QUESTIONS FOR THE AVID READER - 2022, PART 7

Dan is working on a great question (which will post at the beginning of October), and while he is doing so, I thought I might keep you all warmed up and ready with a list.

LIST: FREE ASSOCIATION (add a book of any kind that you have read that fits the adjective)

1. HUMOROUS
2. UNFORGETTABLE
3. LIGHTWEIGHT
4. DIFFICULT
5. ENGROSSING’
6. VACUOUS
7. PAGE-TURNING
8. LYRICAL
9. INTENSE
10.WELL-RESEARCHED
11. STIMULATING
12. RECOMMENDED
13. CLEVER
14. AWARD-WINNING
15. FAILURE
16. MUST READ
17. CEREBRAL
18. IRONIC
19. POPULAR
20. TRAGIC

Six hours later, no bites? I'll start:
1. HUMOROUS: Mermaids in Paradise by Lydia Millett (2014)
2. UNFORGETTABLE: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (1957)
3. LIGHTWEIGHT Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner (2001)
4. DIFFICULT: The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom, (1971)
5. ENGROSSING’On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Synder (2017)
6. VACUOUS: (aka ‘Stupid” or “lame”) Although I haven’t read it, I would nominate Phillip Roth’s The Breast based just on the description
7. PAGE-TURNING: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. (1996)
8. LYRICAL poetry:Emily Dickinson, fiction: Wegener's Jigsaw aka One Day the Ice will Reveal All its Dead by Clare Dudman (2003)
9. INTENSE: Perdido Street Station, China Mieville, (2000) What a ride!
10.WELL-RESEARCHED: Founding Mothers & Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society by Mary Beth Norton (1997)
11. STIMULATING: Anything by Angela Carter, RIP
12. RECOMMENDED The Translator by John Crowley (2002)
13. CLEVER: The Reparateur of Strasbourg by Ian R. MacLepd (2016)
14. AWARD-WINNING: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, (Booker Prize, 2000)
15. FAILURE: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Something happened near the beginning that was disgusting…I did not continue.
16. MUST READ: Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood, (1985)
17. CEREBRAL: Perhaps a too literal choice... Laterality: Exploring the Enigma of Left-Handedness
18. IRONIC: Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit.(2014), essays
19. POPULAR: Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (local NH author, required reading for a NH bookseller, you know?), 2003
20. TRAGIC: In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton (2002)

I started and stalled. My reading just doesn’t really do these extremes all that often. I’ll have to dig a little deeper into my memory

I'll try it, too!

1. HUMOROUS: Kartoffeln mit Stippe by Ilse Gräfin von Bredow
2. UNFORGETTABLE: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
3. LIGHTWEIGHT: Echoes by Maeve Binchy
4. DIFFICULT: Hikikomori by Kevin Kuhn
5. ENGROSSING: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
6. VACUOUS: Die Inszenierung by Martin Walser
7. PAGE-TURNING: The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
8. LYRICAL: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
9. INTENSE: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
10.WELL-RESEARCHED: Buddha by Axel Michaels (I am not able to find the correct touchstone for this one)
11. STIMULATING: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
12. RECOMMENDED: The Stormkeeper's Island by Catherine Doyle
13. CLEVER: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
14. AWARD-WINNING: I don't know because I do not pay attention to that
15. FAILURE: Das kleine Friesencafé by Janne Mommsen (finished on Sunday and still recovering from it!)
16. MUST READ: It depends on the person...
17. CEREBRAL: Florentin by Dorothea Schlegel
18. IRONIC: More Jane Austen!
19. POPULAR: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
20. TRAGIC: Irrungen Wirrungen by Theodor Fontane

>4 dchaikin: You're a good sport, Dan. ;-) One doesn't have to fill all the slots, btw.

Here's my list, with all books in translation, of course...

1. HUMOROUS: Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky
2. UNFORGETTABLE: The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
3. LIGHTWEIGHT: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
4. DIFFICULT: Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
5. ENGROSSING: The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
6. VACUOUS:
7. PAGE-TURNING: I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan
8. LYRICAL: The Issa Valley by Czeslaw Milosz
9. INTENSE: Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada
10.WELL-RESEARCHED: Kristin Lavransdattar by Sigrid Undset
11. STIMULATING: Em by Kim Thúy
12. RECOMMENDED: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
13. CLEVER: Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel in Documents by Ludmila Ulitskaya
14. AWARD-WINNING: From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus (Zerilli-Marimo Prize for Italian Fiction)
15. FAILURE: Seeing by Jose Saramago (after loving Blindness, I could never finishing the sequel, despite starting multiple times)
16. MUST READ: A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
17. CEREBRAL: My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
18. IRONIC: Burned Child Seeks the Fire by Cordelia Edvardson
19. POPULAR: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
20. TRAGIC: Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel

1. HUMOROUS - Cat-a-Lyst, Alan Dean Foster - B+
2. UNFORGETTABLE - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot - B+
3. LIGHTWEIGHT - Hissy Fit, Mary Kay Andrews - B+
4. DIFFICULT - The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell - A
5. ENGROSSING - The Huntress, Kate Quinn - B+
6. VACUOUS - Flying Angels, Danielle Steele - C-
7. PAGE-TURNING - Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn - B+
8. LYRICAL - One More for the Road, Ray Bradbury - A
9. INTENSE - The Witches Are Coming, Lindy West - B
10.WELL-RESEARCHED - Seabiscuit: An American Legend, Laura Hillenbrand - A-
11. STIMULATING - The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe - A
12. RECOMMENDED - Montana 1948, Larry Watson - A
13. CLEVER - Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, Melissa Mohr - B+
14. AWARD-WINNING - The Round House, Louise Erdrich - A
15. FAILURE - The Throwaway Children, Diney Costeloe - DNF
16. MUST READ - The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver - A
17. CEREBRAL - Transformations of Myth Through Time, Joseph Campbell - B
18. IRONIC - James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips - A
19. POPULAR - Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens - C
20. TRAGIC - Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, Ann Patchett - B-

Interesting categories, and made me think! "Ironic" was the toughest one to fill, since I often have trouble pinning down a satisfying definition for "ironic" lit. In the end, I chose the Sheldon biography, not because the writing was particularly ironic, but because Sheldon was eventually hampered in her writing, and almost consumed by the very success of the alternate persona she created in James Tiptree, Jr.

1. HUMOROUS Small Gods
2. UNFORGETTABLE Inferno
3. LIGHTWEIGHT The No. 1 Ladies Detection Agency
4. DIFFICULT The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
5. ENGROSSING My Brilliant Friend
6. VACUOUS The Dovekeepers
7. PAGE-TURNING Bewilderment
8. LYRICAL Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante
9. INTENSE Crime and Punishment
10.WELL-RESEARCHED Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life
11. STIMULATING The Clockwork Universe
12. RECOMMENDED Giovanni’s Room
13. CLEVER The Man Who Saw Everything
14. AWARD-WINNING Tinkers
15. FAILURE The Dawn of Everything
16. MUST READ - refusing to answer 🙂
17. CEREBRAL Being Wrong
18. IRONIC The Known World
19. POPULAR Ready Player One
20. TRAGIC Where the Red Fern Grows

LIST: FREE ASSOCIATION (add a book of any kind that you have read that fits the adjective)

1. HUMOROUS The Days Are Packed - Calvin & Hobbs
2. UNFORGETTABLE Never Let Me Go
3. LIGHTWEIGHT The Essex Serpent
4. DIFFICULT (Subject matter was difficult) Heaven: a novel
5. ENGROSSING’ The Blind Assassin
6. VACUOUS Woman, Eating: A Literary Vampire Novel
7. PAGE-TURNING Project Hail Mary
8. LYRICAL Dancing in Odessa
9. INTENSE The Memory Monster
10.WELL-RESEARCHED The Orphan Master’s Son
11. STIMULATING Captain Blood
12. RECOMMENDED Tenth of December: Stories
13. CLEVER Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories
14. AWARD-WINNING frank: sonnets
15. FAILURE Chasing Amanda
16. MUST READ The Age of Innocence
17. CEREBRAL Death In Spring
18. IRONIC Mouth to Mouth
19. POPULAR Where the Crawdads Sing
20. TRAGIC The Outsiders

1. HUMOROUS — Good bones by Margaret Atwood
2. UNFORGETTABLE — Sketches from memory by Edmund White
3. LIGHTWEIGHT — The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera
4. DIFFICULT — Difficulties with girls by Kingsley Amis
5. ENGROSSING — The modern movement by John Gross
6. VACUOUS — Mishima: ou La vision du vide by Marguerite Yourcenar
7. PAGE-TURNING — The page-turner by David Leavitt
8. LYRICAL — Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
9. INTENSE — Poetry Notebook: Reflections on the Intensity of Language by Clive James
10.WELL-RESEARCHED — All’s well that ends well by Wm. Shakespeare
11. STIMULATING — Doors of perception and Heaven and hell by Aldous Huxley
12. RECOMMENDED — How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe
13. CLEVER — Clever girl by Tessa Hadley
14. AWARD-WINNING — Meine Preise by Thomas Bernhard
15. FAILURE — Heroic failure by Fintan O’Toole
16. MUST READ — 1001 books you must read before you die by Peter Boxall
17. CEREBRAL — How the mind works by Steven Pinker
18. IRONIC — Any old iron by Anthony Burgess
19. POPULAR — Karaoke culture by Dubravka Ugrešić
20. TRAGIC — The tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

— was that free enough?

>11 thorold: Lol. I should have known you would have come up with something like this. Clever

>12 labfs39: I’m sure I could have found something better for “WELL-RESEARCHED”, given time. But I’d got the Dormouse’s story running round in my head, and that doesn’t lead to any obvious book titles.

NVM

>9 dchaikin: Hey, Dan... Paul Harding has a long-awaited NEW book coming out from Norton in late January titled "This Other Eden". 200+ pages

>15 avaland: oh! Cool. I’m definitely interested!

A preface:

On Darryl's (kidzdoc's) thread we were bashing American contemporary literature, and, while bashing away, a list of favorite American authors stumbled out of the conversation. Some were even men.

It all started where Darryl mentioned in passing, “I'm admittedly not a fan of contemporary American literature" ( link here ) And I asked, "What is wrong with American authors?" The conversation grew from there, including a great post by lisapeet on the impact of the Big Five publishers. (same thread, post #163)

Lois (avaland) asked me to make that into an Avid Reader question. Well, I came up two imperfect ones.

Question 34

First: What is wrong with contemporary literature*, if anything? Try to explain your answer. Why? What do you think has the most influence on this? Is this an American problem? Has something changed, in long view?

Second: And on the flip side, where is the best contemporary literature* coming from? For example, if America or American publishers are problem, are there other places pouring out better books. But this question is intened to be more open ended. The where could be a geographical space, or it could be some other national/cultural/linguistic identity, or something along the lines of social groups, styles, mindsets, social media places et.

*For simplicity's sake, I'll define "contemporary literature" as written in the** 21st century.

**a late edit

>15 avaland: is this other eden the one by Rowan Atkinson? Thats such a brilliant story

Perhaps the question was phrased poorly? 🙂

>19 dchaikin:

Fwiw, I think it's a very interesting conversation (thanks btw for linking to Darryl's thread, which I somehow had lost), but for my part, can't contribute to it for the reason I mentioned somewhere already, that I don't read enough contemporary fiction.

No doubt people with something to say will show up by and by. :)

Q34:

I also have to start out by saying that I don’t read enough contemporary literature, especially not by US authors, to be able to answer the question with any confidence. Of course that leads to the follow-up question “why not?”…

Objective explanations:
— (1) I grew up in 60s/70s Britain, at a time when there was still a lot of residual prejudice against American culture. Obviously I don’t really think there’s anything objectively better or worse about one or other side of the Atlantic, but some of that prejudice is probably still working away at a deep level, and in any case my cultural reference points are not those of someone who went to school in the USA.
— (2) I live in the Netherlands, and I don’t have all that much exposure to the things authors and publishers in the US do to promote new books, so there’s a lot I simply never get to hear about.
— (3) I’m getting older, it’s probably quite normal that I take my ideas of what literature should be from writers from my generation and earlier. Consequently, I’m likely to be at least a little bit prejudiced against the kind of things younger people like to read. Like all prejudices, this is damaging but difficult to overcome.

Subjective impressions:
— A mass-market is always going to be conservative and skewed towards mass tastes. At present we seem (collectively) to have an appetite for social-realist novels dealing with the author’s personal experience of particular social problems, so that’s what the industry provides. In a decade or two we might be back to escapist romances or social comedy: who knows? There’s never been much money in experimental fiction, so it’s not surprising that we see less of it as publishing companies become bigger and more centralised. But there are still mainstream novels coming out that are pretty experimental in form, like Lost children archive and Lincoln in the Bardo.
— The “MFA” effect is probably not as extreme as we think it is, but a little bit of pregnant description and overwrought symbolism goes a long way towards putting the reader off…
— There are still plenty of American writers I’ve appreciated. From my recent reading, those that stick out include: Anne Tyler, Siri Hustvedt, the late Toni Morrison, Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, … and there are certainly a lot more good ones I just haven’t got around to yet.
— You are always going to be more aware of the mediocre under your nose than you are in exotic cultures. I tend to have a romantic view of Spanish literature as being full of high-powered intellects like Antonio Muñoz Molina, Javier Cercas and the late Javier Marías. But you only need to go into an actual bookshop in Madrid to see that what they make their money from is selling big piles of action thrillers and crime novels, like anywhere else.

>18 cindydavid4: No, the author is Paul Harding.

Q34 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE:

Like some others who have chimed in, I don't feel as though I read a lot of contemporary literature, especially American, so have hesitated to join this conversation. I tried looking at my charts and graphs to see if I could pull some data, but LT is not great at tracking original publication dates vs translation dates, etc. My biggest genres are history, historical fiction, and biographies/memoirs, none of which lend themselves well to this question. But perhaps as Mark says (>21 thorold:), the question I need to answer is why not?

When I think of contemporary fiction, I tend to think of "domestic fiction," if that is a thing. What I mean by that is fiction about everyday people doing everyday things: family relationships, job woes, raising kids, dealing with climate change, political mayhem, road rage, and inflation. I feel like I deal with these things enough in my own life that I don't need to read about it. So I escape to how people lived in the past or live in cultures other than my own. Even then I tend to read about people dealing with things like war, dictatorships, genocide, oppression. Life writ large rather than small.

Of the 65 books I've read this year, only a handful were fiction set in the 21st century and nothing that I would consider vanilla US contemporary fiction:

School for Good Mothers (dystopian)
Project Hail Mary and Celestine (science fiction)
Anxious People, Please Look After Mom, Monastery, Before the Coffee Gets Cold (non-US)

The one possible exception is The Bad Immigrant by Sefi Atta, which deals with a Nigerian immigrant to the US. But the author was born in Nigeria, so I guess that isn't typical contemporary American fiction either. Although it does raise the question of whether in the land of immigrants, immigrants should be considered contemporary American authors, or authors of their native land.

If you broaden your question to include 20th century, then I have more American authors that I appreciate, but often, they too, are writing about earlier time periods or things like war. Of the authors I've favorited, not one is an American writing about the 20th or 21st centuries.

P.S. I also have allergies to books that make bestseller lists, which doesn't help expand my reading into contemporary fiction.

I’ve analyzed both books read over the last few years, and books bought over the last 12 months and, yes, I seem to be reading very little US literature
.
Thus far this year I read 4 fiction books by US authors…
In 2021 I read four books…
In 2020 I read three books…
In 2019 I read eight books….
Authors have been Bonnie Jo Campbell, Lidya Yuknavitch, K. J. Fowler, James Morrow ,Jeffrey Ford, Margo Livesey, Derek Miller, Paul Yoon, Gish Jen, Jeff Vandermeer, Mary Doria Russell, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Parker, Julia Phillips, Vylark Kaftan, and Roger Wall. (note: this included so-called ‘genre’ authors)

To be honest, I haven’t read that much US lit, relatively-speaking, since I came on LT.
I read a huge amount of classics early in my life, and then all the reading for my degree, so I read little of it now. In the years at the bookstore I read probably 90% American authors of fiction (a huge amount of it over the years). I left the bookstore in 2006 and joined LT. The following year I created the group Reading Globally (2007) because I wanted to read and chart a global trek. At some point I passed the group to Darryl (who has since pasted it on) as I found global reading now ingrained in my little brain and I felt my reading was far more balanced.

Of course, American Lit is part of the world so I do generally read some but I have read very little in these last years. Not even a Joyce Carol Oates in the last two years (gasp!)

However: Judging by my research I note that my poetry reading is roughly half US poets and anthologies, and my nonfiction is very heavily US authors. My crime novel reading contains NO US authors, and the little bit of SF/F I still read in mostly UK.*

Questions that came up when I was mulling over this question …

Does it matter what I am looking for in my fiction reading? thus from American novels, or any novel?? Do I wish to be transported by my fiction reading? entertained? enlightened? made to think? educated?

Does the current political atmosphere and or greater social atmosphere affect my reading? After following current events, do I just want to mentally get the hell out of the country for a while?

AND the world is very global these days. Seffi Atta’s last book was about a Nigerian family who has emigrated to the US and how they are coping. Atta is now listed a Nigerian American. It’s was a very good book, but to be honest, (I’d prefer to read about Africa….)

Perhaps not related but I have not read any dystopias, US or otherwise, since 2019 …I wonder why :-)

>20 LolaWalser: >21 thorold: >23 labfs39: >24 avaland: - thanks for boldly getting this going. Great posts!

I also don’t read a lot of contemporary American or other authors. Mostly just the Booker Prize. The reasons aren’t simple, but partially I hate the hype of bad books. I don’t like advertising in general, it’s a turnoff. But also I get uncomfortable with the praise I come across of middling newer books. (Which is unfair. So apologies)

I have a Whole Foods sense of new literature. What i mean is that if I go to a Whole Foods grocery store (a major American off beat grocery chain), i find a lot off unusual brands. But too often when I try them they are terrible. And then I’m left with a fear of off brands. Ok, maybe only me … but I have the same issue with popular contemporary fiction. In the past i read some hyped better sellers, and too often they were terrible. And it has caused me to hold a resentment against the whole promotional world that promoted this terrible book. Don’t they have standards? Of course, promoters have jobs, authors need income, and the books I dislike appeal to other readers. So it’s a bit unfair. But still it leaves a distaste.

Anyway, i see a few trends in contemporary fiction that make me especially uncomfortable. The YA/chic-lit trend, which I think are the same trend with and without sex, and which pushes books towards generic, inoffensive, under-thought-out, impulsive, white-privilege sympathies with dramatic sentimentality. On the flip side is the MFA trend, where everything sounds the same and every author uses the same literary techniques, but claim creativity and originality.

On the flip side I can’t speak for where the best contemporary literature is coming from. Of course, I would love know. I have noticed that a lot of Booker list authors are living in the US, but born in or culturally associated with another country. That is the US may provide something helpful (an audience? access? maybe some of the impetus?) but the creativity comes from outside (which begs for some explanation, not all positive, if true)

I read quite a bit of contemporary literature, including literature from American authors. I did a quick search through my tags and made a list of books published since 2010 by American authors that I rated 4 stars or higher.
Diane Wilson The Seedkeeper – Indiginous perspective
Ash Davidson Damnation Spring – ecology/environment
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle Even As We Breathe – Indigenous author
Cathleen Schine The Grammarians
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson My Monticello – Black American perspective
Yaa Gyasi Transcendent Kingdom and Homegoing – Ghanaian-American
Rebecca Makkai The Great Believers - about the AIDS epidemic
Eowyn Ivey The Snow Child
Madeline Miller Song of Achilles and Circe
Lucy Ellmann Ducks, Newburyport
Dexter Palmer Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen – Black American author
Otessa Moshfegh My year of rest and relaxation
Richard Powers The Overstory
Catherine Chung The Tenth Muse
Lauren Groff Fates and Furies
Jesmyn Ward Sing, Unburied, Sing – Black American author
Esi Edugyan Washington Black – Black American author
Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad – Black American author

And here are a few more contemporary authors that I really enjoy and have read multiple novels for each:
Siri Hustvedt
Marilynne Robinson
Ann Patchett
Barbara Kingsolver

As you can see, my American reading is very heavily female. I also really enjoy reading novels from both an Indigenous perspective (we can definitely argue whether we want to call these "American" authors, but I included a few anyway) and also enjoy reading works by Black American authors.

All of the above books were well worth my time and either broadened my perspective/understanding as an American or were simply entertaining.

I do look for something different from contemporary novels than I do from classics, but I have a hard time quantifying what that difference is in words.

(I don't know what's going on with my touchstones, but I'm running out the door and will try to fix later!)

I was under the impression that the books had to be set in the 21st century, not written in the 21st century. If I am mistaken, then my post above in >23 labfs39: is moot. I would agree with Jennifer that books like The Underground Railroad, Song of Achilles, and Circe are excellent.

>28 labfs39: - yes, written in the 21st century.

>28 labfs39: i edited the question to make that clear. A little late, sorry.

>29 dchaikin: Sorry I had Lois/Avaland's definition, Contemporary Fiction here shall be defined as fiction written AND set from 1990 - the present from Question 32 in my mind, updated with your specification of 21st century.

On my phone, so I apologize for typos. Wanted to add that while many of the books I listed in >27 japaul22: will probably not stand the test of time to be considered part of a canon, many of the novels present a diverse “other”viewpoint that I value. America is an incredibly diverse country and while I am with Darryl that I read virtually no white, male American authors there are many American authors that I think add value to the world of contemporary literature.

I also love a lot of British contemporary lit and try to read in translation as well, but even in these categories, I’m more likely to read women authors. It’s just become my preference.

hmmmm.Well Ive said before I don't always notice the authors name let alone background. I do still read american lit, tho it sounds like i am in a minorty? Examples Anne Tyler, Ian McEwan, Michael Chabon, E. Annie Proulx, David Mitchell, Marilyn Robinson, Carol Sheilds, Ali Smith, Anne Patchett,E.L. Doctorow, Jeffrey Eugenis, Emily St John Mandle, Madelene Miller.... and thats just in the last 5 years or so. but this last year the number of works in translation have totally taken over my reading list. I suspect down the road that will eventually even out, coz I suspect there are up and coming american authors who will fit the bill

>33 cindydavid4: some of them are British. 🙂 (McEwan, Mitchell, Smith) They are all contemporary.

>34 dchaikin: oops you are right. Ok then. But the ones who are american writers, I notice a pattern of their writing that I enjoy - a good plot, complex characters and superb writing.

>17 dchaikin: What is wrong with contemporary literature*, if anything?

too much repetition of the same plots and charcters. I really hate the current trend of writing about an event or charcter that is interesting by itself, adding with a 'modern' character that is not necessary. I always appreciate an imaginative book like Kelly Barnhill, when women were dragons Sort of fantasy but a satire of our current lives.

>17 dchaikin: And on the flip side, where is the best contemporary literature* coming from?

gosh I have no idea. I know what is best for me, but I am finding the best everywhere around the world. I also suspect that lit from other countries have some of the same problems as American but we are reading from the creme de la creme perhaps

"American" is United State of, I assume. Not North (including Canada) or Central or South? Never liked that we call ourselves Americans when there are several Americas.

>36 dianeham: you make avery good point; if we included Canada they'd be a lot more author names to the list of the best (Timothy Findley and Margaret Atwood come to mind immediately. If we include South America there is Isabel Allende and Borges. Perhaps the title here needs to be changed to US instead of American, or include other titles from all Americas?

>36 dianeham: USians gave ourselves a non-unique identifier. By American I meant, US. I feel Canadian literature has a distinctness to it. And rest of the Americas their own much stronger identities. But, I’m certainly ok with whatever definition you prefer.

>37 cindydavid4: and Carol Shields. :-)
>38yes, Canadian is distinct. Just a bugaboo for me. But everyone seems to agree to American.

I don't read nearly enough contemporary fiction to chime in, but I remember that I read an article about the "problems" of German contemporary fiction some time ago (contemporary meaning maybe the mid-1990s to now). It addressed some of the problems mentioned here. Unfortunately I cannot find it again!
The author of the article states that the majority of German contemporary fiction - at least fiction belonging to "Popkultur", a phenomenon originating in popular culture - was written from a white point of view and dealt with the boring non-problems of privileged, white and standard characters. When I read the article I wondered if that was the reason why most of the Popkultur novels did not appeal to me, and I think the answer is yes.

If I ever come across the article again, I'll post the link here and try to translate the most significant points.

>40 MissBrangwen: Interesting. Recently I noted that I had read no German fiction in translation (nor had I seen any while shopping around), and wondered why that was. Maybe it's related?

>26 dchaikin: I've noted a small explosion of new African authors, and we are starting to get more translated from China. Also, more from lesser-read European countries. I have not seen much from South American, but authors like Eduardo Halfon of Guatemala are giving Central American some attention.

I'm not sure I have a lot to add to the discussion. I don't actually think there is much a of problem with contemporary literature. We as a whole are atypical readers on LT so we have all read plenty of the default viewpoint (White, male, mostly middle-class). I know I have. I now prefer to read from a new, novel perspectives. So I like stories from margins, diasporas, and translated works. I can't remember the last contemporary book I've read from the default viewpoint. I can't judge them because I have steered towards another reading path. Reading translated work has it's own selection bias on top of my own. Not many translators are going to spend countless hours translating average or bad books. What gets translated are the outliers of all the works published from that region. There's a lot of filters in getting stories from outside the US that narrows what is available to us in English or escapes from the United Kingdom - US vortex to be deemed worth making available. I wonder how much of that invisible filtering colors our own impressions of literature.

>43 stretch: "...We as a whole are atypical readers on LT so we have all read plenty of the default viewpoint..." So true, particularly Club Read.

>43 stretch: Not many translators are going to spend countless hours translating average or bad books. What gets translated are the outliers of all the works published from that region.

true, that. which is why comparing them to American lit is like comparing apples and oranges. Which is why i read from all lit and genres and find whats best for e.

This is a great question, and I'm very much enjoying everyone's answers. My reading is so all over the place, however, in terms of fiction/non-fiction and contemporary and older, that I don't feel I have any sort of handle on the state of contemporary fiction, even of U.S. fiction. Born, raised and still living in the U.S. as I am, from my current Californian perch it seems we here in the U.S. certainly have easier access now to a large range of contemporary fiction from different parts of the world, written by authors of diverse nationalities with a much greater number of female authors. That's as compared to years gone by, as I recall things. However, I offer that observation within the context of Kevin's excellent comment . . .

>43 stretch: "Not many translators are going to spend countless hours translating average or bad books. What gets translated are the outliers of all the works published from that region. There's a lot of filters in getting stories from outside the US that narrows what is available to us in English or escapes from the United Kingdom - US vortex to be deemed worth making available. I wonder how much of that invisible filtering colors our own impressions of literature."

So, it seems to me we (in the U.S.) have greater opportunity to read outside our own U.S./Western Europe world, but how actually representative those offerings are of the full range and scope of the novels being written globally I do not know.

Again, as so much of my own reading lies outside of contemporary American fiction, I can't make a judgement as to whether such fiction is any better or worse than in years gone by. The very best fiction will stay readable regardless of the era of its publishing and/or the age/gender/perspective of the author and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the reader. Others won't age as well. Many novels and authors which/who are extremely popular in their own times will fade away and/or be rejected by future generations. Some writers will go in and out of fashion and/or approval. Well, I'm not telling anybody here anything they don't already know! But if we're looking at the totality of the current American world of fiction and comparing it to what has survived for us to want to read from years gone by, the comparison's bound to be skewed. On the other hand, there is so much more available that is outside what Kevin refers to as "the default viewpoint (White, male, mostly middle-class)" and that represents a huge change for the good.

Looking through my list of books read since January 2000, I find only five (of 185 books read in that span) that fall within that "default viewpoint" and Dan's year-2000 forward criteria. One was a reread, chosen by me for my book group (The Human Stain), which just squeezes in as it was published in 2000. Two were short story collections that were OK but not ones I'd go out of my way to recommend (one by Richard Ford, the other by Richard Bausch). One was an excellent mystery/thriller (The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville) and one was satire (The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde). Oh, plus, The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, also a book group selection, which I tend to block out since I hated it so much.

>39 dianeham: oh loved shields just picking a few names of canadian authors off the top of my head and thats what I came up with!

>47 cindydavid4: i’ve been reading Howard Norman. Thought he was Canadian since his books take place in Halifax but he was from Ohio and later lived in Vermont and Maryland.

