Avaland's 2010 Literary Adventures, Part II

Here is my 2010 thread, Part II

HERE'S my 2009, Part I thread. And HERE'S 2009, Part II

My 2008 thread is HERE. I did not keep a log on LT for 2006 and 2007.

NOW READING:



World and Town by Gish Jen (forthcoming 2010, US author)
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones (ON HOLD)
The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the Worldby Michelle Goldberg

READ in 2010

Novels & Novellas

Oil on Water by Helon Habila (2010, Nigerian)
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates (1996, US)
Truth by Peter Temple (2009, Australian)
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005, Australian)
Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (2005, T 2009, Quebeçois author)
Cold Earth by Sarah Moss (2009., UK author)
Rien ne va Plus by Margarita Karanapou (1992, T 2009 Greek)
A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates (novel, 1982, US)
The Country Where No One Ever Dies by Ornela Vorpsi (novel, 2009, Albania)
Kraken by China Miéville (2010, novel, fantasy)
The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout (novella, Algerian, T 2007)
Gardens of the Sun by Paul J. McAuley (2009, Science Fiction, UK)
Deep Hollow Creek by Sheila Watson (novella, 1992, Canadian)
Touch by Adania Shibli (novella, T 2010, Palestinian author)
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (novel, 2009, US author)
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1992)
First Love by Joyce Carol Oates (novella, 1996)
The Wilding by Maria McCann (novel, historical, 2010, UK author)
Dark Places by Kate Grenville (novel, 1994, Australian author)
The Beggar by Naguib Mahfouz (novella, 1965, Egyptian author)
The Beacon by Susan Hill (novella, 2008, UK author)
Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey (novella, UK authors, 1932)
The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates
The Corn Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates, included in Transgressions, Vol 4, edited by Ed McBain
Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi
The Pigeon by Patrick Süskind (novella, German author, 1987, translation 1988)
The Rainforest by Alicia Steimberg (Argentine author, 2000, translation 2006)
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, 2002, translation 2006)
Childwold by Joyce Carol Oates (1976)
The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi (Afghan author, novella, translation 2009)
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (Australian author, 2009)
Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser (novella, US author, 2000)
The House of Paper, Carlos María Domínguez (Translation 2004, novella, Uruguay)
I Lock My Door Upon Myself, Joyce Carol Oates (1990, novella, US)
Galore by Michael Crummey (2009 novel, Canadian, Newfoundland)
A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (2010 novella, US)

Short Fiction Collections & Anthologies

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (2009, US)
Beside Storiesedited by José Luis Martín Nogales (2005, Spain)
Stories from Contemporary China edited by Sun Yong (anthology, 2009, Chinese authors)
A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim (short story collection, US author)
Broken Things by Padrika Tarrant (short fiction, UK, 2007)
The New Uncanny: Tales of Unease edited by Sarah Eyre & Ra Page
Flesh & Blood by Michael Crummey (Canadian author, 1998)
Everything in This Country Must: A Novella and Two Stories by Colum McCann (Irish author, 2000)
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Stories by Philip Roth (novella + five stories, US author, 1959)

Poetry:

Rising of the Ashes by Tahar Ben Jelloun (2010, Morocco)
Upgraded to Serious by Heather McHugh (US, 2009)
Selections from: She had Some Horses by Jo Harjo (US, Native American)
Selections from: Rough Cradle by Betsy Scholl (US, 2009)
Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (US, African American, 2009)
Voices by Lucille Clifton (US, African American, 2008)
Dark Things by Novica Tadic (Serbian poet, Translation: 2009)
Selections from Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland (Irish poet)
Selections from The Long Marriage: Poems by Maxine Kumin (US Poet).

Police Procedurals, Psychological Crime Novels & Other Mysteries

NOTE: technically, I probably should put the Peter Temple novels here, but...
Betrayal by Karin Alvtegan (Sweden 2003, T 2005, psychological suspense)
Missing by Karin Alvtegan (Swedish 2000, T 2006, psychological suspense)
The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas (1995, T 2009, French)
Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill (2009, UK)
A Cure for all Diseases by Reginald Hill (2008)

Nonfiction

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Selections from Conversations with Octavia Butler (2009, US)
The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch (nonfiction, science, US, 2010)
Enlightened Sexism by Susan J. Douglas (nonfiction, cultural/media studies, US, 2010)
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter (UK, 2010)

Samplings/Essays...etc.

"Margaret Atwood's Tales" from In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews by Joyce Carol Oates (2010)
"Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story" in Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon.
"Up Against the Walls of Genre: The Many-Mansions Manifesto" by Eugene Reynolds, published in the New York Review of Science Fiction, February 2010.
"The German Legends of the Brothers Grimm," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter"Through a Text Backwards: The Resurrection of the House of Usher," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"The Better to Eat You With," from Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings by Angela Carter
"Ghosts: Hilary Mantel" also from Uncensored.
"On the Composition of I Lock My Door Upon Myself" from Uncensored: Views & (Re) views by Oates.
"Inside the Locked Room: P. D. James" by JCO, same collect as noted below.
"The Aesthetics of Fear" by JCO, same collection noted below.
"In Olden Times When Wishing Was Having...Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales," essay published in Where I've Been and Where I'm Going by Joyce Carol Oates
"The Double Standard of Content" and "False Categorizing," chapters 5 & 6 of How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ
"Bleak House" from Savage Reprisals: Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Buddenbrooks by Peter Gay.

Books Abandoned (a variety of reasons)

Serena by Ron Rash (Not entirely abandoned, I continue to read this on and off.)
This Night's Foul Work by Fred Vargas (read the Chalk Circle Man and thought it interesting, but I guess Adamsberg is a bit too twee of a detective for me).
So I am Glad by A. L. Kennedy (picked up in a pinch but didn't read enough to get into it. Perhaps will go back to it...)

*sorry about no touchstones. Every time we edit a list like this we have to reset all the touchstones again which gets to be a royal pain when the list gets long...

It's probably a good thing that I don't log ALL of my reading here, sometimes it is so random, compulsive and fragmented. For example, the other evening I was watching the news on television and a less interesting piece came on, I pulled a book from the shelf beside me (one of the lit crit shelves) and shuffled through the pages of The Victorian Novel* edited by Harold Bloom and read half an essay on Middlemarch. Of course, I've read these before, but I love to hear about what makes Middlemarch - a favorite novel - so extraordinary.

*I'm surprised to see that Amazon lists this as YA... very surprised.
--------


Upgraded to Serious: Poems by Heather McHugh.

Heather McHugh's poems are witty and very musical, with lots of wordplay - and they have energy and attitude. I admit, that with some of her poems, it takes me a few reads to "get" what she is saying and i wonder if she sometimes sacrifices some clarity with the wordplay and music. Here's one I liked in the collection:

LEAF-LITTER ON ROCK FACE

Things are not
unmoving (or else what

is inging for?) These things
once-living

drift toward the stone
more movingly for any human glance

that passes over them. The wind
wells up to spill a trail

of onces off the nevers,
take opaqueness from an eye

to mind, or near it.
Every rocking

takes some leaving
to a stonish spirit.
-----
(ha! you are wondering where the wit and attitude are, aren't you?)
-----
PHILOSOPHER ORDERS CRISPY PORK

I love him so, this animal I pray
was treated kindly. Let me pay as much as even
greater pig-lovers see fit

to guarantee him that. As for his fat,
I'd give up years yes years of my
own life for such

a gulpable semblable.
(My life! Such as it is, this
liberality of leaves! The world

won't need those seventeen more
poems, after all, there being
so few subjects to be treated. Three

if by subject we mean anyone
submitted to another's will. Two
if by subject we mean

topic. One if by death we wind up
meaning love. And none
if a subject must entail

the curlicue's indulgence of itself).
---------------
(and here is just an excerpt - about half - of this poem....)

NO SEX FOR PRIESTS

The horse in harness suffers:
he's not feeling up to snuff.

The feeler's sensate but the cook
pronounces lobsters tough.

The chain's too short: the dog's at pains
to reach a sheaf of shade. One half a squirrel's

whirling there, upon the interstate.
....

Touch by Adania Shibli (T 2010, Palestinian author)

This is a tiny book, a novella, more like a prose poem - but not quite. It doesn't follow a straightforward linear narrative, but tells its story of a young girl's impressions - colors, sounds, movement - in small vignettes. There is a certain distance in the prose that makes this ultimately a sad book but it's beautifully done and I will look for the author's other book that has been translated.

This book will be reviewed in full by Akeela in a future issue of Belletrista, I just couldn't resist reading it before mailing it off.

edited to add: Shibli's earlier book, We Are All Equally Far from Love, will be forthcoming from Clockroot books.

*I'm surprised to see that Amazon lists this as YA... very surprised.

Hmmm. Harold Bloom and YA don't really mix. Perhaps Amazon made a mistake.

>4 Nickelini: but I read it on the internets, that means it is true, right?

Of course, how could it not be if it's online???

but I read it on the internets, that means it is true, right?

Oh, right. What was I thinking.

Lois, I liked the McHugh poems you chose quite a lot. I've just reviewed a collection of Marie Ponsot's poetry, Easy: Poems Ponsot, which I think might appeal to you. My review contains the full text of my favorite poem, "Cometing"--it might be enough to tell you if Ponsot's work works for you.

Thanks for that pointer, Richard. That's interesting work! I did notice that you mentioned Sharon Olds in the review. I was a big Sharon Olds fan for a while but I think I outgrew her and I felt each collection not much different from the last. I have maybe 4 of her collections; but I stopped after The Father.

I don't revisit Sharon Olds's poetry much, I confess, since I agree with your one-note point. But she's a communicator! She is, as I said in a college English paper I wrote for my daughter, the anti-John Ashbery, the other pole of James Merrill.

>10 richardderus: oh, la-la-la, I don't want to hear that you wrote a college English paper for your daughter la-la-la!

>11 avaland: Que? Lo siento, senora, pero no hablo ingles muy bien, entonces no se entiendo....

as I said in a college English paper I wrote for my daughter

Hahaha that reminds me of a weekend I spent with an old friend where she stayed up into the night writing her son's English paper and wasn't very crazy about us pointing out that she was such an enabler LOL. Oh well.

as I said in a college English paper I wrote for my daughter
Ha. Been there ... my husband has been, shall we say, involved in some of #1 daughter's more important papers. We have the "enabler discussion" every time.

I overhelped just one time on an assignment my daughter had in fifth grade for an research paper that I thought was just way too much for fifth graders. For their topic they had to have a massive bibliography, interview someone who worked in the field, and on and on. We did perception and I was the interviewee, teaching and studying visual arts then it seemed close enough. I remember we made a kaleidoscope and a shoebox model of one of those things where you look in a hole and something looks bigger that is really smaller or vice versa. What was really insulting was she only got a B on it.

