RidgewayGirl Reads in 2015 -- Part Three

Dies ist die Fortführung des Themas RidgewayGirl Reads in 2015 -- Part Two.

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1RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 24, 2015, 9:40 am

This year's goal is to increase the percentage of women authors to at least 60%. And that's it. My reading has been a mixture of the noteworthy, the proven classic and pure junk. I don't expect that to change.

In addition to book reviews, I'll also be posting reviews of art exhibitions and museum visits. Munich has a quantity of excellent art museums, from the enormous to the tiny, with an busy schedule of temporary exhibits. Writing about what I've seen keeps me from mixing them up and forgetting what I saw.

Currently Reading

Recently Read

Recently Acquired

6RidgewayGirl
Jun. 5, 2015, 2:13 pm

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer was an eye-opener for me. I'd thought I'd had a pretty good idea about how difficult it was for a rape victim to find justice, but things are much, much worse than I'd thought.

Which should make Missoula unreadable, but Krakauer uses a few individual cases while reminding the reader of the larger problem they represent. The women involved are brave and determined to call their attackers to account, despite the skepticism of the police, the unwillingness of the prosecutor's office to prosecute, even when the police felt they had a strong case (often with ample evidence and a confession from the rapist), and the general opprobrium of the public, who were quick to support their beloved football players.

Krakauer manages to remain nuanced and balanced in his journalism, while never down-playing or dismissing the scope of the issue or the deep impact being raped had on the women who were willing to speak with him. I was impressed by Missoula and finished it thinking that it should be required reading for everyone.

7japaul22
Jun. 5, 2015, 3:09 pm

I've been interested in reading this. I have thought for some time that, like in the military, part of the problem on college campuses is that there is a desire to handle rape accusations internally instead of involving the police at all. This is usually couched as an attempt to get women who are hesitant to go to the police to get help anonymously, figuring that helping the women is more important than prosecuting the perpetrators. To me, this is just perpetuating the problem and leading to corrupt practices. Was that a topic explored in this book?

8RidgewayGirl
Jun. 5, 2015, 3:36 pm

Jennifer, in the book the university system was often the only justice a victim could find. Since they're held to a lower level of certainty (like a civil court) and with people more willing to go for expulsion than to commit a man to prison and to a record, this is often the only option - especially when the police and prosecutor would not be willing to take a case to court. But, yes, this was looked at in detail in the book.

9ursula
Jun. 6, 2015, 1:27 am

>6 RidgewayGirl: I do like Krakauer's writing, so I may try to track this down.

10RidgewayGirl
Jun. 6, 2015, 4:35 am

Ursula, he has a clear, journalistic style that worked well with the subject matter. I think that with all the idiocy surrounding it, it helps to have a man with a reputation of climbing mountains and imbedding himself with troops in Afghanistan standing up and saying that the way rape is handled by the American Justice is a disgrace. He also contends that women who were raped often suffer from PTSD, based on his own time in PTSD support groups for veterans. And the veterans in his support group agreed.

11japaul22
Jun. 6, 2015, 6:37 am

>8 RidgewayGirl: that's interesting. Sounds like a book I need to read.

12RidgewayGirl
Jun. 6, 2015, 9:13 am

Jennifer, it's surprisingly readable. And Krakauer does a good job of neither over-describing or under-describing the rapes themselves. He focuses on the victims' feelings of fear and pain, and how consent was not given, rather than the act, which I appreciated.

13kidzdoc
Jun. 6, 2015, 10:50 am

Nice review of Missoula, Kay. I'll add it to my wish list.

14charl08
Jun. 7, 2015, 1:37 pm

What an advert. Hope the female climber has something to wreak revenge with in her bag (Aside from the sexism, which, obviously, ew, I also can't believe people climbed in those enormous woolly jumpers! They must have been boiling.)

I've also added Missoula to the TBR pile, and hope that colleagues / friends will be interested too. Good to hear it is accessible, and that the author has credibility with audiences that might not otherwise see the book.

15RidgewayGirl
Jun. 7, 2015, 2:32 pm

It's well worth reading. I hope it ends up being widely read.

Charlotte, I thought I'd take a step back from the openly offensive to the girls-are-yucky sort of ad.

16RidgewayGirl
Jun. 7, 2015, 2:33 pm

Heather O'Neill wrote the charming and gritty Lullabies for Little Criminals and so I was excited to see that she'd written another book, this one called The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. Set in the same hardscrabble, working class Montreal, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is Nouschka Tremblay, who along with her twin brother Nicolas, are the children of a famous folk singer, now down on his luck. While they were paraded out as children in front of audiences, their father left their upbringing to their grandfather. Essentially alone in the world, the two children formed a close bond that continued into adulthood. Now twenty, Nouschka is beginning to see that charm, beauty and being the daughter of a local celebrity isn't enough and she begins to try to better herself, going back to school and looking for a better job. Meanwhile, the men in her life are still committed to the personas they took on when they were fourteen, unwilling to see that what was cool back then, might not look so admirable in adulthood.

Nouschka has a fantastic voice. She manages to survive in a rough setting and under difficult circumstances with grace and a poetic optimism, that she maintains even in her darkest hours. She also enjoys the life she has, even if she can see that it needs improving. It's the quality of O'Neill's writing that made this book so much fun to read and her ability to create outrageously colorful characters who feel as real as anyone. I'll continue to read whatever I find by her.

17dchaikin
Jun. 8, 2015, 11:27 pm

As much as I have liked Krakauer, reading a book about rape doesn't appeal. But the book sounds important.

I love your books read list ordered by year of publication (>4 RidgewayGirl:), so much so that I copied your idea (although it's buried deep in my thread).

18reva8
Jun. 9, 2015, 1:03 am

>16 RidgewayGirl: This sounds very interesting; a great review.

19charl08
Jun. 9, 2015, 3:57 am

>16 RidgewayGirl: I really liked her voice, but after 200 pages felt the book didn't really go anywhere, and I wanted to go on to other things. As it had to go back to the library, I've returned it. I might try her other book though. I wondered if you had any thoughts on the length, or if you thought it all stood up as a whole? I wondered if it had been pared down I would have been more positive about it.

20RidgewayGirl
Jun. 9, 2015, 5:55 am

Charlotte, I see what you're saying. Nouschka is stuck in a life that isn't going anywhere, but she is struggling to get out, even if her attempts don't always work and are sometimes actively working to keep her where she is. She does progress, though, and that is the point - that she is able to see that what worked when she was a teenager is not as functional as she enters adulthood, even as the men in her life are unable to see the same thing - everyone from her father and brother to her love interest are all stuck on the image they created of themselves when they were much younger and they can't see that they need to leave that behind in order to move forward.

And I love that gritty, down at the heels, magical version of Montreal O'Neill has created. I could hang out there for days. I'm reading a book of her short stories now, Daydreams of Angels, and the shorter form works really well with O'Neill's super-powered imagination. Her short stories remind me of George Saunders and Karen Russell.

reva8, O'Neill's books are not only really inventive, but they also paint quite a vivid picture of working class Montreal.

Daniel, no one wants to read about rape, but the book is more about how we as a society have decided to handle rape and the victims of rape. The statistics are bleak.

21NanaCC
Jun. 9, 2015, 9:49 am

>16 RidgewayGirl: The Girl Who was Saturday Night sounds like one I would enjoy. I will look for it.

22FlorenceArt
Jun. 9, 2015, 9:57 am

LT thinks I probably won't like The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, so of course that (and your review!) makes me want to try it.

23NanaCC
Jun. 9, 2015, 9:59 am

>22 FlorenceArt: "makes me want to try it."

A challenge... :)

24RidgewayGirl
Jun. 10, 2015, 1:56 am

If you haven't read anything by Heather O'Neill I recommend beginning with her first novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, or if you like short stories, Daydreams of Angels.

25RidgewayGirl
Jun. 10, 2015, 6:16 am

The extent of my knowledge of the sinking of theLusitania was that it was a ship that sunk, sometime soon before or after the Titanic, that a lot of people died and that it had something to do with WWI. Which is, admittedly, very little. So when Erik Larson wrote a book about it called Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, I was happy to pick up a copy and start reading. Larson writes accessible and interesting books of social history, and I'd read and enjoyed a few of his previous titles.

During WWI, the German navy was far smaller than the famous British equivalent, except that they had invested in U-Boats that could travel undetected and sink ships without being discovered. These early submarines were not the safest of environments, and their weapons were not entirely reliable. Still, they had a huge impact on naval warfare, leading to the end of large battles involving many ships. Instead, submarines patrolled the waters around harbors and shipping lanes, sinking merchant vessels carrying armaments and supplies. The problem came when British ships began flying the flags of neutral countries when moving through high-risk areas, and American ships began carrying armaments and other supplies.

The British were desperate for the US to join the war. Americans were just as determined to avoid Old World conflicts. Germany was angry about their ships being held in American ports. The Lusitania's planned voyage from New York to Liverpool in May, 1915 was a risky one, given that the Germans had posted warnings in the New York papers that directly mentioned her. But the travelers on board, as well as the crew, were confident that the ship's speed (much faster than that of any submarine) as well as the expectation of an escort of British destroyers as soon as the ship reached British waters, protected the ship from any potential harm.

The actual sinking of the Lusitania occurred only because of an unlikely conflux of events, not the least of which were confusing information sent to the ship, the British government's need for American involvement in the war, the weather, and the randomness of timing. Still, it was a disaster, with nearly 1,200 people dead as a result. The book's most interesting chapters naturally surrounded the events during and immediately after the ship was hit by a German torpedo. Despite the high number of dead, including many Americans, it would be another two years before the US entered WWI, but the sinking of the Lusitania did have a great affect on changing American attitudes towards that war.

Larson writes ably, and certainly researched the subject in an exhaustive manner. This sometimes resulted in a book that tried to pack too much in, with superfluous information about random passengers bogging down the narrative rather than enhancing the story. Still, this is a very readable and accessible book about an important event that is not well remembered. It was certainly worth the time it took to read and I enjoyed it.

26NanaCC
Jun. 10, 2015, 7:26 am

Nice review of Dead Wake, Kay. I enjoyed Larson's Devil in the White City, and had mixed feelings about In The Garden of Beasts. Have you read those? His books are definitely not dry. I might check this one out.

27RidgewayGirl
Jun. 10, 2015, 7:52 am

Colleen, those are the two of Larson's that I've read, too. I thought both were entertaining and I certainly learned a lot from both. That said, I didn't love them and they didn't stay with me the way some other books have, but I'll keep reading what he publishes.

28baswood
Jun. 10, 2015, 5:54 pm

Interesting review of Dead Wake. I think your previous knowledge of the sinking of the Lusitania was on a par with mine and so I have learned something too.

29kidzdoc
Jun. 11, 2015, 2:51 am

Nice review of Dead Wake, Kay. My knowledge of that ship's sinking is also limited, so I learned a bit from your comments.

30Nickelini
Jun. 16, 2015, 11:15 am

Have you seen this article in the Atlantic? : http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/advertising-1970s-women... (‘You've Come a Long Way, Baby’: The Lag Between Advertising and Feminism)

Make sure to watch the embedded video clip of the Loves Baby Soft ad. Disturbing.

