Solla's soliloqys

BookList *recommended
*58. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
*57. Jamilia by Chingiz Aïtmatov
56. Retribution by Denise Mina
55. Garnethill by Denise Mina
54. Primal Tears Kelpie Wilson
53 Exile Denise Mina
*52 Troubles J.G. Farrell
*51. The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell
*50. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
*49. Ex Libris
48. SS Proleterka by Fleur Jaeggy
*47. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
46. So Vast the Prison Assia Djebar
45. Children of the New World : a novel of the Algerian war by Assia Djebar ; translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager
44. Singular Intimacies by Danielle Ofri
43. The Siege of Krishnapur J.G. Farrell
*42. Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki
*41. The spirit catches you and you fall down by Anne Fadiman
40. Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor
39. Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
*38 The Grandmothers by Doris Lessing
*37. Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner
*36. Middlemarch George Elliot
35. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
*34. Dreams in a Time of War by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
33. Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth
32. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) Larsson, Stieg
*31. Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes Ansary, Tamim
30.Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel Amen
29.Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth
28. The Battle Lost and Won Manning, Olivia
27. The Danger Tree Manning, Olivia
*26. Friends and Heroes
*25. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit Winterson, Jeanette
*24. Never Let Me Go Ishiguro, Kazuo
*23. The Spoilt City Manning, Olivia
*22. THE GREAT FORTUNE MANNING, OLIVIA
21The Radetzsky March by Joseph Roth
20. Attila Bartis. Tranquility
19.The Help Stockett, Kathryn
18. The Idea of Justice Sen, Amartya
*17. The Book Thief Zusak, Markus
16. Israel and the Arab World, A History
*15. My A Most Wanted Man Carre, John le
*14. Name Is Red Pamuk, Orhan
*13. Sun and Shadow: An Erik Winter Novel Edwardson, Ake
*12. Frozen Tracks: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel Edwardson, Ake
11. One Good Turn: A Novel Atkinson, Kate
10. 500 Self-Portraits Bell, Julian
9. A Burnt Child Dagerman, Stig
8. Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) Milton, John
*7. Snake Catcher Masud, Naiyer
*6. Never End (Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novels) Edwardson, Ake
5. Blue Shoe Lamott, Anne
4.Miss Lonelyhearts West, Nathaniel
3. The Passport (Masks)
*2. Death Angels: A Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novel (Chief Inspector Erik Winter Novels)
*1. Children of Violence Series by Doris Lessing

There, you've got me trying to be alliterative - well it's better than Solla's sermons, solla's sophistry.
solioquy definition
1. the act or custom of talking to oneself or talking when alone.
2. Drama, a speech in which a character reveals his thoughts to the audience but not to other characters in the play

So, I will define it as talking to myself, but with the intent of being overheard (and revealing myself).
Except I really like it when people talk back.

I like Solla's soliloquys. Poetic.

I wonder, Solla, if you'll also be soliciting solipsistic solecisms from other soloists in your soliloquy thread?

I'm sorry, I know you're a poet (and a darn fine one) and thought maybe (just maybe) you might appreciate some word play today.

Officially abandoning the 2009 thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/62376

Reading Summary for 2009

*mentioned in club read 2009 blog http://www.librarything.com/topic/62376
** reviewed and probably mention in blog http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=solla
+ recommend
++ highly recommend

Fiction
Utterly Monkey: a Novel Nick Laird
Lulu in Marrrakech Diane Johnson
**The China Lover: A Novel by Ian Buruma
Stargirl Jerry Spinelli
++*Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson
**++Home Marilynne Robinson
++The Giant's House: A Romance by Elizabeth Mccracken
+**Asta in the Wings (Tin House New Voice) by Jan Elizabeth Watson
*++The Road Cormac McCarthy
+*A mercy by Toni Morrison
+**Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
+**Life and Opinions of Tomcat Murr by E.T.A. Hoffman
++The Palm Wine Drinkard Amos Tutuola
++**To Siberia by Per Petterson
**Mr. Potter by Jamaica Kincaid
+**Europe Central by Wiliam Vollmann
**an accidental light by Elizabeth Diamond
+**In the Wake by Per Petterson
+**The Song of Wirrun (The Ice is Coming; The Dark, Bright Water; Behind the Wind) by Patricia
Wrightson
++**2666 by Roberto Bolaño
++**The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov
++**A Suitable Boy
+*The Train Now Departing Martha Grimes
**the Octopus Frank Norris
++**The Hour of the Star Clarice Lispector
+**Martha Quest Doris Lessing
+*Jennie by Douglas Preston
**A Glass of Water by Jimmy Santiago Baca
+*The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
+**Ben in the World by Doris Lessing
++**Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Mystery Fiction
+The Old Wine Shades: A Richard Jury Mystery Martha Grimes
+Dust: : A Richard Jury Mystery Martha Grimes
+The winds of Change: A Richard Jury Mystery Martha Grimes
+Belle ruin: a novel Marth Grimes
+Foul Matter Marth Grimes
**the Seducer by Jan Kjaerstad
**The Leaphorn and Chee Novels (Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time and Coyote Waits) by Tony Hillerman
The Sinister Pig Tony Hillerman
Skeleton man Tony Hillerman
The Shape Shifter Tony Hillerman
+**In the Woods by Tana French
+**the Likeness by Tana French
*Web of Evil, Without Due Process, Justice Denied and Day of the Dead by Jane Jance
+*Alone at Night by KJ Erickson
+*Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson
+*the Final Judgment by Richard North Patterson

Children, Young adult fiction
The Graveyard Book Nick Gaiman

nonfiction
Musicophilia: tales of music and the Brain Oliver Sacks
The Forever war Dexter Filkins
The Great Unraveling: losing our way in the new century Paul Krugman
From Babel to dragomans Bernard Lewis
(part of) Fateful Triangle Noam Comsky
Death in the Sahara: the lords of the desert and the Timbuktu railway expedition massacre Michael Asher
Thames the biograpy Peter Ackroyd
+The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals… by Jane Mayer
+**Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy… by Donald B. Kraybill
**On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society… by Dave Grossman
+**Earth: An Intimate History by Richard Fortey
**Palestine peace not apartheid by Jimmy Carter
*Israel and the Arab World by Aharon Cohen
*Try to tell the story : a memoir by David Thomson
++*Sweet land of liberty : the forgotten struggle for civil rights in the North by Thomas J. Sugrue
*Is God a mathematician? by Mario Livio
+**The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 by William Dalrymple
+**Mysteries of the Middle Ages : the rise of feminism, science, and art from the cults of Catholic Europe by Thomas Cahill
**The Middle East : a brief history of the last 2,000 years by Bernard Lewis
+**The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
**New Cold War: Putin's Russian and the Threat to the west by Edward Lucas
+**Pope John XXIII by Thomas Cahill.
+**The Spice Route by John Keay
+**Dreams from the Monster Factory by Sunny Schwartz
**George Soros The Crash of 2008 and what it means
+**Paul Krugman, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008
**Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian
*Europe Between the Ocean
**India, A History by John Keay
+**A Saint on Death Row by Thomas Cahill
+**From Slavery to Freedom a history of African Americans
++**Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II… by Douglas A. Blackmon
+**Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East John Keay
++**India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha
**the Great Hedge of India by Roy Moxham
+**Exiting Nirvana by Clara Park
Small Spirits: Native American dolls from the National Museum of the American Indian by Mary Jane Lenz
+**Cheek by Jowl by Ursula Le Guin

I had decided to reread the Children of Violence by Doris Lessing. See http://www.librarything.com/topic/62376#1590524 for my thoughts on the first of the series, Martha Quest, and http://www.librarything.com/topic/62376#1673705 for initial thoughts on A Proper Marriage. An exerpt of that:

"I am struck by how constrained the characters are from saying what they really want to say and acting as they really want to act, or even associating with or marrying who they want to associate with and marry. At the end of book 1 Martha drifted into a marriage, and now she is acting in the marriage the way she believes she should, which in large part means not acting like her mother, the complaining female."