>12 richardderus: Ha! Du synes å snakke det godt nok når du vil!

Ahem. Well, if it was better than the batch of papers I'm reading now . . . .

One of my worst experiences as a professor: Having caught seven students in a single class plagiarizing from online sites selling essays or providing them for free, I complained about it to an acquaintance--who asked where she could find these sites because her kids could use them. Her rationale was that, since they were majoring in sciences and not humanities, it didn't matter if they cheated, as long as it upped their GPAs.

No, I did NOT tell her where to find them! (I assume her kids were bright enough to cheat on their own.)

Plagiarization has become the scourge of grading papers. I'm succumbing to TurnItIn drop boxes that catch anything on the internet along with strong preventive measures with classes devoted to documenting, carefully crafted assignments that make plagiarism tough, and warnings about the harsh results of plagiarism. And STILL I get at least 3 or 4 cases a semester. But parents who write papers for students ..... WHY?????

>18 janeajones: Because it presented a chance to rescue a failing grade, in a college career that was ending, and thus a sliver of hope for a return to higher ed. at a later time. That day looks like it might be approaching, in a field not liberal-artsy.

The thing about cheating is in the final analysis it only causes actual harm to the cheater. And yes, of course I saw it as cheating. My position is, you're 21 and I've done what I can, so if YOU're okay with it....

19> (sigh!) Your rationale is basically the same as that of the woman I mentioned above. Cheating isn't cheating if it isn't in your chosen field? Or if you're both OK with it?

Jane, I now use Turnitin for EVERYTHING. Even papers on works/topics that they can't possibly find info about on the web, because they often plagiarize from one another.

>20 Cariola: Cheating isn't cheating if it isn't in your chosen field? Or if you're both OK with it? No, not at all. I don't care that others cheat because it's between them and their conscience. I don't expect others to follow rules simply because there are rules. I routinely speed, fail to signal turns, walk across lawns that say "Keep off the grass" and so on. I think cheating yourself out of an education is a concern to the student and the professor, and the parents if they're paying for it (I wasn't); it's a damnfool thing to do; and it's always, always going to catch up to you sooner or later. Are you, the cheater, okay with the consequences? Then if you're an adult, on your head be it.

I don't want to fight those battles...they're enervating and eternal and unwinnable. I say my piece, the chips fall where they may.

21> One thing we definitely agree upon: it's an eternal battle. My brother, who is about to retire, has given up on it. And I have to agree with him that I hate that it has become part of my job to "police" my students. Generally, the university (which is, in reality, a business more concerned with making money and keeping the "customers" happy than in educating them) just wants us to entertain them and pass them all with grades of B or better.

21> I agree that the person the cheater most cheats is him/herself -- until it reaches the the stage of theft. And in a culture where cheating is seen as OK, it escalates quickly. Here's an article on the problem in Chinese academia:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2010/04/11/rampant_cheating_hurts...

Sorry we've hijacked your thread, Lois.

only causes actual harm to the cheater

Unless, of course, curve grading is in effect. University is way too many years behind me to know if it's still done there (I certainly hope not)...but it's certainly still done at the high school level, to my dismay. However, I acknowledge that you specified "you're 21" and, if that applies to a high school student, there are other problems.

ETA: This puts me in mind of the high school Science Fairs where there are always a few projects that anyone with an engineering degree + hundreds of dollars + corporate fabrication facilities could make. Clearly the work of the 16 year old student...

To chime in on the cheating discussion, the school board that I work for just released a memo saying that it will now pay for TurnItIn starting in September. Personally, I think it is a pretty sad statement on our society that even high schools need to check plagiarism through a website. But, it is also necessary - my department (Languages) had quite the run of plagiarized essays last semester, from grades 9 through 12. Our solution is to now make major writing assessments in-class. Of course, our students hate this, as they can't use Spellcheck, Grammar Check, etc. The thing with high school is that we can always tell, as students rarely realize that writing style is personal, and that online essays use vocab and sentence structure way beyond their abilities.

Given how many papers were written pre-Internet, how does TurnItIn check for plagiarism from them, given that they don't find them on a Web crawl? Do repositories of papers voluntarily send them in for scanning?

I don't know if repositories are submitting papers, but certainly all the journals found in online databases like J-Stor and articles published in newspapers and popular magazines are covered. Generally students are looking for a quick and easy cut-and-paste -- it would be more difficult and time-consuming to research print sources than to actually write the papers themselves (at least at the level I'm teaching), so it's actually pretty easy to find anything suspect just by typing a sentence or two into Google. On the other hand, if students can find someone to write an original paper for them, then they'll probably get away with it even if the instructor suspects that the level and style of writing is not the students' own.

If someone is so lazy and gutless as to plagiarize, would they be capable of looking up something written on paper? Universalizing this is philosophically sloppy, but if cheating is justifiable for whatever reason, then surely lying for political or financial gain is fine too.

We should all just obey the rules that make sense to us, and don't inconvenience us personally; after all, the ends justify the means.

Sorry, but I got a B on a paper for which I bled through my eyeballs to complete (Kant, who I dislike to this day), in which at least two people I knew "got help" and for which a grading curve existed. My fault, I know, but I hate living in a world where dishonesty is fine because grades are so important.

Boy, I thought I was over that!

>23 janeajones: hijack away, it's an interesting topic!

My daughter works at the local university in the School of Pharmacy and I just asked her if they still grade on a curve. She said of course they do, especially in the sciences. They also use more frequently the "drop a test grade" approach.

There was a huge to-do here recently over the high school regents exams where students were tested on 65% of the material covered and a score of 50% was actually considered passing which meant that students had only mastered ____% of the material covered. (Maybe some of the math geniuses out there can fill in the blank but you get the idea; it's not much.)

Not a math genius by a long stretch, but would that be 32.5%?

There you go.

Having someone else blatantly do your project or cutting and pasting from a website is indeed just plain wrong. You'll never learn from those projects and you're just setting yourself off on a course of pure laziness.

Now, a peek at someone else's exam or a formula written here or there on your forearm, although still wrong, I can be more forgiving. It's nervousness and fear that you'll forget. More often than not, the person is peeking at someone who doesn't know how to do a problem themselves and will still get it wrong, or they write down a formula they end up not needing on an exam or don't even know when to use it. So either way, they'll still get punished by their grade. But in real life, you can look up at that formula or ask someone else or consult a book.

When discussing cheating with professors they always told me that it's usually the good students who do it because they are so used to being at the top of their class that they'll keep doing whatever they have to do to be there. Especially since I'm in the sciences and these kids are trying to get into med school or dental school. These are smart kids, and they can do the work easily but they get nervous about their grades so they do something they probably shouldn't do. I'm not saying it's good, but it's understandable. We do weird things to get ahead.

Personally, when I was a TA I always told my students that cheating was bad and that if I caught them, they'd be severely punished. But then I also let them know that, if they were tempted by the idea of cheating, then maybe they should stop to think about what else is going on in their lives and to come discuss it with me. We'd rather give them some leeway on something than have them resort to cheating. I know when I was an undergrad student and I had a huge project due when my grandfather died. I wasn't tempted to cheat but I was tempted to just give up until I consulted my TA and she said she'd help me no matter what.

So really, you just need to talk to these students.
But it's pretty amazing supervising a room of exam-takers seeing how many develop these weird ticks and stretches and neck problems and back problems. ;)

>30 brenzi:: Did they know which 65% in advance? If not, arguably they mastered 50% instead of 32.5% since they'd have to study it all to be sure they covered whichever portion was selected.

Still...I admit it's no great shakes for coverage if 50% of the answer can be wrong.

I remember several fellow students once complaining that they'd almost rather go into a test knowing everything would be tested than knowing that some small details would be chosen as the basis of the exam. What if you missed studying that one small thing?

My junior year of college I took a course on The Inferno from Robert Hollander. He was known as a terribly tough grader and one of the complaints was always his, "I'll choose 20 short passages from the entire book and you need to write me an essay on each."

That and his, "Do excellently on all tests and I'll give you a B. An A? Well, tell me something about the work that I find interesting and new." ;-)

I was only auditing because I was already carrying a full course load, but there was a rumor he was going to retire and I wanted to make sure I got a chance to hear him...so all I felt at this was sympathy for friends.

You're right Tad; they didn't know what material was going to be on the test. However, I don't think I could be as generous as you and feel that they mastered everything they studied. That's why we test, to see what's been mastered. At any rate, it's a pretty low standard to be setting, either way.

I join you in sympathizing with your friends. So I take it he didn't make it possible to earn an A.

Bonnie,

I don't think I could be as generous as you

I don't actually believe that, I was just pointing out a possibility. :-)

So I take it he didn't make it possible to earn an A.

Well, honestly, I don't know. How much was hype and how much reality?

I suspect at least one girl did, regardless of the standard. She was an Art History major and pointed out a background image to him in a painting he hadn't been aware of that was based upon the book. They had a very excited discussion about it in one class that ended up digressing all over the place. It was a lot of fun to listen to. She was in my precept and was very involved and well-prepared, so I'd think she was a good candidate.

Beyond that, I don't know...was it just his way of scaring students into working harder, or was he serious? I don't have any real way of telling. I'd like to think it was the latter and that a noted expert in the field wasn't expecting undergraduates to exceed his knowledge. But who knows?...the class was notorious as an anti-gut course, right up there with Classical Mechanics and Orgo as a grade-point killer.

36 -
I love that you point out "Orgo as a grade-point killer" since organic chemistry was what I got my Masters in so I TA-ed that class several times. All that means is that you actually have to study for the damn class compared to others. It was graded on a nice bell curve so it's not like everyone was going to fail. In fact, out of my students, I only had to fail 2 or 3 in several semesters worth of classes.

I tremble to bring this up...I am routinely excoriated for being an elitist for saying, and meaning, it...a college education should not be required for entry-level business positions, or at all for the vast majority of people.

University professors. Candidates for the Senate, the Presidency, and other such mandarin-y things. People who BATTEN on the minutiae of knowledge, obsessively classify same, and generally serve little to no daily practical purpose. THESE should be the ones in universities, pursuing degrees.

NOT people like me, or my daughter, or frankly most of the people on the planet. We're smart enough, and can find our own education on the Internet (please, please, no one point out that it's unguided and untrustworthy...neither is being taught, based on the comments above). But we're never going to make research discoveries that will lead to new technologies or expand the frontiers of science.

As for primary teachers needing education classes to teach...I'd say the evidence is in on that (see conversations above), and the results make me feel like burning down the Schools of Education at all local universities, in hopes of starting a trend.

Well. I'm done.

#37, Very funny about organic chemistry. I got my worst grade ever in the first semester of it, but did better in the second semester (it wasn't just that I worked harder; it was more interesting). At one of my job interviews my senior year of college, an interviewer actually asked me about that grade since it was so much worse than everything else!