31torontoc
Jun. 16, 2015, 11:25 am

I am reading Daydreams of Angels and am thoroughly enjoying it!

32RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2015, 1:56 pm

She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is. Literature had fueled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine o her own narrative. Throughout her teens she inhabited the nineteenth century, roaming the moors with the Bröntes, feeling vexed at the constraints of Austen's drawing rooms. Dickens was her -- rather sentimental -- friend, George Eliot her more rigorous one.

A God in Ruins is a companion novel to Kate Atkinson's amazing Life After Life, and follows the life of Ursula's younger brother, Teddy. It's a very different book from Life After Life, for all the connections. While Ursula's life is characterized by flux and change, Teddy's is characterized by a resigned steadiness. A bomber pilot during the Second Word War, Teddy survives raid after raid, seeing his friends and companions die is horrible ways, and fully understanding the repercussions of his actions. For him, the bombings of German cities is never an abstract or patriotic event. He vows that if he survives the war, he will live quietly, and he does his best to fulfill that vow.

A God in Ruins is deceptively quiet, with the only drama outside of his war years being his contentious relationship with his daughter, Viola, who is a prickly, off-putting person. I'll admit that I liked her, although the consensus clearly goes the other way. Viola was a sullen child, whose personality did not mesh well with her nature-loving father's, and her teenage years and adulthood proved no easier for her. Becoming a mother much too young, she was never a good parent, although her parenting skills far surpassed those of their father. Atkinson has a talent for creating characters who are very different from one another, and having each of them come to life. The book gathers power slowly as it progresses. The parts set during Teddy's flying years are especially compelling, which echoes the pattern of his life.

33NanaCC
Bearbeitet: Jun. 16, 2015, 1:34 pm

Great review of A God in Ruins, Kay. I thought it was excellent. Of course I plowed through it. It kept me up a couple of nights.

ETA: your touch stone goes to a book by Leon Uris.

34RidgewayGirl
Jun. 16, 2015, 1:56 pm

Thanks, Colleen. Fixed.

35RidgewayGirl
Jun. 16, 2015, 1:57 pm

Thanks, Bas and Darryl. I may pick up a copy for my father to read while we're at the beach this summer.

Joyce, that was Not Good. The message I got was, "give this to your girlfriend and you'll get a blow job." It was about that subtle.

I'm glad, Cyrel. I read the first half before the library took it away from me, but I'm next up to get it back. I loved the one about the Nureyev clones. And the one with the angels.

36Nickelini
Jun. 16, 2015, 2:34 pm

Joyce, that was Not Good. The message I got was, "give this to your girlfriend and you'll get a blow job." It was about that subtle.

You forgot to add, "and your girlfriend is prepubescent."

37DieFledermaus
Jun. 19, 2015, 11:29 pm

Missoula sounds like one for the list, although it also sounds quite depressing.

Agree with >28 baswood: and >29 kidzdoc: - an interesting and informative review of Dead Wake.

38RidgewayGirl
Jun. 21, 2015, 6:21 am

Joyce, I'm sure there are even more layers of wrong if we wanted to look more closely. I don't know when that ad was released, but it does remind me of chemistry class, which happened right after PE my sophomore year of high school. There wasn't time enough for a shower, but there was time to spray on the scented stuff and Love's Baby Soft was popular.

DieF, Missoula isn't a cheerful book to read, but it is an important one.

39charl08
Jun. 21, 2015, 6:25 am

>32 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I'm keenly waiting for this to turn up at the library. However, so are many others!

40RidgewayGirl
Jun. 21, 2015, 6:36 am

I know, Charlotte. I was lucky enough to have logged onto my account right after they'd just added several books and so was able to get into the queue for Missoula and Dead Wake right at the beginning. It's fun when that happens.

41RidgewayGirl
Jun. 21, 2015, 6:37 am

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a modern classic and as I read I had the feeling of having read it before. Which didn't impair my enjoyment of this imaginative and thought-provoking book in the slightest. The story concerns a mentally impaired man living in the 1950's in New York. He works as a general helper at a bakery owned by a friend of his father's and he also attends night class for people with learning difficulties and despite his low IQ, he has learned to read and write. He is enrolled in a scientific study, one which has had success in developing an operation that has succeeded in tripling the IQ of rats, although until the latest lab rat, Algernon, the improvements were temporary. Charlie is the first human this operation is tested on, and it is a success. But the rapid raise in his intelligence does not come with a corresponding raise in his social skills or ability to handle his altered circumstances. And then there is his growing awareness that he is nothing but a scientific prize to be shown off.

Flowers for Algernon is very much a part of the time in which it was written, giving an atmospheric view of the New York of sixty years ago, along with insight into how children were raised and how women were viewed at that time. Written as Charlie's diary entries, the book has an immediate and personal feel to it. I can certainly see why it has stood the test of time, and I'm sure that we'll still be reading it in another sixty years.

I received this books as part of my SantaThing package. That program has been fantastic at getting me to read books that I might not have otherwise considered.

42RidgewayGirl
Jun. 23, 2015, 9:15 am

Roz Chast is a cartoonist best known for her work in The New Yorker. In Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, she writes movingly of her experience watching her parents age and how difficult it was to negotiate all that goes with that. Chase was an only child of older parents and she was never that close to them. Once she left home, she didn't return for decades, until the fragility of her parents and their ability to manage on their own became less certain.

Her parents, especially her mother, were used to being independent. Chast was ambivalent about her feelings for them and busy with her life with a family and career in Connecticut. Visiting Brooklyn each week, she felt both burdened and guilty for feeling like they were a burden. This is a relentlessly honest view of what it's like to care for aging parents, especially when there have been no conversations or plans about what to do ahead of time.

43RidgewayGirl
Jun. 24, 2015, 2:24 pm

Fred Clark is a popular blogger, whose posts about religion and culture can be found online under The Slacktivist, but his main claim to fame is his systematic analysis of Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye's bestselling series of rapture fiction. While the authors of the Left Behind series have admitted that each book takes about 28 days to plan, write and edit, Clark has been writing about these books for a decade, and is nowhere close to finishing. In The Anti-Christ Handbook: The Horror and Hilarity of Left Behind, he has published his explanation of the first 200 pages of Left Behind, detailing why the book is both bad theology and bad literature. It's a class in eschatology and a writing workshop, simultaneously taught by a professor with a sense of humor. Whether you've read the books, or just seen them in plentiful stacks in every used bookstore, this is a valuable guide to their flaws and why it matters that the authors got so much so very wrong.

44RidgewayGirl
Jun. 29, 2015, 5:39 am

I'm not a science fiction reader, but I'd heard so many intriguing things about Ann Leckie's novel, Ancillary Justice, that I had to see what the fuss was about.

Told from the point of view of Breq, with chapters alternating from her past and her present, Ancillary Justice tells the story of an ever-growing inter-planetary Radch empire, and what is required to keep control. I spent the first chapters just getting my head around how this society functioned and how the different people and groups interacted. Leckie's world-building is impressive, but she doesn't let that overshadow the action and plot. There are interesting things done with how the Radch language regards gender, and how that affects how I imagined each of the characters. She also does something interesting with who the Radch consider human and who they do not.

At it's heart, this is a classic story of a group of misfits trying to change something much larger than themselves, although the main character is less of a charismatic leader than is usual, and more blindly determined to do everything on her own. It was a gripping story and I enjoyed how much I had to readjust my assumptions and scramble to figure out what was going on for much of the book.

45dchaikin
Jun. 30, 2015, 9:50 pm

Acnillary Justice is not for me, but I was really happy to read your review of Flowers for Algernon, which I have wondered about.

46RidgewayGirl
Jul. 3, 2015, 12:04 pm

I've lately only been reading Stephen King's collections of short stories, finding his novels somewhat longer than they need to be. He is a talented writer, though, able to bring a character or a scene to life in a way few popular authors can. But I had to read Mr Mercedes when I found out that it was a crime novel.

Bill Hodges is a retired detective who is struggling with retirement when he receives a letter from a man who murdered several people by driving a Mercedes through a crowd of people waiting to enter a job fair. Hodges had investigated the crime, and it was one of the few he had been unable to solve before he retired. Soon, with the help of an intelligent and computer-savvy teenager and the sister of the woman who had owned the Mercedes in question, Hodges is, once again, trying to solve this crime.

There's always a question mark next to a book by an established author writing in a genre that they aren't known for. Will they respect the parameters of the genre, or even know what they are? King delivers here; not only does he stay well within each unwritten rule of the genre, but he does so in a way that demonstrates a real understanding of the hard-boiled private detective novel. What's more, Mr Mercedes is a good book. The characters, from Hodges himself, to the tertiary characters, are all fully developed. King follows the rules of the genre, but in a way that makes them appear less like strictures, than like naturally occurring events that had to happen that way. And he has created a lovely team of investigators, from Hodges, whose gruff exterior hides the inevitable warm heart, to Jerome, the ivy-league bound seventeen-year-old who forms an unlikely friendship with both the retired cop and to Holly, who is one of the best characters King has written - an anxiety-prone, unattractive woman in her forties who is valued by the other two for who she is. I hope so much that the next novel in the series includes all three characters.

47ursula
Jul. 3, 2015, 1:03 pm

>46 RidgewayGirl: I liked Mr. Mercedes quite a bit as well. I was just looking up the sequel on the library site today and although I don't really read descriptions, I believe I did skim past something that said all 3 of the characters from this book are in that one.

48RidgewayGirl
Jul. 3, 2015, 3:23 pm

Ursula, I'm on the waiting list for Finders Keepers. There are quite a few people ahead of me.

49RidgewayGirl
Jul. 4, 2015, 6:01 am

Heather O'Neill is a Canadian author who sets her stories in a gritty, half-magical Montreal neighborhood. Daydreams of Angels is her first collection of short stories. O'Neill, who writes like Karen Russell would, had she been raised in Quebec, rather than Florida, excels at the short story, which perfectly suits her off-beat and fairy tale-like writing style. Her stories are alternately bright, but with a dark, foreboding undertone, or bleak, with a touch of magic realism, as though George Saunders and Sarah Addison Allen had decided to collaborate.

In Messages in Bottles, two children are shipwrecked on a deserted island:

The girl wondered if they spent their whole lives on the island, whether she would have to marry a walrus. They were respectable and dependable. They wouldn't cheat on you. But it would be a loveless life. Some of the swans told her that it took seven years to learn to love a walrus. After that, though, everything was okay. More or less.

There are stories based on other tales, like Sting Like a Bee, which follows three characters, a boy, a dog and a girl, all named Ferdinand, like in the story by Munro Leaf. Another, The Isles of Dr. Moreau, has a grandfather telling his grandchildren about his experiences there, and the odd things he saw. Swan Lake for Beginners imagines a Soviet program secretly operating in a village in northern Quebec, where Rudolph Nureyev is being cloned in the hopes of creating a group of great ballet dancers.

In The Saddest Chorus Girl in the World, a woman returns home, broken and unhappy:

The winter wind knew that Violet was coming back. The sky was holding its breath, and when it saw Violet step out of the train station, it finally exhaled and beautiful snowflakes began to fall. Children all over the city were noticing the gigantic snowflakes that were stuck on their mittens. They had been specially designed to impress Violet. The winter wanted Violet back.

