Ursula reads some things

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Ursula reads some things

1ursula
Jan. 1, 2022, 7:42 am

Hello everyone in Club Read Land!

After a few days' worth of thought, I'm going to try to maintain a thread in this group as well as the 75ers. The reasons being: I intend to clutter my 75er thread with other stuff (like my yearly listening project with my husband - essentially all of the "album of the year" lists we can find), and also to keep me coming over here to this group and participating on people's threads more.

So - Hi! Merhaba!

I'm Ursula, 50 years old in January. I'm an artist married to a mathematician (Morgan). We have lived in Istanbul since August 2020 - before that a long string of other places. We arrived with two cats and adopted one from the streets last March so our apartment is full! I have two grown children who live in the US: my son in Colorado and my daughter in Kentucky.

In reading, I am also mostly a wanderer, going where my interest in a cover, title or author takes me. I don't really read descriptions because I realized that they almost universally make a book sound terrible to me. I read from the 1001 Books list, and I am trying rather casually to read from various prizewinners. I'm limited by what I can get in digital form from the two US libraries I have cards at, so that can be annoying when I want something specific, but on the other hand - there are still plenty of books to keep me busy in their collections.

3ursula
Bearbeitet: Jun. 6, 2022, 6:46 am

READ IN 2022

January (Ocak)
—————————
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Wild Palms by William Faulkner ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Walking on the Ceiling by Ayşegül Savaş ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara ⭐️⭐️⭐️

February (Şubat)
—————————
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

March (Mart)
—————————
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib ⭐️⭐️1/2
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Funeral Rites by Jean Genet ⭐️⭐️⭐️
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
We Wrote in Symbols edited by Selma Dabbagh ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

April (Nisan)
—————————
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi ⭐️⭐️1/2

May (Mayıs)
—————————
The City & the City by China Miéville ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw ⭐️⭐️1/2
People Want to Live by Farah Ali ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami ⭐️⭐️1/2

June (Haziran)
Read Dangerously by Azar Nafisi ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Abandoned
Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison by Daniel Genis

4ursula
Jan. 1, 2022, 7:53 am

Here's a look at my reading last year, in pie charts and the like:



I started out strong and then trailed off, only finished 2-3 books a month in the last few months of the year.

5ursula
Jan. 1, 2022, 8:08 am

Bringing my last book of 2021 over here because it has relevance to January's Asian reading challenge focus area of Turkey.



I did it, I finished Three Daughters of Eve last night (30 Dec). What do I have to say about it? Not a lot, really. It's the story of Peri, a woman from Istanbul who also spent some time attending university at Oxford. The book is mostly split between chapters of her life in 2016 Istanbul and her time at Oxford in 2001. Something mysterious happened there, although it's not that mysterious since the mention of a scandal involving a professor is brought up quite early.

I don't know, mostly this was an innocuous if overwritten book. But there were some really strange choices, like having a couple of chapters late in the book entirely centered around the professor. I didn't care at that point, and the chapters were ... odd. But it was better for me than her The Bastard of Istanbul, which I abandoned.

6labfs39
Jan. 1, 2022, 11:52 am

Happy New Year, Ursula!

>4 ursula: Inquiring minds want to know: where did you get your Bechdel tests stats from? Is the pie chart an LT creation? I want one!

>5 ursula: Hmm. I have The Bastard of Istanbul in the queue for this month. Perhaps I should get a backup ready in case I have a similar reaction.

7BLBera
Jan. 1, 2022, 12:27 pm

Happy New Year, Ursula. Interesting comments on the Shafak. I liked The Bastard of Istanbul and will try some of her other books as well.

8ursula
Jan. 1, 2022, 12:30 pm

>6 labfs39: The Bechdel numbers are just part of what I fill in on my own spreadsheet of stats. I am not scientific about it, but if I can’t pretty quickly bring to mind any conversations that fit the bill, I assume there probably weren’t any.

I can’t say that you should definitely have another book on backup, but I am curious what others will think of their chosen Shafak books; what I’ve learned is that she isn’t an author for me.

9labfs39
Jan. 1, 2022, 1:09 pm

>8 ursula: Ah. It's an interesting metric, but not one that I want to track myself. Thankfully we don't all like the same books. Imagine how boring our conversations would be.

10arubabookwoman
Jan. 1, 2022, 2:33 pm

Hi Ursula and welcome to Club Read. I remember following your reading several years ago, and always enjoyed your reading reviews, your art, and descriptions of the interesting places you got to live--and now Istanbul!!
I too still maintain a thread in the 75 group, but it is so hectic over there I find it hard to keep up with people's threads, so I mostly hang out here.
Looking forward to following you here!

11ursula
Jan. 2, 2022, 12:15 am

>7 BLBera: I think she's been pretty successful, so some people obviously enjoy her books, good to hear you liked The Bastard of Istanbul! I will be curious to hear what you think if you do try another of hers.

>9 labfs39: A lid for every pot, as they say.

>10 arubabookwoman: Thank you! Yeah, I think the two groups are different enough that there is value in using them both. Good to see you again too. :)

12dchaikin
Jan. 2, 2022, 12:39 am

hi. I learned a similar lesson, that Shafak is not an author for me. For me it was 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, A Booker longlist book.

Also, following. And Istanbul sounds like a pretty amazing place to get to live.

13ursula
Jan. 2, 2022, 1:32 am

>12 dchaikin: Hi there! I didn't realize one of her books had made a Booker longlist. Interesting, but not tempting!

I feel lucky to get to live here, it's true. At the same time, I recognize it's not a city for everyone. It can be challenging.

14AlisonY
Jan. 2, 2022, 6:21 am

Happy New Year, Ursula! Looking forward to your reading this year.

15raton-liseur
Jan. 2, 2022, 10:18 am

Happy new year and welcome to CR ursula!

>5 ursula: It's an interesting view on Elif Shafak, even more coming from someone living in Istanbul.
I've read only one book by her, Black milk and did not want to try again despite the good reviews here and there. I'm happy to see I am not the only one who don't really like her reading.
I hope you'll have better reads in 2022 and will be happy to follow your thread!

16ursula
Jan. 3, 2022, 12:57 am

>14 AlisonY: Hello Alison! Good to see you here.

>15 raton-liseur: Welcome, and thanks! It's a shame about the Shafak since the library I use seems to have a bunch of her books. It's ironic to live in Istanbul and have a hard time finding Turkish authors but of course my Turkish is not up to reading anything but the most basic texts. I'm going to see if I can find any Turkish writers in English in second-hand bookstores here. (New books are kind of outrageously expensive.)

17ursula
Jan. 6, 2022, 11:59 am



The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (horror)

Four Native American (Blackfeet) friends kill some elk they shouldn't have killed, in a place they shouldn't have been hunting. Years later, it still haunts them in various ways - and then it starts to literally haunt them.

This book was really tense for the first half, and then it was kind of like coming down that first hill on a roller coaster. Everything's been set up, and it just gets carried by its own momentum.

The good: spooky stuff, some really gruesome deaths, a couple of unexpected turns.

The bad: there was a section near the end that kind of bored me although I guess I understand why it was there.

The hmmm: I feel like the ending left me a little unsatisfied. There was nothing wrong with it, and I feel like it was appropriate for the characters being Native American, so it's entirely possible others wouldn't have any problem with it whatsoever.

18RidgewayGirl
Jan. 7, 2022, 4:46 pm

Hi, Ursula, it's good to see you here. Apologies for getting to your thread so long after you'd started it, but now I see why people were talking about your reading statistics and how you displayed them. Looking forward to following your reading again this year.

19ursula
Jan. 8, 2022, 1:11 am

>18 RidgewayGirl: No problem at all, latecomers always welcome! (And it's just a week into the year anyway)

Yes, I enjoy the stats displays although this last year there wasn't as much variety in a lot of them as I would have liked. Didn't get to a lot of 1001 List books, didn't read much nonfiction, etc. But oh well, maybe I'll do better this year.

20ELiz_M
Bearbeitet: Jan. 8, 2022, 7:42 am

>19 ursula: 1001-books comprising 18% of read books is quite respectable.

21BLBera
Jan. 8, 2022, 9:18 am

>17 ursula: Not sure about this one, Ursula. I'm kind of squeamish, and "really gruesome deaths" doesn't sound good to me.

22ursula
Jan. 9, 2022, 12:50 am

>20 ELiz_M: When you put it that way....! I guess I have to learn to look at the numbers from a few different angles till I find one I like, haha.

>21 BLBera: Yep, sounds like horror is not for you!

23ursula
Jan. 10, 2022, 11:02 pm



The Wild Palms by William Faulkner (later published as If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem)

First line: "The knocking sounded again, at once discreet and peremptory, while the doctor was descending the stairs, the flashlight's beam lancing on before him down the brown-stained stairwell and into the brown-stained tongue-and-groove box of the lower hall."

Two narrative threads make up this book, one involving a convict sent to rescue people in a flood on the Mississippi and the other about a doctor (almost, he leaves before his internship is finished) who runs away with a married woman.

The two stories don't intersect in the plot, but they reflect and illuminate each other. As is typical of the few Faulkner books I've read, I spent a fair amount of time wondering what on earth was going on. This is partially because I kept having to set the book aside for days at a time when I started it, and Faulkner is not an author that works very well with. Once I was able to devote more steady time to it, it became somewhat easier reading.

"Given the choice between the experience of grief and nothing, I would choose grief."

It was interesting that this ended up having a thematic overlap with Red Clocks, which I started a couple of days ago. They share the topics of pregnancy, birth and abortion.

24arubabookwoman
Jan. 11, 2022, 10:17 am

>23 ursula: I've never heard of that Faulkner, but I think I will have to track it down and read it.

25ursula
Jan. 11, 2022, 11:02 am

>24 arubabookwoman: Are you a fan? I ... haven't read much, and I'm not sure what I think yet. :)

26BLBera
Jan. 11, 2022, 12:17 pm

I am a Faulkner fan, but I haven't read this one. I'll add it to my list. I might have a Faulkner year...

27arubabookwoman
Jan. 11, 2022, 12:21 pm

I am a fan, but I have only read his more well-known works: The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, Light in August, Intruder in the Dust, As I Lay Dying. I've also read Sanctuary, which is the only one I have disliked. I want to read The Snopes Trilogy which I have on my Kindle.

28japaul22
Jan. 11, 2022, 12:23 pm

>23 ursula: I'm a Faulkner fan, but haven't read this one either. The Sound and the Fury is my favorite of the 4 or so I've read. It's funny that I don't think I've seen Faulkner read or reviewed more than occasionally in the decade I've been on LT and this year he seems to be all over the threads I follow! Maybe I'm just noticing this year since I've been thinking about getting back into his novels.

29dchaikin
Jan. 11, 2022, 11:54 pm

>23 ursula: enjoyed your review. I'm really curious and have never read Faulkner

>28 japaul22: it's not just you, he's come up a lot on a few threads (including mine). I'm thinking about a CR group read, but a bit overwhelmed just now. So I'm thinking about March or maybe April. (But, honestly, I haven't anyone say, "yes, let's do that", so maybe).

30ursula
Jan. 12, 2022, 5:55 am

>26 BLBera: It's funny, it's just a random one we picked up at the Friends of the Library sale while we were in Fresno. I pretty much only kept books I couldn't get digitally from one of my libraries, so it came with us!

>27 arubabookwoman: I read Sanctuary as well. I definitely liked this one better. Morgan likes to remind me that I have The Sound and the Fury waiting for me since he read it a couple of years ago.

>28 japaul22: Funny how that works. I think it could be because it's on your mind, but it also could just be something in the collective unconscious. Kind of how names tend to become popular because everyone thinks they're being original. :)

>29 dchaikin: I would maybe be up for another Faulkner this year. I always say things like that and then 3 months later I'm like "what was I thinking". On the other hand, this could work out to be a year where I actually manage, like the year of the Steinbeckathon. So, let me know.

31ursula
Jan. 12, 2022, 10:02 am


Walking on the Ceiling by Ayşegül Savaş

First line: "For a short time when I lived in Paris, I was friends with the writer M."