The time and place is South Africa of the 1940's in the early stages of South Africa becoming involved in World War II.

Martha Quest is a character who is very intellectual, as is the narrator, who seems to be a version of Martha somewhat in the future, but she doesn't seem able to do is to simply ask herself what it is that she wants. Once I was involved in this exercise in a kind of self-actualizing group. One person keeps asking: what do you want. The other person responds with whatever comes into their head. It goes on for quite some time, and does in fact finally result in you getting a pretty clear idea of what you want. I recommend it to Martha, in the series of dialogues that I tend to have in my head with characters in novels that I read.

Martha always has a sense that she is meant for something, and that something is different from being in a marriage and having a child. She doesn't really know what it is, but seems to feel closer to it when she is involved with socialist study groups, although, at the same time, she sees that little action is taken. In the South Africa of the 1940's Martha is one of a distinct minority who believe that black Africans are equal to whites. While she believes this, at the same time the unequal world is the one in which she is comfortable, used to, there would be something disquieting about a change in that status quo. This is probably nearly always so to some extent even of the most well-intentioned person, and part of Lessing's honesty that she presents it so, instead of showing Martha totally as we (or I) might want her to be. It's probably also so that most of us have a sense of destiny without knowing what the destiny is.

The one thing she feels strongly about his her daughter, Caroline. While she feels tenderness for her daughter, she feels so strongly that parents ruin their children, so it is possible for her to feel the way to save Caroline would be to leave her.

So this book is a second stage of Martha's becoming. And while I am impatient and disagree with her choices, even parts of the final one when she seems to be getting back on her own path at last, still I am interested in learning what she is becoming. There is always a kind of irony and even humor in how she is looking over her own shoulder, which is maybe what allows me to like this character in the end.

I have to say that I am puzzled by the Passport by Herta Muller. Beginning my read I thought that the language of it was sparsely beautiful. However, as it went on I never felt that I was let in to an inner life of anyone enough to care about them at all. They seemed so little caring of each other, in fact, sometimes contemptful. Of course I can understand that in the face of cruelty one's feelings go underground, but then I would expect a novelist to reveal the feelings that are underground. I don't know what I was supposed to get out of this.

I am speechless at the amount of reading you managed to do in 2009, Sola.

I enjoy reading your thoughts on Doris Lessing too.

Great comments on the Lessing, Solla.

Hmm...I was thinking of reading "The Passport" this week, but I think I'll put it aside for now.

I don't recall whose review it was that decided me to try Death Angels: A Chief inspector Erik Winter Novel by Åke Edwardson, but this definitely wasn't a disappointment. It is a mystery, but the language of it is so beautiful that it is almost slippery so I was having trouble hanging onto the facts of it - for the mystery. On finishing I immediately started it again, which is something I can't remembering doing with a mystery before. But the satisfaction is as much in the poetry and the characters as in the mystery. The characters in this case are involving, and I would be glad to read more about them. One thing that makes the book hard to read is that the detectives in it are affected by the murders (there are multiple related victims) and feel the despair of them, so the reader does as well. At least I did. The touchstone never came up, here is the link: http://www.librarything.com/work/957942

Miss Lonelyhearts was a short read that I didn't get from the library until the Salon read was almost complete. It is only 58 pages long in the edition that I read. It starts by presenting the newspaper advice columnist, male, though he writes as Miss L., and then shows three letters that came from readers of the newspaper. The problems in the letters are not about how to find a boyfriend, or any other relatively minor issue, but instead are about problems that seem overwhelming, for example, a woman who has borne 7 children and is pregnant again, though it may kill her, and can't get an abortion because she is Catholic.

The other main character in the novel is the newspaper editor who seems to be a jaded, cynical sort of person - to me he seemed to bear a resemblance to the murdering judge in Blood Meridian but without the murdering - whose favorite occupation seems to be ridicule of Miss Lonelyhearts and callous advice as to what he should say to the readers.

In a way Miss Lonelyhearts could be seen as one individual's answer to the question of: what do I do faced with all the suffering of the world?

This, of course, is a question we are all faced with all the time, because we know so much more about it, earthquakes in Haiti, the tidal waves that killed millions, Katrina. To make it harder, we also know that many attempts to help have not actually helped - one example, supplying food aid from U.S. farmers has sometimes undermined local farmers, leaving a country with less food producing resources at the end of the crisis. We may give to Save the Children or some other organization and still worry that we aren't really improving anything. I wonder sometimes how that changes us from a time when perhaps we only knew of the sorrows of a village, and even events in another part of the country were only known by word of mouth, or a newspaper report after the fact. We don't want to be callous, to shut ourselves off from suffering by not feeling (as the editor does), and yet, we weren't meant either to be so involved with suffering as to be able to do nothing else.

Towards the end of Schindler's list Schindler is speaking to people in his factory of people he has saved from concentration camps and he is saying that he could have/should have done more - I don't remember exactly, but he takes off a ring, I think, and says, I should have sold it, it would have saved two more. And, how about us. There are millions of children who don't have enough to eat, who die from hunger and other resources which are small on the scale of what we consume every day. Yet, we are all meant for happiness (at least according to Pierre in War and Peace) and we need a life that includes something beyond bare necessity, small pleasures and luxuries, and just enjoyment of our day to day lives. So what do we do?

One response would be to deny what I said in the last two sentences and to deny ourselves those things and to devote ourselves totally to overcoming the suffering. There are people like Mother Theresa whose vocation is to do this. I respect this choice, but I can't do it. Nor, does Miss Lonelyhearts.

All Miss L. really has to do is pick out a few letters each day and respond to them the best that he can. The book never shows an actual response to one of the letters. This is one approach to what is overwhelming, take it one piece at a time and do what you can. This is closest to the approach I take, and probably a lot of other people. The logic for choosing what is my piece of the world is fuzzy - pick one kid and sponsor them, help someone who has happened into your knowledge, pick one project or one charity to support. It is an uneasy solution because there is so much more that is ignored, and it feels like little in a sea of suffering.

In Miss L., early on, he says that Christ is the answer - though it is not an answer he allows himself in his column - and, it seems to me, that the approach that he wants to take is a spiritual communion with all the suffering.

At one point he is reading Doestoevsky, a passage about loving all of God's creation, and, if you do, you will perceive the divine mystery in things and come to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. He thinks, "It was excellent advice. If he followed it, he would be a big success. His column would be syndicated and the whole world would learn to love. The Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. He would sit on the right hand of the Lamb."

His response to not being able to achieve this is to be a total jerk, who treats his fiance and other people cruelly. When he dreams he tries to lead the audience in prayer, but found himself saying the jaded prayer of Shrike (the jaded editor). This seems to me like he strives for a grand solution, and that in his disappointment he descends into cynicism and cruelty. At one point he is twisting the arm of an old man, trying to get him to tell his life story, "He was twisting the arm of all the sick and miserable, broken and betrayed, inarticulate and impotent. He was twisting the arm of Desperate, Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, ...."

All in all, it was a pretty strange book, and I'm not sure how seriously to take it. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting, which was a book about someone who genuinely tried to respond to the hurt in the letters and got overwhelmed. That might be the case, but it seemed to leave out the beginning when he tried to respond, and go directly to when he was overwhelmed, so it was hard to feel any genuineness in his emotions. Still it was interesting to read, and there is something that resonates in it (basically all that I discussed above).

Catching up on your thread, Solla.

You read many books in 2009 I only wish I had read, like 2666 and Master and Margarita. And your thoughts on Miss Lonelyhearts make me think I really should reread it. I read it when I was probably twenty, and remember it very negatively, but I may have to reconsider in light of your thoughts.