With this thread in mind, I went to the library yesterday thinking I would specifically look out for some contemporary US fiction. It didn’t quite work out as planned: I came back with six books, four of which were fiction. Of these, one was an early-20th-century German novel, one a new German novel, one a novel from about twenty years ago by a South African, and only one a recent US novel by an author who is already very familiar to me (Edmund White).

My good intentions were rather derailed by the library being in the middle of rebuilding and everything being rather difficult to find, but really it’s not untypical of my usual library hauls.

>48 dianeham: what is a good book to start with?

>50 cindydavid4: The Bird Artist

>51 dianeham: excellent thanks!

>33 cindydavid4: Carol Shields and Emily St John Mandel are actually Canadian. Carol Shields would not be contemporary in terms of this question, since she died in 2003. Timothy Findley died in 2002. Emily St John Mandel would definitely be contemporary.

>36 dianeham: Absolutely agree. Also, when people talk about "America", meaning the USA, it seems to negate others living in the Americas.

>48 dianeham: Howard Norman is a new name to me. Thanks for the intro!

https://www.pshares.org/issues/winter-1997-98/about-howard-norman-profile

>53 SassyLassy: thanks for the lonk.

>53 SassyLassy: To be honest this is a question I probably should not have answered since I dont know enough to. Rather read others answers. And thats fine. Ill just wait for the next question coming up!

Interesting responses on this question, and I'm glad this has come up as I've been thinking about this a lot recently.

Firstly, I do think there is a general decline in the quality of contemporary literature published, and I don't see this as just an American problem - I'm certainly aware of it in the UK as well. I don't think there has been a change in the quality of writing out there, but I believe social media has hugely affected the quality of writing published.

Firstly, an author's potential 'selling power' has had a massive influence on the writers that publishing houses sign. Consider that pre-2000 the only way to get published by one of the big publishing houses was to submit your manuscript, either directly or through an agent, and hope that your talent is spotted through the quality of your writing. Now, if someone has a significant number of followers on Insta or some of the other key social media channels, there's a very good chance that a social media agent will be successfully courting their popular client with a publisher.

A lot of this is non-fiction - I can very quickly think of a bunch of people who have book deals because they have high numbers of social media followers chronicling their journey with stage 4 cancer, dealing with widowhood at a young age, sharing their eating plans for fitness, etc. But a lot of that is happening in fiction as well, particularly when the author is famous.

Bella Mackie and Greg James are good examples. He's a handsome and funny breakfast show radio host on a station that's hugely popular with young people in the UK. She is a journalist who is pretty, has great fashion sense and is also very witty. They got married, and both of them have big social media followings (independently, but also with enough crossover posts to attract followers from each other's accounts). He's now penned 6 children's books which are hugely successful in the UK. After writing a fairly average book on running and mental health (I read it), Mackie wrote the fiction book 'How to Kill Your Family', and after lots of prompts to her social media followers to buy it just before it was published, it very quickly went to the top of the best sellers chart once it was released.

When my children were younger and I'd bring them to Waterstones to choose a book, I really noticed just how swamped contemporary children's literature is with famous names, but there are plenty of famous people who have spoiled the shelves of adult contemporary fiction as well - Naomi Campbell, Sharon Osbourne, Tyra Banks, the Kardashians, etc.

So that's one aspect of social media's impact on writing, but the other is that it has hugely changed how people read, particularly for Millenials and Generation Z. These generations consume information in a totally different way to us, so of course the publishing industry has had to react accordingly. Low energy / attention span reading is what typically sells to this audience, and so literary fiction has declined whilst genre, mass market fiction has increased. As a result of their high social media use, they also buy into the author more, whereas I think previous generations buy into the novel. If an author has a savvy social media presence and builds a fanbase there with people who feel they have a direct relationship with the author, it's no surprise that they'll be influenced to buy their writing.

I do still read contemporary literature, and I think it's important to as there are still great writers out there who deserve to be discovered via the traditional route of quality writing, but I must admit I rarely find them on the best seller shelves these days. The best seller charts often now feel very dumbed down.

>56 AlisonY: "I believe social media has hugely affected the quality of writing published" Very interesting .... (I also remember, in the very early LT years, how many Aussies and others we lost when FB got going)

>17 dchaikin: QUESTION 34: Contemporary Literature - This is a huge question!

It always amazes me when I look at my tags to see that Fiction American is the most used, as it seems to me that I read very little of it. That's made me wonder how this came about.

Like >21 thorold:, I grew up in a culture and environment where American culture was somehow discounted as not important. We did not read American authors at home or in school. As I grew into my teens and learned of authors like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others of the American canon, I started acquiring and reading them, almost as an act of defiance. Well I've outgrown that now, and grown away from American authors.

Now the question has me wondering why. The biggest reason that occurred to me was to put it bluntly, that there seem to be so few adults in the room in terms of American contemporary culture. As others have said, the stream of all about me books and mass market fiction with overhyped promotion has diluted the offerings. That said, I subscribe to the NYRB and often see books I would love to read, but most of these are non fiction.

As far as contemporary American fiction goes, one of the best books I have read this year is Foregone, published in 2021, but the author, Russell Banks is elderly, and I would consider him to be a 20th century writer. Similarly the authors Robert Stone (d 2015) and Denis Johnson (d 2017) are favourites, but they too I consider as 20th century writers.

T C Boyle has been a long time favourite, and he is one who has managed to stay alive and contemporary, so he would be on my list. Also, I recently "discovered" Siri Hustvedt, whom I would happily add to my list. Looking back though, she, Johnson, and Banks are the only American authors of fiction I have read since January 2020.

On the flip side, I have a subscription to And Other Stories, a UK publishing group dedicated to publishing "some of the best in contemporary writing, including many translations:
"https://www.andotherstories.org/about-us/

From them I have discovered many authors from around the world whom I would never have heard of otherwise, for example Oleg Pavlov, and Ivan Vladislavic, and younger writers like Paulo Scott, Iosi Havilio and Tice Cin. There seem to me two major components in their fiction: one is the displacement of people and lack of meaning in their worlds, no matter whether they are in Sweden, London, or the larger cities in South America and South Africa; the other is the sheer dynamism of the language, the speed, the way they are forced to deal with the world.

I'm sure there are lots of holes in all this, and I will have other thoughts on another day, but this is long enough.

>55 cindydavid4: this is a question I probably should not have answered this question.

Not at all! It's just that identity is important to me. Imagine if your favourite American authors were frequently lumped in with English authors, just because they write in English, or live in another country temporarily and are ascribed to that country.

Another problem I have along these lines is seeing authors identified as "British". To me, a person is from one of the constituent countries, not the whole entity, and will often have vastly different sensibilities and use of language depending on what country that is.

******Perhaps now might be a good time to follow Dan's question up by asking (whether you are a US citizen or not) to tell us of some of your favorite living (and still writing) US authors of fiction. 10 -12 sounds like a good number....(so not to completely overwhelm us....) Perhaps add a brief line that might tell us why you like them?

>56 AlisonY: Thanks for that really interesting post. As to this . . .

"Firstly, an author's potential 'selling power' has had a massive influence on the writers that publishing houses sign. Consider that pre-2000 the only way to get published by one of the big publishing houses was to submit your manuscript, either directly or through an agent, and hope that your talent is spotted through the quality of your writing. Now, if someone has a significant number of followers on Insta or some of the other key social media channels, there's a very good chance that a social media agent will be successfully courting their popular client with a publisher.

This is a really good point I think. As a point of information, the reverse is also true. What I mean is, current popular authors are pressured quite a lot by their publishers to maintain robust social media presences. I have a friend (actually my wife's long-time best friend) who is a very popular non-fiction writer and has told us about this pressure. Although she enjoys being in contact with her readers to a certain extent, she is not all that crazy about the emphasis put on her social media activity. This writer came of age before the social media era, but whether she likes it or not, social media activity is now part of her job. It's not something that would have occurred to me had our friend not told us about it. As far as the overall topic we're discussing, this is really by way of a digression, perhaps. The point, though, is that not only does social media help authors (who may or may not be up to snuff) get published, as you've pointed out, but that social media has also become a pressure on authors, as well. I suppose the most successful/popular/best-selling can hire people to run their social media accounts, or their publishers do.

>60 avaland: I went back and looked over my reading lists as far back as 2015 and have to say that I can't find 10 or 12 to list here. As mentioned above, I just don't read the much contemporary American fiction. Here are some names of writers I like, although most are based on my reading of only a single book of their's:

Marilynne Robinson
Paul Auster
Tayari Jones
Jonathan Evison
Carl Hiassen
Elizabeth Berg
I'll add James McBride to my list even though I've only read his memoir, The Color of Water, because, based on my wife's high praise of the two novels of his she's read, I assume I'll like them, too, when I finally read them.

I'll sure I'll chip in with a "me too" or two when I see the names others come up with.

>61 rocketjk: I did the same but also have a tag for "US authors" (which has been used consistently) that I browsed through.

OK, maybe I went a wee bit over a dozen. My US reading changed after I left the bookstore.

Favorite US authors currently:

These are my favorite "regional" authors who write intimately about place and people of a specific area.
Paul Harding (Massachusetts; 2 small novels, new book coming in Jan)
Bonnie Jo Campbell (Michigan; 2 small novels, three short fiction collections
Jeffrey Lent (Vermont; five novels) I haven't read all five....
Jason Brown (Maine, 2 volumes of short stories) Excellent.
Castle Freeman Jr (Vermont, 11 books - (but I can't vouch for all and certainly not the two recent suspense novels.)
Ron Rash (North Carolina). I've only read a few of his, but have enjoyed what I have read.

The Veterans:
Joyce Carol Oates. I'm not sure why I love JCO. Her Gothic Quintet is my favorite, but otherwise read a bit of everything. I even managed to read Zombie.... There really is something VERY American in her book but I'll be da*&ed if I can articulate what it is.
Gish Jen. Under rated, me thinks. But perhaps she belongs to my generation.
Margo Livesey. Scottish-born US author who writes reliably good mid-weight novels My favorite might be Eva Moves the Furniture'
Karen Joy Fowler. She a clever writer, started in magically realism and moved in general fiction. I met her at the same SF convention I met the future hubby....
John Crowley A brilliant, erudite writer of many kinds of fiction. Haven't read enough of him. Also met him at the same SF convention.
Jeffrey Ford Prolific author of very clever short fiction.

The Youngsters:
Jesmyn Ward, Have read her three novels.
Lidia Yuknavitch Clever writing. Have read a few of hers and have more on the shelf
Paul Yoon enjoyed all four small books" 2 novels, 2 collections
Elisabeth Elo I thought her first book was excellent, the 2nd less so. But, I think she shows a lot of promise so I'm watching her.

>61 rocketjk: But now tell us why you enjoy about these authors' books; what do you get from their work? (by way of recommending them to others who might be looking for a new author to try)

>59 SassyLassy: that wasnt what I was talking about which is why I deleted my pose. Of course we shouldn't lump authors together based on language. I enjoy reading literature and Im not really picky on where it comes from or who the author is. I guess Im not concerned about identity? you are right tho "will often have vastly different sensibilities and use of language depending on what country that is."

>64 avaland: "But now tell us why you enjoy about these authors' books; what do you get from their work? (by way of recommending them to others who might be looking for a new author to try)"

I can't really break them down author by author in the amount of time I have to devote to this today, other than to say that the authors I value most are those who provide interesting, complex characters and a strong sense of place. That's a lot more important to me than plotting. (That said, the plotting's still got to be good, or at least believable.) Also, Hiassen is funny.

btw, noting your inclusion of Toni Morrison. I would have added her, too, as well as Larry McMurtry, were it not for the "living (and still writing)" proviso in the question. :)

My favorite US writers is a short list

Paul Auster
Ann Patchett
Noah Hawley

Enjoying the answers above.

>59 SassyLassy: apologies about the “British” designation. My American brain lumps too much.

One thing that comes out of all these comments are challenges to all my assumptions. I checked my list of white American male authored novels published since 2000, and, what do you know, but i liked most of them. A lot actually. But I currently pick books to read that I’m probably going to like and probably any author identity won’t impact that… Actually one reason I don’t read many new books is i have trouble figuring out which I’m likely to enjoy. (And professional reviews are tricky to use in that regard. Too willing to praise. CR is more helpful. So…maybe a big problem with contemporary literature is the nature of professional reviewers? If they don’t attack books, for whatever quality reason, maybe it lowers the quality stakes.)

FWIW: I credit CR with my awareness that my reading was so heavily white male American. And it’s as a member of CR that I have worked to address that, and it has been rewarding! (although I also have worked towards classics, which tend to be white and male, if less American).

>60 avaland: i struggled to post on this without crossing lines, _unintentionally_ , and deleted my earlier post… but I’ve noticed the Booker lists include a lot of authors born outside the US, but living in the US (often as professors of literature in some way).

I don’t want to misread that, but it’s interesting to me. Certainly US universities draw a lot of international talent in all fields. But i like to imagine that crossing cultures expands writers. That many of the best writers are well traveled (Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, James Baldwin, Nabokov, Petrarch and Chaucer all jump to mind…because I’ve been thinking about them.)

Would social media have the same affect? Or does social media demand filters…and hence close minds, or narrow the vision?

>69 dchaikin: Petrarch and Chaucer would have loved social media, I'm sure. Easy to imagine Petrarch posting his sonnet of the week on Facebook, and Chaucer engaging with followers to collect racy stories. Nabokov would have found something impossibly clever to do with it, and got himself into trouble unintentionally by posting "unsuitable" content. Not sure about Baldwin: he'd probably have hated not being able to get away from his readers (what's the point of moving to Istanbul if they can still find you online?), but he might have felt obliged to use social media to communicate his political message.

Ann Patchett
N.K. Jemison
Peter Beagle
Laird HUnt
Marilyn Robinson
Kate Akinson
Gregory Maguire
Elizabeth McCuren
Susan Orlean
Bill Bryson

and I can probably name the same number of canadian and brit authos

Why do I like them? I want to fall into another world when I read,and when I finish takes me a bit to return, by authors who write beautiful language but don't let it overtake the story. plots that almost write thenselves who write endings that sorta make sense in the story, and an author who cares about their characters. Think everyone with some exceptions do that more than not, and are ones I go back to time and time again

>67 rocketjk: Well, adding Morrison was a goof on my part! (soon to be rectified)

>70 thorold: thanks Mark. 🙂

>72 avaland: Well, I've certainly made many a goof in my time!

>69 dchaikin: (Dan, did I mention that Cormac McCarthy has a new novel coming out Oct 25?

-----------------

It's fascinating that we as a group have not had many repeats of same authors on our lists. While I've dipped into the works by the other named authors, I would not list them necessarily favorites (favorites being defined for me as "I will read anything this person writes.").

>21 thorold: Thank you for your response. I agree with your subjective impressions. There is also a mass-appetite for memoir and revisionist history which is not always well edited, and feels very much narcissistic/anxiety of "people don't really know me" without the author honestly telling the truth either. As many people do not know actual history, they consume quickly the narrated version without fact checking or gauging with actual facts.

Interesting conversation. I read all over the place, including a fair amount of contemporary fiction, including a fair amount of contemporary U.S. American fiction. I don't know that I have a good answer for the question... I think the older work I read, for the most part, has stood the test of time and has risen to the top a bit. But "better" is a weird concept, and I'm not sure I want to go there. I do feel like a lot of blame lies with the big publishers (my favorite refrain, I know)—that the editorial process has been shortened, and that the market rewards increasingly formulaic and less risk taking work, playing to the lowest common denominator rather than market or publicize more imaginatively. A lot of that is probably budgetary. There are some very good midlist authors I know who just aren't getting picked up by their publishing houses for a second or third book because they're not hitting certain numbers.

That said, there's some great contemporary work out from newer/younger authors, and some real risk-taking. A lot of that comes from smaller publishers and imprints, but not all. Hear me hedging my bets here? I think it's a hard industry to generalize about.

>59 SassyLassy: Another problem I have along these lines is seeing authors identified as "British". To me, a person is from one of the constituent countries, not the whole entity, and will often have vastly different sensibilities and use of language depending on what country that is.

And I'm the opposite and just use "British" or UK. Too often I find that an author is born in Scotland, went to school in France, and now lives in London. Or was born in London and now lives in Northern Ireland (just random examples I made up to illustrate). I stick "British" on them and move along.

Q: Contemporary, US-ian & male

I read very few books written by Americans in general, and almost no fiction, and almost nothing by US male writers.

I do like contemporary fiction and read a fair amount of it. My favourites tend to be from the UK. I like the subtle humour and way with words. I guess my second most read contemporary country is Canada. I also like to read contemporary fiction in translation.

Hmm, with a country called United States of America, what do you call the people who live there, if not Americans? Unitedians? (or would that be confused with British soccer fans?) Statians? (there are lots of states) US-ians? I think the terms North American and South American are in common use for peoples of a continent and aren't confused with American.

>81 labfs39: I call you guys United Statians :)

we've been called worse

>81 labfs39: Citizens of the United States being called "Americans" is a pet peeve in international editing circles I hang out in. Sometimes we use "US-ians" but that's only done tongue in cheek. Sometimes you can rearrange the sentence to avoid using "American." But honestly, it just is what it is ;-)

Yikes, I was being so careful with my phrasing, I forgot to actually post the message. Trying it again:

'Americans' has been used so long that others understand who is meant, although there should be a better term. However, it's the use of 'America' that bothers me. The country used to be referred to as the 'USA' or 'US' or colloquially as 'the States', and in this part of the world we even talk about 'the Boston States' referring to a region, but to call it 'America' discounts all the other people who live in the Americas. 'America' has an imperial ring to it that might not be felt in the US, but is elsewhere.

>78 Nickelini: I stick "British" on them and move along. Don't tell someone like James Kelman that!

>85 SassyLassy: Maybe. But to my ear, America (in the singular) is the same as USA; the Americas (in the plural) refer to the double continent. Like it or not, if you say "America" almost anywhere in the world, people will think USA and not "a country on the continent(s).

>86 AnnieMod: Spanish (at least as spoken in Europe) is the exception — “América” unqualified normally means Mexico and down. If you mean “North America” or “USA” you have to say so explicitly. People from the USA are Estadounidenses (less polite terms available too).

>87 thorold: That's why I said "almost" :) I would expect Spanish and Portuguese to be like that - after all, they both had empires for a long time in the Americas so their América is not the one up north. :) But for a big chunk of the world, America is just another synonym - most languages have their own words for all the relevant terms but the usage of America is not considered wrong. For example Bulgarian does have separate words for USA and even for "The States" but when you say America, people would understand that you mean USA and not the continent(s) unless the context makes it clear that it is not the case.

I may be wrong in how wide-spread it is but people from different cultures tend to use it in my experience.

thats been my experience as well. I know the name brings up all sorts of wrongs. But so does the united kingdom or even Britian. So I dunno, its been too established for it to change I suspect.

>85 SassyLassy:
'Americans' has been used so long that others understand who is meant, although there should be a better term. However, it's the use of 'America' that bothers me. The country used to be referred to as the 'USA' or 'US' or colloquially as 'the States', and in this part of the world we even talk about 'the Boston States' referring to a region, but to call it 'America' discounts all the other people who live in the Americas. 'America' has an imperial ring to it that might not be felt in the US, but is elsewhere.

Yes. Calling the US "America" sounds really weird to my Canadian ears. If I hear someone say that I guess that they're from overseas.

>78 Nickelini: Nickelini: I stick "British" on them and move along. Don't tell someone like James Kelman that!

I don't know anything about him, but are you saying that he doesn't use a UK passport?

>86 AnnieMod: people will think USA and not "a country on the continent(s)
That's just my beef. It's as if the USA has taken over the whole continent of North America, and has forgotten South America.

A friend said to me "This isn't a hill to die on", and I will heed the advice; just saying that once in awhile it really bothers me, so I'll leave it for another year or so.

>90 Nickelini: are you saying that he doesn't use a UK passport? I'm sure he does, as do I, depending upon where I am, but I grit my teeth every time I read: place of birth Glasgow, British citizen.

As to Kelman, from The New Yorker back in 2014:

...Kelman is a funny, sour, expansive writer, whose strange, new sentences are brilliant adventures in thought. He uses first-person and very close third-person narration (the two are almost indistinguishable in his work) to represent with bitter fidelity the mental journeys of his characters. Because proximity of impersonation is his goal, he is unafraid of boredom, banality, digression, repetition, and verbal impoverishment. His experiments in vernacular Scots push and twist the language, sometimes to breaking points. And his work is humorously interested in the question of what constitutes a story: he likes tales in which nothing happens, twice, thrice, and beyond. When these tendencies are joined by his politics (he has said that he feels a particular affinity with post-colonial writing, because he considers Scotland to be an occupied nation), language gets weaponized, and fiction marches out to do passionate deconstructive battle with “official” writing—that is, ninety-nine per cent of everything produced by the despised English literary tradition.

He is not for the shrinking violets.

>91 SassyLassy: He is not for the shrinking violets. – understatement of the month already :-)

(Loving this discussion..."Boston states" ...very interesting).

>90 Nickelini: Localized usage in Global languages - don't you just love it? :)

>91 SassyLassy: And I can understand your frustration but languages tend to evolve on their own and proscribing what is correct rarely works, especially in the spoken form. On a semi-related note, I cannot stand the term sci-fi. It used to be derogatory term for the genre (or for some parts of it anyway) and in my mind, it still is. Then it started shifting its usage and these days it is accepted as almost a synonym for science fiction (or even the wider genres around it) and acceptable in pretty much any setting. Languages go where they want to go...

>94 AnnieMod: On a semi-related note, I cannot stand the term sci-fi. It used to be derogatory term for the genre (or for some parts of it anyway) and in my mind, it still is.

Even worse, when the sci fi cable channel was named scy fy gah!!

>95 cindydavid4: I think it is Syfy these days (not even an "c" in there -- but I may have missed a version). I think that the channel moving away from the sci-fi name, moving a lot of the old baggage into Syfy, was a part of the term getting some more traction as an acceptable abbreviation - plus it sounded almost mature compared to syfy - at least in sci-fi you could see the original words; syfy looks like a person who has no idea where the word came from trying to spell it based on hearing it. On the other hand, the first decade of the century had a lot of these weird "cute" spellings in product names and so on...

It had been the last half a decade to a decade or so when sci-fi had started to replace SF almost everywhere (to my non-amusement)... I still refuse to use it :)

oh oops you are right, no c. and I agree about SF Ah well we m ust be dinosaurs :)

When are the new questions?

>97 cindydavid4: Another dinosaur here. SF was definitely the preferred term by those who read and wrote it in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, which is the era I was most heavily into it.

But I will also admit that every time I heard "SF", my brain had to remind me "No, they're not talking about San Francisco."

Sometimes there are no good answers!

>98 dianeham: Soon....(I'm off today to the back roads and higher elevations today to leaf peek, and will settle down and post something tomorrow....)

>100 avaland: you’re in s good place for leaf viewing.

Question 35: Genre: Science and Popular science…

Modern science is typically divided into three major branches:16 natural sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, and physics), which study the physical world; the social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, and sociology), which study individuals and societies;1718 and the formal sciences (e.g., logic, mathematics, and theoretical computer science), which study formal systems, governed by axioms and rules.1920 There is disagreement whether the formal sciences are science disciplines,212223 because they do not rely on empirical evidence.2422 Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as in engineering and medicine“ — Wikipedia

We are fortunate as a group to have a fair number of CR members who work or have worked in the sciences and applied sciences…and thus have read the heavy stuff, but most of us do not... but we might read "popular science" which is science distilled or interpreted for the general reading audience.

Please, share with us about your (nonfiction) science reading.

PS: the scientists in the group can participate however they wish.

Where does anthropology,archaeology and astronomy fit?

I’m not quite a scientist, but I did start out studying science (physics) and I spent my career working on the fringes of science and engineering and I’m not easily scared by technical writing (until it starts getting seriously mathematical, at least) — maybe that has given me a taste for looking over the shoulders of people in other fields and discovering what they do. I don’t think there’s very much pattern in my science reading, it’s a mix of technical and (semi-)popular, and it strays over quite a variety of disciplines.

Some things I’ve read recently:
— Die Intelligenz der Bienen by Randolf Menzel — a fascinating scientific autobiography by a distinguished bee-neuroscientist, a subject I knew essentially nothing about when I started.
— Islands of abandonment by Cal Flyn — on the “popular” end of the spectrum, about the ecology of post-human sites. Oddly optimistic.
— Geophysics : a very short introduction by William Lowrie — something else I knew very little about, apart from the underlying bits of general physics. Like most of the Very Short Introduction series it takes you through everything you need to know at an almost painfully fast pace.
— The limits of science by Peter Medawar — why is it that so many of the most articulate writers about science are biologists?
— Notebooks from New Guinea by Vojtech Novotny — fascinating account of what it’s like to do biology in the field, more about the pleasure of working with local people in New Guinea than about the insects they are studying together
— The indisputable existence of Santa Claus : the mathematics of Christmas by Hannah Fry — YouTube maths in book form. The sort of book that sounded like a good idea at the time…
— The Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson — more literary than technical, but it told me a lot I didn’t know about eels
— The perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester — in my review I said “Mostly harmless, but very much standard pot-boiler non-fiction.”
— "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" : adventures of a curious character and QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman — everyone was reading Feynman when I was a physics undergraduate, so of course I didn’t until much later. Entertaining, but he certainly keeps you on your toes.
— I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that by Ben Goldacre — the classic problem with books by bloggers (or columnists) — you have the feeling that you’ve read it all before somewhere. But I do like Ben Goldacre’s way of combating the public misunderstanding of science. It’s a pity he stopped doing his Guardian column.

>103 cindydavid4: I think anthropology usually gets put with social sciences, but it might depend on how you do it.
Archaeology crosses disciplinary boundaries: there’s a scientific end that’s all about imaging and dating and conservation, and a humanities end that’s all about tying in physical evidence with written records.
Astronomy is applied science as far as it’s about building better telescopes and pointing them in the right direction, but it’s natural science when it comes to interpreting what you see through the telescope.

Q35

My science reading is mostly popular science, particularly medicine and field guides, and not a lot of it. A couple of my favorites are


Nature and Numbers: A Mathematical Photo Shooting

Mathematicians with special interest in biology, physics, geography, astronomy, architecture, design, etc., and being prepared to take pictures at any time, might try to answer unusual questions like the followings: What do a zebra, a tiger shark, and a hard coral have in common? How is this with drying mud, wings of dragon flies, and the structures of leaves? What is the "snail king" and is there also a "worm king"? Which curves stay of the same type after being photographed? Do fishes see like we do if we look through a fisheye lens? Which geometric properties of an object have physical consequences? Which kinds of geometric patterns appear when waves are interfering?

Black holes and warped spacetime, because I went through an astronomy phase and this book really twisted my young mind.

visual encyclopedias like:
The Human Body and Geography

bioethics and medical policy related books like:
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Great Influenza
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Grunt

work-related:
Fascinating (to me) books like Thesaurus Construction and Use: A Practical Manual and Text Information Retrieval Systems

One of my reading goals this year was to read more about the natural world, which explains the title of my thread (SassyLassy seeing the Trees and the Forest). Sadly, diverted by Victorians, I've fallen behind in that goal, despite amassing a good collection of books for it. As an 'Aggie', an applied science missed by Wikipedia, the natural world feels, well, natural to me. My other background is in another science also missed by Wikipedia, the social science of politics. What's the connection? Well everyone needs to eat, and if your citizens aren't eating, things can go very wrong.

So far the book that has stood out most for me this year in these areas is Cal Flyn's Islands of Abandonment mentioned by >104 thorold: above. The authorKathleen Jamie does a good job of mixing the natural world and the social sciences too, in a reflective way that requires no science background.

>104 thorold: why is it that so many of the most articulate writers about science are biologists?

Very true and I have wondered about this myself. Perhaps because biology is a science on a human scale we can relate to it more easily, discussing it in human terms. Perhaps because it is messy and goes off in all directions, making errors as it goes, just like humans. Perhaps even because it allows for artistic outlets, like painting and poetry, more so than other sciences - think of all those flowers and animals and landscapes in art over the years. Writing about it is another artistic outlet. Maybe, just maybe, because the biologists know all too well that if their world doesn't survive, neither do we.

Maybe it's time to turn to that pile of natural world books.

