderfully, draw all the threads together.

Yes, this is a novel about time travel, but it's also about people and hope and what joins us together. And it poses some interesting questions as it ranges through the centuries. Mandel writes so well about human emotions. She's playing with complex ideas and creating imaginative worlds, but really she's writing about people and the connections they make. And the answer to a question she asks in the book is really the only answer that can be given. I will be thinking about aspects of this novel for a long time.

85FlorenceArt
Aug. 27, 2022, 2:28 am

>84 RidgewayGirl: Sounds very interesting. I bought Station Eleven some time ago but never got round to reading it. Maybe later, after I’m through with my current fantasy/romance/comfort reading phase.

86RidgewayGirl
Aug. 27, 2022, 11:56 am

>85 FlorenceArt: It really doesn't work to force oneself to read a book at the wrong time. No one benefits from that. But when you're ready, it really is a thought-provoking book.

87BLBera
Aug. 27, 2022, 1:37 pm

Great comments on Sea of Tranquility, Kay. I loved it as well although Station Eleven is still my favorite.

88RidgewayGirl
Aug. 27, 2022, 3:07 pm

>87 BLBera: I loved Station Eleven. I keep finding myself thinking about some of the ideas and events of Sea of Tranquility in the same way I did the first book. And while I enjoyed The Glass Hotel, it hasn't stayed with me in the same way as the other books in the trilogy.

89AlisonY
Aug. 28, 2022, 2:14 pm

I haven't read anything by St. John Mandel. Which one is best to start with?

90BLBera
Aug. 28, 2022, 2:46 pm

I'd start with Station Eleven

91SassyLassy
Aug. 28, 2022, 6:47 pm

92lisapeet
Aug. 28, 2022, 6:47 pm

93RidgewayGirl
Aug. 28, 2022, 7:01 pm

>89 AlisonY: I'll agree with everyone else, Alison. And I look forward to finding out what you think of it.

94RidgewayGirl
Aug. 29, 2022, 10:15 pm



Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen tells the story of several murdered women dumped in the salt marsh behind a decaying motel on the outskirts of Atlantic City. The story centers on Lily, who recently moved back home after a bad break-up and takes a job as a receptionist at a casino spa, and Clara, a teenager working on the boardwalk as a fortune teller and whose guardian is pressuring her to take on some riskier work. There are missing girls who have family looking for them, missing women who have family who hope they will one day come home, and there are women whose absence goes unremarked and unmourned. Lily and Clara form a tenuous friendship as they look for a missing teenage girl and try to find a local sex worker when she goes missing.

This isn't a traditionally-structured crime novel. The focus is on the lives of the women before they disappear and remains on the dangers experienced by women on the fringes of society in a failing town dedicated to vice. The portrayal of Atlantic City is so well done and heartbreaking. Each woman, regardless of her decisions, is a fully drawn character with hopes and dreams and a fully-realized past. This isn't a novel about a serial killer, but one about his victims.

95RidgewayGirl
Aug. 31, 2022, 6:09 pm



Disclaimer: I've read two of Lan Samantha Chang's novels and loved them both and I also really like short stories so it was a forgone conclusion that I would like Hunger: A Novella and stories by Chang. And I did like it very much.

The stories mostly follow the experiences of children being raised by recent immigrants who are struggling to find their place in communities that are not entirely welcoming. Being highly educated and skilled doesn't prevent the parents from being passed over for jobs or promotions, trying to fit in never quite works. The children deal with this by rebelling or by being compliant and eventually learn to be themselves. The book opens with the novella, which left me wanting something longer and which also was exactly the right length for the story it was telling. The best stories examined father-daughter relationships. This was an excellent collection and I hope Chang returns to the short story format.

96lisapeet
Sept. 1, 2022, 5:57 pm

>95 RidgewayGirl: Ohh, noted. That sounds really good, and I loooooove the cover.

97RidgewayGirl
Sept. 1, 2022, 6:01 pm

>96 lisapeet: It's so striking! And Chang is such a good writer. She runs the Iowa Writers Workshop, so I guess she has to be.