Nice one Solla. I haven't thought upon Miss L as deeply as you've demonstrated here. I've searched and searched for interviews or anything relating West's ambitions and/or what his own message was (rather than the critics) in writing Miss L, to no avail...so far.

11 - I had some negative thoughts as well, but noticed something intriguing as well, and some of my review is in response to my own question to myself as to why it hooked me a bit when he is such a meanie.

One thing I didn't mention is how when I got to the bar scene where some men were complaining about female writers, suggested that they needed a "good rape" and started telling stories about rapes - Miss L. called them childish - it reminded me of how prevalent such women hating used to be. It doesn't seem to me that I've encountered that same virulence in recent works.

>10 solla:, 12 Solla, thanks for your really interesting thoughts on ML. Enrique's right about a lack of info on West's purpose/message. This dearth is explained somewhat in this review of the Library of America's volume on West:

"West's four short novels, his letters, and his several stories and screenplays make up the bulk of the Library of America volume. It's a compact book, with no introduction and few notes, and the fact that Bercovitch, who is Charles H. Carswell Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University, has chosen to include in the collection both a college paper and a fellowship application points up a frustration encountered by every new reader of West's work: there's never been enough of it. Even before West died in a car crash in 1940, Bercovitch's detailed chronology makes clear, the young author's literary production had been checked by false starts, strapped publishers, and the difficulty of settling on a genre...

...Among the most illuminating pieces of new material in this volume is a 1939 thank-you note to Fitzgerald, who had praised West in print. Fitzgerald's appreciation made West, who had just endured a decade of mixed reviews, feel less alone with his perplexing visions, his hyped reality. "I go on . . . making what one critic called `private and unfunny jokes,' " West wrote. "You made me feel that they weren't completely private and maybe not even entirely jokes.""

Not much time to update my log lately, and this will be brief.

I finished the Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott. I am a big fan of Anne Lamott as a person and a nonfiction writer in Bird by Bird in particular, but I can't say the same for this novel. It is not terrible, and it is imbued with some of the philosophic sense of her nonfiction. I didn't mind reading it, which I did slowly as I ate breakfast before heading off to work. It is kind of a diary of how the protagonist faces her daily life, and she is likable, so the book it likable. I missed a sense of drama, and I think the elements of the story are there to make for drama. But somehow it is all blunted a bit. In the beginning of the book there are a lot of cases where a scene starts but never finishes, as the book swiftly moves to another scene. This improves somewhat as the book goes on. But the drama simply never builds.

I am continuing on with the Children of Violence series by Lessing, and have finished A Ripple from the Storm and begun Landlocked. In Ripple from the Storm Martha has left her marriage, gone back to her office work from before her marriage, and is an active member of a communist group working in South Africa, which also involves being active in several more liberal organizations which the small communist group hopes to influence. In this work Martha seems to be for the first time acting from her true self, independent of whether this work will have much influence in the end. WWII is going on, though it is somewhat remote to South Africa, where it is present mainly through the soldiers stationed there. It is also present in the sense of waiting, waiting for the war to be over, and an impermanence in relationships as relationships are formed with soldiers who ship out, and young men from the town serve in different places. Again Martha drifts into relationships. The leader of the communist group, a German refuge, cares for her when she is sick and they become a couple, and then he is threatened with internment because of the relationship, and she marries him to prevent it. This drifting is presented as partially the result of unsettled times, but also as a sort of falsity or perhaps difficulty in the relationships between men and women, in playing out roles for one another, being the person the other expects, or resisting that. This book contains a lot of information about the political forces in the British colony of Africa. A note - I had identified the colony as South Africa, mainly because of the mention of Afrikaners and Johannesburg at one point. But Lessing actually grew up in Rhodesia, so perhaps it was written about Southern Rhodesia. At one point there is mention of a group as Policy Sub-Committee for the Communist Party of Zambesia, which makes no sense because Zambesia was a Portuguese colony, and this one is clearly British. (Wikipedia to the rescue - "The name Zambezia or Zambesia was also used up to 1895 for the territory later called Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe.") I don't know why they used it in the 1940's. Also, there were Afrikaners in Rhodesia as well as South Africa.

Continuing with Landlocked. I have to say that I have been reading the various reviews and comments about Les Miserables and, for the most part, I agree with the criticisms, and nonetheless love the book, simply because they parts I consider strong are so strong. However, thinking about the descriptions of romantic relationships in Hugo, those cloying, sentimentalized, woman diminishing descriptions of the relationship between Marius and Collete, especially after they are married, certainly makes me appreciate more the contrast in the Children of Violence series by Lessing. Her descriptions are anything but romanticized. Up to this point, and in the first half of Landlocked the relationships between men and woman have been described as happening more between roles and expectations than between people. But in Landlocked Martha falls in love with Thomas, and has her first real relationship, and the descriptions of their encounters are both realistic and intense and are like drinking from a clean clear spring in contrast to Hugo.

Children of Violence gets better as it goes along. I wanted to read it again because of my memory of the Four Gated City which was like an intense payoff at the end. The earlier books are minutely, sometimes grindingly realistic, and then the last book leaps somewhere beyond that. But I had forgotten, or hadn't appreciated, how this began in Landlocked.

I'll probably write more when I've actually finished the book.

I am also in the middle of Paradise Lost. I've read about half, and, on the whole, am not enjoying it. The blank verse, and the density of it, and a way Milton has of making it very difficult to tell who is speaking, all bogs it down for me. I read Dante in college, and I don't recall it being so difficult. I do appreciate some passages, and I will finish it. One thing that does strike me about it is that it is like reading stories about Roman and Greek Gods - which to me was like reading about people who happened to have a lot of powers, but with human passions and quixotic actions. Consequently the whole angle battle just seems like the more powerful God angered because he is challenged and taking his revenge.

Just a list this time, I'll have to write them up later

A burnt child by Stig Dagerman
Completed Landlocked by Doris Lessing
Paradise Lost by Milton
Snake Catcher by Naiyer Masud
Never End by Ake Edwardson

Just logging again:
500 Self-Portraits not much to read on this one really, a forward of a half dozen pages. There is no commentary on the self-portraits. There is one Egyptian, but most are medieval to the present. Alice Neel, Frida Kahlo, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Kathe Kollwitz are included. Some have series, such as Rembrandt. It is a more personal view into a variety of artists.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson was just ok for me. It is sort of a mystery, with a surprise ending. The people didn't feel real to me.

Frozen Tracks by Åke Edwardson was very good, as were the other novels I've read by him. They are novels about believable people as well as being mysteries.

Finished the last of the Erik Winter novels that my library has, and maybe all that are translated into English, with Sun and Shadow: An Erik Winter Novel. These mysteries and those by P.D. James are my favorites, being literary novels as well as mysteries.

I'm afraid I have not been in much of a mood for writing about my reading. But I did write up a synopsis of my novel today. My first query letter received a friendly but negative response. So, there were just a few agents who said to send the first few chapters, and today's query was to one of them, so at least the response could be based upon the work. They asked for query letter, synopsis and up to 50 pages, so I had to write the synopsis.The down side is that now it will take 6 to 8 weeks for a response, as opposed to the two weeks it took for the query letter.

I am in the middle of the Four Gated City by Doris Lessing. This is the last book of the Children of Violence series, beginning with Martha Quest by Doris Lessing. This is a reread of all five books. I remembered the Four Gated City as being the culmination of all the books, the best of them, and better having read the first four, although I'm sure it would be good stand alone as well.

The first four books are solidly realistic. The one thing that pervades them, and also the last book, is the sense of being caught up in roles that seem not to relate to your true self, and yet, all the time there being the watcher, that is who you really are. In the 4 gated city Lessing describes it as the look in an infants eyes when they first look straight at you. The rest of life is growing into those eyes.

