Ridgeway Girl Reads in Different Places, Part Five

My reading goals for the year are to continue to read more books written by women (which was last year's goal) and add to it an increased proportion of books written outside of the US and the UK. Last year, 76% of my reading was set in those two countries! I'd like to see it reduced to 60%, with the remaining 40% scattered across the rest of the world. And as for my reading by US and UK authors, I'd like a little more of that to come from the voices we hear less from.

I'm back in South Carolina and unpacking a seemingly infinite number of boxes.

Currently Reading



Recently Read



Recently Acquired

Category One



Termagant Titles
Books written by women

1. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz
2. Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith
3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
5. The Widow by Fiona Barton
6. Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
7. Blood Salt Water by Denise Mina
8. Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
9. Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman
10. The Girls by Emma Cline

11. Commonwealth by Anne Patchett

Category Two



Texts in Translation
Books originally written in a language other than English

1. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George (German)
2. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad (Norwegian)
3. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (Japanese)
4. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Spanish)
5. Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski (Polish)
6. The Man on the Balcony by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (Swedish)
7. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Italian)
8. San Juan Noir edited by Mayra Santos-Febres (Spanish)
9. Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch (Dutch)
10. The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Japanese)

Category Three



New in the Neighborhood
Books written by immigrants or expats

1. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
2. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
3. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
4. Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
5. The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta
6. The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens
7. The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
8. The Expatriates by Janice Y. K. Lee
9. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
10. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Category Four



New and Shiny Books
Books published within the last three years

1. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter
2. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
3. A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah
4. A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold
5. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
6. The Followers by Rebecca Wait
7. Revival by Stephen King
8. You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott
9. The Fireman by Joe Hill
10. Darktown by Thomas Mullen

11. While the City Slept by Eli Sanders

Category Five



Aged Pages
Books off of my tbr

1. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
2. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
3. The Salterton Trilogy: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, A Mixture of Frailties by Robertson Davies
4. Truth by Peter Temple
5. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey
6. Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon
7. Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee
8. The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser
9. Trashed by Alison Gaylin
10. To Catch a Rabbit by Helen Cadbury

Category Six



Temporary Titles
Borrowed or library books

1. A Gambler's Anatomy by Jonathan Lethem
2. The Shut Eye by Belinda Bauer
3. The Passenger by Lisa Lutz
4. The Bastard of Fort Stikine by Debra Komar
5. Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma
6. American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers by Nancy Jo Sales
7. Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg
8. End of Watch by Stephen King
9. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
10. Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas

Category Seven



Noteworthy Novels
Longlisted, Shortlisted or award-winning books

1. The Whites by Richard Price (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
2. The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
3. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
4. The New World: A Novel by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz (Contestant - Tournament of Books)
5. Capital by John Lanchester (International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist (2014))
6. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild (Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2016)
7. The Outcast by Sadie Jones (Costa First Novel Award)
8. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden (Canada Reads (Winner, 2014))
9. Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves (Booker Prize 2016 Longlist)
10. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism, 2015))

Category Eight



International Editions
Books set outside of the US and the UK or written by authors living outside of the US or UK

1. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes (Ireland)
2. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar (Afghanistan)
3. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys (Lithuania and Russia)
4. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (Australia)
5. Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil (Tibet)
6. Honor by Elif Shafak (Turkey and Britain)
7. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones (Germany)
8. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck (Paraguay)
9. The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith (Botswana)
10. Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn (Jamaica)

Category Nine



Various Volumes
Books by authors of color

1. A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
2. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
3. The Sellout by Paul Beatty
4. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
5. Oreo by Fran Ross
6. Negroland by Margo Jefferson
7. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
8. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
9. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
10. Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

11. The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Category Ten



A Compendium of CATs
Books that fulfill a CAT, a group read or book club book

1. Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David (RandomCAT January: Embrace your Uniqueness)
2. Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (RandomCAT February: It Takes Two)
3. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (RandomCAT February: It Takes Two)
4. Girl at War by Sara Novic (GeoCAT March: Eastern Europe and Russia)
5. Reader I Married Him edited by Tracy Chevalier (RandomCAT June: I Do, I Do)
6. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (RandomCAT August: Camping)
7. Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek (DeweyCAT August)
8. A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon (DeweyCAT October)
9. The Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Pamela Mingle (DeweyCAT October)
10. Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner (GeoCAT December: Western Europe)

Woman BingoPUP



2. Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek
3. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
4. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
5. Wilde Lake by Laura Lippman
7. The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
9. How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz (author usually writes mysteries)
10. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Winner - Man Booker International Prize)
11. Negroland by Margo Jefferson
12. Girl at War by Sara Novic
13. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
14. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
15. The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck (set in Paraguay)
16. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini (Zimbabwean author)
18. A Guide to Berlin by Gail Jones (set in Europe, Australian author)
20. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey (author born in 1953)
22. Honor by Elif Shafak
23. Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon

BingoDOG



1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
3. A Fort of Nine Towers by Qais Akbar Omar
5. The Woman Who Stole My Life by Marian Keyes
6. Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil
8. A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold
9. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
10. The Whites by Richard Price
11. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
12. Revival by Stephen King
13. A Dual Inheritance by Joanna Hershon
14. Lost Lake by Sarah Addison Allen
15. The Orenda by Joseph Boyden
16. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
17. The Salterton Trilogy by Robertson Davies
18. Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
19. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
20. One of Us: Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
21. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
22. Starter for Ten by David Nicholls
23. Giant Days: Volume Two by John Allison
25. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

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Welcome to my new thread. Expect opinions about books and pictures of the new dog.

Happy new thread! I'm glad to see (on your previous thread) that The Underground Railroad lived up to the hype. I've heard much about it, and it sounds like a must-read book.

Paulina, I thought The Underground Railroad was brilliant. Well worth reading. I'm expecting to see it crop up regularly on shortlists of various kinds.

Happy new thread! Hope everything is unearthed from the boxes and finds a suitable place in your new home. It must be an adventure to open a box and realize "Oh, that's where that went" or think "When did we ever get this?!"

Also yay, dog pictures!

Happy new thread. Hope you're settling in nicely.

Just marking my spot. I look forward to the BBs, and the dog photos!

Happy New Thread!

Happy New Thread!

rp, it's more like: open a box, stare in disbelief at the contents and wonder why we ever spent money on the contents. Lots of trips to Goodwill these days. There's something to be said about having to handle all one's belongings periodically. It's hard to get rid of something placed neatly on a shelf.

Thanks, Charlotte, Betty, Lori and Carrie. There will be dog photos. She's on antibiotics because she is heart worm positive (she was not being well cared for as a yard dog) and I shook the bottle as I was tidying the kitchen. She was sitting by my side a microsecond later. Max is in charge of giving her her medicine and he wraps the pills in a bit of cheese. Pill-taking time is one of her favorite things.

I have finished The Fireman by Joe Hill and can return to regular life.

>24 RidgewayGirl: Happy new thread! Ooh, The Fireman sounds like it was good. It's waiting on my Kindle for me.

Happy new thread! Hope the antibiotics do their magic and that the girl feels better soon!

My bookclub's pick for October is The Little Paris Bookshop. I remembered your entertaining, scathing review (January 2 on your first thread of 2016) and had to look it up again. Not sure I can bring myself to read this. So many books I want to read, dare I waste time? Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for your comments and I'm still enjoying them monthes later.

Shannon, The Fireman was a lot of fun and an homage to his father.

Eva, it's a long process. Heartworms are a huge problem here as they are in the soil and so many people don't bother to dose their dogs with preventative. She'll have a few more injections and she needs to stay fairly calm to keep the dying and dead worms from being pushed out of her heart and into her bloodstream. Luckily, she's naturally calm and laid-back. She should be worm free by the new year.

You're in for fun, Joyce!

>28 RidgewayGirl:
Wow, I didn't realize it was such a long process. How do you decide not to give your dog preventative medication? Sometimes I have a hard time understanding people. Hugs to the girl and hope she does well!

>29 -Eva-: It does cost money - about $4 or $5 bucks a month? And this is a place where people really don't understand why they should get their dogs sterilized and not let them just wander around. We have a huge homeless pet situation. Dogs are regularly taken from shelters here to ones up north where they can be adopted. I have very strong feelings about this.

Adrian's heartworm medication costs between $15 and $20 a month. It's a combo medication that prevents other parasite problems in addition to heartworm. I get it from his vet because it's convenient and requires a prescription. I'd have to contact his vet anyway to buy it from another source. I'm not sure that the family across the road can afford heartworm medication for their dog. He's largely an outdoor dog who roams the neighborhood freely. He's at least 6 years old, and was just sterilized about 6 months ago.

Carrie, if you get Heartgard on-line, it's $32 for six months. And that poor dog has a good chance of ending up with heartworms and it will cost his family several hundred if they decide it's worthwhile to do the treatment. And now I want that dog to come live in my house. Ivy says no, though. She requires quite a bit of sofa.

There does still seem to be a certain group of people who still don't feel that there is any reason to take care of animals beyond feeding them. (I started to write much more but was getting too worked up- nuff said.) I knew taking care of heartworm was an involved process, but I didn't realize it took that long. Good luck to her.

I don't think they woukd give him up. They adore him. I'm just not sure that they understand the health risks of heartworm.

Another neighbor has a lovely recue dog that was heartworm positive when they adopted him. He's a beautiful, healthy dog now.

Betty, I'm glad I'm not the only one with strong opinions on this subject!

Carrie, of course they love their dog. I hope he never gets infected. Ivy should do well - the rescue group we got her from said that most of the dogs that end up at their kennels have heartworm, but only a few have died from the treatment. Ivy is a committed bone-burier, digger up and chewer of same, so her becoming infected was pretty much a given. I wonder if the dirt adds to the flavor? This morning, my husband was sitting on the floor scratching her belly and talking to her. She leaped up, ran away and came back a few minutes later with a present for him (one of her toys).