I picked this one out from the library's digital collection just because I recognized the Turkish name. It's her debut novel, apparently, and now she has another one out, White on White. Anyhow, it's narrated by Nurunisa, called Nunu, who is from Istanbul and has come to Paris to go to school, except she does a soft dropout and just doesn't attend classes.

Instead, she takes walks with a British writer, M., with whom she engineers a meeting after one of his book signings. Literally, this is the book - she walks with him and they exchange stories. She tries to entice him with her stories of Istanbul (he wrote at least one book set there), partially her memories and observations, partially her mothers, and the rest some mix of those and fiction.

She learns some things about herself and how she has viewed her family, specifically her mother, but not much is overtly wrapped up. She muses and makes some somewhat poetic comments on things, but don't expect a lot of actual forward movement. If you're not looking for much to happen, you might enjoy this book.

I don't know if it's familiarity with one and not the other, or if it's intentional, but Istanbul feels like more of a presence in the book than Paris does even though most of the time Nunu is in Paris.

"This was a time when Istanbul’s name was popular around the world. Much was made of its diversity, the so-called meeting point of two worlds. All of a sudden, there were books upon books about Istanbul, its sad and glorious past—in these books, it seemed, Istanbul was always sad and glorious, as if the city had done nothing but decay from an unseen splendor."

32dchaikin
Jan. 12, 2022, 12:26 pm

>31 ursula: enjoyed this review, and sounds fun, like dipping a toe into contemporary Turkish literature.

33arubabookwoman
Jan. 12, 2022, 3:41 pm

>29 dchaikin: >30 ursula: I would love to sometime do a loosely organized "Faulkner Year". A number of years ago there was a Patrick White year, in Club Read I think. People just read what they wanted when they wanted by the author. Since I'm trying to do the Victorian reads this year as well as the Anniversaries group read, I'm a bit afraid of committing to Faulkner in addition this year, though I may end up reading something by him this year, and if some members start a group read of something by Faulkner this year I may try to join in.

34cindydavid4
Bearbeitet: Jan. 12, 2022, 10:29 pm

>8 ursula: interesting you should say that; I am reading Island of Missing Trees and while I want to continue reading since Im interested in the history if cyprus, I am stuck with her talking fig tree. I like magic realism but this just doesn't feel right. Your thoughts?

35ursula
Jan. 12, 2022, 11:25 pm

>33 arubabookwoman: Understandable that this may not be the year, although maybe we could revisit the idea in a few months and see if there starts to be a time window opening on the horizon. I won't read anything else by him for a while myself, my Turkish class is at a level that occupies most of my time right now.

>34 cindydavid4: I am stuck with her talking fig tree.

I'm sorry, but I really laughed at this. Mostly because I think the device in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is a dead prostitute in a dumpster, so this seems in Shafak's wheelhouse. Three Daughters of Eve thankfully didn't use any sort of thing like that. On the other hand, neither did The Bastard of Istanbul and I couldn't finish that one. I just think she's too much. Some people seem to have really good reading experiences with her books, but I think her writing touches something deeply ... annoying, for lack of a better word ... in those of us who don't like it.

36ursula
Jan. 16, 2022, 5:00 am



Red Clocks by Leni Zumas

I don't know that I've processed all the nuances of this one, but I really enjoyed it.

First line(s):

"Born in 1841 on a Faroese sheep farm,

The polar explorer was raised on a farm near


In the North Atlantic Ocean, between Scotland and Iceland, on an island with more sheep than people, a shepherd's wife gave birth to a child who would grow up to study ice."

Abortion is illegal, thanks to a Personhood Amendment, and Canada is not an escape because they will send you right back to the US if they suspect you are trying to get in to have an abortion. (The very idea of being forced to take a pregnancy test at the border ....) In addition, there's a new law coming into effect soon, Every Child Needs Two, which will prevent single parents from adopting or having in vitro fertilization.

The chapters alternate between different women in a small Oregon town - the chapters are headed by their roles (The Mender, The Wife, The Biographer, The Daughter), and there are also snippets from The Biographer's book, about a female polar explorer. You do eventually find out everyone's name, and it's a little difficult at first to understand the relationships as you're putting that together, but it makes sense pretty quickly. There's a lot of interplay between the way the chapter headings characterize each woman, how they characterize themselves, and how the world characterizes them.

There are lots of things to think about - what you want your role in life to be (do you want to be a mother or not) and how much of that role is determined by biology or society rather than your own actual wants (and how can you even begin to separate them), what is motherhood supposed to look and feel like, how do you support someone's decision when it is not the decision you desperately want them to make, what following your own path can cost you.

"Before having kids, she envisioned motherhood as a jubilant merging. She never thought she would long to spend time away from them. It is hideous to admit she can't bear the merging 24-7. Same guilt that's kept her from putting John in daycare: she doesn't want it to be true that she wants to be apart."

37dchaikin
Jan. 16, 2022, 3:29 pm

>36 ursula: For a book that I so far haven't been interested in, your review interests.

38AlisonY
Jan. 16, 2022, 3:30 pm

>36 ursula: I've seen a few favourably reviews on this book recently. One I'm interested in reading at some point.

39BLBera
Jan. 16, 2022, 4:33 pm

>36 ursula: Great comments, Ursula. I agree that there is a lot to think about in this novel. I'm glad you joined in.

40ursula
Jan. 17, 2022, 2:14 am

>37 dchaikin:, >38 AlisonY: The book wasn't on my radar at all until people started dropping out of the group read in the 75ers group, then it piqued my interest. :)

It was more affecting to me than The Handmaid's Tale, which I also loved, because there was no world-building in this one. It's not a future where a bunch of things had to happen to create this elaborate system. Only one thing had to happen - a Personhood Amendment. And we all know how uncomfortably close that feels.

>39 BLBera: I'm glad I did too!

41ursula
Jan. 26, 2022, 2:56 am

It's been a bit.

I've been in the middle of two very long books, one on purpose and one accidentally. My hold on Hanya Yanagihara's new book To Paradise came in, and like A Little Life, it's 700 pages long. Then I thought I would read another book for the month's Turkey theme, and chose Pamuk's A Strangeness in My Mind, which for some reason I thought was 400 pages long when I started it. Instead, it's 600.

I've also been in the middle of this:



That was the day before yesterday. Today it's an ice field out there, which is not a good combination with the many hills and stairs of the city. So our Turkish class is cancelled for the whole week - which might seem like I have tons of time to read, but really means that I'm trying to get the same amount of time of Turkish study in on my own, at least. It's a challenge.

42Dilara86
Jan. 26, 2022, 4:18 am

The snow in Turkey and Greece made the news where I live. I hope you're not too inconvenienced. Good luck for your week of Turkish self-study!

43ursula
Jan. 26, 2022, 8:37 am

>42 Dilara86: Oh yeah? Interesting. I believe it snows every/most years, we got a decent amount of snow last year in February. I think though that where I am didn't get hit as hard as some other parts of the city. As I was looking at the radar map, the heavier snow was definitely concentrated to the east of us.

44BLBera
Jan. 26, 2022, 10:47 am

I really liked A Strangeness in My Mind, the only Pamuk I've read! How was the Yanagihara? I'm thinking that will be a post-semester read.

45dchaikin
Jan. 26, 2022, 1:42 pm

Well, it’s really pretty. Sorry about all the inconvenience. And good luck with the tomes books.

46RidgewayGirl
Jan. 26, 2022, 4:45 pm

In the American South, when any kind of inclement weather threatens, everyone runs to the store to stock up on milk and bread. Is there an equivalent panic food in Turkey?

And if a book is good, the longer the better. May you be enjoying both.

47wandering_star
Jan. 26, 2022, 11:45 pm

>41 ursula: That looks beautiful - although I am sure it is not very convenient for daily life.

I have only been to Istanbul once. It was over Christmas and within a few days we had beautiful sunshine and a few inches of snow! So I can sympathise with what you mean about the steep roads and steps.

48ursula
Jan. 27, 2022, 12:30 am

>44 BLBera: I'm enjoying A Strangeness in My Mind, although I'm only about 30% in at the moment. As for the Yanagihara, I'm enjoying it, but not through it yet! It reminds me a bit of Cloud Atlas.

>45 dchaikin: It is really pretty. At the moment, less so since it's mostly frozen slush and outright ice. Every day it's been just about 1C, and the sun helps with melting, but then the nights are below freezing. Not the best combination!

>46 RidgewayGirl: Hmm, an interesting question. It's a little hard to know because 1. restocking can be chaotic in general (sometimes they'll just be out of stock for weeks on something they normally have) and 2. with the lira losing value lots of things get bought up in cycles right before prices get raised again. But in general I don't think we've seen anything like that - partially driven by the fact that people live in tiny apartments, there isn't a lot of refrigerator/freezer space!

>47 wandering_star: It is definitely not convenient for life. There are very few cars on the road, universities and schools are closed for the week. Ah yeah, if you've experienced snow here you can imagine. It is usually fine, but the freezes every night have been a problem. There are some roads I definitely would not want to be walking on. Our neighborhood is at the top of a hill, so when we went to the post office yesterday, we timed it for when the sun had been out to melt some of the ice.

49raton-liseur
Jan. 27, 2022, 5:34 am

>41 ursula: What a nice photo! Maybe you should pick another book by Pamuk and read Snow?
It's not the prefered Pamuk, both in the asia challenge group and for myself, but it seems timely!

50ursula
Bearbeitet: Jan. 27, 2022, 6:25 am

>49 raton-liseur: Thanks for the thought, but I've already read Snow!

A Strangeness in My Mind is my 5th Pamuk, after that one, Istanbul, The Museum of Innocence and My Name Is Red.

51raton-liseur
Jan. 27, 2022, 10:56 am

>50 ursula: Too bad for the timeliness!
A Strangeness in my mind is great! Of the 3 Pamuk books I've read, I don't know which one I prefer, between My Name is Red and A strangeness in my mind (Snow being far behind).

52Linda92007
Jan. 27, 2022, 3:54 pm

>41 ursula: A Strangeness in My Mind goes on my list. Thank you, as I had not previously heard of it. I wasn't crazy about Snow, but did enjoy several of his nonfiction books, and still have My Name Is Red waiting.

53ursula
Jan. 28, 2022, 8:34 am

>51 raton-liseur: I actually chose this one because every night for a few months I've been hearing a bozacı out in our neighborhood. So it's timely in its own way.

Here's a video if you'd like to see and hear him:
https://www.icloud.com/photos/#05aeI9mJYeSuUYmEOtw13pG4A (you don't have to download, you just click on the lower preview to play it.)

>52 Linda92007: You're welcome! I think his work can be difficult. I am not finding this one difficult at all though.

54raton-liseur
Jan. 30, 2022, 9:22 am

>53 ursula: Nice anecdote, and thanks for the video! Is Turkish yogurt as good as it seems while reading the book?

55Nickelini
Jan. 30, 2022, 10:14 am

Just saying HI. I’ve fallen behind on reading threads but I’m caught up again

56ursula
Bearbeitet: Feb. 1, 2022, 1:18 pm



To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

First line: "He had come into the habit, before dinner, of taking a walk around the park: ten laps, as slow as he pleased on some evenings, briskly on others, and then back up the stairs of the house and to his room to wash his hands and straighten his tie before descending again to the table."

Hm.

I really loved A Little Life. I devoured it, and even though I know it was something like 700 pages long, it never felt like it dragged.

To Paradise is also 700 pages long, and I was aware of just how long it was. It begins in New York, in 1893, but you quickly become aware that this is not our New York in 1893, either through the text or because you paid attention to the maps provided at the front of the book. The US doesn't exist; instead there are The Free States (New England minus Maine and plus Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware), The Colonies (the south), The West (California, Oregon and Washington), America is the upper midwest extending to Nevada, etc. I don't even know why I typed all of that out, because most of it doesn't matter except in a tangential way. The story is set in New York, period. I'm starting to realize maybe I typed all that out because it's more interesting than a lot of what goes on in the book.