The first four books follow Martha from girlhood to an early marriage, to leaving the marriage and becoming a communist activist during World War II. These are good book, getting better as they go along. Landlocked is the best of the four for me and kind of a prelude to the Four Gated City as Martha begins to come into who she really is. She falls in love for real for the first time - this after being married twice. The Four Gated City though, is another level. It is also a different kind of consciousness, verges on science fiction. Martha is in England. As it begins she had been there for a few months and is coming to the end of a time when she can be in a place and not be claimed by it yet. She's stayed in a couple of places temporarily and has a relationship with a man who knows things through his body.

Not long after she takes a job, meant to be temporary, but she is still there halfway into the book and about 10 years later. She was to help a writer with his work, and ends up becoming the matron of an extended family. Mark is the writer, and his brother, Colin, is a scientist who flees to Russia during the McCarthy era when he is about to be arrested for insisting on the sharing of knowledge. His wife and small son are left behind and his wife soon kills herself, leaving the son. There is also Mark's son, whose mother, Lynda is in a mental hospital. I don't remember details well, but at the place in the book where I am now, in addition to an examination of the times, 1949 - mid sixties, Lynda has come home, living in the basement apartment of the big house, and Lynda and Martha have begun an exploration of the mind, including tapping into the thoughts of others. Lynda is learning to do without the drugs which mask her abilities, and Martha is paying attention to things which were there all along. Partly she is pulled into this by her own crises when her mother writes her that she is coming to England. She thinks she ought to be able to be at peace with her mother and provide her a calm place to spend the rest of her life, but she is actually thrown into a panic, nearly a breakdown.

Like I said, I haven't finished, but this is still probably my favorite.

At the end of the Four Gated City two things come together - Martha's attempt to get inside her own mind, which leads to development of some of her abilities (telepathic) and to the recognition that Lynda never needed to be ill - she was treated when she reported what people were thinking, not realizing that others didn't hear them; and second a major environmental catastrophe which some groups of people are able to prepare for with the aid of some particularly talented psychics.

Recently read A Most Wanted Man by Le Carre. I am not a reader of spy novels other than Le Carre. This is one of his very best. It is a recent, after 9/11, novel. It occurs in German and centers on a young man who has arrived from the middle east after having been in a Russian area and then a Turkish jail, from which he escaped. His experiences of being tortured in jail have had some devastating effects on him. He has a desire to work as a doctor and to help his people in the Caucusus. You see the effect of the young man's personality on several people, including a family that he both chooses and is rescued by after showing up in a German city - I am relying on memory as I don't have the book with me right now; a lawyer from an agency working with immigrants who tries to help him; a bank owner; a local German spy agency who become aware of him; higher ups in the government along with British/American operatives who work with them. It is clear early on that the young man is not guilty of any terrorism, but was wrongly jailed. The more local spy agency is interested in him as a possible way to use him to obtain information from actual terrorists. The lawyer and Bank owner become involved with him because his father (a Russian of some power who becomes involved with a woman in the Caucasus) had secreted money away in the bank. The young man wants to use the money to study medicine and to help the Caucasus people from whom he believes his father stole. The tension is between those who are doing their best to protect and heal the young man and help him achieve his goals, those who want to protect but also use him (local spy office) and those for whom the young man is only a tool who aren't concerned about his fate. Like the best of LeCarre, it shows humans at their best and worst, taking risks to protect what they value. I don't want to say much more and be a spoiler, but I highly reccommend it.

Israel and the Arab World by Aharon Cohen
I read this book because I wanted to get more of a background to the Arab Israeli conflict, expecially prior to 1947 when the UN passed the resolution partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish sections. The first 100 pages or so cover distant history through the Ottoman era. After that it continues with the modern Zionist movement through about 1970, so before the more recent overtures from Egypt to Israel.

Cohen participated in much of the history that he tells about. I was alert to bias towards Israel, but the book felt pretty even-handed. He seemed, however, to be in agreement with the idea the the Jews (outside of those already living in Palestine) had a right to emigrate there because of their long history in the region. Initially, as he describes Zionism, this wasn't necessarily the establishment of a Jewish state but could have been the establishment of a joint state with the Arabs. As Cohen described it, it took awhile for Arab and Israeli attitutes to harden against each other such that they couldn't work together to create a state after the British mandate over Palestine ended. Part of the hardening, as he described it, was due to the British who played the two sides against each other and did their best to discourage direct negotiations. After the UN vote ending the British mandate, the British didn't work with the UN for an orderly transition, but rather encouraged the Arab states in the plan to invade Israel as soon as it became independent.

There is a lot of detail in Cohen's account. Sometimes it was tiresome, but I was also glad of it. Once surprising thing that I learned was that the Soviet Union was an early champion of creating a Jewish state, and that Gromyko favored it for pretty idealistic reasons. This was surpising to me knowing how later the alignment switched to Soviet\Arab and US\Israel.

As I got more into it, I wished that I had read it concurrently with the Keay book, Sowing the Wind which dealt with the British in the Middle East from a different perspective. That book was easier to read, but Israel and the Arab World is a solid history and did give me some of the background that I wanted.

"One surprising thing that I learned was that the Soviet Union was an early champion of creating a Jewish state, and that Gromyko favored it for pretty idealistic reasons."

Thanks for posting that. Somewhere along the line a pronouncement entered my brain that Soviet Russian support was critical for Israel's survival in the early part of the 1948 war of independence. I don't recall where it came from and I've always wondered how true that was.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
This is a fantasy based upon real events - it is told from the point of view of Death in Germany during the time of Hitler. The characters, though, feel very real, and sharp and poignant, and I cared what happened to them. It would be good for Middle Schoolers, but it was also good for me.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett, in contrast, was written more realistically, but somehow didn't feel nearly so authentic to me, despite being partially based on the experience of the author growing up in the south. It was pretty interesting reading, and I got caught up in parts of it. It is set in 1962 Mississippi, and switches points of view between two black maids and a young writer white woman who collaborate on a book about working as a maid in the south.

The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen
I was very interested in reading this book. A lot of it is a reaction to the ideas of John Rawls about justice - not arguing with Rawl's ideas, but talking about taking a different approach. Rawls has taken a pretty Utopian approach, describing his ideas about what a perfectly just society would be like. Sen suggests another approach, stating that while we may never agree or be able to achieve, perfect justice, there still may be many areas in which we can agree that that something is clearly unjust and on steps that can be taken to improve the situation. What I was expecting was that after Sen had laid these ideas that he would then move on to describe some of these areas on which we could agree (and the principles of justice that underlay our consensus) and talk about some steps that could be taken to achieve a situation that is more just. Unfortunately, he never really did this. I still enjoyed the book, especially hearing an Indian perspective on justice, but I felt frustrated by the lack of a payoff for me. It made me want to start a discussion of what the clear injustices are and to plan steps that could be taken.

The Radetzky march by Joseph Roth
This is a story of the breakdown of the highly disciplined society of Austria Hungary as told by 3 generations of males of the Trotta family, beginning with the one who saved the life of the Emperor on the battlefield to that of his grandson who died early in WWI. I never got really caught up in the novel or the characters, although it wasn't uninteresting, just not compelling to me. After the first Trotta, the hero, the others seem to drift into their fate, doing what is expected of them. One of the strongest parts is the death of Leutenant Trotta's (Trotta 3) friend in a duel which he feels compelled to follow through with for honor's sake, although no one wants him to. I wonder how many generations of people feel that they are witnessing the breakdown of the world that they knew - maybe it is the majority of them.

My Name is Red Orhan Pamuk was of much more interest to me. I felt it gave me much more of a picture of a different culture, especially in the discussions about art with the Frankish (French and other European Renaissance) opposed to Islamic with the Frankish focussing on the individual portrayed recognizably, while the Islamic was focussed on getting to the inner reality. These philosophies are presented within the context of a sort of murder mystery. Like others have said it took a little while for the momentum to build so I was really drawn in, but I was interested all the way through. It also is written from different points of view, several, rather than the three main ones of the Radetzky March, and I was pretty much interested in what happened to all of them. There were only a couple of female speakers (but none in Radetzky).