I'm headed for Hawai'i in a few weeks and would love some appropriate fiction recommendations, especially anything by Hawaiian authors. I've read Sharks in the Time of Saviors and loved it.

98BLBera
Sept. 1, 2022, 7:48 pm

For nonfiction, I really liked Sarah Vowell's book about Hawaii. I think there were fishes in the title.

99kidzdoc
Sept. 2, 2022, 8:01 pm

>95 RidgewayGirl: Nice review, Kay. I'll move Hunger: A Novella and Stories higher on my TBR list.

100Cariola
Bearbeitet: Sept. 3, 2022, 3:37 pm

>95 RidgewayGirl: I've loved everything I've read by this author, including this one! My copy has a different cover. This one reminded me of the cover of Yiyun Li's new book:

101RidgewayGirl
Sept. 3, 2022, 3:58 pm

>98 BLBera: Beth, I read Unfamiliar Fishes awhile ago. It taught me most of all I know about Hawai'i.

>99 kidzdoc: Darryl, it's a very solid collection.

Today, my house received a letter. The postman rang the bell and wondered if I knew who the addressee "Adlai Stevenson House" was. And the letter was from a man who had house-sat in 1976, who sent a few photos as proof. In one of the pictures was the chair -- the one I'd bought from a local antique dealer who claimed it had come from the house -- turns out he was right about that.



Anyway, he and his wife will be in town next week and want a tour and I am going to have so many questions for him.

102RidgewayGirl
Sept. 3, 2022, 3:59 pm

>100 Cariola: Chang is one of my favorite authors, too. She's so versatile and her writing is always beautiful.

103labfs39
Sept. 3, 2022, 4:01 pm

>101 RidgewayGirl: How fun! I'm glad you were able to reunite chair and house, and I hope you have a nice visit with the former housesitters.

104cindydavid4
Bearbeitet: Sept. 3, 2022, 6:30 pm

>101 RidgewayGirl: cool but make sure they arent leaving with , um, extra baggage! Looking forward to see what they told you about the house.

105RidgewayGirl
Sept. 3, 2022, 6:42 pm

>103 labfs39: I'm really interested in hearing how the house has changed in the past 48 years, especially since he was here before the house was renovated by the historical society that inherited it.

>104 cindydavid4: Cindy, there is nothing we own worth trying to smuggle out in a coat pocket, lol.

106RidgewayGirl
Sept. 3, 2022, 6:43 pm



I really liked Ling Ma's debut novel, Severance, which was an odd blend of everyday observations and utter weirdness and I'm happy to report that her collection of short stories, Bliss Montage shares those traits. There are odd situations, presented matter-of-factly, like the woman who lives in a mansion with her husband and children and all one hundred of her ex-boyfriends, and also astutely observed ordinary moments, like a woman meeting a man in a bar.

He bought me a cocktail without asking, and proceeded to explain, casually, that he lived in this neighborhood, just a few blocks away. Actually, what he said was six blocks. No, five and a half blocks. That's what he said, five and a half blocks, as if he were afraid that at six blocks I would say no. I didn't tell him that actually, I liked him up to eight blocks. In our city, that equals a mile. I liked him up to a mile.

These stories are full of young women figuring out life, how to move on from the things their mothers taught them, working out how love and life work in the world as it is. Sometimes the worlds these women exist in are different from this one, other times the author stays with this one.

What I wouldn't give to escape these late winters in Chicago. Especially the deep, post-holiday extremes of January and February, when, no longer buoyed by festivities and merriments, you're confronted with the empty expanse of a new year, discarded resolutions in your wake, resigned to your own inability to change.

I really like how Ling Ma writes, both on a sentence level and in the way she views the world. I ended up liking each story in this collection a little more than the last and would have liked it to be much longer.

