Charl08 reads the year through #12

Have you read any of the Booker shortlist?



Burnt Sugar
The Shadow King

Or the international prize shortlist?

https://thebookerprizes.com/fiction/2020

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Farsi-Iran), translated by Anonymous, published by Europa Editions.

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Spanish-Argentina), translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh, published by Charco Press.

Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann (Germany-German), translated by Ross Benjamin, published by Quercus.

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (Spanish-Mexico), translated by Sophie Hughes, Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese-Japan), translated by Stephen Snyder, published by Harvill Secker

The winner: The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Dutch-Netherlands), translated by Michele Hutchison, published by Faber & Faber

November 6 (Total 261*)
Symphony for the City of the Dead
Last Night in Nuuk
The Pear Field
His Grumpy Childhood Friend
Death Going Down
The Tourist Attraction

October 26
The Clerkenwell Affair
Burnt Sugar
V for Victory
That Old Country Music
Superman Smashes the Klan
Murder Most Unladylike
Between Friends
Kiss my Cupcake
Death in Captivity
Ramifications

Heresy
Strange Weather in Tokyo
Airhead
Three Poems
The Last Voice You Hear
Ghosts
Square Haunting
The Boyfriend Effect
The Friend
Minor Detail

Her Halloween
Sheets
A Month in Siena
The Duke Effect
Crazy Stupid Bromance
All the Ways to Ruin a Rogue

September 22

How We Disappeared
Hamnet
Wilde Lake
Loathe at First Sight
A Thousand Ships
The Times I Knew I was Gay
The Viper
The Gypsy Goddess
Three Apples Fell from the Sky
The Roommate

The Fragility of Bodies
Trouble is What I Do
Five Photos of My Wife
The Wedding Date Disaster
The Tenant
Well Played
Transfer Window
The Death of Murat Idrissi
Down Cemetery Road
The Midnight Library

Grass
Icing

January 25 (January 2019: 23)

February 22

March 30

April 30

May 28

June 25

July 25

August 27

September 22

*These totals don't add up. I'm going to have to go back and fix this.


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

(Thanks to Paul S for this map link).

Books read in translation



(Pictures from places I want to visit - or revisit - via Unsplash)

Sworn Virgin Albania

The Plague Algeria

The German Room Argentina
Fate
The Fragility of Bodies
Death Going Down

The Book of Rio Brazil

Singer in the Night Croatia
Wild Woman

Fish Soup Colombia

Transfer Window Denmark

Holy Ceremony Finland

Maggy Garrisson France
Crush
Summer of Reckoning
Five photos of my wife

The Pear Tree Georgia

The German House Germany
Inkheart
Irmina
The Seventh Cross
Grove

Last Night in Nuuk Greenland

Detective story Hungary

The Mist Iceland

The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die (India - Bengali)

Between Friends (Israel)

Basquiat Italy
Snow Dog Foot
The Hotel of the Three Roses

The Memory Police Japan
Where the Wild Ladies Are
The Lady Killer

Signs Preceding the end of the World Mexico

The Death of Murat Idrissi Netherlands

Restless Norway

Palestine +100

Rock, Paper, Scissors and other stories Russia
The Slynx

The Trap (author born in a town that moved states between and during the wars, translated from Romanian, but the author resettled to Israel)

The End. And again Slovenia

Nada Spain
Lord of all the Dead

Diary of a Murderer South Korea
Grass

The Truth about Sascha Knisch Sweden
For the Dead
Inlands
1947

The Judge and his Hangman Switzerland

Arid Dreams Thailand

Books to read from the shelves...



From top left:
The Ungrateful Refugee (from a reading by the author)
Close to the Knives (from the shop linked to the Keith Haring exhibit- but my brother has now nicked this)
Rock Paper Scissors Reading in translation
The Slynx Reading in translation
My Antonia (I've still not read it. I feel left out)
Nada (Fiction in translation)
An Imperfect Blessing SA fiction
Our Endless Numbered Days One I've had on the wishlist for a while
Age of Iron SA fiction
Bird By Bird
John Clare: faber A gorgeous new edition of the poet - now reading
Lifting the Veil
Words will break cement
Balthasar's Odyssey Bought in the gorgeous mill at Saltaire. Referenced repeatedly in a book about Turkey.
The Beautiful Summer Fiction in translation.
The Gypsy Goddess She spoke at the same venue as Nayeri - very compelling.
House of Stone Picked up in Edinburgh, I think.
Respectable Heard her speak at work - she's impressive.
Why this world Fascinating writer, but I've still not picked up this biography.
Travels with my Aunt A beautiful orange penguin, a sad hole in my reading. I've picked it up, but finding the stereotyping hard going.
Sunburn I read a Lippman earlier in the year, mixed feelings, but have been assured her others vary, so thought I'd try this one when I saw it for A Reasonable second hand price.
The East Edge By a small press.
In Dependence Now reading!
The Devil's Dance The first book of fiction to be translated from the Uzbek.
Manchester Happened
Whatever Happened to Harold Absalom
Insurgent Empire clearly a little light reading (!)

Borderless bookclub -

I'm still reading as part of the zoom bookclub, who have now announced their autumn programme.
https://www.peirenepress.com/borderless-book-club/

Next up:

October 1st

Nordisk Books | Transfer Window by Maria Gerhardt
With translator Lindy Falk van Rooyen | 15% off with code “TRANSFER15”

October 15th

Charco Press | Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París
With translator Christina McSweeney and author Daniel Saldaña París | 20% off with code “BOOKCLUB” | free UK shipping, 50% off international shipping

October 29th

Fitzcarraldo Editions | Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
With translator Elisabeth Jaquette

November 12th

Comma Press | The Book of Cairo
With translator and editor Raph Cormack | free ebook with every hard copy ordered

November 26th

Istros Books | The Fig Tree by Goran Vojnović
With translator Olivia Hellewell

December 10th

Tilted Axis Press | Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
With translator Jeremy Tiang This has been replaced by Tokyo Ueno Station due to printing timelines.

Happy new thread!!! I have only read The Shadow King. So many books, so little time!

>5 charl08: >6 charl08: You are so organized. : )

Happy new thread!

I've not read any of the Booker shortlist, although I do have Tyll which arrived from my book subscription. Which ought to mean it;s good, as they've been sending me books like they know me. But that one didn't grab me. Not sure why. Must go back and try again.

>1 charl08: I've got The New Wilderness and Shuggie Bain in the pile for October Charlotte.

>7 Berly: I'm so pleased I've actually finished the bookclub book ahead of time, Kim.
(It would be more impressive if it wasn't so short!)

>8 drneutron: That was quick!

>9 Helenliz: I have two on the shelf to read - and have only read one so far.

>10 Caroline_McElwee: I'm hoping Shuggie Bain turns up at the library at some point, Caroline. I'm not holding my breath though!

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

>1 charl08: I now have all the shortlist and will prioritise seeing which would be my own pick.

Happy new one!

>1 charl08: I have not read any of those yet.

Happy new thread! I've read Real Life by Brandon Taylor and I have Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi on my tbr, so I'm really far behind on the Booker shortlist already! It's a great list though.

Happy new thread, Charlotte. I keep looking for a ladder shelf like the one in >5 charl08:. I love it.

Happy New Thread, Charlotte. I hope your week is off to a good start. I am 50 pages into The New Wilderness. It has hooked me.

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

Happy new thread, Charlotte. I haven't read any of the books on the prize lists that you posted but you made me think that the Giller prize should be coming out sometime this fall as well. The long list is out. I haven't read any of those either.

>12 katiekrug: Thanks Katie. I have been admiring Nuala pictures on your thread.

>13 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul. I've heard some wide ranging responses lobbying for the different books, so intrigued to hear what LT readers make of them.

>14 figsfromthistle: It's not exactly a list of familiar names (not that I'm complaining).

>15 RidgewayGirl: I was hoping to get more of the books read before the deadline, but with the library only just getting back online, I think I'll be catching up over the year.

>16 jessibud2: I like it, but it's nowhere near as tidy as the photo just now!

>17 msf59: Good to hear, Mark. You have reminded me that I have Underland waiting for me in the 'nature' pile.

>18 BLBera: Thanks Beth. LT is rather a marvellous distraction from the worries around the reopening of campus this week.

>19 Familyhistorian: Meg, it seems to be prize season! I like hearing about all the different discussions.

Now reading The Midnight Library from the library's online collection.

"Okay, then. I would like to try the life where I am not stuck. What life would that be?'
'Aren't you supposed to tell me?'
Mrs Elm moved a queen to take a pawn, then turned the board around. 'I'm afraid I am just the librarian.'
'Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.'
'Exactly. But you also have to know what you like. What to type into the metaphorical search box. And sometimes you have to try a few things before that becomes clear....'

Down Cemetery Road
Mick Herron's other series, featuring detective Zoë Boehm, kicks off with this explosive look at chemical weapons. Clue: they're not in Iraq, they're closer to home.

The Midnight Library
Nora tries to commit suicide at the start of the book, but ends up instead in a library where she can choose to start again with different lives, undoing regrets from her failed relationships to lost chances at big career wins. Unsurprisingly, the career wins are accompanied by therapy appointments and the failed relationships turn out to have failed for a reason. I enjoyed Haig's timetravelling outing, so was expecting to get more from this. At the end I felt rather battered about the head with the (to me) rather fatalistic approach to life choices. I like/ admire his optimism but find it a bit of a reach.

Grass
A really beautiful GN entirely in monochrome, telling the story of a "comfort woman", now elderly campaigner for Japanese reparations to Korean survivors of forced prostitution. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim creates the young girl who is forced to leave her home first by her parents and then kidnapped into sexual slavery on a Japanese base in China. Rooting in one autobiographical narrative as told by he elderly survivor to the cartoonist made it extra powerful for me. It also makes it humorous as "Granny Lee" has survived much and has little interest in going easy on her biographer.

The illustrations are really beautifully done, often apparently simple but packing emotional weight. I particularly loved the birds shown linking the story panels.

>24 charl08: I felt the same about The Midnight Library. I’d seen a lot of comments about how good this one was and I think I was expecting something a little more exceptional. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I was expecting.

>26 SandDune: Yes, I perhaps should have said a bit more about the positives. I think expectation weighed this one down a bit for me too.

Well, another lunchtime and I have no idea where the time is going. What is it Douglas Adams said about deadlines?

Here is my September in review.

I read 22 books, taking me past the 3x75 mark. Woo.

I covered some distance in my reading, including authors from Russia/Armenia Three Apples Fell from the Sky, Denmark Transfer Window, France Five Photos of My Wife and India The Gypsy Goddess.