Tranquility by Attila Bartis, a Hungarian novelist and A Burnt Child by Stig Dagerman were both very difficult to read in the sense of being tormented works with tormented characters, or characters who display a lot of cruelty towards each other, hard to take because you do (or I did) get emotionally involved with them.
A Burnt Child begins with the funeral for that child's mother. He is actually not a child but in his early twenties. Yet he seems something of a child in his actions and being economically dependent living with his father while he gets through school. At first my sympathies were with him as he seemed the only one truly sorry about his mother's death. Later he acts very like a teenager, angry at his father for being unfaithful to his mother (and being very black and white in comparing his father's actions with his own), angry at the father's mistress, then becoming involved with her. His emotional volatility seems young, on the one hand, but there also seems to be some cynical cruelty in his actions.

The main character of Tranquility is also a grown child (but older) who lives with his mother in order to take care of her as she has become a recluse. There is a love-hate relationship there. He has another relationship with a woman - herself with some emotional difficulties - and I got very involved with wanting this to go well. The two seem genuinely in love with each other, but still, he does not seem to be able to avoid acting destructively towards her from time to time. One of the most sympathetic characters is a priest who reaches out to the main character, but he is unable to receive it.

I am following your thread with interest, Solla, but don't have much to say, as I have not read anything you have read recently. Roth seems to be very popular in Club Read this month. I must try to get my hands on some.

Yes, we don't often overlap, but I will be rereading the Brothers Karamazov with the salon so we can get in sync then.

I just read the first of the Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning The Great Fortune - the time period is just before WWII rather than WWI as the Roth book it, and it is set in Romania and has a much more modern feel to it - I think it was actually written about 1970, so that makes sense - being a more personal account. It is mostly through the eyes of an English woman newly married to a an English man who teaches literature in Romania. I'm looking forward to the next volume.

i recently read the whole The Balkan Trilogy and thought it was remarkable and fascinating; then proceeded to The Levant Trilogy. which I liked less.

It is interesting to contrast Manning's writing with Doris Lessing's about Africa - the difference being that Lessing was born in Africa though of British parents. Lessing often shows the British complaining about the African servants, and, it is quite clear that she disapproves. In The Great Fortune there is a minor character who become a friend to Harriet Pringle (the main character) who talks about Romanian servants in much the same way, and while it seems that Harriet disagrees, and asks, "why do you think they act that way?", there isn't the same level of moral disapproval and distancing - in fact she becomes friends with the woman. But in the Lessing book most of the characters shown making those comments are female but also a generation older. I find myself maintaining a skepticism about Manning's portrayal of the situation, vis a vis Harriet, that I didn't have with Lessing.

Another contrast would be in how they react to how they are treated as women. There is a point where an acquaintance of Harriet's husband actually tells her to shut up, and although Harriet snaps back that she will not shut up she doesn't show the level of outrage about it that I would feel, nor does the novel show Harriet's husband reacting to this at all. Harriet seems to accept some of the things she cannot do easily as a woman, or as a woman who is not lower class - going to fetch something from the market by herself, for instance. On the other hand, she resists being sent home to England when war is threatening. Overall the writing seems to show clearly the strictures that were put on women, but not to have so much sense of battling against limitations that would be found in Lessing's works.

It's a long time since I read Lessing, but my memory of her work is that her characters were more combative than Harriet is: what strikes me about Harriet (and, to a lesser extent, Guy) is how young she is to be thrust into a situation with a pretty unknown husband and a war breathing down their necks. With respect to the the woman who criticizes her servants and yet becomes a friend, another of the things that stood out for me was how alone Harriet was despite the hordes of people clustering around Guy: you have to pick your friends from the people available. I guess what I'm getting at is that I think of The Balkan Trilogy as a very deeply psychological work, and my distant memory of Lessing is that she wrote much more political works.

Definitely more combative, I agree.

Continued on with the Balkan Trilogy with the second novel, the Spoilt City by Olivia Manning. As the German influence in the country increases Harriet Pringle, as an Englishwoman is increasingly isolated. Her friend, Bella, doesn't want to be seen in public with her because it might bring her into danger. As she speaks Romanian and is married to a Romanian Bella is able to blend in and not appear to be British. At the same time Harriet's husband, Guy, is increasingly busy with a summer session mostly attended by Jews who want to improve their English and planning to emigrate. Besides their cook and her family they have living with them Prince Yakimov, something of a freeloader, whom Guy had foisted upon her, and Sasha, a former student of Guys who were forced into military service when is father was arrested, and who deserted (and is a Jew). It was also Guy's idea to take the young man in despite the danger, but Harriet becomes fond of him and is concerned about protecting him should they need to leave Romania. The book ends as their life in Romania is disintegrating.

Unfortunately, I had to order the third novel via interlibrary loan, and it has not arrived yet.

While I was reading the Spoilt City on my bus ride, I decided to begin Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (author of the Remains of the Day which I haven't read) at breakfast. However, I was immediately caught up with it and ended up reading it at breakfast, on the bus, and before sleep, until it was read. The book takes place in the present or nearly, but the reality is different in one respect. There is some sort of artificial creation of human life, perhaps cloning, but seemingly only one of each type. The story is told by one of these people. She was raised at a special school, and much of the book describes that life which seems mostly benevolent and to encourage the children's creativity. At one point a teacher, says that they are told and not told things, and that is also somewhat true of the reader, though we are told more of the meaning of the school and the purpose of the cloning (or whatever). But I found myself asking why they did not try to escape their fate, and the reasons for that were not given, so that I have to assume there is more about these people than is told.

The novel had a flavor to me of The Giver by Lois Lowry, which is a young adult book, and I felt that about it before the nature of the school was revealed. However, there are many differences. There is no hint of the emotional blandness of the people in the Giver society who are protected from suffering, but give up sexual feelings and even color in exchange. The residents of the school have full lives aside from the restriction of not leaving the school until they are 16 when they go to a farm for awhile, and then to their training. The descriptions of them are emotionally complex. The distinctiveness of their situation doesn't overwhelm their individuality. I'll be reading more by Ishiguru.

Another author I'll probably read more of is Jeanette Winterson. Oranges are not the only fruit was her first novel, and based on the publication date or 1985, she was 26 when it was published. It is autobiographical and describes her unique life, raised in England to be a missionary - I thought that only happened in the U.S. The novel is mostly about her relationship with her mother who was the one raising her to be the missionary. The protagonist - in the novel - was gung ho for evangelism, a believer, and would have continued to be, had she not had urges that her mother and the church saw as unnatural. I enjoyed the account of her childhood in this environment. Towards the end she makes use of a device of telling fairy-tales interwoven with the narrative that seem to be an illustration of her predicament, and a way of separating (psychologically) from her mother. But I found myself hurrying through them and didn't feel they added to the story. Nonetheless, it is a strong work that makes me wonder what she has come up with in the next 25 years.

Continuing with Friends and Heroes from the Balkan Trilogy. In between I had jumped ahead to The Danger Tree and The Battle Lost and Won from the Levant Trilogy. The latter two are much shorter, and again my library doesn't have the third of the trilogy and I'll have to wait on an inter-library loan again. So, Harriet has just gone off an unexpected adventure and I'll have to wait to see what it is. Coming back to the last book of the Balkan Trilogy, I felt more depth than in the other two, but maybe that is just because they are short. Also, the latter two switch between the point of view of Harriet - the protagonist of the Balkan trilogy and a young soldier. Maybe it is that Harriet has somewhat resigned herself to her husband who is rarely present for her. There is a death at the end of Friends and Heroes, which is especially stunning because of its pointlessness. It seems barely to matter. I think any of these books are well worth reading, but the Balkan Trilogy is stronger than the Levant Trilogy, so far.