>102 avaland: I’m reading a popular science book that fits a lot of my personal interests. Finding the Mother is a personal memoir of a research scientist from her first job. So she goes through her learning process and, in the last chapter I read, how this led to some groundbreaking stuff she did for her PhD, significant enough to be on the cover story for an issue of Nature magazine in the 1990’s. (She used carbon isotopes to trace carbon transfer between different tree species and their root fungi - proving a critical cooperation between what were considered purely competitive species. The methodology being presumably more important than the results.)

In general I really enjoy popular science and rarely come across a title that doesn’t interest me. But my reading of it has been actually pretty limited. And like any other thing, there are problems everywhere within the covers. I’ve mostly enjoyed what I’ve read, but i can get bored or the writing can be terrible, too dense or too lite…and all-too-often selective or our misinformation (including anything promotional).

The key guideposts for my science writing, as I think of them this moment, are Thomas S. Kuhn’s (very difficult) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the non-scientist nonfiction write John McPhee’s works on geology (collected in Annals of the Former World). (I’ll add two books on English antiquarians: Stonehenge (Wonders of the World) by Rosemary Hill and he Trophies of Time : English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century by Graham Parry)

For me science writing and nature writing intertwine closely, as does science and history. So I blend the loony classic Desert Solitaire as part of my science writing. And I love reading about the occult. I’ve forgotten almost everything in The Beginnings of Western Science : The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 by David C. Lindberg, but I do remember it was unsatisfying to me (in 1998) because I basically learned science was not an opening of the mind, but merely an alternative perspective, measuring what we see (so engineering) applied to some faux-philosophical problem. (Robert Musil wrote it this way: “ Credible received wisdom indicates that it all began in the sixteenth century, a time of the greatest spiritual turbulence, when people ceased trying to penetrate the deep mysteries of nature as they had done through two millennia of religious and philosophical speculation, but instead were satisfied with exploring the surface of nature in a manner that can only be called superficial.”) Anyway it makes Lindberg an odd cornerstone to my science reading.

I think I’ll stop myself here. 🙂

>105 thorold: thank you, that all makes sense

>104 thorold: The sort of book that sounded like a good idea at the time…

Ha! Ive have read books that I certainly could describe that way.

>108 dchaikin: I have never read desert solitare have read most of Abbey but for some reason missed it, need to get to that sometime

I love biology, and most of the social sciences esp anthropology, sociology, and archaeology. Whats funny is that I dont really read specific books of them. I think I need to go back to my older reading journals. I know I liked simon winchester professor and the madman but thats more linguistics.galileos daughter and Longitude were both fascinaing look at the development of astronomy and measuring time. tbh I get a lot of my science info listening to shows like Connections and and magazines like Archeology today, smithsonian, national geographic. So I depend on you guys to give me some other reads!

>110 cindydavid4: I loved the Tv show Connections - (Mostly the original version which zipped around from topic to topic. My 20 yr old brain adored that. Then they came with a second season of sorts and slowed everything down, and I lost interest). I read Connections in 1997, and The Pinball Effect in 2004 - but I was maybe past him by them. I only gave pinball 3 stars.

I like astrophysics. One of my early reads was In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat - Quantum Physics and Reality. I also read something that explained relativity but don’t remember what.
I enjoy:
Brian Greene especially The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory
Michio Kaku
Roger Penrose The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe by Lee Smollin
Still trying to understand quantum gravity which Carlo Rovelli has written about but it was over my head.

With some exceptions most of my science reading has personal connections. For example, I’m left-handed so I read about laterality in the brain. Or, some things I read is about the world around me (I live in New England). I thought it might be too cumbersome to list all the book titles but if anyone wants the titles for any of these, just let me know.

And I can only go by my library here, which doesn’t cover my reading or books, for the first 45+ years of my life. However, I do have in my library A Child is Born bought when it came out in 1978, an eye-opening read when one is pregnant for the first time (my oldest was born in ’79)

Geology (volcanoes, New England rocks, Greenland),
Archaeology: Mummies, early New England, cemeteries
Forensics, Genetics, Biology (a couple of Bryan Sykes books among them)
Brain studies: laterality, memory, dreaming, heredity, gender, asymmetry, evil
Nature: Trees, birds, deer (LOL, I should probably read a book on bears, too)
Mathematics: fractals in nature, 3 books (a independent study class I took in the early otts)
There are the usual guides for various nature subjects.

>108 dchaikin:
One of my high school classes required us to read Kuhn’s book (1970 edition—very bright pink cover). I didn’t think about things the same way after that!

In the 1980s, a friend much interested in neuropsychology lent me her copy of Martin Gardner’s The Shattered Mind. A fascinating, mind-bending book. I took (and kept!) notes. An example, from the first chapter:
“In pure alexia a patient who has suffered injury to the posterior regions of the brain will find himself unable to read printed matter…his visual perception is normal…he can speak and understand as well as before…he can write—but, amazingly, he cannot even read his own writing!...he can read numbers…DIX as the roman numeral for 509, but not as “diks.” Wow.

The strangeness of our world and of ourselves keeps science titles on my TBR list.

>114 dypaloh: The strangeness of our world and of ourselves keeps science titles on my TBR list.

Exactly. And the human brain particularly fits that bill.

>108 dchaikin: I’ve forgotten almost everything in The Beginnings of Western Science : The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 by David C. Lindberg, but I do remember it was unsatisfying to me (in 1998)

That's one of those books that I feel like I'm the only person on LT who has even heard of it (wrong, there are >500 of us). I read that for university sometime around 2006 and I too have forgotten it. But I remember liking it and gave it 4 stars when I entered it in my library here. I don't read a lot of what real scientists would read, but I very much enjoy science for the general audience, or books that weave in some science with other topics, such as history.

Some of my favourites from the past few years that might fulfill this question are:

The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohleben

Gut: the Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ, Giulia Enders

(hmm, both German authors -- maybe check out more popular science from German scientists?)

Best American Science Writing 2009, Natalie Angier - not the sort of thing I read but it fell in my lap and 3 essays are seared in my mind all these years later -- one about a woman who scratched into her brain, another about giraffe sex, and a third about space destroying our planet

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, by Kathryn Schulz (I actually am fine with being wrong, but I do very much enjoy being right, so this was enlightening to me and probably one I should read again)

>116 Nickelini: Being Wrong is one of my favorite books. 🙂

I’m pretty sure baswood reviewed the Lindberg book recently, maybe last year. I remember thinking how much more he got out of it then me and that maybe I should revisit it.

>117 dchaikin: I still own it, so that means I want to revisit it one day.

Hmmm, in my late 50s, I need to rethink how many books I'm going to reread. Although so far I'm still passing books into my 20-something kid's hands, so not chucking them all yet

Q #35

There is a very dull and a somewhat less dull part of answer to this question... As a (mostly bench-)working scientist, practically all of my science reading is of the highly technical gobbledegooky type--all acronyms and Greek letters in stiff Latinate boilerplate prose--and the prose isn't even the focus half the time, because at this point of specialization, we know to hop directly to the image or graph that are the GOODS--and sometimes it will be just a bit of info under Methods.

Once upon a more innocent time I used to think of it as a point of honour to "keep abreast" with what colleagues in other fields, nay, SCIENCES, were doing, but it all dwindled down to the occasional perusal of Abstracts/Conclusions in general research publications like Nature and Science.

I do get tempted by some ballyhooed pop science, and every now and then I'll pick up stuff, like Cordelia Fine's books on gender, that I expect would be useful to recommend (or criticise) to others.

The heyday of my pop science consumption was in my childhood and teens, reflecting my early orientation to science. I loved books by George Gamow, Carl Sagan, and a number of fantastic Russian science popularisers. However, as I hit uni and got into The Thick Of It, I lost my appetite for pop science and science fiction. This, I found, seems to be a pattern in the profession, although there's always some dorky exception (exceptional dork? :))

That said, I read recently Alan Moorehead's Darwin and the Beagle, the well-illustrated oversized Penguin edition, which despite its age can still be read with greatest enjoyment because Moorehead's a superb writer.

I don't want to go into philosophical questions because the orthodox prejudices are too ingrained and the damage done by blind adherence to physicalist reductionism too widespread to address quickly. This is not a suggestion that there is some as-yet-unknown (let alone supernatural) force at work in the world, only that our past biases and tendency to hierarchize stuff have done a disservice to our practice of science and still impede our understanding of nature.

>119 LolaWalser: I read a Cordeila Fine book...Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (I thought one was enough)

>120 avaland:

She's excellent. I recommend her Testosterone Rex in particular, not just for the myth-busting around testosterone specifically but as a prime example of common misuse--of common ways of misuse--of biology generally.

Looking over my reading lists going back as far as (and including) 2015, it's clear that I don't read that much science, and that the books I do read are generally narrative non-fiction/biography rather than straight science. Here are the books over the past 8 years plus that generally speaking fit the "science" description:

Read for my book group (none chosen by me):
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen (excellent)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer (for me this book was just OK, though I can see why so many others are more enthusiastic about it)
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson (informative and enjoyable, though I know it's got it's faults in terms of the way the science is presented)

Mary Roach is a favorite. I've actually read all her books. These are just the ones that fall within my specified time period.
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
Grunt: the Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

More or less general reading
Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life by Louise Aronson (Quite informative and interesting. Especially for us elderhooders)
The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts (Enjoyable, though some of the science about genetics is already obsolete)
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt (Read for another book group that I opted out of after this reading. Some interesting concepts, but quite a few of the conclusions didn't ring true for me.)

A few years back I read these three books to try to wrap my head around string theory. I was only mildly successful, but enjoyed fighting my way through the concepts.
Beyond Einstein: the Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe by Michio Kaku
Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall
The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin

>119 LolaWalser: … we know to hop directly to the image or graph that are the GOODS

That seems to be the real difference between science-reading that you do “for work” and science-reading for pleasure or general curiosity. When it’s for work you hardly ever have time to read the whole of something, and it’s all about deciding whether it’s potentially relevant or not on the basis of a quick scan.

>119 LolaWalser: what kind of science do you do?

>124 dianeham:

My background's in biochem and molecular biology; these days I do mostly cell biology and biophysics with applications (inshallah!) in medical imaging and diagnostics.

>123 thorold:

Oh ya. But funny how shocked I was when a friend who studied history ("read" it at Oxford) divulged that skimming was how they dealt with their huge reading assignments. But that's what education means in the end, no? Learn enough to know to discern the new and the relevant.

Q35

This has been an interesting question to reflect on. Like most working scientist here I tend to read highly specialized texts for the work I do. Which occupies a lot of bandwidth for this kind of reading. I use to read a lot of Popular science that was outside my field. Now I find it hard to concentrate on those types of works. So I have trouble keeping up even in areas that I find interesting. Today I focus more on how the science was done and less on the topics. I have small collection of 'little' books that I want to read to get back into the more topical side of things I am not familiar with, we'll see if that works. I terrible at keeping up with new scientific developments so there is a lot to catch up on.

Taking a shot at the Popular Science books that left an impression:

Geology Related:

Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud
Rough-Hewn Land: A Geologic Journey from California to the Rocky Mountains by Keith Heyer Meldahl
Machine by Peter Adolphsen This one is fictional in story factional in concept.
Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology by David Oldroyd
Annals of the Former World by John McPhee

Scinece that is not Geology:

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future and Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark and Cosmos by Carl Sagan
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There by Aldo Leopold
All things Mary Roach

Q35 I'll have to give this question some thought, and take a deep dive into my past reading. My undergraduate degree is in Microbiology, although I was a Chemical Engineering major before I caught the bug (pun very much intended) and switched majors, and I have a doctorate in Medicine, so I've read dozens of chemistry, biology, engineering and medicine textbooks in the past 30 years. Much of my non-fiction reading for pleasure consists of books about medicine and public health, so instead of focusing on those two categories I'll try to come up with notable books of natural sciences, the social sciences, and the formal sciences which made an impression on me.

As a start, here are several Biology books I enjoyed:

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas: A collection of essays which appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine ranging from biology to anthropology to music by the former Dean of the Yale School of Medicine. According to Wikipedia, The Lives of a Cell won the U.S. National Book Awards for "Arts and Letters" and "The Sciences" in 1975 (both awards were split). It is also ranked 11th on the Modern Library's "100 Best Nonfiction" books of the 20th century list. I read this sometime in the 1980s, when I was an undergraduate student, along with his subsequent books The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher, and The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher, all of which were superb and unquestionably 5 star reads. I haven't read anything by Lewis Thomas in at least 25 years, so I should get back to him sometime in the near future.

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong: A fascinating book which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017.

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee: This was also shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. I also enjoyed his previous book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

I'll add more books in subsequent posts as I think of them.

There is an article in the nyt about black holes and gravity:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/science/black-holes-cosmology-hologram.html?c...

I read a lot of popular science - it's not my work (I'm a computer tech) but has been a consistent interest of mine for years. Lots of geology, mathematics (I do have a degree in mathematics and probability), history of science, archaeology/paleontology, history of medicine...I'm always fascinated by how we got to where we are (or were at the time the book was written, anyway).

In...high school, I guess, I came across Prehistoric America by Anne Terry White. It hit a lot of my buttons, and likely created some of them. Geology - how what is now the American continent was created; evolution/biology/paleontology - how the creatures that live(d) here developed and lived and were found; and largely, the history of how these things became understood. There's a bit in there about the guy who went to live on a glacier for a year and discovered that they moved; there's discussions of specific digs, what they expected and what they found (La Brea tar pits, for one, and a hill somewhere in the Southwest that produced rhinos) and how science went from seeing giant (human) teeth (probably lost in the Flood) to discovering all the amazing things that were going on, from rhinos and elephants to huge inland seas, on what is now the North American continent. I still have the book, and still reread, it's fun! I read another by her (The First Men in the World and it wasn't nearly as good, though.

A _lot_ of the books mentioned above I've either read, have on my TBR shelves, or don't intend to read (I read and mildly liked one Mary Roach, read another and decided her brand of comedy wasn't for me). I have, I think, all of Stephen Jay Gould's essay books - Bully for Brontosaurus and many more. I've also read some of his single-piece books, not as good - at that length he tends to hammer his thesis into the ground.

Oh, an early science book - The Natural History of Selbourne by Gilbert White. Some of it is absolute nonsense - he believed that swallows hibernated in ponds over the winter, since he never saw them then; also he talks about burning "fossilized" wood from the peat bogs, so the words don't necessarily mean what they mean today. But overall it's amazing - he observed what was around him and reported it, and the picture it makes of the land and the creatures on it and how humans interact with both is fascinating. Written in the 1700s.

Recent reads:
The Decipherment of Linear B by John Chadwick - a bit hagiographic, but interesting for techniques.
Four Colors Suffice by Robin Wilson - techniques, history, interesting problem too (if you're into math).
Mudlark by Lara Maiklem (or Mudlarking, depending on where you got the book) - amateur archaeology - makes me really wish I'd read it while I was living in London! Though I doubt I'd have found much, or gone often. Fun read, though.
The Missing Ingredient by Jenny Linford - time in cooking and food-making (including breeding animals and plants...). I love books about science in cooking.
Everything and More by David Foster Wallace - fascinating (again, if you're into math).

And - yeah, lots more. I'm going to stop there.

Before I posted the popular science books I like, I thought: oh, everybody’s going to be into astrophysics. And they’re not. Why did I think that?

because of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Love his show and listening to hime elsewhere (saturday night live has a comedian imitating him and its just perfect) Would like to read his books but am afraid Id have no idea what hes talking about!

He explains things very well.

>130 dianeham: I’m interested! ( fyi >112 dianeham: )

>121 LolaWalser: I remember seeing that book when it came out. I'll keep it in mind.

I am not myself a scientist. I do have a decades-out-of-date bachelor's degree in physics/astrophysics, though, and I work in astronomy in an operational support role. And I read a lot of science writing, in lots of different fields and varying levels of technical detail, and have done so my entire life. Mostly, I suppose, because I'm just really interested in how the world works, from stars to brains to atoms. Oddly, though, I also often find myself reading popular science books that mostly just explain things I already know. I think there is a particular joy in good science writing for its own sake, in reading a writer who can find an especially good, vivid, entertaining way of describing or explaining something, and I'm always looking for that. I also like reading about the philosophy, history and practice of science. I think it's incredibly important to understand how science actually works, both in principle and in practice, and how it doesn't. I really, really wish more people had a good grasp of that.

Anyway. Some science-y books I've read in, say, the last year and rated at least four stars:

Hair: A Human History by Kurt Stenn. A bit disjointed, but full of fascinating hair facts, both biological and cultural, and a lot of fun to read.

A Trillion Trees: Restoring Our Forests by Trusting in Nature by Fred Pearce. An interesting look at forests and climate change, with some thoughts about how best to manage forests that I don't have the expertise to judge, personally, but that seem solid and sensible.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. Not my favorite Mary Roach, but she's always entertaining, and takes you places other science writers are unlikely to go. This one's about conflicts between humans and animals (and occasionally plants).

A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life by Lauren Marks. This is a memoir, not science writing, but medical/brain science features pretty heavily and is handled well, as I recall.

Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System by M. Chris Fabricant. A look at bad science -- specifically, psuedoscientific aspects of forensic dentistry -- and the damage that convictions based on it have done.

Trinity: a Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm. A short but well-done graphic novel history of the first atomic bomb. Doesn't go into the science aspects a whole lot, but what's there is good.

Ignorance: How It Drives Science by Stuart Firestein. One of those books about the philosophy and practice of science. Makes a point that'll probably be familiar to most of the audience likely to actually pick it up, but it's an important point and he makes it well.

Bats by Phil Richardson. It's about bats! Pretty much just a brief layman's overview, but really fascinating, with lots of pictures.

My bachelor's is in physics, Ph.D. in applied mechanics, which is the science side of mechanical engineering - fluid mechanics in my case. Spent the rest of my career hanging out with chemists. Like others here, I tend not to read popular science books. They seem to devote too much time to stories about the scientists, not the science. Better and quicker to read a two page news-and-views piece in Nature or Science. I find various items to read online; I currently have about 20 tabs in the "science" collection in my Firefox browser on my tablet, and I subscribe to a newsletter from Nature that usually opens short articles that are not paywalled.

>137 dukedom_enough: (but you should see his science fiction collection!)

QUESTION 31 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OTHERS

It can be an art to recommend books to other readers. Just because you loved a book doesn’t mean all your reading friends would like that book, also. Beyond close reading friends, one needs to look at clues: what that person is reading and what they say about it. Look at their recent reads; is there a common theme between them? Do they seem to like a certain genre, setting, topic, author….

Chose FIVE Club Read members: No more than 2 of the 5 readers should be those you know really well, the others should be less familiar (just to give you a challenge). For each person, recommend a book you have read that they may enjoy. List the user name, the title you are recommending, and why (the clues you used)

*Please do not feel slighted if for some reason you aren’t chosen to receive a recommendation. There really is no way to do this so everyone is assured to get some..
** No one is obligated to read the books recommended to them. But a thanks might be nice :-)

Oh lord no. I occasionally manage one for my mom or my sisters - Dad and I had closer to the same taste, but it was maybe 50%. Someone I haven't known that long? Nope nope nope.

I'll talk about books I like and if someone sounds interested I'll tell them the title and author. But trying to figure out someone else's book taste is so out of my wheelhouse...

Question 30--Books About Science

I did not in the past I did not read a lot of science books. But my two daughters grew up to careers in the sciences (the elder a medical doctor, the younger a PhD. in genetics, working as a research scientist at a startup biotech working on cancer drugs), and I wanted to at least be able to talk to them on a basic level. I also started reading a lot of medical books over the course of my husband's illness, and as I get older I'm reading books on aging and end of life issues. Some of my favorite authors in these areas are Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene, Atul Gawande and Oliver Saks.

could I recommend a modification? If readers would give a few hints of what they like, it would be easier to match a book for them

>139 avaland:

A sort of scary yet strangely compelling task!

I'll give this a try but with the caveat that I don't know anyone well. Apologies in advance for any gross misreadings of people's interests... The following titles are checked for presence in the catalogue, but of course I can't know if they've been read but unlisted, read but hated etc.

AnnieMod -- I know you read crime (mysteries/thrillers), among lots of other stuff, so how about some Friedrich Glauser? Assuming you didn't reject him in the past... the first volume translated into English about his sleuth Sergeant Studer is Thumbprint. Glauser is one of those mystery writers who are as big on character and atmosphere as on the plot (or even more).

arubabookwoman -- yes, I got the idea from the post above -- gotta grab inspiration as it flies!-- you don't list Francis Crick's What Mad Pursuit, so it might be interesting as a peek into an earlier era of scientific education-and-research (and one which a younger person such as your daughter may count herself fortunate to have missed!) Crick was considerably older than Watson at the time of their partnership but I think comes across better, both as a person and thinker.

avaland AND/OR @dukedomenough -- how could I resist, if it fails with one maybe t'other might still like it...? I'm all about loading my dice. So, the rec is A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict because John Baxter started out in Australia (and ended) as a huge sf fan, and this book is filled not just with great bookhunting lore but with reminiscences of the often hilarious and illegal lengths one had to go in order to BE a huge sf fan in 1950s/60s Australia.

cindydavid4 -- at first I went for Karel Čapek's fairy tales for the children's literature connection (one of my childhood faves), but it looks as if War with the newts might be easier to find. His tone and humour are consistent across his writings for adults and kids alike.

bragan -- Shaun Tan's Lost & Found has, to me, a very Doctor Whoish feel made of wonder, steampunky melancholy, and miraculous discoveries made on littlest as on biggest journeys.

Q31 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OTHERS

I found picking books for strangers a nightmare last time we did SantaThing, and I suspect the people who picked for me were cursing even more... Of course, it should be easier when you take out the constraint that the book has to be available new from a certain bookseller and within budget. I'm going to try arbitrarily taking the first five people who posted in this thread and haven't already got recs from >143 LolaWalser:, which was the last response to the question when I started typing this. I don't know any of those people personally, and haven't interacted with them outside the context of this group — I don't know where we draw the line of "know really well"...

dchaikin — we have an overlap of 319 books (about 5% of his library), and the "what should you borrow" thing isn't much help, listing mostly classics that we certainly know about but haven't got to yet. Stabbing in the dark slightly, and taking the keyword "geology" far more literally than I'm entitled to, I'm going to suggest the 19th century Austrian eccentric Adalbert Stifter, the most geological writer of fiction I can think of, and specifically his story "Kalkstein", ("Limestone"), a gorgeous mini-epic in which the only major characters are a priest and a weird mountain landscape. There must be an English collection that includes it. "Bergkristall" ("Rock crystal") is another obvious one, but that's actually more weather than rocks.

 

dianeham — we have an overlap of 76 books (3%), so there's not much to go on. The top two books I "should borrow" from Diane are in a collection called "DNF", which doesn't inspire much confidence! It looks as though our shared interests are mostly crime and contemporary fiction. We both have big poetry collections, but they don't overlap much except for classics: obviously there's an Atlantic in the way of that. Seeing the keyword "sonnets" popping up, I'm going to suggest Mimi Khalvati's recent collection Afterwardness, which struck me as a very interesting new take on the idea of a sonnet sequence (Mimi's a friend of a friend, but I'm not getting a rake-off).

 

labfs39 — we overlap on 219 books (8%), and Lisa often expresses interest in reviews I post on my thread. I think we are both dipping in the same streams for new reading ideas a lot of the time, so there's not much hope of suggesting something she really doesn't know about. Stabbing half-blindly into the "what should you borrow" list, I came up with Pereira maintains, a lovely delicate little book set in Lisbon in the thirties by the Lusophile Italian novelist Antonio Tabucchi.

 

LyndaInOregon — we only overlap on 14 books (2.5%). "What should you borrow" is frankly embarrassing, suggesting that Lynda would have been the ideal recipient for all those Terry Pratchetts I've been giving away to make space (and worse, that copy of Even cowgirls get the blues that somehow refuses to stop haunting my library...). Not that there's anything wrong with liking Terry Pratchett, of course. I don't see any P G Wodehouse in Lynda's library, though: possibly because she's read them all, but just in case she hasn't, I would strongly suggest trying him, he might well fit in with that tradition of humorous literature that has Pratchett at its contemporary end. How about Money in the bank, which doesn't fall in one of the well-known series, but is a gloriously funny book Wodehouse wrote in the miserable conditions of a German internment camp?

 

MissBrangwen — we overlap on 188 books (6%), but the great bulk of those are in a field Mirjam knows much more about than I, German literature. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to follow the advice of "what should you borrow" and suggest that she should read Berlin Alexanderplatz or Die Feuerzangenbowle...!
But I do notice Cold Comfort Farm coming up in the recommendations — I suspect that that is the kind of book you might not have heard of if you didn't grow up in Britain, and it's a wonderful comic novel from 20s/30s England by a woman writer, and a perfect antidote to D H Lawrence, which is something everyone with "Brangwen" in their username obviously needs in their emergency toolkit.

 

---

I'm not going to go back and double-check, but I have the idea that one book that popped up in the "what should you borrow from thorold" for all five of the people above was The narrow road to the deep north, Richard Flanagan's 2014 Booker winner. A tough book to read, but I can certainly recommend it.

>142 cindydavid4: Ah, but that's the hard part. You may have to read through their thread, look through their library at their five-star reviews, You must be a bit of a detective :-)

>144 thorold: I hadn't even thought of working it that way. Hmmm.

>146 avaland: I think we’re mostly the kind of readers who have a very long “virtual TBR” list, so it’s not easy to hit on things another member of the group wouldn’t know about but might like.

The “what you should borrow” should be the perfect tool for this exercise, but a lot of the time it just picks up gaps in our libraries we already know about — especially the situation where I have 4/5 of that author’s works, and you also have 4/5, but you are missing a different one from me. We both probably read the missing one before we started recording “read but unowned” books in LT.

>143 LolaWalser: wow, ok, youre on! will check out both!!!

>144 thorold: that’s a lovely recommendation Mark.

>143 LolaWalser:/>144 thorold: these are terrific posts. You both put so much thought into these.

My Recommendations:

*Thorold: We share 222 books. Which didn’t seem all that helpful. So, I had to have a think and a bit of hand-wringing. I came back to your reading of Hart Crane and will recommend another US poet, Frank Bidart. I had a brief Bidart period in the 90s. You were a challenge...

*SassyLassy : I would recommend Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah. Why? Hmm. It’s just came to mind when I saw that someone (maybe, Dan?) recommended to her a different, slimmer Gurnah. Paradise is the first Gurnah I read, so I went for that.

*Dianeham: We share 97 books. Diane shares my former obsession with dystopias, so I recommend to her Roger Wall’s During-the-Event

*Yells / Danielle : We share 458 books. She is a fellow Oates fan, but I did not see in her library Oates wonderful fun book: A Bloodsmoor Romance, so I’m recommending that (and if she needs a copy, I have an extra!)

*ELiz_M: We share 375 books, mostly crime novels. I recommend to her the William Wisting series by Norwegian Jørn Lier Holst

What I learned: Often the readers I thought might be easy, were not…and vice versa. Also, I was surprised by some of the numbers of “books I share with other members. Some had less than what I expected, some had more.

I"m not great at picking recommendations for others -- I tend to start second-guessing myself uncomfortably -- so I think I'll sit this one out, but I do have to say, being on the receiving end of it is fun!

>143 LolaWalser: Ooh, I really like what I've read (seen?) of Shaun Tan so far, and describing anything as "Doctor Whoish" immediately gets my attention, so, OK, that one's going right on the wishlist!

>145 avaland: well if thats how we are doing it, I have very little in my profile that will help anyone. I agree with Mark, its like the LT secret santas that drove me rather crazy, But I will try to check others profiles and see what I can find

>152 cindydavid4: I think part of the idea is that we had been in each other threads for months (and years in some cases) so it is a bit of fun based on what we had noticed about other readers.

>143 LolaWalser: New to me author (I do not think I had ever seen his name before) so will check him out. Thanks! Funnily enough I read another book translated by his translator (Mike Mitchell) earlier this year: The Basel Killings (no review yet but it is coming).

Looking at some of the posts above, recommendations for other people will be very poachable...

>150 avaland: Thanks! (I think…) — I didn’t know about Frank Bidart (I’m pretty ignorant about US poetry altogether). He looks interesting from a quick dip into what the Poetry Foundation has online. From my history with Browning I have a weakness for people who write dramatic monologues.

>144 thorold: thank you for the recommendation. I downloaded the kindle sample which only included one poem. Trying to decide between paperback or ebook. Poetry doesn’t always do well on ebooks.