But more on that in a second, because the first part of the book was actually the best. David Bingham is the scion of one of the venerable families of the Free States, but he seems to lack direction and ambition. His grandfather is trying to get him married off (to a man, same sex marriage is totally acceptable), but David finally grows a backbone and starts making his own decisions.

Then the second part begins, and the setting is the same, except now it's the 1980s and our David Bingham is a paralegal. Presumably the same person on a different timeline, as he shares characteristics with the first one. And then the setting is also Hawaii ... look, this section was, I believe, the shortest one, but it felt so long. I seriously considered abandoning the book in this part.

The third part is set again in New York, this time in the 2090s, and jumping from there back in time via letters. (Are you feeling resemblances to Cloud Atlas? Me too.) Pandemics have ravaged the world for 50 years or more, etc etc. Like in the second section, we see a lot of the same character names applied to different people.

Before these comments also get to be 700 pages long, let me just say this: I kept reading because there are moments when Yanagihara's writing really swept me up like it did in her previous novel. Also because I felt like the first section was strong, and the last one definitely had its moments. But you can seriously skip that middle section and miss nothing at all.

I can't really recommend it, even though I think I'm going to give it 3 stars just on the basis of the writing. I can, however, recommend that you read Cloud Atlas if you haven't.

"And yet sometimes, on those summer nights, he thought he knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to be somewhere between where he was, in a bed dressed in expensive cotton sheets next to the man he had grown to love, and on the street, skirting the edge of the park, squealing and clinging to his friends when a rat darted from the shadows inches from his feet, drunk and wild and hopeless, his life burning away, with no one to have dreams for him, not even himself."

57labfs39
Bearbeitet: Feb. 1, 2022, 9:51 am

>56 ursula: Wonderful review. Sorry the book wasn't as good as your review!

P.S. Your touchstone goes to a different book.

58ursula
Bearbeitet: Feb. 1, 2022, 1:19 pm

>57 labfs39: thanks, on both counts! I copied the review from my 75er thread and forgot to fix the touchstone here. I’ll edit when I’m on my computer. Done!

59AlisonY
Feb. 1, 2022, 4:01 pm

>56 ursula: Oh good to read this review. I also loved A Little Life, but this sounds tedious. I'd maybe take a risk if it was shorter, but not at 700 pages.

Thanks for taking one for the team!

60BLBera
Feb. 1, 2022, 9:14 pm

Great comments on To Paradise, Ursula. I'll have to think about that one. I loved Cloud Atlas. Maybe I'll just read that again.

61ursula
Feb. 1, 2022, 11:50 pm

>59 AlisonY: I don’t know, wait and see what other people have to say. I might have just been impatient with its flaws.

>60 BLBera: I am definitely curious what others will say about it. It definitely suffers from the comparison to Cloud Atlas, but most things would.

62arubabookwoman
Feb. 2, 2022, 10:24 pm

>56 ursula: I have this on hold from the library but probably won't receive it for a month or so. I'll probably read it despite your lukewarm review, and despite the fact that Cloud Atlas is one of my favorite books. I haven't read A Little Life , though I have it on my shelf, but I did enjoy another book by the same author that I did read, The People in the Trees.

63ursula
Feb. 3, 2022, 1:21 am

>62 arubabookwoman: I’m glad you will read it anyway! My opinion could have been colored by many things that yours won’t be. I’ll be interested to see what you think.

64lisapeet
Feb. 3, 2022, 1:52 pm

>56 ursula: Good review. I didn't care for A Little Life and haven't made any motions to pick this one up, but I appreciate hearing other people talk about it.

65ursula
Feb. 4, 2022, 6:16 am

>64 lisapeet: I'm pretty sure I read more reviews of books I'm not interested in reading than of ones I am interested in. (But that's because it's my personal preference to go into a book knowing as little as possible.)

66ursula
Feb. 4, 2022, 1:22 pm

I just realized I missed responding to a couple of posts up here, sorry!

>54 raton-liseur: I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Turkish yogurt is known in the rest of the world as Greek yogurt, much to the chagrin of Turks. The word yogurt is from Turkish, in fact. (They say yoğurt though.)

>55 Nickelini: "Hi" is always appreciated! The beginning of the year is always hard I think. I also sometimes read threads and don't realize for a while that I didn't actually post anything on them on any of my visits. An accidental lurker, if you will.

67ursula
Feb. 6, 2022, 12:41 am

Off topic (is there really a topic?), my daughter sent me this:

68Nickelini
Bearbeitet: Feb. 6, 2022, 3:59 am

>67 ursula: As someone who's been with my Italian husband for 32 years, I find this amusing. And also puzzling. I have to say, after eating his family's food, and after 5 trips to Italy, and after watching this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/italiasquisita (Italian chefs make Italian food, and they critique popular chefs from the UK and US attempting to make Italian food), and https://www.youtube.com/c/PastaGrammar (an adorable couple where the husband is a confused clueless American and his VERY Italian wife sets him straight) . . . I have to say, I'm having less and less tolerance for typical North American Italian food, even when everyone is raving how authentic it is. Mostly it has way too much salt, and insane amounts of garlic, and too much cheese.

But what puzzles me the most about this chart is that only 82% of Italians say that eating pasta with ketchup is wrong. I'm going to say that the other 17% don't actually know what ketchup is, and the other 1% has a medical condition where they can't actually taste anything.

69ursula
Feb. 6, 2022, 4:16 am

>68 Nickelini: But what puzzles me the most about this chart is that only 82% of Italians say that eating pasta with ketchup is wrong. I'm going to say that the other 17% don't actually know what ketchup is, and the other 1% has a medical condition where they can't actually taste anything.

My husband suggested that maybe the 18% are all from Trentino-Alto Adige/Süd Tirol.

70wandering_star
Feb. 6, 2022, 5:30 am

>67 ursula: this is great!

71SandDune
Feb. 6, 2022, 7:05 am

>67 ursula: I have to say that most of the 'Unacceptable' and 'Divisive' to Italians sections are unacceptable to me as well but I have to confess that I do occasionally have a cappuccino after a meal. I know I'm not supposed to, I know you're not supposed to drink it after midday, but I do like cappuccino ... And I have been known to have garlic bread with lasagne as well, but not with other sorts of pasta.

72ursula
Feb. 6, 2022, 10:10 am

>70 wandering_star: Glad you liked it!

>71 SandDune: Yeah I feel like most of those are pretty much a "no" for me too. Except pineapple. I enjoy a good Hawaiian pizza. Living in Italy got me right out of the cappuccino habit. When my son visited, he learned to enjoy a macchiato since he likes his coffee with milk but also didn't want funny looks. And that one anyway is one that I've seen Italians themselves break.

73ursula
Feb. 6, 2022, 10:43 am


The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

First line(s): "I wake up, get out of bed, say good morning to my plant, unwrap a protein bar, and drink a liter of bottled water. I'm awake for five full minutes before remembering I might die today. When you get old, you get soft."

Finished this one today. If you're into horror (or pop culture, I guess), you'll know what a "final girl" is. She's the one who survives to the end of the movie and ends up confronting the killer. In this book, there are several of them who have been going to group therapy together for years, through the movie franchises spawned by their lives and their various responses to their trauma. But now one of them has been killed and it seems that a monster is back to finish them all off.

We see the story through the eyes of Lynnette, whose response to what happened to her has been to shut down. Like, literally and completely - taking circuitous routes to and from group, and never going anywhere else. Always sitting with her back against a wall. Never letting anyone know where she lives. Never letting anyone anywhere near her, physically or emotionally. So clearly she's doing just fine.

It's breezy, kind of trope-y, and fun if you're into that sort of thing (horror, I mean, not fun. I assume you're into fun). I probably would have enjoyed it more if I liked horror movies, which I do not. I like horror novels, but the movies not so much. But still, it was a good, twisty and turny sort of read.

"Final girls learned a long time ago not to rely on things other people take for granted. We all know that elevators and telephones never work when we need them."

74labfs39
Feb. 6, 2022, 10:49 am

>73 ursula: I don't read or watch horror, but the blurbs you posted make me think I would like her writing. A bit acerbic and funny.

75BLBera
Feb. 6, 2022, 12:03 pm

>67 ursula: That is great, Ursula. I agree with the catsup on pasta. Who would do that? I am also not a fan of pineapple on pizza.

76Nickelini
Feb. 6, 2022, 12:46 pm

>69 ursula: My husband suggested that maybe the 18% are all from Trentino-Alto Adige/Süd Tirol.

LOL. That's harsh ;-)

77ursula
Feb. 7, 2022, 1:02 am

>74 labfs39: It is ... but if you don't read horror because you don't want to read descriptions of gore, this might not be for you. It's not super lengthy or detailed in those descriptions, but it can certainly be ... creative. I mean, they're ridiculous because they're an homage to slasher films, but nevertheless each of the final girls has a horrific event in their past.

>75 BLBera: Who would do that?

I can't confirm for sure, but we had an Irish friend who seemingly had a bottle of ketchup as a best friend. It went on everything. So probably him.

>76 Nickelini: Harsh, but clearly funny. ;)

78Nickelini
Feb. 7, 2022, 1:11 am

>77 ursula: Harsh, but clearly funny. ;)

Indeed :-)

In 2019 (pre-Covid), we went to a local pub on a Saturday night and ended up partying with the locals in a Dolomiti village. They mostly spoke German, but my Italian-speaking husband did all the talking. They were appalled at what we were drinking, so bought us strange cocktails and shared their pizza. I can't disparage the Alto Adige! Also, they were celebrating some Medieval event, so were all dressed rather Tyrolian. It was true Rick Steves back door moment. (Also helped that my husband spoke one of their two languages)

79BLBera
Feb. 7, 2022, 8:48 am

My SIL puts catsup on his eggs, which is gross, but luckily we don't breakfast together often. Unfortunately, he's passing that habit to my granddaughter.

80ursula
Feb. 8, 2022, 1:39 am

>78 Nickelini: Morgan and I had a good time in Bolzano, which we visited in December for their Christmas market. Funny to have spent so much time working to communicate only to end up being greeted with "Güten Tag" and further unknown German. :) They would mostly switch to Italian (or English) eventually, but we had drinks at a bar where the counterwoman responded to everything we asked for in German.

>79 BLBera: I ... don't really voluntarily put ketchup on scrambled eggs, but I don't care if some (or a lot) from the hash browns ends up on them.

81ursula
Feb. 8, 2022, 1:49 am



Here's a random photo for you, a bakery near our house. Obviously not taken recently, since it's currently 8C and pouring rain. This was from the summer.

82labfs39
Feb. 8, 2022, 7:37 am

>82 labfs39: I love neighborhood bakeries!

83RidgewayGirl
Feb. 8, 2022, 9:22 am

>81 ursula: That's gorgeous. I really miss having a bakery just down the street (and another a few blocks in the other direction). Regarding Italy, we were in Venice, eating at a very nice restaurant with the kids and my son asked for ketchup. We saw the waiter run across to another restaurant to get a few packets of the stuff for my son. While our kids were very young, we'd take all our vacations in Italy because small children are so welcomed there. Our daughter, as a toddler, once got away from us at a pilgrimage site and we found her because some old women were audibly delighted by her wandering through the roped off part.

84BLBera
Feb. 8, 2022, 1:45 pm

Neighborhood bakeries are great!

85wandering_star
Feb. 8, 2022, 7:34 pm

>80 ursula: That dynamic reminds me of a weekend in Brussels I had with Mr w_s where I spoke French to everyone and he spoke Dutch (he learnt a bit when he lived in Amsterdam). Mostly he received icy looks and a response in French but there was one bar where the barman switched from offhand to extremely warm when he heard the Dutch.

86Nickelini
Feb. 8, 2022, 7:39 pm

>85 wandering_star: LOL That's a great story

87ursula
Feb. 9, 2022, 12:40 am

>82 labfs39:, >83 RidgewayGirl:, >84 BLBera: Who knew people loved tiny bakeries so much?

>83 RidgewayGirl: Yes, Italians are very indulgent of small children and dogs. (That sounds ... strange, but I'm sincere.) Our cattle dog, Penny, had the very best time in Italy and she was not particularly well-behaved.