I've been very impressed by Destiny Disrupted, a History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. It is very readable, and covers history in a manner which I enjoy, where the ideas of the time are treated along with the events. Although I was aware of a lot of the events, the book provides a cohesive view in which Europeans were not the central actors, but more a a blip on the edge until the last couple of centuries.

Read Change your brain, change your body : use your brain to get and keep the body you have always wanted after seeing him on a public television show. I have mixed feelings about it. I think it is pretty sound nutritionally, but I am suspicious of a couple of things. His treatment center does scans of brain activity which according to him shows more than ordinary brain scans. But, looking at the scans in the book, I have to say that I don't see in them what he describes - a lot of them look very much the same to me. Also, based on the idea of body malfunction coming from brain malfunction, he divides people into a lot of groups based on the kind of brain malfunction, such as underactive prefrontal cortex, or overactive deep limbic symptoms. As in most such tests I come out not clearly any type, though if I exaggerated how much I did some things, I managed to fall into a couple of them. To help with the brain problems there are very high priced supplements on the site - like $45. for a 15 day supply of one.

I'd be interested in what Kizdoc or anyone else with medical training things about the book. On the positive side, there is a lot of information on the web site for free including lists of good foods to eat, reflecting a whole grain, fruits and vegetables, lean meat, nuts, unrefined foot approach, with enough sleep and exercise. His talk about how diet drinks caused him to have muscle pains made me wonder if that was affecting me, since I had begun drinking them at work again and had muscle pains - and they seem to be much less. Also, he convinced me to be better about getting to bed on time.

I think I saw that guy on TV once: he seemed like an "Ive got a gimmick" health evangelist, but of course nobody would argue against eating well and getting enough sleep and exercise. In my cynical way, I think he just wrapped it up in a new money-making package. But, he was very good at it, I must confess.

And I agree with you about The Balkan Trilogy being stronger than The Levant Trilogy, and that the second protagonist dilutes the Levant.

I'd have to look at this more closely, but I would be very skeptical of his findings and conclusions. I'm always a bit leery of docs who open their own for-profit treatment centers, hospitals and other medical facilities. One of the things I look at is the number of publications in reputable peer-reviewed medical journals, such as The New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics, and JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. I briefly looked at his credentials and C.V. on his web site (http://www.amenclinics.com/meet-dr-amen/credentials), and he does appear to have a significant number of published papers in what appear to be legitimate medical journals, although I'm not that familiar with the neuropsychiatry and clinical psychiatry publications. I would also look at the number of articles that reference his article; if a number of other papers have commented on it, that usually indicates that others are trying to replicate his findings or using them to reference their own studies, which are good things -- provided that his studies can be replicated and are not refuted or challenged. If any of the articles are retracted by the journal that is a HUGE red flag, indicating that the study is likely fradulent or seriously flawed; the best recent example of this was the British clinician who initially linked vaccines to autism, whose "landmark" paper was retracted by The Lancet, one of the major British medical journals, earlier this year:

Journal Retracts 1998 Paper Linking Autism to Vaccines

In general, I'm of the belief that anything that sounds too good to be true is too good to be true.

Thanks for responding Kidzdoc. Anyway, I think I'll pass on the high priced specialized vitamins and just go with a multivitamin and fish oil. I am feeling much more virtuous now anyway since I got a heater for my pool with a current (cheaper version of an endless pool) and I am back to swimming every day.

Rebecca, I am still looking forward to reading the third volume of the Levant trilogy but I'll have to wait for an inter-library loan, but I have to find out where Harriet ends up after ditching the ship.

My daughter gave me a copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for mother's day. It was an engrossing read, but not a very satisfying one really. I didn't get much of a sense of reality of the characters, certainly not what mysteries can do at their best which is to reveal people in extreme circumstances. I feel like there was this thin veneer of liberalism with quotes about assaults against women at the beginnings of chapters. The main character is presented as a tolerant guy who has a long time relationship with a married woman with her husband's knowledge. Well, I don't think that people own each other either, but it is just not all that smooth and simple. Another main character is a young woman who has been given a guardian with control over her finances, etc. after she had had some minor violent encounters as a youth, and refused to cooperate with the people who evaluated her. Of course, she is a computer hacker savant with a photographic memory to fulfill another stereotype. I was engrossed in the action, but after it ended the whole mystery part of it didn't make that much sense. The evil people are totally evil. Funny, he mentions Ake Edwardson in the book, whose mysteries I like very much and who has real people in his books with much more subtle mixtures of good and evil. I don't recommend it.

Based on the movie of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the reading of The Girl Who Played with Fire we don't know after the first what her challenges were as a child and youth.

Satisfaction, I guess, is in the eye of the beholder. I won't be satisfied until, it is hinted, the third volume with respect to the big picture. But from the movie I was satisfied that I had been introduced to one hell of a tough (and admirable) heroine.

Robert

I gather then that you thought more of The Girl Who Played with Fire than I did of the first?

I have the feeling that I enjoyed it more. The movie was the big deal for me, though.

Robert

Solla - I'm only up to post 42, but wanted to mention I also got a lot out of Destiny Disrupted. I've enjoyed your takes on the Balkan Trilogy, Never Let Me Go and Oranges are not the only fruit - all of which I'd like to read some time.

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust - I made it up to about page 220. The first part which concerned his relationship with his mother was pretty interesting to me, but although well written, and fairly easy reading I was not so interested beyond that. 220 is in the middle of accounts of Swann, his uncle's love affairs, and I just found myself not interested and disliking this person, and not expecting any revelations that would make up for so many words that appeared to have little direction in terms of story. I was also put off by Proust's description of the lesbian couple. I felt it showed little imagination in supposing why they acted as they did.

Weights and Measures by Joseph Roth - this was short, but I think I actually got more out of it than from the other book by Roth (Radetzky march). This seemed more a personal portrait - the other more a portrait of a time, a style. The thing that caught at me was how coldly he acted towards his wife - how he might have had such a richer life if he had been able to manage some forgiveness. 150 pages. Recommended.

Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner - I definitely enjoyed this book about quirky and likable people, all of them more or less outsiders and at least partially orphaned. It is presented as being about three people who come to Montreal, but my expectation of them meeting and having some joint purpose was not revealed, although one meets the other two, one for an intense evening and one only briefly. There is some sense of resolution and of the characters having reached some point at the end, but it isn't a strong sense. The story could have continued to be a lot longer for me. Less than 300 pages. Recommended.

Middlemarch George Elliot
Middlemarch is quite different being a book that slowly builds to a climax. Even so, it seems to me to be mainly about relationships. It reminds me of Henry James in this, showing the intricacies and subtleties of rellationship, and how vulnerable they can be to seemingly small things, and how it can be possible both to see and not really see each other and our motivations. It's about 800 pages and well worth it. Highly recommended.

Dreams in a Time of War by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is an account of the childhood of the Kenyan novelist. I have read many books lately, which show the actions of the British towards colonial peoples in their arrogance and cruelty. This book doesn't focus on that, being more about the life of the Kenyan people, but, of course, it is in the context of a British occupation that has no regard for their way of life and disrupts it in multiple ways.
About 250 pages. Recommended.

I forgot about The Grandmothers a collection of four short novels by Doris Lessing. I've been reading these over an extended period. They have very different subjects, probably the first, the title story, is most provocative involving two friends who become involved with each other's sons. Victoria and the Staveneys shows the effect of class - even with people who are well intentioned from the point of view of a woman of a poorer class. The Reason for It is science fiction, and seems to be asking the question of why the good rich times when people live in peace and freedom do not last. A Love Child deals with a wartime relationship which was short, and but which he feels as the truest thing in his life. Good writing.