I feel like this is so hard but it shouldn’t be since I’m a librarian. Also real8zed I should stick to club members who post in this topic since people who don’t may not see it. This is fun.

>150 avaland: thank you. Yes, dystopias are my thing.

>148 cindydavid4:

Cool! I have about 50% confidence you'd like him--that's pretty confident for me!

>149 dchaikin:

Thanks! I wish I thought to entice with images, like Mark did. :)

>151 bragan:

It did seem unlikely that you hadn't come across him before, but as I didn't see your name on his biggest hits, thought I'd take a chance...

>153 AnnieMod:

Then I'm really happy about the suggestion, even if you end up disliking him! Btw, if you don't need to observe strictly some order (of publication, or translation), I think you can go for whichever title appeals most, they are fairly stand-alone although developments in Studer's private life are noted from one book to another.

Incidentally, one of the biggest German-language crime writing prizes is named after Glauser, so there's another reason to check him out.

Here goes:

thorold: you like travel but I didn’t see anything by Pico Iyer so I am thinking you might like A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations or Video Night in Kathmandu

ursula: I saw you liked Patricia Highsmith so you might like The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson which is a crime/mystery novel starring Highsmith.

labfs39: The Break is a "debut novel about a multigenerational Métis–Anishnaabe family dealing with the fallout of a shocking crime in Winnipeg’s North End."

kidzdoc: Taking a chance here. I’m suggesting this book because it’s about a remote island in Ireland that is similar to the island in The Colony except this one, Blasket Island, is no longer inhabited. A Pity Youth Does Not Last: Reminiscences of the Last of the Great Blasket Island's Poets and Storytellers which is translated from the Irish.

avaland: you might enjoy Willnot, a quirky mystery that is more life in a small town story than mystery. Thought it might appeal to you.

>157 LolaWalser: I tend to try to read series in order... when possible. Stay tuned - I plan to get to that one soon-ish. And now that you mentioned the prize, that's why the name did sound familiar - the other novel translated by the same translator I recently read had won that prize. Never thought to go and check who that guy actually is though...:)

I am usually easy to recommend to - anyone even glancing at my "read in XXX" tags or my threads or my Read collection can see that the only thing missing there is a kitchen sink (and that is only because there isn't enough writing on any I had ever seen). And that's mostly only post-move books - so the last 12 years which means the classics are mostly missing but anyone that had talked to me in the Club knows my history there as well. Stay away from the popular contemporary novels (especially the literary and/or experimental ones) and I am very likely to be interested in something a reader whose taste runs to more than the bestsellers table recommends to me (or to anyone else). Which is why I said that the rest of the recommendations people post are poachable... :)

But that also makes me almost unable to recommend things unless something pings strongly (like Annie Dunne and a comment by Lisa about her preference for that specific kind of old women as protagonists that fits Annie as a glove) because I don't segregate my books in my head into groups or even genres so I need to think very seriously on why I like certain books where they may fit with other readers (and what they may find unreadable/unwanted - a historical novel with a supernatural twist does not bother me (and I may not even think of the latter when I am thinking of the book) but it will annoy a reader who just does not like speculative fiction for example). So still thinking on the question itself.

>157 LolaWalser: I've read and loved Tales from Outer Suburbia and The Arrival. But I hadn't seen that one.

>158 dianeham: Intriguing: I’ve never come across Pico Iyer’s books, but I see I very narrowly missed meeting him in person in Oxford — we were at the same college, but didn’t quite overlap. You’re right, I do read quite a lot of travel. There were quite a lot of new, young, British travel writers around in the eighties, I expect I overlooked him because the Colin Thubrons and Bruce Chatwins were getting all the attention.
I see Scribd has got the Japan book, I’ll check it out.

>156 dianeham: January 6th and the Covid Era killed my penchant for dystopias.

>158 dianeham: I have dropped the Sallis into my BD basket. I read very little US police procedurals these days, but I'll pick this one up as it sounds a bit different (and what do I know about New Orleans? Will put it in the TBR pile, thx!

Avaland has graciously allowed me to take my own spin on this question. If youve looked on my profile, you'll see a discussion of the kind of books I read, and the groups Im in, but no books in common and no virtual library. But I do like the idea of recommending books. So if you will allow, Ill begin

If you like

hitchikers guide to the galaxy you might like cartoon history of the universe

books about books you might like parnassus on wheels and the haunted bookshop

wolf hall you might like a history of the plantagenets

books about travel to paris you might like the greater journey

stories about the Navajo Nation you might like the laughing boy

a distance mirror you might like the tres riches heures of jean, duke of berry

Hamilton you might like War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel that Stunned the Nation

the pull of the stars you might like the world I made for her

Finacial mysteries you might like stone's fall

History of Civil Rights Movement you might like a time of our singing

>144 thorold: Thank you so much, Mark! I have heard the book title Cold Comfort Farm, but never knew anything about it. I will add it to my wishlist.
And yes, I was a huge D.H. Lawrence fan ten years ago when I chose this username, and was reading Women in Love at the time.
Oh, and I have neither read Berlin Alexanderplatz nor Die Feuerzangenbowle, haha! Although they are on my list of course, especially the first one.

>162 avaland: Willnot isn’t in New Orleans. The author has a series that takes place in NOLA. I want to go there tonight but I’m not.

Finished Difficult Light by the Colombian Tomás González last night which was excellent. Review in my thread and in the work (plus 2 reviews from yesterday of books I read earlier in the year: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn and the 7th Alex Verus novel Burned by Benedict Jacka).

Next is Bound by Benedict Jacka, the 8th Verus novel although there is a story between the 6th and the 7th novel which I missed so I may pick that up before the novel. In any way, I am heading back to magical England to check on Verus.

>150 avaland: Thanks for the recommendation - should be an interesting new path. I am delinquent in not reading him before.

____________________

Q31 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OTHERS

Oh what a devilish question!

Like most people here, I don't know anyone in the group in person, but feel I 'know' some better than others. Here are five with varying degrees of acquaintanceship in alphabetical order:



avaland: (174 shared books) The Afterlife of George Cartwright by John Steffler for your interest in local history and Newfoundland, a novel from beyond the grave

____________



cariola (265 shared books) I think you read this thread, but don't often comment:
The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners by Margaret Visser, an entertaining and knowledgable social historian
- something to throw in with those great books in your social history mix

______________



labsf39 (268 shared books) Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon because Jane Austen is listed as one of your favourite authors and here Weldon follows Austen's example in letters to her own niece about Austen

_______________



MissBrangwen (107 shared books) I don't really 'know' you at all, but I follow your thread:
The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson for your contemporary European literature thread and to add some fun to your wonderfully heavy collection (the above mentioned Berlin Alexanderplatz would also add some humour, but in no way could be described as fun)

_________________



thorold (321 shared books) because despite the number of shared books this will be a real challenge, and I do love a challenge
The Railway Man by Eric Lomax railways and redemption

>166 dianeham: I see.... (it's on its way to me)

>168 SassyLassy: Thanks for another recommendation. I'll chase down The Afterlife of George Cartwright and put it in the pile....

>150 avaland: As I long-time lurker, rare poster, I wasn't expecting to see my name pop up here! But yes, big Oates fan. I do have a paperback copy of that one around here somewhere... not sure how it missed getting logged but I will hunt it down. Thanks for the suggestion! If I have a second, I will see about trying my hand at this game. It looks like fun.

Double book bullet - The Rituals of Dinner led me to her other book, Much Depends on Dinner. And if you liked those, you should probably check out Consider the Fork - the history of eating focused on utensils and tools. Fascinating book.

>168 SassyLassy: Thanks — I vaguely knew about The railway man, but haven’t read it. It has obviously slipped off my virtual list somewhere in the last twenty years, so it’s good to have a nudge to look at it again.

I met a friend I haven’t seen for some time last week, and he was enthusing to me about his discovery of a remarkable Swedish novel that changed a lot of his ideas about historical fiction — of course, it turned out to be The long ships.

>170 Yells: You're welcome! I have read little of JCO in the last couple of years. I had hopes to read Blonde this past year (it having been hailed her masterpiece),even took it with me on vacation but it was a no go. I think the window has closed...

>143 LolaWalser: Thanks Lola--I will look for that. Have you read Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science? Not a recommendation, because I haven't read it. But I bought it to give to my daughters, and read the intro, which said the author got the idea for the book after the uproar created when the NYT obituary for a female rocket scientist emphasized her beef stroganoff recipe and her kids and her moves for her husband's job, rather than her scientific accomplishments. Might be interesting, but probably nothing covered in much depth.

>174 arubabookwoman:

No, I haven't seen that, but there's so much more compared to what was around when I was a student. Incidentally, if the topic is of interest, one recent book I liked a lot is Rita Colwell's A Lab of One's Own: One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science. Fortunately today's students have many more resources and at least don't need to feel lonely and isolated. The profession is still very harsh to women, and under capitalism there are hard limits to how much improvement there can be anyway.

>144 thorold: Thanks for the Wodehouse recommendation. The only thing of his that I've read was The Inimitable Jeeves, several years ago.

And yes, I would have gladly adopted your Pratchett collection. Also the Robbins, who always goes the long way around the barn, but manages to make the journey worthwhile, IMHO! :-)

>176 LyndaInOregon: I am in the middle of reading Terry Pratchett: a life with footnotes and its quite good. The author was his long time assistant and had access to lots of people as well as his own bio notes he started writing. Very readable and fun. A way to wile away the hours till you get that package of books from Mark!

ETA and sad. the last section starts with Pratchetts diagnosis of early onset azhiemers. Kinda dreading getting to the end.

>168 SassyLassy: Thank you! I have heard about The Long Ships - I think it was here in Club Read - and made a mental note of it, but now I added it to my wishlist! I really like the cover and the description, and I haven‘t read much Scandinavian literature apart from crime fiction.

>178 MissBrangwen: It's fantastic!

I have been avoiding this thread, because I haven't had the mental bandwidth to research this question in order to answer it in a helpful way. But Diane alerted me to the fact that I had some recommendations. Thank you! I will try to return the favor, but no promises. :-)

>144 thorold: Mark: Thank you for the suggestion of Pereira maintains. It sounds wonderful and right up my alley. Rebbecanyc wrote a rave review of it as well.

>158 dianeham: Diane: The Break checks not one but two of my want-to-read-more-of boxes: indigenous lit and Canadian lit. Thank you for the recommendation, I will look for it.

>168 SassyLassy: SassyLassy: Thank you for recommending Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen. It's an interesting concept, and I look forward to reading it (perhaps with a rereading of Austen's novels). That would be fun!

>178 MissBrangwen: Finally I must add a plug for The Long Ships. It surprised me with how engrossed I became while reading it. Excellent historical fiction.

>180 labfs39: glad you stopped by. 🙂

Duplicate post.

Q31 Recommendations for Others

I am choosing people that I have only gotten to know recently, so I may be way off base, but here goes:

LyndaInOregon The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was a book I loved, and I think you might too. I chose it because you read a lot of historical fiction, romance, and WWII books, and this hits all three. Plus it's about people who like to read. Bonus! (Lynda and I share 38 books)


jjmcgaffey The Hawk's Grey Feather. Patricia Kennealy-Morrison wrote a couple of series, but this is the first, I think. It's a retelling of the King Arthur tales, but imagining that the Celtic people had emigrated to a different star system to escape the rise of Christianity. So, yeah, King Arthur in space. A different sort of fantasy for sure, but one I don't think you've read yet. (Jennifer and I share 282 books)


Yells Please Look After Mom. I learned from your tags that you like following award lists. Kyung-sook Shin won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011 with this book, the first woman and first South Korean to do so. (Danielle and I share 608 books)


AnnieMod Baba Dunja's Last Love. This is a bit of a cheat, because I mentioned this book on Annie's thread, and she said she hadn't read it or any Bronsky. This is my favorite by her, but you may prefer Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, as it's edgier. (Annie and I share 89 books)


dianeham The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family. As a former public librarian, I think you might enjoy this memoir, I know I did! The author is very funny, but covers some interesting ground too. (Diane and I share 95 books)


I hope I didn't go wildly astray with any of these recommendations. It's very nerve-wracking for me to do!

Edited to add pictures

>182 labfs39: you did great. Thanks for the recommendation.

And somehow my post duplicated. Grrr.

>180 labfs39: "I have been avoiding this thread, because I haven't had the mental bandwidth to research this question in order to answer it in a helpful way." - I'm struggling to answer too. I really want to, but I'm finding it difficult.

>186 dchaikin: Even with people I "know" fairly well, I hem and haw whenever I make a recommendation. Everyone's tastes are so different, plus the person might not be in the mood for x now, even if they might enjoy it at a different time. I feel guilty if I recommend something and the person is like ????

>187 labfs39: I feel guilty if I recommend something and the person is like ????

Sometimes ???? is just what we need if we are willing to follow through. That's how I will be taking on Abdulrazak Gurnah thanks to avaland.

>183 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa -- I did love The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Literary Society, and though you didn't specifically recommend The Hawk's Grey Feather for me, it looks like something I might enjoy.

Here are some in return:
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World (based on the number of books by Asian writers in your library);
The Doomsday Book, since you mentioned Connie Willis. This one has been around for a while and may have slipped below the radar; and either
Love Medicine or Four Souls, since I see several Louise Erdrich books on your list, but not those two.

>189 LyndaInOregon: Aw, shoot. I didn't see Guernsey in your LT catalog. Did I miss it? I'm glad you liked it though, and I wasn't totally off base. What an interesting concept in Phone Booth. I love Doomsday Book. Must. read. more. Erdrich.

>190 labfs39: Guernsey predates my LT catalog. Not everything from my journal (which reaches back 20+ years) made it into my LT library! But, you were right on the money in suggesting I'd enjoy it.

>143 LolaWalser: at first I went for Karel Čapek's fairy tales for the children's literature connection (one of my childhood faves), but it looks as if War with the newts might be easier to find. His tone and humour are consistent across his writings for adults and kids alike.

Was able to locate both (book finder.com is a lifesaver) and I just received them. I needed something fun and light at the present moment and they will be my next reads! thanks!!

>190 labfs39:,>191 LyndaInOregon: as two people who loved The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Literary Society Id recommend major pettigrews last stand not only a lovely book in the manner of Guernsey, but among my favorite book covers of all time.

>181 dianeham: I notice that you are an Atwood fan, as am I. I recommend to you hag seed her take on The Tempest, which is a master class in teaching this play.

>191 LyndaInOregon: just saw that you are a Kate Atkinson fan. She has a new one out that has found its way onto my TBR shelf: shrines of gaiety thought you;d like to know

>193 cindydavid4: thanks Cindy. I have the ebook, I will give it a go.

>158 dianeham: Thanks for thinking of me! Sounds interesting - unfortunately I'm limited by what my US libraries have available in their digital collections, and there's nothing by Jill Dawson in either of them at the moment. But it's cool to know a book like that exists.

>195 ursula: too bad. I read it through a library ebook service called Hoopla.

>193 cindydavid4: The recommendation of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is spot on. I did enjoy it very much.

>193 cindydavid4: I've read Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, and did enjoy it. It's another that probably predates my LT listing.

Will look for the new Atkinson.

>192 cindydavid4:

eek, you bought them? I thought they might be hard to find in a public library. Well, I certainly hope you find them worthwhile. :)

>199 LolaWalser: i find a lot of my books on bookfinder. com Think one was $12, the other $8. Usually I can find books there for under 5, but these were probably not as common. And If I dont like them, I can usually trade them at the used book store. Anyway started the fairy tales. Loved the cat of course; reminds me a bit like Collette's book on animals

QUESTION 37: Scary Reading

There are all kind of scary books in many genres, in both fiction and nonfiction. Sure, there is a horror genre with the likes of Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell and that counts, but what about the other stuff that scares us? Horrors like war, climate change, politics, violence …etc. And we might find horror in mysteries, fairy tales, and other fiction we read.

What are some of your scariest reads…whether they are called horror or not, or whether they are fiction or nonfiction.

ETA: My intent is to broaden the term to include books we find : unsettling, intimidating, disconcerting, and upsetting.....

PS: Please respect other's answers

I don't like to be scared, so I avoid those books. However, I get very unsettled by books I read like Handmaids Tale Fahrenheit 451 brave new world as I realize how prescient these works are now. I am terrified now.

Q37: Scary

Touching the void is the one that springs to mind immediately, even though I read it more than twenty years ago.

I don’t really read “horror” as a genre; the odd time I have read something that strays into the direction of the supernatural I’ve usually found it less scary than formulaic. You can’t really be frightened of (e.g.) vampires unless you have at least a lingering belief that they might exist.

>201 avaland: Q37 - Scary Reading

The way you've worded this makes it a complex question (I see you were trying to keep it wide open, and not just say "horror", which many readers sniff at and dismiss without realizing how broad a category it is).

For me, I divide scary reading into what is real (or realistic) and what is pretend. I have to be very careful with the real side, and I'm picky about the pretend. For the real column, I include reading the news, which terrifies me pretty much every day. As for published books, the one that stands out in my mind is If This Is Man by Primo Levi, about his WWII concentration camp experience. I read it in my 40s after reading about, and seeing movies about, the holocaust for many years. Yet the night I started reading it I had night terrors. Excellent book, recommend it. But I don't like that experience. (In the film world, the scariest movie I've ever seen was Platoon, which I saw when it came out and will never see again -- maybe it wasn't even scary at all, but it was real to me at the moment. I refuse to ever watch Saving Private Ryan).

But I love pretend scary when it's done well. Unfortunately, that's rare. I love a spine tingle, but I don't scare easily, and I like stories that are almost believable rather than over-the-top monsters, zombies, etc. I don't mind paranormal, but it has to be as realistic as possible. Some recent favourites were Your House Is On Fire, Your Children All Gone, by Stefan Kiesbye. What I really likes about this was that in the end, the explanation was not supernatural, and when I discovered the reason for all the horror, I was even more horrified. And I was puzzled that this book had been tagged "horror", but then a few months later I read Starve Acre by Michael Hurley, which was paranormal but similar in tone, and I learned they were both "folk horror." This folk horror category is something more common in film, I think, and one that intrigues me.

I don't get scared from fiction books, but some that have given me creepy fun were: Coraline, Neil Gaiman; The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris; Perfume, Patrick Suskind; the Black Spider, Jeremias Gotthelf; and Slade House, by David Mitchell. Going way back, Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin, and the Stand, by Stephen King (the original, not the uncut edition), were good memories.

That all said, it's October, which in my reading world, is called Spooktober. This month I'm reading The Trouble With Lichen by John Wyndham. After that I will pick up Pine by Francine Toon. Every year I look for new spine tingles.

And on the topic of spine tingles, has anyone been to a tourist site that actually delivers them? I had my first experience with this last December at Chateau Chillon on Lake Geneva. The bottom level is fascinating, and on a winter Wednesday afternoon, there weren't many people down there. My daughter and I spent quite a bit of time looking around, and we were fascinated by the torture chamber and the spot where they hung people, and Lord Byron's graffiti, and then it just went on and on, and the lake was lapping against the stone walls, and then we hadn't heard anyone else for a while and suddenly I just needed to get out of there. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Montreux on a winter afternoon. I'd love to hear if anyone else has been truly creeped out at a tourist site.

>203 thorold: You can’t really be frightened of (e.g.) vampires unless you have at least a lingering belief that they might exist.

I disagree. I don't remotely believe in vampires, but I found the scene in Dracula when Jonathan Harker is locked in the tower and looks out the window to see Count Dracula scaling down the wall absolutely chilling. The rest of the novel was meh (to me), but that scene was perfection.

Also, vampires are a metaphor. But that's a whole other topic (one my daughter did a whole class on at university. Covid summer 2020, she was bored so took an elective for something to do. It was in the Germanic Studies department. I watched 6 vampire movies with her. Great fun)

My intent is to broaden the term (horror) to include books we find to be: unsettling, intimidating, disconcerting, upsetting, causing fear.

-----------------------------------------

I have no tags for "horror" so I started paging back and scanning my books from newer to older... I was a bit surprised to find as much as I did. I suppose, after listing books, it seems I like to be "unsettled" -- a kind of scary that makes one think....?

FICTION:
Hands down, my scariest book is Handmaid's Tale (and I've read it multiple times)

Some of you will remember I'm a Joyce Carol Oates fan...but I never read the books of hers labeled "horror" however, I've read more than a few 'unsettling' novels from her.
Rape a Love Story, Zombie, First Love, Gravedigger’s Daughter and The Female of the Species ('you will never look at those mirrors in the store dressing rooms quite the same way again"…I said in my review of that last one).

Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
Grimm's Fairy Tales the story "Fitcher's Bird"

As for NONFICTION....

*Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica's Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night by Julian Sancton
*Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright
*The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria by Helon Habila (Edna O’Brien’s "Girl" same topic)
*On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
*It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America by David Cay Johnston

>203 thorold: I don't believe they exist, just know that Nosferatue gave me nightmares!

>204 Nickelini: I agree, the way this topic opened up to more subthemes makes it much more inclusive.

For Halloween, we either watch Young Frankenstein and Love at First Bite (yes I have read the originals of both; The former had so many interesting ways of seeing made it less frightening but more upsetting, the latter honestly did not scare me at all)

One of my favorite takes on Frankenstein is pride and prometheus if you are a big fan of Austen, you might not like what the author does to the characters, but I loved how the two stories melded, and was actually a bit terrifying

I find my response to scary/unsettling/disturbing reading odd in that I read a lot of depressing history and memoirs on the Holocaust, war, genocide, etc. and find it fascinating. Give me true crime, or worse, fiction with graphic violence, and I am wigged out. For example, several years ago I read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I found that horrifying. Is it the distance of history that makes it bearable to me? Or is it the scale of violence? I'm not sure, and I've thought about it off and on for years.

When I was a teenager, I read several horror-type books like The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, and Carrie, but haven't read much since. I laugh now at the memory of my reading The Omen. My copy of the book had a raven on the cover, and whenever I set the book down, I had to make sure the raven was facedown!

I am also sometimes frightened when I read a very popular book, and find myself thinking, is this the depths to which American literature has sunk? Can we become any more anti-intellectual than this?

Overall I'm with Joyce, the scariest thing is reading the news, which terrifies me pretty much every day.

>210 labfs39: I think the distance is kind of a buffer.

>203 thorold: “You can’t really be frightened of (e.g.) vampires unless you have at least a lingering belief that they might exist.”

And here comes the favorite argument of people who believe that speculative horror and its subgenres are for children and not serious Literature (with a capital L). Everyone has the right to think what they want of course. I am just a bit surprised that this showed up so fast in this group after the word horror showed up.

>206 avaland: You picked my #1 scary book.

>168 SassyLassy: I probably wouldn't have picked up The Rituals of Dinner on my own, but it does sound interesting!

I will get back with answers to the last two questions.

>201 avaland:

#37

No question that reality outstrips any horror for me these days. I'm not exaggerating when I say I often feel sick scanning the headlines, my mind going in circles around the catastrophes that are befalling us, the catastrophes we've spent our entire lives within, only more or less conscious of them.

Well with that intro I have no choice but to look back to the past, to my childhood, as the time when fictional horrors chiefly scared me. "Jane Eyre" comes to mind first. The madwoman in the attic, the scene where Jane wakes up to see her in Jane's room, made me abandon the book.

"The Midwich cuckoos"--the glassy eyes of the children on the cover almost kept me away from reading... and once I was reading it, the telepathic communication between them, "the hive mind", squicked me out horribly (I still hate the motifs of telepathy, and twins, clones, with a passion).

I've read very little contemporary horror for the same reason I don't watch many contemporary horror movies--too realistic and it becomes seriously unpleasant. Something that filters through an interest in camp or history or art, especially if it's older and less explicit, is typically easier to take.

But I recall being seriously scared by Poe's stories, in particular The black cat and The pit and the pendulum, when I was already fifteen or so.

>214 LolaWalser: You reminded me that I, too, at a young age, was scared at that same scene in Jane Eyre, also...but I was younger, maybe 11 or so.

>201 avaland: Question 37

Horror is the only one of the big categories which spans both the speculative and the non-speculative genres on its own (while other such as mystery can live in both, you usually have a mix of genres when it crosses into speculative). Because of that and because of the usual connection of the term with the speculative side of it, people tend to shy from calling a lot of books horror. In my book, if it is scary, it is horror of some type - regardless if the monster is a sea creature, an invented creature, the neighbor or just in your head. But they are scary in different ways so here is an attempt to summarize my thinking on each of them:

Speculative horror - the usual books one thinks about when thinking about the genre - cosmic creatures, vampires, ghosts and zombies. These can be scary in the same primal way fairy tales about monsters are scary to children. They require imagination and for the reader not to have lost the ability to immerse themselves into the story and not to try to connect everything to the real world - to live inside of a world that does not exist and is not ours (I still have cases where I would close the book unfinished (for the night or because I need to do something else) and keep thinking on how it will continue, playing scenarios in my head which work based on what I had already read). Every child seems to have that ability but a lot of grown-ups seems to lose it as their reading life progresses - sometimes by choice ("I am not a child anymore"), sometimes being forced into it ("These stories are for children, read a real book"), sometimes it just happens. It's their loss as far as I am concerned (as long as they do not try to convince me that they are right).

While I will happily read both text and graphic works from the genre (although I am not a huge fan of body horror and the too gory works), I rarely watch speculative horror movies and TV series - because this kind of stories relies on imagination, I find most of the movies to lose that and force you into one static way to look at things. I know quite a lot of people who have the opposite experience though so... it depends on how one developed as a reader and as a movie-watcher I guess.

Psychological horror - "it's all in your head" or "someone is playing games with you" kind of scenarios. These often get dumped straight into the thriller category but I still consider them part of horror. Some of them are obvious (The Yellow Wallpaper for example which is a story of mental illness and obsession which is so proper and undertoned and yet probably one of the scariest stories I had ever read - it works on a certain part of one's brain which seems to scream "but this can happen to anyone").

And then come the books that usually do not get sorted into horror: the war stories and the serial killer stories, the stories of cruelty and abandonment. They all seem to share the same cause though - humans do horrible things to other humans (or animals sometimes).

But then there is another group - the books where everyone seems to be a decent person and yet, things go horribly wrong. People caught in the middle of a refugee crisis, people who get diagnosed with incurable diseases (and the people around them having to deal with the aftermath), the parent of young children who gets hit by a bus or killed by the killer du jour in the latest installment of a mystery series. All of these are unsettling and can be a lot scarier than the books which were written to be scary.

I've also found that my own reactions to some of the books, especially in the later categories had changed as my life had been changing. My 15-years old self could read about someone dying from a disease a lot easier than I can do that now for example. For some of them, I needed life experience to really appreciate; for some - I just needed to see that in the life of people around me to connect the dots.

For years I've considered the scariest book I've read to be If This is a Man. It still is in some ways. These days some of the dystopias can unsettle me a bit (especially when they start turning true in some ways (1984 and The Handmaid's Tale for example) but it is still the books of the atrocities of humans vs humans that stay with me the longest. Especially because we should really know better. I am at a point where I escape into speculative horror because I know I can close the book and exit its world (thus allowing me a safe way to explore the scary and unsettling) and I cannot do that with these other books which are either the real story or grounded in reality.

Question 37:

I certainly think of myself as a horror enthusiast and gravitate towards the darker themes within literature in general. The definition of horror is murky at best and crosses into everything from mystery to highbrow Literature. The genre itself isn't even that sticky. It's also something that plays equally well on screen as it does on the page. In my opinion zombies and there metaphors are much better in the hands of George Romero (Night of the Living Dead) then in anything I've ever read. And a good jump scare is always, always better on screen.

I can't remember the last time I found a book scary, the ones that stick out are more the ones of humans doing terrible things to each other The Sea and Poison and Fires on the Plain.

But I think right now the most interesting horror from the horror genre is coming from the indie publishing: Laura Hightower, Cynthia Pelayo, Samantha Kolesnik, Gemma Armor, and Chad Lutzke.

Women in general write the best horror fiction. If you can stomach the graphic violence that comes from their inner fears.

Women in general write the best horror fiction. If you can stomach the graphic violence that comes from their inner fears....

Hmmm. That's interesting. Why do you think that is?