Harper is a school nurse when the virus commonly called dragonscale first appears, and as the infection widens into a global pandemic, she works tirelessly in the local hospital. The virus causes a rash that looks like an elaborate tattoo and the infected die when they self-combust. There's widespread panic that Harper manages to stay free of until the hospital burns down and she returns home to her beloved husband, Jakob.

If you didn't know that Joe Hill was Stephen King's son, you would by the end of The Fireman, which reads as a loving homage. This feels like a King novel, although Hill's writing style is different, he retains King's love of adding pop cultural references. I don't want to give away any of the plot, as it's too much fun to read without knowing what will happen next as Harper goes from being a sweet young woman who loves Mary Poppins to finding out that she's got an iron will and the personal strength to lead. Hill takes the time to create fully developed characters; ordinary people facing extraordinary conditions and keeping their reactions nuanced and believable.

And, best of all, The Fireman is just a lot of fun to read.

I found The Underground Railroad on the 7-day Express shelf at the library. Wa-hoo!

>36 RidgewayGirl: It's a big book, but his dad writes big books too and usually I tear through them. Would you say this is a page-turner, tear through it in a weekend type of book? I was saving it for Christmas holidays but I'm feeling tempted to go ahead and read it now...

Happy new thread! And all my best to Ivy- I hope she recovers quickly!

Shannon, I tore through The Fireman. And the main character is amazing. I think you'll love it.

Thanks, Jennifer. She's on the sofa with me, keeping my feet warm and breathing on my husband's arm.

Happy New Thread. I've loved a number of Joe Hill's novels, so I should definitely pick up The Fireman.

The Gardner Heist is one of the most famous art thefts of all time, especially since it remains unsolved and none of the stolen objects have ever surfaced. The bare bones of the theft go as follows: in 1990, two men dressed as police officers talk their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the early morning hours. They tie up the guards and make off with 13 works of art, including Vermeer's The Concert and a Rembrandt seascape. Their haul also included random items like the finial from the top of a Napoleonic flag.



The FBI investigated and leads abounded, implicating everyone from local Boston criminals, to the mob, to Whitey Bulger, to the IRA. Whether or not any of the suspects had any role in the crime remains unknown. Ulrich Boser takes the angle of interviewing and following around an art detective working for insurance companies, Harold Smith. Smith has had some notable finds, but he's older and ill and dies soon after Boser begins his research, and this is where The Gardner Heist goes off track. The history of the museum, its founder and of the crime itself were well covered, but once Boser began conducting his own investigation, the focus of the book changed from the heist and the missing artwork to the adventures of Boser as he hangs out with grifters, retired policemen and criminals who have gone straight but who might know someone who knows something. Boser writes about every fruitless lead and wild goose chase he is sent on and long before he starts recounting his dreams and his imaginary conversations, I was reading the book solely to finish it.

As far as solid information goes, there's a solid magazine article in here, underneath all the filler and fantasy. I would have rather just read an article.

Sorry it had all the filler, but thanks for the review. I would have been sucked in by that one too, just from the subject. Btw, I think both the title and career of an "art detective" would be so cool. I'd never stop handing out my business card.

Happy New Thread!
Finally made it over here. The backlog of threads from my vacay week is daunting! LOL.

>42 RidgewayGirl: Marking that one off the WL. Thanks for the informative review! If he gets around to writing that magazine article I will read it.

>42 RidgewayGirl: Thanks for taking one for the team there. The title does sound much better than what you describe it actually involving. His dreams?!

>43 mstrust: Oh yes, I like the sound of that too.

Me, too, Jennifer. It sounds like the best job ever, especially all the world travel necessary to track down leads.

Imagine how daunting all the threads looked once we'd finished moving! I'm still digging out - at least it's fun to have plenty of threads to visit.

Carrie, I'd be interested in that magazine article, too. I found myself not paying close attention once he'd started "investigating" on his own. It always astonishes me how people think that they could just do any job at all with no training or experience.

Charlotte, someone recounting their dreams is never not boring, even in fiction when it supposedly moves the story along. When my kids were young, it was always an exercise in patience to hear about their dreams -- and I'm interested in their inner lives! Of course, my own dreams are fascinating.

>42 RidgewayGirl: I must confess I love art theft but I usually find fiction is better than nonfiction, although it seems the opposite would be true.

clue, I always fall for a book about art theft or forgery, and they are bad more often than they are good. But the occasional good one keeps me reading them.

Because we're so close to Boston, this crops up on the news every so often so I was waiting to hear what you had to say about this book. And with Whitey Bolger being caught, it was mentioned again. Plus I think it was on the news last year because it was the 25th anniversary of the heist. But now I'll cross this off the list of books to read about it. Sorry you had to take one for the team. Now I know why it was sitting in your list of "currently reading" for so long.

Betty, they can't all be winners. It's such a fascinating topic. Maybe if they ever find any of the stolen objects, there'll be at least a long article about the heist.

So I'm reading Darktown, a novel about the first African American police officers in Atlanta. It's written by an author I like very much and who recently tweeted that he was about to do signings in a few places in NC. So I asked if he was planning a trip near to where I am (it really is all about me and I've been putting off buying the book in the hopes of a signing nearby - he is almost local after all) and he tweeted (yes, I am on twitter. Authors often like to waste time when they are supposed to be writing) back that he'd be happy to appear at any bookstore willing to have him. So my task this week is to ask at both the local independents and keep my fingers crossed. I will get my books by Thomas Mullen signed someday.

Virginia Reeves's first novel, Work Like Any Other, was long listed for the Man Booker prize. It didn't make it on to the short list, but I was happy to have read this historical novel set in Alabama between the world wars.

Roscoe is an unsuccessful farmer. Which is to say, he's an electrical engineer who was happy in his work until his wife's father died and left her the family farm. Living on a farm isn't something that fulfills Roscoe and things are going downhill when he comes up with the idea of tapping into the electrical wires now being strung across the state. It does indeed help the farm, but at a terrible cost, and when the theft is discovered, both he and Wilson, who has worked on the farm for decades, are sent to prison. No spoilers here; the book is divided into the events taking place before the arrests and after they are sent to prison.

Reeves opens the novel with Roscoe abusing his wife and son, and yet still manages to make him a sympathetic character. He's a wonderfully written character; an ordinary man stuck in terrible circumstances, which he handles as well as he can. He's complexly written, as are most of the other characters. I especially appreciated how Reeves wrote about Wilson and his family. Wilson's time in prison was much harsher than Roscoe's, with Roscoe, a white man, being sent to a "model" prison and Wison, a black man, being rented out to work in mines, effectively as slave labor.

There are a few signs that this is a debut novel. At times the research show through and is presented heavily. Reeves clearly researched every aspect of this novel and there's a solidity to her descriptions of prison life and of farm life that show that she isn't just winging it.

>52 RidgewayGirl: Good luck. I'm still miffed Patchett isn't travelling several thousand miles to give a reading here. (Unreasonable? Me?!)

Charlotte, I'm number 52 for the Patchett book, so any day now!

And I'm not too optimistic that I can get a bookstore to set up a signing, but at least it gives me an excuse to go by.

>53 RidgewayGirl: Kay I want to read Work Like Any Other but I'm trying to wait it out to see if the library will purchase it.

I just got the Patchett book today but I think I'll finish the Ron Rash book first.

>53 RidgewayGirl: I'll get to that one eventually. I'm behind on all my reading at the moment.

Lisa, I'm looking forward to finding out what you think about The Risen. I have a few books I'd like to finish before I get too deeply into it, but I should read it next week.

Lori, I'm behind in everything. I think you'll like Work Like Any Other when you do get to it.

Glad the weekend has finally come. I'm spending tomorrow organizing and unpacking the study -- AKA the spare room AKA the game room AKA the crafting and sewing room AKA the guest room. Right now, it can most accurately be called the box room.

I made the terrible mistake of downloading an audio book I'd already listened to. (I thought those things disappeared from your wish list when you checked them out, but I guess not.) Anyway, I missed a chance to listen to about 4 hours of another book because I didn't have a good wifi connection in the car and refused to use data to download a book. I do have one audio book to review and add in a bit.

Lori, I understand your stubbornness. And I have purchased an audiobook then the book, and not noticed until after I'd read the book. Luckily, Audible took it back. Even with the LT app on my phone, I can still end up with two copies of a title.

I unpacked nine boxes over the weekend. The room looks largely unchanged.

San Juan Noir is a collection of crime stories edited by Mayra Santos-Febres. Most were written originally in Spanish and there is a Spanish language edition available. This collection is slenderer than the other books in this series, but Santos-Febres has made up for this by choosing stories that are relentless dark. The stories, like in most anthologies, an uneven group and having a single translator for all the stories makes all but a few sound as though they were written by the same person. Still, there were several memorable stories.

Death on the Scaffold details the narrator's unrest at losing their privacy when their apartment building is undergoing renovation and a scaffolding is erected that passes in front of the living room window. In A Killer Among Us, a schoolboy and his friends join a group of neighbors who have found the body of a murdered man. Y tells the story of a teacher's search for his missing student, and Death Angel of Santurce narrates the final hours of a woman's life.

The Akashic Noir series is strongest when the subject matter is somewhere off the beaten path. This edition has provided me with a half dozen authors to keep an eye out for.

Hurricane Matthew is heading towards the coast of the US. The SC coast is being evacuated and to help with that, the district school buses have gone to help transport evacuees to safety. The local convention center and churches are being set up as temporary housing. I am hoping so much that this will all be a giant inconvenience as the storm veers out to sea or dies down and does no damage.

To everyone along the southeastern seaboard; I hope you make it out with as little stress as possible. Stay safe and don't risk your life to guard your stuff.