Another one I forgot was Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky. I've tried to read it a couple of times before, finally made it through a Google books version. Previously I've read Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and the Idiot. At one time Dostoevsky was my favorite author, but this one really doesn't appeal to me. Or maybe it is that I am just not fascinated by the idea of giving into to negative impulses. I don't find anything romantic about being cruel. It feels to me more of a choice to make.

Rain of Gold by Víctor Villaseñor was enjoyable reading. It is a novel based upon the lives of his parents and grandparents. Much of the novel is told through the point of view of his mother, Lupe, and his father, Salvador, beginning when they were children, but through their voice you get a lot more about the grandparents and before. It has a feel of having mythologized the lives of the grandparents, and even of the parents as children, but particularly the mothers of both Lupe and Salvador. I think I enjoyed the early parts of the book more, seen through Lupe's eyes in a mountain valley in Mexico, periodically raided by either government or revolutionary soldiers. It made the little that I know of Mexican history a bit more real to me, and also the treatment of Mexicans in the United States early in the 20th century. Towards the end I tired a bit of the depiction of Salvador's grandmother - it seemed a bit overdone - and, at the end, Lupe was covered much less than Salvador, some of whose dialog got a little preachy. Still, a good book, at at around 550 pages, enough to sink into.

I've just been reading The spirit catches you and you fall down by Anne Fadiman. There was a point during the read that I felt that the two cultures of Hmong and medical American were just too far apart ever to reach any understanding of the other's true intentions. But, of course, that isn't so, and there are moments even in this book when some of the barriers break down. The story in brief is what happens when a Hmong family brings their dearly loved child, a toddler, to a hospital when she begins to have epileptic seizures. The seizures are very serious. First, without translators, it is not until the third visit that the doctors really know what is happening, when they are actually able to see a seizure happening. Then the medicines are continually adjusted, have complicated dosages, and lots of side effects. Though they've sought the doctor, the parents come to believe that their daughter is suffering from too much medicine, and they resist giving the ones that they perceive as causing the most damage. In addition getting the doses correct is difficult for them, as they are illiterate. They perceive illness as losing contact with your soul, and epilepsy, besides being an illness, has a spiritual dimension which can mean that a person can fill a role similar to a shaman. The doctors, on the other hand, see them as doing harm to their daughter by not following their medical instructions exactly.

The book describes how this conflict plays out, and, very well, so that you understand that both sides agonized over what was going on. Mixed in there are short descriptions of Hmong history in China and Southeast Asia, and about their role with the U.S. during the Vietnam war era.

I loved The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down and it got me started reading anything Anne Fadiman writes. I also bought a bunch of books about the Hmong, but still haven't read any.

I read the Fadiman book last year and your review really nails the book in a single paragraph.

#57 - I'll have to look up some others by her then. Anything you'd especially recommend?
#58 - thanks, maybe I'll post it as a review then. I haven't done much of that lately. I'm on to reading Singular Intimacies now by Danielle Ofri, another one that Kizdoc had mentioned, written by a doctor at Bellevue hospital. I've only gotten through a couple of chapters, but I am enjoying it. She is just starting out as a practicing medical student - she has gotten a Phd focussing on research - and she talks about her feelings of uselessness on the floor. Chapter 1 focused on one patient, and chapter 2 told about two others. Chapter 1 left me kind of hanging on the outcome, but I don't know if she will get back to it, or if that is part of her style.

I still have time to read on the bus, but my other free time is very much taken up with sending query letters or novel excerpts to agents, and now, sending out short stories taken from the novel to magazines - as I read that that might be helpful for eventual publication of the novel. Then I am working on a project that I've thought about for a long time which is a mixture of constructing dollhouses and writing little stories to go along with it.

#59, My favorite is Ex Libris, a collection of essays mostly about books, reading, and words. I've given away countless copies of this book.

Solla -- I love the idea about constructing dollhouses and stories -- two of my favorite things -- anyone/thing can live in a dollhouse where anything can happen -- so many imaginative, playful possibilities!

#60 just put it on hold

#61 Do you make dollhouses then, or have one?

I made dollhouses out of all kinds of odds and ends, mostly cardboard boxes and found objects when I was a kid -- don't own any now -- no space to collect anything but books.....

Some Prefer Nettles was purported to be a subtle book about conflict between western influence and tradition. It is from the point of view of a man who has absented himself from his marriage - at least from feeling and expressing real affection for his wife. It wasn't clear to me whether his wife truly felt the same, or had been pushed into her affair by the sterility of their relationship. But, in any case, at the time of the book, she is in an affair with the approval of her husband, and they both are expecting to divorce but somehow aren't taking the step.

In some ways the person I have the most sympathy with is the 10 year old son, who rarely appears in person in the story, but the father talks about him, and seems to have a clear view of his personality and fears. A family friend finally tells the boy what is happening with the parent's marriage.

A lot of the book takes place while the husband or the couple are spending time with the wife's father who is living with a woman much younger than he is. There's a lot of detail about meals and watching traditional puppet plays in the father-in-laws company.

When the couple finally takes the step of divorce the father in law wants to persuade his daughter to change her mind and stay in the marriage, and seems to blame her although he's been clearly told it was a mutual decision - although the main character doesn't think that he really objects as much as he says. Still, he arranges for an evening at a restaurant along with his daughter to try to influence her.

The pace of this all was a bit too languid for me. It was easy enough to read, but I never really developed a sympathy for the characters. I don't know that I really got much sense of Japanese culture other than a concern with an appearance with propriety, which mainly has to do with how to extract his wife from the marriage so that she is not disgraced so she wouldn't be accepted by her lover's family.

I enjoyed much better Children of the New World : a novel of the Algerian war by Assia Djebar. It is during the Algerian struggle for independence from France, which I had previously read was a particularly bloody one. There are several interconnected characters, and the story is told through several sections, which shift the point of view character. I felt like it gave a deep and complex sense of the motivations of the characters and their interdependence in their family and community. At the same time the presenting of the character's thoughts had a kind of distant feeling to it, as though they were seen from a distance or in a dispassionate way without full involvement. But maybe that is because I would gladly have gone on with more about any one of them - to a book focused on a single character. Instead the story goes through a couple of days in which several characters come to some point of decision or crisis, both woman and men, although the focus is a bit more on women, and the roles they are in are quite varied.

I finally read Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, which I'd intended for a long time after reading Home and Gilead, both of which I enjoyed very much. I liked it very much as well. In some ways it is very unlike the other two. It is lush in imagery and language, whereas they have a stark feeling to them, a precision of language in describing emotions and relationships. Some similarities are how they are all filled with things that haunt us, whether it is because of their loss as in Housekeeping, or an inability to keep from hurting each other in the same ways, as in Home. Also, similar is the sympathetic portrayal of all the characters including those whose actions are hurtful. There is no particular explanation given for why the characters turn out the way they do, although some of them are different in a way that seems it should have a cause. Also some characters becomes estranged from others for no clearly stated reason, which may be more like the actual world than not.

Ex Librus was a pleasant read and probably would be so for anyone who loves reading and words. It did set me wondering how I came to be a writer. She makes a statement about not knowing any writers whose childhood homes weren't filled with books. Mine was not. There was one bookcase with volumes of Childcraft and a book about how to raise children, which may have been a companion to the childcraft books for the parents. Each volume had a theme. One was Bible stories, and there was probably one of myth.One had Wynken, Blyken and Nod. I can't recall my parents every reading books, although my mother read magazines, Redbook, and we had a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post at some point. I mostly remember being told to get my nose out of my book and go outside to play, rather than encouraged.

solla - That's interesting about your bookless childhood. My avoidance of books growing up was voluntary. There were some books there and my parents would have happily added more, but I wasn't interested. But then I'm not a writer. :)

You have a ton of interesting reviews that I'm now reading (since post 52). I especially like your reviews of the Fadiman books and of Housekeeping.