>218 avaland: I'm making mssive generalizations here, and can't speak to all of the horror genre, but to me women and minorities write to fears where men write to conflict. This is espeically true in the sense of the more psycological side of the specturm. The fear of abuse, murder, and gaslighting are things that women and minorites experience to a greater degree. The fear is more viseral and deeper. It's more of an exploration of the fears and socetil ills (i.e. horror as metaphor) and less about beating those things. Where I think a lot of horror from men is more bout a protgonist versus antagonist, good versus evil, conflict between hero and villan. It's less about the driving force of fear and more about the fight to overcome the things that go bump in the night. These cn still be frightening, gross, or plain depraved but there's often a distance to it. That there is an escape, the possibilty of estblishing normal again. When women write horror this is the normal, there's no getting away from it, no leaving behind the scars. What is done is done. This is all in degrees of course, men and women don't all write just one kind of story.

Like Nickelini, I found the wall-climbing scene in Dracula to be truly chilling. That’s one 19th-century horror classic that has kept its ability to raise the hair on the back of the neck. Poe’s works of horror ("The Murders at the Rue Morgue", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Cask of Amontillado", and others) are also supremely spooky, and pretty essentially set the standard for the modern ghost story.

Jumping forward a century … Ray Bradbury was capable of creating some very spooky stuff. His October Country collection ought to be re-read at least every couple of years during Halloween season, and “The Ravine” pulls out all the stops for a classic ghost story, with its very quiet but very effective gotcha in the last line. From the early 70s, I still recall Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist as being truly frightening. (I was reading The Exorcist at work one day and one of the guys came by and asked me about it. I told him it was really good, but warned “don’t read this if you’re home alone at night.” He looked at me and laughed – big strong tough guy, you know. A couple of days later, he sidled up to me in the lunch room with a copy in his hand, and said, out of the corner of his mouth, “You’re right.”)

When Stephen King first started writing, I read his early work with equal parts glee and fright, as he explored the dark sides of the human heart and pit mere humans against destructive forces. Ultimately, however, he seemed to go through a “sausage” stage where he had all the ingredients down and simply put them into the hopper and turned the crank to get the next novel on the page. Sausage. It was often very good sausage, but it was … sausage. Then, he segued into a fascination with the myriad ways in which the human body can disintegrate, and at that point I checked out of Blood Bath Central, and haven’t read any of his stuff in years. His son, writing as Joe Hill, seems to have taken a blood-soaked page from Dad’s diary, so after sampling his first novel, I crossed him off the list also.

One of the most frightening straight-up “traditional” ghost/horror stories I’ve ever read was The Vanishment, by Jonathan Aycliffe. Without resorting to gore, shock, or schlock, Aycliffe still manages to serve up a story that grows more horrifying with each quiet paragraph.

Moving out of the realm of things that go bump in the night and into the realm of psychological horror, I stand with those who were (and still are) scared spitless by The Handmaid’s Tale. Those who scoffed at the notion of human beings having their essential rights removed due to their gender identity have not been reading the news lately.

Somehow, I don’t read as much horror as I used to. I guess when your local news source serves up a heaping helping of abominations on a daily basis, the fictional variety just seems superfluous.

I don't read horror as a genre, but Blindness by Jose Saramago was terrifying on a number of levels. I read it in February 2020 just as Coronavirus was starting to spread which didn't help - suddenly something like this contagium felt a little more possible as opposed to being something from a totally fictional world.

>219 stretch: I think I agree with most of that....

Small note: As you have noted both women and minorities, then your "men" should probably be identified more precisely as "white men", yes?

>222 avaland: Yes white men, that is what I am generally referring to. Although it does fit the pattern for all men I've read within the horror genre specifically. The genre is sadly lacking in diversity, that is somewhat changing in recent years with Stephen Graham Jones and Victor LaValle reaching the mainstream within the genre. Gus Moreno and Gabino Iglesias certainly don't fit my mold. There's a nuisance that my generalization is lacking. But even on the diverse side of things the list is much longer for women writing within horror. This gets messy when include more literary works in horror The Trees and We Cast a Shadow which are more satirical takes on racism that incorporate elements of horror, but don't come up within mainstream horror discussions. There's a lot of nuance to this blanket statement by me, especially when the genre itself is so broad.

Here is my list:

1. HUMOROUS: Luis Weihnachtsbengel by C. Willfurth
2. UNFORGETTABLE: Der Pinguin meines Lebens. T. Michell
3. LIGHT-WEIGHT: Das Haus am Rande der Magie by Amy Sparkes
4. DIFFICULT: History of the siege of Lisabon by Saramago
5. ENGROSSING: Como agua para chocolate by Esquivel
6. VACUOUS: Unser allerbestes Jahr by David Gilmour
7. PAGE TURNING: Serie Helden des Olymp by Rick Riordan
8. LYRICAL: Das kleine Wunder von Mayfair by R. Dindsdale
9. INTENSE: Erzähl es niemandem! By Crott
10. WELL-RESEARCHED: DIE Straße nach Isfahan. G. Sinoué / Als China die Welt entdeckte by Gavin Menzies
11. STIMULATING: La vida cuando era nuestra by M. Izaguirre
12. RECOMMENDED: Chroniken der Weltensucher - Die Stadt der Regenfresser by Tim Thiemeyer
13. CLEVER: Die Vermessung der Welt by Daniel Kehlmann
15. FAILURE: Three books I started and didnt read anymore, titles forgotten...
16. MUST READ: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
17. CEREBRAL: Schnelles Denken, langsames Denken by Daniel Kahneman
19. POPULAR: Chocolat by J. Harris
20. TRAGIC: Bel Canto by Anne Patchett

>221 AlisonY: Blindness was a horrifying book and it was scary. I hated it. Not fun scary.

>219 stretch:
Interesting idea. I wonder how much of the growing presence of women writers in genre horror is due to one editor, Ellen Datlow, and her dozens of anthologies, many centered on women writers and women's stories?

My usual take on horror is that I would read none of it except that so many of its practitioners are such annoyingly good writers. Lucius Shepard is my main example here; he basically wrote the same story almost every time, and in the same way, yet I never tire of them.

A subgenre of the scary that I don't think has been mentioned yet is cosmic horror. The advance of science reveals more and more of a universe that is implacably hostile to us humans, tucked away in a tiny, cozy, but temporary nook in space and time. My favorite contemporary example is Peter Watts; in his ongoing series (Blindsight and Ecopraxia), human consciousness is a deadweight waste of brainpower, and baseline humans are probably doomed to extinction in competition with hyperintelligent but nonconscious aliens, hive minds, and vampires. That our cognitive biases keep us from thinking rationally fits in nicely with current trends in world politics, besides.

Charles Stross also works in this subgenre. His novellette "A Colder War" combines cosmic horror with fear of nuclear war.

An older example is Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree, Jr., whose best stories involve doom by some inadequacy in our very biology.

And must mention H. P. Lovecraft, whose racist fears of dark-skinned Portuguese and Italian immigrants on the streets of Providence, Rhode Island are among the roots of cosmic horror. His stories are very hard to read today, but many contemporary writers are using his materials in nonracist, nonsexist ways.

>226 dukedom_enough: That is an interesting question, I've read a few stories form Ellen Datlow's collections, but can't say that I tracked any of the authors further than the signal stories.

I'm not even sure when there was shift. Still surprises every time I find out the that one of the 70s and 80s paperbacks was written by a woman under a pen name or initials.

When it comes to scary stories, I prefer stories in which the horror element is subtle. For example, I remember very much enjoying Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James. I've found some of Shirley Jackson's stories very effective in that manner, as well. Other types of writing that scare me are books that put me in situations that I would find horrifying to be in in real life. Emma Donohoe's Room had that effect on me, as did Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. Elie Wiesel's Night scared me at an early age for the reason that I knew that, other than the accidents of time and place, that, as a Jew, could have been me. When I read graphic, intimate memoirs and/or accounts of the enslavement of African Americans it scares me to know that now Americans are resisting having their children taught about these things, and that the result of that develops into the American legal system as illuminated in The New Jim Crow. That, of course, is a very short list of the reading I've done about current events that scare me.

I have had similar experiences I remember discovering Johnny Got His Gun* on a shelf in my professors office. She let me borrow it and it just blew me away. The last line made me gasp; not scary so much, but sad that this soldier was trying to stop the killing, and no one knew who he was. Lately one story that stopped in my tracks was The Man Who Ended History" by Ken Liu. I knew nothing about unit 731 until I read more after the story. the fact that mans inhumanity to man never stops is enough to make me scared for our future

* the movie Trumbo, about the author of the book who was black listed in the 50s and needed to use a front in order to get scripts onto screens, well worth seeing Bryan Cranston is brilliant in this

QUESTION 38: LIST: A BOOK YOU READ THAT….

fiction or nonfiction and comments and explanations encouraged. You may wish to space out your lines for visibility/clarity.

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading:
2. …You read multiple times:
3. …Was assigned and you disliked:
4. …Was assigned and you liked:
5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary:
6. …Was a library book (and what library):
7. … On a vacation of any kind:
8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get":
9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it:
10: … Was someone else’s copy:
11: … Was part of a series or trilogy:
12. … In which war plays a role:
13. … Is much older than you:
14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore:
15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood:
16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge:
17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) :
18: … In which Bad things happen:
19: … Is light and fluffy:
20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?)

QUESTION 37 an article in the paper reminded me of one scary story from my childhood The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Watched it with my family on a black/white tv and it scared me to death. Wasnt till I was in HS when we read it and it still sent shivers down my spine, but this is the kind of scary I don't mind as much. Like Psycho, the scare was in the story, minus the gore.

Q38 BOOK YOU READ THAT….

1.…Everyone seemed to be reading: 1974-79: The eight books of “The Kent Family Chronicles” by John Jakes.

2.…You read multiple times: Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

3…Was assigned and you disliked: Catcher in the Rye

4…Was assigned and you liked: The Pearl by John Steinbeck

5…Found somewhere out of the ordinary: The Dirty Dozen (at one point my mother hid it from me in my father’s bureau…but then they went grocery shopping one day and I found it and finished it.

6...A library book (and what library): Long ago (1981 or so, I wheeled my firstborn a few streets over to the local library where there I picked up and thumbed through my first Joyce Carol Oates novel. After reading the back I thought that, as a new mother, I shouldn’t read it and did not take it home. But, it was not long…. The Berkshire Athenaeum (Pittsfield, MA) OK, that’s not the best answer, but it’s the most interesting one :-)

7. On a vacation of any kind: At the lake in Maine this September: Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Q Road

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t “get”: Blood by Maggie Gee (black comedy that wasn’t that funny) Abandoned halfway—I do like some of her other books.

9. … A real tome, but you got through it: Mists of Avalon almost 900 pages or maybe Bleak House (over 1000)… there have been so many fat books…

10: … Someone else’s copy: A 1943 boxed set of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights that was in the house …it could have been my mother’s (though I never saw her read books) or a hand-me-down from older cousins.

11: … Part of a series or trilogy: The Raj Quartet, by Paul Scott

12. … War has a role: Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (nonfiction

13. … Is older than you: Anything written by Kenneth Roberts of Maine i.e. Northwest Passage or Arundel.

14. … Bought in a brick & mortar bookstore: Remarkable Women of New England: Daughters, Wives, Sisters, and Mothers: The War Years 1754 to 1787 (nonfiction)

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: The Bloodsmoor Romance (the Zinn sisters) OR Bellefleur (the Bellefleurs) OR My Heart Laid Bare (the Licht family) three of the five books in Joyce Carol Oates’s splendid Gothic Saga series.

16: … As part as a personal or group challenge: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, over 1000 pages. Challenged myself to read this while in high school, it was the ‘fattest’ book in the school library.

17: … Out of this world: Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

18: … Bad things happen: In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton (history)

19: … Light or fluffy: Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner.

20. … Embarrassed to admit: None. I thought about saying 1972’s Joy of Sex which my boyfriend ‘borrowed’ from his parents’ bedroom when they were out). But, to be honest, I don’t remember any words in the book….

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: the girl with the dragon tatoo came to it later than most; a friend was reading it and said it was good. I skipped over most of the s/m and gore stuff, but really liked the story

2. …You read multiple times: Wolf Hall. usually for a book group, but often coz nothing else I read was interesting enough

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: Miserables.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: Green Child in my utopia/distopia English lit class, a book I never hear people mention, but was very pleased to have read it.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me at the arizona state fair, which included some estate items (also bought a signed photo of Mary Pickford)

6. …Was a library book (and what library):the discoverers at the Tucson Public Library. Ended up losing it and it cost me a $50 fine which I really didnt havecoz it was brand new. Found it and kept it

7. … On a vacation of any kind: the good husband read it on the beach; not only was it a wonderful story of two marriages, but one of the husbands searched for Misericords in Cathedrals I was fascinated, and the next time we were in britian, we asked about them every church we were in; usually we got a surprised yes we do! In York Minster, the deacon even turned the lights on for us so we could get a better look. *

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get" a confederacy of dunces lots of my reading friends loved it; I tried, I really did....

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Game of Thrones

10: … Was someone else’s copy: my big sisters copy of Kim fascinated by the story and descriptions of India, much later understood more of "The Game"

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: Time of the Dark one of my fav fantasy trilogies

12. … In which war plays a role: Johnny Got His Gun probably the best anti war stories Ive ever read

13. … Is much older than you: a modest proposal

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: the city we became

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: godfather

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: Works of Kurt Vonnegut, read after he passed

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like)My HS boyfriend at the time handed Dune to me and said I had to read it. think I was 14. reread it many times over the years. Was a book that really had me looking at sci fi more closely. The book lasted, boyfriend didnt. cant wait till the second part of the recent adaptation comes out

18: … In which Bad things happen: hated the book, but its the first one I can think of fall on your knees

19: … Is light and fluffy: heidi one of my fav books of childhood

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) valley of the dolls I snuck it off my sisters shelf and thought I was being secret, till my dad walked by my bedroom when I was reading it and said "oh Ive been wanting to read that, let me know what you think" ah yeah, sure dad

*A misericord (sometimes named mercy seat, ) is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer. These were usually carved by apprentices and were not always religious in theme

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boston_Stump_misericord_02.JPG

>234 cindydavid4: #17 I think you omitted the book title.

>235 avaland: oops thanks!

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading:
Braiding Sweetgrass A good but not great reading experience for me, though many others loved it. I wouldn’t have read it but one of the members of my reading group selected it.

2. …You read multiple times:
When I was in my early teens, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a once-a-year tradition for me. More recently, Heart of Darkness.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked:
Henry James' novels. I think I had to read five of them. I understand why they're important in the grand scheme of Western literature, and also why others might like them, but they don't work for me at all.

4. …Was assigned and you liked:
That’s a long list. Let’s say, off the top of my head, The Bass Saxophone by Josef Skvorecky

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary:
I found The War in Eastern Europe by John Reed in an antique store in Barstow, California. That's the best I can think of at the moment.

6. …Was a library book (and what library):
Hmmmmm. I love buying books so much that I don't spend much time in libraries these days. How about this? The copy of Pride and Prejudice that I read this year was a discard from an institution called the Discipleship Library which I believe from the inscription of the book's later owner was somewhere in Iowa.

7. … On a vacation of any kind:
During our month in New Jersey last year, I picked up The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar in a bookstore in Hoboken and really loved it.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get":
I’m sure there have been plenty of books over the years that would fit this category for me, though I can’t really think of one offhand. Let’s just say that I don’t get why so many people liked The Lincoln Highway, which I loathed.

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it:
The Ministry for the Future, which I “got through” because it was a reading group selection but didn’t enjoy all that much.

10: … Was someone else’s copy:
I borrowed a friend’s copy of Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography, Born to Run, to read, but then I bought my own copy just to have. Is that weird?

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy:
I loved Faulkner’s Snopes trilogy, so I’ll list the first book in the trio, The Hamlet

12. … In which war plays a role:
Speaking of trilogies, I also loved Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour set, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. The series starts out almost as satire but gets progressively darker (and better).

13. … Is much older than you:
Define “much.” :) I’ll go with Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2. Still my favorite Shakespeare plays.

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore:
I recently bought Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson in the Livraria Bertrand in Lisbon, an outfit that lays claim to being the oldest continuously operating bookstore in the world.

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood:
Darn, I already used the Snopes Trilogy. Oh, I know! The Family Moskat by Isaac Singer, a fabulous, epic novel about Jewish life in Poland in the decades leading up to the Holocaust.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge:
I’ve challenged myself to read through a list of books about African American history, slavery, and racism in the U.S. that was provided by a friend of mine who is a history professor at UC Berkeley. There have been a lot of enlightening/interesting/depressing books on the list. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom was fascinating for me, as it was a very clear and detailed history of a movement I am just old enough to remember but not old enough to have really understood while it was going on.

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like): Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, much of which takes place in Fforde's extremely imaginative, clever and enjoyable creation, Book World.

18: … In which Bad things happen:
Geek Love by Dunn. One of the most creepy and sly explications of pure evil I can recall reading.

19: … Is light and fluffy:
"Golden Era" mysteries often fill this bill for me. I've recently read, and enjoyed, the first two books in Timothy Fuller's Jupiter Jones series, an obscure set of humorous murder mysteries written in the 1940s. I'll be reading the remaining three books in the set in the relatively near future.

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?)
I'm sort of embarrassed that I didn’t like In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. It seemed to me like the same coming of age story told three times and therefore just didn’t work for me despite the extremely interesting time and place it’s set in. On the other hand, I very much enjoyed Rona Randall’s 1972 gothic romance, Dragonmede when I read it back in 2011. As I wrote in my review of the time, “This is a Victorian romance, set in 1880s Sussex, England. Our heroine, Eustacia, marries into an aristocratic family living in the impressive yet gloomy mansion of the title. She soon begins to realize that all is not as it seems (is it ever?) with her dashing husband, his family or even her own past. Mysteries, and soon physical danger, begin to swirl around her.” I don’t really find the fact that I enjoyed this book embarrassing, I guess. Maybe surprising would be a better word.

Q38

List a book that...

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson (my bookstagram days)

2. …You read multiple times: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (I never tire of those)

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: When I was in middle grade - Frühlings Erwachen by Frank Wedekind. I am still not inclined to reread it.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: At school – Die Leiden des jungen Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Emilia Galotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Still among my favourite German classics and among my favourite works to teach, although my students usually don’t enjoy them as much, especially the first one. At university I liked many of the assigned readings, most of all Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey, The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence, Medicine River by Thomas King, Störfall by Christa Wolf,… Special mention: What We All Long For by Dionne Brand was an assigned reading that I skipped, but read years later and loved.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: I bought a used copy of The Vicar of Wakefield in a bookshop in Palma de Mallorca. I cannot think why, but somehow it appealed to me exactly there and then. I haven’t read it so far, though.

6. …Was a library book (and what library): I only ever borrowed nonfiction and text books for my research and assignments when I was studying. I used the libraries of the German and English departments at the University of Cologne and the library at James Cook University in Cairns (there was only one library there). I love visiting libraries, but I am a book collector…

7. … On a vacation of any kind: Today I finished Aunt Bessie Considers by Diana Xarissa on the plane home from Ireland.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": I had a hard time reading Lucinde by Friedrich Schlegel

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Der Prosa-Lancelot in Middle High German and in translation, volumes I – IV. I don’t know how I did it.

10: … Was someone else’s copy: I gave Nußknacker und Mausekönig by E.T.A. Hoffmann to my husband as a Christmas present and read it myself a few years later.

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: I recently finished A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle which is the first in a trilogy.

12. … In which war plays a role: Fly away, Pigeon by Melinda Nadj Abonji deals with some of the consequences of the war in what was then Yugoslavia.

13. … Is much older than you: Many of the books I read are older than I am. So I thought about what the oldest text was that I read (apart from parts of the bible), and it must be the Hildebrandslied from the 9th century, which I read and translated in a course on Old Saxon.

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Again, so many. The last books that I bought in a bookstore were two Penguin Little Black Classics in the Winding Stair Bookshop in Dublin the day before yesterday – two collections of poetry: A Terrible Beauty Is Born by William Butler Yeats and My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: Another recent read – The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan, in which family is an important aspect.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: I read Birnbäume blühen weiß by Gerbrand Bakker for the Category Challenge’s BingoDOG last year.

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like): Eragon by Christopher Paolini. A series I mean to get back to but keep putting it off because I know the next book will take me ages to read.

18: … In which Bad things happen: Another recent read – Dans med en ängel (Tanz mit dem Engel/Death Angels) by Åke Edwardson. Disturbing.

19: … Is light and fluffy: Austenland by Shannon Hale. I do not have much to choose from in this category, but this one comes to mind.

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?): I did start Fifty Shades of Grey to see what all the fuss was about, but I did not get past the first few chapters because it was so badly, badly written. The characterization was so terribly done that I couldn’t stand it.

QUESTION 38: LIST: A BOOK YOU READ THAT….

fiction or nonfiction and comments and explanations encouraged. You may wish to space out your lines for visibility/clarity.

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: The Hunger Games actually, I didn’t know anyone reading it but it was popular at the library. It was right up my street.

2. …You read multiple times: Bel Canto and I never remember what happens - always new.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: The Immortalists read for a book group - waste of time.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: Willnot assigned for a book group and very offbeat.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: Working - got it at a party where Studs Terkel was the guest of honor and he signed it.

6. …Was a library book (and what library): Cutting For Stone from the Cape May County Library

7. … On a vacation of any kind: The Big Windows by Peadar O'Donnell - read this in Donegal Ireland while staying in a cottage.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": Invisible Cities

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: 1Q84 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

10: … Was someone else’s copy: Duino Elegies but they gave it to me.

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: The Schooldays of Jesus

12. … In which war plays a role: Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania - WWI

13. … Is much older than you:

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Poem in Your Pocket: 200 Poems to Read and Carry

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood:The Dutch House

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: In Search of Lost Time

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : Dhalgren

18: … In which Bad things happen: Serial Murderers and their Victims

19: … Is light and fluffy: No Bad Dogs - well some of the dogs are fluffy

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) I have no idea. Maybe something will occur to me later.

>237 rocketjk: #10 not at all! Ive read books that Ive borrows (from friends or library) that I felt I must own for myself!

#11 is the fact check website snopes name come from that book?any connection in finding the truth?

>238 MissBrangwen: #1 wrong touchstone but its close!

>241 cindydavid4: Thank you, I fixed it!

QUESTION 38: LIST: A BOOK YOU READ THAT….

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: Wolf Hall, I felt like everyone had read it but me. Finally climbed onto that wagon and loved it.
2. …You read multiple times: Outlander
3. …Was assigned and you disliked: My Antonia
4. …Was assigned and you liked: The Issa Valley
5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: I was staying at a farmhouse in Normandy and found a book about the battle of the hedges (bocage) that took place in that town. Very local, fascinating.
6. …Was a library book (and what library): Peg-Leg Pete was a library book about a duck with one leg that I loved as a kid. One time when I had it checked out, I forgot it outside and it got wet. I was horrified. I had ruined a book! At least it was about a duck… The library was the old Limerick Library (one room, heated with a wood stove) in the town where I grew up and have since returned to. That building is now the historical society.
7. … On a vacation of any kind: Asterix
8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Ulysses
10: … Was someone else’s copy: Cinder
11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: Maisie Dobbs
12. … In which war plays a role: Matterhorn
13. … Is much older than you: Kalevipoeg
14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Parable of the Sower
15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: The Penderwicks
16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: By Night in Chile
17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like): Stranger in a Strange Land
18: … In which Bad things happen: The Blue Notebook about a child prostitute in Mumbai
19: … Is light and fluffy: I'm having a hard time with this one… hmm, Stories from the Vinyl Cafe?
20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?): Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife. Little did I know that Elizabeth Bennett found it sexy for Darcy to leave his boots on.

never heard of Issa valley, want to read it!

>243 labfs39: #20 That gave me a laugh this morning!

>244 cindydavid4: You might like it, Cindy. The Issa Valley is a very beautifully written novel set in Miłosz's childhood lands, a part of the world that has belonged to Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, all within the author's lifetime.

>245 avaland: The things I never knew... And wish I still didn't!

QUESTION 37: Scary Reading

There are all kind of scary books in many genres, in both fiction and nonfiction. Sure, there is a horror genre with the likes of Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell and that counts, but what about the other stuff that scares us? Horrors like war, climate change, politics, violence …etc. And we might find horror in mysteries, fairy tales, and other fiction we read.

What are some of your scariest reads…whether they are called horror or not, or whether they are fiction or nonfiction.

The most terrifying in a real-world-way book I've ever read is Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson. The years that followed its publication in 2019 have only reinforced and added to its effect.

I do think, given the current political and social situation in the US, that it's an important read for all US citizens at the very least, especially in the lead up to the midterms and local elections in November. The book is horrifying, but what's happened since, and what may happen in the future if it isn't stopped, is much, much more frightening.

As for more traditional, supernatural style scares, the books I've read by Jennifer McMahon have been both excellent and plenty spooky/creepy.

I disagree with >203 thorold: that You can’t really be frightened of (e.g.) vampires unless you have at least a lingering belief that they might exist.

For me, at least, well-written supernatural horror isn't frightening in that I'm actually afraid the subject matter will get me in real life. It's more that the writing and immersion into the story I experience while reading creates a feeling of eeriness that leaves me spooked for a bit.

I will say that it does take an especially good writer, and a certain style of writing - one that leads to immersion or narrative transport, which excludes lot of older/more formal prose ala M.R. James or Bram Stoker and the like - to achieve this for me.

I also don't enjoy being truly frightened, or anything more than mildly spooked. So I don't read Stephen King's novels, or anything similar. For me, with the modern stuff, McMahon is about as deep into proper horror as I'm willing to go.

>205 Nickelini: Also, vampires are a metaphor Definitely, and that's a whole different, real-world horror, given what (who) they're so often, in the early tales, at least, a metaphor for, and why....

>214 LolaWalser: No question that reality outstrips any horror for me these days. I'm not exaggerating when I say I often feel sick scanning the headlines Hard same. I'm sick with anxiety so often these days.

Maybe that's part of what's behind my growing interest in supernatural, weird, and borderline-horror fiction: it's a safe, controlled type of fear* with a satisfying and inevitable ending, and no actual danger attached.

Which is a large contrast from simply living day to day with my particular identities (Jewish, queer, woman, Autistic, among others) these days, where the fear and anxiety are constant with no end in sight, and attached to quite real, serious danger over which I have little to no control at all. *shrugs*

*the weird fiction and early supernatural horror doesn't actually scare me at all. Like I said above, I need to have narrative transport for that, and the style of writing popular in the genres in the 19th and early 20th centuries just don't do that for me. But they are still about fear, and meant to induce fear or horror. So I'm lumping them in, even though their affects, for me, are very different from that of books like McMahon's.

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: Wolf Hall I now own it at least…

2. …You read multiple times: I’ve only ever re-read two books outsside of the below assigned book Edgar Allan Poe’s Colltected Tales and the The Civil War: a Narrative. Poe is a favorite and the Footes work is so detailed you miss something without a re-read.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: The Great Gatsby, I changed high schools in the same year and had to read this twice. Disliked it the fist time and grew to hate the second time around.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: The Jungle probably the most memorable assigned reading I have ever read. I’ve enjoyed others but I read this with a fun group that was hard to replicate.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog found in a boat after a rowing match, nearly ironic.

6. …Was a library book (and what library): I Must Betray You, last book I borrowed from the Indianapolis Library - Eagle Creek Branch

7. … On a vacation of any kind: Battle Royale on train trip out west.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": A Confederacy of Dunces I still don’t get why this is so appealing.

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Don Quixote was always something I had trouble sticking to, it’s great of course but I wandered off.

10: … Was someone else’s copy: Jurassic Park a deaf friends copy I never returned. Now my name is the sign for dinosaur. Not bad trade off.

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a famous trilogy.

12. … In which war plays a role: Matterhorn takes place on a battlefield in Vietnam.

13. … Is much older than you: A Third Of A Century In The Gold Fields(https://www.librarything.com/work/7194657/book/40049150) published in 1888 in softcover. Brother colored in it but has been owned in family since 1888.

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Bluegrass Shale bought at Indyreads. Last new book I bought at a bookstore.

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: Unto this Hour two families split by the civil war.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: Took psrt in horror reading challenge this year so a lot of those went to that.

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : Ten billion days and 100 billion nights interdmensial science fiction.

18: … In which Bad things happen Uh… most of what I read is bad things happening. Guess the worst is Hiroshima so I’ll go with Black Rain

19: … Is light and fluffy: Jingo might be the lgithest thing I’ve read.

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) Nineties Christopher Pike novels, there are dumb in concept and terrible even by YA trash standards, I read them all.