>38 richardderus: I will say one thing: the bachelor's degree is the new high school diploma.

40> You are so right. Which means that they are no longer being taught the essential skills in high school. When I get them as college freshmen, most of them are at about eighth or ninth grade level. I was just talking today to a colleague about how far we have had to "dumb down" our courses in just the last 5-6 years.

41 -
Just from going to an undergrad to a grad student teaching undergrads I noticed how things were dumbed down. I was shocked and amazed! And yet they still couldn't get the subject matter right. Bewildering.

I have to say too that when I read news articles about high school teachers having to remind their students not to use netspeak in their lit papers, I'm just dumb-founded! Bewildered again. These things should be self-explanatory.

I keep trying to slip into the conversation, but it's like trying to catch running water...

42> Yes, I read a paper just last night that was full of it. They are also taught that their own experiences and tastes are relevant to EVERYTHING. Teach Hamlet by asking them how they felt when someone close to them died or let them read the manga version because they like it better. One of the short story analyses I graded last night rambled on and on about what happened to her and how she felt about it when she missed a day of class in grade school; the main character does miss a day of school, but there was nothing in the paper that remotely resembled an analysis of the story.

richardderus@38,

I tend to be suspicious of, e.g., marketing and business administration as college majors. These subjects are well worth scholarly study, but their actual practice is surely better learned under some sort of apprenticeship. Maybe people should be able to minor in them while majoring in a real subject.

Brenzi@40,
I too suspect that college is the new high school. It's a great way to exclude from the job competition a lot of smart people whose circumstances or temperament made it hard to complete or afford college.

On the other hand, I do note that these complaints about the dumbing down of college education coincide with the steady increase in the majority proportion of the female college population. Maybe that's unrelated, but maybe there's a sexism connection? Here, of course, I must defer to the academics actually doing the teaching.

>45 dukedom_enough: It's possible that sexism plays a large role in this issue. But I wonder if we've overstayed our welcome with this issue...see #43...perhaps it's time to rest the conversation on new footing.

>46 richardderus: didn't mean that comment to deter further conversation, only to note in my wry way the simultaneous yet interrelated topics. Carry on.

>45 dukedom_enough: That's an interesting thought (possible sexism), but I see it more as the dominance of the consumer culture and the general sense of entitlement that the younger generation seems rife with (and there is, of course, some connection between these two things; though I think there are also other cultural reason for this).

>47 avaland: I see it more as the dominance of the consumer culture and the general sense of entitlement that the younger generation seems rife with (and there is, of course, some connection between these two things

Here, here. I've probably said this before because I say it a lot, but teachers today have to put on a real dog and pony show to engage students because they're so used to fast moving visual images on computers, tv, iPods, cell phones, etc. They don't know how to sit and listen to a teacher try to teach forcing her (him) to constantly be trying new methods that might further engage the student. It's a pretty tough battle.

And entitlement, wow, huge, huge problem. Don't even know where to start with that one. Why, why, why would people succumb to raising their children that way?

45 -

dumbing down of college education coincide with the steady increae in the majority proportion of the female college population.

Correct me if I'm wrong but are you trying to say that subjects have been dumbed down because there is a greater increase of women attending college? I am eating breakfast so perhaps I haven't woken up enough but this seems to be what I'm understanding from your comment.

>48 brenzi: another good point! attention span. re: entitlement. well, some of that is, no doubt, inherent with economic/social class but I'm talking about a more general malaise. Some of it comes from the consumer mentality where paying for the class, for example, seems to be confused with the idea of having to earn the grade.
>45 dukedom_enough:, 49 there is certainly a coincidence with this trend and the rise in the attendance of women in college (I think women are over 50% now in college), but I can't see any angle where a case could be made for sexism. Hmm. I think we shall have an interesting conversation when dukedom gets home this evening:-) (btw, if anyone missed the news about the larger number of women in college these days, here's a piece on it: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec02/college.html)

Are we excluding the ivy leagues (prestigious universities, for those who might be outside the US) from the "dumbing down" trend? A good portion of the students still have to earn their way in (the ones that don't have useful family or money connections).

lilsin@49,

No; apologies if I didn't make that clear. I'm suggesting that the complaints about dumbing down are related to the demographics: that people look at the larger population of women and see failings that they overlooked for men, back when men were the majority population. If a woman has a problem, she's presumed unprepared and/or lacking in work ethic; a man with the same problem is more likely to be diagnosed with having a tough semester and in need of extra help, while still basically a sound student. There being more women, failings are seen more often in the general (women plus men) population, and thus seen more often compared with years past.

But then again, maybe there really is a change over the years, in both genders. I last TA'd in the early 1980s.

Interesting confluence of issues here:

48> ""teachers today have to put on a real dog and pony show to engage students" -- while this partly due to the changing nature of students, it's also partly due to academic administration's love affair with pedagogy and whatever fashionable trend is next around-the-bend. Where once professional development had to do with deepening one's knowledge and expertise in the field one was teaching, now it's all about teacher training of one sort or another. In my 20-some years of college teaching I've been force fed -- ethics education; "tech-prep;" student engagement; Gen X,Y and Z; job-force readiness; 21st C skills; etc., etc. Not to mention immersion in the continual learning curve of computer applications. It's not only students that can't focus their attention -- it's also administrators.

40.45.47> Re: college being the new high school and immersion in the consumer culture -- I think these are two aspects of colleges' becoming businesses rather than academic institutions. On the one hand, administrations see students as customers rather than learners, and in order to get customers, they have advertised the monetary worth of their degrees. Businesses have bought into the advertising, so they require college degrees to even apply for jobs. Students have thus been deluded into thinking that if they pay tuition, they have bought a right to a degree. In order to keep and attract students, colleges have to hand out degrees, so professors are pressured to pass students. A vicious cycle that just gets worse. I'm looking forward to retirement.

Let me just say that I quickly deleted the email from my provost asking if I would consider making a Facebook page for my class. In fact, a few years ago one of my Supplemental instructors thought this would be a good idea and asked the studnts if they would participate if she made a class Facebook page. The answer was a resounding, "No! We don't want school interfering with our personal lives." (I only wish the reverse was true and that I didn't have to keep chastizing students for text messaging or having their cell phones ring during class.)

I don't think gender has anything to do with the dumbing down trend. It's all of the things mentioned above: universities having become money-making ventures, students having an attitude of entitlement, and the fact that most young people seem to have the attention span of a pea (which I attribute to their having grown up on televison, video games, iPod, cell phones, and the internet. If any task takes more than 15 minutes, it isn't worth doing, in their opinion. Hence the rise in plagiarism.)

The university's focus is simply how many students can we get, how many students can we graduate, and how many of those who graduate get jobs. that is what success is based upon. And since jobs are the main focus, students are bucking anything that resembles a well-rounded, liberal arts education. "I'm going to be a computer analyst, so why do I have to take Intro to Lit?"

The "consumers" now have inordinate power over faculty. We are evaluated by our students every semester, and these evaluations are used in the promotion process. While some students do give fair, thoughtful, and even sometimes helpful responses, most of them use the evaluations as an opportunity to get back at faculty for a bad grade. For example, I have been given the lowest possible mark for "Available to help me with my work" when I hold a minimum of five open office hours each week, my syllabus states that I will make appointments for those who can't come during office hours, and I regularly reply to emailed questions. The handwritten comments have included such "useful" comments as "I hate literature," "She has a nasally voice that irritates me," and "Why does she wear those ugly shoes?" Is it any wonder that we have to put on the dog-and-pony show and hand out Bs llike candy?

Our curriculum is about to be gutted by the state Dept. of Education. The pols have decided that the reason kids don't learn is because teachers don't teach well, so they are now requiring our secondary certification English students, who make up 50% of our majors, to take nine new credit hours in pedagogy. Because the state system will not allow any programs to exceed 120 hours (to get them in and out in exactly four years), that means that nine hours will have to be cut from content in order to make room for the pedagogy courses. Shakespeare may be on the chopping block--even though high school English teachers always teach Shakespeare--and there is another proposal to make the entry level course a general education course--which will raise the cap from 25 to 40, and how anyone will be able effectively to teach three genres, research skills and documentation format, and literary terms and analysis to a class of 40 is beyond me. There is the very real prospect that we will be graduating new English teachers who haven't read a Shakespearean play since high school. And sadly, some of my colleagues think that's just fine. One even stated that it was more important to "model successful teaching methods" because "you don't need to have read a Shakespearean play in order to teach one."

If there is one word that absolutely makes my skin crawl, it is "assessment"--a favorite of administrators who are looking for somewhere, anywhere to place the blame for failure other than on the "consumers" themselves.

Maybe it has something to do with how the cost of a college education has exploded. People can no longer go to university to get an education, but have to go with a specific, well-paying job in mind. Think about it--just a few decades ago it was entirely possible to work one's way through college; I don't think that would be possible now outside of some community colleges. We could also graduate with a reasonable amount of debt, or debt-free, even if we were paying our own way. If I were to go to university now, knowing I would be up to my eyebrows in debt by graduation, I wouldn't take the time to explore ideas and study abroad because I'd be focused on getting my money's worth.

My answer to the rising cost of a college education: cut 40% of the useless and highly overpaid administrators and managers whose main job is to create data to justify themselves and to create busywork for everyone else so they can have annother line for their resumes.

I agree.... and while you're at it, cut the college athletic teams. And don't tell me they make money.

>50 avaland: Are we excluding the ivy leagues...from the "dumbing down" trend? A good portion of the students still have to earn their way in.

I don't know. My wife and I both have done interviews for our respective schools and it seems to be getting harder to gain admission, rather than easier—an exceptional GPA and very good SATs don't go as far as they used to go. On the other hand, they recalibrated the SATs in the 90s, so maybe they shouldn't go as far as the old 'R' scores did. Once students are there?...if one reads the statements by their presidents, there is an explicit recalibration and move away from grade inflation (much to the editorial howls of undergraduates).

>53 Cariola:: We are evaluated by our students every semester

Admittedly, I'm 30 years post-university and my oldest is still a couple years pre-university...so I'm out of touch a bit...still, this was rather shocking to read. Short of extreme misbehavior, I didn't really envision administrations caring much about a professors popularity (and that's what such an evaluation would devolve toward), being more concerned with competence and ethics.

>54 RidgewayGirl:: I'd be focused on getting my money's worth

And that seems to be the problem: what we consider our money's worth. With the clarity of hindsight, I find myself wishing I had spent more time on the "other stuff" instead of nerding away in the chem lab. However, I didn't feel that way at the time.

>56 janeajones:: Athletics = alumni support = donations = administration looks good

The old saw of "the three jobs facing a college president are to provide enough parking for the faculty, enough football for the alumni and enough sex for the students."