Weird connections that weren't planned included two books about "comfort women" taken from (ed Singapore and) Korea as sexual slaves How We Disappeared and the GN Grass, and a historical/ literary reimaginings in Hamnet (Shakespeare), A Thousand Ships (all that ancient Greek stuff) and Well Played (Cyrano). Authors I'd read before included Laura Lippman, Mick Herron, Meena Kandasamy, Maggie O'Farrell, Jen DeLuca, Matt Haig, Avery Flynn and Walter Mosley...

Books that were a disappointment included The Fragility of Bodies, but since it made for a good book group discussion, I'll (almost) forgive it. (Almost because it was over 300 pages. I won't be picking up the sequel.). I read lots of 'romance' categorised books, but actually the sweetest relationship was in Three Apples Fall from the Sky, between two 'older adults'.
Books that were ARC's - 0 (oops)
Books that were bookgroup books (2 - plus one I still haven't finished)
Books that I can tick off from my post in >5 charl08: - 1 (Hurrah!)
Books that made me laugh (very important category) Down Cemetery Road.
Books that made me realise I can't spell Cemetery - ditto.

On The Roommate, your link goes to a book in the Sweet Valley University series rather than to a newish romcom by Rosie Danan, which you've added to one of your collections..... There are also a number of other books by the same title.

>29 elkiedee: Yes, I was amazed how many books with that title there are!

ETA I think about half of the links were wrong - now fixed (I think!)

Happy new thread, Charlotte! And also for the 3 x 75 :-)

Are you still on for Things Fall Apart as a group read? I think it was supposed to be the first week of October, but perhaps that's Monday, being the first actual whole week.

ETA Did you see that Lissa Evans has a new one - V for Victory, with Vee and Noel from Crooked Heart?! I read about it in the Times on Saturday.

>31 susanj67: Yes, up for Things Fall Apart next week Susan.

>31 susanj67: Thanks Susan.

Work has been very full on this week, so doing it next week would be lovely. Are we ok to do it on my thread, or do you want a separate one? I don't mind setting one up. Or we could just post on each others, I suppose if that works?

I did not know she had a new book! Now I know how to spend my Waterstones £10 voucher. Thank you.

>32 Caroline_McElwee: Hey Caroline. That fits with my idea of time too. Do you have a preference where it sits?

Ooh re Lissa Evans.

>33 charl08: Wherever you like Charlotte.

Ooh re Lissa Evans. Thanks Susan. Have added to my huge Kindle wishlist.

>33 charl08: Charlotte, let's do it here. We already come here :-)

I was surprised about the Lissa Evans book - usually there is a bit of "in the pipeline" buzz, but I'd heard nothing at all. A lovely surprise! (Incidentally, one of her earlier books, Spencer's List is 99p for Kindle at the moment. It's a grown-up one).

>27 charl08: That’s one of the reasons that I mostly avoid very recent books. They work better, for me that is, when the hype/hate has died way down and I can come to them on my own terms.

That seems odd now that I see it “in print,” but it’s worked for me so far.

I’m impressed by your reading volume and variety, Charlotte.

Have a restful weekend.

>37 susanj67: I like your thinking, Susan. I would also have expected more of a fanfare. Thank you for shouting about it!

>38 Matke: That makes sense to me. The flip side of that is that I do enjoy being part of a book discussion, which without LT is definitely limited, often, to "new" books.

Belated happy new thread and belated congratulations on reaching 3 x 75, Charlotte!

>33 charl08: I just reserved the Dutch translation of Things Fall Apart at the library. It looks like it is available in the Almere library. If so, it should arrive next week.

*thud*
That's me hitting the floor at you having read 3x75 books so far! And we're only 2/4 through the year, is 300 a possibility?!?!?!
Congratulations.

>35 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline, appreciate it.

>36 elkiedee: Oooh indeed! I'm looking forward to it.

>40 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita. Hope that it comes soon.

>41 Helenliz: I slowed down this month as work has been so busy, but I hope so Helen.

Now reading The Clerkenwell Affair. It's #14 in the Thomas Chaloner series.

>43 charl08: I checked the library website, the book is on its way. It should arrive halfway next week :-)

>45 FAMeulstee: Good stuff, Anita.

The Clerkenwell Affair
I've been listening to Gregory's books (she has another series about a medieval Cambridge doctor) online, so when I saw a new one on the library lists I thought I'd try one out on paper too
Thomas Chaloner is a very human protagonist, full of doubts and concerns about how he is viewed at court. Post-commonwealth, he is just about getting by under Charles II, employed as an investigator for the government. In this book he's asked to investigate the mysterious death of an unpopular King's official, accompanied by another investigator, infamous for his violent approach to solving problems. Throw in a gambling ring of lazy courtiers, a group of poor women trying to campaign for education, the Duchess of Newcastle and a post-plague London afraid of signs and portents, and it's hard for Chaloner to see the wood for the trees. At 400+ pages, I found it a bit long as an "eye-read" book and in terms of the plot it seems a bit retro to have the jealous lesbian political activist as well as the conservative woman reactionary at the heart of the criminal conspiracy.

Now reading That Old Country Music a short story collection due out 22nd October.

He had worked for eight years at Rel-Tech, but more and more he had found the banter of the other men there a trial, the endless football talk, the foolishness and bragging about drink and women, and in truth he was relieved when the chance of a redundancy came up. He had the misfortune in life to be fastidious and to own a delicacy of feeling. He drank wine rather than beer and favoured French films. Such an oddity this made him in the district that he might as well have had three heads...

Happy new thread to you Charlotte. Hope all's well. Great reading going on over here!

>48 mdoris: Thanks Mary - certainly keeping me busy!

I picked up V for Victory today, and if I can keep my eyes open after a bad night last night, I might just read it tonight.


Plus in the post Murder Most Unladylike, The Last Voice You Hear and The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree.

......Nor could she remember the timbre of his voice, or the sound of his yawn, or what he said when he sneezed, and because he wrote very little about the POW camp, even when she asked him to, she couldn't even visualize what he was seeing, or doing, so that there was nothing solid for her to hold on to, only those letters with their endless impersonal detail; she had fallen for Romeo and now found herself padlocked to the editor of Modern Homes and Gardens.

>31 susanj67: >32 Caroline_McElwee: >42 charl08: Just starting on 'Things Fall Apart' (Touchstones kaput).

I started by looking up the Ogene musical instrument

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bvz8FjKefw

>52 Caroline_McElwee: I got sidetracked by Lissa Evans. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Burnt Sugar
I read this as one of the Booker shortlist. Centred around a broken mother-daughter relationship in Pune, India, jumping between the narrator's dysfunctional childhood to her present-day crumbling marriage and care for her mother's developing dementia. The focus on the relationship between the mother and daughter was made to carry a lot of weight in the narrative, but it never seemed to make sense to me. There was little insight into what was driving the mother, even before her dementia. Threads that seemed more interesting to me - the narrator is taken by the mother to spend her childhood in a commune - were dropped without detailed exploration, in favour of her husband's attempts to persuade the narrator to start a family, or descriptions of her 'art'. I'd see this as an interesting first novel, but wouldn't expect it to win. (For what it's worth!)

V for Victory
This was more my cup of tea. Evans' latest in the loose series around Noel and his carers, the house in Hampstead is now an eccentric boarding house full of lodgers run by Vee, whilst a parallel plot follows Winnie as she runs her local ARP warden post. There's lots of period detail, some brilliant wit and a sense of anticipation about what will come after it's all over. Recommended. (Start with Crooked Heart though)

>55 charl08: Yay! I can't wait :-)

>52 Caroline_McElwee:, >53 charl08: I got sidetracked by finishing Passing but I will start tonight!

>56 susanj67: I put the book on the shelf, and dug out my copy of Old Baggage to put next to it. Now sorely tempted to pick up a copy of Crooked Heart to match, despite having only ever borrowed a copy to read from the library.

>55 charl08: OMG - I didn't know that Evans had a new one out. I have loved her books. Onto the list it goes.

I've heard mixed reviews about Burnt Sugar...Maybe I'll wait on that one.

Thanks for the comments on Midnight Library. That's one with a great description that would tempt me to pick up, but I think I'll pass for now.

I loved Grass; I think that's one reason I didn't love How We Disappeared.

>58 BLBera: Hope you can find a copy soon, Beth. It felt like a visit from a friend, if a new book can be that. Just what I wanted to read at the right time.

I've picked up Things Fall Apart, read the first chapter, and his bio blurb, which is interesting as much for what it mentions as what it doesn't. He first sent his MS to London and it was ignored (and nearly lost) before it even reached a publisher.

https://slate.com/culture/2013/03/things-fall-apart-by-chinua-achebe-was-almost-...

Why a Yeats poem for the title? As interviewed by the Paris Review

INTERVIEWER: The titles of your first two books—Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease—are from modern Irish and American poets. Other black writers—I’m thinking particularly of Paule Marshall—borrow from Yeats. I wonder if Yeats and Eliot are among your favorite poets.

ACHEBE: They are. Actually, I wouldn’t make too much of that. I was showing off more than anything else. As I told you, I took a general degree, with English as part of it, and you had to show some evidence of that. But I liked Yeats! That wild Irishman. I really loved his love of language, his flow. His chaotic ideas seemed to me just the right thing for a poet.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1720/the-art-of-fiction-no-139-chinua-...

The New Yorker 2008 article on 50 years after the book was first published notes the way the book was first received, with the reviewers largely missing the point.

"Western reviewers praised Achebe’s detailed portrayal of Igbo life, but they said little about the book’s literary qualities. The New York Times repeatedly misspelled Okonkwo’s name and lamented the disappearance of “primitive society.” The Listener complimented Achebe’s “clear and meaty style free of the dandyism often affected by Negro authors.” Others were openly hostile. “How would novelist Achebe like to go back to the mindless times of his grandfather instead of holding the modern job he has in broadcasting in Lagos?” the British journalist Honor Tracy asked.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/05/26/after-empire

Anita just read a book by Karin Amatmoekrim and I am putting this note here so that I remember that I emailed Peirene to ask if they would be interested in translating it.

>60 charl08: So far, like those reviewers, I am also missing the point. I read half of it last night. I'm assuming it's short, rather than that I'm a reading *machine* (how awesome would that be, though). I think I'll read a bit more about it before I continue. I have the Penguin Modern Classics edition, I think, but didn't read the introduction in case of spoilers.

>62 susanj67: It is a quick read Susan. Although I wouldn't question your reading machine status.

I think the New Yorker article above is worth checking out. I'm hoping it's not behind a firewall.

And on the plus side, at least you can tick it off every time it comes up on the top 100 lists! (She says, desperately looking for a silver lining...)

Tempted by this online event 11th November:
Tickets
www.ticketsource.co.uk/griffinbooks
Dear Reader is a moving, funny and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of your life.

For as long as she can remember, Cathy Rentzenbrink has lost and found herself in stories. Growing up she was rarely seen without her nose in a book and read in secret long after lights out. When tragedy struck, books kept her afloat. Eventually they lit the way to a new path, first as a bookseller and then as a writer. No matter what the future holds, reading will always help.