QUESTION 38: LIST: A BOOK YOU READ THAT….

fiction or nonfiction and comments and explanations encouraged. You may wish to space out your lines for visibility/clarity.

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson - I had been looking at it occasionally but then half of the people I talk about books with (aka half of Club Read) decided to read it so I decided to join the fun. No regrets.

2. …You read multiple times: Asimov's Foundation - and in 3 languages (although I've read in more than once in just 2 of them).

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: Great Expectations. It was way too early from a linguistic standpoint - my English was still shaky. Although it did help improving my reading abilities considerably. It was a later chance reread (nothing else available) which made me appreciate the book and return to Dickens and the Victorians.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: Where do I even start? I tended to like most of the assigned books and as we were assigned 10 or more books each year, it is a long list. Vazov's Under the Yoke (the first Bulgarian novel) for example.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: Library, bookstore or internet had been the source of all my books in the last decade or so... not sure if there is anything that came from elsewhere.

6. …Was a library book (and what library): 1,076 library books since I discovered the library here in 2015. 944 of them were physical books from the Scottsdale Public Library (or ILLs via them). The first was Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher - which introduced me to an author I am very fond of.

7. … On a vacation of any kind: Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton - alongside a pool in a friend's house in a village near Bordeaux, in between trips around the area.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": that sent me back at reading my "bad" reviews. Probably the only book I had really given up on in the last decade: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (as opposed to setting aside for a bit and planning to return). Everyone is gushing about it and the author and it was just... bad. Review here: https://www.librarything.com/work/15130278/reviews/116799607
Or the one I did finish (hoping it will improve): The Melody Lingers On by Mary Higgins Clark (review: https://www.librarything.com/work/15380733/reviews/126281082 and again people seem to like it).

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Is "tome" supposed to have negative connotations? If not: Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl by Uwe Johnson

10: … Was someone else’s copy: Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett - a friend of mine just refused to accept my "I do not read fantasy". I blame her for some of my very expensive habits...

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: I am a serial series reader. So the latest (which was not a complete trilogy in one book): Endangered by C. J. Box which is the 15th in his Joe Pickett series

12. … In which war plays a role: The horror question earlier reminded me of this one and I did wonder between it and Primo Levi's book but as I read the Levi a lot earlier, I went with it. So time to mention the other one that haunts me: The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 by Władysław Szpilman

13. … Is much older than you: The Epic of Gilgamesh - the version I read contained one of the original Sumerian poems which did not make the original Akkadian version we all know of as the epic these days and you cannot get much older than that. Not that the Akkadian version is not old enough as it is of course.

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: I am drawing a blank here. I know I have books from bookstores and I know I've read some of them but need to think a bit on which ones - I mostly get my books online these days...

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: The Domestic Crusaders by Wajahat Ali - a play about 3 generations of the same family.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy (for the Award Winners in their Own Languages over in Reading Globally)

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia because I read a lot of fantasy and SF and out of this world sends me to them. Plus I liked it a lot.

18: … In which Bad things happen: that's half of my reading (if not more). Let's go with The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor as I am working on its review just now so it is kinda fresh in my mind.

19: … Is light and fluffy: I really do not do much light and fluffy. Maybe Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn... at least it is somewhat light-heated (with murder and mayhem thrown in)

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?): I don't get embarrassed about what I read, regardless of what people may think about my reading. But if we need something I wish I had skipped - all those formulaic Harlequin novels in their long running unrelated monthly series. Somewhere in my mid-teens, these things came to Bulgaria finally and I was at the right age for them I guess (and they were cheap...). Still have quite a lot of them at Mom's. I had not touched one of these for ages though - which may change if nostalgia gets me...

>250 AnnieMod: #2 I'm tempted to re-read the Asimov before the second season of "Foundation" comes out. It has been a long, long time (1980s) and I had some trouble following the first season....

>251 avaland: It may have something to do with the fact that the series feels like someone who looked at the book and then took a nap and used what they dreamed instead of what the book says... :) I'll admit I watched just 2 episodes (I think) and I plan to get back to it but... reading the book won't help make sense of whatever that series is...

>252 AnnieMod: That maybe true about the interpretation.

My tuppence...

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: Hamnet. Sadly, unlike most people, I wasn't grabbed by it.

2. …You read multiple times: Can't think of a single book in this category. I'm not good at rereading - FOMO.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: The Hobbit - I just don't enjoy that genre still to this day.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: The Great Gatsby. Something about Fitzgerald's writing just hooked me in, even at 16.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: I found Beloved on a shelf in an apartment in Portugal and it blew me away that holiday.

6. …Was a library book (and what library):To the Lighthouse - the first library book entry from when I started LT in 2015.

7. … On a vacation of any kind: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall - a fascinating book about the world's greatest endurance runners and running form, discovered in a book shop in Chamonix when I was hobbling around unable to partake in much of the holiday following a running injury.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get":The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I've tried 3 times to get into it as everyone raves about it, but I just can't warm to it.

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it:Ducks, Newburyport was mighty in size and then there was the unusual sentence structure, but it was a rewarding read in the end (still, was glad to reach the end).

10: … Was someone else’s copy:Stolen Lives by Malika Outkir - found in a bookshelf trade in Lanzarote.

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy:Updike's Rabbit series. I know he's a Marmite reader but I just loved that series.

12. … In which war plays a role: The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg. A really interesting account go WWII from a Brit living in Germany at the time.

13. … Is much older than you: The Mayor of Casterbridge. But oh, so good.

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Most recently, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos.

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood:We Were the Mulvaneys by JCO. Heartbreaking.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: Reading the Wolf Hall trilogy in CR (thank you - would never have got around to reading it otherwise and discovering its brilliance).

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : Knausgaard's My Struggle series. Just brilliant - like nothing I'd read before.

18: … In which Bad things happen:Blindness by Jose Saramago. First to come to mind on a number of fronts.

19: … Is light and fluffy:How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) Ambition by Julie Burchill when I was in the 6th year at school. My sister had a copy first and then I got my hands on it. I couldn't get over the amount of sex in it. By the end of that term I think half my English class had read it with their eyes on stalks.

>254 AlisonY: with their eyes on stalks LOL, what a great phrase.

Took me a while to get to this ... Real World Issues getting in the way ... but here 'tis:

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: Where the Crawdad Sings - I thought it was overrated when I read it, and the more it got hyped, the more strongly I clung to that opinion!

2. …You read multiple times: Hawaii, which in fact I'm re-reading at this very moment

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: Lord Jim - Simply could not get through it in high school; came back to it as an adult and actually enjoyed it.

4. …Was assigned and you liked: The Oresteian Trilogy - What an amazing introduction to pne of the oldest soap operas in the world!

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: User Friendly, by Spider Robinson, which I found on the swap shelf at a women’s fitness center.

6. …Was a library book (and what library): The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams, from my local library, Umatilla, Oregon.

7. … On a vacation of any kind: I don’t keep my reading journal in a format that lends itself to digging out that information! So I’ll offer a book I bought while on vacation, but didn’t read until after I got home: A Terrible Glory, by James Donovan.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": The Goldfinch – I understood it – just didn’t get what everyone was raving about, as I thought it overlong, obtuse, and self-indulgent

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Wolf Hall

10: … Was someone else’s copy: A Woman of No Importance, which my sister-in-law lent me.

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: The Vanished Man, by Jeffery Deaver – Though I usually stay away from series books, I make an exception for the outstanding Lincoln Rhymes suspense thrillers. (And, okay, Stephanie Plum – see Question #19)

12. … In which war plays a role: Gone With the Wind

13. … Is much older than you: Moby Dick

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver's latest.

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: Montana 1948, by Larry Watson

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: A History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage – part of a challenge to read a book that had been in your TBR stack “too long”.

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers

18: … In which Bad things happen: The Grapes of Wrath

19: … Is light and fluffy: Any of the Stephanie Plum books (and I think I’ve read them all! They are my Twinkies.)

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) ‘Star Trek’ fan fiction from the 70s & 80s, when writers like Lois McMaster Bujold, Peter David, Jean Lorrah, and others were cutting their teeth on the genre.

>256 LyndaInOregon: totally agree with you on #1 and 8

>256 LyndaInOregon: #20 - yes! There are some really good stories (yes, still "are") among that fluff. Like monthly Harlequins. Have you read Janet Kagan's Uhura's Song? Great story and great Star Trek story.

Uhura's Song was one of the better pro-novels. Fanfic is ... often a completely different critter. Better take this to my thread, as it could totally derail this one!

>231 avaland: QUESTION 38: LIST: A BOOK YOU READ THAT….

1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: The Vanishing Half, which I wouldn't have read except for my book club

2. …You read multiple times: I had to think about which book I've reread the most. Probably my favourites from the Chronicles of Narnia, but most memorably the Stand by Stephen King. Which was a very long time ago.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: Meatless Days, by Sara Suleri. Had to read it twice at university. I want those hours back

4. …Was assigned and you liked: Kiss of the Fur Queen, Tomson Highway, still a fav of all CanLit I’ve read

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: . . . drew a blank on this one

6. …Was a library book (and what library): went with the most unique library I've ever borrowed from . . . Murder of Roger Ackroyd and many other Agatha Christie novels, borrowed from the informal missionary library in Ukarumpa, Eastern Highlands, Papua New Guinea. I blazed through all of the Agatha Christies over the 2 months I spent there

7. … On a vacation of any kind: on a trip to Kaanapali, Maui, I ignored my family all day and ripped through Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": The Little Prince. I read this after hearing several people say it was their favourite book ever and that they often gave it as a gift because they loved it so much. I’m baffled.

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: Not the longest book I’ve read, but Middlemarch comes to mind

10: … Was someone else’s copy: The Girl On A Train – not a book I wanted to read, but had to read for book club. I borrowed a copy and enjoyed it very much

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: Bridget Jones’s Diary and sequels

12. … In which war plays a role: Tinder, by Sally Gardner – a haunting illustrated novel set in the Thirty Years War in 1600s Germany

13. … Is much older than you: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales stands out, but I’ve read The Bible and it’s older

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: last book I bought at a bookstore and have read is Taste:My Life Through Food, by Stanley Tucci

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: The Baby Is Mine, a unique novella by Oyinkan Braithwaite

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: Unsettled Ground, Claire Fuller for book club

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like) : The Wanderer, a wordless novel by Belgian author Peter Van Den Ende

18: … In which Bad things happen: First that came to mind was A Fine Balance by Rhohinton Mistry. This book scarred me. Honorable mention: If This Is A Man, which I believe has been mentioned already. It gave me night terrors.

19: … Is light and fluffy: Dreaming of Italy, Trevor Williams. (Relaxed sigh)

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?): I’ve discussed this book several times here on LT – A Dangerously Sexy Christmas, a Harlequin Blaze that stopped me in my tracks at the grocery store and that I bought as a joke. Guess what? It wasn’t bad at all. So there.

Note: Next question will go up sometime after Tuesday; and November will likely be the last of the questions for 2022. Over the years I have noticed that many start focusing on their new year/new thread in December.

>260 Nickelini:
#6 I envy your travels! that mustve been amazing, along with the book

#8 read in hs and used to carry it with me and reread constantly Thats also the time I was loving the prophetand jonathan livingston seagull tried to reread it a few years ago, and yeah it has its issues. But some of its message still stick with me

#15 howd you like it? sounds interesting

>261 avaland: I love the questions - not the essay ones so much but the list ones are great.

>262 cindydavid4: #15 howd you like it? sounds interesting

I enjoyed it. It's set during COVID lock down though, and I know many readers don't want to read about that

>261 avaland: Over the years I have noticed that many start focusing on their new year/new thread in December.

I'd say that's a very accurate description of what happens.

Over the years, this has somewhat perplexed me. I'm not sure what prompts this leap into the future, and would be interested to know. Does December then become a forgotten reading month? If so, what happened to being in the moment, being present, or however you want to phrase it? Isn't there enough to occupy December without rushing on to the next thing?

Perhaps one idea might be to start Club Read 20nn slightly later in December than currently happens. That would keep discussions going on people's current threads a bit longer.

For myself, my own situationally superstitious nature prevents me from creating a thread for the next year until I have navigated my way through the current year, but obviously others aren't curtailed by such ancient fears!

________________________
Edited to correct post reference

>264 Nickelini: good, yeah I don't mind the setting.

>265 SassyLassy: yeah I don't get that. Granted my family isnt super busy with christmas and holiday stuff, but I am always reading and always interested in what others are reading. And December would be the time to ask gift questions like: what fav book was given to you?
What book have you given others? What is the worst book youve even been given? etc. It might be a slower thread but Id rather that then a month of down time

Besides, a new thread is honesly the least chore Id be thinking about!

where and when do we start listing our years fav reads?

>265 SassyLassy: "For myself, my own situationally superstitious nature prevents me from creating a thread for the next year until I have navigated my way through the current year . . . "

This is me, as well, although in my case not as much from superstition as from a sense of fidelity to December. :)

>265 SassyLassy: In the years when I am behind on reviews, moving to the new and shiny thread for next year feels like a new beginning - it is too late in time to restart for this year so it feels better to start anew. So there is that.

>265 SassyLassy: I tried to stem the move to Club Read 2022 by not opening it up until Dec. 24th (except for thread curators so they could get ready). I figured some people might be off the 25th and want to get set up. That means it wasn't even possible to set up a 2022 thread until a week before the new year. Not a lot of December was truncated. Other groups do start much earlier.

>265 SassyLassy: Apart from the last couple of Covid years, I’ve normally been away over Christmas and New Year, so I don’t tend to have leisure to get my new thread set up properly until at least the first week of January. And — whilst not exactly superstitious — I suppose I have been brought up with a strong tradition of not anticipating anniversaries. Even hanging up next year’s calendar early feels quite wrong.

I’ve still got plenty of stuff piled up for November and December, including all the Q4 Victoriana that I haven’t touched yet.

>268 AnnieMod: I do understand the impetus for a clean slate and the idea of moving on. It's probably much better for the psyche!

>270 thorold: Even hanging up next year’s calendar early feels quite wrong.
I'm with you there - I don't even look at the pictures until the appropriate month!

>270 thorold: The Asian Book Challenge will keep me going to the bitter end, trying to squeeze everything in. I'm usually busy on the 31st trying to finish my book, so that I can start the next year fresh. As the end of the year approaches, I have started to wonder what I should do for reading plans next year. This was the first year in which I had formal plans, and there have been pluses and minuses.

I generally create my next-year thread in mid-December, with just the skeleton (top post and list posts and so on) and a post saying "I'll start posting here next year". I don't abandon this year's thread until 12/31, but if I don't set up the thread early it won't get set up until mid-January and I'll already be behind...I have enough trouble with that anyway.

>265 SassyLassy: & >270 thorold:, et. al.

To add to my earlier post on the subject, this harkens for me to a philosophy (if one may use so grandiose a word for such a subject) that I developed back when I was washing dishes at a lunch restaurant inside a department store inside a mall just outside of San Diego. I would be on my 15-minute morning or afternoon break, sitting in the break room with my book, and someone would come in when my break was almost over and start talking to me about something work related. I would think (and say if the person wasn't my boss), "Hey, I'm on a 15-minute break. Thirteen and a half minutes through a 15-minute break is still my break!"

Hence: December 27, 2022, will still be December and will still be 2022!

Sez I, anyway. To each his/her/their own of course.

>274 rocketjk: Washing Dishes at a Restaurant Inside a Store Inside a Mall Just Outside San Diego

I’d read a book with that title.

>275 dypaloh: Lol— you have a good eye

>275 dypaloh: sounds like the title of a country song actually!

>274 rocketjk: Hence: December 27, 2022, will still be December and will still be 2022!
Heheh, this. But then again I'm not a setter upper... I start a new thread, post a new picture at the top, I'm done. Usually on January 1 or thereabouts, or 2nd or 3rd if I'm, I don't know, lazy. But I'm way too I don't want to say OCD because that's not fair to people who actually have OCD... surely there's a term for a less severe form of extreme pickiness that isn't "anal," which I'd rather not use either to start my 2023 thread at any point in 2022.

>275 dypaloh:, >276 Nickelini:, >277 cindydavid4:

Glad y'all got a kick out of that. Actually, I got a kick out of the fact that you noticed. But also, I forgot to mention that it was right after college.

>278 lisapeet: . . . surely there's a term for a less severe form of extreme pickiness that isn't "anal," which I'd rather not use either . . . "

Detail oriented?

>231 avaland:
1. …Everyone else seemed to be reading: The Secret History by Donna Tartt I saw it recommended everywhere, and I actually really liked it. Not enough to want to reread it a bunch, but enough that it left an impression. I loved the atmosphere of the book and all of the characters were interesting.

2. …You read multiple times: The Starless Sea obsessed.

3. …Was assigned and you disliked: The Taming of the Shrew meh

4. …Was assigned and you liked: Jane Eyre I didn't think I would like it, but I was very entertained the whole time and it was very dramatic and had spooky energy.

5. …You found somewhere out of the ordinary: The Greenglass House by Kate Milford. found on a Goodwill shelf and judged it by its gorgeous cover. I've never heard anyone talk about it and it won't even touchstone, but the story is fun, atmospheric, and cozy!

6. …Was a library book (and what library): The Sun Down Motel loved it! one of the Baltimore County Libraries. Had a great time reading this past summer.

7. … On a vacation of any kind: American Gods Neil Gaiman never misses. I read it at the beach in the Outer Banks, North Carolina.

8. …You didn’t understand, didn’t "get": The Alchemist it was good, but didn't understand the hype.

9. … Was a real tome, but you got through it: The Silmarillion enough said...

10: … Was someone else’s copy: Mistborn: The Final Empire borrowed this trilogy from my mom's friend. Loved it!

11: … Was part of a series or trilogy: The Dream Thieves Book two of the Raven Cycle. I listened to the audiobooks for this series during the first few months of Covid lockdown, and would take walks to listen to them and get out of the house. I've listened through and read the physical copies several times a year since. So comforting.

12. … In which war plays a role: The Priory of the Orange Tree This book was so so long but so fascinating. The switching between plot lines kept me moving through the book, and it has the most gorgeous cover. Talk about an epic final battle!!

13. … Is much older than you: The Neverending Story Only by 19 years, but it's what came to mind. Everyone jokes about the movie being cheesy, but the book is breathtaking!

14. … Was bought in an actual bookstore: Anansi Boys One of Neil Gaiman's books that I haven't finished yet. I figured it was a guarantee that I'd like it, so I went ahead and bought it. I'm a few chapters in!

15. … Featured a family or at least two individuals related by blood: The Raven Boys Book one of the Raven Cycle. Blue and her mother Moira remind me so much of me and my mom, but with a slightly different relationship dynamic.

16: … Was part of a personal or group challenge: The Eye of the World This book had so much walking. Definitely a personal challenge to get through, I put it down for a while and almost didn't finish it. I lived in Columbia, SC when we had the thousand year flood, and during the period when there was no electricity I finished this book by candlelight in a small half-bathroom.

17: … Was out of this world (interpret that how you like): Neverwhere I just love Neil Gaiman. Neverwhere blew me away.

18: … In which Bad things happen: The Guest List I reread this recently! The drama is just insane, and my absolute favorite brand of murder book is one that takes place on a small, rainy island.

19: … Is light and fluffy: The Secret Garden my first favorite book, it's just so heartwarming.

20. … Is embarrassing to admit to (but you are going to tell us about it, right?) A Court of Thorns and Roses I liked it alright, but didn't finish the series past the third book. Too much roaring and use of the word 'male' as a noun, just isn't my thing! Feyre was sometimes great and sometimes bugged me. The monsters in this series were captivating, though. I was obsessed with the Bone Carver, the Weaver, and Baraxis.

>234 cindydavid4: Heidi!!! I loved that book too. It was so beautiful, and I'm not religious but the period where Heidi reads hymns to the older woman has always stuck with me. That book is so uplifting and charming

#7 did you watch the series as well? I started to but had me more confused than the book did, as much as i loved it

#16 I lived in Columbia, SC when we had the thousand year flood, and during the period when there was no electricity I finished this book by candlelight in a small half-bathroom.

Wow, you fit right in here!

re Heidi. the parts that stay in my mind was when her aunt took her to grandfather. He was a gruff old man, but sat her down, cut a slice of homemade bread and spread butter on it with chees, and a glass of milk. I could just see her enjoying that. The other one was when she met Klara. Their friendship was so sweet. then peter gets jealous and tosses her wheelchair down the cliff. and lo and behold, she walks! wasnt till I was a special ed teacher to realize how rridiculous, but it was such an amazing scene

>282 cindydavid4:
#7 I haven't watched the series! I'll definitely start it and get back to you, I need new things to watch.

and omg, the food in heidi. All of the descriptions, that book is so vivid. I swear I could smell the grass and taste the food.

>280 liz4444: #5 Book bullet! and did you know that's the first of a series of 5? My libraries have all five, so I suspect I'll be reading them pretty soon (I got the ebook of the first one already).

LOL! and then I went to look if I had anything else by her, and I already had Greenglass House! I got it in 2017, and never read it. So I'll start that soon... It touchstones if you leave the The off. If I put it on, it gives me a bunch of others from the series.

>284 jjmcgaffey: Hahaha, thank you! I was staring at the cover the whole time and kept typing the The, loll. I'll need to read the rest!

>265 SassyLassy: Thanks for keeping everyone busy while I was ...last was voting this morning.

QUESTION 39: INFLUENTIAL PHENOMENA*

Back in October, after listening to a BookRiot podcast, “Stretch” posted** an interesting list of the “phenomena” that influenced his reading over the years. His list of phenomena ranged from school book fairs to E-ink/E-book readers, the Harry Potter books and the introduction to Japanese literature here on LT.

What do you think were the strongest phenomena or factors that have influenced in the development of your own reading?

**See his Msg 149, dated Oct. 24th on his personal thread to read the whole post (which I recommend you read first).

*phenomena: occurrence, event, fact, happening, circumstance, situation

>287 avaland:

#39

For easy reference, the post Lois is talking about:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/337828#7960817

What made me the reader I am... My book love started around age six and a half, when I read my first chapter book on my own (Pippi Longstocking). I'll never know if another title might have had the same effect. Definitely it was the charm of the character and her adventures that did it for me. I wanted more and more and more of that.

Environment--no doubt my parents' own bibliophilia, the readiness with which they bought books and comics for us, was extremely important. Books were as natural a part of life as anything.

Lack of television--another environmental factor. Growing up in the Near East, we weren't tempted by the locally available TV in the least. On return to Europe my brother would "come down" with a TV addiction, but I stuck to books, saw movies in the cinema, and didn't "discover" TV until the 21st century and reruns of Buffy.

Classics--modern Greek as well as feeling strongly the belonging to the Med made ancient Greek and Latin feel a part of personal heritage. I loved classics as a teenager and still do, although I didn't pursue the studies long enough to be proficient.

Chinese and Japanese literature--for one of my "teen" birthdays I received two books of Chinese and Japanese poetry and fell in love. When I moved away from home for university, one of the first books I bought was Edward Seidensticker's translation of The tale of Genji, which cemented my addiction.

Modernist lit--this kicked in high school as well, with the fondness for the theatre of the absurd and other things out-of-this-world, zany, grotesque, ambiguous, and difficult. Not for difficulty's sake, but because--as happened to Hofmannstahl's Lord Chandos--so much in life was incommunicable, ungraspable by language.

QUESTION 39 What do you think were the strongest phenomena or factors that have influenced the development of your own reading?

For me, bedtimes.

I was a first child, and my folks had some rules then that I failed to appreciate. An 8 o’clock bedtime in third grade was one. I knew that just had to be when “good” TV was on (good because I didn’t get to see it). Since eight was too early for sleep I’d immerse myself in books. Two that I loved: The Jungle Book and The Story of Submarines. The worlds they described extended into my play. For example, my father had a big workbench in the garage for his lathe. That machine tool looked to me (trying to imagine stuff I didn’t understand) exactly like a delivery system for shooting torpedoes. I’d settle under the work bench, issue commands to sailors, order attacks, and conduct evasive maneuvers to dodge depth charges.

My younger siblings would enjoy more liberal bedtimes. But they didn’t have their own lathe-model submarine! And I gained, in addition, a life-long affection for books.

QUESTION 39 What do you think were the strongest phenomena or factors that have influenced the development of your own reading?

a mentor: I dont remember my parents reading to me. I do remember frequent trips to the library (they owned a deli across the street and sent me to get out of their hair) a librarian angel named Prisilla McCloud was in the kids section and took me under her wing, read books to me and and at 5 was reading my first books. I suspect she got a pastrami sandwich for her trouble.

She ended up transferring to the branch library near us when I was in HS so each saturday Id go and get her recommendations for the week. If she had time she'd ask me about them

my school in 1st grade wasnt big on phonics, We moved to the school near my house, so in 2nd gradeI was behind. I remember sitting inside a closet with a very nice lady (reading specialist) who helped me make sense and learned to break the code Wish I knew her name. Ever since i was one of the top readers in each grade

my dad loved to read and we would often read together, and take me to used bookstores, plus the big book sale'at the fair grounds every year. He had tons of books on his shelves that he let me choose from

bullying. Not sure why, but I started getting bullied in 5th grade. I think because we were not well off. Not sure, But recess times Id take a book and find a place to hide. Our school librarian let me come to the library sometimes. Bullying continued well into HS so I learned to keep my head down in a book. Great for my reading skills, not so great for social skills

boyfriend. He was a big sci fi fan, and one day he handed me his copy of Dune and said I must read it. I did and I was hooked. For much of HS I was drawn to the classics

I was a library helper in HS and often got access to books I wasnt supposed to be reading. have no idea why but found reads I wouldnt have known about otherwise.

Q39: Phenomenology of reading

To make this question distinct from all the others we've had about early reading influences, we probably need to keep the definition of a phenomenon reasonably narrow. Obviously in the dictionary it is simply anything we can perceive with our senses, but we've already done libraries, teachers, adults who read to us and all that kind of stuff. In the spirit of the original discussion on stretch's thread, it seems to be referring mainly to literary trends or to big social/cultural/technological changes that belong to the Zeitgeist of the period when our tastes were formed. Lets see what I can do with that...

— Television: This was the thing that was supposed to be killing reading when I was growing up, but I don't think it had much influence. My parents didn't want/couldn't afford a TV receiver until I was about ten, so up to that time it was just occasional programmes watched with friends or relatives, and even after that there wasn't all that much to see. Children's programming was about an hour between coming home from school time and the early evening news, and there were only two channels, one of which we weren't supposed to watch because it had commercials. I mostly remember Blue Peter, which tended to be a programme that introduced you to topics you wanted to follow up in the library afterwards (hovercraft, Mary Queen of Scots, snakes, William Wilberforce, the Navy, ...), so I don't think there was much deleterious effect. Later on there was more TV, but there was also constant homework, so the TV was never really a big influence. Obviously there were a few shows we all watched, like Monty Python.

— The Moon landings: a cliché, but it was still the most spectacular display of technology around at the time, and it fired me with enthusiasm to read just about everything in the Science & Technology section of the children's library and then move on to do the same thing among the adult books. But I do remember working out at an early stage that most of the people who wrote children's books on rocket science didn't actually know very much about it themselves...

— Intrepid (British) heroes: the humiliations of the post-Suez world meant that "we" had to look for low-budget ways of profiling ourselves, so there was a lot of attention paid to people like Francis Chichester and Robin Knox-Johnson, and to world-changing innovations like the hovercraft (remember the hovercraft?). I certainly remember reading the "junior editions" of their books and imagining myself as a solo ocean explorer.
A less-pleasant part of that was WWII-nostalgia, mostly indulged in by people too young to remember what it was actually like. There were stacks of books and films about that thrust at us: to my shame, I had a shelf of Biggles books, like everyone else, but it doesn't seem to have done any long-term harm.

— The Harry Potter of our time: there wasn't one. With hindsight Roald Dahl must have been the really influential children's writer during the years I was growing up, but I somehow never noticed him until I was reading his books to the next generation. I didn't really get into the local phenomenon, Alan Garner, either. My important children's writers were people from a generation earlier, like Erich Kästner, Arthur Ransome and C S Lewis. Tolkein was what everyone was reading, but I found Lord of the rings very boring...

— Bogus science: the seventies seemed to be a golden age of quacks, snake-oil salesmen and self-deceivers (in hindsight of course it was only the first glimmering of an inglorious dawn). We had a teacher who was, bizarrely enough, an Erich von Däniken fan, but I don't think he convinced anyone. And that early exposure may well have been a useful inoculation against all the fakery to come.