>62 RidgewayGirl: Yes, let's hope. I am not in the danger area, so I am just preparing myself for another weekend of rain. How are you making out with The Vegetarian? I just finished it and will post my review shortly.

Shannon, I have less than five pages to read. I'll finish it tonight. I liked it more the further into it I got. May go stand on my head and channel tree thoughts later.

Someone here reviewed Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil and I had to read it right away. Now, a few chapters in and enjoying myself enormously, I went to add the book to my catalog only to find that I'd already read it in 2010.

Oh, well. I'm enjoying it and while I did wonder why I was already oddly familiar with the events I was reading about, I'll continue on. I can't believe that I am now such an aged wreck as to be able to reread books endlessly and find them new to me!

>65 RidgewayGirl: I think this means an end to the "rereading guilt" some people feel when rereading old books rather than trying out new ones. No guilt when old books are new again! ;)

My problem is that, with all of the books I read about on LT and elsewhere, bookshop browsing has become an endless stream of "Hm, I recognize that title. But did I actually want to read it or did I just read about it? And if I read about it, was it good things or bad things?"

>66 rabbitprincess: Ha! Exactly! At least the LT app keeps me from buying books I already have (or have read), but it doesn't stop me from checking them out of the library.

I finished Darktown by Thomas Mullen over a week ago and at the time thought it was a well-written, well researched and well-plotted novel. But it's been growing on me since I read it; I keep thinking about one of the characters and how Mullen did a masterful job in writing about him.

Set in 1948, when the first eight African American police officers donned uniforms and began patrolling the black neighborhoods of Atlanta, Darktown is, on its surface, an excellently plotted crime novel that is full of details about Atlanta, Georgia at a specific point in time. Boggs, the son of a prominent minister and Smith, who spent WWII in a tank, are patrolling the African American district of Sweet Auburn on foot when they see a car crash into a streetlight. The car is being driven by a belligerent white man who knows that Boggs and Smith have no authority over anyone white and there is a young black woman in the passenger seat. When the car drives off, they see the man punch the woman and see her flee the car. In following the man and finding a call box to summon white officers they lose sight of the woman. When she is later found murdered, the two officers work to solve the crime, despite ample obstruction from their white peers.

Meanwhile, Dunlow and Rakestraw speak with the man in the car. Dunlow is one of the few white officers who will set foot in black neighborhoods, but he does so more to administer beatings and shakedowns than to do any actual police work. One of the reasons the African American community fought for having African American officers was to stop this behavior from the white cops, and Dunlow is not having it. Sweet Auburn, known as Darktown to white officers, is his personal fiefdom. Rakestraw is his rookie partner, a man wary of risking his job or his safety to take any action, but who is deeply uneasy with the actions and attitudes of Dunlow and his fellow officers. Rakestraw also recognizes the dead woman and begins investigating the crime on his own, keeping his activities secret from his partner.

The murder plot and it's dual investigations, is gripping and well-plotted and at the most basic level, this is an excellent historical thriller. But the strength of this book lies in how well researched it is. Darktown is full of details of what it was like to live in that time and place, described vividly. And his characterizations are marvelous. Boggs is a member of the elite, a college-educated man whose family is prominent in both the social life of their community and its political life. Smith comes from a much more hard-scrabble background and the two men work well together, both being fully aware of the risks to their lives they are taking. They aren't even allowed into the police headquarters, their own headquarters being the basement of a YMCA, where a janitor's cupboard had to be turned into a bathroom for their white supervisor.

Rakestraw is the character who is the most interesting. While Boggs plays a more prominent role, and is the most understandable character for the reader, Rakestraw's ambivalence and slow conviction that he has to take action or be complicit in the corruption and racism of the police force is wonderfully depicted. Rakestraw isn't someone the reader can admire and while his views are progressive for that time and place, they certainly would not be regarded as progressive today. Rakestraw isn't a modern man sent back in time, but one firmly rooted in his era. My personal pet peeve with many historical novels is that the heroes are all really just modern people dressed up in old timey clothes. Mullen doesn't do this. His characters are firmly of their time.

Thomas Mullen is one of my favorite authors and with Darktown he has cemented his place in my literary heart.

Knowing you are in SC, I hope you got through Matthew without any damage or injury.

>65 RidgewayGirl: So glad to hear I'm not the only "aged wreck" and re-reading books. I was adding a title to my wishlist and was shocked to find out it was already tagged "read in 2015". So recent!

I also discovered that the LT app does not prevent me from buying a second copy of a book I already own.

>68 RidgewayGirl: Excellent review of Darktown. This is one for the wishlist.

>68 RidgewayGirl: What Vivienne said. Onto the wishlist...

Yep, just this past week I got around 10 pages in when I realized I'd read that book a few years ago. I wondered how I managed to do that, but I would have continued if I didn't have a big stack to get through this month.

Thanks, Vivienne. I'm in the Upstate, so while we had some wind and rain, it wasn't anything notable. We do have a number evacuees here until they can return home and we had no school buses last week, as they went to Charleston to help transport people to safety.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who inadvertently rereads books! I'm going to keep reading, because I don't remember how it all plays out. This time I'll write a review - that seems to help me remember a book, then again, I've only been serious about writing about what I read for a few years now - it may be too soon to tell!

Glad Darktown will be read. It really is good.

Korean author Han Kang's novel, The Vegetarian, tells the story of Yeong-hye, a woman who seeks a sort of self-annihilation, first through becoming a vegetarian and then in other ways. Yeong-hye's story is told in the form of three short stories told from the points of view of her husband, then a brother-in-law and finally her sister. As Yeong-hye's behavior becomes less and less comprehensible to her family, their reactions spark changes in how they experience the world.

This is an unusual book, but it repays the reader, becoming more fascinating as the story continues. Her husband believes that his wife is unremarkable in every way and he takes her vegetarianism as an insult to him. He is especially outraged by the idea that he will no longer be served meat at breakfast, the meal his wife prepares for him. As his discomfort increases, his behavior becomes more extreme. The brother-in-law, far from being repulsed by her, is intrigued and then obsessed. As an artist, he begins to center a new project around her body. And then her sister tells the final story, rounding out Yeong-hye's story by remembering their childhood together.

The writing, which is translated into English by Deborah Smith, is pared down, with even the most violent and upsetting of scenes described in a matter of fact way that suits the melancholy and lonely atmosphere of the novel.

>73 RidgewayGirl:

Really intriguing review. The structure and tone make me wary though -- reminds me a little of Please Look After Mom -- a book that I can't describe how much I loathed. The Vegetarian is Korean, isn't it? Not sure I want to take a chance on The Vegetarian and wonder if it's a Korean literature thing. I guess I won't know unless I give it a chance.

>74 Nickelini: Hmmm, I should read Please Look After Mom and get back to you. Are you willing to wait an unspecified length of time?

>75 RidgewayGirl: I wouldn't wish that book on anyone.

Was glancing back up and saw your comments about Hurricane Matthew. I'm heading to Raleigh this weekend. I know there were some roads closed near Jeff's earlier this week. He'll give me an update Friday night before I head over on Saturday. I know some dams broke southeast of them.

Have a great time in Raleigh this weekend, Lori.

In Ivy the dog news, she's begun the serious part of her heart worm treatment and is decidedly under the weather. Even her usual favorite treat of American cheese did not interest her, so the many pills had to be stuffed down her throat by yours truly. Not my favorite thing to do.

After graduating with an English degree and with vague plans to write, Scott Douglas ends up working in the local library as he waits for his real life to get going. After going back to school for his MLS, Douglas eventually realizes that he's a librarian. In Quiet, Please, he documents both his journey to librarianhood and his experiences working in a public library in Anaheim, California.

If you're a regular patron of your local library, parts of this book will feel familiar. I enjoyed learning the different library positions and what their duties are, as well as his comments on the changing nature of libraries and their importance in this digital age. Douglas admits that he is a bit of a jerk and I have to agree with his assessment, but this makes for a more entertaining book, as he dislikes a few of his co-workers, is astonished that some of the people employed in a library aren't readers and pokes fun at the patrons.

>79 RidgewayGirl:
This sounds fun and I love that the little round stool is pictured on the cover. Good memories of sitting on them when I perused the lower shelves.

>79 RidgewayGirl:

he...is astonished that some of the people employed in a library aren't readers

One of my friends, a long time public librarian, and I have pondered the allure to both library and bookstore jobs that causes people who don't read to want that work. I guess it all comes down to the fact that the world doesn't understand those jobs very well. I think some people see libraries as quiet, calm, safe places where they won't be subjected to "modern behavior".

>80 andreablythe: Me, too. I wouldn't mind one for my living room if it fit the decor. I'm a short person living with high shelves. The one I want is always out of reach.

>81 clue: Maybe they were who was hiring when they were looking for a job? Also, library jobs are government jobs, with more job security and better hours than a retail position. But, it was a revelation to me -- I'd assumed that everyone working in a library loved books.

>82 RidgewayGirl:
Since you mentioned it, I had to look. Apparently the stools are available in a variety of colors. ;)

(Although 60+ bucks is a wee pricey.)

That stool looks like one my husband found me at a yard sale. I too am short and find it very convenient. I wouldn't mind a couple more.

RE: Ivy and her pills. When Gracie had to go on even more pain meds for her hips last spring, peanut butter worked for me for a while. Then she started to turn her nose up at that and cheese only worked for a couple of weeks. I finally gave up and am using pill pockets. I can split them up and wrap them around her pills and she will take it as a "treat". Much easier than forcing them down her throat, although she never tried to bite me. She tolerated me. I find the side of the mouth is best.

Betty, she's been on antibiotics for a month and we've found American cheese to be what she likes. She's gotten so the rattle of the pill container and the sound of the cheese wrapper gets her into the kitchen. Of course, just my son walking into the kitchen does the same thing. She's feeling a bit better today and has been fine accepting her "treats." She was just in too much pain last night to want to deal with food.