>58 TadAD: Well perhaps colleges need to follow the advice of Sec. of Education Arne Duncan:

penalize schools that do not value academics. Teams and coaches that graduate players at a lower rate than their institution's other student athletes should be at risk of losing scholarships. Teams with an NCAA-calculated graduation rate below 33 percent should not play in the postseason. These squads do not deserve to be rewarded with a spot on the NCAA's biggest stage when they clearly are not able to achieve even a low level of success off the court.

33%??? Really?? I guess I'm just naive in thinking that colleges actually tried to graduate these "students."

>59 brenzi:: Actually, I hear that there's a move to put a new rule in the NCAA: Sports teams will no longer award a varsity letter to an athlete who cannot identify it.

:P

The University of North Texas football team was paid over $3.5 million to play GA Tech in an upcoming pre-season game. The reason? They are one of the teams with the most consecutive losses, and GA Tech's alumni will love to see get slaughtered. The illusion of having a winning team=more alumni donations.

And where is UNT putting that $3.5 million? Into a new football stadium, of course.

>61 Cariola:: Actually, the articles I've seen on it don't equate winning teams with alumni donations. They equate simply having a team with alumni donations.

51 -
Thank you for that clarification.
As for women vs men in the classroom, personally I haven't seen a difference. I have smart girls and boys and I have dumb girls and boys. I've even had a boy tell me that he intended on getting by in life with his looks. (He used to be a cabana boy in Vegas). I snorted and moved on. But he's still my biggest regret in terms of students as he had so much potential but wasn't using it.

In grad school, my organic chemistry class was 50/50 men and women. The Physics department was more 95/5 but only for the incoming class. Seemed the women sort of did a mix and preferred doing physical chemistry.

I should have been a physicist or a pchemist as I was better at those subjects but I was weird and chose ochem. Don't ask me why as I still can't explain that one.

53 -
Good old professor evaluations!
How I miss those. Most of the feedback was spot on and I appreciated that they were able to pick up on my strengths and what I considered to be my weaknesses. A lot of the students actually appreciated my high standards as they would tell me that they learned a lot. That made me really proud and gave me hope that they would build up their own high standards in the future. But obviously some evaluations were worthless. One student told me I was slow to help them out when I'm one to check my email every 30 minutes and reply immediately. I appreciated the "TA is HOTT!!" evaluation as it was flattering but I'd hope they stared more at what I was writing on the chalkboard instead of just staring at my ass. Must admit my most bewildering TA evaluation was along the lines of "Scott was a great TA; I really appreciated having him for my sociology class as he was really helpful." I don't know if this student was trying to brag in my face about his other TA or was just really high off his mind. (I did TA in Boulder after all.)

As for the athletics, I'm an athlete myself and I don't think those departments should be cut. But schools do need to learn how to find a balance.

The cost of a college education hasn't gone up much in real terms...the *burden* has shifted from taxpayers to families. This was coincident with the rise of Federally funded, privately guaranteed and administered (for fees), loans. How odd.

I worked at a student loan company. These were internal statistics. Obama has changed this to a certain degree by removing banks from the lending part of the process, then giving them a profit center in administering the loans they once had, and made scroodles of money from, cradle-to-grave...unless someone defaulted, then *bang* back to the Department of Education went the loan.

Eliminating athletics will happen shortly after legalization of gay marriage in all 50 states, by the voters not the courts. Should they be eliminated? Yes. Useless damn things. Wanna get into shape? Go to a pay gym. Can't afford it? Go run in the park. No park? Run in the street. Football? Basketball? Why? There are pro teams looking for talent all over the place. Go find 'em. Lacrosse?!? Field hockey?! Get real! Go to the aforementioned park.

Teachers should be paid more than administrators, and students should belt the hell up and learn instead of issuing fatwas on profs they don't like. Who CARES if they like you? The administration certainly shouldn't.

Oh well. Things are far from perfect every damn where, eh what?

Hmm, I think I am on the pro side of professor evaluations. When I was in university, we always filled them out at the end of the semester. My school was split into the main campus, and then four smaller "college" campuses that ran their own classes, hired their own profs, etc. Students could take courses at any of these five campuses, as they were really all on the same property. I took about half of my classes on main campus, and the other half at the biggest of the colleges. Profs at this college were actually given pay raises and decreases based on their student evaluations (not huge ones I'm sure, but still). Interestingly, I would say that every single prof I had at this college was outstanding, whereas on main campus I had several horrible ones. I'm not sure if these evals are major factors, but they can't hurt either.

I should note that I am not talking about easiness as the reason a prof is better than another - rather lecture style, availability to students, love of subject, etc.

Stopping by to say Hello and get back in the thread reading groove. Looks as though I've missed quite a bit of interesting discussion here.

Get 'em talking an' posting, woman.

Love, Ruth

>66 womansheart: LOL! Yes, it has been very interesting.

I've finished Deep Hollow Creek by Canadian author Sheila Watson, which I very much enjoyed.

And I'm about to finish Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done bu Susan J. Douglas, which has been very interesting. I've spread the book out over weeks; it's just not the kind of book I can read cover to cover. I read a chapter and then let it stew for a day or a few days before I move to the next chapter.

I'll be back to review/comment on these after the next issue of Belle goes up (though possibly before).

#67 - Phew! I'm glad you enjoyed Deep Hollow Creek - now I can stop worrying over recommending it! LOL

Lois, are we going to have a May challenge, like out March Novella and April Living Poet ones? They were a lot of fun, and produced some excellent discussion.

> I have added Deep Hollow Creek to my Wishlist, because both of you have read it. I've been reading more great books from Canadian authors lately it seems.

Ruth/womansheart

>68 Cait86: re: challenge. Hmm. I just thought of one...

>68 Cait86: Eventually I'll get around to writing about it. I thought it a little confusing at times and I thought it had something to do with the style of her narrative, but I'm not convinced that it wasn't my brain. Lovely passages that I sometimes stopped to read out loud.

Enjoyed all of the above conversations immensely and found myself agreeing with supposedly opposing points of view all too often. Would love to jump in, but it would take me hours to formulate my thoughts on subjects I care so much about, so will change the subject (not suggesting anyone else has to) and ask: What do you think about about The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain} so far?

>71 bonniebooks: well, Bonnie, I've only dipped into a chapter or so and thus far it's fairly easy reading; unexpectedly so. The book is short also, so I may have gotten most of her thesis while listening to her interview on "Fresh Air" (which is why I bought the book). Still, it's a comfort to those of us worry about why our once phenomenal memory is not quite phenomenal in some areas any more:-)

Thanks for the link; that was a reassuring interview.

The Rising of the Ashes by Tahar Ben Jelloun

This collection of poetry, in this bilingual edition, containing two long poems sandwiching numerous short poems, are an elegy for those Iraqis who died in the first Gulf war (the thousands of victims left behind after the US & its allies left; many buried in mass graves), and testifies to the "displacement and killing of Palestinians in Lebanon in the Occupied Territories during the 1980s." Jelloun, who is Moroccan, originally wrote the poems in Arabic and they were translated into the French. The French has now been translated into English (so the result is a double translation, which might, imo, be responsible for a bit of the flatness that I sense).

The collection is filled with grief and anger as Jelloun tries to give these anonymous dead, through his poetry, "names and a gravestone for remembrance." His introduction is also emotional. An excerpt:

"Once one has covered thousands of anonymous corpses with a blanket of ashes and sand, one cultivates forgetting.

So poetry rises. Out of necessity. Amidst the disorder where human dignity is trampled, poetry becomes urgent language.

But words pale when the wound is deep, when the well-planned chaos is brutal and irreversible. Against that, words. And what can they do?"

(actually, I think that as good as posting an excerpt from one of the poems...)

Hey! How did your thread get from 1 to 74 in what seems like just days! Lots of interesting conversation...

With ref to >3 avaland: way up top, I absolutely agree with you: Touch by Adania Shibli is a special little book.

>74 avaland:, I've just got a ticket to see Tahar Ben Jelloun speak at an event during the London Review of Books' World Literature Weekend. I'm very excited!

> 76 Wow!

>76 charbutton: awesome. The advantages of being in a city!

I have been a bit behindhand in keeping up with LT: goats, gardens, and guests (not to mention one wedding and a funeral) have kept me busy. Consequently, I missed the discussion on plagiarism, but I would like to add my clichéd two cents worth. I have a cousin who regularly "helps" her son and college-age daughter "write" her papers. I have had endless discussions with her about the necessity of letting her children do their own work. She doesn't see what she does as plagiarism; she sees her help as a method of keeping her children on task. I keep telling her that she is doing her children no favors. While she agrees with me in theory, she doesn't stop. I think she sees her help as part of what a supportive, caring mother does. Oy!!!

When I taught, mothers writing papers were the bane of my life. Disclosure of their "help" usually came when I flunked a paper for bad structure, bad grammar, and generally bad writing. Mothers who taught language arts or English were the worst.

Tracking down plagiarism finally became such a chore that I rebelled. I told my students, "If you want to end up $40,000 in debt for your college degree (which you gained by plagiarizing) that is your business. I consider it a hideous waste of money not to mention stupid. If I see egregious plagiarism, I will track it down and flunk you. If I see fragments, I will not bother to track them down. I have better ways to spend my time. I will not, however, give you a good grade nor will I waste my time offering feedback. I reserve that privilege for students who earn their grades."

Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done by Susan J. Douglas

(apologies in advance for the long-windedness of this; there's just so much in this book...)

Susan J. Douglas is the author of the 1994 Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media, a deliciously insightful and witty book about how the mass media had portrayed women during the 1950s through the 1970s. As Publishers Weekly notes, she “considers the paradox of a generation of women raised to see themselves as bimbos becoming the very group that found its voice in feminism.” I loved this book and I never looked at television the same again. I think I may have even sent a note off to Ms. Douglas begging for a sequel.

While not exactly a sequel, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done once again examines the mass media and the often conflicting images of women it presents – this time from roughly 1990 to the present. But instead of examining how the mass media may have contributed or reflected the feminist movement, this time she’s using the same kind of study as a wake-up call and call to arms, thus joining an increasing number of voices who are saying the same thing.

Douglas, with her characteristic wit, argues that the battle for equality has not been won and that many of the images of female power the mass media has been giving us over the last 15 or so years has been little more than fantasy.

What the media have been giving us, then, are little more than fantasies of power. They assure girls and women, repeatedly, that women’s liberation is a fait accompli and that we are stronger, more successful, more sexually in control, more fearless, and more held in awe than we actually are… Of course women in fictional TV shows can be in the highest positions of authority, but in real life—maybe not such a good idea. Instead, the wheedling, seductive message to young women is that being decorative is the highest form of power—when, of course, if it were, Dick Cheney would have gone to work every day in a sequined tutu.