>85 wandering_star: Oh man, I understand. When we lived in Gent, we learned some Dutch. Then we were at a restaurant in Brussels, menu in Dutch and French, and so we ordered in Dutch. The waiter refused to understand us, only answered in French, etc. As a last resort, we tried English - nothing.

A little while later a party of Chinese travelers came in and it turned out the waiter spoke English after all.

88Nickelini
Feb. 9, 2022, 1:11 am

>87 ursula: Oh man, I understand. When we lived in Gent, we learned some Dutch. Then we were at a restaurant in Brussels, menu in Dutch and French, and so we ordered in Dutch. The waiter refused to understand us, only answered in French, etc. As a last resort, we tried English - nothing.

A little while later a party of Chinese travelers came in and it turned out the waiter spoke English after all.


Oh, LOL, yes, travelling stories. Fun! Based only on my experiences in Europe from 1992 to 2021, I'm finding anyone who is in a service job speaks English more and more. But on my first trip, we checked into a hotel in Nice, France (probably a pensione) before the room was ready, and to hold the room, she wanted our passports. Yeah, no. So she asked for our luggage, but we had been traveling for weeks already, so our plan was to go to a laundry and wash all our clothes. We explained this but then freaked out about us Americans traveling the world and being so rude that we couldn't even speak another language (we're Canadian). My husband immediately switched to Italian and said "what are you talking about? You assume I don't speak another language?" and then I imagine he said a few choice words, but my Italian was terrible back then, so not sure. They had a conversation in Italian, we went and did our laundry, and she only spoke to us in Italian until we checked out. But that was 30 years ago. It's not like that now. I try to speak the local language as best I can, and they immediately speak English if they can. (But I'm still trying to do better)

89SandDune
Feb. 9, 2022, 3:37 am

>87 ursula: I remember we went to the Italian Lakes for a holiday when my son was 6 months old. He was a very blonde smiley baby and he got so much attention. Old ladies would literally pounce on him in the street. Being a pretty sociable baby, he loved it - he clearly wondered where all the attention had gone when we got back to the U.K.!

90ursula
Feb. 11, 2022, 12:03 pm


The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

First line: "My mother put on mismatched shoes and ran out of the house."

This is the first book I'm reading this month for the Asian Reading Challenge. February is the Holy Land.

The book is set in modern-day Jaffa. One day as the city awakens people start to realize that their Palestinian neighbors are not at work. They're not at home, either. In fact, they don't seem to be anywhere. There are no signs of violence; they're simply gone.

How do the Israelis react to this, as the days wear on and no explanation is forthcoming? Is it some sort of plan executed by the Palestinians, or maybe by the Israeli government itself?

There are a range of theories and reactions, as could be expected. Reflecting the bigger picture are the Israeli reporter Ariel and his missing Palestinian friend Alaa, whose diary Ariel reads. The diary mostly reflects Alaa's thoughts on his beloved grandmother and what she said about the nakba (the displacement of Palestinians in 1948).

The writing and/or the translation (see comment below about the translation) are not exactly flowing, but I was still very involved with the story. It's more of a set piece, an examination of the results of an inexplicable event than a from-here-to-there story.

A note about the translation: there are definite problems with the translation and editing - there are a fair number of typos, but more than that there are a lot of strange tense changes and other grammatical strangeness. Normally it might have made me frustrated, but I really wanted to find out what happened in the book so I read on.

Your Jaffa resembles mine. But it is not the same. Two cities impersonating each other. You carved your names in my city, so I feel like I am a returnee from history. Always tired, roaming my own life like a ghost. Yes, I am a ghost who lives in your city. You, too, are a ghost, living in my city. And we call both cities Jaffa.

Personal comments: I am sorry to say I've never read much about this part of the world. I feel like all my life there has been one prevailing narrative and as I learn more, I'm ashamed to have taken that at face value.

91LolaWalser
Feb. 11, 2022, 12:42 pm

>90 ursula:

Hi, Ursula, lovely thread.

I feel like all my life there has been one prevailing narrative and as I learn more, I'm ashamed to have taken that at face value.

Don't be too hard on yourself, the "prevailing narrative" is pushed by mighty forces. Your remark reminded me that a book I read not that long ago, Khirbet Khizeh, although published in Israel in 1949 and a classic (if controversial), hadn't even been translated into English until ten years ago or so. The author was a soldier who participated in the expulsion of Arabs from the eponymous village and the story shows that the Naqba was anything but peaceful or bloodless.

92ursula
Feb. 12, 2022, 1:36 am

>91 LolaWalser: Welcome, Lola! Thanks for that response. I doubt I can get my hands on that book, but it's good to know about it.

My lack of understanding about the naqba is bad enough, but honestly I feel even worse about not previously understanding how things are today/have been for my entire lifetime.

93BLBera
Feb. 13, 2022, 12:49 pm

>90 ursula: This sounds really interesting, Ursula, despite the translation issues. I will look for it. Yes, we have heard pretty much one side of the story here in the States.

94FlorenceArt
Feb. 13, 2022, 1:12 pm

>90 ursula: Hi Ursula! I’m worse than you in that I don’t even know how much I don’t know about this area, its history and current situation. My narrative is probably different from yours but just as biased. And I think I read one book by an Israeli author (can’t even remember his name) in my whole life. And none from a Palestinian one. The one you read sounds interesting.

95ursula
Feb. 14, 2022, 12:59 am

>93 BLBera: I think it's worth it, and maybe it's somewhat available - I checked it out of the Denver library.

>94 FlorenceArt: I am guessing the narrative you have been exposed to is probably similar.

96ursula
Feb. 14, 2022, 1:04 am

One of the things that happens in the book is that all flights in Tel Aviv are suspended. Someone in the book wonders why, since Palestinians can't even work at the airport.

I asked my Palestinian classmate about this, and he just nodded through the description, waiting for presumably what my question was.

"That's true - you can't work at the airport?" I asked him.
"Oh yeah, of course," he said. "We can't even go to the airport."
"You can't go to the airport? How do you travel?"
The answer is - they can't go to the airport or travel by sea. They can drive to Jordan and fly out of there.

If you have an Israeli passport (which only a very small percentage of Palestinians do), you can fly in and out of Tel Aviv.

97BLBera
Feb. 17, 2022, 1:05 pm

>96 ursula: Wow! I had no idea.

98ursula
Feb. 18, 2022, 12:30 am

>97 BLBera: Yeah. My previous Palestinian classmates were of the very small minority with Israeli passports, so I didn't realize. But with a Palestinian passport, even once you get to Jordan there are very few places you can go without a visa or with a simple visa online or visa on arrival. (And they're mostly remote islands or random countries in Africa/Central Asia.)

Not to mention having to pass through (hopefully pass through) a ton of checkpoints just to drive across the country to get to the border with Jordan. It's a terrible situation.

99ursula
Feb. 20, 2022, 11:22 am


A Strangeness in my Mind by Orhan Pamuk

First line: "This is the story of the life and daydreams of Mevlut Karataş, a seller of boza and yogurt."

Finished this one today. It's my fifth Pamuk, and probably my favorite so far. Mevlut comes to Istanbul with his father, and they settle in to sell boza and yogurt. That's there in the first line, and that's pretty much what gets delivered.

The main problem in Mevlut's life is that he falls in love with a girl he saw once at a wedding, and writes her love letters until she runs away with him to get married. Except he marries a different sister than the one he had in mind when he was writing the letters. All of this comes out within the first few pages of the book, so no worries that anything has been spoiled.

Pamuk loves to really settle in to a character's life and examine all the nooks and crannies, whether or not they ultimately have any relevance in the reader's eye. I really enjoyed the depiction of Istanbul from the 1960s through 2012, which was obviously a time of huge change. So many things are different and yet, I recognize a lot of it even today.

There are two kinds of love in our land. The first kind is when you fall in love with someone because you don't know them at all. In fact, most couples would never fall in love if they got to know each other even a little bit before getting married. This is why our Blessed Prophet Muhammad did not think it was appropriate for there to be any contact between the boy and the girl before marriage. There is also the kind that happens when two people get married and fall in love after that, when they have a whole life to share between them, and that can only happen when you marry someone you don't know.

100raton-liseur
Feb. 20, 2022, 1:03 pm

>90 ursula: It seems it was a powerful read. Your review illustrates well the power of books, and one of the reasons we love this activity so much!

>99 ursula: I really liked this Pamuk too!

101ursula
Bearbeitet: Feb. 22, 2022, 2:59 am

>100 raton-liseur: It definitely illustrates that. I was glad to have a classmate to ask questions of, as well. It really brought it home, especially his reaction to my reactions, if that makes sense. He said "I know, when you're there it's just normal but when you leave, you see that it's crazy."

The Pamuk was a lot of fun for me because it encompasses so much of what I have learned and seen in Istanbul. His Istanbul settings are usually right around where I live, and this one bounces around a few different places but plenty of them are almost literally outside my window. Pamuk himself lives within walking distance of me.

I can see it would also be one of his more accessible books without any inside knowledge.

102raton-liseur
Feb. 22, 2022, 12:48 pm

>102 raton-liseur: Living within walking distance from a Nobel Prize. How cool!

103dchaikin
Feb. 22, 2022, 5:04 pm

>90 ursula: >99 ursula: just stopping by. Enjoyed your posts and comments on these. Fascinated you live so close to Pamuk.

104BLBera
Feb. 23, 2022, 10:51 am

>99 ursula: That was the first Pamuk I read and I did love the sense of place in that novel.

105ursula
Bearbeitet: Feb. 24, 2022, 1:14 pm


Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

Book 2 of the month for the Asian Reading Challenge.

First line: "Amal wanted a closer look into the soldier's eyes, but the muzzle of his automatic rifle, pressed against her forehead, would not allow it."

This book gets its title from Jenin, a refugee camp for Palestinians fleeing the Nakba set up in what was in 1948 part of Jordan but later became part of territory occupied by Israel. It's a family saga, so there are generations of family involved. The first generation is anchored by the matriarch Dalia, whose children (Yousef, Ismael and Amal) are small when the Nakba happens. Around 10% of the way into the book, we find out that the toddler Ismael is ripped from Dalia's arms when they're fleeing by an Israeli soldier and taken to be raised as his own. Ismael becomes David, raised a Jew.

If you're thinking that this is going to turn into a saga of nature vs nurture, religious differences and a search for true identity, you are totally wrong. Ismael/David essentially disappears from the book entirely and although we do see him again, I think he could have never appeared again and it wouldn't have significantly changed the story.

This is the story of the Palestinians - what they experienced, what it means to be "displaced", what it means to escape there and make a new life (with all the literal and figurative scars you take with you, and the fact that you have to leave so many others behind to terrible fates), what it means to lose people without ever knowing for sure what happened to them.

The story was probably more involved than it needed to be (the author did a lot of research on various events and I can understand wanting to include as much as possible), and the writing was definitely overwrought. For no reason at all, she switches between first person chapters and omniscient narrator chapters - everything in the omniscient chapters could have been worked in in some other way, or left out entirely. She has an annoying habit of slapping you in the face with foreshadowing: "For this decision, one day Yehya would beg his son's forgiveness as they all camped at the mercy of the weather, not far from the home to which they could never return." "The physical remnant of that day was a distinctive scar that would mark Ismael's face forever, and eventually lead him to his truth." Also, sometimes the dialogue is ridiculous. "Rage and the impunity I knew I had throbbed in my arms when I was holding the rifle," said no one ever.

So I can't recommend it on the basis of the writing, overall. But for a look inside the results of the Nakba, and how those results stretch on and on and on, it's worth reading.

(Btw, the book was originally published under the title The Scar of David (Ismael has a scar on his face, and he becomes a Jew named David after he's kidnapped. Get it? Get it?!), and I'm glad they dumped that title although Mornings in Jenin doesn't sound like what this is either.)

106dchaikin
Feb. 24, 2022, 4:11 pm

I need to use the “impunity” more in my everyday speech.