She went for a walk in the east end. The gargoyles wanted to crawl right down off the buildings and put their arms around her. She was the only one who had loved them and who had thought they were beautiful. She was the only on who had chosen this neighborhood over Westmount.

Every story in this collection was different. I hope she continues to write short stories, although I'll continue to read what ever she writes.

50NanaCC
Jul. 4, 2015, 7:18 am

Happy birthday!

51RidgewayGirl
Jul. 4, 2015, 8:25 am

Thanks, Colleen. We're having a small heat wave here, so I've spent it sitting in the cool part of the house, reading. Which is a very satisfying way to spend the day.

52RidgewayGirl
Jul. 4, 2015, 9:09 am

I've added a new ad. I didn't know that you could use Lysol for this, but I am curiously uninterested in giving it a try.

53Nickelini
Jul. 4, 2015, 1:00 pm

>49 RidgewayGirl: Wow, that sounds so different from Lullabies for Little Criminals. I'm so happy to see that she's publishing more these days--there was a long dry spell after Lullabies.

54VivienneR
Jul. 4, 2015, 1:48 pm

Happy birthday, Kay!

(Your new ad is truly alarming.)

55NanaCC
Jul. 4, 2015, 5:27 pm

>52 RidgewayGirl: that ad is terrifying.

56RidgewayGirl
Jul. 5, 2015, 5:19 am

So does that mean no one here is willing to give it a try in the name Saving Your Marriage? C'mon, guys.

57rebeccanyc
Jul. 5, 2015, 11:13 am

I don't even understand how it's supposed to be used (and I definitely don't want to know either!).

58LolaWalser
Jul. 5, 2015, 11:42 am

It makes a "wife" sound like an appliance. Nice design, check out these features here, can do this, and that, oh yes, upgrades are possible for this model... ahhh, sir, you identified the ONE factory glitch! But not to worry, we've come up with this cheap and simple solution, shake the can, direct the nozzle, spray the offending parts... voilà. Cow patty to meringue.

Oh, by the way, did anyone notice the news about the apogee of Japanese robotics soon to hit the market, the (female, what else) sex robot?

I can't make up my mind whether that's good or bad news.

59chlorine
Jul. 6, 2015, 4:04 pm

>46 RidgewayGirl:: I'm interested by what you say about unwritten rules in the crime genre. Is it possible to sum them up? Do you think that they are good? Would a novel that does not follow them be a bad novel, or simply not a crime novel?

60charl08
Jul. 7, 2015, 4:46 am

I'm vaguely aware of reading something about Lysol that it caused all sorts of health problems for the women who used it. Absolutely no idea where I read that though. Any offers? Or am I mixing that up with something else?

61RidgewayGirl
Jul. 7, 2015, 6:03 am

Rebecca, I would rather not think too long on the subject, either. And I'll bet that there was no equivalent male ritual to make his personal areas smell like a newly scrubbed bathroom.

Lola, there are layers of wrong in these ads. And I could live my entire life without wanting to know about rich guys and their sex toys. Maybe it's a good thing? If you find out that a guy has a Japanese sex robot, maybe consider not dating him? I mean, I'm all for the ownership of personal appliances, but there are limits to how important they should be in your life. Although if a guy is very lonely and has lost his wife because he forgot to wipe down with Lysol?

chlorine, they're different for every sub-genre. And, of course, authors break those rules all the time, and often the results are fantastic. But (and this is only my opinion) if an established author decides to write genre fiction, I think that it's important that they respect the genre they're writing in. There's a worry that this is just a diversion from their more serious and important fare. The parameters of each subgenre can make for stale writing, but a good writer can use them to do something interesting with characterization or with the setting. And a good writer can take a tired genre and turn it into something else, and that's fun, too, but there is something very satisfying, to me, in a really well-written, solid crime novel. And that's what King delivers here. And to answer your last question, following rules has little to do with whether a novel is successful or not. I read a truly terrible detective novel that followed all the rules that was written by an author who usually writes popular history. The plotting and characters were all so lazily written that it was clear his heart wasn't in it. And an author like Jonathan Letham with Motherless Brooklyn can use the format in order to play around with it and the result is very good.

I don't know, Charlotte. It does seem like it would be a uniquely bad idea, though. It wouldn't surprise me. We did eventually find out that douching was generally not a good idea, after all.

62lyzard
Jul. 7, 2015, 7:54 am

There are many articles from many points of view about the Lysol advertising campaign, but briefly, it was overtly sold as a douche for "feminine hygiene" and "freshness", but covertly it was understood as a form of contraception, to be used as a post-sex rinse, at a time when it was illegal to advertise birth control.

Try this article for a start - lots of potential new thread-toppers!

63RidgewayGirl
Jul. 7, 2015, 7:56 am

That is tremendously interesting, lyzard!

64LolaWalser
Jul. 7, 2015, 11:15 am

>61 RidgewayGirl:

I'm actually not against sex toys of any kind, including dolls. There are people for whom they are more in the nature of very necessary aid than perverse caprice or something. It's just that you know those Japanese scientists aren't bent on making a terrifically "lifelike" and incredibly expensive robot for the benefit of poor disabled veterans etc.

>62 lyzard:

Good point, but I really hope nobody bought into it for contraceptive purposes.

65Nickelini
Jul. 7, 2015, 11:38 am

>62 lyzard:

Try this article for a start - lots of potential new thread-toppers!

OMG. The one from 1933 that talks about "FEAR" . . . yep, that can only be pregnancy. And then there's that lovely one from the 50s where they recommend the new pine-scented Lysol. 'Cause THATs what I want to smell like.

I've never been gladder to be born after this era. I wish my mom was still alive so I could ask her about this.

66Helenliz
Jul. 7, 2015, 5:21 pm

>60 charl08: This is not my expertise, but any disinfectant will no doubt kill the normal bacterial flora that are present in a healthy individual. Remove that and I would imagine that someone would be prey to other bacterial and yeast infections. Lovely. That'd be nice and no doubt do wonders for one's "feminine hygiene". Any husband expecting that from his little wife deserves a dose of something itchy.

>64 LolaWalser: "I've never been gladder to be born after this era." yup, me too.
I do recall a very squirmy (on my side) conversation with my grandma about contraception prior to the invention of the disposable condom. It was a condom and it had it's own box in the bedside table. ewww sprang to mind. But given the alternative of crossing your fingers and hoping, well I suppose it was a better option. Mind you, disposable condoms aren't all they are cracked up to be, as my very presence on the planet testifies...

67lyzard
Jul. 7, 2015, 6:59 pm

The subtext of those ads is amazing. As Joyce points out, the 30s one is clearly a pregnancy scare ad; the implication of all of them is, "Refuse your husband sex for fear of getting pregnant and he will start getting it elsewhere - better to douse your 'delicate membranes' with disinfectant than THAT."

Though I can't imagine that the prospect of an eventual rinse out with a product now chiefly sold as a toilet bowl cleaner did much to engender a romantic mindset.

I'm curious whether the booklet women were encouraged to send away for was any more explicit than these ads; though given you could go to jail for sending information about contraception through the mail, probably not.

68RidgewayGirl
Jul. 8, 2015, 2:50 am

I'd forgotten how well Colm Tóibín writes about quiet lives until I was halfway through the first chapter of Nora Webster, and entirely hooked. Set in Ireland, in 1968, the novel centers on a woman in her mid-forties, whose husband has recently died, leaving her to negotiate child-rearing, find a way to support the family and to become someone other than half of a couple. Nora's awesome though, being stubborn and willing to stand her ground when she needs to.

Tóibín is writing about an Ireland that doesn't exist anymore, just as it began to change with the Troubles beginning in Northern Ireland and the conflict a growing concern in the Republic. And women's roles were changing, with Nora's daughters experiencing vastly more freedom than she did. Nora, herself, gets to experience some of that independence, slowly and reluctantly choosing hobbies and interests outside of what her family circle enjoys.

There's no great action in this book, no central conflict to resolve. It unfolds like ordinary life, a series of challenges and decisions to be made and lived with, as Nora works to keep her family going and to find her own feet. And the writing is lovely; unassuming and clear. I'll always read whatever Tóibín decides to write because of the quality of his writing, but I also love the care with which focuses on women who live their lives largely unnoticed by others.

69RidgewayGirl
Jul. 9, 2015, 3:36 pm

I had been warned that The Warden is not Anthony Trollope's most exciting novel, but as it is the first in the Barsetshire Chronicles and I had a copy at hand, it was the first Trollope that I've read. It hasn't generally aged well, nineteenth century Church of England politics being somewhat out of fashion as a topic of interest, but the writing is strong and reminded me why I enjoy Victorian authors so much.

Reverend Harding is a pleasant, ineffectual man who has a sinecure as the warden of a small retirement home for deserving working class men that includes a house with pleasant gardens and an annual salary of 800 pounds, given to him because one of his two daughters had married the son of the bishop. Here he lives comfortably, enjoying his music, reading books and visiting the old men in the adjoining hospital now and again. His life would have continued in pleasant routine had not a spirit of reform begun to sweep England and a young reformer, the aptly named John Bold, questioned the generosity of the annual allowance.

Trollope is clearly on the side of the status quo, and he breaks from the narrative to complain about the tactics of an author (supposedly Charles Dickens), whom he calls Mr Popular Sentiment, and who he accuses of biasing the public by creating characters and situations that manipulate the reader into sympathy with his poor working class characters. Of course, Trollope is doing exactly the same thing here; Harding is so mild and inoffensive that it is impossible not to hope that he can keep his generous and largely unearned salary.

Outside of the machinations of the lawyers, clergymen and journalists, there is a sub-plot involving Harding's unmarried daughter and John Bold. They had feelings for each other before Bold discovered possible shady dealings on the matter of the wardenship and it's uncertain as to whether their love will survive the conflict. This part of the novel is particularly satisfying, as Eleanor is an interesting character and Bold's conflict as he tries to do what he sees is right without losing her love results in the most satisfying chapters in this brief novel.

I'm looking forward to continuing on with the Barsetshire Chronicles.

70NanaCC
Jul. 9, 2015, 4:51 pm

>69 RidgewayGirl: I think I liked The Warden a bit more than you, Kay. I'm on the fourth book right now, Framley Parsonage, and enjoying it immensely. You will find much less politics in the books after The Warden.

71janeajones
Jul. 9, 2015, 5:25 pm

Interesting review of The Warden. I've enjoyed the Trollope or two I've read, but I don't think he's high on my endless TBR list, so it's nice to read these reviews.

72japaul22
Jul. 9, 2015, 5:33 pm

I didn't love The Warden, but I've loved all the other Trollopes I've read (all of the Barsetshire series and two of the Pallisers). Glad you're planning to continue with Barchester Towers. It's a much better litmus test for whether you'll like Trollope or not.

73rebeccanyc
Jul. 9, 2015, 6:54 pm

I started with the Pallisers, but with two more to go I see the Barsetshire series in my future!

74AlisonY
Jul. 11, 2015, 2:09 pm

Think I need to read another Toibin book soon. Definitely good summer reading.

75RidgewayGirl
Jul. 12, 2015, 7:26 am

The only person I miss is my English teacher, Mrs. Colgate. She told me to keep in touch and to "read, read, read." I called her once, but hung up when she answered the phone crying, "Curtis, listen. For the love of God, Curtis, I can explain everything."