107cindydavid4
Sept. 3, 2022, 6:47 pm

>105 RidgewayGirl: heh yeah but it would make a great plot for a story

108Cariola
Sept. 3, 2022, 7:19 pm

>101 RidgewayGirl: So cool! Hope you have a great visit.

109RidgewayGirl
Sept. 4, 2022, 5:09 pm

>107 cindydavid4: It certainly would, but I think they'd target the fancy houses around the Country Club.

>108 Cariola: I'll let you all know how it goes.

110RidgewayGirl
Sept. 5, 2022, 4:37 pm



Love Marriage begins with a dinner to introduce Yasmin's family to the mother of Joe, her fiancé, then expands to look at the two families and Yasmin and Joe's relationship. Yasmin grew up with the story of her parents's love marriage, with her mother's family being wealthy and her father a menial worker who didn't graduate high school until his mid-twenties. He's now a respected doctor living in a quiet part of London, his wife occupies herself with cooking and bargain-hunting. But the details of their love match were never made clear and as Yasmin worries about her own love match, as her family begins to shatter, she wants the whole story. And Joe is seeing a therapist, who is pushing him in a direction he doesn't want to go; looking at his relationship with his (in)famous well-to-do mother. As family issues consume their thoughts and time, as their careers as doctors put another pressure on their emotions and their time, will Joe and Yasmin manage to get married?

Monica Ali is fantastic at pulling at the threads of family and seeing what emerges. Each character, from Yasmin's tense, regimented father to her unemployed and seemingly directionless younger brother, are given time and space to be full characters. Having each chapter follow a different character only works when each character is interesting and fully developed and their story ties in with the larger novel, things Ali pulls off effortlessly. This is an excellent novel and now I need to go back and read the books by this author that I've missed.

111Cariola
Sept. 5, 2022, 5:35 pm

>110 RidgewayGirl: I enjoyed this one, too. You should definitely read her first novel, Brick Lane. Untold Story imagines what Princess Diana's life would be like today had she survived the car crash--very different for this author but also interesting. I will have to check out her other novels.

112RidgewayGirl
Sept. 5, 2022, 9:40 pm

>111 Cariola: I loved Brick Lane but somehow missed all of the novels in between.

113RidgewayGirl
Sept. 8, 2022, 1:04 pm



Small Things Like These is a novella by Irish author Claire Keegan, set in the 1980s in a small town in the southeast of Ireland on a snowy day just before Christmas. It's a small jewel of a tale, managing to cram a great deal of atmosphere and story in very few pages and it manages to end at exactly the right moment.

Yes, it's very good. There's a reason this was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And it's delightful that a novella is receiving this much attention. Novellas get short shrift in the literary world. They're too long and bloated to be a snappy short story; they're the long thing that sits at the end of some short story collections, to be begun with some trepidation. They're too short for those in the mood for a novel; there's no space to get to know the story at a leisurely pace, or to allow for a wide cast of characters or twists and turns to a plot. But they have their own charms, and in the case of Small Things Like These, it's in holding a work that is exactly the length it needs to be.

114cindydavid4
Bearbeitet: Sept. 8, 2022, 5:24 pm

Just saw a synopsis of it, and remember seeing a movie a few years back with Judy Dench as one of those girls, looking for her son 50 years later. I was horrified by this story, that supposed religious people can treat others that way. Denchs character has a good ending, but just think of all the young girls there who never had chance. Ill read this.

the film is Philomena based on the memoir Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search

115RidgewayGirl
Sept. 9, 2022, 5:57 pm

>114 cindydavid4: The story of those laundries is grim. I do think you'll like Small Things Like These and it's the shortest book on the Booker shortlist.

116RidgewayGirl
Sept. 12, 2022, 8:28 pm



Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach begins with the knowledge that the narrator's sister dies, but not when or how. It sets up a tension in the story as Sally recounts her life with her older, more popular sister. Each section of the novel moves the story forward, through the terrible events in which her sister is lost, then on to how their family collapses; their shared grief serves to separate them.