107labfs39
Feb. 24, 2022, 10:25 pm

>105 ursula: I enjoyed your review. I read this years ago, and as it was one of the first books I read about Palestine, I found the story affecting. Like you, however, I found the writing uneven. I read the advanced reader's copy and hoped that an editor would have another go at it before publication.

108ursula
Feb. 24, 2022, 11:23 pm

>102 raton-liseur: >103 dchaikin: Maybe I’ll see him somewhere one day!

>104 BLBera: I think he did a good job making the city one of the characters.

>106 dchaikin: Don’t we all, don’t we all.

>107 labfs39: I wish she’d let the book breathe a little.

109Nickelini
Bearbeitet: Feb. 25, 2022, 12:00 am

>96 ursula: One of the things that happens in the book is that all flights in Tel Aviv are suspended. Someone in the book wonders why, since Palestinians can't even work at the airport.

I asked my Palestinian classmate about this, and he just nodded through the description, waiting for presumably what my question was.

"That's true - you can't work at the airport?" I asked him.
"Oh yeah, of course," he said. "We can't even go to the airport."
"You can't go to the airport? How do you travel?"
The answer is - they can't go to the airport or travel by sea. They can drive to Jordan and fly out of there.

If you have an Israeli passport (which only a very small percentage of Palestinians do), you can fly in and out of Tel Aviv.


Wow, I had NO idea about any of that. Pretty crazy

110raton-liseur
Feb. 25, 2022, 2:31 am

>105 ursula: I bought this book quite some time again and never read it. Maybe I should include it as a (late) read for the February Asia challenge.
I have it in English (although it has been translated to French). I don't know if I will notice the uneven writing and how it might affect my reading.

111ursula
Feb. 26, 2022, 4:44 am

>109 Nickelini: My classmate said about 4% of Palestinians have Israeli passports and therefore can go to the airport (or board a ship). I tried to look it up online but only found stats for "Arab Israelis", which give the number as 12%, but that includes Bedouins and Druze in addition to Palestinians.

So maybe as many as 96% of Palestinians have to go through endless checkpoints (hopefully making it through of course) to the Jordanian border to be able to leave.

>110 raton-liseur: I wonder if the French would smooth out some of the issues of the original. I definitely rolled my eyes particularly at the frequent "one day in the distant future" sort of moments but it didn't make me want to quit.

As for late reads for the Asian challenge, I'm going to be doing that all year I'm sure. :)

112ursula
Feb. 26, 2022, 7:30 am

Cat break!

113dchaikin
Feb. 26, 2022, 11:39 am

Happy cat. He’s making good use of what looks like merchandise.

114ursula
Feb. 26, 2022, 11:25 pm

>113 dchaikin: Indeed. In Istanbul, merchandise = cat bed.

115markon
Feb. 27, 2022, 6:54 am

Love all the color. Happy car, indeed.

116ursula
Feb. 27, 2022, 9:09 am

>115 markon: Hello, welcome! Slightly less happy than a fish market or kebap shop cat, probably, but yes! Happy cat.

117dchaikin
Feb. 27, 2022, 9:37 am

>114 ursula: My thought process is a little entertaining because at first I was trying to imagine as a decorative corner in your home, with lots of scarves (?) and a pair of weird plastic things, but the sideways pictures confused me. Then I realized the numbers with the unfamiliar symbols were price tags. :)

118ursula
Feb. 27, 2022, 9:44 am

>117 dchaikin: Of course!!

I forget that not everyone is going to instantly recognize the symbol for Turkish lira: ₺

And yeah, the plastic thingies at the bottom are feet in slippers.

119ursula
Bearbeitet: Feb. 28, 2022, 10:25 am


Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd

Rifqa is a book of poetry, and I essentially do not read poetry. I can't remember when (if ever) I've read an entire poetry collection, and I actively avoid even reading singular ones. I'm not saying that as a point of pride, just letting you know that this is way outside of my comfort zone.

Anyway, the title is the name of El-Kurd's grandmother, who was born before the Nakba and died in 2020 without ever being able to return to the home she was driven from. She never stopped fighting though, never stopped giving witness to what the Palestinians suffered and continue to suffer. The poems tell her stories, and also El-Kurd's own - not only in Palestine but also touching on his time at university in Atlanta.

How is it as poetry? I have no clue. But I highlighted a lot of passages. Here are a few:

This is why we dance:
Because screaming isn't free.

Please tell me:
Why is anger -- even anger -- a luxury
to me?

(This Is Why We Dance)

May 15, 1998,
I was born before a closed house
that I called mine but have never been in.
      After nine years of fines
paychecks and playchecks
it was opened        for them
           not us.
The colonizers    youthful      differently clothed
rifles smacking against their hips    terrorist nation
celebrated stolen property      callous.
I cried -- not for the house
but for the memories I could have had inside it.

(Rifqa)

And from the afterword, talking about his first attempts to write poetry:

At first, I made two mistakes.

The first was that I trained myself to use "unbiased" words. What I'd refer to in Arabic as an "entity" would become a "state." Striving for a vocabulary void of accusation, I replaced "arrogate" with "confiscate," "dispossess" with "evict," and "lie" with "allege." This phenomenon is common among writers writing about Palestine, writers who worship the mythology of objectivity instead of satirizing it. There is this naive belief that Palestinians will acquire credibility only once they've amassed respectability. I did this to appear rational and unhostile. The truth, however, is very hostile.

The second mistake is what I will call "humanization": I portrayed my people only in the ways that adhere to ethnocentric civility, robbing them of their agency. It is to "women and children" Palestinians to death -- to infantilize Palestinians in the hopes of determining that, indeed, they deserve liberation.

120labfs39
Feb. 28, 2022, 7:55 am

>119 ursula: I don't read much poetry either, but this sounds interesting, and I like the excerpts you quote. I'll look for it.

121dchaikin
Feb. 28, 2022, 10:06 am

Those excerpts are hard to read. Thanks for posting.

122ursula
Mrz. 1, 2022, 12:45 am

>120 labfs39: I definitely think it's worth checking out.

>121 dchaikin: They are, and I think that's a good thing.

123ursula
Mrz. 6, 2022, 1:20 pm


The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

First lines:

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.


Those were the first words I wrote after it happened.

So begins Joan Didion’s raw account of what happened in her head following her husband’s sudden death.

It’s interesting, I had expected more about the magical thinking - about the expectation that he might come back, etc. But while that was a recurring part of it, a lot of it also was about the cognitive disturbances and thought “vortexes” that she suffered.

A sometimes difficult read, both when I found myself trying to avoid thinking about what it would be like to be in her situation, and when I thought about how the story would end - her husband died while her adult daughter was in intensive care. Her daughter would pull through after a couple of bouts with ICUs but ultimately would die less than 2 years later. How much can one person be expected to deal with?

I highlighted a lot of things in this book. Here’s one:

““I just can’t see the upside in this,” I heard myself say by way of explanation.

Later he said that if John had been sitting in the office he would have found this funny, as he himself had found it. “Of course I knew what you meant to say, and John would have known too, you meant to say you couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

I agreed, but this was not in fact the case.

I had meant pretty much exactly what I had said: I couldn’t see the upside in this.”

124Nickelini
Mrz. 6, 2022, 3:18 pm

>123 ursula: Interesting comments. That's one book that part of me wants to read but most of me doesn't

125ursula
Mrz. 6, 2022, 10:09 pm

>124 Nickelini: I was torn about whether it was better to read it now, when I had no particular reason to, or at some point in the future when I might. I was worried reading it would seem a little like borrowing trouble, but it didn’t end up feeling that way.

126Nickelini
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 6, 2022, 10:33 pm

>125 ursula:
I was worried reading it would seem a little like borrowing trouble

Now that you mention it, that is one of the things that makes me hesitate too

127AlisonY
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 7, 2022, 5:48 am

Also been interested in the Didion book for a while, and also hesitant for the same reasons. Perhaps especially now; with everything going on in the world I feel my soul is reaching for sunnier topics.

Enjoyed your post on Italians views on dos and don'ts with Italian food and the chat afterwards. I must admit I do enjoy garlic bread with pasta regardless of whether it's authentic or not.

My father (who is not a pasta or garlic lover) maintains that if you took tomatoes and pasta away from Italians it would be akin to the Irish potato famine. Slightly harsh, but he has a point!

128ursula
Mrz. 7, 2022, 10:06 am

>126 Nickelini: You have to judge for yourself, of course, but in the end I didn't feel that way. I mean, it's a window into a dark time but it's definitely interesting to read it in her hands - she really is kind of fascinated by what was going on in her head.

>127 AlisonY: See above about The Year of Magical Thinking! I totally get not wanting to read anything even approaching heavy though.

I mean, I come from a country that's got its own style of Italian that is authentic ... just not to Italy. :) But the funny thing about your dad's statement is that before the discovery of America, Italian food was of course completely without tomatoes.

129dchaikin
Mrz. 7, 2022, 3:20 pm

>123 ursula: I found this difficult because of the subject matter, and because there's nothing to do with this intense information but misunderstand it. Hoping you read more by Didion (what am I saying... hope I read more. I've only read one other). I mean, I hope you have or will try other stuff, because this one quite different from her less personal stuff.

130ursula
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 9, 2022, 12:33 am


No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib

First lines: "It is much too hot in here. Only my hands are freezing, even as they sweat onto the railing."

First book for March, the Arab World. It is primarily set in the US, about two Syrian immigrants, but I'm counting it anyway. The author was born in Lebanon and I'm assuming is of Syrian extraction although I didn't find anything saying that for sure anywhere.

Okay, the book: Hadi and Sama are two young people from Syria who took different paths to the US. Sama came to study, and Hadi came as a refugee. They fall (immediately) in love and get married. She is pregnant when his father dies and he decides to go back to Jordan for the funeral. Great... until Trump signs the travel ban, which happens while Hadi's flight is in the air. He is turned around at the airport and sent back to Jordan.

Sama doesn't know any of this is happening; she's at the airport waiting for him and in the chaos, gets jostled around enough that she goes into early labor and gives birth to their son prematurely. This seems like a lot of plot, and it is, but all of that happens in the first bit, and then not a lot happens afterward. The chapters are split between Hadi and Sama, both in the present and the past in their (very short) courtship and marriage. In spite of that, I never felt like I got a feel for Hadi at all.

The writing was very flowery and metaphorical and sometimes just had me shaking my head. Although I could empathize with their situation, the presumed ending (it was not completely tied up but pointed in a direction) was just impossible for me to accept. It seemed irrational.

Quote: "An honorary refugee, elevated on a podium. A podium for having left, survived Syria, when he was no different, better, or worse than the countless others who hadn't."

131ursula
Mrz. 10, 2022, 10:11 am


The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade

First line: "This year Amadeo Padilla is Jesus."

Picked this up on a whim from the front page of the Libby app. It's about a family in New Mexico. Amadeo is in his early 30s, with a 15-year-old pregnant daughter, Angel. He's unemployed and lives with his mother, Yolanda. Angel used to live with her mother, but she moved in with her dad and grandmother after having an incident with her mother's boyfriend.

The people in this novel are fully alive - everyone has complicated feelings about their lives, everyone makes mistakes, everyone is sometimes incredibly self-involved. Things don't wrap up neatly, but neither does anything in life. You do get the sense that these characters are continuing to learn and grow. I was really drawn in by the characters, even though they screwed up so many things I found myself frequently wanting to pick up the book and find out if they were making any progress, haha.

Quote: "Isn't that how things should be? That the man who'd lost a son and the boy who'd lost a father should find each other? Now the thought occurs to him, as though it was original, that there is no way things should be, only the way things are, and the way things are is going to keep changing."

132SassyLassy
Mrz. 10, 2022, 10:20 am

>123 ursula: You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
Joan Didion is one of my very favourite authors. The Year of Magical Thinking was a difficult book given the reflection it generates, but I think her best thoughts on these subjects is Blue Nights, looking back from a distance of a few years.

133ursula
Mrz. 11, 2022, 12:47 am

>129 dchaikin: because there's nothing to do with this intense information but misunderstand it

I'm not sure I follow you?

Anyway, I am intending to read something else by her eventually.