Incidentally, my mother is on the same drug regime as the dog right now. It's a lot cheaper for the dog. (My mother does not have heartworms.)

Andrea, I want one! Maybe I'll ask for the navy or slate one for Christmas.

I learned about the economics of pet drugs from my brother, whose best friend's father was a veterinary science professor. Many of the drugs used for pets are also used for humans. The pet prescriptions are cheaper. Many people are not willing/able to pay as much for drugs for their pets as they are for themselves or their children. I've wondered if that will start to change as pet insurance becomes more common.

I'm glad Ivy had a better day today, and I'm so happy that she found a family with the patience to see her through this course of treatment.

Carrie, I'd hope that we'd go the other direction and make drugs affordable for people, too! Ivy is doing much better but I'm not looking forward to the final injections.

Intriguing librarian book. At least he knows he's a jerk, I guess. (Trying to think of a British English equivalent and struggling).

>88 charl08: A friend from Manchester likes the term "arsewaffle," although I don't believe it's in wide usage.

In 1962, two young Harvard students become friends. Hugh Shipley is from an old, prestigious family and has the effortless grace that money brings. Ed Cantowitz is the son of a Jewish laborer striving to make a successful life from himself. They become close friends. Joanna Hershon's novel, A Dual Inheritance follows the two men through their lives, in a sweeping story that takes them through their marriages, careers and children's lives.

There are three kinds of books about climbing expeditions; those written by serious climbers - these are usually not particularly well-written, but are gripping because of their passion and the drama of their lived experience; Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; and books written by non-climbers or amateur climbers who are hoping to write a successful book just like Into Thin Air. Dark Summit: The True Story of Everest's Most Controversial Season by Nick Heil falls firmly into that third category.

In 2006, a decade after Into Thin Air was written, Everest was even more crowded with more climbers who required greater comfort and more help to reach the summit and return safely. On the north (Tibetan) side of Everest, the biggest and most luxurious outfitter is run by Russell Brice, who throws the best parties and is the one responsible for stringing the lines that allow all those climbers to reach the summit. Heil is fascinated by Brice and most of the book is told from the points of view of members of his team of guides and climbers.

That season saw several deaths, but the controversy referred to in the subtitle is the death of one man and the survival of another. David Sharp was climbing alone, using a climbing outfit solely as a way of getting access to the mountain. He climbed without sherpas and without anyone knowing his plans. He ended up stranded above a tricky bit of climbing (the Second Step) and while he was noticed by several climbers and passed by at least forty, no one helped him in any substantial way, despite his obvious peril. Another climber, who had been left for dead, was found by climbers heading up to the summit early the next day. He was rescued, in an effort that involved several teams.

Afterwards, questions were raised about why one man was rescued and the other abandoned. These are not unfamiliar issues and while the question of who gets rescued and who is not, and when is abandoning an attempt to reach the summit the right decision and when is the summit (given the time and money required to even make the attempt) more important than another adventurer's life. Ultimately, Heil's book is a disappointment. While his account of what happened over those few days is gripping, he fudges the serious questions he raises and is far too infatuated with Brice and his impressive business to pay serious attention to the issues of the ethical considerations of climbing a mountain that is a capitalist free-for-all, with the wealthiest climbers being able to purchase the certainty of a rescue being attempted if they run into problems, as well as the many unprepared climbers seeking to be the first of a category to summit (in this season, the first double amputee and the youngest teenager, for example) or simply gain the bragging rights, without the needed experience on other difficult peaks.

>91 RidgewayGirl: I won't be reading this! Sounds grim reading. Coincidental have just been listening to Michelle Paver talking about her new book on the radio, a ghost story set amongst 1930s climbers.

Arsewaffle? I've heard of -wipe but not -waffle. Like it!

>92 charl08: With subjects like climbing or arctic exploration I think that the real thing is so gripping that fiction tends to lose out.

The author was discussing how she'd researched the book whilst climbing. Apparently you can have all sorts of mental disturbances with altitude sickness - I had no idea. Another reason I won't be signing up for one of those big climbs anytime soon. I like walking the flat.

I have long been a sucker for modern chick-lit based on the novels of Jane Austen. If it's out there, I will read it. I have, however, never been interested in the novels using Austen's characters, set in the same time period. Except The Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Pamela Mingle is about Mary, the awkward, unpleasant, sanctimonious middle sister from Pride and Prejudice. Despite myself, I had to take a closer look. Here is the opening paragraph:

Sometimes anger is a living thing. It rose up in my chest and made me want to chew thorns. The would tear at the tender flesh on the roof of my mouth, at my cheeks and tongue. When I swallowed, the sweet, salty taste of blood would linger on my palate, along with pointy bits of thorn. I squeezed my eyes shut, contemplating the pain.

Is it any wonder that I brought that book home with me and continued to read?

No, the rest of the novel's writing does not live up to that opening paragraph, although it is written well enough. And the idea that Mary's affect was due to inner rage does not hold up either, but she's a pleasant enough character to spend a book with. In the end, this is a gentle romance novel that reminded my of Georgette Heyer and was a fine way to spend an evening. Mingle is a huge Austen fan and it shows. There are no glaring anachronisms and she remains faithful to the characters Austen created for the most part. I don't think I'll be giving any more books in this genre a try, but I don't regret my time with Mary and her kind, but not very forceful suitor.

>91 RidgewayGirl: I like your categorization of climbing-expedition books. After reading Into Thin Air, I too would find other books trying to imitate it, particular ones written by non-climbers, to be disappointing.

Thanks, Paulina. As a compulsive reader of accounts of expeditions gone terribly wrong, I see Krakauer's influence on what's been published since Into Thin Air.

The Argonauts is an extended personal essay by Maggie Nelson about her relationship with a gender fluid trans man, their marriage, the family they form and her experience with pregnancy and motherhood. Nelson examines what it's like to be transgressive and queer and yet be living a traditional life, thinking through aspects of her life with ample references to queer thinkers, arguing and agreeing with what they have said.

Structured without chapters, but organized into short segments of thought, The Argonauts reminded me of the novel Department of Speculation, in structure and subject. The structure worked well for me, as much of the issues she addressed were either well outside of my comfort zone or familiar subjects approached from an angle I'd never viewed them from before. This was not a work written for me, someone largely unfamiliar with what life is like for those who fall outside of what is considered the norm in sexual and gender orientation, and her habit of referring to the people she's responding to solely by their surnames often left me stranded. But much of what Nelson describes is familiar to me, as she discusses her pregnancy and people's reaction to her pregnancy, as well as her experience of being a mother.

This is a meaty book, with much packed into a few pages, but what I have taken away from The Argonauts is the impossibility of a single person being a representative of the queer community, as there is such a wide range of lived experience and ways of living their lives, and the sheer universality and uniqueness of each person's experience with motherhood. This is an thought-provoking book and while much of it was inaccessible to me without a lot of research on my part, I nonetheless learned a great deal.

Stepping away with a few book bullets from this thread and your previous one: Underground Railroad, Darktown and The Vegetarian.

Enjoy all of those, Lisa. I've ordered a copy of Darktown for myself (I had read a library copy) and because I want to loan it to my father and brother.

Honour: a Novel by Elif Şafak begins with a woman driving to pick up her brother on his release from prison. She's deeply ambivalent, and the novel then goes back in time; to Iskander's time in prison, to the months before he commits the crime, and farther back to the childhoods of their parents in Turkey, especially that of his mother, Pembe, who grows up in a small Kurdish village with her twin sister, who doesn't emigrate to England, but remains behind, unmarried and respected as being the closest thing that area has to a doctor.

Şafak varies the writing in the novel, with the Kurdish and Turkish portions reading like unfamiliar folktales and the parts set in London written in a more straightforward style. This is a novel about immigrants and their children, how they change in response to their new home and how they refuse to change, and how their children juggle two very different worlds.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking book. At times I was frustrated with the hypocrisy built into the patriarchal society the characters come from, but the writing was lovely and the issues and questions raised never took precedence over the characters.

Last night, the President's Won United States Marine Band played locally, and VictoriaPL and I went to meet Japaul22. It was so much fun to meet her and hear her doing her thing, too.

Sharing this because today is dedicated to the second rung of that ladder, which feels pretty much like the first rung. On the other hand, I dislike roaches, grime and untidiness and do not aspire to an eventual appearance on Hoarders. Note that the top rung reads Presidency.

>102 RidgewayGirl: It was SO much fun! The whole ensemble sounded fantastic, as you would expect.
A great night of sharing fantastic Americana with my Canadian friend, LOL.

Yay for meetups! I love music as much as I love books, so would have loved to live close enough to join you all.

Carrie, it was fun. And Victoria was singing along to most of it. I could have sat between you and absorbed musical aptitude.

How great that you guys got to meet up like that. Thanks for sharing the picture - love being able to put faces with names.

>106 RidgewayGirl: Oh no! You could hear me?!? I thought the crowd covered.

Stacy, it's so fun to meet up. Let me know if you're ever in SC!

Victoria, I liked it. Music is such an unknowable foreign language to me so it was a glimpse into another world.

Yay, meetup! :D Great photo of the three of you!

How nice you guys got to meet up. Great picture!

Looks like a lovely time was had by all! I am currently on that second step of the ladder as well. I love a clean house, just hating getting there!

rp and Betty, meet-ups are wonderful. Victoria and I were discussing afterwards how we'd met in real life after realizing after several discussions on LT, that we lived near each other. We met at a Nanowrimo meet-up and it felt creepy and strange, but not even ten years later it feels normal to meet someone you'd only interacted with on-line.

Judy, it's the difference between the adjective and the verb. Love the first, am resentful of the second.

I loved The Wonder far too much to be able to write an impartial and helpful review. Please take that under consideration.