Barrel Fever is a collection of short stories and personal essays by David Sedaris. Written earlier in his career, the stories are quite a bit more raw and unfiltered than one might expect. From Glen's Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2, to Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!, the stories are told in a close first person narrative, with the events describes quickly veering into the bizarre, with each character competing to see who can make the worst life choices.

The book finishes with a few personal essays about Sedaris's time before he became an author. SantaLand Diaries concern a holiday season spent working as a elf at Macy's.

There was a line for Santa and a line for the women's bathroom, and one woman, after asking me a dozen questions already, asked, "Which is the line for the women's bathroom?" I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it.

She said, "I'm going to have you fired."

I had two people say that to me today, "I'm going to have you fired." Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn't get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are?

"I'm going to have you fired!" and I wanted to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed."

76AlisonY
Jul. 12, 2015, 1:02 pm

Sounds like a fun read. David Sedaris was a new discovery for me this year - I enjoy his dry humour.

77charl08
Bearbeitet: Jul. 16, 2015, 7:56 am

I heard Sedaris reading the Santa stories on the radio. Hilarious, but I wouldn't have wanted to work with him!

78chlorine
Jul. 14, 2015, 7:12 am

>61 RidgewayGirl: RidgewayGirl: Thanks for the detailed answer! :) Makes me curious about learning more about the rules of crime novel, but unfortunately this is not a favorite genre of mine.

79RidgewayGirl
Jul. 15, 2015, 9:33 am

Alison, there is one personal essay of his, called Six to Eight Black Men, that makes me laugh out loud every single time I read it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYdpte1W0vk

Charlotte, it takes me longer to read him now that I've listened him read several of his pieces aloud. I hear his voice as I read and it forces me to slow down.

80RidgewayGirl
Jul. 15, 2015, 9:34 am

I picked up Munich Airport by Greg Baxter on a whim, knowing nothing about it. Usually, this ends badly for me, but this is the exception that will keep me bringing books home based solely on the cover and descriptions written on the dust jacket.

The nameless narrator and protagonist is in Germany, helping his father bring home the body of his sister, who has died in her apartment in Berlin. The narrative takes place entirely within a long fog delay at the Munich airport, and the format of the novel is that of one man narrating the wait with his frail father and the official from the American consulate in Berlin who has been guiding them through the process. His memories range back through his childhood to the weeks spent waiting in Berlin for his sister's body to be released by the coroner. The format makes the absence of quotation marks and the way the novel jumps around feel entirely natural; we are accompanying this man as he spends his hours in the airport with his father or walking aimlessly about, privy to his random thoughts and rising agitation.

Munich Airport feels a lot like Herman Koch's The Dinner, with a growing sense of something being wrong, although this is a much more restrained falling apart. The sister was troubled and distanced herself from her family, especially after her mother died. There were long stretches between encounters with her brother, making the changes in her stand out all the more. But the narrator has also been unsuccessful in many ways. He's in his forties, and despite a modest success in freelance consulting, he is remarkably unmoored to anyone.

This is not a cheerful novel, but it is a good one. And the way it's written gives it a forward momentum that kept me reading.

81NanaCC
Jul. 15, 2015, 10:05 am

>79 RidgewayGirl: Kay, that is absolutely hilarious. Made my day!

82janeajones
Jul. 15, 2015, 10:43 am

80> Interesting review. Always gratifying to be rewarded for a whimsical choice.

83RidgewayGirl
Jul. 15, 2015, 2:10 pm

Colleen, as soon as I'd linked to it, I had to listen to it. And I laughed again.

Jane, my record is abysmal. I always choose terrible books when I just go for what looks interesting. And now that's there's been a single exception, I fully expect to waste my money on terrible books with great covers for the rest of my life. I picked up Munich Airport because of the cover and because buying a book with Munich in the title while actually in Munich was irresistible. I picked up a book with Berlin in the title while recently in Berlin, but at least it was by an author I like.

84janeajones
Jul. 15, 2015, 4:26 pm

83> I'm absolutely drawn to books about places I'm visiting when I'm there -- sometimes I'm lucky, sometimes, not so much.

85Nickelini
Jul. 15, 2015, 7:26 pm

>83 RidgewayGirl:, >84 janeajones: yep I'm the same. No way I could have resisted that Munich book in your circumstances.

86reva8
Jul. 16, 2015, 3:51 am

>68 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I find Toibin a bit hit and miss, but when he's good, he's very very good!

87AlisonY
Jul. 16, 2015, 8:31 am

Munich Airport sounds like a good read. Hard to resist book shopping on a whim - no doubt we get a rush of endorphins that lasts as long as the time it takes to put it into a carrier bag.

88RidgewayGirl
Jul. 16, 2015, 9:54 am

Jane and Joyce, I think that the bookstores know this. Both Munich Airport and Leaving Berlin were prominently displayed.

reva8, I've loved everything I've read. I really like his slightly distanced writing style.

Alison, don't forget how much fun it is to find a place on the bookshelf for it. And then seeing it on the shelf. Basically, for me, there is no downside.

89AlisonY
Jul. 16, 2015, 11:58 am

Lol, that's true!

90RidgewayGirl
Jul. 22, 2015, 5:42 am

The second book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series, The Story of a New Name, picks right up after My Brilliant Friend ends. The books are really all part of one longer story and so I'm reading them all in a row. This segment is even better than the first, beginning as it does with Lila's marriage and Lena's subsequent difficultly in taking her education seriously, with her best friend married at sixteen. Both girls mature into women and their lives diverge sharply.

It's during this handful of years that the dominant traits of both girls, Lila's contrarian attitude and her need to push against the tight restrictions governing a new wife's life in Naples in the 1960s, as well as Lena's dogged diligence and her inability to speak out for what she wants, have permanent and long-lasting effects on their lives. It's in this book that Lena begins to shine and for her horizons to expand beyond the working class neighborhood they both grew up in, while Lila sees the walls closing in and all the fine clothes and power that goes with having some money in a neighborhood where most residents are mired in poverty isn't of the slightest comfort.

I'm falling more and more in love with the stories of these two strong women trying to find their way in a world that is both difficult and stuck in rigid gender roles. I have already started the third book.

91RidgewayGirl
Jul. 22, 2015, 5:48 am

Oh, and I've put up a new ad. Does it make you want to fly Eastern?

92NanaCC
Bearbeitet: Jul. 22, 2015, 6:44 am

The new ad is pretty awful. I don't know if all of the airlines had ads like that, but I know that they all used looks as the first criteria. They were pretty blatant about it, weren't they.

ETA: I'm not sure whether I mentioned this before, but it wasn't just the airlines. I think it was during the 70's, my husband was applying for a job. He had several interviews, and at the last one, he had to bring me to meet a few people in NYC at dinner. I later found out that they were making sure that I was presentable, and could hold a conversation with clients at dinners.

93LolaWalser
Jul. 22, 2015, 11:15 am

That ad alone could sustain a thesis. My "favourite" aspect is how blatant they make the fact that the only customers that matter--the only customers that exist--are men.

>92 NanaCC:

Did you try negotiating for a salary? ;)

I'm not even joking. As a kid I was very aware of my mother's role in making my father look good and his company attractive, and other wives' too. A lot of business got conducted at those endless dinners and cocktail parties...

>90 RidgewayGirl:

Glad to see you're enthralled. I hardly know which of hundred things to say, but, okay, what first comes to mind is the richness of naked experience shown, how we see them formed without the interference of any psychological or sociological critique. For me, growing up without having heard the word "feminism" (that I could recall) until I came to the United States, it was so familiarly painful and so tantalizing, I kept wanting to shout to these women (my mother's age and more or less background), something like "it's been seen before, it's been analysed before, we know what that's about, read this book, have you had this idea, you really are a person, not just to yourself, you're not an appendage to men, you're not abnormal to think so etc. etc."

You know, when the whole world treats you in function of your service to men. My mum didn't get away from it. I did, but in such a painfully flailing way...

Eh, sorry, went off a-rambling... looking forward to your opinions on the third, there's more shocks to come. ;)

94Nickelini
Jul. 22, 2015, 1:08 pm

Re: your latest picture at the top. How nice.

One in twenty, huh? What a different world that was.

95pmarshall
Jul. 22, 2015, 1:25 pm

>91 RidgewayGirl:
Is this a current ad? It looks and sounds like something from the 1950"s.

96DieFledermaus
Jul. 22, 2015, 2:39 pm

Wow. Just....wow. That new ad is pretty horrible.

>68 RidgewayGirl: - I liked the other Toibin books that I read - this one sounds like one I'd be interested in as well. Good review.

>69 RidgewayGirl: - Glad you enjoyed The Warden, even if, as you say, it hasn't aged well. I agree with everyone else that the others in the series are better - Barchester Towers is probably my favorite Trollope.

>90 RidgewayGirl: - Another tempting review for the series. I'm reading the first one right now and am pretty sure that I want to read the next ones.

97RidgewayGirl
Jul. 26, 2015, 10:09 am

I started reading Anne Tyler years ago, with Dinner at the Homesick Restaurantand The Accidental Tourist. She was a big deal at the time and I loved her novels about introverted oddballs and their take on living ordinary lives. But over time, I slowly stopped reading Tyler, beginning again with A Spool of Blue Thread because I ran across it in a bookstore just after it had been put on Baileys Women's Prize shortlist.

And it's a perfect book, combining Tyler's keen eye for the ordinary and the idiosyncratic, with a master writing at her peak. This is a quiet book, about a family, about aging and about the history of a family home, but there is nothing bland or boring about it. Like Alice Munro and John Cheever, Tyler has the ability to make a deceptively domestic story resonate.

Abby Whitshank is the central character, appearing first as the mother of four adult children, a wife to a steady husband, dealing with a son who is having trouble gaining traction in life and her own failing memory. It's through her eyes that we watch her family grow. A Spool of Blue Thread is divided into two sections; the first follows the Whitshank family as Red and Abby age and decisions are made about how they are to cope with the family home and their reduced abilities, the second takes the form of a series of short stories, giving the family history back to Red's parents, the history of the house they all love, how Abby and Red began their relationship and the background of their children.

Really, this should be nothing special, a pleasant book to enjoy on a summer's afternoon. But the writing is very fine and places Tyler firmly in with our very best authors.

98RidgewayGirl
Jul. 26, 2015, 10:33 am

Colleen, sometimes it feels like we haven't gotten as far as we should have, but looking back, things are certainly different!

Lola, I inhaled Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. I've pre-ordered the fourth book, but had a small moment of unhappiness in realizing I have to wait until September for the next one. I think that Lena's made a huge mistake in doing what she did, instead of leaving for her own reasons. And I'm wondering what happens next with Lila - she's put herself in the middle of something she will have trouble removing herself from. This is trite, but I had so many feelings while reading this book. The picture of fascists vs. communists was intense. And the student politics likewise.

Joyce, we've come a long way, baby?

Penny, it's from the seventies, I think.

Thanks, DieF. I've read a series of domestic novels about women now and it's been a great stretch of reading. I've started Barchester Towers, but I'm saving it for the beach next month.