This is a very well-structured novel that seems superficially like an above average tear-jerker about a family tragedy, but the way that the author puts the novel together and how she evokes the different facets of grief elevates this novel. And she nails aspects of childhood with clear-eyed accuracy.

117RidgewayGirl
Sept. 28, 2022, 1:28 pm

I had great plans for the next week, involving a book festival and my two best friends, and yesterday I had a scratchy throat. Friends, I have finally succumbed to covid. Plans are canceled, I'm irked, but here I am, home for the foreseeable future. I guess I should catch up on my reviews or something.



Growing up in the eighties in Albania is hard enough, but with the death of his father, Bujar's family spins apart. Bujar's best friend, Amir, has always known what he wanted and now he proposes that the two of them set out for Italy, where they will surely prosper and live their dreams. But reaching Italy isn't the solution it first seemed, and as he moves from country to country, he finds that being an Albanian migrant is a hinderance. He tries living as a man in Spain and as a woman in Germany, each time with disastrous results. New York is difficult, but maybe Finland will be more welcoming?

Crossing by Pajtim Statovci is a novel that explores what being an outsider feels like, whether that of being a foreigner from an undesirable country or someone whose gender and sexuality fall outside of what is accepted, and is even criminalized in some places. The protagonist has to constantly reinvent himself, hoping with each move that he will finally find the acceptance he longs for. I found this novel to be thought-provoking and challenging.

118cindydavid4
Sept. 28, 2022, 1:29 pm

>117 RidgewayGirl: oh no! so sorry! hope your health returns soon

119dianeham
Sept. 28, 2022, 3:33 pm

Sorry to hear you’re sick. Did you have to go somewhere and get tested? Did you get any meds?

120wandering_star
Sept. 28, 2022, 4:12 pm

Oh gosh, I hope it's a mild case and you are feeling all right.

121RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 28, 2022, 4:12 pm

>118 cindydavid4: & >119 dianeham: & >120 wandering_star: -- Thanks for the sympathy and concern! I've got what feels like a mild flu, with a low fever that responds well to Tylenol. And I'm tired. But that's it so far. Hoping it stays this way. I did a home test when I felt my throat go scratchy last night, because I was planning to leave for my trip today. And then I did another home test, hoping for a different answer. I'm too young for the meds (when my husband had covid a few months ago, he was turned down and I'm three years younger.) So now I'm just waiting to be able to rejoin the world.

122BLBera
Sept. 28, 2022, 7:03 pm

Sorry you have COVID, Kay. I hope you feel better soon.

123labfs39
Sept. 29, 2022, 1:55 pm

I'm sorry to hear you finally succumbed, Kay. So disappointing that it had to be this week too!

124RidgewayGirl
Sept. 29, 2022, 2:24 pm

>122 BLBera: & >123 labfs39: Thanks, Beth and Lisa. Still feels like a mild flu. And since my schedule is clear, I've been laying around, napping and generally being lazy.

125RidgewayGirl
Sept. 29, 2022, 3:25 pm



Literature really likes a non-neurotypical protagonist these days and The Maid by Nita Prose certainly fits that bill. Molly is relentlessly literal and needs her space to be ordered and clean. She's also unable to read people at all, taking them as they claim to be. She lives in the apartment she grew up in under the care of her grandmother, although without her grandmother, she's having trouble paying the rent. She has a job as a maid at a small, upscale Manhattan hotel which she does diligently and with real enjoyment. But when she finds the murdered body of a hotel guest while cleaning, her well-ordered, if tenuous, world rapidly falls apart, leaving her with no choice but to find out who the murderer is herself, especially given that the police are focused on her.