Lib Wright trained under Florence Nightingale in the Crimea. Now, she's been hired for two weeks in rural Ireland with no details given. Arriving, she finds out that her patient will be a young girl, the daughter of a farmer. Her family and priest claim she has eaten nothing for four months and is yet healthy. Lib, along with another nurse, a nun, will be watching her to verify that she is indeed not eating. They are to function as guards and witnesses. Lib finds Anna, and the entire family, to be a strange and religious child. Neither Irish nor Catholic, Lib is confused about much of the behavior surrounding her.

This was just such a meaty, atmospheric story. Lib's a prickly, cold woman, but she won me over and there is just so much to think about in this book; the role of religion in Ireland's history, the power of the Catholic church in Ireland, what living through the famine did to people and the question of what to do when doing your job is hurting someone. Emma Donoghue researched the phenomenon she's describing here, and she certainly has a talent for evoking specific times and places.

Hi Kay, nice pic of you and Victoria above. You mentioned Hoarders see I watch it initially, to feel better about my housekeeping , then I become repulsed and do what I'm supposed to, cleaning wise!

Lisa, I don't think anyone enjoys cleaning, except for my MIL. She brings cleaning supplies to hotels and literally leaves the room cleaner than when she arrived!

The true crime genre has come a long way since I worked in bookstores and it consisted of a few rows of red and black books, spines inevitably cracked at the point where the crime scene photos were located. A co-worker dubbed it the "how-to section" and there was no denying that it was a creepy, creepy selection of books. While I'm sure that these kinds of books still exist, the genre has become more thoughtful, less sensational, and downright respectable. While the City Slept is written by Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer for his journalism on this specific murder, and focuses mostly on mental health services or, more exactly, the lack thereof.

On a hot July night in 2009, a man broke into the small house shared by a lesbian couple in the South Park district of Seattle. He raped both women and managed to kill one of them. It was a brutal and inexplicable crime. Sanders begins with the lives of the three people present on that night, showing how Jennifer Hopper and Theresa Butz ended up living in that house as they planned their commitment ceremony and lived their lives. He also looks at Isaiah Kalebu's life, beginning with his childhood living in a house where his parents battled, sometimes violently, and how the early signs that he needed help were lost among the family turmoil, poverty and the inability of the school system (in this case, a church-based school) to take action. As Isaiah's issues became more and more apparent, he still failed to receive help, the over-worked court system and over-burdened mental health systems being geared to keeping him on the street without sufficient support. (It should, of course, be noted that the vast, vast majority of people with mental health issues (Isaiah's never having been formally diagnosed, as he had only brief encounters with mental health professionals who gave conflicting diagnoses) never commit even a single act of violence.)

This is a sobering account of how little we do for the mentally ill in our communities and how that constant need to not spend taxpayers' money on basic services results in much higher costs as the police and prison systems become the help of last resort. While the City Slept is a work of solid journalism.

>117 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I'll watch out for While the city slept. Most people around me are tired of hearing me rant about this, but we used to take care of those with mental health issues. Now people are wondering why they have eruptions of tent cities in urban areas - to name just one of the sad outcomes.

It's well worth several rants, Vivienne. Sanders makes the case that it's more expensive to continue on ignoring people with mental illnesses. I think that the human cost is even higher though -- how many people are trapped in jail cells or in the grip of illness when they could be living productive, happy lives?

>119 RidgewayGirl:

Like many states, Arkansas has within their prison reform initiative the goal of improving the way mentally ill people are identified, treated and housed. The quote below is from a study that was done a year or so ago.

"The nation’s jails and prisons have replaced hospitals as the primary facility for
mentally ill individuals. There are more seriously mentally ill individuals in the
Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago’s Cook County Jail, or New York’s Riker’s
Island Jail than in any psychiatric hospital in the United States."

It was estimated that Arkansas would reduce the number of people in prison and jail by 20% if the mentally ill were not incarcerated. This is considered a very conservative number for the country as a whole.

>102 RidgewayGirl:
Adding my "Yey for meet-ups!" And what a great reason too!

clue, exactly.

Eva, it was a good evening.

>117 RidgewayGirl: Sounds grim but important reading. Hope someone with purse strings does something in response to it. I would like to say things are different here but they aren't - was recently watching media coverage including knee jerk reaction to young man who went off his meds and knifed someone - seemed to be exclusively focused on calls that he should have been locked up. Not that those with mh need more support.

Seems to me that 60 Minutes did an episode on this topic within the last year. Very depressing. Because RI is so small, the state hospital was always known about. Not only the mentally ill, but those individuals that had no one to take care of them and what was known as dementia in those days. If a family couldn't afford a nursing home, this is where the elderly could be sent. As a member of the National Guard, I can remember being called up to work there when the workers went on strike back in the 70s. It was only 3 days, but eye-opening. And like a lot of places, now it's closed down.

Charlotte and Betty, I wonder if any country or state manages to do a good job here. I suspect not, given that most severely mentally ill people don't have the resources or ability to fight for humane treatment.

I usually read books before any hype surrounding them builds to a ridiculous level or manage to ignore it. Both options are impossible when it came to Emma Cline's novel, The Girls. Not only is it the culmination of the trend of books about girls wearing coats on trains, but hype surrounded this book long before the publication date, bleeding into every review and mention.

It's the story of a teenage girl's encounter with a nomadic group centered around a charismatic leader. Set in the 1960s, a few members of the group murder the people who were staying in the home of a Hollywood actor, leaving behind cryptic signs in blood on the walls. Among the murdered are a beautiful actress and her young son. A fictionalized account of the Manson murders was always going to be an easy sell, especially when it tells the story from the viewpoint of a teenage adherent.

So is the hype justified in this case? On the publisher's side, of course. It's a crime novel centered on a young woman who is involved in the Manson cult-like group and who walks away (this is evident from the opening chapter of the book). How could this book fail to reach the bestseller lists? It's a thinly veiled retelling of an infamous case that we're still fascinated by and given the respectable veneer of literary fiction.

And the book itself isn't bad. It's overwritten; the poetic descriptions and flowery language often intrudes into the story itself, but it's not badly written. The story itself is fine, too. And there's where the hype hurts the reader's reaction to the novel itself. A book so lauded and celebrated should just be better. Instead, it's typical. There's the framing device of the narrator's older self living her current life and looking back on the events of that summer. There's the coming of age story of a teenager feeling out of sorts with her friends and discovering that her parents are flawed. There's a relationship with a cooler, older woman, who influences her. There's nothing new here, outside of it being about a murderous cult. But it was a diverting read, and I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

An Aside: I'm irked at the tendency to call women over the age of twelve "young girls." Why do we do this? We'd never call a man in his twenties, or even a teenager, a young boy. It's infantilizing and inaccurate. Let's not do this. Let's allow books to feature women, and refer to them as such right in the title.

Kay, you might enjoy this analysis of books with the word "girl" in the title: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gone-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-on-the-...

I've had The Girls on my wishlist for a long time. The problem is that the more hyped something is, the less likely I am to enjoy it or even want to experience it. (I have yet to see Titanic.) I have dropped many books off my TBR simply because I've seen them mentioned far too often. I find that the hype makes it impossible to evaluate the book or movie on its own merits because expectations have been preset.

>127 sturlington: Oh, but Shannon, it's a good candidate for the Tournament of Books! And also a fictionalized account of the Manson clan from the inside. There was no way I wasn't going to read this one. I'm as susceptible as the next mark person.

>128 RidgewayGirl: ha ha, I will probably read it--definitely, if it's on the TOB. The subject is very intriguing.

>126 RidgewayGirl: Kudos to you for reading it, and sorry it didn't live up to the hype. I hadn't heard of this one before.
I think the title of The Girls came from either the Manson group or the trial. I seem to recall the Manson women being lumped together as "the girls".

Definitely taking a bb for While the City Slept--it sounds like there's a lot more to it than I realized when I came across the title somewhere before! Thanks for the review :)

Shannon, just give in now. With lowered expectations, you may love it.

Jennifer, because of course they were called girls.

whitewavedarling, I was surprised at the substance and depth of Sanders's reporting. He won that Pulitzer for a reason.

>127 sturlington: Hurrah! I finally found someone else who never saw Titanic...

>126 RidgewayGirl: Great review. I think I'll skip it.
The trope in crime that drives me nuts just now is kidnapped women by strangers, or someone from their far distant past. I know crime novels are fiction, but still.

>125 RidgewayGirl: There are some great mh charities here that enable mh service users to speak up and advocate on behalf of themselves and others. Their work is made harder by cuts in support that helped keep people well, justified as austerity measures. Which I guess was your point too...

Great review of The Girls. It's too bad it didn't live up to the hype.

I'm a little less annoyed by the use of girls in describing women, but your point is well made.

>133 charl08: I'll join you in general annoyance at the entire woman-in-peril-from-random-dude trope.

And it's funny how they always manage to be able to trim a little more from services that go to those who are least able to hire lobbyists and organize.

>134 andreablythe: While I was disappointed with The Girls, I was also unsurprised. Often the books that are hyped end up being hyped for reasons unrelated to the quality of the work being touted.

I truly enjoyed the first section of Jonathan Lethem's newest novel, A Gambler's Anatomy, was interested enough in the second section, only to realize in the final section that I'd been reading another WMFuN.* I'm too far in to abandon it, and Lethem's writing is fine enough to keep me reading, but I am disgruntled.

*White Male Fuck-up Novel I've put this between spoiler tags as it contains a swear.

>135 RidgewayGirl: - Good to know about this one. It was of the Book of the Month options which I ended up passing on even though it sounded interesting. Hope my other pick turns out better.