99rebeccanyc
Jul. 26, 2015, 10:44 am

I read a lot of Anne Tyler in the 80s and haven't thought of her in decades. Thanks for reminding me.

100NanaCC
Jul. 26, 2015, 10:45 am

Kay, I think I better get to Elena Ferrante very soon. I have the first two books on my Kindle, so have no excuse. Your reviews have pushed them up the imaginary pile.

101RidgewayGirl
Jul. 26, 2015, 12:21 pm

Rebecca, that's how it was for me, too. A Spool of Blue Thread is wonderful as a way of getting reacquainted.

You have a treat in front of you, Colleen. The first book is by far the weakest, although I was still fascinated.

102janeajones
Jul. 26, 2015, 12:45 pm

Interesting review of A Spool of Blue Thread.

103baswood
Jul. 26, 2015, 7:19 pm

Lovely review of A Spool of Blue Thread Sounds like the perfect book if you are in the right mood for it.

104AlisonY
Jul. 28, 2015, 12:16 pm

I have been hovering over A Spool of Blue Thread and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant on my wish list for ages. I haven't heard a bad review yet of Anne Tyler - I'll have to stop hovering and order one of her books from the library soon.

105kidzdoc
Jul. 30, 2015, 1:55 pm

I'm glad that you also liked A God in Ruins, Kay. I was expecting to see it on the Booker Prize longlist, and was mildly disappointed when it wasn't chosen. A Spool of Blue Thread was selected, though, and I look forward to reading it next month after your comments about it.

I love Colm Tóibín's writing. I have Nora Webster, and I'll get to it in the fall.

106RidgewayGirl
Jul. 30, 2015, 2:39 pm

Thanks, Jane. It was the right book at the right time.

That's exactly what it is, Bas. If you're in the mood for excitement or high drama, you'll be disappointed.

Alison, enjoy discovering her. I read Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant as a teenager and I still have a few scenes etched in my memory.

Darryl, you'll like both the Tyler and the Tóibín. Good to see you here! And now I'm off to go look at the Booker longlist, which will heavily influence my reading in the months ahead.

107charl08
Aug. 11, 2015, 3:53 am

What did you decide to read next? I've just begun A History of Seven Killings as part of my longlist reading, and enjoying it so far.

108RidgewayGirl
Aug. 11, 2015, 2:12 pm

I'm on vacation this week without wifi, on Edisto Island off of South Carolina. I've read The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates and The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah. I'm beginning Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, and looking at It's Not Me, It's You by Mhairi McFarlane, Gilead by Marianne Robinson and a few others.

I'll be back in the land of the connected this weekend at the soonest, but by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Here's hoping the books I've bought will all fit in the luggage!

109RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Aug. 11, 2015, 2:30 pm

This is a difficult book to review, both because it is the third of a four book series, and because I sped through it, not so much that I needed to find out what happened next, but because I was enjoying it too much to stop reading. And, having inhaled Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, I now feel that I consumed it too quickly to have given it the attention that Elena Ferrante’s novel deserved.

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay continues the story of Lila and Lena, although their life circumstances and the nature of their relationship has kept them largely apart. While Lena continues on as a university graduate and author, Lila can’t continue in her role as the wife of a man she hates. Both come face to face with the changes beginning to sweep Italy, Lena through contact with student activism and Lila seeing the need for workers to unionize and in the clashes between communists and fascists.

I don’t know how successful this book would be without the two that came before, but each segment of the larger story is more compelling than the last. I’m planning on reading the final book, The Story of the Lost Child, as soon as it's released in English in September.

110Cait86
Aug. 11, 2015, 5:14 pm

>108 RidgewayGirl: I'm starting Gilead today too. I've never really had any interest in reading it before, but Lila is on the Booker Longlist and I am way too obsessive to read it without reading the first two novels in the trilogy, even though I've heard it can be read as a stand-alone.

111NanaCC
Aug. 11, 2015, 8:55 pm

>109 RidgewayGirl: I'm on vacation too. I just finished My Brilliant Friend, which I enjoyed. I don't have time to write my comments, but will get to that next week.

I have the second book on my kindle, so may get to it soon.

Enjoy vacation.

112reva8
Aug. 12, 2015, 7:29 am

Just catching up on your thread, and I am more and more intrigued by the Elena Ferrante novels. I think I'll wait, though, until the fourth translation is out, before I read any of them.

113SassyLassy
Aug. 12, 2015, 9:33 am

>108 RidgewayGirl: I love those vacations without network access but with lots of bookstores.

>110 Cait86: I am way too obsessive to read it without reading the first two novels in the trilogy, even though I've heard it can be read as a stand-alone. I'm with you all the way!

114charl08
Aug. 12, 2015, 1:51 pm

Hope you enjoy the rest of your holidays. Wonderful reading so far.

115RidgewayGirl
Aug. 14, 2015, 8:01 pm

Cait, I'm enjoying it so far. Beautiful writing. I was sidetracked by finding a copy of Padgett Powell's book, Edisto, which needed to be read while on that island.

I'm glad you liked it, Colleen. The first book is the weakest one, but it did hook me. They get better and better.

reva8, September first. I've pre-ordered.

SL, and there have been many visits to bookstores and booksales. Now to figure out what can go in the suitcase without breaking it, or the airline weight restrictions.

116lyzard
Aug. 14, 2015, 8:36 pm

Wow...I can't even BEGIN to count how many ways that new thread-topper image is Just Plain Wrong...

117RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Aug. 14, 2015, 8:46 pm

Joyce Carol Oates clearly regards the old adage to “write what you know” in some contempt. While her new novel, The Sacrifice, is set in her native New Jersey, the protagonists range from a police detective of Hispanic ancestry to an African American teenage girl living in a poverty-ravaged neighborhood in Biscayne.

At the opening of the book, Ednetta Frye searches frantically for her missing daughter, Sybilla. Sybilla will be found in the basement of a derelict factory, bound and battered. Her story of what happened to her, as well as her mother’s reaction, will lay bare the ever simmering racial tension still present in the late 1980s in a city deeply affected and still scarred by riots twenty years earlier.

Although it proceeds at a breakneck pace, this is a hard book to read. Oates does not shy away from the dark underside of human behavior and here there is no victim who is entirely free of blame. I’m not entirely sure what to think about this book, that creates villains only to humanize them, and never hesitates to look at complicated and muddy situations. I’m pretty sure I’ll be reading her previous novel with a similar theme, them, sometime soon.

118RidgewayGirl
Aug. 14, 2015, 8:48 pm

I've added a new thread topper. I thought I'd go for tasteful this time around.

119RidgewayGirl
Aug. 14, 2015, 8:49 pm

Thanks, Charlotte. I got quite a bit of reading done this week. So satisfying.

lyzard, there are a seemingly infinite supply of wrongheaded advertisements.

120LolaWalser
Aug. 14, 2015, 10:10 pm

RG, I can't remember whether this site was linked before--apologies if I'm repeating something old:

http://www.genderads.com/

It seems to be a teaching resource, but one can skip the text, the pictures are eloquent enough.

I had the same problem with the Ferrante--so many things to say I ended up saying nothing.

I'd make a small note--I would emphasise that Lila and Elena's politicisation isn't odd or extraordinary, for Italian culture and especially in that period. Sure, their speaking up while being female is something relatively new on the scene, but the fact that they allow politics into their lives, that politics is shown to have an immediate effect on them is something generally "Italian", maybe even "European".

Another thing I've come to appreciate after living in the US is that Americans hear the very word "communism" very differently to Europeans, even those on the right. To someone with Elena's background, communism's salient "scary" (or awesome, in the classic sense) characteristic would have been the opposition to the church, the overthrow of religion. But the economic dimension wouldn't have caused a tremor to someone of her class, because there was no mass idolatry of capitalism in Italy. The Italian Communist Party had a following unimaginable in the US for anyone on the left (I mean the real left, not the Democrats). In the first postwar elections they obtained such success (combined with the socialists, a majority) that the US intervened, breaking up the popular front and backing the demo-christians, as they did in West Germany.

I mention this to point out that when Elena talks about communists, there is a different emphasis and worldviews involved. In the Italian context (as in almost every other global context outside the US), the communists aren't some bizarre anomaly, to be talked about in whispers or with hysteria, and her engaging with a communist programme or taking up some of its goals is pretty ordinary for someone like her.

121RidgewayGirl
Aug. 15, 2015, 1:14 pm

>120 LolaWalser: I agree with all of that. September first cannot come quickly enough. How will this all end? While I understand the lure of the guy who got away, this thing with Nino cannot possibly end well.

122rebeccanyc
Aug. 15, 2015, 2:22 pm

>118 RidgewayGirl: That is the all-time winner, I think!

123NanaCC
Aug. 15, 2015, 3:04 pm

Another unbelievable ad. :)

124RidgewayGirl
Aug. 16, 2015, 10:29 pm

It's really understated, isn't it?

125RidgewayGirl
Aug. 17, 2015, 7:46 am

Disclaimer by Renee Knight is a novel in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. There’s an unreliable narrator and a story that twists and turns on itself as each new revelation sheds a different light on the story being told. The novel concerns Catherine, who upon reading a book that just showed up at her house, comes face to face with the events of some fifteen years ago, and sees herself clearly identified as the villain of the piece. It throws her into a tailspin, unable to sleep and uncertain of what to do next.

It’s a good enough set up for a decent beach novel, but it’s uneven in the execution. Too much of the book depended on information being withheld from the reader, although it’s known to the main characters. While this strategy kept me reading, it didn’t make me trust the storytelling. And just as I started to become bored enough with the initial pattern of the book, Knight stands the entire premise on its head and delivers an unexpected and unexpectedly powerful reveal, which is then marred by the reaction of the main characters. There’s one individual whose reaction to a version of the secret being revealed is so unlikely and over the top that I wondered at Catherine’s ever allowing them to become a part of her life. Taken as a whole, Disclaimer was a decent enough entertainment, but nothing more.

Sophie Hannah writes a series of crime novels whose convoluted plots are matched by the convoluted personal lives of the detectives who solve the crimes. And yet, for the most part, it all works well, and with the ninth book in the series, The Telling Error, Hannah is sure-footed and wields a plot even more complex than usual, featuring a disparate cast of characters and a plot based on internet infidelity.

This was a fun book to read and it’s a pleasure to read a crime novel by an author who’s been writing them for awhile, but who clearly is still enjoying herself. One does need a certain suspension of disbelief in places (the plot and motivations can be stretched at tlmes), but The Telling Error was still tremendously readable.

I do like a good Chick Lit. Unfortunately, they are hard to find, the genre being, in this reader’s opinion, being mostly composed of trite, formulaic and lazily written stock pieces. Someone mentioned that Mhairi McFarlane’s novels were both fun and readable and so I gave It’s Not Me, It’s You a go.

I am so glad they were right. In It’s Not Me, It’s You, Delia is living a happy life in Newcastle. She loves her city, her incontinent dog, her flat, and especially her easy-going boyfriend. So her job’s not great, working on press releases and social media for the local council, but it pays well enough and at the end of the day, there’s home to go to. On their tenth anniversary, Delia proposes to her boyfriend, Paul, whose reaction is a little off, and then a lot off, sending Delia into a search to find out what really matters to her.