Cathy is the author of the bestselling memoir The Last Act of Love and A Manual for Heartache. She is a book reviewer for The Times, and presents The Bookseller podcast.

http://www.griffinbooks.co.uk/index.php/events/upcoming-events/126-cathy-rentzen...

>64 charl08: - Oh this looks good. Is it a very new publication, Charlotte? It is not in my library's system yet at all.

Happy Somewhat New Thread, Charlotte.

Grass sounds challenging but good. Adding it to the WL.

My eyes perked up at The Clerkenwell Affair, as we stay in Clerkenwell when we visit London. Sorry the book wasn't better. It was fun to read Troubled Blood because a lot it happens in Islington where we stay, and even on our street, St. John's.

>60 charl08: That is fascinating, Charlotte. It would be a good book idea, to go back and compare initial reviews with books that have stood the test of time.

>64 charl08: This one goes right on my WL!

Hi Charlotte. Just popping in, although I'm only up-to-date on the current thread (12!!) I like the sound of Lissa Evans - exactly the kind of stuff I have been craving this year. I bought Spencer's List and might try some of the others if I like it. I see Insurgent Empire on your bookshelf. The husband bought that one and I was eyeing it but... well, it might be a read for next year, if things are looking a bit better. A bit too much in these times, for me at least. I read Things Fall Apart as an undergraduate on a post-colonial literature module. That book hasn't stayed with me like some of the others I read on that course did. I couldn't quite get past all the casual wife beating, if memory serves...

I got Things Fall Apart from the libray today. Reading is still somewhat slow, so it will take a few days.

>61 charl08: I hope it works out!

>60 charl08: >62 susanj67: >68 HanGerg: >69 FAMeulstee: My review for Things Fall Apart is here
https://www.librarything.com/topic/323979#7282582

>60 charl08: Fascinating. He was such a pioneer of African literature.

>65 jessibud2: It's just came out in September - but someone is ahead of the game on LT (of course!) and has already posted a review :-) (it's not me).

>66 jnwelch: I like reading books about places I know and visit too Joe. I'm rubbish with street names in real life, so I'm not sure why I like them in my fiction. I think you'll like Grass - her style is not like anything else I've come across.

>67 BLBera: I really like old book review magazines - I spent some time looking at old editions of the TLS (I think I've got that right) and the Times Ed Supp too in the National Library of Scotland - amazing just how many books used to get reviewed too. I'm sure many haven't dated well, but the temptation of the possibility of a 'hidden gem'....

>68 HanGerg: I haven't read that one of Lissa Evans, Hannah, look forward to hearing what you make of it.

Re things fall apart - thanks for posting, and sorry for going AWOL in the middle of what was supposed to be a group read. >68 HanGerg: >69 FAMeulstee: >70 Caroline_McElwee: >71 PaulCranswick:


Some of the books that came up when I stuck 'Nigeria' into my LT library search.

It's really interesting to me how differently people read TfA - and that includes me now, as opposed to me in 2002/03 when I was studying Nigeria for the first time. For the first time in ages I dug through my books on Nigeria acquired (mostly through bargain hunting in some secondhand bookshops that I think benefitted from some academics getting rid of free review copies) whilst studying, and found (not for the first time) some books I had forgotten I owned.

One is a book commemorating the 50 year anniversary of TfA, which seems like it comes from another era in itself as it comes with a DVD (!!) of the conference it was linked to, and includes colour photos of the attendees (surely something that wouldn't get funded now). I don't remember ever reading it (perhaps it was a freebie from a conference? I don't think I bought it). More to the point it includes a chapter by Nwando Achebe, a historian in the US who has published on gender and Igbo community history. She argues that Okonkwo's chauvinism / domestic abuse are a demonstration of his 'not-rightness' (my clumsy paraphrase), rather than an example of how gender worked in his community. (She acknowledges that this is not the only view taken by critics though).


Different kinds of money in the UNN collection

One of the things I loved about studying Nigerian history is how some studies show 'traditional' gender roles to be a misnomer. It's not to suggest some kind of pre-colonial perfect world (not least because of the impact of hundreds of years of the slave trade on West Africa). Following the imposition of colonial rule in the 19c, the (male) British authorities (still the only ones allowed to vote back 'home') only recognised authority when it was male, despite Igbo women's groups meeting as part of local governance, active merchants and traders, roles in spiritual traditions, and widely respected moral authority.


Palm oil being sold in Nsukka market

None of this is really about the novel though, just me remembering that I enjoyed studying Nigerian history.

I read some other stuff - have been sleeping really badly this week, so finished this ARC at 5am. Despite that, it held my attention, so definitely recommended.

That Old Country Music is an ARC but this collection of short stories by Kevin Barry is published in the UK next week.* I thought this was a brilliant collection. I'm a bit of a tough sell on short stories, I don't always stick with them, so I think it's a testament to the writer that I found the stories here so engrossing. Characters are really diverse, from a Roma child on the run to an American poet in a psychiatric hospital (a fictionalisation of Theodore Roethke's experience). ("When you say you're going into work, as a writer, what you mean is you're about to crawl into your fucking nerves.") A story about a musicologist translating a lost ballad about a doomed Irish couple working in Lancashire, who loved to sing ("The merest, glancing line gave somehow the sombre bricks and industrial smoke of England's Victorian north, and those brassy old pubs loomed above the verse, like lanterns in the dark of the long-lost singing nights.") Some were surprisingly romantic and sweet, others needled the idea of writing and writers. One I will be buying for myself when it comes out in paperback.


Superman Smashes the Klan
I bought this because it was about half the price of Yang's other new book! Yang takes an old radio story where Superman faces down a just-different-enough-not-to-be-sued version of the KKK when they attack a Chinese family that has moved to Metropolis. Nicely done with nods to both the history of the character (the shift from leaping to flying) as well as the parallels between 'aliens'.

*Little dance about getting this review out before the publication date.

Reading the TLS, which is dangerous for my wishlist.

Alice Wadsworth reviews Dorthe Nors new one Wild Swims, which doesn't seem to be about swimming. I'm wondering about picking her up again having read some more scandi lit through the book group.



Sheena Joughin reviews What are you going through by Sigrid Nunez, which reminds me that I still have The Friend on the shelf to read. Apparently "...the starting point of it all is the shadow of death." I'm not racing to pick it up now.

Richard Overy reviews Robert Harris' V2 which I'd not even realised was out. But apparently I can have a pass as it's "not his best novel".

Daniel Clarke reviews The Blind Light by Stuart Evers, a book about the impact of the nuclear threat on ordinary people.

As for the fear of nuclear strike - as Drum acknowledges, towards the end of his life, "there's always something like this". In fact, "there's never anything not like this. Bird flu, Al Qaeda, the end of oil, the millennium bug, climate change, there's always something. We're used to it. It doesn't change people. It doesn't change anything." .... The further question, then, that The Blind Light raises - read now, against our own deeply uncertain backdrop of the pandemic and attendant environmental terrors is whether that thought is ultimately reassuring or dispiriting.

Corsica Bradatan reviews The Polymath: a cultural history which sounds like something my dad might be getting for Xmas (he's a fan of da Vinci). I'm not sure he's going to like Burke's view of da Vinci as exemplifying one of the downfalls of being interested in so much: 'an enormous "dispersal of energy" is what strikes us in the many projects that da Vinci "abandoned or simply left unfinished".'

Late-life Love by Susan Gubar reviewed by Daphne Merkin is a literary memoir described as "vigorous". That plus the mention of long descriptions of Marilynne Robinson's novels has put me off.

The Sundays of Jean Dézert is a new translation of a 1914 self-published novel about a man who collects leaflets and then spends his days off walking to the places advertised. (!!!)

Splash! 10,000 years of swimming is criticised for being "altogether too stuck on dry land. Where is the sensation of water, the passion for swimming?"

Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire is, as you would expect from the title, a retracing of Clare's journey when he left the asylum and walked home. Unsurprisingly then, this retracing shows "exactly how nature gave way to razor wire, motorways and urban development."



Alan Forrest's review of Black Spartacus: the epic life of Toussaint Louverture reminds me that I have the ARC and haven't touched it yet. Mary Beard looks at Strange antics: a history of Seduction, concluding that author Clement Knox: sees seduction as "bewildering, exciting and dangerous" because it occupies a "grey zone of agency". But perhaps... it is just too bewildering...."

Loads more reviews I haven't read!
This issue hasn't come through my door yet: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/current-issue-2-2/

Murder Most Unladylike
A fun pastiche of 1930s girls' boarding school stories, with a murder mystery plot. Daisy and Hazel investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of their teachers, whilst still managing to have a midnight feast and do their prep. Daisy runs straight at problems whilst Hazel keeps the investigation records, and tries to point out the holes in Daisy's latest suspect. This is the first of a successful series featuring these two characters.

The others all have good alibis - and although in books they might have done it by constructing a dastardly long range missile out of a trombone, three plant pots and the Gym vaulting horse, in real life that sort of thing does seem beyond the bounds of possibility...

I have finished Things fall apart, Charlotte.
I liked the story, review will come soonish. Probably Monday, as I will visit my father tomorrow.

Hey Anita, I'm glad your copy arrived!

I'm reading a collection of linked short stories by Amos Oz, Between Friends, set on a kibbutz.

A committee vote will never be able to eradicate envy, pettiness or greed.

The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all U.S. citizens, yet for some Americans, these ideals exist only on paper. Novelist Laila Lalami’s new collection of essays, “Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America,” offers a searing look at the struggle for all Americans to achieve liberty and equality. Lalami eloquently tacks between her experiences as an immigrant to this country and the history of U.S. attempts to exclude different categories of people from the full benefits of citizenship.

Review | The Americans who aren’t seen as full citizens
By Rachel Newcomb

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-americans-whose-rights-are-conditiona...

Going through a phase* of wanting all the books. From the Washington Post.

Carlos Lozada’s “What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era” is satire. It is anything but. Lozada, The Washington Post’s nonfiction book critic, has read some 150 works assessing Donald Trump and his presidency and has produced an immensely valuable book that, in his words, delves into the “debates of this moment — from the heartland to the border, from the resistance on the left to the civil war on the right, from the battles over truth to the fears about democracy.”

But Lozada sounds chagrined that the huge body of work that Trump has incited hasn’t added up to a richer intellectual portrait of his influence. “Too many books of the Trump era are more knee-jerk than incisive, more posing than probing, more righteous than right, more fixated on calling out the daily transgressions of the man in the Oval Office — this is not normal! — than on assessing their impact,” he writes. “Individually, these books try to show a way forward. Collectively, they reveal how we’re stuck.”

From

Review | To understand the Trump era, a Post critic read 150 books
By James T. Kloppenberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/to-understand-the-trump-era-a-post-critic...