In The Expatriates, Janice Y. K. Lee's new novel, three women as the negotiate life as American expatriates in Hong Kong. Margaret arrives with her husband and three children ready to enjoy the privileged life of an expat and to explore Asia with her family. Hilary is another expat wife, although she and her husband are childless. She toys with the idea of adoption, but life in Hong Kong is leaving her unmoored and drifting apart from her husband, who is working long hours. And Mercy is a young Korean American woman, who found that building a life in New York after graduating from Columbia was more difficult than expected. She moves to Hong Kong as a way of jump-starting her life, but finds herself just as stuck.

Some of what Lee writes about being an expat is true for expats everywhere, while much of what goes on is specific to Hong Kong, which she renders vividly. There are echoes of novels about British colonial life of a hundred years ago; in many aspects, that lifestyle has not changed substantially, with a small number of people, constantly encountering each other, despite living in a city of millions. Lee writes her characters well with enormous understanding and while the story ending is a bit contrived, the rest is very readable and well-paced.

I saw on the other thread that you've just finished the "wonderful, wonderful" Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. Now why would I think that means BOOK BULLET!! before I've even seen your review?

I just placed a hold at the library for Commonwealth by Ann Patchett. So glad to hear it's worthy of a bookbullet.

I'm far down the line, so it will be a while before my name surfaces.

Betty, it's fantastic. I'll try and get a review up tomorrow.

Vivienne, I was in that library hold line for months. Worth it, although I'm kicking myself for not just buying a copy at Costco when there were stacks of them available.

In Ivy, the new dog news, she has had her final treatment for heartworms and so it's now just a matter of waiting and keeping her calm while the worms leave her system. She's doing well, although she managed to gain ten pounds over that month she spent on steroids. We though she was looking a little rounder, but that's a lot for a dog! So now I don't take her word for it that Max forgot to feed her breakfast, and treats are in short supply. Poor thing.

All the stories go with you, Franny thought, closing her eyes. All the things I didn't listen to, won't remember, never got right, wasn't around for. All the ways to get to Torrance.

Commonwealth by Anne Patchett is a novel about two ordinary families, tied together by divorce and remarriage, who are messed up in ordinary ways. What makes this book so extraordinary is Patchett's writing, which is so perfect as to fade into invisibleness, never getting in the way of this story, and her compassion and interest in every member of these two families.

Each chapter reads like a short story, complete unto itself, and joined together, the chapters tell the story over several decades, beginning with the christening party where Bert Cousins first meets Beverly Keating, a meeting that will eventually result in six children spending summers together largely unsupervised, not naturally drawn together, but connected by proximity and shared experience in a way that will bond them through their adult lives.

I'm not drawn to family sagas and I'm glad I had no idea what the book was about before beginning, or I would have put off reading it. All I knew, opening the book to the first chapter, was that people were losing their minds over this book. This book is wonderful; that's all you need to know about it before you start. Enjoy.

I DO like family sagas and sure enough - BB! What did I tell you? Going to go add it to my list for next year's reading.

>141 RidgewayGirl: - Sigh. Feels like I've been waiting forever at the library for this one and am still only at number 43. Maybe I'll have it in time for TOB, assuming it makes the short list.

Betty, I think you'll love it.

Stacy, it's worth the wait. I put a hold on it in August and only got my hands on a copy this week.

So this is the time of year when I look at my categories and start actively looking for books to fit in the categories that aren't filled.

I moved from Germany back to the US this summer, and have been a little nuts at the local library. And rabbitprincess told me about how you can find the list of all the books that the library has ordered, but which haven't arrived. You can see where this is going, can't you? All those books I gleefully reserved are coming at me at a rapid pace and they usually don't fit into any of those unfinished categories.

Basically, the only solution I can find is to give up my responsibilities and just stay home and read.

>145 RidgewayGirl: That always happens! And the more attention-demanding ones always seem to come in clusters. I've had to return some unread and re-request them.

"give up my responsibilities and just stay home and read"

Wouldn't that be nice, were it an actual possibility... :)

>145 RidgewayGirl: I think you've found the perfect solution. Let us know how the implementation goes!

rp, I've got one that I'll return unread. In my defense, I wasn't in the mood for non-fiction last week.

Eva, someday this will be a valid excuse. Someday.

clue, even my own family didn't take that suggestion seriously.

Back in the day, I read Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem's brilliant and emotionally resonant noir about a private eye with Tourette's Syndrome. I always meant to read more by this talented writer, but never got around to it. So when A Gambler's Anatomy began to be reviewed and I found myself with a copy of it in my hands, I was excited to see what Lethem would do with the story of a high-stakes backgammon player, down on his luck.

The book begins brilliantly, with Bruno going to Wannsee, just outside of Berlin, to play backgammon against a man he has been assured will be easy prey. Bruno needs the money; after the disaster in Singapore he's utterly without resources. And those opening chapters are excellent, with the small exception of the stereo-typical younger and attractive woman who is drawn to the desperate and thread-bare Bruno. Bruno's descent coincides with a blot in the center of his vision, one which requires him to look at things through the corners of his eyes and may be related to the headaches and other health issues. The evening in Wannsee does not go well.

From this promising beginning, A Gambler's Anatomy turns out to be just another WMFuN*, where the world and especially the women in it, exist to spotlight what's happening to the self-absorbed main character. Add a long stretch of men being more interested in their own thought-processes than anything around them and the utter relegation of women to helpers and sex and the book ended up being quite a bit less than I had hoped. It's stylistically interesting, in the way a novel by a prominent white guy who has read everything David Foster Wallace ever wrote usually is, but at the expense of any heart whatsoever. Also, Mr. Lethem, it's 2016. Women are no longer merely props. If you can't write them as people, leave them out.

*The all-too-common White Male Fuck-up Novel. There are already too many of these.

Well, that's still a great review, even if it makes me want to steer clear of that one. Hopefully Mr. Lethem takes your advice.

>150 RidgewayGirl: Pass on that one then. Picked up a Motherless Brooklyn tip for the wishlist though.

Ha, Jennifer, I'm sure Lethem is agog to find out what I think of his newest book!

Charlotte, Motherless Brooklyn is very, very good.

And this year's SantaThing is up! This year, reunited with all of my books, I briefly wondered if I really need to participate this year after all, but luckily sanity reasserted itself and told me not to be silly.

A prominent aging writer lives upstairs and the man downstairs writes him oddly intimate letters, detailing how closely he follows the author's life. Because this is Herman Koch, you can trust that Dear Mr. M begins dark and only becomes more sinister as the novel proceeds. The stalker, Herman, has a connection to Mr. M, along with no small amount of resentment. For his part, Mr. M is not a sympathetic character. And while Koch keeps the reader guessing as to the final outcome of the men's encounters, there's no doubt that it will be satisfactorily horrific.

The narration of Dear Mr. M passes between Herman, Mr. M and Herman's high school girlfriend, Laura, whose growing fascination with the odd and manipulative Herman will culminate with the disappearance of one of the teachers at their school. How they were involved, however, remains uncertain until the very end of this superbly plotted novel. If you need sympathetic characters, this isn't the book for you, but I found it gripping and impossible to put down.

That sounds really good, so it's going on the WL. Great review! How many authors would name the weirdo stalker after themselves?

Jennifer, you'd expect him to name the prominent Dutch author after himself, but Koch never goes in expected directions.

>155 RidgewayGirl: Sounds very creepy.
I'm really enjoying Dark Town. Brilliantly written as well as suspenseful.

So glad you're enjoying it, Charlotte. Thomas Mullen is one of those authors who should be more well-known than he is.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a novel about Ifemelu, who grew up in Lagos, Nigeria in a middle class family, then managed to get a student visa to go to college in the US. Ifemelu struggles with adjusting to a new and foreign culture, earning enough money to survive, and with the paradoxes of being African in the United States without being African American. She eventually becomes both successful and a citizen, but ultimately decides to return to Nigeria (no spoilers; this is all laid out in the opening pages of the novel.)

for the most part, Ifemelu's journey kept me fascinated. Under the guise of being part of a blog Ifemelu writes, there are frequent asides to comment on race relations and cultural assumptions from the point of view of a non-American. These do distract from the narrative flow, but are interesting in and of themselves. It's a view that most of us never see, and it's more valuable coming from someone who is treated as black as soon as she arrived in the US. The book does lose steam after Ifemelu has achieved security; a long segment where the characters stand still and discuss the 2008 elections, which seems so dated now, only eight years later, but manages to regain momentum as Ifemelu returns to Nigeria and finds adjusting to her old home more challenging than she'd anticipated.

Overall, this was a thought-provoking and fascinating book about many currently pertinent issues, as well as being a character-driven novel in which a lot of stuff happens. While there were flaws, it certainly deserves the awards and attention it has received and I will be reading more by this author.

>141 RidgewayGirl: Nice review. I really like Ann Patchett's writing but haven't read this one yet. It will have to go on the wishlist, though I still have Run waiting for me on my shelves.

>160 RidgewayGirl: This is another that I'd like to read. I loved Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie's novel set during the Biafran War.

I'll definitely be reading more by Patchett and Adichie! I have Purple Hibiscus on my tbr and I picked up a copy of Bel Canto last week.

>160 RidgewayGirl: Having read Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, I am looking forward to reading Americanah at some point. Good review.

Thanks, Judy.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is an unusual police procedural set in Tokyo, Japan. The reader knows who the murderer is from the beginning, and the suspense comes from finding out whether the cover-up will be successful. There's a cat and mouse game being played, but not between the detective and the murderer, but between a physicist working in a university lab who sometimes consults for the lead detective and the next-door neighbor of the murderer who engage in the battle of wits.

Ishigami, a high school math teacher, loves his neighbor, Yasuko. Yasuko is a divorced mother who works in a small shop selling bento boxes. He buys his lunch from her every day, but lacks the courage to speak to her. On day, her estranged ex-husband appears and after he follows her home and forces his way into her apartment, there's an altercation and he is killed. Hearing the commotion, Ishigami appears and takes charge.