134ursula
Mrz. 12, 2022, 1:56 am

My first abandoned book for the year:


Sentence: Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison by Daniel Genis

Interesting premise, I thought. The author is the "apologetic bandit" who I guess briefly made news in New York for robbing people at knifepoint and apologizing to them. He is the son of Russian intellectuals, it wasn't really in his nature to be robbing people on the street, but he had a heroin addiction to feed. He ended up being sentenced to 10 years in prison.

During those 10 years, he read widely, both for his own sanity and also to learn more about prison. It's interesting to think about the idea of reading books set in prison to learn more about how it works, how people survive, etc. Anyway, in the book he talks about both what he reads and what he experiences in various prisons (he was transferred what seemed like a lot to me, but what do I know). The real-life prison parts can be brutal, because of course prison life can be as well. The reading is mostly just touched on, occasionally with a little blurb about something he learned from the book, or the reason he picked that one up.

That's fine, but the book felt disjointed - going backward and forward in time, arranged according to some logic I guess only he knows. Also, the writing was ... kind of like you might expect from someone who has read a lot but not spoken a lot. There were a lot of unnecessary words, and some misused words (that were unnecessary - just use a word you understand!). At 25% I realized I wasn't enjoying it and just decided to end it there.

135labfs39
Mrz. 12, 2022, 10:42 am

>134 ursula: Interesting premise. Too bad it wasn't better written. I am more curious about the books than his experience.

136labfs39
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 12, 2022, 10:43 am

Sorry, dup post. Odd...

137BLBera
Mrz. 12, 2022, 11:36 am

>134 ursula: This does sound interesting. Too bad about the writing.

The Five Wounds sounds like one I would like. Luckily, it's already on my list.

I think I liked No Land to Light On more than you did. I agree the relationship seemed to come from nowhere, but the situation kept me so interested that I let that go.

138ursula
Mrz. 13, 2022, 1:12 am

>135 labfs39: Yeah, it's definitely a shame about the writing.

>136 labfs39: It wasn't so much their whirlwind relationship for me, that was fine. It was Sama's willingness to take a premature baby to who knows where. Syrian passports don't make it easy to go anywhere, and they don't make it easy to stay anywhere. It seemed like a fantasy that they'd be able to just bounce around, with a tiny baby! I thought it was ridiculous.

139ursula
Mrz. 13, 2022, 9:33 am

As I am reading various books dealing with Syrians fleeing their country, I'll share a bit about a policy that Turkey has recently implemented. There are officially 3.7 million Syrians residing in Turkey. (The population of Turkey is about 60 million, Istanbul is about 16 million.)

They're starting what they call a "thinning" or "dilution" process. They've been checking everyone's documentation, and if a Syrian has left the region/city where they were registered, they're being sent back to that region/city. And in areas that have Syrians making up 25% of the population, no foreigners of any kind will be granted residence permits. I think anywhere that has more will have some sent to other areas.

140labfs39
Mrz. 13, 2022, 12:08 pm

>139 ursula: That's a lot of refugees, but a policy of "thinning" or "dilution" is scary, especially with genocide in the not so distant past in Turkey. What is popular opinion on the subject?

141ursula
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 13, 2022, 2:17 pm

>140 labfs39: Well I certainly wouldn't jump there.

Non-Erdoğan-supporting Turks tend to think that he sold the country to the EU (they paid 6 billion Euros for Turkey to stop the refugees here, instead of allowing them to enter Europe). Also, that it is part of his plan to bolster a general Islamist presence in the country, with an aim to undermining the secular state.

People in general are never thrilled about the numbers of seriously observant Muslims increasing, foreign or not. But acceptance of Arabs is more difficult, some of the religious practices are not considered compatible with Turkish life. Also, there have been crime problems - there are officially 3.7 million Syrians, but there are varying estimates of the real numbers - so there are a lot of squatters, etc, and inevitably incidents of violence occur.

142ursula
Bearbeitet: Mrz. 14, 2022, 6:33 am


Funeral Rites by Jean Genet

First line: "The newspapers that appeared at the time of the Libration of Paris, in August 1944, give a fair idea of what those days of childish heroism, when the body was steaming with bravura and boldness, were really like."

When I started this, I remember saying to Morgan, "Oh, I'm reading an ode to buttholes." (That first line didn't prepare you for that statement, I realize.)

As it turns out, it's that, but besides that, it's a book about the narrator's dead lover, Jean. He was killed by the Germans in World War II. But it's really a jumping-off point for a kaleidoscope of transgressive musings on death, love, mourning, betrayal and ... Nazis, I guess.

I don't know - the book is dense and took me a long time to get through. It didn't benefit from being put down for days at a time, and it got much easier to read once I was visiting with it every day. But even so, Genet puts himself in the place of various characters, jumps around between times, writes about things that never happened as vividly as about things that did. And on that note - the descriptions get pretty vivid. The sex is as ugly as the war and death, and the war and death are as ridiculous as the sex.

There was a moment where I asked myself, "Am I seriously reading about Hitler performing this sex act on a prisoner?" (The sex act is almost certainly not what you're thinking, and the answer to my question was "yes.") My feelings about the book varied according throughout the read, so I'm considering it an averaged out three stars.

Quote:
"The Resistance sprang up in the underbrush like a nervous prick in the hair around it.
All of France rose up like that prick."

143ursula
Mrz. 15, 2022, 9:26 am

Well, that's it. I had my Turkish test today. It turned into a bit of a nightmare but you know, the teacher actually understands me and my frustrations and occasional meltdowns. So hopefully in the end it's all okay.

144ursula
Mrz. 22, 2022, 9:15 am


What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad

First lines: "The child lies on the shore. All around him the beach is littered with the wreckage of the boat and the wreckage of its passengers: shards of decking, knapsacks cleaved and gutted, bodies frozen in unnatural contortion."

Winner of the Giller Prize.

One can only assume that everyone who reads those first lines is reminded of the photo of the Syrian child dead on a Mediterranean beach. Although this is probably the seed of the novel, in this case the child is older (I think 9?) and he wakes up on that beach. The book alternates between "Before" and "After" chapters - how Amir ended up on the boat, and his journey on it, and his time trying to elude the soldiers who are after him in the new land. In his efforts to elude capture, he is aided by a teenage girl who lives on the island.

I don't think the book breaks any new ground if you're aware of what goes on with these refugee boats, but it's well told. The "after" is mostly a pretty standard, if tame, chase as the girl tries to get Amir to safety (or at least the possibility of safety). But what the book is getting at isn't entirely clear until near the end.

I liked it, although something kept me from loving it - maybe just the simple style of the storytelling.

Quote: "When she was with her friends she was someone named Iman and when she haggled with the vendors at the market she was someone named Umm Amir and when she pleaded with the British man whose position seemed to entail passing judgment on whether she and her family were sufficiently destitute to be called refugees she was Mrs. Utu, and all of these people seemed to be entirely different and engaged in entirely different attempts at survival."

145labfs39
Mrz. 22, 2022, 9:42 am

>144 ursula: Great review.

146ursula
Mrz. 24, 2022, 2:48 am

Thanks, it was an interesting book.

147ursula
Mrz. 27, 2022, 3:28 am


We Wrote in Symbols edited by Selma Dabbagh

Subtitled "Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers", this is a collection of poems and short stories by Arab women from the far back in the pre-Islamic past all the way up to the present. It's not my normal fare, but how could I resist picking it up since it is definitely a unique perspective?

I truly don't know what to say about it - some stories and poems were funny, some sexy, some ... strange. A couple were all of those together. One was written by a slave girl who was executed after she recited it; a few are written by living writers under pseudonyms. There is straight love, lesbian love, premarital sex, extramarital sex.

One note: It's probably better if you don't have to return it to the library and can really take your time, opening it and flipping through and choosing something to read here and there.

148ursula
Mrz. 29, 2022, 4:00 am


Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

First line: "The cover for Trout Fishing in America is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco's Washington Square."

Of course, for some reason that is no longer the cover of the book. I guess the photo made the book look a lot more serious/boring than a childish fish drawing. Anyway, I read Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar in 2013. It's one of those books where I vividly remember the circumstances under which I read it. We were living in Belgium and my daughter was visiting; we were off on a several-day trip looping up to Amsterdam and then down through Cologne by train. I took it along because it was small and light, and seemed like it wouldn't be too taxing if I got interrupted a lot.

Anyway, I said that to say this - both of these books are ones that I found myself having to slow down in reading. Not because they're full of deep meaning - also not to say that it's meaningless - but because the short, whimsical chapters are easy to fly through without really absorbing them, and that would be a shame. Morgan also read this one, and he said he imagined reading it out loud to get himself to slow down and really enjoy it. Good technique! Brautigan uses trout fishing in America to talk about actual trout fishing, but he also uses it as the name of a person or people, and things get weirder from there. If you're a certain kind of person, you'll probably like this. If you're not, you'll hate it.

Quotes:
"The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, "Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper," and put the coin in my hand, but never came back."

"I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pictures developed. Sometimes I'll get curious about them, wondering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are developed and easier to please. Look there's the baby! Look there's Mushroom Springs! Look there's me!"

149lisapeet
Apr. 1, 2022, 9:53 am

>148 ursula: Like you, the circumstances of reading Trout Fishing in America are still vivid for me, so no matter what kind of crappy gen-z-appeal cover they've come up with, the original photo is still burned into my brain. I was 12 or 13, in the house of some friends of my parents in the Bay Area where we were staying for a summer, and they had all these fabulous old Beat author books in the bedroom where I was sleeping. I so clearly remember sitting on the bed—it was a trundle bed, so raised up pretty high off the ground, and a guest room so it was covered with a collection of odd pillows—and reading and reading. I didn't get most of whatever Brautigan was aiming at, I'm sure (I've never reread it as an adult), but I just fell in love with his language so hard.

150ursula
Apr. 3, 2022, 1:27 am

>149 lisapeet: I love that ... and what a great location to be reading Brautigan!

151ursula
Apr. 6, 2022, 2:22 am


Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

First line: "When we left the hotel it was raining, a light, fine rain, as can sometimes happen in Tokyo in October."

A slim little book about a woman taking a trip in Japan with her mother. The mother is from China, and moved to Hong Kong. The daughter lives in another country (perhaps Australia, like the author). They travel to hotels, art galleries, tourist sites, and they talk, or don't talk, to each other. It reminded me a bit of Rachel Cusk's Outline series, because the things that are occurring are often backdrops to the conversation the characters are having, or to the narrator's thoughts and memories. As far as I can tell, it's about displacement, relationships, memory, how rarely you see those around you clearly.

If you like things that are described as meditative, interior, or character studies, you may like this. That doesn't mean it was slow, though - it was a very quick read, and also a short one at 136 pages.

Quote: "I thought that some of it was true and some of it was not, but the real truth was how such things allowed someone to talk about you, or what you had done or why you did it, in a way that unraveled your character into distinct traits. It made you seem readable to them, or to yourself, which could feel like a revelation. But who's to say how anyone would act on a given day, not to mention the secret places of the soul, where all manner of things could exist? I wanted to talk more about this, if only to chase the thought further, but I knew too that she needed, and wanted, to believe in such things: that my sister was generous and happiest in the company of others, that I should be careful with money in the month of May, so I said nothing."

152ursula
Apr. 8, 2022, 7:32 am


The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea

Somehow I thought I'd read another book by Urrea, and then I thought I hadn't, and now I discover I have apparently read his collection of short stories, The Water Museum, of which I have no recollection at all.

Okay then, let's talk about this one before I forget it entirely!

First line: "On the cool October morning when Cayetana Chávez brought her baby to light, it was the start of that season in Sinaloa when the humid torments of summer finally gave way to breezes and falling leaves, and small red birds skittered through the corrals, and the dogs grew new coats."

Apparently this story is based on some distant relative of Urrea's. The girl, Teresa, is born the daughter of an Indian and a landowner. Abandoned by her mother, rejected by her aunt, she is ultimately taken under the wing of both her father and the resident curandera, or medicine woman. Teresita, as she is known, demonstrates abilities beyond those of her teacher and by the time she is a teenager becomes viewed as a somewhat unwilling saint. What ramifications that has, who it threatens, and what everyone, including Teresita thinks about it is what the book deals with.