*If phase= "my life since I found out about the existence of bookshops".

>81 charl08: - Great post, Charlotte. I happen to agree with you 100%, re your *phase*.

As for the books mentioned, though I haven't read it yet (still on a long waiting list at the library), from the interviews with her I have seen, I would venture to guess that perhaps Mary Trump's book about her uncle and his psychological state and issues might be an exception to Lozada's statement about most books about t-Rump being more knee-jerk than incisive. I think hers does indeed probe the depths, as well as reveal more than sound bytes. I will reserve final judgment until I actually read it. Admittedly, though, I haven't been able to bring myself to read any other books about him. Seems I know all I want and need to know just from watching and listening to him. More than enough.... far more....

>82 jessibud2: I think it's almost impossible to write something that gauges impact now - things are still happening. I can imagine Mary Trump's book is more reflective as she's writing about Trump's past and how it led to now. But I haven't read it either!

ETA I've added the WP link for the review which I had missed before. Apologies.

Oh dear... I am rather behind with thread visits so stopping by with belated Happy New Thread wishes, Charlotte.

>84 lkernagh: I don't know about anyone else but I am finding the time of year very tiring, and am not keeping up either!

>5 charl08: Sunburn has been on that shelf for a while, yes? Just teasing -- you know we all have books that languish on our TBR shelves for months, years....

>81 charl08: Sounds interesting!

>86 EBT1002: Ellen, you can tease away about that one: I've read it! However there are about half I've not got near. Maybe that's my November challenge?

New book orders - still waiting for the book group book to turn up (meeting is Thursday - hope it's a short book!)

Have ordered a guide to the Peddar's Way, which I had never heard of until last night. It's in Norfolk. Norfolk is known for being flat. Hence my interest in a long-distance walk based there.

I usually rely on the library for my GNs, so I'm still ordering them. Hoping Sheets by Brenna Thummler arrives soonish, I've heard good things about it.

Library books - still to read.

NF
Walking in Berlin : a flaneur in the capital

Symphony for the city of the dead : Dmitri Shostakovich and the siege of Leningrad

Rebel writers : the accidental feminists

Mutual Admiration Society

F
Abigail

A life of adventure and delight

The death of Rex Nhongo

'Rock and roll is life' : the true story of the Helium kids

Celestial bodies

>88 charl08: I hate to tell you this, but Norfolk as a whole is not terribly flat. There are uppy downy bits all over. It's not like Wales levels of vertiginousness, but when people think of the flat bits they're thinking of the fens which are only partly in Norfolk. And those are not the area the Peddar's way traverses.
Sorry.

>90 Helenliz: My enthusiasm level for the walk currently:

Book didn't turn up today but nice people at publisher have sent me the ebook.
So now reading: Ramifications

In 1994, everything was charged with meaning, but my confusion of front and reverse was simply the confusion of a boy trying to make origami figures and repeatedly failing in the attempt. And neither can I say that the tenacity I exhibited in continuing to practice origami in the face of constant failure has made me adept in the exercise of patience. What is certain is that origami was a school for being alone: it taught me to spend many hours in silence.

>88 charl08: We did the Norfolk coastal path years and years ago, which joins up with the Peddars Way, but we never did that part.

>90 Helenliz: Norfolk as a whole is not terribly flat. Hate to say this, but we go there quite a lot (going next week actually) and I’ve always considered it pretty flat. Admittedly though, the fens are flatter. But then I come from Wales so am probably biased!

>93 SandDune: If we're on comparative grography then it's certainly flat compared to Wales. Even I can't argue that one! It's just not pancake flat all over, which is the percepton.

Mind you, the plus side is you get some huge skies.

>93 SandDune: The book I ordered about it will hopefully include gradients! How did you organise the coastal walk (or did you go with one of the bag/accommodation companies?)

>94 Helenliz: Holidayed in Cromer and Holkham as a kid (presumably because it was easy for school etc to get to), so thinking might rediscover some old haunts as well as find new ones. The birdwatching is also advertised as being very good, too.

I should just be reading the bookclub book, but I went to the library yesterday and mostly picked up crime fiction. (Plus a Booker shortlisted book, which I was amazed to see on the new books shelf)
Kerry (avatiakh) mentioned a classic crime author Michael Gilbert. My library had Death in Captivity and I thought I would just pick it up for a little bit. Several chapters in!

"Quite right," said Burchnall "Has anyone seen Gerry?" At this moment the door burst open and Gerry Parsons arrived at a gallop. His face was red and he appeared to have lost his voice.
His friends stared at him in amazement. "I say," he said at last. "Do you know what?"
"End of the war?"
"Revolution in Italy?"
"Extra issue of Red Cross parcels?"
"No, I say, this is serious," said Parsons. "They've simply gone and pinched them,
"Pinched what?"
"The rugger* posts."
A horror-struck silence was broken by Burchnall. "This is the final, ultimate limit," he said. "They can't do it. I've a good mind to go straight to the S.B.O."

*rugby

>95 charl08: How did you organise the coastal walk (or did you go with one of the bag/accommodation companies? The North Norfolk coast path is about 45 miles so do-able in three days. We just carried our own stuff and stayed in B&B’s. We left the car in Ely, caught the train to King’s Lynn and stayed one night in Hunstanton, then started walking next morning, with one night’s stop in Burnham Overy Staithe and another in Blakeney and then caught the train back to Ely on the last afternoon. I was fitter then!

>96 charl08: I picked this one up from the library today. Got home and found I hadn't checked out any of my library books so I had to go back to fix that. Had spent my time by the checkout machine getting a tote out and had then walked off with the books.

>97 SandDune: I think I need to get fitter before I even think of setting out, Rhian. Thanks for the info.

>98 avatiakh: Oh no! Hope you get some time to read it after all that, Kerry.

Saw an ad for this new series of short translations from Dutch authors by Strangers Press

"VERZET (tr.: Resistance) is the latest of our ground-breaking and highly collectible sets of translated short stories from around the world. This time we teamed up with the amazing Manchester-based agency Office of Craig to bring you a new hit of beautifully designed chapbooks to get stuck into. The VERZET series showcases the work of eight exciting, new -- to the English language -- writers from the Netherlands and they are available NOW!

This new list encompasses an impressive array of award winners and nominees including Jamal Ouarichi, Karin Amatmoekrim, and Sanneke van Hassel, as well as newer voices all long overdue or dearly deserving of English language translations. It's a bit like taking a short visit home, for us: our name, Strangers Press, comes from The Strangers of the 16th century -- a group of migrants from the then Spanish Netherlands who enriched the culture and technology of the East Anglian region and whose architectural style even informs our own logo. We like to think this set is a kind of symbolic re-tracing of that journey and one that is fittingly timed. Order yours now, Strangers, and here's to a more diverse Europe and finding our way to being a kinder, more welcoming place.

VERZET was made possible by generous funding from the Dutch Foundation for Literature."
https://www.strangers.press/product-page/verzet-full-set

VERZET1: Reconstruction by Karin Amatmoekrim

VERZET2: Thank You For Being With Us by Thomas Heerma van Voss

VERZET3: Bergje by Bregje Hofstede

VERZET4: The Tourist Butcher by Jamal Ouariachi

VERZET5: Resist! In Defence of Communism by Gustaaf Peek

VERZET6: The Dandy by Nina Polak

VERZET7: Shelter by Sanneke Van Hassel

VERZET8: Something Has To Happen by Maartje Woortel

Yikes. I tried to comment on my own thread and the new version won't let me on my phone! Have headed back to the laptop instead.

>101 charl08: - I haven't tried to post from my phone yet (though Talk *looks* better on my phone), but I can't "preview" messages at the moment...

Based on the thread where Tim and company are rolling out the changes, there appear to be a couple bugs that only showed up after they went live with the changes. I think they'll have things foxed soon.

>103 drneutron: I'm hoping you meant fixed; talk being foxed probably won't help too much. Although I like the idea of lots of foxes frolicing about on the threads. >;-)

>100 charl08: I like the covers, Charlotte.
I added Bergje and Resist! : in defence of communism to my library wishlist.

>102 katiekrug: >103 drneutron: >104 Helenliz: Impressed posting from the phone is already sorted. Not a job I would want to be doing...

>105 FAMeulstee: I am looking forward to their arrival - spoke to our postie a couple of days ago and from what he said, it sounded like the mail office were really struggling. He said lots of staff were unwell and not coming in, and the mail volume was really high. He is normally Mr Perpetual Smile, so I am a bit worried about them all. And (less importantly) about my ordered books, and whether I should go back to ordering things via Amazon.

>104 Helenliz: 😂

Just popping in to say Hi!!

Death in Captivity
Read this when I should have been reading the book group book. A great murder mystery set in the familiar (if you watched The Great Escape on TV every Xmas season throughout your childhood) world of a POW camp. Set just before the Allied invasion of Italy, there's a great deal here, and all of it feels authentic, if sometimes a bit heightened (the author experienced it, escaping himself). I enjoyed the accounts of the different groups in the camp, some of whom were not so keen on escaping. Recommended.

>108 Berly: Hi back, Kim.

>100 charl08: Temptations, stop it...

>111 Caroline_McElwee: The cover photos look so crazy on my phone now. I wonder if I can fix them.

Ramifications

I think this was one of the most accessible books the Borderless Bookclub have read. The author, the publisher and the translator joined the group to talk about the novel this evening. Set in Mexico City in 1994 (fun fact: two years before I visited) and flashing forward to the present. The adult narrator is stuck in bed, writing his memories of the year his mother left the family.

I felt something approaching pity for that boy who compensated for a painful, incomprehensible situation by adopting strange behaviours. That frog must have been one of the last I made before giving up origami. It was the product of a turbulent, unstable period when I was struggling to give some meaning, any meaning, to the news that Teresa, my mother, had died the most dreary of deaths on a secondary road, far from the jungle and revolutions...

>112 charl08: They look fine on IPad.

>114 Caroline_McElwee: Maybe I should shift to an iPhone!

Hey Charlotte: I'm smiling at Sponge Bob; Scout is currently a big fan. I guess her dad is as well.

I'm reading The Eighth Detective, which I THINK I heard about on your thread...It is interesting.

>116 BLBera: I think there is a Spongebob gif for every LT situation, Beth. Scout and her dad have excellent taste :-)
I liked The Eighth Detective. Clever stuff.

Phew, after a week with a sinus headache that refuses to leave, I've taken the day off.

Finally got to the end of Heresy on audio, with a grim account of death on the scaffold for a catholic under Liz #1. Anyone for bbq sausage? No? The narrator did a heavy 'Italian' accent throughout, impressive commitment.

Request - is there a work around on the phone for not seeing how many new posts are one someone's thread? I tend to leave updating until the thread owner has had a chance to respond to messages, but I now can't see who's the last poster.
I can of course, just head over to my laptop, but was thinking there's probably a smart solution I've missed!