The Devotion of Suspect X was an interesting deviation from the usual police procedural. Coupled with the Japanese setting, this proved to be a fun evening's read.

>165 RidgewayGirl: I really enjoyed the audio version a couple of years ago. It had some twists I didn't expect!

>160 RidgewayGirl: I thought the ending was wish fulfilment on the author's part. Liked the book as a whole though.

Carrie, my copy is an ARC that came with a cd. I enjoyed all the twists although sone of them were unlikely.

Charlotte, I agree about the ending.

Thank you for the book bullet on Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present! It is compulsively readable. I'm only putting it down now because I don't want to get nightmares about skeletons and poisons.

rp, I loved that book! I would wear the green dress even knowing what's in it. I think its appeal is a little limited -- people who enjoy reading about grotesque skin diseases and reading about fashion probably aren't a huge segment of the population, especially given the vividness of the illustration of both!

I just got back from going to see Allied with VictoriaPL. It was a visually beautiful film, and Marian Cotillard was fantastic in it. Worth seeing on the big screen if you can, if only for the scenes set in French Morocco. There's a baby in the movie who is acting her tiny socks off. And Brad Pitt is a little too old for the role he plays. This is sad, because it means I'm old, too. I remember seeing him in Thelma and Louise, when we were both quite a bit younger.

>170 RidgewayGirl: Ew, yes, the wax figure showing the effects of mercury on the face and mouth was particularly gruesome. I had to hold the book nearly shut and squint at the text on the facing page to read it.

I loved the child's dress with the purple and white embroidery! And the magenta/purple evening gowns were eye-popping in colour. No wonder they sold like hotcakes.

>172 rabbitprincess: Especially when the previous colors available were plant-based and so were muted and faded quickly.

Americanah is on my list. One of those I keep meaning to get around to books.

It's a worthwhile read, Andrea, and very readable. I kept running into it on those lists of books everyone should have read.

Zadie Smith's new novel, Swing Time, is about two girls who meet in a dance class. They're the only two brown girls in the class, but they become friends because of their shared love of dance and those old movies starring Fred Astaire. Tracey has talent, and eventually their paths diverge, as our narrator gives up dance and moves on to university, then a job at a television studio and then as an assistant to a famous singer (a little too obviously modeled on Madonna). But their paths will eventually cross again.

Swing Time feels like two novels mashed together. The parts set during the narrator's childhood are fantastic. They feel true and they make for fascinating reading as both girls grow up. They are both interracial girls living in housing estates who share a common interest, but there the similarities stop. The narrator's mother is driven to better herself, to get a degree and to change the world and her father is loving and present. Tracey is being raised by a single mother who is harshly judged by the neighbors for first being lazy and then, after she finds a job, for leaving her daughter alone too much. But Tracey's house is freer and her mother more present in her life than the narrator's.

The other part of the book concerns a famous rock star who is interested in Africa and who sends the narrator there to keep an eye on the school she founds. The narrator's experiences in the unnamed African country don't quite reach the level of Westerner-touched-by-the-simple-lives-of-the-natives, but it's not comfortable reading. And the parts involving the Madonna-like Aimee were interesting, but fell short of the other part of the book.

Still, this is an interesting book by a gifted writer and worth the time spent with it.

>176 RidgewayGirl: I just ordered that one for the library yesterday. It was one of a couple of African-American novels that sounded promising.

>177 thornton37814: Lori, it's a solid novel from a talented author who is worth reading. Good choice.

I have got to catch up on reviews! I was without a laptop until today as mine was in for repairs. It's all better now, allegedly, so I should be able to catch up this week. I'll also finish my challenge in the next week or so - just a few books to fill all my categories and then I can set up next year's challenge.

Alexis M. Smith's debut novel, Glaciers, was quirky and off-beat and it charmed me (and I am not easily charmed). Her new novel, Marrow Island, is more structured and focused, but still had that odd charm I remembered from her first book.

Lucie was a child living on a small island off the coast of Portland, Oregon when the 1993 earthquake destroyed the oil refinery on the nearby Marrow island, killing her father. She survived the months after because of her close friend, Katie, but when Lucie and her mother move away, their paths diverge; Lucie working as a journalist and Katie joining a small, environmentally conscious commune that is working to restore Marrow Island's ecosystem. When Lucie loses her job and is given the title to her parents' house on the island, a letter from Katie brings her to Marrow Island, with the hope of writing an article about the commune, but events and Lucie's presence destabilize the commune and lay bare the flaws within.

Marrow Island is a lot of fun to read. It's full of a sense of place, whether it's the San Juan Islands or the Malheur refuge, the other setting of this slender novel. The structure and plot remind me of the old school suspense novels I devoured in high school, although Lucie prefers to rescue herself. The environmental theme is thoughtfully done, and never comes across in a heavy-handed way; it's clear that Smith is not using the novel to send a message, but allows the environmental theme to serve the plot. I just really enjoyed this book.

Catching up on reviews.



Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is an excellent and varied collection of short stories by ZZ Packer. From a troop of Girl Scouts plotting revenge on the other troop at camp, to a lonely nurse whose church provides less support than one of her patients, the stories never feel repetitive (I ended up reading several in a row) or lack heart.



Alison Gaylin's thriller, Trashed, is set in the tawdry world of tabloid reportage. Desperate for a job in her field, Simone takes a job for one of the least respected celebrity-focused tabloids and in the process of learning how to steal trash and sneak into private parties she finds evidence that the suicide of a has-been starlet might have been murder.

This isn't literary fiction by any stretch, Gaylin isn't pushing any boundaries or subverting the genre, but the writing is solid, the plot does not insult the reader's intelligence and the novel was fun to read.



I'm conflicted about Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn. On the one hand, it's a vivid and unrestrained portrayal of life on the margins in Jamaica, with attention paid to the roles class, color, sexuality and gender play in a Jamaican's life chances. On the other, it's both unrelentingly grim and not very well written. The dialog is written in dialect, and not well done at all, turning every conversation in this novel into an endurance test.

Margot works as lower level management at a posh, but down at the heels resort in Jamaica. She earns most of her money servicing guests, being discrete to preserve her hopes of a promotion. She's working to put her clever younger sister, Thandi, through school. Thandi does well at school but dreams of being less black, thinking that will help her fit in with her more affluent classmates. She also doesn't want the future her sister is planning for, but obligation runs deep. And their mother, Delores, works long hours selling trinkets to the tourists, barely hanging on and unable to support or help her daughters.



If you've read Jacqueline Woodson's poetic memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, you'll know that she can write beautifully, with a talent for creating vividly evocative vignettes. Her novel, Another Brooklyn, is similar in tone and feel to her memoir, but follows instead a girl named August, who moves to Brooklyn in 1973 with her father and younger brother. There she meets three other girls and together they form a fearless and inseparable band, ready to take on everything they can't handle alone.

Catching up on your thread and had to comment on Commonwealth. I just finished it and really enjoyed it too. It was definitely not what I was expecting and thought she told the story very well. For once you and I agree on one of the potential ToB reads!

>181 LittleTaiko: Yay! But I'm sure we'll disagree on a few others!

>180 RidgewayGirl: Packer's book was on my radar once. I think I dropped it from the list when the lease book was returned to the book company.

It was excellent, Lori. If you run across another copy and are in the mood for short stories, you should give it a go.

Nice shot you got me with a BB with Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. I went to the library site and promptly borrowed it. I must be in the mood for short stories, I'll start on it after I finish the sad but good Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl.

>184 RidgewayGirl: It appears to be available on audiobook through Tennessee Reads, but I don't think that format is what I want for short stories. It does appear to be available in the story collection at the public library. I'll just have to get there to check it out. It's so much easier to check out e-books.

Ha, Lori, so much easier! There's something so decadent about sitting in bed, in pajamas, at midnight and checking a book out of the library.

Taking the morning to play catch-up on all the threads in the group. Sorry to see that the move out of Germany was fraught with such an annoying and irresponsible landlord (yes, that is how far behind I am with the threads)! Glad to see the moving container arrived stateside earlier than expected - which is always a bonus.

So happy to see you loved Lonesome Dove! What an epic story!

Ivy looks like a wonderful dog! What a sweet face she has!

>102 RidgewayGirl: - Love the meet up picture!

Made notes about a number of the books you have read and reviewed, and paid particular attention to your review of Darktown. I love Mullen's writing style He really knows how to capture the historical time period he sets his stories in. Not sure when I will find the time to track down and read some of the books I made note of but I do love having lists of good books at the ready. ;-)

I've got The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers out from the library. Enjoying it so far, although very different from Darktown, of course!

Lovely to see you here, Lori. Ivy is a wonderful dog. I can hear her snoring in her bed now. And who wouldn't love Lonesome Dove? What an awesome book that is!

I hope you like it, Charlotte. It was a book that hit me exactly in the right way when I read it the first time. I'm due for a reread.

I took my daughter to the DMV today to get her learner's permit. I'm old enough to have a daughter who is legally allowed to drive a car.

>190 RidgewayGirl: How does that happen so quickly? Your daughter must be the same age as my cousin's son. He turned 15 on Saturday and got his learner's permit on Saturday.

Carrie, Charlotte turned sixteen in October. Our time in Germany delayed her desire for a license since you can't get one there until you're eighteen and public transportation means they aren't necessary. The inconvenience of dropping her at friends' homes is making me feel quite a bit more positive about this. And that since my mother has stopped driving, we're getting a reliable, but not in any way fashionable car for her to use.

>190 RidgewayGirl:, >191 cbl_tn:, >192 RidgewayGirl:

Nice! Once she's driving, it's such a treat for the parents (I quickly got over the "I'm not letting her touch my car!"). Here in BC we have graduated licensing system, which they didn't have when I was a teen (although they had it in Australia back then). It's a very good thing. We also have insurance discounts for every year of "safe driving," topping out at 10, but it starts from when they get their learner's permit, so the sooner they start the better (insurance here for new drivers is very high).