Douglas’s term “enlightened sexism” is a nod to an earlier book titled Enlightened Racism. “Enlightened sexism is feminist in its outward appearance (of course you can buy or be anything you want) but sexist in its intent (hold on, girls, only up to a certain point, and not in any way that discomfits men or pushes feminist goals one more centimeter forward). While enlightened sexism seems to support women’s equality, it is dedicated to the undoing of feminism.”

Examining the mass media, particularly television from 1990 onward, Douglas chronicles the rise in this enlightened sexism, and the examination is – like in her earlier book – fascinating. It’s a lot to digest and probably not a book one would want to read quickly. Let me give you the highlights using the chapter headings (rather oversimplified, I’m afraid):
-1990 and the show “Beverly Hills 90210” – one of the first programs successfully aimed at the teenage girl market.
- “Castration Anxiety” – images of dangerous women (remember Loreena Bobbitt, Amy Fisher?) and women who don’t play by the rules (Janet Reno) in the early 1990s.
- “Warrior Women in Thongs” examines shows like “Xena” and “Buffy” in the mid to late 1990s
- “A New Girliness” examines movies such as “Clueless,” “Legally Blonde,” and “Miss Congeniality“ and television shows like “Ally McBeal.”
- In “you Go, Girl”, she examines how African American women and other women of color are portrayed in the mass media during this period (including the success of Oprah, the rise of rap music..etc).
- “Sex “R” Us” looks at the mainstreaming of pornography beginning in the late 1990s. “…the rampant return to the often degrading sexual objectification of women, and the increasing sexualization of children, especially girls.”
-“Reality Bites” looks at so-called reality television from “The Bachelor” to “Survivor” to “Wife Swap.”
-“Lean and Mean” looks at a possible connection between our culture’s pressure for women to fit into a size zero dress while still filling out a 38D bra and the rise of “queen bees” and “mean girls.” I found this a particularly provocative theory and although I’m not convinced entirely of the connection, the exploration of the topic was fascinating.
-“Red Carpet Mania” examines our cultural obsession with celebrity and what the celebrity industry is telling us.
In “Women on Top…Sort Of”, Douglas decodes the media coverage and examines how women are talked about in the last election (Clinton, Palin, Michelle Obama), and other prominent women (Martha Stewart, Katie Couric). She also discusses their television counterparts in shows like “ER,” “Law & Order,” “Commander in Chief,” and “Boston Legal.”

In her last chapter and, in my opinion, to her credit, Douglas takes up a call-to-arms, encouraging us to a new era of media consciousness, a redirection of our energies into a new era of activism that benefits all women, particularly the millions of women currently invisible in the mass media (most of us).

Unlike with the previous book, I hadn’t watched much of the television in the era Douglas covers in this book. I wondered whether my experience of this book would have been different if I had, but I think fundamentally not, although I might have thought some parts slightly less tedious, I suppose.What Douglas does that I find so valuable is to raise our consciousness around the conflicting images and subtle messages presented to us in the mass media, so that we are not just passive receptacles. I enjoyed this book, and found it encouraging that I am not alone in seeing that equality for women is still an illusion and there is indeed more work to do.

Great review, Lois!

>81 dchaikin: thanks, Dan.

An additional note: It is interesting to note that books do not escape Douglas's gaze entirely (her mention of The Rules and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, but clearly the poor woman must watch all this television as part of her lifelong study. I think any examination of our popular literature (fiction & popular nonfiction) would find parallels to her study. For example, the rise of chick-lit and yummy mummy novels over the last two decades, and also the rise in the 1990s of epic fantasy beginning with Robert Jordan's first Wheel of Time book in 1990.

Actually, didn't Harry Potter lay it all out for us: Men still hold the power (and the magic wand) and women are still the secondary characters?

"yummy mummy" novels?

I'm very entertained at the roll fantasy might play here. Jordan would be shredded by any feminist analysis - the women hold all the real power, until things get too tough and the men are finally able to... Tolkien would be shredded too. Isn't fantasy really an attempt to find a golden past - you know, where men and women knew their place.

>83 dchaikin: "yummy mummy" - Here's a piece from the NY Times which pretty much sums it up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/fashion/17MomLit.html

I've not read epic fantasy (I don't even want to go back to the 50s, much less pseudo-medieval times), but I know a fair bit about it and my oldest daughter read it extensively beginning in the early 90s with Jordan and Goodkind (and Douglass, Marco, Martin...etc) and I think your summary covers it. It's been called "consolatory" by some who prefer to write the opposite.

Looks like "consumer mummy" to me.

Deep Hollow Creek by Sheila Watson (Canadian, 1992)

Deep Hollow Creek is the story of a young teacher's one year stay in a small village in British Colombia during the 1930s. Stella, a city girl, has chosen this adventure of slumming it in the wilds, and traveled to Deep Hollow Creek to find—first off—that two related families have been squabbling over who will have her as a boarder. And thus begins the year.

This is not a chronicle of Stella's teaching experiences, for we barely get to hear much about her one-room schoolhouse with its 10 or so pupils. What we do get is a wonderfully crafted tale of the land and its people during the tough economic times of the 1930s. As Stella gets to know both so do we.

The novella has a lyrical rhythm at times and Watson has a keen sense of language. I stopped more than once to read a passage out loud. Here's a sample:

"In the cleft of the valley the snow was falling on the roof for which old Adam Flower had freighted shingles from the coast. Over the mountain road which led from the Rock the snow was drifting in swirls and eddies, deepening in the hollows, crust forming on crust. The flakes fell and the cold tightened. Then the flakes stopped falling and the blue weight of a clear sky lay on the valley as the ice lay on the creek."

The dialog is written without quotation marks which creates a bit of distance, the feeling over looking at the story through a window, and lends a sort of wistfulness to the prose. Though largely autobiographical, written in the 1930s while Watson herself was a teacher staying in British Columbia, it was not published until 1992 and I cannot help but think that this wistfulness entered then. I can understand why this book is now considered a Canadian classic, the book captures brilliantly a time, a place and its people. Deep Hollow Creek is less a story of her becoming a part of this place than this place becoming a part of her.

*I heard about this book from Cait86 who read it earlier this year.
*A new edition of this book is coming out this August.

The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch

My experience with this book is very similar to that of rebeccanyc's.

I heard an NPR interview with the author on Terry Gross's "Fresh Air" program while sitting in my car eating an ice cream. It was absolutely fascinating interview and i promptly went out and bought the book.

The book is a wonderful summary of the scientific evidence around the middle-aged brain (roughly age 40-65). With the now extended human life span, we have a middle age where one really did not much exist before and much effort has been made to study the brain during this period - many of these studies are now bearing fruit and surprise! it turns out that the gains outweigh the losses and the middle-aged brain is now considered the peak of our cognitive and intellectual powers.

The book is more than a little comforting to those of us who sometimes, as the author put it, puts "the bananas in the laundry" or descends the basement stairs only to find when we get to the bottom that we've forgotten what it is we were after. We lose a little gray matter but gain a lot of the "white stuff". The book, which is about 200 pages long, is written in an easy, understandable prose. Strauch pulls out much scientific study but keeps the jargon digestible for all of us non-scientists. Her chapters highlight the various different areas of brain study and what the studies have found.

The book offers more detail than the interview, of course, but not enough to justify my running out and buying it. Still, it was a quick and painless read, enlightening and comforting, and I'll pass it on to a friend. Both the interview and the book on this topic intrigued me enough to make me consider the author's previous book about the adolescent brain...

Terry Gross's interview with Barbara Strauch can be heard here (or you can read the transcript):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125902095&sc=nl&cc=...

Gardens of the Sun by Paul McAuley

In his earlier book, The Quiet War, Paul McAuley introduced us to the solar system of the future teeming with life as human have migrated out away from an Earth which is recovering very slowly from environmental devastation. McAuley introduced us to this future Earth and the various people and fractions who inhabit it and also introduced us to the "Outers" - the people who have moved out further into the solar system to colonize the moons of Saturn...etc. The Outers, as they are referred to by those in power on Earth, have a more progressive philosophy around using gene therapy to adapt to and better their surroundings. A little tweaking can be a good thing.

The story is rich and complex and laced thoroughly through with much biology and other sciences (McAuley is a biologist of some kind by education and training). It's chock full of ideas and different philosophies played out on this solar-system-sized stage with a full complement of interesting, credible characters - including women. In fact, the two geniuses in this story - one on Earth and one an "Outer" - are women.

Long story short, Earth launches a war against the Outers and "wins". Gardens of the Sun picks up the story of the aftermath of that war. We revisit all of the main characters of the first book (about 5 or 6) and a host of secondary characters and see how they're faring - or not. I dare not tell to much here.

I think these two books are McAuley's best works—of the many I've read (but admittedly have forgotten much of). It's best recommended for those who enjoy SF with a thick biological bend and a fictional future world as complex as the one we currently live in. While the overarching theme might centered around genetics and post-humanism, there is a lot of other thoughtful bits which makes this duology a great place to lose oneself for several days.

I think I have one or two more reviews to do and I'm caught up!

Thanks for linking to that interview! It was very interesting, if perhaps not quite as reassuring as Strauch might intend it to be. I mean, I've been having these "senior moments" my entire life, so the thought that they're just going to get worse is a little alarming! Anyway, I've added the book to my wishlist.

And I might throw The Quiet War on there, too, as that series does sound up my alley.

Well, bragan, the McAuley was a good read but I did find myself less patient with all the scientific and technical detail in the second book because I was more interested in the characters and other goings-on. Still, try The Quiet War and see what you think.

#89 - Your doing better than me, I'm up to three now. Nice reviews today, all three. Deep Hollow Creek is now on my wishlist.

89, 92 - Bah! I've got 5 pending.

>92 dchaikin: I had to get my copy from ABE, but I'm not sure how available it is in the US - it might become more available with the new edition if distributed down here.
Re: catching up on reviews: I think I'm being a bit lazy about them. It's nice to write full-blown, carefully crafted reviews for every book - but who has time? There are *gasp* other things in my life.

Distracted by preparations for Book Expo next week. Behind again on 3 reviews, soon to be 4.

avaland at #84: I've not read epic fantasy (I don't even want to go back to the 50s, much less pseudo-medieval times)...

Exactly. EXACTLY.

I love your taste in books.

I really enjoyed your comments on Deep Hollow Creek, Lois, especially the idea that it is more about the place and less about the characters. I totally agree - Deep Hollow Creek changes Stella, but I do not think Stella changes Deep Hollow Creek.

I think I just might buy the new edition when it comes out!

Reviews coming for:

Broken Things by Padrika Tarrant
The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Dajout
Kraken by China Miéville
Meeks by Julia Holmes

Really.

Lois -

I really enjoy your reviews when you do have the time, so, don't give up. They are being read.

I find for myself, that I do have a life outside of writing reviews for the books that I read and lately, I haven't been able to read that many books. I fall asleep, instead.