— LGBT+ literature: if you were in the right place, this would just have been getting going as a recognised genre when I was in my late teens, but I was only dimly aware of it until about a decade later. I already had suspicious quantities of Christopher Isherwood, Patrick White, E M Forster, etc. on my shelves before I realised that there was any sort of pattern there...!

Phenomena... hmmm.

Social reading phenomena was a biggie at a young age. Enid Blyton was all the rage for my primary school age group and I devoured so many of her books. I think that developed an interest in reading books that were part of a series - I enjoyed familiar characters - so Blyton led to various pony series (which were fuelled by a love of horses), Sweet Valley High and many others.

The lack of anything much else to do encouraged the massive summer holiday reading binges I remember. TV was generally only any good for my age group during the holidays up to 10am or so. After that the day stretched long, and as my siblings were older and our interests gap widened with age I'd a lot of time on my own to fill. Had there been the technology that's around now to distract me, I doubt I'd have read anywhere as much.

At secondary school, the Judy Blume craze kept me reading lots through first year, and I distinctly remember Virginia Andrews' Flowers in the Attic series being something all the girls were obsessed with. No surprise at that tween age it was reference to a small bit of sex in both that probably fuelled both the crazes. Judy Blume very much captured the major issues tween girls were worrying about (when will my period start? How will I know how to kiss properly?), so although we laugh about her books now they felt very important in that pre-internet era before information was available at your fingertips.

I got into Roddy Doyle and Maeve Binchy later in secondary school, heavily influenced by what my close friend was reading (we did a lot of book sharing). Both were very popular authors at the time.

Beyond that, I don't think my reading was overly socially influenced for a long time until I joined LT. For me this social aspect of reading (enabled, clearly, by tech advancement) has led to a massive increase in the amount of non-fiction I read. It now accounts for at least one third of my reading. The rise of 'science for the masses' in recent years has also led to me reading a lot more of that genre. As someone who was useless at science in school, these titles have encouraged a belated interest in this area for me, particularly anything to do with neuroscience.

Q39

The myth of the Jewish intellectual. Keep in mind I didn’t read as a kid. But closed books were interesting, and I really took to the movie The Chosen, about a well-educated reformed Jew making friends with a crazy intelligent Hasidic Jew in Manhattan. Anyway I had an image of reading when I wasn’t a reader and I carried that imagined perspective into my actual reading later. It’s still a large underlying influence, even if the myth doesn’t hold up so nicely. It’s why I read The Old Man and the Sea on a 10+ hour bus ride home from summer camp when I wasn’t a reader, instead of something fun. And why my second book, once I switched to become a reader, was a classic (available in my high school), Brave New World. (Even though the book that actually got me reading was a fun fantasy book - Eye of the World.) And why I still search out all those classics I feel i was supposed have read by now. I’m still in a way trying to obtain that myth personally.

>291 thorold: Using Mark's useful criteria as springboard . . . "literary trends or to big social/cultural/technological changes that belong to the Zeitgeist of the period when our tastes were formed. . . "

* Dr. Seuss & the subversive nature of reading: In the early 60s, when I first came of age as a very young reader (I turned 7 in 1962), Dr. Seuss, it seemed, was a go-to author, at least in our house. It wasn't until later that I realized how much I'd been affected by Suess' On Beyond Zebra! which is pretty much entirely about thinking outside the box and subverting the dominant paradigm. Whether the good doctor meant it that way or not, I have no idea (my mother certainly wasn't thinking of it that way), but the statements, both offered early in that book, "I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends, but my alphabet starts where your alphabet ends," and "When you stop at the Z, you're stuck in a rut. But on beyond zebra, you're anything but." That, added to Horton's admonition, "I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent" pretty much formed the worldview that I've aspired to ever since.

* Science fiction: The first authors that really fascinated me, in around 6th and 7th grade, were Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Heinlein's politics and social/gender attitudes certainly don't scan anymore, but the world of science fiction helped to kick my brain out of the dull suburban world I was in after we moved from an urban environment (Newark, NJ) out to the burbs when I was eleven.

* Baseball: In the early 60s and even into the middle part of that decade, baseball was still the most prominent sport in the U.S., although football was on the ascendence. So I read lots of baseball biographies and YA novels. In fact, a few years back I reread John R. Tunis's "Roy Tucker" trilogy, The Kid from Tompkinsville, World Series and The Kid Comes Back and enjoyed them immensely. But the bios in particular, I think, helped sharpen my taste for that sort of reading.

* The counter culture: Early "anti-establishment" novels like Catch 22 and, yes, On the Road (and On Beyond Zebra! of course) sent me on the path to pushing out my reading boundaries as I embraced, in my youthful naiveté, the counter culture of the late 60s and early 70s and further developed, as well, what I consider to be an extremely useful disenchantment with the powers that be. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was influential, of course, though I remember being even more impressed by Sometimes a Great Notion. I was initially impressed by Tom Robbins' early novels, as well. Now I can't stand his writing.

* The Vietnam War: I was also fascinated/horrified by the Vietnam War. I took part in many protests, but also was somehow drawn to learn about the experiences--the fear, horror and absurdity--of the U.S. soldiers who were sent there. I was just one year too young to get drafted, but during my college days and the years immediately thereafter I read a lot of Vietnam War fiction. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato was particularly good, as well as a less well-known novel called The 13th Valley by John Del Vecchio. The sense of dread encompassed by these narratives has also stayed with me.

All of these influences helped strengthen my love of reading and broaden my reading tastes.

>294 rocketjk: We are the same age but I don't remember Dr. Seuss being a big thing at that time. Hmm, we were probably running behind (I was in Maine).

>295 avaland: Maybe it was just in my house and I am extrapolating unrealistically. That could certainly be. Or maybe being in Maine you just had different influences. Hard to know.

I never heard of Dr. Seuss until I was older either.

Oh, i was well drenched in Dr. Seuss growing up in the 1970’s.

>287 avaland: #39 "literary trends or big social/cultural/technological changes that belong to the Zeitgeist of the period when our tastes were formed..." (I really think this should have made the question text...)

The fall of Communism - I was born in the last decade of Communism (old style anyway) in Eastern Europe. It was nowhere close to where it had been in the 50s (the fall of the regime and the Berlin Wall was not an overnight thing after all, the 80s were slowly moving towards it but with some bumps) but most books were published from the national presses and what was translated was controlled. When 1989 rolled through in Bulgaria (we consider 10 November as the start of the new times), things changed almost overnight. New publishers, books that had never even been heard of, the popular books one may have heard of but could never read - it all started showing up. Sometimes in bad translations, very often semi- (or completely) illegally (as far as copyrights are concerned). I was 8 at the time and that shaped what I could read - a decade earlier, I probably would not have read even half of what I did read in the first 10 years of me being a reader.

The summers in the village - no camps (except maybe for 2 weeks), no summer schools and so on when I was growing up - the week school finished (May 24 for Grade 1 and senior year, June 1 for elementary school, June 15th till 7th grade, June 30th after that), you got shipped to your village to be taken care of by your grandparents for the summer. No arguments, no options - that was what was being done with everyone in the 80s and the first half of the 90s - part of the local landscape. Which meant no access to the town library (they allowed you to check out 10-15 books for the whole summer - I really do not remember the exact number - you usually got the ones from the mandatory list that you did not have at home) - the village had a very small library where the newest book was 30 years old and at home the books were not much newer (and not that many books in either). At one point it was either attacking my father's school books (he went to a Russian language school so he had all the Russian classics in Russian) or read my grandfather's books on the theory of communism. My Russian improved drastically in those summers. I also learned to appreciate the classics...

The modernization/opening of the Speculative Fiction genres - I've loved Science fiction since I can remember. Fantasy was an acquired taste and most of the older ones I had access to were Sword and Magic which I was not a fan of at the time. The border genres were not something I was even aware of for a long time and after that I did not really find that gateway work to open them for me for awhile. It was Sir Terry and later Kelly Link who finally showed me what Fantasy and the border genres actually can do. I know that all that technically happened a lot earlier but I grew up in a small-ish town in Bulgaria, pre-internet. Until the very late 1990s-early 2000s, my idea of the genres was essentially works from the 50s to the 80s (with a few newer things thrown in for taste).

The Peace Corps volunteers and donations - one of the things the organization did in the now opened Eastern Europe of the 1990s was to send their volunteers to help teach English. Almost none of them was a teacher (although I did have one that was) - their job was to teach you to talk the language and introduce you to the culture (it was a bit confusing because they were American and we were taught British English but...). They were stationed in all of the schools which taught English extensively (Language high schools, Math and nature sciences schools and the like) and everyone had 2 lessons per week with them. That allowed us to read in English a lot faster than just the regular lessons would allow and having someone native explain the slang and the usage of the language when you do not understand was invaluable. The second part of that was the donations - the Peace Corps donated English language libraries (~1000 books) to the schools they had volunteers in - mainly mass market paperbacks from the 50s-80s. These libraries did not contain the usual classics we worked on at school but just literature - Agatha Christie, "To Kill a Mockingbird", Science Fiction and so on. These were the only books in English you could get your hands on in my town (except for the Penguin Classics - these made it to the local bookstore because of the British Council program which made the textbooks we were using, the major classics and the additional grammar books and dictionaries available for purchase in all towns that had the schools which taught English extensively - books in the bookstores, textbooks and so on directly from them via an order in the bookstore).

Internet and the first credit cards - the first time I used internet was in late 1999. By the time I could program, I was winning competitions even but I had never been online. It took me a few years to actually find my feet around it but it was not until 2003-2004 when I got my first credit card (they had been available a bit earlier but not popular) that I realized that now I have access to books to any book in English. Once I convinced different small publishers to ship to Bulgaria anyway (because we had a bit of reputation at the time of cards stealing and worse - not unwarranted but still). The rest as they say is history.

Bookdepository - the previous one may have opened the world but it was an expensive opening. Shipping prices were horrendous - you often paid as much in shipping as you paid for the books and second hand books were impossible - shipping made them prohibitively expensive (the cheapest was amazon.com - $3.99 per package plus $3.99 per book in the package so a 4 books package cost $19.95 to get shipped to you - plus the price of the books; amazon.co.uk changed the prices for Bulgaria sometime in the mid 2000s making it a bit cheaper but not by much. You could not add a LOT of books in the package because a combined price (shipping plus goods) of over $80-$100 triggered the custom duties threshold and now you owed even more money, this time to Customs - it was supposed to be only on goods but if they came via the regular post, the clerks really did not care - they looked at declared and shipping combined and it was a pain to point out the rules). Then Bookdepository added Bulgaria to their list of supported countries. They may have been a bit more expensive than the Amazons but without the postage, it was a lot cheaper. And they shipped every book in its own carton thus never triggering the customs threshold (which was also moved a bit higher at one point). I know that this one does not fit fully into the idea of the question but it kinda does - it was the start of the opening of Europe towards Bulgaria). It was still new books only (that would change for me when I moved to the States a few years later) but it did change what I was reading - I was a lot more likely to risk a book (especially some of the cheaper ones).

LibraryThing - anyone here that is going to claim that LT did not change their reading habits at all? :)

Kindle, second hand books and the era of mass reprints - these kinda happened at the same time for me - and they did change what I had available (having access to a US library, to second hand books which do not cost an arm and a leg to ship, local bookstores, publishers who can ship to me a lot easier and Kindle). That coupled with the era of reprints - a lot of older books suddenly become available again, Project Gutenberg and all other online sources - changed the trajectory of my reading in ways I would not have thought possible.

Audio books and podcasts - I was very late to all of these - audio was not something I even looked at for a very long time. Once I did... well, it became part of my daily life.

That got long...

Q39:

Fascinating answers everyone. Since I may have inadvertently started this on my thread I should port over my answers:

1. Scholastic Book Fairs -- growing up in a small middle of nowhere community, these fairs were really the only way to get books that were current. Our small library did it's best but most things were long in the tooth. The fairs was as close to the bleeding edge as we got for what was current.

2. Harry Potter publication and series -- hit at the right time. I was 11 when the first one came out and was the first series I followed as they came out. never really fell down the fandom hole but I remember several summer days consuming the newest release. Hitchhiker and the Discworld were also important at this time.

3. E-ink and E-reader -- changed my reading as adult. I read almost exclusively on an e-reader and I don't plan on going back.

4. Barnes and Noble/Amazon -- again access is a big factor. I get that small independent bookstores are important, but small towns and tiny communities don't have the luxury of being picky. So a Barnes and Noble and an Amazon package opened book world to an endless amount of possibilities. I have moved away from Amazon where I can, but can't deny it's impact.

5. Writng about books -- this LT specific, I never kept a reading journal before. Finding LT and the forums has made reading a more social function and makes me reflect on what I read differently. Also added to new avenues that I don't think I would have explored without the LT and specifically Club Read.

6. Introduction to Japanese Literature -- another LT influence. The introduction of Japanese Literature from Lilisin has fundamentally changed the trajectory of what I read. I would have never picked up a Japanese author on my own with the exception of Murakami. Now besides horror Japanese literature is the only thing I seek out with purpose.

7. Audiobooks -- not the biggest change for me, still a small portion of my reading life, but has expanded what can be consumed and where. Competes with podcasts and loses most of the time.

>298 dchaikin: I knew him as a kid from the Grinch. Wasnt till I was actually teaching in 79 that a realized what a wealth of material was available to young children

>287 avaland:

Library summer reading challenges! My mom was always taking me to the James Island branch of the Charleston County public library system, and they had a lot of reading challenges. I already read a ton, but these challenges made me competitive. I would bring back 12-15 books every visit, read them all as fast as I could, go back for more, and collect the summer reading prizes. That Library branch was really involved in making it a fun experience. I have a handful of reading medals and a free karate lesson (that led to more karate lessons for a while) and free visits to the ice skating rink. I loved that library so much!

>291 thorold: it seems to be referring mainly to literary trends or to big social/cultural/technological changes that belong to the Zeitgeist of the period when our tastes were formed. Lets see what I can do with that...

mmmm good point. lemme see what I can do here

The Holocaust In our temple the education director, who I think was a survivor, would talk to us most every sunday about our history, evoking this event and never letting something like this again. Certainly that lead to reading Jewish history, and I think I read diary of anne frank about the same time. Like >293 dchaikin: I was a big fan of the chosen and similar books This later lead to an interest in geneology leading me to reading books on immigration.

Assassination of Robert Kennedy. My dad and I always watched the news together and caught this as it happened.. I was about 11, and while I knew about what was going on around me, this tragedy opened my eyes to how history turns on a dime, and how one event can change everything. I was already interested in current events, which lead to reading the paper. I became more aware of the wide world which lead to my reading more about it. the good earth grapes of wrath come to mind, but others surely followed. this lead to me become an activist for social justice

Counter Culture Mad Magazine led me later to Mother Jones, as well as the humor of Doonesbury, Far Side, the Onion and every bit of satire I could find

TV I was a big fan of PBS: Nova, Masterpiece Theatre, Connections, The Civil War, I Claudius, certainly influenced more reading and more learning

the internet: I had just gotten into it around 2000 and found the Table Talk Salon from the Atlantic. My first experience with an online bookgroup. I was terrified at first, feeling like I wasn't smart enough to belong. But they took me in and opened my eyes to books and authors Id never have found on my own. Which of course leads up to LT which continues to expand my reading world

Q39

>288 LolaWalser: The first couple paragraphs match me exactly. Bibliophile parents, who read to me and encouraged me to get my own books - at 11 I owned over a thousand books of my own (mostly gifts, of course). Lack of TV - until I was 13 we lived overseas, and most of the time there was one English-language channel that had maybe as many as three kid-oriented programs running in a week (Dan'l Boone, The Swamp Fox, and Zorro are the three I remember - Disney shows). So while we watched religiously, it didn't take up much time - had to get our stories elsewhere.

I recall one sequence - we got to see 101 Dalmatians one summer, then it went away (left the country, and then it was in the Vault when we got back to the States, so I didn't see it for another 10-15 years). I found the book of that story during that time, and read it so many times that I (still) get the two confused. They're very different stories - but I visualize events that were only in the book in Disney animation, and events that did happen in the movie in animated versions of the book illustrations.

I don't know that any general events really affected my reading - small ones, like where we were and what books I could get, certainly, but broad zeitgeist not so much. We had Seuss, and Blyton, and C.S. Lewis, and Pippi Longstocking, and Tintin, and Asterix...lots of horse books, the Black Stallion and other Farleys and nearly everything Marguerite Henry wrote...Kipling, too. Since we lived in Afghanistan, he had (has) a special resonance for me - again, personal not general things affecting me. I have no idea what my first SF book was...likely I got there via fantasy, via the Colored Fairy Books (I had quite a few of them - Blue, Lilac, Purple, Brown I'm sure of) - that's my primary genre now (F and SF, I don't separate them).

And LT made very little change in my reading patterns. It did a) introduce me to books I might never have heard of otherwise...but I have a lot of sources of various sorts and b) get me, for possibly the first time in my life that wasn't a library contest, to actually track my reading. And write reviews, for other people but mostly for myself. But LT didn't change the sorts of things I read, or how much, or anything like that. It did help me keep track of what books I own, though - something I'd been trying to do for years before I found LT.

Q39

- Weltbild catalogue: When I was about ten years old, my mom started working in a bookshop belonging to the Weltbild chain. Every month we received their catalogue and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it and mark the books I wished to have. I marked everything that looked mildly interesting. Of course I did not get all of those, but my mom did give me lots of books because we were able to buy them at a discount, and we got damaged books at a very cheap price or even for free. Because of that I read many books that you would usually not read as a teenager, or that were rather obscure and I would not have discovered them otherwise.

- Tolkien: I was given my first boxed set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 2001 for my birthday, which is in September. I read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Rings before I watched the first film, which came out in December that year. These books, and the film, completely blew me away. I had loved fantasy before, but Tolkien’s writing touched my soul. I became a total nerd and for three years, my then best friend and I talked about nothing else and spent all our money on books and going to the cinema. Tolkien is still my very favourite writer.

- Internet: In my early twenties I became a member of LovelyBooks, a German site similar to LT. I did not enjoy the way it took, so I looked for another site and joined LT in 2012. For many years, I only used the LT catalogue, though, and was not active in the groups.
I joined Instagram in 2015 and posted almost daily for four years, and followed many bookish accounts. My book buying went through the roof in those times, and my tastes changed in that I read more and more English books, and more new releases. But it also built up a lot of pressure to always keep up with what was trending, and to continually post nice pictures, so I quit “bookstagram” in 2019.
I joined the Category Challenge in 2021 and this group in 2022 and it has influenced my reading in several ways. I find it much easier to stick to reading and not drop out of it so easily because my motivation is higher. I am also much more interested in reading more globally, although I am not really doing so right now because I want to reduce my TBR first before buying more and more new books, and my TBR is not that diverse.

- Amazon/Audible: These have changed my reading habits because Amazon makes it so much easier to access English books. I try to buy new German books in the local shops and older books in both languages from online secondhand shops (there aren’t any secondhand shops around where I live), but Amazon is my best choice for new English books, which can be very expensive in Germany and for which you also have to wait for several weeks sometimes, whereas Amazon delivers them within a few days. Audible, and also the kindle, are just so convenient and again, they offer accessibility.

I have tried to stick to actual phenomena with this… The biggest personal influences would be university, especially studying abroad in Australia, as well as my husband.

QUESTION 39: PHENOMENA and the PHENOMENOLOGY of READING

Nationalism: As a child, you don't get to have much influence over the books that come your way. The books that found their way to me, fiction and nonfiction, often had the idea of Scotland as its own country, whether pre Act of Union or since. This wasn't obvious to me then, but became more clear with age. I suspect it is what has formed my interest in independence movements in general, and definitely led to my interest in novels from other countries where some form of struggle is happening.

No television: Television only came into the house when I was an older child, and it wasn't particularly interesting. As an adult, there have been long stretches of time when I have lived without one, so like others above, books were the focus.

Books everywhere: The houses I lived in seemed to be drowning in books; there was great scope for illustrating children's books there. I thought that every house was like that. Most extreme was my grandparents' house, where some rooms were set up as stacks. Obviously if books were there, they were there for a purpose, and that was to be read.

Libraries: I mean these in the sense of a phenomenon. They were like a secular church, a place for contemplation. I still visit new ones whenever I travel.

Victorians: As a child, I wanted to be as widely read and as knowledgeable as they appeared to be to my young self. I have never lost my fascination with them.

Romanovs: Not sure if they were a phenomenon or not, but they were a huge influence on my teenage and later reading. Some youthful part of me found them somehow mysterious and romantic, and I read a lot about them in my teens, which naturally led me to the great Russian novelists.

Question 39 PHENOMENA ....

I've had a tough time trying to answer this question. I had a terrible time weighing one thing against another...

1. Having books in the house. My father liked to read and some of the these books were his or books or books passed on to him from one of his many younger siblings. My mother may have had one or two. Thus, on the back of the chimney, was some deep, narrow spaces stuffed with books. Ernie Pyle WWII dispatches, war novels, some classics, a boxed set of Jane Eyre/Wuthering Heights, a medical reference book ... A real mix. I also had a brother 5 years older who was doted upon and who amassed quite a collection of softcovers through school book "clubs". He was not into sharing much so I got into his collection on the sly. I think I have mentioned before that the public libratary was 10 miles away, and my father had the one car and often weekends. And there was no school library on our side of town until they built the new school and collected used books for a library.

I think books offered me escape, education, entertainment and a way, as an introvert, to be by myself in a house stuffed full of family.

2. A negative influence My parents refused to let me go to any other colleges than the state university three hours north in ...well...nowhere. We argued. I got pissed and took off with my boyfriend and we enrolled in an evangelical bible college. I thought I would be able to do good things for the world. Anyway, they were big on preaching/lecturing, some of it off the cuff and there was very few actual books. I remember one biblical history text, and one of the younger profs taught William Glasser's Reality Therapy. I did read the 66 books of the bible at least twice. I did get caught in the girl's dorm reading a unacceptable book and had some sort punishment, which I have long ago forgotten (we had the book hidden in the bathroom). So, a bit of temporary "backslide" in my reading. Ah, the 70s. It was either drugs or religion.

3. Email, the Internet.... I don't think I need to explain this one, do I?.

4. The Bookstore Years In 1996, the communications company I worked for was shutting down and I happened to mention then when I was in my local independent bookstore. The manager offered me a job. And I took it. It can be hard work, and one is on their feet most of the time, but oh, the pluses. Endless new books arriving, piles of advanced reader copies, some authors...etc. I ended up doing a lot of data entry (because I could type with all my fingers), going through the catalogs and putting in the books ordered by the owner or manager. This is how I got addicted to 'shopping' by publisher catalogs. Then I discovered we could buy from the UK through the wholesaler Gardners (a great portion of the world opened up to me; Africa, for example) Gawd, I loved that job (after I met Michael, I moved from NH to MA and the much longer commute eventually got to me and I decided to leave. But before I went, one of our Random House reps told me that I would need something to a replace the bookstore and she told me about this new thing called LibraryThing ...

5. LibraryThing
I joined LT Oct. 6, 2006. Here was the place where I could continue being around bookish people...and so many readers from around the world.* What a resource! Thank you all for sharing your reading and your thoughts here on LT, it's been a great 16 years.

*FaceBook came along and charmed a lot of readers to it's site (I'd still like to get some of those Aussies back!)

QUESTION 39: INFLUENTIAL PHENOMENA

I love this question! I feel like I know a lot of you better than I did before.

I’m going to start off by stealing a concept from >293 dchaikin:, The myth of the Jewish intellectual, But mine is second-gen: this was my parents ethos. In their case, it wasn’t so much of a myth as an aspirational fable, that books and intellectual pursuits would pull you up out of the working class and out of what was then, in the 1940s/’50s/’60s U.S., a still-foreign Jewishness. I think this was amplified in urban areas, and it was a smooth shot for smart Jewish kids from Brooklyn (my dad) and the Bronx/Yonkers (my mom) to move from City University and Brooklyn College to better schools, especially on GI Bill scholarships. So reading and intellectual curiosity were very big in my house growing up—many many eclectic books on the shelves, two kinds of encyclopedia, books for gifts and any books I wanted in between. I was pretty introverted as a child, and spent a lot of time reading and geeking out on various threads of interest, all of which were encouraged.

Interestingly enough, there wasn’t a huge focus on my formal education, though they put me in private schools—not all of which turned out to be that great. I think they just assumed school would be important to me, but I didn’t grow up with that same ethic and after seventh grade or so was perfectly happy to sacrifice my education for the pursuit pleasure… luckily my love of reading and information stuck with me.

My peers: I always say that my dysfunctional hippie high school was pretty crappy in terms of the formal aspects, but one of the things it did do for me was throw me together with a bunch of other smart weirdo teenagers who brought along their parents’ and older siblings’ books and records. I was exposed to such great culture in high school, wonderful reading trails that have stayed with and influenced me all my life. Ditto my college years (NYC art school, early 1980s)—the curriculum was OK in terms of assigned reading, but my friends (some fellow students but mostly just folks in my social circles) turned me on to a huge range of stuff. And we’d sit around talking about it, too, trading opinions and paperbacks and listening to records and cassette tapes. Good times that taught me how to be part of a literary/cultural community.

No TV: I never really loved TV as a kid, and didn’t have it at all as a teenager and into most of my adulthood. In 1998 I finally got a small one from my then-boyfriend, who I think couldn’t stand the fact that I didn’t have one… and my son, 11 or so at the time, was SO SICK of being the only kid in the world with no TV and having to listen to his beloved Yankees on the RADIO for god’s sake. I’ve still never really taken to it. We have a nice little home theater system here now, thanks to my husband (who loves TV, go figure), but I rarely watch it unless we’re streaming a film. It’s just… not my thing. And my son turned out to be a serious reader too, which I don’t doubt is because that was his only form of entertainment for years.

A Common Reader Catalog: A wonderful mail order organization started by the estimable Jim Mustich, with a fantastically eclectic assortment of books. The catalogs were marvelous, coming every three weeks or so and featuring little blurbs on each book... they were enticing, and my interest far outpaced my disposable income. I would circle the ones I wanted with Sharpie markers and slowly accumulate what I could. That expanded range of reading prepared me for a lot of the conversations I would have online.

Internet forums: I think one of the single most life-changing things for me was finding an early online literary forum, Readerville. It not only gave me a place to talk about what I was reading, but taught me how to do so, how to have a public voice. It was when I first began posting there that I realized I wanted a career in the book/literary world—at the time I was an office manager in an architectural firm. I began blogging for the Readerville proprietor in 2008, which led to me starting a literary blog of my own when the site folded a year later. That all was where I really learned how to write and review, and where I made a lot of great contacts/friends. Through them, my reading life opened up enormously. And now I’m here, and ditto!

Work: And I did end up in a reasonably literary job, and do a lot of reading for work. Most of it good, some of it stuff I wouldn’t have picked up if I didn’t have to—though it’s good for me to stretch—and I get a lot of great recommendations from the editors at work.

Ebooks: Library ebooks, e-galleys—an embarrassment of riches. I read my first ebook (Wolf Hall) in 2009? 2010? and never stopped (though I still love print as well). That’s a lot of great access, and I've take full advantage of it.

A Common Reader Catalog: Oh I loved that catalogue! couldnt really afford to buy month but I usually could manage one book or tzatcka a month. Really sad when it stopped. but then, there was the internet!!

>258 jjmcgaffey: That would be mine, too. One I recall that I thought was priceless - don't remember the name of it, but a sub-plot was Data writing a romance novel....

>310 WelshBookworm: The worst two I can recall are "Spock sets up as a pirate" (and turns out to be a double agent), and the one with the (alien) prince and the swords. The aliens look like fluffballs on stork legs (IIRC), and yet the prince is attracted to Uhura and some of the locals (after the away team is stranded on the planet) are attracted to Sulu. Of course that may have been for his sword skill, but still. Neither one has any idea of what those characters actually were like...cardboard puppets for the authors. I'm seriously surprised either one got published. It may have been the authors - can't recall who wrote either one (and very uncertain about titles - the first may have been Vulcan's Fury and the second...Shadow Prince? Maybe?). At that point I was reading all of them - it was the pirate one that finally made me stop and be a lot more picky.

This is the last question of 2022, but before I post that, I want to say that it has been a privilege to be your inquisitor for this year. The very capable Sassylassy will be taking the reins for 2023. Any suggestions for next year may be directed to her (via a message, rather than clutter up her reading thread :-).