What’s fun about this book is that it’s less about Delia finding the right man (and whether or not the right man is the one she’s been with all along) than it is about her finding her feet (and confidence) in her working life and in how she relates to the people around her. And her group of friends is pleasantly diverse, from a successful lawyer as a flatmate, to a socially anxious guy who prefers to meet only online or on skype than in real life. Also, there is no shopping.

126katiekrug
Bearbeitet: Aug. 17, 2015, 8:10 am

Diese Nachricht wurde vom Autor gelöscht.

127rebeccanyc
Aug. 17, 2015, 8:11 am

>125 RidgewayGirl: I just read about Sophie Hannah somewhere else, so there must be a conspiracy to get me to read her!

128NanaCC
Aug. 17, 2015, 8:14 am

I had added the Sophie Hannah series a while ago, based upon your reviews. Haven't started yet, but you're pushing me there.

129RidgewayGirl
Aug. 19, 2015, 7:49 am

Rebecca and Colleen, I enjoy her crime series; they're well written and unpredictable, but I wouldn't consider them fine literature.

130RidgewayGirl
Aug. 19, 2015, 7:49 am

Edisto Island sits among the other sea islands along the coast of South Carolina, midway between Charleston and Savannah. Both those cities have islands nearer; Tybee for Savannah and John’s and Pawley’s for Charleston. The out-of-staters and affluent go to Myrtle Beach Hilton Head, where there are golf courses, resorts and t-shirt emporiums. This leaves Edisto for families from the Upstate to congregate for their annual beach vacations, in a place where the fancy end of Edisto Beach holds a modest marina, a nine-hole golf course open to the public and a scattering of condos. The rest of the town is composed of beach houses of varying sorts, from the modest and run-down variety to newer three story constructions of wide balconies and cathedral ceilings. There’s a bookstore that features both free wifi and a cat and the local Piggly-Wiggly became a Bi-Lo just last year, although the changes appear to be slight and entirely cosmetic. People buy their vegetables and key lime pies on the drive across the island to the beach, at farm stands down dirt roads or from pick-ups parked along the roadside.

Edisto by Padgett Powell is set in Edisto before the beach houses were built, when the island had not yet begun it’s transition from a sparsely populated African-American enclave that began as a refuge for escaped slaves, when people made modest livings fishing, farming and weaving grass baskets for the market in Charleston. Twelve-year-old Simons Manigault is being raised out there by his educated and heavy-drinking mother, going to the local school and is an expert in fitting into environments where he is clearly an outsider.

So he goes in the house and reads W.P.A. stories on the walls where the roaches have eaten away the flour but not the ink of the newspapers, and he naps, wakes, and emerges into the old, bored heat of this named but never discovered small place of the South and hears the tin roof tic, tic in that heat.

Simons is a wonderful narrator. He’s clever and observant, but also very much a boy about to enter puberty. Lots of what he sees and experiences he doesn’t fully understand, but he explains as best he can. This is not a book with a lot of action (although things do happen), but one that captures the atmosphere and feel of a world that has been gone for some time, of juke joints and old women fishing, of boxing matches and drunken faculty parties, and of a boy learning about his world and figuring his place in it.

The Father wipes the silver chalice with a beautiful linen rag large as a small tablecloth, turns the cup two inches each time to keep you from having to drink where the last worshipper lipped it, as if that takes care of the germs. But I don’t care, I always reach out very piously — that’s to say, in slow motion, the way you move for some reason to take and eat the body of Our Savior — reach out and lay my hand over the Father’s in somber reverence to the moment and then press down and suck a slug of wine that should have fed six communers. I have to, because the bread of His body is stuck to the roof of my mouth like a rubber tire patch, and if I can’t wash it loose by swishing His blood around, I’m going to have to dig it off with a finger, in slow motion, and possibly gag.

131NanaCC
Aug. 19, 2015, 8:26 am

>129 RidgewayGirl: Sometimes I just need a little fun....

132RidgewayGirl
Aug. 19, 2015, 8:59 am

Me, too, Colleen. Often I need a lot of fun.

133rebeccanyc
Aug. 19, 2015, 9:20 am

>132 RidgewayGirl: Ditto!

134baswood
Aug. 19, 2015, 2:38 pm

>125 RidgewayGirl: her incontinent dog, perhaps it was the incontinent dog that put Paul off.

135RidgewayGirl
Aug. 19, 2015, 2:49 pm

>134 baswood: You would think, but they chose that dog together and he retained custody when she moved out.

As a person who invariably chooses the pet with the appalling life history and severe behavioral issues, I would have adopted that dog, too. Our last dog took three good years to become "normal" and she was a much loved dog.

136janeajones
Aug. 19, 2015, 11:16 pm

Lovely review of Edisto

137DieFledermaus
Aug. 21, 2015, 5:26 am

I don't think I'll read any of the books at >125 RidgewayGirl:, but enjoyed reading your reviews, especially the one for It's Not Me, It's You.

138kidzdoc
Aug. 22, 2015, 11:36 am

Great review of Edisto, Kay!

139RidgewayGirl
Aug. 23, 2015, 11:09 am

Thanks, Jane and Darryl!

DieF, after thinking that my summer reading is never lighter than my usual fare, I have discovered that I was wrong.

140RidgewayGirl
Aug. 23, 2015, 12:38 pm

Scout, now called Jean Louise, returns to Maycombe, expecting the usual friction with her Aunt Alexandra about the expectations put on a young lady, but eager to spend time with her father, Atticus, who is now aging and struggling with arthritis, and with Henry, a childhood friend who is eager to marry her. What she finds instead is an onslaught of memories and that Atticus is not the man she thought he was.

If you didn't know by now, Go Set a Watchman isn't a sequel or companion novel to Harper Lee's beloved To Kill a Mockingbird, but an earlier draft that her editor at the time suggested she rewrite, focusing on Scout's childhood. I'm not sure this book could have been published at that time, and the end of the book lacks both power and decisiveness. That said, having prepared to dislike Go Set a Watchman, I found it to be an entirely readable book, with much of the charm of the later book. It lacks coherence and the conflict at the heart of the book is resolved in a manner unsatisfying to a modern reader, but it isn't a bad book, let alone a stain on Lee's literary reputation.

At the heart of the novel lies Jean Louise's disillusionment on discovering her father's racism. After having worshipped him as a hero for so long, her reaction is much stronger than her reactions on finding out that other people she knows share his abominable views. There's a powerful confrontation between the two that is simultaneously difficult to read and impossible to put down. There is so much honest anger and frustration in Scout. I found myself egging her on and frustrated when she didn't give as strong an argument as I wanted her to, arguments clearly put forth earlier in the book through her actions and experiences from her childhood. Which is one of the strengths of this book; while the climactic scene is open and raw, Lee still allows many of her most powerful arguments to exist quietly in scenes far removed from the one between Atticus and Jean Louise.

While this is a flawed novel, with an abrupt and lackluster ending, it was a much better book that I had anticipated and it would be worth reading without Harper Lee's name behind it.

141AlisonY
Aug. 23, 2015, 2:35 pm

>140 RidgewayGirl: Enjoyed your review of this. A friend bought me a copy of this for my birthday a few weeks ago, so looking forward to getting to it soon. It's so long since I read TKAMB I can't completely remember the full details of the plot - hoping I don't need to know it for Go Set a Watchman.

142RidgewayGirl
Aug. 23, 2015, 2:51 pm

I'll be interested in what you think of Go Set a Watchman, Alison. I don't know if knowledge of TKAM helps or hurts the reading of GSAW. I listened to the audiobook of TKAM a few years ago (read by Sissy Spacek, and perfect) and I've read it a few times before that - enough to be very familiar with it. I was looking at it initially as an opportunity to see what an earlier draft of a published novel looks like, but this so different and had such a different viewpoint that they are really two different books.

143RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Aug. 25, 2015, 7:25 am

The Green Road by Anne Enright is one of those quiet, understated novels that I always have trouble reviewing. It's centered around a family of grown children and their widowed mother, and it's written so plainly and effortlessly that I suspect quite a lot of work went into the writing. The first section of the book is a collection of short stories, each centering on a different member of the family. They stand alone, except that the reader knows that each protagonist is a member of the Madigan family, and each is very different from the others. The second section of the book brings them together for a final Christmas in the family home, in which old patterns continue to hold steady, even as new conflicts arise.

The Green Road has been long listed for the Man Booker Prize and it is well deserved.

144japaul22
Aug. 25, 2015, 1:52 pm

I enjoyed reading your thoughts on Go Set a Watchman. I thought it had flaws but was worthwhile as well.

Also interested in The Green Road. I've never read anything by Anne Enright except for once when I started an audiobook of The Gathering but the reader annoyed me so much I didn't continue. She sounds like an author I would enjoy.

145RidgewayGirl
Aug. 25, 2015, 2:32 pm

She writes beautifully, Jennifer. Very similar to Colm Toibin -- if you like his work, you'll probably like hers.

146AlisonY
Aug. 25, 2015, 4:19 pm

The Green Road sounds good - another author I need to get to.

147RidgewayGirl
Aug. 27, 2015, 7:57 am

Alison, there are thousands upon thousands of authors I really need to get to soon!

148RidgewayGirl
Aug. 27, 2015, 7:57 am

Jane, the Fox and Me is a graphic novel by French Canadian author Fanny Britt about a lonely girl who finds refuge in reading Jane Eyre. For Helene, Charlotte Brontë's novel is a way of hiding from the girls in her class who bully her, a way of hiding how alone she is, and a genuine escape into the life of a girl who persevered, looked clearly at things, and triumphed in the end. Her mother, struggling to raise Helene and her two younger brothers, doesn't help Helene's lack of confidence by worrying about how much Helene eats. Then a class excursion is announced, and Helene has something new to dread -- a week of camp with her entire class, which everyone else seems to be looking forward to.

The illustrations by Isabelle Arsenault are really lovely, switching between black and white panels in a traditional comic book set-up with larger panels, often full page, in full color and a more painterly style. The illustrations of the parks and woods are especially beautiful. The style in which the characters are drawn remind me of Kate Beaton's (of Hark! A Vagrant fame) style; deceptively simple, but with an uncanny ability to render expression.

Jane, the Fox and Me successfully combines an unhappy and bleak reality with a sense of optimism and hope. The conclusion of the book was realistic, but satisfying and lovely as well.

149FlorenceArt
Aug. 27, 2015, 1:44 pm

>148 RidgewayGirl: Sounds great! Looks like it's available at my local library...

150RidgewayGirl
Aug. 27, 2015, 3:57 pm

Florence, in French or English? I didn't know that it was translated from the French, and in any case, my library only had the English version, but it might be better in the original.

151FlorenceArt
Aug. 27, 2015, 4:28 pm

In French! I'll pick it up as soon as I finish Maus.

152SassyLassy
Aug. 28, 2015, 2:49 pm

>150 RidgewayGirl: amazon.ca has it in French as Jane, Le Renard et moi. There is also another interesting looking book by her, Félicien et les Baleines, but then I'm a fan of children's books and whales together.

153torontoc
Aug. 28, 2015, 3:48 pm

I loved that book and am saving my copy for my great nieces.

154chlorine
Aug. 30, 2015, 2:31 am

Putting Jane, the Fox and me on my godson's wishlist! He's still too young for reading it now (or rather, having it read to him) but I'm sure I'll be happy to have this recommendation in a few years!