What might be in order for me is to either read at the library, during the day, or set up official and regular reading breaks at home for myself.

Mostly, I get "stuck" on LibraryThing or other interesting websites and forget how much time I have "spent" on line.

I was able to get a copy of Enlightened Sexism from our county library system and it is hovering in the basket for books beside my bed. After reading your review, I want to read it myself. I personally think that we will always need to work for equality and I, for one, am happy to do so.

Ruth/womansheart

I just found your first thread here and found much I want to respond to but will have to read both your threads and come back later. I spent years after studying literature at university reading mostly books by women writers and avoiding a lot of literary male writers (and also crime fiction - a favourite genre - by men).

My university lit courses included the Norman Mailer novel with rape and murder -Kate Millett's Sexual Politics goes into detail on its unpleasantness.

I've read and enjoyed Philip Roth's The Plot Against America imagining what if American Fascists had gained political power in the US in the 40s, and I'd like to read the trilogy which includes American Pastoral and I Married a Communist - his other work really doesn't appeal at all.

>99 womansheart:, 100 Thanks for your posts. I haven't given up writing reviews/comments (I don't really consider them proper reviews), just gotten behind and reading itself always takes priority.

>99 womansheart: We will always need to work for equality. If books are any indication, it seems there's another wave rising. I am glad that my daughters both came to the 2004 Washington DC march with me, I'm hoping some of it sticks with them for a lifetime (they were 21 and 24 at the time).

>100 elkiedee: I'm a fan of non-American police procedurals but I'm not interested in thrillers (although they do work well for audio books on car rides).

Broken Things: Stories by Padrika Tarrant

This collection of 19 very short stories, blends the surreal with the psychotic, the whimsical and the wacky, the real and the unreal, in sketches of people - mostly women - often doing some pretty crazy things. The stories/sketches are both tender and touching, yet disturbing, and I found that, despite their short length, I could only read a couple of these at a time.

Tarrant writes wonderfully and her prose is full of wonderful metaphors and imagery. Her first paragraphs are masterful—drawing you immediately. Here's three examples:

"Until today, I always pushed a pram, just in case I find a baby. People lose them all the time, don't they, so the chances are some day I'll get lucky and pick one up."

"The night bus splits the city lengthwise, leaving ribbons of road that are jumbled with the haunches and elbows of houses. It isn't dark, not among these blinkless, brainless streetlamps."

"They came to Mrs. Hope at dusk. The messages was for her along, although plain enough for anyone to have seen it: in the middle of the weather forecast, the girl said that a few front was coming. Coming, she repeated, and she looked right through the screen at Mrs. Hope, to make sure that they understood one another."

Thing is, you are never really sure where she is taking you! Her stories and characters often walk a fine line between reality and fantasy and it's a slippery tightrope. I don't agree with the comparisons to Angela Carter, but I think I understand why they make the comparison. Ironically and perhaps unexpectedly, her stories brought to mind some of Joyce Carol Oates stories of mentally-ill or deranged people that I'd read this year, although the Tarrant's style couldn't be more different.

It will be very interesting to see where Padrika Tarrant takes this talent, because I just might want to follow.

The Last Summer of Reason by Tahar Djaout
Translated from the French by Marjolijin de Jager

The Algerian author Tahar Djaout was :an outspoken critic of the extremism stirring his nation” and was assassinated in his country by Islamic fundamentalist group in 1993. This short novel was found among his papers.

The Last Summer of Reason tells the story of Boualem Yekker, a bookstore owner who holds out against the tide of religious extremism overrunning his community. What is valued in his community has now changed, and people no longer come to shop for literature. Boualem’s family has even left him. Still, Boualem carries on despite threats, taunts and vandalism but retreats further into his more pleasant memories to survive.

This is a deeply mournful book, the feeling of loss is palpable. We struggle with Boualem, and perhaps that is what is so affecting about this novel—because his fate becomes ours.

Kraken by China Miéville

A preserved giant squid has been stolen—tank and all—from a museum in London and before very long we discover there is much, much more to London than we ever dreamed. Our hero, the preserver of the aforementioned squid, is soon caught up in something very dangerous and strange that involves not only the very odd police unit that shows up to investigate but also a rather large cast of: cults and cult members, witches and Londonmancers, shady businessmen and thugs, and all manner of delightfully weird and dangerous people. Anyone who has read Miéville expects this. The book is essentially one long, overpopulated, high-energy chase through various parts of the city. It's filled with creations from Miéville's endless imagination, as expected.

I enjoyed this adventure, but I admit to a wee bit of disappointment after last year's profoundly spectacular The City and the City. Unlike City, which has one overarching idea that could be a metaphor for oh-so-many things, Kraken is an adventure and mystery tale filled with little ideas and imaginings that tickle our wonder spot but doesn't blow us away. HOWEVER, I know they do tours of Ian Rankin's Edinburgh, and if they develop a tour of China Miéville's London, I want to be on it.

Lois, The Last Summer of Reason sounds especially interesting. On to the old wish list it goes. By the way, do you know why we say "translated from the French" rather than "translated from French"? I know it's the done way to say it, but I don't know why.

All three books sound interesting, but especially the first two. I'll read The City and the City before I read anything else by Miéville.

>107 kidzdoc: Although I wouldn't think of most Miéville as your kind of thing, you might enjoy The City and the City.

>106 Nickelini: I have no idea. And now that you mention it, it is an odd phrasing.

Maybe it is short for "translated from the French original" or "translated from the original French"?

>109 rebeccanyc: brilliant!

Avaland, three great reviews; your comments on Last Summer of Reason were moving. How sad - the author and the book.

I'm curious about post #105 - I can't read the title.

#108: Right, Miéville isn't my usual thing—which is exactly why I'm planning to read The City and the City next year, as part of a personal (1111?) challenge: books from categories that I usually don't read (SF, mysteries, Americana, Canadian literature, books recommended by people I work with, etc.), which I want to do to expand my horizons a bit. I'll definitely read books by authors such as Miéville, Octavia Butler, JCO, Marilynne Robinson, and Alice Munro, amongst others.

>112 kidzdoc: If you haven't read Butler yet, I think you might like Kindred and possibly The Fledgling. JCO has written enough so that everyone can have a different favorite, so you will get a different recommendation from everyone you ask. You might also enjoy Mieville's Un Lun Dun if you like a wild, whimsical Alice-in-Wonderland sort story.

>111 dchaikin: Sorry, I intend to put a review there at some point. It's A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim. When I write it, it will say that I loved this collection of stories which read more like a novel.

A Taste of Honey: Stories by Jabari Asim (2010, US author)

Written with obvious affection, these very connected stories follow an African-American family and neighborhood in a community in the upper midwest (Ohio, I think, but it's not clear) during some of 1967 and 1968. The book reads almost like a novel and introduces us first to young Crispus Jones, age 9, and before the end of the book we've met the whole family and all the other people whose lives they touch and are touched by - the good and not-so-good.

And here I'd like to tell you about each of the stories as reviews so often do, but I'm an advocate for discovering books—at the moment this particular set of stories—and these people—on your own.

Asim writes in an easy style with a distinct affection for the characters he has created. He writes with humor yet I found the stories often riveting—and certainly held my breath through some of them. History and events of 1968 in particular are seen from the street level, experienced by individuals. We, the readers, are brought into this community, plunked down in a chair on a local front porch and handed a glass of cold lemonade—we are both observer and made to feel as part of these people's lives and one cannot fail to be changed by the experience.

avaland - You're on the cutting edge, only seven copies in LT. Sounds quite interesting. I'm also intrigued by your comment about withholding plot as "an advocate for discovering books." Sometimes I have your comments in the back of my mind when I write a review; this is another one to keep in mind.

>115 dchaikin: I believe I saw a pre-publication review of this book in Publishers Weekly which prompted me to order it. They, of course, were far more elegant in their praise than I. "Asim successfully delves into politics, domestic violence, racial identity, young love, and more in this humourous and poignant collection."



Meeks by Julia Holmes (2010, US author)

In this cleverly imagined novel, we are in a somewhat familiar world, sometime after a lengthy, drawn out war with the now nameless, elusive enemy. Police keep order and some thuggish types called the Brothers of Mercy fill in the gaps, so to speak. The tinge of failure hovers just around the corner all through this story.

We follow two characters, "Meeks" (ironically named after one of this society's heroes), a foreigner and perhaps delusional. He lives in the park and thinks he is a policeman. He seems to have been befriended by one of the real policemen in the area. We also follow Ben, a young soldier who returns home after his mother's death to discover that the family home has been reassigned. He manages to get a black mourning suit from a old family friend and tailor, who also sets him up with a room at the local bachelor house. Basically, Ben now has one season to obtain the pale suit of a bachelor looking for a wife and obtain said wife before the Independence Day celebration. Failure to obtain a wife means a life in the factories. Ben is penniless and is desperate to get that pale suit and time is running out!

Of course, the fates of our two men will eventually become intertwined. This is a slyly humorous tale that I enjoyed very much. Holmes, through her story, pokes fun at a lot of things, but in the end I came away without a definitive sense of what she might be criticizing. Is it marriage? Is it rigid societal norms? It is an imaginary enemy? Is it 'the other'? When I think of the other dystopias and dystopian satires I have read, I have a clear idea of what the overall critique is, but not here. So, while I enjoyed the story of Ben & Meeks, I am left feeling that I may have missed something (and obviously still thinking about it!)

I will look forward to others' readings of the book, and your commentary!

yay! I'm caught up!

I'd much rather read a novel than a collection of short stories, but you've caught me with your review of A Taste of Honey: Stories. Thanks!

i looked for Kraken yesterday @ our college bookstore w/out any joy..did you get an early copy ? though you've led me to want to let our library get it rather than buy it myself.

>119 bobmcconnaughey: we'll send you our arc, Bob. I'll check back with you if I don't have your address. We usually buy a hardcover when it comes out for "the collection" :-)

Meeks sounds delightful! I've wishlisted, with thanks.

>121 richardderus: I'm still thinking about the book, Richard. Oh, not because there's anything deep there, but because I find it an interesting puzzle. There's definite hints of the Regency period in the story with our bachelors being trained in bachelor arts - scrimshaw carving, painting, gun collecting - that they can do while in their season of pursuit. And they all yearn to be married - it is survival much like it is for the women in Pride & Prejudice. It would be interesting if her dystopian satire is not so much critiquing/poking fun at something in today's culture but that of the Regency period?

Lois, I've finally caught up on all your threads! Man, you read some great stuff. Thanks for sharing it here.

Belletrista 6 is now up: http://www.belletrista.com/2010/issue6/index.php

Hopefully, that means I will have time to add a few reviews here and maybe even read!!!