Thanks for your comments dchaikin. Lately, I have not seemed to have had a real review in me, I mean for posting as a review, a paragraph or two seem to be it. Partly it is time. Partly it is a feeling that I would like a review to me more like an I-search paper, which is something my daughter did in middle or high school, the idea being that instead of coming up with a research paper filled with things that you found out, that instead you write the paper on the search, the process, beginning with what you wanted to find out and why.

On the writing front, I am still looking for an agent for my novel. In the meantime I have extracted short stories from it, and two have been accepted for publication, both in online magazines. One is also a print magazine and one has a print magazine connected to it in which they publish their favorites or the winner of their best story of the month contest. One is to be published sometime in August, probably the next week or two, as the Bartleby Snopes site builds an issue with two story a week and then opens for voting after the 22nd. The other is scheduled for October at 34th Parallel. I'll put up links once they are available.

Congratulations on having your stories accepted for publication! I will look forward to reading them once you post the links.

solla, congrats on the publications!

Congratulations!

Looks like it will be Ag 8 for one, so I'll make sure to post it.

I'll be watching for your stories. I've been waiting since you posted that segment about the climbing tree some time ago.

One story is up today. Skate Key is a chapter from my novel, The Things That Always Were, as a short story. http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/stories.htm Starting August 22 there will be voting for the story of the month.

Thank you for the link. Having just finished Faithful Place, you've given me the theme of dysfunctional families for the month.

Solla - Thanks, I enjoyed reading it. Wish it were longer. ;)

Thanks, Solla. I enjoyed reading it, and it brought back memories of my childhood roller skates with keys.

The one to be published in October is longer, dhaikin. A lot of the literary magazines have a limit of 2000 words or less, about 6 pages, which is kind of short for me, in general, though I do have a few.

All the short stories are now up on Bartleby Snopes, and the voting is started. Here's the info:
---------
from Bartleby Snopes to Contributors and Subscribers,

Voting for the August Story of the Month Contest is now open. This
month we have stories by Eileen Donovan Kranz, Annam Manthiram, Jeffrey
Miller, Solla Carrock, Ron Yates, Mason Alexander, Heather Clitheroe, and
Robert John Miller. We're also pleased to announce the debut of Howard
Reeves in our New Writer Showcase. Head over to
http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/stories.htm to read all of our stories and
vote for your favorite. Results will be announced on the site on September
1st.
---------

Take a look if you have a chance.
Also, I found out a third story is also scheduled to be published online in October.

#75 Just clicked on the Faithful Place link. I'm glad to see that Tanya Woods has written a new one. I'll have to get hold of it soon since I liked both of here previous books.

It may have been you also who recommended Denise Mina. I've just finished Exile. I put all three of the trilogy on hold, but the second one came first. I thought it would be okay, and it was, but there were a lot of places where it assumed you knew the back story and it didn't take the time to refresh your memory (or lack of it in my case) from the first book. I think I should probably reread once I've got the first book. Exile seemed a little implausible for me in how recklessly the main character acted and that she didn't actually get herself killed, but nonetheless it was pretty gripping, and realistic in terms of descriptions of the characters and the surroundings of Glasgow - felt real anyway, as I've never been.

The Wizard of the Crow is a long book (700+ pages) that didn't feel long. Early on in the book we meet the wizard so hungry he has left his body and is deciding whether to return. He runs into the other main character when he goes to an office to look for work. The book is about their relationship and a satirical and very funny account of what is happening in a made up African country. I have already forgotten names since I finished it a couple of weeks ago, but the male character stumbles into a protest in which the female character is involved. They end up running together in the dark to evade the police following after them. They manage to escape when the man puts up a symbol of sorcery. Not only do they get away, but this evolves into a new profession, and the sorcery, the political rebellion, and the account of the inner intrigues in the government intertwine throughout the rest of the book. I would be glad to read more by this author, Ngugi Wa'Thiong'O.

In addition to the Siege of Krishnapur, I've now read two of Farrell books, the Singapore Grip, and Troubles. They all seem to be more about how human relationships play out in the background of some crises, than about the crisis per se. This is especially true of Troubles. The characters aren't really so much involved with the troubles in Ireland, until near the end, but it is talked about and reacted to much. The Siege of Krishnapur had the most sense of being involved in the event, but even that was from a very small part of the action.

The Singapore Grip begins mainly from the point of view of a partner of a rubber company. The other partner dies, and his son comes into the picture, and the point of view shifts to him as he manages to evade the plot by the other partner and his daughter to ensnare him in marriage for the good of the business as they see it, and instead becomes involved with a Eurasian woman. There are a couple of digressions into the military actions, some from the allies, and another from a Japanese soldier. They are interesting but mostly used to show the forces that will soon take over Singapore and threaten the people we are most interested in. This isn't really a criticism, as it didn't stop me from being interested, but at least the Singapore Grip and Troubles kind of petered out in terms of the relationships at their center.

In Troubles the main character, the major, who has survived WWI, with some leftover mental effects, first comes to the Majestic hotel to see whether he is actually engaged to a woman he met on a shore leave, but that relationship serves mainly to get him to the Majestic. However, he is entranced/fixated with a woman who is at first seems to go from hot to cold, and then, it is clear, simply doesn't care for him in the way that he cares for her. Of the three books, this was the best for me, I believe because the characters were most fully and emotionally portrayed.

Running through all the books is a general sense of the British in general not recognizing other people as fully human, whether Asian or Irish, and with a sense of superiority in their class, or their destiny. Of course, part of what makes the books interesting are the characters who somehow oppose this general tendency. Often the people that embody the counter forces - and are probably most like me, at least in terms of their beliefs - are portrayed as somehow ineffectual. They are not sure of themselves, and even appear foolish or naive in some ways. What strength really is, is an issue, especially of Troubles.

Jamilia is a sweet and beautiful story. It is the kind of story I would think that I wanted to write when I was bogged down in my own novel which is about four times as long (not that long, Jamilia is only 96 pages). It is set in Kyrgyzstan, one of the Republics that came out of the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is Turkic in central Asia, mountainous. It is in a time of war. It is not specific which. It mentions German, but given that the author was born in 1928 and that the main character is a 15 year old boy, Seit, it is probably WWII. The village doesn't experience any battles. Rather the war is present through the young men who have gone away.

The sense of place and culture is very strong in this book. The boy belongs to a large extended family which lives in two houses both managed by his mother. The second house is lived in by the second wife of his father. She had lived there with her first husband, who died leaving her with two small sons. Seit explains, "We could not abandon a widow and her sons, so our kinfolk married my father to her." The tradition of large families was left from nomadic times.

Now the two small sons are grown, and have gone off to war. Seit refers to these men as his older brothers. One of them has married the daughter in law Jamilia. Seit feels akin to Jamilia and is a little in love with her. This is true, though their relationship, like many relationships in the village, is shaped by tradition. For instance, Jamilia's husband does not write directly to her, but to the family. She is barely mentioned in the letter. Seit and Jamilia do not call each other by first names, but he calls her, jenei, and she calls him, kichine bala - little boy, which is the custom to call a husband's younger brother.

The story happens in the course of a summer. A man, Daniyar, not totally a stranger, but an orphan who grew up mostly in nearby Kazakstan, returns to the village. Because the three of them are set to do a task together, delivering grain for the soldiers, they are thrown together, and Seit experiences the growing relationship between Jamilia and Daniyar. He doesn't simply watch it, but experiences it as his own awakening to another kind of perception of the world.

>83 solla:: solla,

Judging from your review, Jamilia does have a similar feel to your novel in parts.

Because of the mysterious disappearance of this thread when you order by topics, I have moved on to part 2 here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/98436

#84 - well, I hope so. That would make me happy.