155RidgewayGirl
Aug. 31, 2015, 2:09 am

Florence and SL, I'm going to keep an eye out for a French copy.

That is an excellent idea, Cyrel. And graphic novels are always easier to get someone (especially a young someone) to read than an ordinary book.

Chlorine, your grandson is lucky. Having a shelf of interesting books waiting for him when he visits will be fun for him.

156RidgewayGirl
Aug. 31, 2015, 3:48 am

And now for two books that were fine, pretty much.

The Girl Next Door is Ruth Rendell's final novel, and it's better than her previous few. Which is not to elevate it to the level of her best work, but it was, at least, not bad.

The Girl Next Door begins with the discovery of a tin box containing two hands, found by construction workers underneath an old house. They date back to the final years of the Second World War, making this mystery less than a priority for the police. But the discovery brings back together a group of people who were children living in the area in 1944, and who regularly played in a series of tunnels behind their estate. Now in their seventies, they reconnect and the reunion unsettles their lives, as well as draws old memories, both bad and good, to the surface.

Rendell is on much surer footing writing about contemporaries than she has been writing about younger people. One of the things that made her earlier books such a joy to read was how she made even the most twisted of characters both nuanced and sympathetic, and here she manages to do that again, although one character is only redeemed at the last minute.

If you've enjoyed Rendell's books already, you'll probably like this one well enough, but if you haven't yet read anything by her, please begin with something from a few decades ago instead.

While Joyce Maynard's novel, Labor Day, is told from the point of view of a twelve year old boy, the story centers around the relationship between his lonely, divorced mother and the escaped convict they briefly shelter. Set in the mid-eighties in a New Hampshire town, during the final week of the summer, the story begins with Henry, an outcast at school, who feels responsible for his mother's happiness. Adele is emotionally fragile and agoraphobic, leaving Henry as her sole companion and support. During one of their rare trip to pick up supplies, Henry meets a man who behaves oddly, friendly, but there is something off about him. Despite this, Henry agrees to give the man a ride, and, equally surprising, Adele doesn't object. Soon, they are technically being held hostage by an escaped felon. The truth is more complex, however, as Adele and Henry are so lonely that they are willing to voluntarily comply. Soon a relationship begins between Frank, the convict, and Adele and Henry.

In this book's favor, the writing was solid and it was certainly a page turner. On the other hand, there were some pretty big problems with the characters. Adele is passive. Really passive. There's not a moment when she speaks up for herself or makes a decision that isn't just going along with someone else's decision. And she mostly just sits around. Sure, she's describes as beautiful, with a dancer's grace and body, but this seems inadequate to cause the levels of love and devotion she attracts. There is, of course, a tragic backstory, but it doesn't fully explain her inertia, years later. And then there's Frank. A man perfect in every way, except for the small detail of being a murderer. He's sensitive, hard working, bakes, understands boys and cares lovingly for handicapped children. Has there ever been such a perfect man in the real world?

157rebeccanyc
Aug. 31, 2015, 7:52 am

I have had an irrational dislike of Joyce Maynard since she published this article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine when we were both freshmen in college. It is entitled "An 18 Year Old Looks Back on Life" and it really really annoyed me.

158RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Aug. 31, 2015, 8:06 am

Rebecca, that was great. Newly philosophical, I pondered the universe... It brought back how pretentious and world weary one can feel after having just graduated high school. I mean, what's left?

I don't think you've missed anything by skipping her books, if Labor Day is any indication. I mean, it was fine, and the writing was fine, but there are a thousand books of equal quality published every year.

I had an irrational dislike of Emily St. John Mandel, after reading her first novel and then reading a brief interview with her where she came across as a sort of MFA, Brooklyn-dwelling person with a very high estimation of her skills and background. Of course, a few years later, she writes the excellent Station Eleven and tones down the aren't-I-quirky-and-talented comments and I'm stuck now looking forward to whatever she does next. So maybe Maynard will write something startlingly good and redeem her eighteen year old self?

159SassyLassy
Aug. 31, 2015, 10:44 am

>157 rebeccanyc: and >158 RidgewayGirl: I have had an irrational dislike of...
We all have those dislikes, so that might make a good question for the Questions thread: who and why?.

160rebeccanyc
Aug. 31, 2015, 10:52 am

>159 SassyLassy: Good idea, Sassy.

Maynard is also famous (infamous?) for living with the MUCH older and reclusive J.D. Salinger after he wrote her that he liked that article. Makes one wonder about Salinger too . . .

161RidgewayGirl
Sept. 4, 2015, 3:34 am

SL, that would be a good question. I certainly have plenty of opinions!

Rebecca, ok that explains why Maynard is given credit for perhaps having more writing chops than she demonstrated in the single book I've read by her.

162RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 4, 2015, 3:57 am

I've decided to not worry about the museum and gallery visits I've made that I haven't gotten around to posting about. The initial excitement is long gone and I'm not sure I could accurately remember what I saw and why I liked it.

But yesterday I made it to the Haus der Kunst and saw a selection of work belonging to the Sammlung Goetz. Ingvild Goetz is a prominent collector of contemporary art. She has a small museum on the grounds of her home which is accessible by appointment only. I've been once, on a tour of a retrospective of the photographer Cindy Sherman and it's an impressive place, small but beautifully curated. Only a very small portion of the collection can be shown at any one time, and the restricted hours and difficulty of getting in means much more remains unseen. So the Haus der Kunst is showing what they are calling a Random Sampling from the Goetz Collection.

The artists shown were are prominent artists working today. The highlights for me included a chance to finally see something by Chris Offili, a British artist who combines African themes with glitter and elephant dung.

His work has much more impact in person than is possible with a reproduction. The two included were fantastically detailed, with a shimmery surface. The elephant dung came across as a playful enhancement, rather than a gimmick, and was as embellished and shimmery as the rest of the painting.

There were also works by Mike Kelley and Andy Hope, who I had previously seen at the Brandhorst, and Ellen Gallagher, who I had learned about at a show at the Haus der Kunst last year. It's always fun to encounter a painting and recognize the artist, at least for me, since I know so very little about contemporary artists.

I discovered a few other artists who I'd like to see more of, including Scottish artist Lucy MacKenzie, Polish artist Paulina Olowska, American artist Sarah Morris (see below left) and Udomsak Krisanamis (see below right).

163NanaCC
Sept. 4, 2015, 7:35 am

>162 RidgewayGirl: That's an interesting exhibit. Kay. It's lovely that you've been able to get to so many exhibits during your time there. How much longer will you be there, and will you be back in the U.S, for a while after that?

164RidgewayGirl
Sept. 4, 2015, 7:57 am

We're due back in SC on July first. So only a few months remain. I am trying not to panic with all the art I will only get to see if I go now and otherwise I will die without ever seeing it.

165FlorenceArt
Sept. 4, 2015, 12:41 pm

Sounds like an interesting show! And you still have almost a full year. Personally I decided long ago that I'm not going to see everything there is to see or read everything there is to read, no one can do that. So I just take my time and try to enjoy what I do see and read.

166RidgewayGirl
Sept. 4, 2015, 2:54 pm

Florence, I have not yet given up. But I have found that a few hours in a museum is it. I can't absorb any more.

And I've put up a new ad at the top of the thread. It's more tasteful this time; a pregnant bride in lingerie advertising a shooting range is pretty easy to beat.

167charl08
Sept. 4, 2015, 4:14 pm

Wow, what an ad. I do like Chris Offili's work. I think I saw some at Tate Modern, but it's been a while now!

168Nickelini
Sept. 4, 2015, 4:25 pm

>166 RidgewayGirl: But I have found that a few hours in a museum is it. I can't absorb any more.

Yep! In my family, we call that "getting museumed out." Doesn't matter how fabulous everything is, we just hit a wall. That's why I've learned that when I really want to see something at a museum, I head directly for it and see it as early in my visit as possible. (Of course we get distracted along the way . . . ).

Along the same lines, the same thing happens at Ikea. I have fun until suddenly I have to get out before I start screaming.

169NanaCC
Sept. 4, 2015, 5:33 pm

Cough, cough, cough!! I'm so glad smoking isn't allowed indoors anymore.

I should read something else by Ruth Rendell, as I really enjoyed the one that I read. The same goes for Joyce Carol Oates. The illustrations in Jane, the Fox and Me look quite lovely.

170dchaikin
Sept. 4, 2015, 10:15 pm

Museumed out? - this is a problem for the people I go to a museum with, but not for me. I can hang out for hours, daily. I mean like a full 8 hour day plus...not that I have much a chance.

(Inside my head, I start screaming if I see an IKEA. Nothing against their stuff, do not like being in those stores.)

171RidgewayGirl
Bearbeitet: Sept. 6, 2015, 9:54 am

I was surprised and pleased by Stephen King's foray into the crime genre with Mr Mercedes. I worried that he'd add in horror, or even just a touch of the supernatural. Instead, I read a well-written, tightly plotted detective novel, with engaging, three-dimensional characters. And at the end, there was a solid core of three characters, each very different, who had come together under unlikely circumstances. It boded well for the sequel, Finders Keepers.

Finders Keepers was just a lot of fun. The bad guy was, in the best King style, really bad, but also almost sympathetic in his motivations. And there's a kid, who is scared, but resourceful. For most of the novel sections about the kid, Pete, and the bad guy, Morris, trade off as their lives slowly move toward a violent intersection. And although I missed Bill Hodges, the retired police officer who has become a private detective, the wait paid off as he and his idiosyncratic assistant, Holly, and even their friend Jerome, now a college student home for the summer, enter into the story exactly when they are most needed.

The story itself revolves around how irrational a love of a book, or a fictional character, can be. Both Pete and Morris encounter a character much like Updike's Rabbit Angstrom at a critical point in their growing up and each reacts to the fictional character's fate in a different way. This is an entertaining crime novel that centers on the love of literature and the influence a character can have on a person's life.

172NanaCC
Sept. 6, 2015, 10:26 am

>171 RidgewayGirl: Hmmm. Library Thing thinks that I probably won't like this series, but your review makes me think I might.

173RidgewayGirl
Sept. 6, 2015, 10:29 am

Colleen, it does have King-levels of gore and vivid descriptions of bad things happening, but if that doesn't bother you, I recommend it. I'm happy about all these established authors deciding to write crime novels (J.K. Rowling, Kate Atkinson, John Banville, etc...).

174NanaCC
Sept. 6, 2015, 10:35 am

I managed to get through The Red Riding Quartet ok. It can't be much worse than that, can it?

175RidgewayGirl
Sept. 6, 2015, 10:49 am

It is very much not as harsh as the Red Riding Quartet! Here, there are good guys, or at least people doing the best they can. And the relationship between the three eventual main characters is just lovely.

176Helenliz
Sept. 6, 2015, 3:02 pm

I can understand the being museum-ed out. I tend to do one in the morning then have a change of museum for the afternoon. Although I could spend several weeks being a geek in the Science museum. >:-D

Lovely. Passive smoking doesn't strike me as in the least bit attractive.

177charl08
Sept. 6, 2015, 3:36 pm

I'm a fan of the short museum or gallery trip. I think it's as much the being in a busy space thing for me as much as absorbing all the info.