Reviews coming:

Stories from Contemporary China, 3 novellas (2009)
The Country Where No One Ever Dies by Onela Vorpsi (2009, Albanian)
Bedtime Stories (2005, 5 stories by authors who write in Spanish, a little freebie book given out by NH Hoteles)
"Margaret Atwood's Tales" an essay by Joyce Carol Oates (2010, Rough Country: Essays and Reviews)

Still reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and A Bloodsmoor Romance by JCO (I had a delightful moment this weekend effusing over this book with author Judith Berman).

This list will remind me what I have to do.

I'm going to see if I can get to some of my backlog now:



Stories from Contemporary China, 3 novellas by Bei Cun, Xu Yigua, and Li Er

I have waited too long after finishing this book to comment as the three novels are starting to fade in my memory. The three short novels presented here were all written in the last 20 years and are said to reflect various aspects of Chinese society. "The authors are representative of contemporary writers, as well as being young and active new stars," says Sun Yong in a one-page preface.

After reading the entries by Chinese authors in the very fine anthology Speaking for Myself: An Anthology of Asian Women's Writing, I have been casting about for more writing by contemporary Chinese author, so I admit I was drawn to this collection for the very reason the collection was put together - to introduce Westerners to contemporary Chinese literature, culture and people. The first story "Zhou Yu's Train" by Bei Cun is a tale of love, one woman's grief, and the difference being delusion and truth. In "The Sprinkler" by Xu Yigua tells of a story of the young Hehuan, a sprinkler truck driver (wets down the roads) and the mysterious disappearance of her husband. And lastly, in "The Crime Scene" by Li Er , a journalist interviews a gang of bank robbers and we hear the story of their crime from their points-of-view.

I enjoyed each of these stories finding the translation quite readable, the stories complex and certainly successful in their aim to show us the internal lives of a variety of Chinese people. A worthy read for those interested in Asian literature on any level.

The Country Where No One Ever Dies by Ornela Vorpsi (T 2009, Albanian)

More a collection of related vignettes or stories, than a novel, The Country Where No One Ever Dies pulls together stories, some perhaps autobiographical, about a young girl/woman growing up in the 1970s in Albania under the oppressive regime of Enver Hoxha. The tales are not chronological, and the girl/young woman's age varies, and she goes by varied but similar names, including the author's name, Ornela. One tale might be from a young girl's viewpoint, another might be told about the young girl in retrospect. One might think this would be confusing, and perhaps intellectually it could be, but I found it had an artful flow - like being caught in the current of a river.

The girl tells of visiting her father in prison, of swordfighting with some very ideal "sticks" which turned out to be her uncle's bones; of stealing the family jewelry piece by piece in trade for being able to read banned books, like Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's a rough life, a rough time; with anger and long-held fears, repressed sexuality, limitations and encultured oppression... and yet, Vorpsi adds a kind of undercurrent of hope because they survive.

A couple of books came to mind as I read this book. It's hard not to think of Herta Müller, although there is no similarity in writing styles. But here are two women authors who both lived under oppressive dictatorships and expressed their experiences artfully through writing. The other book which came to mind was Adania Shibli's Touch (no touchstone) which relates the impressions of a young girl living on the West Bank. Vorpsi has chosen to tell at least some of her story from the viewpoint of a child.

I thought for some time about why this author might have chosen to write her tale the way she did - darting back and forth in time, from different viewpoints, under different names and what came to me is that her book takes the form of remembering. When we remember, we do not remember chronologically, always with the earliest memory first; instead, our memories flit in and out in our consciousness somewhat randomly, and as we grow older we shape them a little differently each time we experience them. And so this is the way I've come to think of Vorpsi's tale.

I'm sure I am not doing this book justice. Not everyone would enjoy it, but I think it important to read for any number of reasons.

Bedside Stories, edited by José Luis Martín Nogales (2005, Spain)
Stories by Ignacio Padilla, Lola Beccaria, Juan Pimentel, Angel Olgoso, and Javier Sagarna.

What a great idea! Hotels giving out small collections of short stories to their customers! I found this collection of five stories by authors who write in Spanish (4 from Spain, 1 from Mexico) at a library sale, the detritus of someone's global wanderings - or so I imagine.

All of the authors in this collection are in their 40s now, four are men, one is a woman. I believe these stories might be samples of long-listed stories or winners of a short story competition in Spain sponsored by the NH hoteles chain. All of the stories - which varied considerably - were quite good and I'd love to find more of these little books (did I mention that they were the perfect size to fit in a purse?).

In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews by Joyce Carol Oates (2010)

"Margaret Atwood's Tales", an essay first published in the NY Review of Books.

I read collections like this in bits and pieces, as the mood strikes, and so it is with this latest from JCO:

I can't think of anything more delicious than one of my favorite authors writing about another of my favorite authors, and so it is with Oates and Atwood. Although perhaps a bit erudite for some readers, this piece of literary criticism covers a varied selection of Atwood's works - novels, short fiction and poetry and provides a nice overview of Maggie's work. I particularly enjoyed Oates' comments on Atwood's early works: Surfacing and her lit crit Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature both published in 1972. "One can see how traditional academics were roused to indignation by a "mere chit of a girl" not only venturing into their territory but approaching their subject with such panache and vernacular directness," Oates tells us.

And I like Oates's holistic approach, speaking of Atwood's poetry alongside her fiction. "Though Atwood's poetry has been overshadowed, perhaps inevitably, by her prose fiction, Atwood brings to her poetry the identical sharp, acerbic eye and ear, and the identical commingling of the tragic and the farcical, that have characterized her most ambitious fiction..."

Yum, yum. There's nothing like looking afresh at some of your favorite reads. Here's a picture of my crate of Atwood-Oates works: novels, short stories, nonfiction and poetry. This is still quite a bit of Oates and some of Atwood strew about the house, which is probably a good thing because this is kind of full.

Two more to do, but I need a break for a bit.

Great reading, Lois, and interesting reviews, too.

A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates (1982)

A Bloodsmoor Romance is set in the last half of the 19th century in a fictional area outside Philadelphia called the Bloodsmoor Valley. It is a chronicle of the Zinn family: father, John Quincy Zinn; mother, Prudence of the esteemed Kiddemaster family; biological daughters: Constance Phillipa, Malvinia, Octavia, and Samantha, and adopted youngest daughter Deidre.

Our chronicle is narrated by a virginal, moral, Christian woman of "hallowed years" and delivered in an appropriate elevated language as befitting our narrator's standing in society. She becomes, over the course of the novel, another character in the book—indeed—I do believe she is a bit shell-shocked by the end of her tale.

Our tale begins with the hot air balloon kidnapping of young Deidre. I say "begins" for we are told that it happens, but it takes our narrator 75 pages of delightfully frustrating digressions to actually get to the details. In the meanwhile, we have been introduced to the whole family of marriageable daughters.

It is no accident that JCO has chosen a family of daughters which reminds us of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. The character of the parents are drawn somewhat from the very real Bronson and Abigail Alcott, parents of Louisa May, who so heavily drew on her own family for her "Little Women."* That book is an American classic but here JCO gives us all the great stuff that a 19th century American novel like "Little Women" couldn't tell us.

Besides the delightful language which the reader cannot help but chortle over at times, especially when our narrator is attempting to tell us something about sex (referred to as "the unitary act") and the wild, passionate and erotic undercurrents in the story,—some of which I just had to read out loud to my husband—there is almost every possible Victorian literary trope included: illegitimate children, fallen women, inheritance plots, scandals, money, spiritualism and ghosts, time machines...etc. It's hard not to think of various novels of the 19th century from both sides of the pond while reading this spectacular book.

I have purposely chosen not to given you details of the plot, which I'm sure you can find elsewhere if you must, but I think you will enjoy having the story revealed to you as I did. A Bloodsmoor Romance is part satire and part homage, a delightful send-up of societal mores and a must read for those who adore the 19th century literature, both British and the more moral American, and particularly the Victorian romance. It is wryly witty and a great joy to read.

*I did quite a bit of research on Abigail Alcott and the entire family in late '08, early '09, and recognized some of them in John Quincy and Prudence.

Hmm. I've read 7 works by Oates thus far this year, not including a novella from an anthology. Wonder if I should take a break....

Naaaah.

#128, what a coincidence, I have that too! I logged it here. Although looking at the book, mine seems to be volume 8 - it has stories by Fernando Aramburu, Claudia Larraguíbel and Ignacio Jáuregui.

>134 wandering_star: I missed the volume number, but now that I look at it, I think it is "3".

Good stuff Lois. I really enjoyed your review of The Country Where No One Ever Dies.

Thanks, Dan. It was a tough review (more a collection of thoughts, me thinks) to write.

Rien ne va Plus by Margarita Karapanou (1993, T 2009, Greek author)

An artful book, this novel tells the story of a relationship - the marriage of Alkiviadis ("Alkis") a veterinarian, and our narrator, a would-be writer, whose name, Louisa, we learn near the end of the book. The story is told twice; in the first version the relationship is destructive and emotionally cruel and Alkis reveals himself, on their wedding night, to be gay. In the second version there is a power shift, it is Louisa who taints the relationship with her flagrant infidelities and outright lies.

The book is strangely, or perhaps surprisingly, compelling, considering neither relationship is particularly endearing. But, as the back of the book notes, "Karapanou's devastating exploration of just what makes us want to read each {version}, just what makes each so tempting to write." There's a revelation towards the end of the book that brings the two versions together followed by a short final section where the story switches to third person. I think one of the epigrams says it best:

People interpret an action, and each interpretation is different. Because in the telling and the retelling, people reveal not the action, but themselves —Akira Kurosawa's Rashomom

Recommended for readers who like artful fiction; where the form of the fiction plays a certain part in the telling.

People interpret an action, and each interpretation is different. Because in the telling and the retelling, people reveal not the action, but themselves —Akira Kurosawa's Rashomom

I like this quote, and premise of this book, and, OK, I'll admit it, I love the cover. Added it!

Came back to stop the italics.

>139 bonniebooks: Well, bonniebooks, if you do get to reading the book, I would certainly be interested in what you will have to say about it! And yes, I was looking at the cover myself. I interpret that to be the protagonist's dog sleeping in the bed; however, since the red shape is not blood, perhaps it is to indicate a warm spot (?) And, of course there are two sets of feet to the left there:-)

>138 avaland:, 139 Interesting thoughts, and great quote!

I hadn't looked at the cover before. It is telling, because Alkis is a vet and so loves animals, and Louisa too adores her dog, if I remember correctly. And it looks as if the two people (attached to the two the feet) you mention are standing and (perhaps lovingly) looking on, as the dog inhabits their space in the bed, under the covers... :)

I have a different quote on the back of my ARC: "Margarita writes as if riding a wild horse, holding tight to its mane. If she had written in English, today the whole English-speaking world would be talking about her." Amanda Karapanou.

>141 akeela: Yes, of course, I had forgotten the vet connection!