I think conceptDawg added a desktop view to the mobile pages - it might give you that. He just added it a few hours ago, so there still may be some bugs to work out.

The Eighth Detective is very clever, Charlotte. I'm anxious to see where it goes.

^I enjoyed The Eighth Detective, too, Beth.

Hi, Charlotte. Good review of Superman Smashes the Klan. I was a little disappointed by it, but I think it's my fault. I've grown to expect a lot from Gene Luen Yang. SSTK was good, and I liked what he did with the themes, but I thought it might be more. If SSTK had come from someone else, I bet I would've appreciated it more.

His other new one, Dragon Hoops, gives an interesting look into his life as a high school teacher, and as a novice enthusiast for the school's basketball team.

>120 drneutron: Thank you, I'll have another look.

>121 BLBera: Great to see the enthusiasm for The Eighth Detective! I had no idea where it was going.

>122 jnwelch: I was surprised he didn't do the artwork for the book as well as the story, Joe. I'd have liked to see what he would have done with it. But I suspect he has other things on his plate!

Strange Weather in Tokyo

I picked this up as I've seen it getting rave reviews all over the place. Translated from the Japanese, the narrator is adrift in her personal life (we never learn much about her job). She bumps into one of her old teachers, and gradually strikes up first a friendship, and then hopes for more. There's lots of discussion of Japanese food, and a great deal of drinking. In a rather lovely scene, all the old teachers and friends gather for a reunion on the school grounds, and the narrator's young(ish) friend describes how they clean up afterwards, beautifully organised so as to leave no trace of the celebration behind. Despite her attendance at events like this, the narrator's loneliness and isolation is, at times, overwhelming.
I was expecting to like this more than I did though: I can't see myself remembering much about it for long.

This always happened after I saw my family for the New Year holiday. Even though they were in the same neighbourhood, I rarely visited them — I just couldn't bear going back home to the boisterous house, where my mother lived with my older brother and his wife and kids. At this point it wasn't about them telling me I ought to get married or quit my job. I had long ago got used to that particular kind of uneasiness. It was just dissatisfying in some way. It felt as if I had ordered some clothes that I had every reason to think would fit perfectly, but when I went to try them on, some were too short, while with others the hem dragged on the floor. Surprised, I would take the clothes off and hold them up against my body, only to find that they were all, in fact, the right length. Or something like that.

Just read about this new film version of News of the World. Tom Hanks!

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/news-of-the-world-perfect-tom-hanks-veh...

Then I read her other article about some of Jiles' views, and wished I hadn't. Ah well.

Airhead
Just finished the last three chapters of this loose memoir of British journalist Enily Maitlis. (ETA this was a bookclub book) She focuses on the behind the scenes of her job, presenting a current affairs programme on the BBC. There is a lot of self justification, running around internationally, and hobnobbing with famous people. I didn't like it much: it seemed to miss the point a lot (not asking Sheryl Sandberg about Lean In), focusing on her own volunteering after Grenfell, and repeatedly when talking about interviews with Trump acolytes. Book group members talked about the weirdly invisible childcare arrangements, her conviction that we should take her word for the kind interpretation when interviews go wrong, and the fascination of what goes on behind the scenes. I think I'd be interested to read a book by her when she's at the end of her career, whether she would still want to defend the same decisions then.

... this time I bring in Johnson's own words to MPs in a select committee about the imprisonment in Iran of the British woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: a phrase he used to them — 'When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism, as I understand it.'

It was a statement that was not only incorrect but one that her husband and many others believe significantly increased her prison sentence. So I ask him there, finally, whether he recognizes his own words have had consequences. Does he accept, in other words, that his did for her? He does not stop talking to respond.

Now travelling from my reading chair with Hisham Matar reading A Month in Siena. The library copy is pristine with beautiful pictures of the artworks he discusses.

Trying not to get my drool on the book...

This unveiling of new territory must be one of the most remarkable achievements that an artist can attain. By challenging the imagination they nudge our perception a little and, for an instant at least, the world is remade. This exchange of ideas between the artists who walked through Duccio's door is nearly audible. To look closely at their work is to eavesdrop on one of the most captivating con-versations in the history of art, one concerned with what a painting might be, what it might be for, and what it could do and accomplish within the intimate drama of a private engagement with a stranger. You can detect them asking how much a picture might rely on a viewer's emotional life; how a shared human experience might change the contract between artist and viewer, and between artist and subject; and what creative possibilities this new collabor-ation might offer. This is why these paintings seemed to me then, even from within my initial bewilderment, as they seem to me now, to articulate a feeling of hope...

>100 charl08: That looks a great list. I hope Ella, Anita or much missed Connie and Diana can come by and give us some pointers. I have good experiences so far with Dutch authors.

Have a lovely Sunday, Charlotte.

>126 charl08: oh, disappointing Charlotte, it's in the pile.

>127 charl08: this too is near the top of the pile and I'm looking forward to it. I bought it for my brother too.

>128 PaulCranswick: I posted the list on Anita's thread too, Paul, and may have inadvertently added to her TBR. It's only fair, as Anita had read one of these authors recently (one of the reasons these were so attractive to me!)

>129 Caroline_McElwee: It's easy reading, Caroline, on the plus side. Two newbies came to our online book club sessions (this is a book promoted by the uni) and commented on this being a rare book they could fit into their lives. So there is that. Which I am all for. But I wish it was with a book that had perhaps thought a bit more (or acknowledged that she did this) about how much the author has in relation to her readers. Even her discussion of being stalked seems to skim over it, even though it clearly has had a large impact on her life.

>130 charl08: I am glad you posted on my thread, Charlotte. My TBR is never large enough ;-)

>131 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita.

If I don't look at mine straight on, it appears manageable....


(Not my pic)

Didn't get much reading done today.
Instead, helped my mum a bit (she has put her back out again), slept, trimmed some stemmy bits from the sweet pea in the hope I might get some final flowers before the first frosts, watched a slightly odd (to me), but mostly sweet, Korean drama, a much less sweet Katherine Heigl movie, baked some savoury muffins and some flapjack (the oat kind). Nothing turned out like the picture (no kale), but they taste ok.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bacon_egg_and_cheese_08419

Read Three Poems last night (couldn't sleep). Enjoying shelving a book after I've finished it!

Days may be where we live, but mornings are eternity.
They wake us, and every day waking is absurdity;
All the things you just did yesterday to do over again, eternally.

>134 charl08: Like.

>135 Caroline_McElwee: 😊

Another book for the wishlist
Anniversaries: from a year in the life of Gesine Cresspahl
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/a-new-translation-of-an-anti-heroic...

A bitty day, bookwise. I have picked up Square Haunting again, an in an idle moment 'flicked' to the back in my e-copy, to find that two thirds of the book is notes / bibliography, so I am almost half way through. The Dorothy Sayers section is fascinating, I hadn't realise how much of her work drew on her own life.

The absurdity of women's exclusion from intellectual activities was apparent to Sayers, as it was to Woolf, and to H.D.* too. All these women were absorbed, in their life and their work, in finding ways to live in a society which still refused to allow those powers to reconcile - which still believed women's needs and desires must be quite different from men's, and imposed expectations accordingly...

* another writer who features in the book.

Also rereading (or rather, skimming) Girl, Woman, Other for a book group that I am not sure I should have signed up for, that meets tomorrow night - it's a national one bringing together people who work in my field, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Finally, the book of the flat walk (that turns out not to be quite as flat as I thought) has turned up too Walking the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coastal Path. Lots of pictures, so I'll be doing some armchair travel, at least.

Apparently you can stay in the windmill enroute



Tempting! (pic from Wikipedia)

Nominate a 'lockdown hero' for free books -

SHELF IMPROVEMENT FOR LIFE
Who is your lockdown hero? Nominate someone else to win a hand-picked hardback book a month for life anywhere in the world.

Heywood Hill is proud to present Shelf Improvement For Life, a life-changing literary prize for book-lovers worldwide – with an altruistic twist. Nominate someone else to win a hardback book every month for the rest of their life, hand-picked just for them. Who deserves a boost in this pandemical year? They could be a struggling relative, a friend in need, a healthcare worker or someone who has put others first. Someone you wish to acknowledge or appreciate.

https://www.heywoodhill.com/competition2020

>138 charl08: - Wow, what a lovely and generous idea!

>138 charl08: I LOVE that!!
hmmm.
I wonder who I can get to nominate me.... >;-)

I’ve discovered that the Norfolk Coast Path has been extended and no longer stops at Cromer. It now continues for a total of 83 miles to Hopton-on-Sea (wherever that might be). So I don’t suppose I can say that I’ve walked the Norfolk Coast Path any more, as I’ve only done half of it as it exists now!

>139 jessibud2: Yes, although...

>140 Helenliz: Did occur to me too.

>141 SandDune: That might explain why my edition of the path guide has a reprint coming out soon!

Currently reading The Last Voice You Hear the second Zoë Boehm novel.

The physical form - the body you tenanted - could be shored up: there was no shame now in going under the knife; it was an available alternative you'd be a fool to dismiss out of hand. And there were other measures, varyingly drastic Botox injection, HRT, laser correction, toy boy: whatever worked. But it was all throwing money on top of a weary infrastructure: things looked brighter, gleamier, as if they'd probably work, but irreversible corrosion ate the foundations below. The high-speed trains all stopped when the signals failed. And the things you owned grew worn and faded, and were destined for boxes in the end.

Do I need a drink or what? she asked herself.

Still reading The Last Voice You Hear. I do like Mick Herron always good value.

Also enjoying Square Haunting, just finished a section on the classicist Jane Harrison. Her partner has been accused of much in other accounts (from blocking friends' access to failing to write her biography). On losing Harrison:

Later, Hope received from Woolf a note which she would never forget. 'It was only one line,' Hope told her friend Valerie Eliot in 1965, consoling her on the death of her husband T. S. Eliot, but it was more comforting than all my other letters put together: “But remember what you have had.”

>134 charl08: I love that poem..

Underground Railroad is going to be a series on one of the streaming services. I want to say Netflix, but I could be wrong. I saw a clip of the opening and it looks interesting.

I think Tom Hanks would be great in News of the World. I think if authors sell the rights to their books, they should keep quiet about the results...

Love the armchair travel and the windmill!

Thanks Beth - it was from an interesting collection, three long poems. I'm not usually a fan of longer works, but these had lots to like.

I think the armchair travel will continue. Not sure where next: still have Siena to read.

The Last Voice You Hear
I thought the Slow Horses series would be difficult to match - although the Zoë Boehm series was written earlier, the two books I've read so far have matched them for pace and er, "grippyness". Here, proving the adage about two separate cases in any crime fiction, our PI starts the book wondering if she will ever feel anything again. Investigating the death of a woman who may have felt too much, and the death of a child who grew up too fast in a London tower block, she is at risk (again) on becoming the victim herself. I love the dark humour here. Given the current ban on travel, particularly nice to wander with Zoë through London and Oxford.