QUESTION 40: YOUR 2022 READING

We are nearing the end of the reading year and it's a good time to take a slightly preliminary and general assessment of our 2022 reading. We are not looking for statistics so much as a sense of how it all went.

A few questions to get you thinking (NOT a list):

*Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?
*Are you satisfied with your reading this year?
*If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?
*Which books were your best reads and briefly why?
*Which books bombed with you and why?
*Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?
*Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?
*Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Have you started a series you wish to continue?
*Are there other members you would like to thank for specific recommendations?
* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?
*How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?

>312 avaland: Thanks so much for your questions - I know how challenging this can be! I hope there will be more of them in the future.

>312 avaland:

Q#40

There's a whole month left but I don't expect it to improve anything. This was an unusually bad reading year for me, the first since I began recording (in my teens) in which I saw more films (223 so far) than read books (203 so far).

I always read the same sort of books--more nonfiction than fiction, more older than contemporary lit--so no special remarks on quality etc. I don't set specific goals but maybe I'll have one or two for the next year because I feel more urgency to get to some stuff.

For one thing, I've meant for years to take a deep dive into José Lezama Lima and why wait? It's the sort of thing that I did only a few times in my life (with Woolf, Proust, and Sade) and Lezama may well turn out to be the last.

>312 avaland: Thanks for coming up with all the questions this year, Lois!

Q40 The last ten-and-three-quarter months

I somehow have a feeling that I've not achieved anything special this year, but that might just be general grumpiness because it's not even Advent yet, and everyone's talking as though the year is already over. Or because 2022 so far has not exactly been one of those years when the inhabitants of our planet showed themselves in their best light. Apart from a minor glitch in early summer when I broke my wrist and messed up various holiday plans, it's been a pretty good year for me personally, however. And I've managed to achieve a basic level of competence in bookbinding, which is both satisfying and useful.

When I look back through my threads, I seem to have read quite a lot in 2022 (already more books than in 2021), and there was some good stuff there too. A big Abdulrazak Gurnah catch-up in Q1, as well as Olga Tokarczuk's amazing The books of Jacob; a re-read of David Copperfield for the Victorian theme, as well as several Victorian authors new to me; Charles Causley and Patrick Gale's new novel about him; two German verse-novels; three novels by Dutch authors who have switched pronouns in the last few years; a Pushkin catch-up; a gloriously camp Firbankathon.

I've also cleared a satisfying number of books from the old end of the TBR pile (but there are always more there...), and I finally got around to Simenon's irritatingly long intimate memoirs.

It looks as though the two books that excited most discussion in my threads were probably Alberto Manguel's Packing my library and Samuel R Delany's The motion of light in water — make of that what you will. Both of those were recommendations from CR members, if I remember rightly.

Of course, there were things that got lost: if you look at the goals I listed in January (https://www.librarything.com/topic/338153#7700777) then I only really managed to get anywhere with the first two. I even failed to meet the negative aim of "not reading any more about Neutral Moresnet", something most CR members could probably do without any effort at all...

Fiction vs. non-fiction seems to be about the same as in past years, around 60% fiction, but I seem to have been reading a bit less crime-fiction and more general fiction than usual. Not sure if there's a reason for that.

I haven't thought coherently about 2023 plans yet, and I probably shan't until I post my new thread. But that reminds me that I really ought to post the voting thread for Reading Globally theme reads, which usually play a big part in steering my reading over the year...

I'm expecting to have less time to read next year, for good reasons, but that remains to be seen. My experience this year was that I found myself buying and borrowing books during the weeks I had limited reading time, so the TBR pile has been growing a bit.

Mmm...satisfied with my reading overall, yes. Lots of minor dissatisfactions, though. I did _very_ badly on reading BOMBs, and I doubt I'll get many more in in the next month and a bit. Some, but... Also, relatedly, bad on discards - I didn't get rid of many books. This is a serious goal for me, I have too many physical books in my house!

Both my five-star reads this year (so far) were rereads. But I had quite a few four and four-and-a-half star reads, including several new authors (and a good many continuations of favorite series). There are a lot of books out there that have what I'm looking for - rich characters, complex but not convoluted settings/situations, and...nice? I _do_not_ enjoy antiheroes. I want people to be trying to do good things - even (especially) if their trying gets crosswise of someone else's trying. People can seriously hurt each other when both are trying to do good - and that sort of story is much richer (given you need conflict - some books manage almost without) than Evil Villain and Pure Good Hero (yawn).

Unfortunately, a _lot_ of my ER reads were one- and two-stars for me. Nasty characters, wooden writing (or angsty), pointless wallowing - note that some of the books I panned for wallowing have been highly reviewed by others on LT for the rich interactions. YMMV. Those authors just weren't writing for me.

Huh. I have read _very_ little non-fiction this year, much less than I usually do. All kinds of reasons, which amount to - I just didn't. Doesn't bother me - I read what I want to read.

And yes, I found several new authors to binge this year! Mel Todd (urban fantasy/SF (can you have urban SF? She does)), Travis Baldree (only one book so far, which is _amazing_ - Legends & Lattes. I'll read anything else he writes!), Jasmine Guillory (romance, well done), Lauren Connolly (um...urban fantasy? Kind of?), Nathan Lowell (SF)...and a lot of good books from authors I've found only recently. And from ones I've been reading for 30+ years. Overall, I had a _lot_ of good books this year.

I've gotten a lot of book bullets, but I don't consistently track them, so I'm not sure who I've gotten them from. I know at least once (last year, I think) I burbled about a book on someone's thread and we figured out that it had been a book bullet from (a previous iteration of) their thread.

No plans except my usual, to deal with BOMBs and get rid of books; hopefully I'll do better next year than this. And...yeah, my plan to put my keeper books in boxes and put the BOMBs on shelves keeps looking better (digging up a particular book is hard when they're in boxes, and browsing for serendipity is near impossible). Not exactly a reading plan, but a facilitating-reading plan.

>315 thorold: I somehow have a feeling that I've not achieved anything special this year

Well you managed to get me reading books I never would have discovered. So if nothing else, you enabled a fellow reader to branch out! Thank you

Well I read at least 75 books this year, quite a few more than the last 4 years. The secret to my success was retiring! Also had great help from the various challenges, RTT and RG themes, author discussions and lots of enablers around here (looking at you thorold, Paul Crusaink, Labs, Rocket, kidzdoc,Dan, Lisa Peet, Alison oh heck most of you are guilty but I thank you.)

I am pleased with my reading this year, most has been fiction, and the non fiction have been mostly biographies. What I am proud of is the number of reads that were from translations; my sights have expanded and Im suspecting they will do next year as well with the new African challenge

New authors: Elif Shafak, Defene Suman,Natalie Haynes,Teffi, Gurnah,Erika Flatland,Chingiz Aitmator, Pip Williams, Laird Hunt,Alberto Manguel,Alex George. , John Nicols, Aerin Kim,(there were more, but these had books that I rated 5*

Best reads the five thousand and one nights, the silence of schezerade, the wrong end of the telescope,a Thousand ships,memories, Moscow to the Black Sea,damnificados, My fathers notebook,the dictionary of lost words ,zorrie ,the mother in law ,autumn ,my brilliant life ,our missing hearts, the book of illusions, terry pratchett a life with footnotes

Why? good reads that I couldnt pull away from, memorable reads that stayed with me for a long time, good writing, complex characters, interesting stories

Disappointed reads City of Brass, the midnight library, a woman is no man, my uncle napoleon, the monkey king, the dragon republic, the brass drum

Why? usually the writing, poorly developed characters, plots that seemed to go nowhere, and stories that made no sense

As usual,I have no plans for next years reading. I will be participating in the African challenge, aside from that, whatever I can glean from hereabouts

>318 cindydavid4: I didn’t know you retired this year.

>312 avaland: Q 40

* Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?

Flat. (I apologize for the energy-kill my post is.) i had some moments, was glad to read Decameron, and I enjoyed the several Booker prize books I read (instead of listened to). But it felt like a flat year where i was never carried away, but just eating pages.

* Are you satisfied with your reading this year?

Disappointed

* If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?

Not bad. I failed the TBR plan, but I was content with my other goals - Decameron, Musil ( mixed experience) Booker, Wharton, Shakespeare

* Which books were your best reads and briefly why?

In hindsight three stand out as nice reading experiences: Bewilderment by Richard Powers, Second Place by Rachel Cusk, and By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño. Each was short and playful. Actually My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout could be added to that list. Oh, right, and The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli

* Which books bombed with you and why?

Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536-1860 was a history book i was really looking forward to. It was long, slow and didn’t do much for me. Musil wasn’t a bomb, but didn’t win me over.

* Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?

Nothing crappy. But finding the right mix that works for me is tricky (and a moving target). So good books, but not satisfying.

* Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?

I’m not concerned about that, but I keep track and I notice I’m reading a ton of novels lately relative to everything else.

* Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Have you started a series you wish to continue?

I think I’m moving on. Chaucer and Richard Wright in 2023.

* Are there other members you would like to thank for specific recommendations?

For motivations. The Victorian theme helped with three books. Thanks Anniemod! And Lisa ( labsf39 ) got me to read and chat about By Night in Chile.

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?

Yes

* How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?

I’m happy Richard Wright has a lot of mixed-length novels. I think I’m wanting shorter novels.

>312 avaland: thanks for a fun year of questions. Always a nice diversion.

>319 dianeham: four years ago; but the last few years I was subbing and working at a museum. Im in total retirement mode right now!

>322 cindydavid4: cool Cindy. Congrats.

*Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?
*Are you satisfied with your reading this year?
Pretty much

*If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?
Nothing specific

*Which books were your best reads and briefly why?
I rated 55 books 4 stars or better

*Which books bombed with you and why?
No details on the bad ones, sorry.

*Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?
Yes, generally

*Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?
I haven’t read much nonfiction. I’m okay with that.

*Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Yes, J. Robert Lennon, Aminatta Forna, Mercé Rodoreda

Have you started a series you wish to continue? No

*Are there other members you would like to thank for specific recommendations? Everyone

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?
Think I’ll try read some earlier works by Anne Tyler since I’ve only read her more recent ones.

*How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?

My 2022 reading year was good for the most part, found some Manga series I want to keep following, read a lot of good dark and disturbing books this year. Have become following entrenched in the dark side. Didn't read any Japanese literature that I loved this year. All the books I read from Japanese authors were good but nothing that will standout fiction wise. And have fallen well short of reading more women. Still read more than in past years but didn't reach the goal. This year looks like a full half-marathon for me, oh the joy.

Next year I want to read longer books and of course continue reading Jaoanese works. Both these books are piling up and I need focus less on numbers and more on plowing through the TBR. So I will need to tweak my goals for next year to reflect that. Yay!, more fun with spreadsheets.

Don't think I am reading to pick the best reads of the year quite yet. A couple might sneak across the line by the end of the year.

Question 40

I read a lot more comfort reads than usual, so feel that my reading was flatter than I like. But I remind myself that Dad died in March and my dog died in July, so comfort reads were OK this year. This also influenced nonfiction reading as 4 out of 5 so far were biographies or memoirs. Nevertheless, each book was memorable in its own way.

What I missed this year were things that stood out when I look back. I can pick favorites, but not a lot I thought was outstanding, and they seem to be either at the very beginning of the year (The broken earth trilogy), or coming up now (The mountain in the sea, The world keeps ending and the world goes on.) I did miserably on the two challenges I thought I was committed to, and in 2022 will read what I like (which is what I do anyway.)

I did discover two new-to-me mystery authors that I will continue to dip into: Martin Walker’s Inspector Bruno series set in France and Maurizio de Giovanni’s Bastards of Pizzofalcone series set in Naples, Italy.

I am participating in Santa Thing for the first time this year, and that has made me narrow down my 800+ list of things I want to read to a more manageable wishlist, and I am looking forward to more reading - always more reading!

I'm very happy with my reading this year. Not only did I read more, but the quality was high as well. In large part, I have Paul Cranswick and the Asian Book Challenge to thank. I expanded my horizons and read a lot of translated literature from new-to-me countries and authors. I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan was my favorite read of the year (so far), but An Unnecessary Woman, Galsan Tschiang's books, The Colonel, and Burnt Shadows were excellent as well. I also branched out into Central and South America with books by Halfon and Bolaño, which were very good.

My three worst reads of the year were all genre books (mystery, chick lit, espionage), although I read others in those categories that I did like, so I guess all I can same is genre books are hit or miss with me.

I read a fair number (for me) of graphic novels this year, some of which were excellent. For nonfiction, I discovered the Very Short Introductions by Oxford University Press and also Mary Roach, and will look for more of each.

Thanks to Lois/avaland for introducing me to Halfon, Dan/dchaikin for the Bolaño shared read, and all the usual suspects. I also want to give a shoutout to raton-liseur who has seriously impacted my wishlist this year, perhaps more than any other. I'm glad we connected!

I think I'm going to cut back on my plans for next year. I felt too constricted this year and guilty when I didn't participate as much as I had hoped (graphic novels, reading globally theme reads, remembering rebeccanyc, Holocaust group). I am however going to join Paul's African Novel Challenge, since I enjoyed the Asian one so much, and will renew my commitment to Holocaust literature.

>312 avaland: Question 40

I am so far behind on reading threads here in this group, but I finally caught up with the Question threads. Enjoyed reading them all!

*Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?
*Are you satisfied with your reading this year?
Given the circumstances, I'm amazed I read as much as I did. Having said that, I will fall far short of my goals.

*If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?
I was overly ambitious at the beginning of the year, and lowered my goal along the way from 60 to 48 books for the year. I have finished 35, thanks to including 3 short stories and 6 children's books or graphic novels. I might finish the year with 40, which is pretty respectable considering everything. As for specific goals, I think I am on track to finish all 12 of my Daytimer's book clubs reads. I only skipped one read for my Perspectives book club so far. As for A Good Yarn, I have not been able to keep up. The same with my personal alphabet challenge. And a number of chunky reads. I started a lot of things that didn't get finished yet, and I still intend to read them, but at the moment those books are in a box somewhere that hasn't been unpacked yet and may not be until after Christmas. And my goal of trying to read one book from each of my random lists (or 12 of them anyway....) isn't too bad. I've read 6, and have 3 more in progress - I'm pretty happy with that.

*Which books were your best reads and briefly why?
See my thread for reviews if you want to know why, but here are my best (adult) reads this year:
Anxious People
The Lager Queen of Minnesota
The Four Winds
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Grapes of Wrath
I had quite a few 4 star reads as well.

*Which books bombed with you and why?
My only 2 star book was The Philosopher's Baby - repetitious and meandering, and not much scientific evidence presented, though there were some interesting ideas.
3 star reads are generally okay books, but I had more of those than I would have liked.

*Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?
Yes.

*Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?
Yes. I read a lot more non-fiction than I usually do, thanks to the Perspectives book club.

*Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Have you started a series you wish to continue?
Would like to finish Wolf Hall and that series.
Would like to finish The Summer Queen and that series.
Not new, but I certainly plan to continue reading the 44 Scotland Street series.
New and would read more of:
The Aunt Bessie series by Diana Xarissa.
The DI Tudor Manx series by Dylan H. Jones

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?
*How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?
Well, I'm going to be carrying over some things. But yes, I have some plans lined up. I already have next year's Daytimers list. I'm aiming for more "fun" books next year. This year was really heavy on non-fiction, social justice, fiction about immigrants. It got a bit depressing. My (mini)themes for Daytimers next year is "Vacation" and "modes of transportation" (titles like Vacationland, The Lincoln Highway, The Lakehouse, and Murder on the Orient Express).

Q40
*Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall? AND
*Are you satisfied with your reading this year? AND *Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?

No. Life is unpredictable, and it always amazes me when people on LT make a lot of goals, and then meet them. Who knows what a year will bring? Those people seem to, but not me. Anyway, I started out the year with a flexible plan, but blew it out of the water at the end of March. My husband and I had been looking for a new house on and off for more than a decade (we live in the crazy real estate market of Vancouver, and had a house that met a lot of our needs, but that we had grown out of). All of a sudden a great house showed up and financial ducks fell into place, and after 26 years we were moving. All that was involved took up every single one of my brain cells, and although I had time to read, I had no room in my brain for anything else. Mixed in there we had family visits to Europe, and then a visit here to Canada, so again, time to read, but my brain needed to focus on what I was experiencing and no brain space for narratives, distraction, or anything else. Now life has settled down and I'm starting to enjoy reading again.

*Which books were your best reads and briefly why?

Nothing really stood out, but I did enjoy Autopsy of a Boring Wife and then suggested it to my book club, and we all had a lively discussion about it.

*Which books bombed with you and why? Again, nothing really stood out, but I had heard that The Other Bennet Sister was good, and it really, really wasn't.

*Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of?

Looking back, I'd like to read more of Hakan Nesser, but . . .

Have you started a series you wish to continue?

I'm not one to read series. Also, Hakan Nesser is known for series . . .

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up? AND *How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?

Pretty much going to go forward with my flexible reading plan from the last few years. Now that I have a new garden and new house, I will read more non-fiction on house and garden topics. Maybe

Q40:
I’m satisfied with my 2022 reading thus far. I’m not goal-oriented in any away, but over the decades I have had many reading topical or author-oriented ‘jags. However,’ at this point in my life, I love to explore … so I surround myself with interesting books and often I just trust my instincts as to what I might need or like at any time. I have no plans for 2023 than to continue to swim in the lake of possibilities.

*A few notes: Regarding the short fiction read this year: I thought the individual collections read (3) where far more satisfying than the one anthology.

*I read far less crime novels than most years. And I seem to be happiest in the Nordic countries.

Only 5 of 27 fiction reads were US authors (and I’m fine with that)

Books that bombed: A Brian McGilloway crime novel (just couldn't connect), and Maggie Gee’s Blood (I’ve enjoyed many of her books, so this was a disappointment).

*BEST READS this far (but if you ask me again tomorrow, the list would be different, LOL):
Dottie
Bad Immigrant
Reparateur of Strasbourg
Monastery
Stone Tree
Women and Other Animals
Willnot by James Sallis **A big thanks to Dianeham for recommending the book!

I wanted to add to mine: I am immensely grateful for this incredible site, and for the friendly, helpful and intelligent posters here. I have found my book home. Wishing everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving, along with good health and time to read

>312 avaland: Q40 -
I feel like I've done pretty well for 2022 all things considering. I haven't had much time to sit and read because of college, so I've mostly moved to audiobooks. Due to my major (art) I can listen while I work a lot of the time. I think I read a good mix of more thought-provoking books and YA books.

My best reads were definitely - American Gods, Piranesi, The Cruel Prince series, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt

A few books that bombed with me were The Bone Witch, which I really wanted to like but found too slow with too much plot-unrelated world building for my taste, and She Who Became the Sun for the same reason. I love elaborate fantasy books but just couldn't get into these two, I might try again at some point with She Who Became the Sun, but I don't think I'll ever finish The Bone Witch. Origin stories that involve detailed magic schooling or other sorts of schooling for a large part of the book tend to be lost me (excepting Harry Potter).

Most of the things I read this year were rereads, but think I worked a healthy amount of new stuff in there too!

Loved American Gods (did you watch the series?) she who became the sun really grabbed me. There was a point about 3/4 of the way through I wasnt sure I was going to finish it. Too much detail, repetition and too much like another fantasy I read The Poppy War where the woman will do anything to get where she wants no matter how many die in the process. I did finish it and glad I did, gave it 3* but it is a bit of a slog at times.

>333 cindydavid4: I haven't seen the series! I think I will get to watching it soon. Do the ghosts ever play a bigger part in She who became the sun?

OK, I'll try and not be the person who kills this thread this time...
Q40: 2022 READING

*Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?
*Are you satisfied with your reading this year?
I’m kind of averse to reading for numbers or even counting how many books I’ve read, so yeah, I’m happy with my reading for 2022—and very grateful that I have so many people in my life with whom I can talk about what I’m reading.

*If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?
I had no goals other than to read books I like—although I also do some reading for work that may not be my first choice, and a few of those I definitely liked less, though I’m not sorry I read them.

*Which books were your best reads and briefly why?
A few standouts:
Jane of Hearts and Other Stories - Katharine Weber
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Patrick Radden Keefe
In the Field: A Novel - Rachel Pastan
The Long Ships - Frans G. Bengtsson
Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation - Maud Newton
Companion Piece - Ali smith
The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence
Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories - Leigh Newman
Duke Riley: Tides and Transgressions - Duke Riley

*Which books bombed with you and why?
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang—body horror, which just is not my comfort zone.

*Are you satisfied with the overall quality of your 2022 reading?
Yeah, it was good. Not a huge string of knockouts, but I was happy with it.

*Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?
Yes. I read a bit less nonfiction this year than usual, I think, but that’s fine.

*Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Have you started a series you wish to continue?
Margaret Laurence and Ali Smith were authors I had heard of but hadn’t read, and I definitely will keep reading them.

*Are there other members you would like to thank for specific recommendations?
Oh gosh, everyone has turned me on to so many things. Special thanks to all who’ve sent me books and letters!

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?
*How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?
I’ve been drawing in my sketchbook more regularly, and was thinking that spending time every day—or OK, most days, because life is busy—looking at something from my art book collection would be a good practice alongside of that. Especially as the weather gets colder and I’m less inclined to hop on a train down to the city to hit up museums or galleries in person (which I did a LOT of this summer and fall, and feel it was part and parcel of my reading, writing, and art-making). I’d also like to read deeper into my mythology collection—my big fat copy of Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation is calling to me. But… whatever. Any books I read make me happy.

Q40 - 2022 Reading

OK, here's my Friday after Thanksgiving sit-down with these questions!

Leaving the numerical statistics behind, what do you think of your 2022 reading overall?
My reading in 2022 was greatly influenced by two major factors. One is that I am still gradually working my way through my friend Kim Nalley's list of books about African American history and racism in America in general. I read one of these books about every 4th book I read. Also, I've lengthened this process by adding several books to it myself as I've gone along. This whole process had focused my reading more on non-fiction (although there are some novels included, most notably Their Eyes Were Watching God), than is my normal reading pattern, and has also kept my reading within the U.S. much more than I generally desire during a given year. Nevertheless, I'm don't regret this reading whatsoever. I'm only regretful that it took me until so late in life to learn so much of what's been presented in these histories.

The second major factor influencing my reading is my monthly book group. Only rarely are the books selected by my fellow group-members works that I think, "Good. I've been meaning to get to that one." Mostly they're books I'd most likely never have selected for myself. This can be a mixed blessing. When the books are highly entertaining and informative, I'm glad to have had them assigned to me. More common are the books that make me think, "Well, that was OK, but I didn't really need to read it." The fellows in my group lean heavily, though not entirely, towards non-fiction, so that's one more element that has skewed my year's reading in that direction. But these are good friends of mine, all people I like and respect quite a bit: two doctors, an architect, two educators, a contractor/builder, and an entirely self-sufficient farmer/gardener. I was invited to join this group during Covid, when the meetings were via zoom. It was a great way to remain connected with community, and I felt honored, in fact, to be thought of. Now that we're meeting in person, even though I'm not always entirely pleased with the way the group's selections affect my reading time, I feel my commitment to these friendships to be much more important a factor than any individual books I might not otherwise have chosen.

Are you satisfied with your reading this year?
I wish I'd read more novels in translation and more contemporary fiction. But as to the books I actually did read, I'm certainly satisfied with the interest/enjoyment level of most of them. I'm also satisfied with the progress I've made through the list mentioned at the beginning of this post. Unless I go crazy and keep adding on to it. I've included below a listing of the books from this list I read this year, and also my book-group reading for the year, just in case anyone is curious.

If you had specific goals, did you meet them or are you on track to meet them?
My specific goals were:
A) to read 50 books - I'm currently making my way slowly though my 47th book, Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn, so I think I'll get to 50 by New Year's.
B) to read 25 books "off the shelve," meaning books that were already in my collection, rather than books I bought with the specific idea of reading immediately or at least very soon. The Miller will be the 20th such book, so making it to 25 is at this point an iffy proposition.
C) last year I read books written in or taking place in 14 different countries, including the U.S. I'd hoped to improve on that, though, as mentioned above, the reading about racism in the U.S. every 4th book has cut down on the globe trotting. Right now, I'm at 10 countries, including the U.S. Getting to five more countries in the time remaining will be stretch.

Which books were your best reads and briefly why?
* I loved The Sellout by Paul Beatty. This was a book group selection. A terrific satire about life in L.A. from an African American point of view.
* I used to have a tradition of starting each calendar year with the reading of a Joseph Conrad novel. When I'd read them all, I decided to move that tradition to the novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer, but to read one every six months instead of one a year. The Singer book I read in July, The Family Moskat was an astounding, funny and tragic look at Jewish life in Poland in the years leading up to World War 2 and the total destruction of that world.
* The New Jim Crow and The Color of Law are two horrifying and entirely effective and essential books about the current state of racism in American and the ways we got where we are.
* Going to Meet the Man is a short set of devastating short stories by James Baldwin that serve as companion pieces to The New Jim Crow and The Color of Law.
* The Boys of Summer, another book group selection, is a wonderfully written memoir about boyhood, baseball and the human condition. Roger Kahn was a beat writing covering the Brooklyn Dodgers the year Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball.
* A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr. Just for fun. I love Philip Kerr's crime series about Bernie Gunther, a 1930s/40s Berlin homicide detective who hates the Nazis and is trying to simply remain a "good cop." Moral compromises abound for poor Bernie.
* On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: luminous and moving in an elemental way for me. Simply wonderful.
* Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe is a stunningly well-written narrative history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Which books bombed with you and why?
I found The Ministry for the Future to be turgid in the writing and almost entirely unrealistic in both detail and concept. Alas, a reading group pick so I had to plow through to the end.

Are you generally satisfied with your mix of fiction vs nonfiction reading?
So far, including my current read, 24 of my 47 books have been fiction. I would like to get back to a somewhat higher percentage of fiction.

Are there authors you discovered or were introduced to this year who you plan to read more of? Have you started a series you wish to continue?
I will definitely be reading more works by Paul Beatty and Ocean Vuong. I haven't started any new series, though I'm in the midst of quite a few. My favorites of those are the aforementioned Bernie Gunther series and C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers series.

Are there other members you would like to thank for specific recommendations?
I'd like to thank LolaWalser for recommending John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon. After reading her review last year, I immediately ordered the book, and I'm about to read it, either next, or right after that. It looks quite fascinating and I'm very much looking forward to it. My wife, who is technically an LT member although no longer active, turned me on to On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and bought me Say Nothing as a birthday present, so thanks to her for those and so much else. And heartfelt thanks to all the folks who comment on my threads and engage in conversation with my elsewhere on LT.

* Do you have preliminary plans lined up?
I have a general reading rotation that used to be a 3-way rotation but since the advent of my reading group has essentially become a 4-way rotation. The original rotation was: 1) a book I go out to buy and read immediately (replaced over the past few years with the books about African American History), 2) a book, often selected more or less randomly, that is already in my collection at home ("off the shelf" reading) and 3) a book from my "short" TBR list (currently 82 books!) of series I'm in the midst of, books I've been given as gifts, or books I've purhased wanted to read sooner rather than later. Since I can average in my retirement about a book per week, adding in my Reading Group selections essentially makes this a 4-way monthly reading rotation.

*How does this year's reading inform your tentative plans for 2023?
I should finally finish my friend Kim's list, plus my add-ons, in Spring 2023. At that point I'll return to reading recently purchased books, and my percentage of fiction reading will rise.

In case anyone's curious:

Books Read This Year from Kim's* List (add ons to the 20 books from this list that I read during 2020 and 2021)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Conjure Women by Asia Atakora (added to list by me)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South by Deborah Gray White
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
The Autobiography of Harriet Jacobs (next to be read, most likely to be completed during 2022)
Additional books to be read from this list:
Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, plus two more that I've added on myself: An Easy Burden by Andrew Young and Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer by Kate Clifford Larson.

Reading Group Books This Year
The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai Weiwei
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (selected by me)
Dead Dead Girls by Neksa Afia
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (reading selection for December's meeting)

* Kim is Kim Nalley, an exciting and popular blues and jazz singer active, most prominently in the San Francisco Bay Area, though she is very well known nationally, as well. She recently earned her PhD in History at UC-Berkeley. Quite obviously, then, a brilliant woman entirely.

https://www.kimnalley.net/about
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/05/18/graduate-profile-kim-nalley/