I enjoyed the stories of the life and interactions on the ranch, although there were some incidents glossed over that I wish had been dealt with a little more completely. You have to have a tolerance for magical realism of the miracles occurring and being performed type, and also it's a pretty long book (just about 500 pages) so you won't exactly breeze through it, but I don't regret the time I spent on it.

Quote:

"The Tigers of the Sierra have come to see me."
She grinned. She made a muscle. "Great fighters. Great lovers of God." Teresita laughed as she flexed her arm.
Cruz was tongue-tied. She burned into his eyes with her own. Was she making fun of him?
"I have come to test you?" he managed to say.
She put her fists on her hips and stared at him quite frankly. He did not appreciate the boldness of her stare. "How will you test me, Tiger? Shall we shoot at cans? Race horses?" She put up her dukes. "Fistfight?"
Cruz opened his mouth and said, "Uh."
"If you try to wrestle me," she warned, "I can beat you."

153RidgewayGirl
Apr. 8, 2022, 3:55 pm

>152 ursula: I really liked that one. There's something about a good, long historical novel that I really like.

154ursula
Apr. 9, 2022, 1:36 am

>153 RidgewayGirl: I quite enjoyed it too. I was a little apprehensive since it was a big book and I had to memory of whether or not I liked his short stories, but I really settled into this book.

155lisapeet
Apr. 9, 2022, 9:40 am

>152 ursula: I read that when it first came out, a million years ago, feels like (OK, 2005. Why, oh why, does LT not include publication dates on their book pages?) and remember really enjoying it, but very little of what was actually in it. If life weren't so short I'd gladly reread, but maybe not at 500 pages.

156AnnieMod
Apr. 9, 2022, 11:44 am

>155 lisapeet: Original publication date is on the work pages - as long as someone bothers to fill it in anyway. :) Otherwise there is no way for LT to guess what the date might be - people use the field for whatever they want and it is never clear if the first edition is in the DB. Ergo - the CK field. ;)

157lisapeet
Apr. 9, 2022, 12:24 pm

>156 AnnieMod: I know, I just hate having to dig for it and wish it was used more often and up front on the work page. Not that I can't find it in a couple of clicks, but I'm lazy and that's info I tend look up a lot.

158ursula
Apr. 9, 2022, 12:41 pm

I'll be honest, I usually look up date of original publication on GoodReads.

159RidgewayGirl
Apr. 9, 2022, 12:42 pm

>158 ursula: Ha! Me, too.

160ursula
Apr. 11, 2022, 1:07 am

>159 RidgewayGirl: Oh good, I'm not alone. :)

161ursula
Apr. 12, 2022, 3:29 am


Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage

First line: "One sunny day at the start of a ceasefire, a father drove with his son down towards where the fighting had been."

The father in that first sentence is a member of the titular group. Their commitment is to giving people burials, no matter their religion or circumstances. Sometimes these are unclaimed and unknown bodies; sometimes they are honoring the wishes of someone whose family wanted something different for them than they wanted (Muslim cemetery when they wanted Christian, etc). Shortly into the book, the father dies and his son, Pavlov, has to honor his wishes for cremation. After that, he's visited by a member of the society, which he has not known existed until now. He had gone with his father to collect and cremate a few bodies, but had never had the whole thing explained to him.

Soon he is enmeshed in the world of death. Or I guess I should say, enmeshed in different aspects of death. He lives in Beirut, so bombs are falling and death is everywhere. His father was an undertaker, and his apartment is above the path for burials in the cemetery he can see from his window. But this leads him into much closer contact with death.

In a sort of interesting parallel, this one ended up also visiting a lot of the themes of Funeral Rites - the transgressive intersection between death and sex and life. What a body really means, what the things that can be done to it mean (or don't). Whether being cavalier with it is freedom or fear. Basically, there are some unpleasant things in this book in service of those themes. Not for the faint-hearted.

For me, I didn't feel like I was really pulled in by the book. Whether it's because of Pavlov's pretty stoic nature, or whether it was just the story overall, I didn't hate it but I also wasn't dying (haha) to pick it up every time.

Quote: "Nevertheless, I hold on to my beliefs and I am more convinced now than ever that this world should be undermined. I do not have the courage to hang myself, so I guess I must still love myself after all. Or maybe I still cling to the conviction that I did the right thing. In any case, repentance will never be a choice for me, regardless of the tragedies I may have caused. I believe that it is through vice alone that we can undermine this world - but with age, one realizes that Nature has perfected indifference and immorality. The world always defeats us. All we can do is mimic it, not undermine it. Or maybe we can refuse it, and convince ourselves that we are constructing or imagining an alternative, like your pious father did."

162BLBera
Apr. 15, 2022, 6:43 pm

>161 ursula: Great comments, Ursula. Not sure about this one.

163ursula
Apr. 17, 2022, 2:28 am



I went to see the tulips - it's a yearly thing, every April is the Tulip festival. This is at Emirgan Korusu, where the biggest displays are. They weren't all blooming yet, the snow in mid-March threw things into a bit of disarray. But there were enough of them in bloom!

164ursula
Apr. 17, 2022, 2:29 am

>162 BLBera: I wasn't entirely sure about it either, but it did give me things to think about.

165wandering_star
Apr. 17, 2022, 3:11 am

>163 ursula: Oh, those are beautiful!

166ursula
Apr. 18, 2022, 7:45 am

Thanks! Hoping to go out later this week (when it stops raining) to see them again at Gülhane Park, where there is also a big display - not quite as big as that one, but still worth seeing!

167ursula
Apr. 19, 2022, 10:39 am


The Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin

First line: According to St. Augustine, woman is a frail and fickle creature, and the great obscurantist and misogynist was right a thousand times over - at least with regard to a certain individual by the name of Varvara Suvorova.

This is the second novel in a detective series featuring a guy named Erast Fandorin. I didn't read the first one; I just picked this one up at a Friends of the Library sale because it looked vaguely interesting. I think it was well before the idea of coming to Turkey was even on the horizon. Anyhow, I finally picked it up and read it now.

And looking back at that first line, maybe I should have known to stop there? In my defense, I thought the main character would be this Fandorin guy whose name is on the cover, after all ("A Fandorin Mystery"). But it turns out we only see him from time to time and we are stuck with Varvara, called Varya for the majority of the time. The outlines of the story: It is 1877 and Varya has decided to run off from Russia to somewhere in Bulgaria to find her maybe-fiancé Petya, who is stationed there as a cryptographer in the Russian army. She is abandoned at an inn by the unscrupulous guy who was supposed to be taking her there, and taken under the wing of a mysterious man who turns out to be Fandorin. He takes her to the army's post but things are complicated and between one thing and another she ends up assisting Fandorin in his office to pay for her keep while she waits for Petya to ... what? I'm not sure. See her, I guess. (They do see each other briefly and he assures her of his intentions, but as I said, things get complicated and that keeps them apart.)

Meanwhile, every man in the camp is interested in Varya (believable, probably, there are only a few nurses or nuns or something in terms of women there), and she is more than happy to flirt with all of them. And be upset if they don't seem effusive enough about their feelings for her. What? She is simultaneously very smart (of course) and modern enough to make herself at home in meetings where women are frowned upon (of course), but she's also an idiot who seems to forget her fiancé if he moves behind a door.

The plot is twisty and turny and double-crossy and Fandorin gets to give one of those "I was led down the wrong path but then I figured it out and I'm only telling this roomful of people about it at the last moment because I knew I had to wait until I had enough proof to convince you" speeches. So there's that.

Quote: "The Turks, who were not notable for their strong nerves, and, as everybody knew, were capable of a brief impulsive effort but balked at the prospect of any prolonged exertion, would naturally be thrown into confusion, perhaps even panic."

168LolaWalser
Apr. 19, 2022, 1:01 pm

>167 ursula:

I'm ambivalent about the Fandorin series but not because of the stereotypes (which I think are used in the spirit of the times the action takes place), but because the valiant hero works for the Okhrana, the secret service that gave the world The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

That said, I admit to being seduced by Akunin's inventive plotting, although that particular title may not be the best example (a personal bias against espionage; boring stuff). I dimly recall the first Fandorin book as the best (IMO). A different series featuring an Orthodox nun and her understanding boss the bishop contains only three books and is consistently great (Sister Pelagia and...)

169ursula
Apr. 20, 2022, 11:36 am

>168 LolaWalser: I feel like I have heard of the Sister Pelagia series. I agree that I also find I get bored by espionage unless there's a lot of other stuff going on, and Varya making eyes at everyone doesn't count, haha.

170ursula
Apr. 27, 2022, 10:03 am


The Immortals of Tehran by Ali Araghi

First line: Ahmad was a ten-year-old boy when he was a ten-year-old boy.

In case you're wondering where that first line is going, it's basically saying that when he was that age, he couldn't have guessed the things that would happen in his life, the things that he would see. And that makes sense, because first of all, he will be a grandfather when the revolution in 1978 happens, and second of all, because this book involves magic realism. There are poems that emit light when written (if they're good), a man who is dead but doesn't realize it, a ghost, music that causes trees to blossom ... you get the idea. The first chapter starts off with a bang (pun unfortunately intended) with the death of Ahmad's father in a rather abrupt manner, after which Ahmad stops speaking.

Look, I'm not going to recommend this book to anyone, so let me talk about the things I found interesting/difficult about it. (ie, with spoilers) In the book, there is a fable about cats that leads one character to become convinced that the cats are plotting something. This character tracks the cats' movements around the city in an attempt to find out what is going to happen. There are some scenes of violence against the cats with this character. I feel like in an American book, this would be obvious code for THIS IS A BAD PERSON, or maybe THIS PERSON IS LOSING HIS MIND, but although the people in his life do think that perhaps he is not entirely in touch with reality, (spoiler) his theories seem to be borne out.

Also, one of Ahmad's adult acquaintances decides he's in love with Ahmad's daughter when she is 9, I believe. Again, this is shorthand for THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BAD PERSON in my mind. Ahmad's protective fatherly response is to tell the man that he is forbidden from seeing the daughter for 10 years, at which point they can meet and she can decide. Well, all right. But the daughter begins engineering ways for the man to see her from a distance, because she is ... courting him? In love with him too, at the age of 10? I have no idea. But they run off together when she enters her first year in high school.

Part of what makes reading literature from other countries interesting is that it makes me consider what messages I'm getting from what I'm reading and whether or not those are the messages that are intended by the writer. I don't have the answer here, but it's something I thought about a lot.

Quote: They talked as the old man welded bars across the window. Before he left, he shook Ahmad's hand. "I don't know what you're keeping in that room, my boy, but something tells me you're making the wrong decision again."

171RidgewayGirl
Apr. 27, 2022, 3:00 pm

>170 ursula: Thanks for writing that review.

172ursula
Apr. 27, 2022, 11:57 pm

>171 RidgewayGirl: You are welcome!

173BLBera
Apr. 28, 2022, 10:17 am

>170 ursula: Great comments, Ursula. This sounds like one I would be interested in reading. I might have to skim a few places. I'm not familiar with this author.

174ursula
Apr. 29, 2022, 2:22 am

>173 BLBera: Well then ... sorry about the spoilers? :)

At times the magical realism is barely there, and at times it goes fully off the rails. That fact meant that sometimes I was startled by something surreal happening because I'd forgotten that was a possibility, haha.

175BLBera
Apr. 29, 2022, 8:18 am

No worries. By the time I get to it, I will have forgotten your comments. :)

176ursula
Mai 1, 2022, 9:45 am

>175 BLBera: Boy, do I relate to that! Haha.

177ursula
Mai 2, 2022, 6:43 am


The City & the City by China Mieville

First line: I could not see the street or much of the estate.

I suggested this book to Morgan, just knowing that it was 1. supposed to be good, and 2. some sort of fantasy/sci fi/speculative fiction. He read it and really enjoyed it, so I picked it up after him. It's a police procedural set in a sort of alternate world. The main character, Tyador Borlú is a detective in the city/country of Beszel who is investigating the murder of a female archaeology student. The trick is that Beszel is geographically co-located with another city-state, Ul Qoma.