New books have arrived: (well, new to me)

The Book of Cairo (for the bookclub)
Molotov's Magic Lantern (on a bit of a Russian interest kick)
The Book of Not (because I thought I owned it from when I read it, but couldn't find my copy)

Also the lit magazine NB, which is new to me. Just trying it out.

Events on at the British Library (virtually)

I would be trying to get to London for this exhibition, but things as they are, no dice. https://www.bl.uk/events/unfinished-business

However, there are lots of e -events going on which might be of interest (and of course I want *all* the books), including: (text from the website)

Representing Africa with the New Daughters
Fri 23 Oct 2020, 19:30 - 20:30
To mark the paperback release of the pivotal anthology New Daughters of Africa, contributors Anni Domingo, Ade Solanke, Goretti Kyomuhendo and Zukiswa Wanner join Lavinya Stennett to discuss their perspectives on African representation in education, art and literature. We will also hear readings from the anthology itself.

New Daughters of Africa celebrates the work of 200 women writers of African descent and charts a literary landscape as never before. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class.

https://www.bl.uk/events/representing-africa-with-the-new-daughters (this one is free)

Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel
Tue 27 Oct 2020, 19:30 - 20:30
Sylvia Pankhurst was born into one of Britain's most famous families but she always carved her own way. As well as a militant campaigner for women's suffrage, she was a gifted artist and orator, a designer, newspaper editor and radical visionary.
Her activism landed her in Holloway prison where she was tortured, and her notes from this episode are featured in our Unfinished Business exhibition. Pankhurst's life of campaigning led her to America, Soviet Russia, Scandinavia, Europe and East Africa.

Biographer Rachel Holmes shares her adventures from inside the Unfinished Business exhibition space, in conversation with Shami Chakrabarti.

https://www.bl.uk/events/sylvia-pankhurst-natural-born-rebel-october-2020

Ships at a Distance: A Celebration of Zora Neale Hurston
Wed 28 Oct 2020, 19:00 - 20:00
Black Girl’s Book Club co-founders Natalie Carter and Melissa Cummings-Quarry – who cite Neale Hurston as the ‘the patron saint of Black women’ – chair a conversation with poets Jackie Kay and Salena Godden about Hurston’s writing life, and how she has become regarded one of the most significant Black woman writers of the 20th century.

https://www.bl.uk/events/ships-at-a-distance-a-celebration-of-zora-neale-hurston

>150 charl08: Lots of good stuff here, Charlotte.

The Last Voice You Hear sounds good as well.

>151 BLBera: I think it might prove an expensive event!

Ghosts
This almost made me cry. Cat and her family move to a new town for her sister's health: she has CF and is already on oxygen treatment. Beautifully done, no objections to the magical realism this time.

Reading NB magazine

Now want to read House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elona and Daughters by Lucy Fricke, both of which sound good.

This looks really good - and even better for those in the right (EDT) time zone!
Words Without Borders
Virtual Gala 

Tuesday, October 27, 2020 | 7PM EDT



Celebrate literature that opens a window on the world.
Join us for an evening of . . .

• Readings by National Book Award nominee Megha Majumdar, Booker Prize finalist Maaza Mengiste, and other captivating literary voices from around the world
• Intimate performances by world-class musicians
• Opportunities to connect with a global literary community

https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/events/2020-words-without-borders-virtual-ga...

>138 charl08: Cool!

>156 figsfromthistle: Indeed.

Barely read anything yesterday, as I signed up for a Netflix deal and watched endless episodes of Schitt's Creek and Virgin River. Fortunately the clocks went back so I got an extra hour in bed today.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte. I also enjoyed Ghosts and speaking of GNs, I have been enjoying the author Frederik Peeters, an artist, Joe recommended. Have you read or heard of him?

Thanks Mark. Telgemeier can do no wrong in my eyes. I sent two of her books to a reluctant reader and they were enthusiastically read. (After repeated failures!)

ETA no I haven't come across Peeters - thanks for the heads up.
(urgh, I fear I am never going to get rid of my football related metaphors).

Now reading The Friend

I bought this after the lifting of the first lockdown, at the bookshop in the next town.

Wouldn't it be easier if we just named all the cats Password?

Oh, the enormous quote font has gone.

I finished three books yesterday, mostly because two were short and one I just had a couple of chapters to go. The Boyfriend Effect was nothing to write home about. There is well written romance out there, but this didn't meet the criteria for me.

I enjoyed The Friend and loved Square Haunting once I got past the first chapter. Both were the kind of literary referencing I enjoy, although The Friend was billed as a novel. Nunez includes all kinds of quotes about writing, from the hopeful to the downright discouraging (repeated use of the 'if you can do anything else' message). Her take on changing attitudes to teacher - student relationships and impropriety in the university classroom were closely observed. And of course the enormous dog stole the show.

Square Haunting brings together original research on five women who lived in a small area of London, examining their experiences of work and life in a period that saw dramatic improvements for some women's lives (as well as entrenchment of some restrictions). All were 'elite' in the sense that they managed to access higher education at a time when Cambridge still didn't award degrees to women (they could study, just not get the degree). I loved the way Wade brought together these very different women's lives to tell a story about how they dealt with discrimination and attempts to limit their choices. I had read a little about Dorothy Sayers, but this section was definitely a highlight for me. Wade shows how she hid her (only) child, continuing to write. In the process, the link between her own life and her choices re the character Harriet Vane are made clear. Also additions to the books that never quite made it - would have loved to read Woolf's new history, rethinking ideas about cultural history across time. It was still in note form when she died. Quoting Virginia Woolf-

'Literature is no one's private ground; literature is common ground. It is not cut up into nations, there are no wars there. Let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.'

As always with this kind of book I'm left with a longer TBR pile, from Mary Beard's book about the significant of Jane Harrison's interpretation of classical women's lives, to Swastika Night which 'describes a future society ruled by descendants of Hitler's Nazi's where women are considered a subspecies...' I also want to read some of Eileen Power's history books for Penguin / Puffin.


ETA *Eight* illustrations, everyone, eight!

New books came. Also magazines. That top tagline is why I didn't subscribe to BBC history magazine in the first place (too much Hitler) but the World History one has closed, so the publishers transferred outstanding subscriptions.
I am looking forward to reading about the Vikings though.

New books is always good. What's the Penguin book to the right? Can't quite make it out...

>164 Helenliz: I'm moving things around to try and fit in the new books, and wondering what to get rid of... maybe one of those beds with shelves underneath.

Book is this one: Seven Hundred Penguins

Only love and art can do this: only inside a book or in front of a painting can one truly be let into another's perspective. It has always struck me as a paradox how in the solitary arts there is something intimately communal.

From A Month in Siena

Just finished Minor Detail for the bookclub meeting on Thursday.

Looking forward to hearing from translator and publisher about the process of making this book available in English for the first time.

The discussion questions for the breakout rooms:
How do you think the two parts work together - why do you think the author chose to write two parts from two perspectives?
When you read the second part did that affect how you understood the first part?
How did you respond to the narrative voice, especially in the second part of the novel?
Did you notice any recurring themes or motifs? Did that affect your reading of the novel as a whole?
How do you feel about the ending?

Another review
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/22/adania-shibli-body-border/

Couldn't get this to work in the top post, but weirdly it works fine here.

The Clerkenwell Affair
Burnt Sugar
V for Victory
That Old Country Music
Superman Smashes the Klan
Murder Most Unladylike
Between Friends
Kiss my Cupcake
Death in Captivity
Ramifications

Heresy
Strange Weather in Tokyo
Airhead
Three Poems
The Last Voice You Hear
Ghosts
Square Haunting
The Boyfriend Effect
The Friend
Minor Detail

Her Halloween
Sheets
A Month in Siena
The Duke Effect

Hi, Charlotte.

Ghosts: Debbi and I loved this one. We keep it where guests stay in our house to tempt them.

Sheets: I was all for the concept, but found the storytelling subpar.

Strange Weather in Tokyo: I wish this one had worked better for you. I am glad you've seen lots of rave reviews from other readers. I loved it - the somewhat dream-like atmosphere she creates suits me well. I've gone on to read a bunch of her others.

I thought of you while reading a new (to me) Tillie Walden GN recently, Are You Listening. I had to loosen my mind for some of the . . . illogical, I guess . . . storytelling, but ended up liking it a lot. She's the one who did Spinning and I Love This Part, both of which I liked.

Square Haunting sounds great! Off to find a copy!

>169 jnwelch: Always relieved when someone else likes a book when I didn't. Hopefully someone likes Sheets out there (I'm sure they did).

I also found the latest Tillie Walden a little off the wall story wise. But I liked the illustrations.

>170 BLBera: Hope you like it Beth. I found a beautiful hardback copy, I really liked it that much.

See you are well beyond 250 books already, Charlotte.
4x75 this year?

>172 PaulCranswick: We've been given some extra time off over Xmas so hopefully that time will be spent reading. I think otherwise I might not reach the 300 this year.

Having a lovely day off, which h I have so far spent:
: sleeping in
: listening to the radio, feeling glad I didn't have to get up
: watching the little birds on the bird feeder
: admiring the beech tree, which is dropping beautiful orange-yellow leaves all over the garden
: catching up on my TLS reading (a new biography due out of Sybille Bedford, a review of Mantel Pieces (what 'strikes you... is just how brave she is'.), Kick in the Teeth, Britain's Black Past and Caste. Joint review of Let the People Pick the President Why do we still have the electoral college only mentions the books on the second page of the review! Least appealing title award goes to Lake of Urine.)

Now to Remember, Remember, which I forgot (!) is not the first book in the series.

Your thread is always full of BBs, Charlotte but I’m on my phone so I didn’t pick up any this time although the other Mark Harron series does sound good.

Thanks Meg, I'm impressed at your restraint on your phone!

I picked up Symphony for the City of the Dead as I need to/ want to return some library books. It's fascinating, if a little jarring in style in places (e.g. use of 'kids' instead of children keeps knocking me out of the narrative).

In later symphonies, however, Shostakovich often quoted the Revolutionary songs of his youth, songs he would have heard at funerals for Bolsheviks killed in action, songs his father would have sung as he marched on the tsar's Winter Palace. These were tunes known by everyone in the audience.

But we can never be certain exactly what he meant by them. Is he celebrating the Revolutionary cause or pleading for those who suffered later under the Russian Communist yoke-or both? And if we assume that every recognizable tune carries a valuable secret message, then what pre cisely does Shostakovich mean when, in his intense Second Cello Concerto, he quotes an Odessan jingle called "Pretzels, Buy My Pretzels"?

Pretzels, eh? Maybe he was referring to the salt mines - can't eat pretzels without salt.