When my older daughter got her licence, all of a sudden she was able to drive her younger sister to soccer, birthday parties, school, etc. She wanted to drive, whereas it was just another chore for me. She could pick us up at the skytrain (our house is a kilometre uphill from the station), and suddenly we had a designated driver (our drinking driving laws are very strict).

Both times I took my daughters to take their learner's permits, it was a big GULP for me, but really, it's a very good thing. Also, so many young people aren't even learning to drive these days that it's an actual skill that they have under their belts. My older daughter even had to learn to drive standard, so she is unique in her friend group.

>193 Nickelini: Yes, the not having to drive her everywhere will be nice. She's looking into driving courses now.

Brit Bennett's The Mothers is a difficult one for me to review because there's a lot to discuss, but all of that would lead to spoilers that would reduce the next reader's enjoyment of this excellent debut novel. It's well-written, in an assured and subtle way that most authors don't achieve until the height of their writing careers and there's an issue at the heart of the novel that is rarely discussed with such nuance, since it's one that tends to polarize. People on both sides of the issue will feel uncomfortable with this book, and not because Bennett handles the issue in an uninformed way.

The Mothers are a group of long retired women, who gather together at church to work their way through prayer requests. They're nosy and gossipy, but they also care deeply for the congregants of The Upper Room church. They provide a Greek chorus to the story of Nadia, a young woman whose mother has died suddenly and who is negotiating her way through her last summer in Oceanside, California, before she leaves her almost-boyfriend, the pastor's son, and her best friend, who has also lost her mother (but for very different reasons) to go to university. What she does and doesn't tell her best friend will impact their lives for years after that summer.

The Mothers has been receiving a lot of attention and is on the long list for the Tournament of Books. It deserves the accolades it has received; they are not over-blown.

One more book to complete my challenge. Anything off of my tbr will do. Feeling in the mood for a crime novel, of which I have several to chose from.

And then I can put together my 2017 Challenge thread.

>195 RidgewayGirl: - I'm glad to read your review. A few LT friends have read it recently and were underwhelmed, but I have really been wanting to read it. Hopefully, my reaction will be similar to yours!

>195 RidgewayGirl: I'm on the fence with this one - good to read your review. I'll see how easy it is to get hold of at the library in the New Year.

>195 RidgewayGirl: -Well there goes another BB. I do want to read some from the TOB this year and your recommendations will help me pick and choose. Off to look at the holds at the library.

>195 RidgewayGirl: I rated The Mothers a little lower than you did, but that could have been my mood at the time. I'm looking through my 2016 reads trying to come up with my top 5 or maybe 10, and my ratings don't always reflect what I think about the book now.

Katie, it's a solid novel, but it is getting an awful lot of hype, which is hard for a debut novel to survive.

You, too, Jennifer.



Happy holidays everyone!

Betty, the Tournament of Books longlist is why I have a huge stack of library books sitting here. I hope to get to a few of them before they're due!

Lisa, I rated it highly mostly because the writing was better than most debut novels and the central issue of The Mothers was handled in a way that seems certain to leave everyone with an opinion on the matter disgruntled.

You've got me curious about The Mothers. I'll see if I can get it from the library.

And Merry Christmas to your whole household - humans and pets!

Thanks, Carrie. So we decorated gingerbread cookies last night. This is what happens when you have a 13 year old.

Here's another crime novel being promoted as the next The Girl on a Train, which it really, really isn't. I mean, they didn't even bother to call it The Missing Girl, Presumed or Missing, A Girl, Presumably on a Train. Instead, it's the debut in a new series of police procedurals following a DS named Manon Bradshaw who is not very good at social interaction, mainly because she's cranky and has terrible taste in men; she'll try anyone. But she is good at her job, as are the other two officers working with her to solve a high-profile missing persons case as the press dogs their every step. Edith is the woman who is Missing, Presumed. She's got a complex personal life and prominent parents, making her disappearance a dream for the press.

Susie Steiner's writing is much better than is usually the case in the debut of a new series (this is her second book) and she writes each of her characters as fully-rounded people, treated with empathy whether they are a distraught mother, an officer trying to do her job or a criminal. With her compassionate treatment of even those on the margins of society, the main character's messy personal life and the excellent pacing, I was reminded of the police procedurals of both Sophie Hannah and Denise Mina. I eagerly await the next installment.

>204 RidgewayGirl: Haha! :)

>204 RidgewayGirl: That cookie is cracking me up! And you already know you got me with Missing, Presumed.

Happy holidays to you and your family !

He's proud of his gingerbread crime victim.

Happy holidays to all. May they be relaxing and full of love. And also books.

I love that cookie!

>204 RidgewayGirl: How funny! Has he been reading Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes books, by any chance?

Merry Christmas to you Kay:

Carrie, no. He plays too many video games.

Happy Christmas to you, too, Betty!

So my Santathing haul was lovely and included a book I'd never heard of.



And then my husband finally looked at my amazon wishlist, and then chose accordingly, with a third book that the bookseller recommended. He also picked me up a copy of The Little Paris Bookshop, which wins my award as the worst book I read in 2016, but it can't all be bloody projects and unnecessary women.

Hurray for your husband looking at the wishlist! Enjoy all your lovely presents. :)

>213 rabbitprincess: I know! I was so pleased. I also received a few scented candles, including one in "library" scent.

And I've started a thread over on the 2017 Category Challenge forum. I'll be here until the end of the year, but that's coming up.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/244289

Someone recommended An Unnecessary Woman to me over the holiday so it's on my wishlist now.

>204 RidgewayGirl: Absolutely LOVE Max's gingerbread man. Oh! And I was just at the library's site and didn't search on "On Order". Going back now....

Betty, it had been on my own personal list of books to look for (which is, admittedly, ridiculously long) so it was fun to see my Santa was thinking like I do.

I'll see you in a few days, Victoria. Knowing that they've already pre-ordered the new Denise Mina did stop me from doing the same thing, so it is a money-saving activity. And there's a limit on holds of ten books, which I discovered the first time I scrolled through the "on order" books.

>205 RidgewayGirl: Sounds like a good series debut, even if the promotion is all wrong.

Lori, I think so. And unlike many debut novels, it was good on its own. I just finished another debut in a crime series and while I'll keep an eye on the reviews for it, the first book was just okay - the kind of book that isn't actively bad, but neither is it memorable in any way.

>202 RidgewayGirl:
Love the Krampus card!

>204 RidgewayGirl:
Haha! Creepiest gingerbread man ever. lol.

>212 RidgewayGirl:
Nice haul!

Andrea, I love that your favorite parts of my thread are the threatening devil-creature and the murder victim.

So time to take a look at this year's reading. I'm going to purposefully put off finishing any books until the new year, since this one had a lower total than normal, but I did finish my challenge, if only at the last possible moment.

Books Read: 103
Percentage by Gender: 36.5 male, 63.5 female (goal was 60% women authors)
Diverse Books: 14 (I counted only books by authors living in English-speaking countries, so 18%)
Countries Read: 20 (48% American, 16% British, 6% Canadian)
Books by the Year: 31% were published in 2016, 22% in 2015. Oldest was published in 1951.

Overall Assessment: Reading books by women is getting easier (this is the third year that I've paid attention to this) and it was a fair start at reading more diversely. My love of reading awards shortlists keeps my percentage of Americans and British authors high.

Best Books:



Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present by Alison Matthews David
The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth McKenzie
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Darktown by Thomas Mullen
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith

Worst Books:



The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George won handily.
A Game for All the Family by Sophie Hannah
The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild

Please note that my best books list reflects the books I loved the most this year. Several books I read this year had greater literary merit. The bad books were simply bad.

One more review and then all my attention will be on my 2017 thread. Happy holidays everyone.

Hi Kay: I really really want to read Darktown, I was trying to wait it out and see if the library would buy it. Maybe I I'll part with some of my Christmas funds and get it, I'm impatient that way.

>222 RidgewayGirl: Your best of list just added at least 3 books to my TBR, so thanks. And happy new year! See you on the other side.

Lisa, the paperback is due out in June.

Shannon, not the last three I've listed, I hope.

To Catch a Rabbit is another debut in a planned series of police procedurals. Helen Cadbury's novel follows community services officer Sean Denton. He's not a real cop, but he wears his uniform and does things like untangle swings and provide a presence on the streets and housing estates of Doncaster, England. Then two of the boys on the estate take him out to a field and show him the body they found, which leads to his involvement in a series of murders, human trafficking and police corruption.

This isn't a bad book, nor is it a good one. As far as first-in-a-series goes, it's about average. Which is to say that Cadbury might end up with a solid series in time, or maybe not. The promise is there, but this book was hampered by the tendency to leave all of the bad guys and the secondary characters as cardboard cut-outs. This could change as her writing skills improve, in which case, this may turn into a series well worth following. I'm going to wait and see. If the series reaches four or five books, I'll give the newest a try.

Yay, Fashion Victims was one of my picks for this year too!

I am currently reading The Red Road, and because it is Denise Mina, I thought of you. :)

>227 rabbitprincess: I'm glad you liked Fashion Victims as much as I did. I loaned it to a friend months ago and am itching to ask for it back.

Happy New Year to you! I've been making the end-of-year rounds on long-neglected threads and caught a few BBs on this one, including The Fireman and Darktown.

>231 paruline: The Fireman is a lot of fun, but Darktown is really good, and deserves more attention than it's getting.

>222 RidgewayGirl: Congratulations on finishing your challenge! I thought it was interesting that a large percentage of your books were from 2015 and 2016. That's the same for me. I'm always struggling to balance my desire to read books from recent awards lists and my need to clear those languishing on my shelves.