This is a fun novel. Molly is an engaging narrator and the author knows how to pace a novel. She also allows the reader to know who the good and the bad guys are well in advance of when Molly figures this out, but the story is less in whodunit than it is in witnessing how Molly navigates her world and in how her friends care for her. This novel is heart-warming without being annoying or overly sweet, although I did think it went on for slightly longer than I would have liked it to. This novel has a similar energy to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

126RidgewayGirl
Sept. 29, 2022, 4:08 pm



Karin Slaughter writes thrillers and while I vastly prefer her stand-alones over her series, Girl, Forgotten was pretty good. A young woman in the mid-eighties discovers she's pregnant without any memory of any sexual encounter, but she was at a party where she got wasted and she suspects that it was either one of the boys at that party or the teacher who gave her a ride home who are to blame. Before she can get far with her investigation, however, she's murdered.

Years later, US Marshals are assigned to protect her mother, a judge, after she received threatening letters. Andrea, the main character of another Slaughter novel and now a US Marshal, investigates that earlier murder amid plenty of danger to everyone.

Slaughter is always good for a well-paced and exciting thriller and this book was no exception. Her titles, however, are impossible to remember and are far too generically "thriller" to be memorable. She does a great job describing the eighties and the feeling of growing up in a small town past its prime.

127RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 30, 2022, 6:11 pm

Thanks to Beth (BLBera) for recommending this one.



Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett has the kind of voice I really enjoy, a very close first-person narration by a protagonist whose thoughts range widely as she goes about her day, mostly thinking about the story she's writing and about literature in general.

Graham Greene. Gore Vidal. Nabokov. E. M. Forster. So many men for the simple reason I wanted to find out about men, about the world they lived in and the kinds of things they got up to in that world, the kinds of things too that they thought about as they drifted out of train stations, hung about foreign ports, went up and down escalators, barreled through revolving doors, looked out of taxi windows, lost a limb, swirled brandy around a crystal tumbler, followed another man, undressed another man's wife, lay down upon a lawn with arms folded upon their chest, cleaned their shoes, buttered their toast, swam so far out to sea their head looked like a small black dot.

It's the kind of writing that is immersive when the time is taken to allow the flow of the words to take over one's own thoughts. The narrator here is so thoughtful, curious and honest that her voice is very good company, erudite and unpretentious. I will certainly be reading more by this author.

We confused life with literature and made the mistake of believing that everything going on around us was telling us something, something about our own little existences, our own undeveloped hearts, and, most crucially of all, about what was to come. What was to come? What was to come?

128rocketjk
Sept. 30, 2022, 6:17 pm

Just caught up with your thread after a long time away for some reason. Lots of fascinating reading and terrific reviews. Thanks!

129RidgewayGirl
Okt. 1, 2022, 1:16 pm

Always good to see you here, Jerry!

130RidgewayGirl
Okt. 1, 2022, 2:24 pm



How to Find Your Way in the Dark by Derek B. Miller is a madcap and heart-warming tale about a boy growing up in the years before the US entered WWII. Left orphaned after his father's murder, Sheldon swears he will kill the man who ran them off the road. This novel is similar in tone to Fredrick Backman's novels and is a prequel to the author's earlier novel, Norwegian by Night. While the story was more than a little far-fetched, the love that the author has for his characters is undeniable and the book managed to balance some heavy subject matter with humor and whimsy. I'm not really the reader of this kind of book, it was the choice of my book club, but I did enjoy reading it.

131RidgewayGirl
Okt. 1, 2022, 2:48 pm

Come join me over on my fourth quarter thread. Last thread of the year, I promise!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/344828

132labfs39
Okt. 1, 2022, 3:29 pm

>130 RidgewayGirl: Interesting. I hadn't heard of this one, and I'm someone who did enjoy Norwegian by Night.

133RidgewayGirl
Okt. 1, 2022, 5:17 pm

>132 labfs39: Yes, it seems to have flown entirely under the radar.

134BLBera
Okt. 1, 2022, 7:32 pm

>127 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad you liked this one, Kay. I also loved Pond.

135avaland
Okt. 2, 2022, 7:38 am

>76 RidgewayGirl: I think I have that book on my wishlist...glad to hear it will be worth the read!

>110 RidgewayGirl: Hmmm, another Monica Ali novel....

136RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Okt. 12, 2022, 5:55 pm

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