My library has a copy, Charlotte, so I hope to be able to pick it up soon.

I quite enjoyed Symphony for the City of the Dead. I think it may be intended for a YA audience?

>177 ffortsa: I think his point is (at some length) that it's impossible to know quite what the composer intended.

>178 BLBera: That makes sense, Beth. It reminds me of biographies I read as a kid, completely unafraid to throw in quick judgemental comments about complex background stuff. Makes for much quicker reading.

I've picked up The Burning - it's a netgalley e-copy, and I thought I was late with the review as I've seen others have read it.
However, according to netgalley only comes out in the UK next January.

We are all knowing what is happening to girls who are displeasing police, like Laddoo, our young hijra sister who was going to the police to report harassment from a constable, and was herself put in the lockup. There she is staying for days and days. Many years ago I would have been asking why is this happening? But now I am knowing that there is no use asking these questions. In life, many things are happening for no reason at all. You might be begging on the train and getting acid thrown on your face. You might be hiding in the women's compartment for safety and getting kicked by the ladies.

To wrap up October: weirdly I seem to have had an inadvertent ghostly / haunted theme, not intentional as I'm not a big fan of the thing - as one of my friends put it, you spend the whole time telling kids not to talk to strangers, until one night of the year when it's ok to go and ask them for sweets...

Minor Detail a book I read for the Borderless Book Club. The big insight I took from the discussion of the book with the translator was the author's focus on balancing the two halves of the book (she took 12 years to write it). Initially they appear completely different: one is a very clinical discussion of an army officer's daily routine in the 1940s defending Israel's new borders. The second is a Palestinian woman attempting to investigate a historical death (murder) of a Bedouin woman decades before. Then you start noticing the links, from the dust that creeps in everywhere to the spiders' webs. Members of the group who were really paying attention (not me) noticed the reappearance of certain terms, too.

Her Halloween Treat - some light romantic reading, highlight of this one for me was the 80s themed wedding the heroine attends, genius idea.

Sheets beautifully drawn YA story of an outsider teen who is holding her family together after her mum dies. Another outsider is looking for some answers and breaks out for the land of the living to try and find them. It seemed like the author was trying to fit too much in here: grief, a plot about someone trying to take over the laundromat, ghosts, and a romantic interest. This is the start of a series (with the next book out next year).

A Month in Siena short book based on Matar's love of painting and stay in Italy to explore a particular tradition of art. The small hardback includes beautiful reproductions of (most of) the art he discusses. Of course, lots of it is not really about the art but about what it means to him, what it is like to be in an Italian city as an outsider. Rather nice to read, especially at the moment when travel is not possible.

The Duke Effect I pre-ordered this, so think I can blame the Smart Bitches Trashy Books website.

Crazy Stupid Bromance third in a series that riffs off romantic novels but flips the gender of the reading group.

"I tried to talk to her," Noah protested. "She won't listen to me."
Mack snorted and looked at Malcolm. "what would you say is your pet peeve about poorly crafted romance novels?"
Malcom crossed his arms. "That would be when two adult characters avoid having a grown-up conversation that could change the course of the story."

Happy Sunday, Charlotte. I loved A Burning. It will end up being one of my favorite novels of the year. I am glad to hear you have an e-galley and I hope it is also a winner for you.

>176 charl08: Interesting read, Charlotte, sadly not available in Dutch.

I love the music by Shostakovich, he was a very talented composer.
We will never know exactly what he ment with using some popular tunes. All I know it that his music always touches me emotionally.

>182 msf59: I'm about half way through and it's great so far, Mark.

>183 FAMeulstee: I've been listening to a bit of his music but have a lot more to listen to.

>179 charl08: Oh, I was just trying to be a little snarky. Not my best trick.

We are at the point in our long audio class on music where the discussion is about Russian Nationalism in music. The session we listened to today was centered on Mussorgsky and Glinka. Shostakovich will come along quite soon.

>185 ffortsa: Sorry! I missed that. There are so many different interpretations possible highlighted in the book, and no one seems to agree. I imagine your course lecturers will have a lot to say.

I went for a walk yesterday.
It was quite wet and miserable.



Then I woke up this morning and unloaded the dishwasher. As I reached for the bovril, my back went.
Ouch.

Sorry about the back, Charlotte. I blame the bovril, though I don't know what it is... :)

>187 charl08: So sorry your back is troubling you again, Charlotte.
I hope it feels better soon!

>188 katiekrug: Katie, Bovril is great on toast. I'm not a fan of it as a drink.
These guys aren't either.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xEhSyM3u0vI

I blame the dishwasher. I want one of those fancy AEG ones that have a bottom shelf you can load without stooping.

>189 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita. Major bonus of working from home I don't scare anyone when yelping without warning.

Thinking of all of you in the US today, hope that everything goes peacefully.

Updated map following Last Night in Nuuk (also published as Crimson)


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

>187 charl08: ouch, i hope you feel better Charlotte.

Charlotte, do you have a physiotherapist who could help right now? Back pain is the worst. How about a heating pad, in the meantime?

>191 charl08: So do I!

HI Charlotte, Hope you are feeling better today. Back pain is horrible. Take care!

>193 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline. With great timing my new wheat heat pad arrived today.

>194 jessibud2: Nope! I have not had much joy with physio. With the exception of the guy who told me to do the chicken thing with my neck, which totally fixed my RSI problem. I am thinking I need to start pilates again. Thank you NHS... https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/nhs-fitness-studio/chronic-back-pain-pilates-exerc...

>195 rosalita: Crossing fingers and toes.

>196 mdoris: Thanks Mary. I probably should learn to leave the leaves where they fall...

I hope the back improves and that the Bovril was worth it.
I found that my back is a lot better when I do yoga, all those twists and stretches really get into the lower spine and glutes and sort me out. It's about finding what works for you.

>197 charl08: oh i love my wheat heat pad. It lives permanently on the radiator in winter. Hope its helped Charlotte. The chicken exercise sounds impressive.

Help! Does anyone have any experience of choosing an online conference delivery tool (eg like Crowdcast?) Recommendations welcome.

>199 Helenliz: Thanks Helen. I used to go to classes, but got out of the habit.(I identify with the Nationwide ad featuring yoga classes at home, also).

>200 Caroline_McElwee: The new one came with lavender and is much smellier than anticipated. Hoping that it will calm down a bit!

We used Zoom webinar when we did our AGM online. I can e-mail you our crib sheet, what worked, what didn't if that would help at all.

>203 Helenliz: I hadn't thought of using zoom, thanks for the offer, Helen, that would be great.

Finished The Pear Field - good timing given that launch is tomorrow night...
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-pear-field-online-launch-with-nana-ekvtimishv...

Join author Nana Ekvtimishvili and renowned critic Maya Jaggi for the online launch of The Pear Field. In partnership with The Book Hive.

We are thrilled to announce our virtual book launch for The Pear Field, in partnership with The Book Hive, Norwich. Writer Nana Ekvtimishvili will be joined by renowned critic Maya Jaggi for this special event hosted by Maddie Rogers of Peirene’s Borderless Book Club, with readings from translator Elizabeth Heighway.

The Pear Field is acclaimed Georgian filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili’s debut novel. First published in 2015, it was awarded several prestigious literary prizes in Georgia and has also been published in Dutch and German, with reviewers praising the book as ‘delicate, heartrending, but completely unsentimental’ (Bayerischer Rundfunk) and ‘a moving debut’ (Norddeutscher Rundfunk).

Beautifully translated by Elizabeth Heighway, the novel centres around eighteen-year-old Lela, who lives in the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children. Languishing on the outskirts of Tbilisi, the school is run-down and chronically underfunded, home to a motley group of other children who are either orphans or have been abandoned by their parents. Interspersing vivid snapshots from Lela’s past with the turbulent present, Ekvtimishvili paints an unflinching picture of post-Soviet Georgian life, as experienced by those on the margins of society.

Updated map - now with Georgia (at least, according to the app)


Create Your Own Visited Countries Map

>201 charl08: My firm's graduate recruitment team uses Zoom for all its events now. Multiple speakers from all over the place and it seems to work well. There are also breakout rooms possible. I think a lot of people have become familiar with it this year, so that might be helpful for the speakers.

Sorry to hear about your back, Charlotte. I hope the new head pad works (and stops being quite so scented).

>207 susanj67: Thanks Susan. I am really interested in what everyone is doing differently, as well as for the work reasons. I have just finished watching a book launch with speakers from London, Berlin and Cape Town, whilst under my duvet and contemplating a piece of cheesecake.
It's hard to beat that level of comfort (even if the sound did go a bit funny several times).

I now know where Georgia is on the map. I should probably look into a world map jigsaw or some other map based educational game aimed at 10 year olds.

>208 charl08: I was just going to tell you where Georgia was, Charlotte. Glad you found out by yourself ;-)

>209 FAMeulstee: Good to know I can call on you in a future map jigsaw emergency, Anita :-)

In case anyone is looking for a distraction from the other thing happening just now.

Penguin news bombshell:

Gentoo penguins are four species, not one
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54817124

>211 charl08: Thank you, Charlotte, I could use some distraction.

In other penguin news, a friend has recently started a venture making felted bird decorations. These were for me.

>212 FAMeulstee: Also not politics or COVID related:

World Puddle Jumping Competition https://youtu.be/Zgrl9_BO1m4

(*Cuteness overload warning*)

>213 Helenliz: How many could I fit on one small tree, do you think?

>213 Helenliz: Those are adorable!

Morning, Charlotte! I am slowly trying to catch up on the threads. I have added SO many books to my list from your threads.

>162 charl08: I recently read Square Hauntings and loved it as much as you did. Excellent review - I wish Virginia Wolff could have finished her new history as it would have been full of fabulous. Like you, I came away with a bunch of books mentioned in its pages that I am wanting to track down - I purchased Nineteenth-Century Fiction and the Production of Bloomsbury by Matthew Ingleby (listed in the bibliography) as a jumping off point. There are some charming rudimentary hand-drawn maps in it, but I was hoping for more of them and for more detail in them. LOVE me some maps. I also picked up Medieval People by Eileen Powers, which was free on Kindle.

Hoping that your back is feeling much better. Perhaps the Bovril could remain within reach just in case.

Book delivery! New translation collection arrived today.

>216 Crazymamie: Mamie! How lovely to see you. Yes isn't Square Haunting brilliant. I'm so glad you enjoyed it too.

Now reading The Adventures of China Iron

It’s difficult to know what you remember, is it what actually happened? Or is it the story that you’ve told and re-told and polished like a gemstone over the course of years, like something that has lustre but is as lifeless as a stone? If it weren’t for my dreams, for the recurring nightmare I have where I’m a grubby barefoot girl again, with nothing to my name but a sweet little puppy and a few ragged clothes; if it weren’t for the thump I feel here in my chest, the tightness in my throat on the rare occasions that I go to the city and see a skinny, bedraggled little creature hardly there at all; basically, if it weren’t for my dreams and the trembling of my body, I wouldn’t know that what I’m telling you is true.