Hmmm? Yeah, this is the problem. Both cities are technically located in the same place. But they have a complicated system for making this work, which involves "unseeing" things that are technically in the other city. Some streets will be totally in one city or the other, so there's no problem. Others are "cross-hatched", and you have to be careful not to see what is actually in the other city, or god forbid, actually cross over into it. That would be breach - and that will land you in trouble with the mysterious group that enforces laws against it, also merely called Breach. Obviously this case is going to be complicated enough to need information from both cities, and Borlú has to navigate all the problems that causes.

I felt like this was a pretty well-plotted but standard mystery against a wildly inventive backdrop. A fun ride; the setting was intriguing and well-realized enough to make the mystery secondary to me.

Quote: With a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrász at all, and that I should not have seen her. Immediately and flustered I looked away, and she did the same, with the same speed.

178rhian_of_oz
Mai 2, 2022, 10:25 am

>177 ursula: Your review reminded me how much I enjoyed this book and made me wonder why I didn't add any other Mieville books to my wishlist. Time to go and check them out.

179ursula
Mai 3, 2022, 2:17 am

>178 rhian_of_oz: I'd always seen that his books were pretty well-liked, it took Morgan actually reading it for me to finally pick it up myself! I am interested in reading more of his work, but it usually takes me a while to get back to an author even then.

180BLBera
Mai 3, 2022, 11:49 am

>177 ursula: This does sound intriguing. I haven't read anything by this author.

181lisapeet
Mai 6, 2022, 10:04 am

>177 ursula: I've had that one on the virtual shelf for a couple of years, recommended by a few friends. I've never read any of his work, but people really like him so I should give this one a shot.

182wandering_star
Mai 6, 2022, 11:54 pm

>177 ursula: You make this sound so good!

183ursula
Mai 7, 2022, 1:59 am


Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Okay, I finished this days ago! But we have been busy with preparations for Morgan's mom to arrive, and then we met up with her and her friend yesterday and spent the whole day wandering the streets. So I'm going to write up my pretty half-assed thoughts about this book while I have a few minutes this morning.

First line: Edwin St. John St. Andrew, eighteen years old, hauling the weight of his double-sainted name across the Atlantic by steamship, eyes narrowed against the wind on the upper deck: he holds the railing with gloved hands, impatient for a glimpse of the unknown, trying to discern something - anything! - beyond sea and sky, but all he sees are shades of endless gray.

It gets old to compare everything to Cloud Atlas, but it's useful shorthand I guess. There are characters living through different eras of time. Edwin of the first line is going to North America in the early part of the 20th century. Someone else is in 2020; another character is an author who is on a book tour after writing a novel about a pandemic caused by a "scientifically implausible flu" - she grew up in one of the colonies on the moon, and the year is 2203. We even hit 2401. What ties these people together is that they all experienced some sort of anomaly - a strange moment in the forest with music and a whooshing sound. What is that all about?

I liked this book quite a lot. It didn't draw me in as completely as Station Eleven, but most books don't, so I don't think that's a terrible negative. There are a couple of tertiary characters who appear in Mandel's book The Glass Hotel, but I hadn't read that one and didn't feel like it was necessary.

Quote: "So we don't own the building," the director said, "but we hold a ten-thousand-year lease on the space."
"You're right. That's magnificent."
"Nineteenth-century hubris. Imagine thinking civilization would still exist in ten thousand years. But there's more." She leaned forward, paused for effect. "The lease is renewable."

184ursula
Mai 7, 2022, 2:01 am

>180 BLBera: It was my first, it seemed like a good place to start, but who knows? Haha.

>181 lisapeet: Yeah, I had the same impression. Didn't know much about him beyond that people seem to like his work!

>182 wandering_star: Then my work here is done. ;)

185BLBera
Mai 7, 2022, 11:44 am

>183 ursula: Great comments on Sea of Tranquility, Ursula. I love the quote! I wrote it in my reading journal. Station Eleven is still my favorite as well.

186ursula
Mai 8, 2022, 3:09 am

>185 BLBera: Did you read The Glass Hotel? I might read it eventually just because of the overlap, although the subject doesn't sound that interesting to me.

187BLBera
Mai 8, 2022, 7:10 pm

>186 ursula: I did read The Glass Hotel. Twice, actually. My book club chose it. I liked it better the second time. Mandel does interesting stuff with the narration.

188ursula
Bearbeitet: Mai 12, 2022, 9:31 am


Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle

First line: My father used to carry me down the hall to my room after I came home from the hospital.

Do you ever finish a book and realize you have no idea what you'll say about it? This is one of those books. The narrator is a young man, Sean, who runs a turn-based mail-order roleplaying game called Trace Italian. He came up with the ideas for it when he was 17, while he was laying in a hospital bed recovering from an event that is slowly explained (if "explained" is the right word here). The game has been successful, but has also had a pair of players who took it too far into the real world, with serious ramifications.

This is a book that mostly takes place inside someone's head, and the someone in question doesn't always (often?) understand his own thoughts, so there's not a lot of solid resolution, especially where you might want it most. But I felt like it was worthwhile and painted a picture. I just hesitate to say a lot more about it because the labyrinthine nature of trying to get through the layers of Sean's narrative is the whole point (the cover is quite appropriate).

Quote: "I worry that you'll be lonely," she said; she was crying.
"I was going to be lonely anyway," I said which I didn't mean to come out the way it did, but it did, and besides, it was true.

189ursula
Mai 12, 2022, 8:43 am

>187 BLBera: Sounds good, I'll probably check it out some year (haha).

190ursula
Mai 15, 2022, 12:41 pm


The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

I am essentially exactly the same age as Chuck Klosterman (he's about 6 months younger than me). And I was pretty sure this is why I related to and loved Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs so much. As I recall, it was a funny and entertaining look back at the 80s. So I was excited to read his take on the 90s.

I don't know what went wrong. There's no fun in this book. I don't know if it's because it inherently wasn't a very fun decade, or because when Gen X became adults the extreme irony became a cage, in such a way that even looking back on it it's impossible to find joy in anything. Whatever the reason, I didn't expect this to be so dry. It was interesting to read his analysis of Reality Bites (it could only have been accepted/viewed the way it was in an extremely small window of time before people wised up that Ethan Hawke's character was not someone to admire and "selling out" was not the end of the world - in fact it might be the only reasonable goal), and I learned some things about the brief trend of clear beverages.

Anyway, it was disappointingly kind of a slog for me. I don't think it was really bad, but it is hard to separate my expectations and judge that fairly.

Quote: Modern people worry about smartphone addiction, despite the fact that landlines exercised much more control over the owner. If you needed to take an important call, you just had to sit in the living room and wait for it. There was no other option. If you didn't know where someone was, you had to wait until that person wanted to be found. You had to trust people, and they had to trust you. If you made plans over the phone and left the house, those plans could not be changed - everyone had to be where they said they'd be, and everyone had to arrive when they said they'd arrive. Life was more scripted and less fluid, dictated by a machine that would not (and could not) compromise its location.

191LolaWalser
Mai 16, 2022, 9:29 pm

>190 ursula:

To my mind that's all upside-down. Phones went from being a useful appliance to a burden. As for meetings etc. I think there's much to be said for having a simple directive -- be there at that time --than a potentially enormously irritating stream of people ringing up changes etc.

192ursula
Mai 19, 2022, 12:51 am

>191 LolaWalser: I guess you had a more reliable set of contacts in the pre-cellphone era. Those simple directives didn't always work out to simple meet-ups.

193japaul22
Mai 19, 2022, 7:39 am

>190 ursula: I felt the same - topics that were fun to reminisce about, but overall boring and I did a ton of skimming. And no one who didn't live through the 90s would enjoy it at all.

194BLBera
Mai 19, 2022, 9:28 am

>190 ursula: Well, there's one I don't have to add to my list. Thanks Ursula.

195ursula
Mai 19, 2022, 11:08 am

>193 japaul22: Interesting. I said to my husband that I wasn't sure if it was just me or what ... maybe not. :) I think he's considering reading/skimming it since he has a different viewpoint on the era than me (10 years younger).

>194 BLBera: Always happy to take one for the team, haha.

196ursula
Bearbeitet: Mai 24, 2022, 10:56 am

It's been busy, but I've read some things:

First up, my first 1001 Books list read of the year, at this late stage.


Fear and Trembling by Amélie Nothomb

First line(s): Mister Haneda was senior to Mister Omochi, who was senior to Mister Saito, who was senior to Miss Mori, who was senior to me. I was senior to no one.

A novelized memoir of a young woman named Amélie who goes to Japan to work in a corporation. She was born in Japan although she is Belgian, and she has a love for the country and its people. However, she never finds her footing and instead finds herself rapidly descending the corporate ladder to places she didn't even know it could go. The entire thing is a fish-out-of-water story. In spite of what Amélie "knows" about Japanese culture, she always finds a way to do something wrong. I've seen that some people found her generalizations about Japan and its people quite offensive - but I feel like her actions kept landing her in trouble because of things she didn't understand, so I took her pronouncements about the causes also with a huge grain of salt.

Quote: Ancient Japanese protocol stipulated that the Emperor be addressed with "fear and trembling." I've always loved the expression, which so perfectly describes the way actors in samurai films speak to their leader, their voices tremulous with almost superhuman reverence."

Secondly:


Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

First line(s): "How the fuck are you this rich?" I took in the old vestibule, the wood ceiling that domed our heads.

A group of friends (frenemies, really) gather in a haunted Japanese castle for the wedding of two members of the group. The bride wants to tell ghost stories all night and then get married. To each their own! Anyway, everyone has history together and much of it is both not good and not adequately buried. What is buried, though, is the problem. The reason the castle is haunted is because a bride, when her groom was killed before their wedding day, asked to be buried in the foundations of the house to wait for him. She was buried alive, and eventually other young women met the same fate.

The rest is pretty much what you'd expect, although I wish in the end there had been a little more of it. At only 125 pages, there was simultaneously not time for much to happen and also something constantly happening, without time for the delicious building of suspense that I enjoy about horror.

Quote: The sight of it itched under my skin, like someone'd fed those small, black picnic ants through a vein, somehow; got them to spread out under the thin layer of dermis, got them to start digging.

197stretch
Mai 24, 2022, 10:08 am

>196 ursula: I have to get the Fear and Trmbling at some point. If for nothing else but to round out the presepectives on Japanese culture.

The Cassandra Khaw pops up a lot in horror circles, but is universally panned (at least that is my impression). It's too bad it kind of sounds interesting.

198lisapeet
Mai 24, 2022, 10:42 am

>196 ursula: Too bad about the Khaw book, because I find that cover absolutely terrifying and would love to be scared out of my wits accordingly. Even at that short length, I'll pass.

199RidgewayGirl
Mai 24, 2022, 3:39 pm

>198 lisapeet: Yes, that is a cover that demands a second look.

200ursula
Mai 25, 2022, 10:58 am

>197 stretch: Yeah I read some pretty scathing reviews, and some decent ones as well. I didn't have such a problem with the writing, I just felt like it needed more space all around. But maybe that would have made the flaws even more apparent, who knows?

>198 lisapeet:, >199 RidgewayGirl: The cover definitely drew me in, and the ohaguro bettari deserves a good story, with such a striking appearance. Maybe there's another one out there.

201ursula
Mai 30, 2022, 10:26 am


People Want to Live by Farah Ali

First line: A week after their son had been shot dead in a street, Salma and Asaf sat staring at each other across the big white sheet on the floor of their drawing room. (Heroes)

This is a collection of short stories set in Pakistan. I don't always get along with short stories, but I really enjoyed every single one of these. Girls in an orphanage dreaming of running away, a truck driver who gets into an accident with unexpected results, tales of marriages and families - those who separated from each other, those who stayed together, those who are coming together again.

Quote: I want to take my parents out to eat.... My mother wants Chinese food. My father wants to know why I like to waste my money. (Present Tense)
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