178lilisin
Sept. 8, 2015, 3:05 am

Museums are like department stores for me. I like looking at art like I enjoy shopping for clothes. But I like boutiques and galleries where items are specifically chosen with the customer in mind or with a story linking the pieces. If I'm just dropped in the middle of a massive array of pieces then everything starts to look like items from the local charity shop.

179RidgewayGirl
Sept. 8, 2015, 5:08 am

Helen and Charlotte, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I did a weekend museum hopping in Berlin, which worked because I took frequent breaks for coffee, and switched museums, with a walk in between. Also, standing still on marble floors is much more tiring than walking around.

lilisin, the museums here, especially the Pinakotheken will frequently put together a few rooms on a common theme or looking a part of an artist's work. These are perfect for an hour and it's amazing how a painting that I've seen in one place will look different when its neighbors have changed, and the exhibit intends to bring something out of the painting. There's one I saw recently that compared the kind of art Hitler loved with the "degenerate" art he vilified. There were just a dozen works; a few of the most popular and representative works of the Third Reich (with explanations of why they were favorites) and the work of two other artists, Otto Freundlich, a Jewish artist who died in a camp, and Max Beckmann, who is a favorite of mine. It was a very small exhibit, but powerful. And Nazi-approved art was tremendously mediocre.

180avaland
Sept. 11, 2015, 6:52 am

Just popping in to see what you've been reading. It's interesting stuff, as usual! Regarding your recent acquisitions, I enjoyed both The Yacoubian Building (I have his latest in the TBR pile), and News from Paraguay.

181RidgewayGirl
Sept. 16, 2015, 11:05 am

Hi, Lois. Given that I grabbed both The Yacoubian Building and News from Paraguay without knowing anything about them, it's good news that you liked them. My goal to read more by women this year has gone better than expected, but I see that I don't read enough by authors who aren't from N. America or the British Isles.

182RidgewayGirl
Sept. 16, 2015, 11:06 am

The Known World by Edward P. Jones centers on Henry Townsend, a freed slave living in the decades before the American Civil War who owns a plantation and slaves. The novel centers on him, but beginning with the opening chapter, which starts after he has just died, the book is really about Manchester County, Virginia, and the people living in it, from Henry and his parents, to the county sheriff and his patrollers, to the wealthiest slave owner in the county, to the least fortunate slave.

Each chapter tells the story of someone different, circling back to certain characters, and giving the eventual fates of others. What results is a curiously well-rounded portrait of a particular time and place, wealthy in detail, but with a distance built into the structure, so that while I got to know many people intimately, I never felt as though I were ever inside their heads. It was an effective way of telling the story of something that could make for unbearable reading, giving it more the feel of an oral history.

This was a book that took me a few chapters to get into the format and writing style, but once I did, I read compulsively. The stories of the various denizens of Manchester County are still vivid in my mind.

183FlorenceArt
Sept. 16, 2015, 11:23 am

>182 RidgewayGirl: I wanted to add the book to my wishlist, but it's already there. Sounds very interesting.

184janeajones
Sept. 16, 2015, 11:25 am

Great review of the The Known World.

185japaul22
Sept. 16, 2015, 12:17 pm

The Known World has been sitting on my TBR shelf for a while now. I need to get to it soon!

186RidgewayGirl
Sept. 16, 2015, 2:41 pm

Thanks, Jane.

Florence and Jennifer, I read this now because I realized that I'm not reading much from the books who have been with me awhile. So I'm trying to reach further back in my tbr now and again. And if The Known World and Barchester Towers (a book I've owned since before I joined LT) are any indication, this will not be wasted time.

187NanaCC
Sept. 16, 2015, 4:21 pm

I think I should try The Known World again. I tried reading it while I was still working, and it just didn't pull me in fast enough. Your review makes me feel that I didn't give it enough time.

188RidgewayGirl
Sept. 17, 2015, 5:22 am

Barchester Towers is the second of Anthony Trollope's books set in the fictional county of Barsetshire. I read the first, The Warden, and while appreciating the writing, never fell in love with the book. I had the same experience with Barchester Towers, until halfway through when things took off and I could not stop reading.

Like The Warden, Barchester Towers is largely concerned with wrangling between groups of Anglican clergymen, some of whom want to reform the system and others who have benefited from what is essentially an old boys network and are deeply invested in keeping things as they are. Trollope is clearly on the side of tradition, which left me siding with the obvious villains of the piece. Here, a new bishop is appointed by the government and it isn't the pompous Grantly, but Proudie (it must be said that Trollope's names are not as good as Dickens'), who arrives with not only a wife who expects a voice in matters, but also a personal clergyman, Mr Slope, whose ambitions manage to alienate everyone. And so the church in Barchester is split into two factions, both jostling for power, mainly in the appointment of various sinecures.

Trollope does a lovely job writing his female characters. While he's a big proponent of people knowing their place, he writes women as real people, with as much intelligence and personality as any of his male characters. And my favorite was Mrs Proudie, a woman accustomed to being in charge and who, when briefly thwarted, becomes a force to be reckoned with. Trollope also has an entertaining habit of going all meta here and there, to point out who the villains are, or to explain how he has tailored his story in order to fulfill the expectations of the reader.

On the other hand, I found Trollope frustrating in a few regards. He has a tendency to put some of the most interesting scenes outside of the story, so that the reader is only told of the result of a fabulous conflict or romantic interlude. This was a great disappointment, especially when an encounter has been foreshadowed and anticipated for some time. A paragraph or two telling the reader what happened is not good enough, Mr Trollope! He also has a habit of telling the reader things about the characters' personalities which are not bourn out in the telling of the story. Not only is he telling-not-showing, but he's telling us things that just aren't true. Specifically, that Mrs Proudie is a villain, or that a certain family is devoid of heart - despite Trollope telling the reader this several times, their actions show this to simply not be true.

I'm interested enough in the doings in Barsetshire to continue with the series, but I have my issues with Mr Trollope.

189FlorenceArt
Sept. 17, 2015, 8:11 am

>188 RidgewayGirl: Interesting take on Trollope! I still haven't read any of his book, and clearly I should do so, but I'm not sure which one to pick for a first taste. Barchester Towers could be a good start I suppose. Have you read other books beside it and The Warden?

190RidgewayGirl
Sept. 17, 2015, 9:39 am

Florence, no, that's it. And while others have said differently, I think it's worthwhile to read The Warden before reading Barchester Towers. A lot of background knowledge is assumed. Also, The Warden is a short novel and will give you a taste of his writing style, as well as featuring John Bold, a character I liked quite a bit.

I wonder if a different novel would be the best starting point for Trollope? I'm invested in Barsetshire now, though, and will continue on.

191FlorenceArt
Sept. 17, 2015, 10:33 am

I'm a little wary of the church politics aspect...

192rebeccanyc
Sept. 17, 2015, 10:52 am

I started Trollope with the Palliser series (or really with a novel that isn't in a series, The Way We Live Now, which I loved) because I was wary of the church politics too, Florence. I love the Palliser series, but I'm on the last book now, so I'm looking to start (warily) the Barsetshire series and will be looking for The Warden. And I love his female characters too.

193ELiz_M
Sept. 17, 2015, 10:52 am

>190I've heard The Way We Live Now is a good starting point, as it is a stand-alone novel and not as much of a commitment as starting one of his six-book series!

194janeajones
Sept. 17, 2015, 11:38 am

Don't think I shall read the Barsetshire series, but I enjoyed your review.

195NanaCC
Bearbeitet: Sept. 17, 2015, 1:00 pm

I've really been enjoying the Barsetshire series. I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed The Warden as much as I did without the tutored thread. The church politics would have been confusing. But after that one book, they all were easier.

**I meant to add that the tutored thread can be found on the book page.

196RidgewayGirl
Sept. 17, 2015, 1:35 pm

Florence, it's not really about religion - more about tradition vs. reform.

Rebecca, I'm enjoying it. Does he glide around pivotal scenes in his other books?

Hi, Eliz_M! I'd heard that, too, but I've owned this copy of Barchester Towers for more than a decade, so it was hanging over my head.

Ah, Jane, have I scared you off?

Colleen, I'm reading through the tutored read for Barchester Towers now.

197rebeccanyc
Sept. 17, 2015, 2:12 pm

>193 ELiz_M: The Way We Live Now did make me want to read more Trollope.

>195 NanaCC: Thanks for reminding me about the tutored read once I do get to The Warden.

>196 RidgewayGirl: I haven't noticed that "gliding around" in the books I've read, Kay, but now I'll be looking for it.

198janeajones
Sept. 17, 2015, 3:03 pm

196> No, not scared off -- I read some Trollope years ago, just not my cup of tea, I'm afraid.

199dchaikin
Sept. 18, 2015, 8:37 pm

>182 RidgewayGirl: I loved The Known World. It's strangely one of those books the I enjoyed causally while reading it and when it finished it suddenly struck me that I really liked it. As I mentioned on the wayrn thread, I think about it a lot still.

200RidgewayGirl
Sept. 21, 2015, 4:22 am

Elizabeth Hay's new novel, His Whole Life, tells the story Jim and his mother Nan during his early adolescence. It's a time of change in their lives, beginning with a summer spent on an Ontario lake as Jim enjoys his last summer of childhood and his mother decides whether or not to stay in her marriage. At the same time, Canada is preparing for the second Quebec referendum, and Nan's feeling about her family are entwined with her feelings about Canada's future.

This isn't a book were a lot happens. It's entirely domestic in scope, exploring families and forgiveness in families, which is usually exactly the kind of book I most enjoy. And the writing is very fine. Nonetheless, this book never really captured my attention; I was always turning pages and counting chapters. It never felt real to me. It did, however, capture the tension of that referendum vividly, with Canadians on both sides feeling passionately about the issue.

201AlisonY
Sept. 23, 2015, 7:44 am

That's a shame - from the start of your review I thought it was going to be another one for the wish list. I hate reading those kind of books where you keep flicking to the end to see how many pages you've left to go...

202RidgewayGirl
Sept. 23, 2015, 10:26 am

I was disappointed, too, Alison. Hay has always been someone whose books really grabbed me, even when the plots were weak or disjointed.

203charl08
Sept. 23, 2015, 12:21 pm

I don't think I've even come across Elizabeth Hay before. Given this one was a bit if a dud, which one would you recommend a Hay newbie to consider getting hold of?

204RidgewayGirl
Sept. 23, 2015, 1:35 pm

Charlotte, Late Nights on Air is fantastic. It's set in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, at a small radio station. I loved it.

205Jenni_Canuck
Sept. 23, 2015, 3:42 pm

I read Late Nights on Air a few years ago and I loved it. Next up for me is A Student of Weather and I'm really looking forward to it.

206SassyLassy
Sept. 24, 2015, 10:30 am

>200 RidgewayGirl: Was Hay's perspective on the referendum one of a family potentially breaking up like the family in the novel, or was it just sort of background to place the book in time?

I haven't read this one yet. I've only read A Student of Weather which I did like. I suspect this new one may be a library book.

207charl08
Sept. 24, 2015, 5:55 pm

Cheers for the recommendation. I'm in the middle of The Great Fire and finding it a bit mannered, a bit tough to lose myself in.

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