>219 charl08: Oooh, the big block quote text is back. I wonder if that's on purpose or a bug when they switched the font? I like that it's set off from regular text, but it could maybe bump down a point or two for my taste.

>220 rosalita: Yes, I wondered what I'd hit by mistake!

Totally going to be using the "non-zero number" when someone asks how many books I've bought recently...

>222 charl08: On holiday in 2001 we stayed near Boston, Massachusetts with friends of my partner, Mike. I bought a lot of secondhand books which I left piled up in the room we were sleepiing in. A twelve year old daughter of the house counted them all and asked why there was an odd number - she felt that I should at least have bought a round number.

I quite liked her way of thinking though as it actually meant buying at least 3 more. Or 13 more, etc.

>222 charl08: as it should be. *nods knowingly*

>223 elkiedee: reminds me of someone who thinks you should only buy items in powers of 2. Which is OK for 2 or 4, but going to 8 or 16 is sometimes a bit of a stretch!

>223 elkiedee: >224 Helenliz: I didn't know the even number books was a thing. I'd have tried it before...

>223 elkiedee: >224 Helenliz: >225 charl08: I always aim for uneven numbers, preferably prime numbers.

>226 FAMeulstee: That made me laugh as I think the number of books was a prime number. There are some quite big gaps between those as well,

>226 FAMeulstee: >227 elkiedee: I'm tempted to ask how this affects your thingaversary purchases.

Now reading Death going Down, Argentinian crime.

>227 elkiedee: LOL! There were times in the previous century I would come home with books in large (prime) numbers ;-)
So you had 7 books, and the girl said it should be a rounded number like 10 or 20?

>228 charl08: You can always buy a few more, Charlotte.
And "preferably prime numbers" doesn't mean I always succeed.

>230 FAMeulstee: I was guilty of rounding up this weekend already as I bought 17 books (a nice prime number) and saw three books I liked on my way out of the store so I finished up with 20!

A leopard can never change it's spots!

Have a lovely weekend, Charlotte.

>230 FAMeulstee: Hahahaha. I think the number ended in a 7 and M thought it should be a number ending in 0. But if we were talking 7 or 17, I wouldn't have been avoiding mentioning the actual number.

In 2000 I got on the internet at home and joined a very good crime fiction discussion group and discovered lots of authors. Massachusetts offered many opportunities to buy books from a newly discovered series or 3 and other books which new online friends had mentioned that weren't available to buy here. Some US bookshops sold both new and used books and had really big secondhand selections, and there were some amazing converted barns. Sadly, Kate's Mystery Bookstore near Cambridge Massachusetts shut a few years ago. like many on specialist shops on both sides of the Atlantic, and the owner Kate Mattes died a year or two ago (in her 80s I think). I did get some new books but I think the vast majority were secondhand.

>231 PaulCranswick: Please don't ever change your spots, Paul! I'm quite fascinated by big cats. A few years ago I had a spell of finding the boys lots of really brilliant cuddlies in charity shops. Conor has a whole collection of tigers, lions and a leopard cub. We had zoo membership for a few years and always went to see if the tigers were visible.

>230 FAMeulstee: >231 PaulCranswick: >232 elkiedee: Lovely to hear about book outings, regardless of the numbers.

>205 charl08: Thanks for posting this review of a Georgian novel. My closest friend Ruta spent several recent years in Georgia, first with the Peace Corps and then on her own, developing a non-profit to help the disabled. I forwarded the review to her. It must be very difficult to translate from the Georgian, a language quite sui generis. Ruta knows Russian and was able to get by since most Georgians still speak it, but the native language is still beyond her.

Quick side story. Jim and I were going to spend a week in Prague and a week in Tbilisi, Georgia and the surrounding area a few years ago, during the spat between Ukraine and Russia, and we went to a nearby travel agent to make flight plans. She couldn't understand why we wanted to fly to Prague and from there directly to Georgia (the state) instead of coming home first. Oy. She thought Tbilisi was some small town in the south. After we clarified, she attempted to route us from Prague to Tbilisi first on a Ukrainian flight, then on a flight through Moscow, and finally on a Polish flight. She couldn't imagine why we were reluctant to fly on a plane the Russians or Ukrainians might shoot down.

>234 ffortsa: I enjoyed listening to the author speak online - she was amazing, talking about her experience making films, growing up in Georgia and the pressures to leave (amongst many other topics).

Some short reviews.


Last Night in Nuuk - also published by Virago as Crimson, this translated novel has been praised as an own voices account of growing up LGBT in Greenland. There's a lot of booze, poor decision-making and regret, and I did wonder if I would have enjoyed this more if I'd read it twenty years ago.

I was an enigma to my friends. They didn't know which box to put me in. When they began to question me, I began to question them. I began to question why they called me into question. my parents, siblings and family began to be uncertain about me. they were uncertain about who I was. Since my family were uncertain about me, I bega nto be uncertain about myself. I was uncertain about why they were uncertain about me.

The Pear Field
I read this latest book from Peirene with the spur of the event with the author coming up. I've not been that much of a fan of the latest series from Peirene, the focus on outsiders, with a key theme of isolation and loneliness coming through, has proved a bit close to the bone during lockdown. However, this one was a great read, despite (like Korneliussen's book) being centred around young people. In the UK, the collapse of Romania was followed by a lot of attention on the institutional homes for children, their neglect being followed by tv crews, with public adoption and donations. I hadn't realised that this was also the case in Soviet states. The author grew up next to an institution like the one in this book, which we see through the eyes of one of the former students (Lela) who has never left - she has nowhere to go. Viewed as 'idiots' the residents are not only abandoned by family but vulnerable to abuse and neglect in the home. Lela tries to find a new family for one of the young residents who has been abandoned by his mum when she emigrated for work. The city around them is struggling too.

Set slightly back from the path next to the cemetery is a long, nine-storey tower block. The right half has been almost completely destroyed. There are only outer walls left now, blackened hollowed shells. Lela can see right through the building and out the other side. At first glance, it looks derelict, but then she sees people are still living the other half: on the balconies she spots laundry, strings of onions, garlic bulbs and saffron crocuses, old pairs of tights full of unshelled hazelnuts stuffed in for storage. And the whole building seems to be listing, as if slowly sinking into the ground under the weight of its remaining inhabitants.

His Grumpy Childhood Friend Continuing an 'own voices' theme in (some of ) my romance reading.

Death Going Down Argentinian crime fiction from the 1950s. German emigrants and their histories during the Nazis are key here, when a young woman is found dead in the lift of an apartment building.

Now listening to Henrietta Who?

Happy Sunday, Charlotte. It looks like you are enjoying your current reads. We are not only elated by the election results but we are also loving this beautiful stretch of weather.

>238 msf59: Thanks Mark. A long wait!

>205 charl08: and >234 ffortsa: I read quite a good novel by Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies about 3 years ago (would have guessed more recently) with a dual storyline, present and historical. The present day character is a Sudanese woman living in the UK (Scotland?) like the author, but not necessarily the same - the historical story is about characters caught up in conflicts between 19th century Georgia and Russia, though I am struggling to remember the precise details of this bit of things (lots of disputed territory, borders, complex identities and shifting loyalties) it was an excellent read.

>241 elkiedee: Yes, I have that one on the shelf. I liked The Translator of hers.

ETA and her new one too in the TBR pile.

More reading carrying on -


from Rebel writers: accidental feminists which after a fairly gentle introductory chapter has gone all academic on me, and I'm wondering whether to carry on with it. I think it suffers with the comparison to the accessibility of Square Haunting.

Also reading The Adventures of China Iron - the postal copy never turned up, but the publishers kindly sent me a replacement e version. I've not got far yet, but early section is fascinating historical novel told by a young woman who was abandoned by her family in a settler camp in Argentina.

I've read one of the Verzet collection of translated Dutch short stories, by authors previously not available in English.

I really loved the first one by Karin Amatmoekrim, Reconstruction

including stories about living on the fringes of Dutch society, and on the role of the reader too.
https://www.strangers.press/product-page/verzet-full-set

Far away from here, he lives in a wooden hut built from rough planks and a corrugated iron roof. A bed only just fits inside. Next to it is a small chest, upon which he puts his Koran. There's a shelf above the bed, with photos that curl at the edges. And beside these a row of books, books I have written. Books that, for this reason, also bear his name. He shows them to everyone who visits. I don't dare to ask if he's read them.

Listening to Henrietta Who via Borrowbox.

This week I need to pick up Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race which the work bookgroup have chosen, and The Book of Cairo which the online book group will be discussing.

Hello, Charlotte! That is a shame about Rebel Writers - I had that one on my list. Depending on your final thoughts, I might skip that one.

Love all the translation reading you are doing - that is a goal of mine for next year.

The Book of Cairo looks interesting.

It's a bit like after I finished the Sarah Churchwell book about Gatsby, I think, Mamie. All other NF suffered by comparison.

I do think it's really hard to do this genre well: you have to be able to write well enough to stand up to your quotes in comparison, to know enough history to be smart but not over complicate the writing, and to know the lives of the writers well enough to make the kind of comparisons that don't insult the reader in their banality.

Fingers crossed Sarah Churchwell has another one in the pipelines.

>245 charl08: Oh! I read that one on your recommendation, and it was so well done. And you are right that Square Hauntings sets up the same dilemma for other books on the same subject. Agree with all your thoughts on writing for this genre. And also I want to learn something I didn't already know, especially the small stuff, if that makes sense.

>246 Crazymamie: Totally agree re the small things. There were some lovely ones about living in London 100 years ago in Square Haunting. The invitation to dancing in the kitchen struck me as something I'd like to recreate.

I read the second Verzet book Thank You for Being with Us by Thomas Heerma van Voss. This was two short stories 'The Massage Parlor' and 'Thank you for Being With Us '.


The first one reminded me of some of the shut-in stories I've read through the borderless book club, stories centred on people who are barely connecting with the outside world. Here a young student becomes obsessed with the door of the massage parlour opposite, speculating about who the clients are. The second, longer story follows the father of a writer who has written a 'tell all' book about his family relationships. Invited to speak on TV with his son, the father hopes for a kind of reconciliation.

All of a sudden everyone looks at Egbert. Koen, the audience, the host, the cameramen, dozens of eyes focus on him. As if he'd been given the floor in court , a lawyer given the last chance to plead for his client's exoneration. But it's Egbert who's accused. And how can he defend himself without knowing exactly against what?

Ah, my library has Square Haunting but I can't get ti until I return something in my e-list. We are going to the country this weekend, and I should get some good reading done there, so maybe next week!

Time for a new thread I think.

>250 ffortsa: Have a good trip! I'm still stuck at home. It could definitely be worse.