Lois - I see you're reading Cold Earth. I bought that after reading the Belletrista review (sorry, don't remember who wrote it but he or she sold me!). Interested to hear your thoughts--I haven't been able to get to it yet.

>143 Nickelini: Flossie, Issue 4 (I had to look it up!). It's good thus far...but I'm not very far into it. Distracted by the sewing machine, Twitter and other things.

Cold Earth by Sarah Moss (2009, UK author)

I thought this book intriguing when I saw it in a catalog last year and FlossieT agreed to review it for Belletrista. Her review convinced me that I had to have the book. This will be just come short comments.

A small team of archeologists have six weeks to work on a dig in Western Greenland to unearth a burial site at what is believed to be an old Viking settlement. The team members come from several countries, and as one would expect, have varied backgrounds and equally varied personalities. Moss did a particularly good job putting together this team.

As if the work and the rough camping conditions are not enough, there seems to be a pandemic beginning back home. The team has very limited access to the outside world and are desperate to know how their loved ones are faring. Then Nina, who isn't really an archeologist but has come as manual labor, begins to be plagued by dreams and hears things the others do not.

The story is told in successive narratives, each shorter than the previous, by each of the six team members, beginning with Nina. They are each writing to someone back home. The suspense builds slowly as the story unfolds and becomes delightfully excruciating.

I enjoyed the archeological detail (ooo, digging in the dirt for treasure!) in this debut novel, the Greenland setting (what do I know about Greenland?), the mix of personalities (Nina really irked me right at the beginning because she was snotty about Americans), and the "stuff" they are all personally "processing" while trying to work together and well, also, to survive.

Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner (2005, T 2008 Quebeçois author)

I picked this up for the "Adventurous Reader Challenge" by browsing the bookstore shelf and was not familiar with the book or author.

Nicholas Dickner tells his story with a plain, charming, and easy-going, blue-jeans sort-of- style—as if he's just across the table from you. It works really well with the three characters he's created - Joyce, Noah and our narrator - all young, and each from different parts of Canada, each a bit restless, with nomadic tendencies of their own, or somewhere in their family history.

As you learn their stories, you also learn that they all are tied to the same family tree, blissfully ignorant of each other, and, as if following some internal compass, they all converge in Montreal. Now, if you think you know where the author is taking this, stop right here and leave those thoughts in the closest trash bin.

Nikolski is a charming story of self-discovery, fish, pirates, nomads and Canada. While I was a wee bit disappointed in how the book ended (in that my expectations were not fulfilled), I will be looking to see what else this new-to-me author has written and is translated.

Flossie's review convinced me to try Cold Earth too. And I also like obscure places like Greenland, and archaeology. And my daughter's name is Nina, so there you go. It still sounds great! Can't wait to try this one.

Nikolski won the CBC Canada Reads this year, so it's very popular in Canada (as in, widely available).

I'll have to try Cold Earth as The Blue Manuscript is also about an archeological dig -- but this time in Egypt (I promise you'll get something on it this week). Two different ends of the earth.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicolas Carr

Unlike the title that was given to his Atlantic Monthly article, Nicholas Carr has not written a book about the internet making us stupid. This book is about how the internet, as with every other major intellectual technology, is literally rewiring our brains. And with every change, there are things that are lost and things that are gained.

For some time I had been hoping a book would come along that would help me assess my relationship with the computer and the internet and to be able to step back and look at the cultural impact of the same. After hearing Carr in an NPR interview, I thought this might fit, and so it has. I agree with the jacket flap when it says that the book is “part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism.”

Carr writes with an accessible style; and his combination of history, science, cultural examination and personal anecdotes makes for an easily digestible and thought-provoking read. He approaches his subject with a certain fatalism—for the world is indeed going digital—but gets the reader—I think particularly for those of us old enough to remember life before the internet —to step back and think about the many ways the internet is shaping our world culturally and socially, and our brains literally. And while we are quick to bring to mind all that we have gained with the internet, he wants us to think about what we may be losing by the change.

Here’s my summaries by chapter:

Prologue: Introduces us to the idea that the medium’s influence on how we think and act is greater than that of the content. In this case, the internet is the medium.

Chapter 1: Author’s personal anecdote about how he suspected that the internet was influencing him and how he came to write the book.

Chapter 2. An interesting historical overview of early brain science and discoveries of the plasticity of the brain – the ability to rewire itself. Opens with an intriguing example of Nietzsche using the Malling-Hansen Writing Ball (early prototype of the typewriter).

Chapters 3 & 4. Discusses historically the mental and social adaptations to intellectual technologies like the map and clock. “...Intellectual technologies change language more, and more deeply, by actually altering the way we speak and listen and read and write.” (p. 50) This is followed by a discussion of language, written language, and the book (ah! The intellectual transformation wrought by the printed book!).

Chapter 5. A discussion of the difference between printed text and online text. “The shift from paper to screen doesn’t just change the way we navigate a piece of writing,. It also influences the degree of attention we devote to it and the depth of our immersion in it. He discusses the searchabliity of online works, the interruptive (and distractive) quality of the internet.


Back later with the other five chapters… I have to do some work!

Lois -- have you read The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shalin about the shift from the pre-written holistic, imagistic consciousness to a linear consciousness brought about by the invention of writing and reading? A somewhat controversial, but fascinating study by a brain surgeon/philosopher.

>145 avaland:: ooh, Cold Earth sounds fabulous, Lois. And my library has it. YES.

#150, Lois, this is a great summary (so far) -- now I can spend my time browsing on the internet and won't have to read the book!

I went to put Cold Earth on my wishlist and discovered that it was already there. That thing is getting decidedly unwieldy.

The Shallows is already there, too, and it's sounding to me like that's a good thing. I have very little patience with the "Everything that was invented since I was a kid is a sign of humanity's degeneration into apocalyptic stupidity!" attitude that's probably existed since invention of stone tools, but a thoughtful, balanced, scientifically literate look at what the internet actually does to us is very much something I want to read.

>153 rebeccanyc:: good one, Rebecca!

>151 janeajones: I have not, but it sounds intriguing.
>152 lauralkeet: It's a quick read; I'll be interested to know what you think.
>153 rebeccanyc: ha ha!
>154 bragan: Yes, that happens to every generation in one way or another.

The Shallows, review continued

Chapter 6: books, digital books, perhaps in the future will be digital books incorporating social-networking. How will this influence authors and writing styles? How is/will this affecting deep-reading? A bit of history about how pundits have been trying to "bury the book" since the early 19th century. He includes a 2008 quote from Clay Shirky, a digital media scholar at NYU, suggesting the death of deep reading, "No one reads War and Peace. It's too long, and not so interesting." People have "increasingly decided that Tolstoy's sacred work isn't actually worth the time it takes to read it." NOTE: I learned about Shirky from Tim of LT, believe it or not.

Chapter 7: What science can tell us about the actual effects that internet use is having on the way our minds work. He brings in quite a few scientific studies and their results which I found fascinating and disturbing. The effects of distraction, interruption, mental multi-tasking and on the other hand, the compensations like eye-hand coordination, processing visual cues, reflex response.

Chapter 8: Google, digitizing all books, and the stress placed on "the efficiency of information exchange as the key to intellectual progress" (which has been around since the Industrial Revolution). A bit of philosophy here, and a discussion of artificial intelligence.

Chapter 9: Long and short term memory, memory consolidation, attention, attentiveness, the dangers to individuals and to the culture of outsourcing our memory to the web.

Chapter 10:Discussion of the 1966 computer program ELIZA (after Eliza Dolittle, simulated conversation). The popular reaction to the software unnerved its creator and he asked himself a question that would plague him for years, "What is it about the computer that has brought the view of man as a machine to a new level of plausibility?" The author wraps up his thesis and concludes with a short epilogue.

I'm not really sure why I did chapter notes here. I suppose it's because there is so much in the book (despite it only being about 225 pages), and I found plenty to think about. One day while reading this, I mulled what the internet's long term cultural effects on art would be.

OK, fine, I'm adding it to my wishlist, geez! :) It's your chapter-by-chapter summaries that most make me want to read this - because it reveals how the book builds up a whole story, instead of just focusing on a single point (namely the expected chapter 7). So, thanks for the chapter-by-chapter summary.

>Dan, I read the book slowly and took breaks after some of the chapters just to digest, but after chapter 7 it was at least a week before I went back to it.

I am heartened by thing like my computer engineer son becoming fascinated with film black and white photography and old cameras...

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson (2009, US author).

A collection of eleven spectacular short stories, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth has earned a spot as one of my favorite books of the year.

Many of his stories begin with a rather absurd premise. My favorite in regards to this is the four redneck brothers who can't stand each other but must come together and fold and initial 250 paper cranes. The 1000 cranes will be placed on a table and four fans from four corners will be turned out simultaneously. As stipulated by their mother's will, the maker of the last remaining crane left on the table inherits the dilapidated mansion they all covet. So absurd, so hilarious, but by the end of the story there has been this beautiful moment.

There's the 50-something woman who works as a professional grandmother (five families!); the scrabble tile sorter who job it is to find the Q's in the pile of tiles; the three recent college grads who, not having any real direction, decide to just start tunneling in one of their back yards; the man who works for Worst Case Scenario, Inc. professionally calculating all the things that can go wrong for people who want to know; and the young museum curator who presides over the Museum of Whatnot, a place that takes in all the very weird collections people make (600 spoons? jars of toenail clippings? rubber bands?).

Wilson's stories are a weirdly irresistible mix of the absurd and the poignant, the mad and the moving, the hilarious but at all times very, very human; and he moves between them with skill and brillance. And we cannot help but see in his odd, flawed characters parts of ourselves. The guy is magic. No kidding.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (2005, Australian author).

This exceptional crime novel is also a splendid piece of literary fiction. The writing is superb, the characters credible and well-drawn, the story brilliantly told, and the sense of place inextricable from it all.

Joe Cashin has returned to his hometown to recuperate further from the severe injuries he received in a previous case in the city. He's a broken man, both emotionally and physically, and is only just now starting to really recover. When a local, wealthy landowner is brutally attached in his home and eventually dies, Cash can't help get drawn into the case, sometimes involuntarily. Three young aboriginal boys are quickly suspected and when an attempt to apprehend them by the local police goes terribly wrong and two of the boys die in a gunfight, Cash finds himself in the middle of it all.

And this is just the beginning of a story that becomes more and more deliciously complex as each page is turned. And as the story progresses, we get to know Joe Cashin, a young detective of few words who proves to be far more complex than we might assume at our first introduction. Despite it being set on the somewhat rural coast of Victoria, the dialog has an urban feel to it; a fair bit of Aussie slang and off-color, offensive words. And Temple, like fellow crime writer Reginald Hill, is great with dialog.

The setting, especially the broken down wreck of a building that Cashin lives in, the farmland around it, the old family home he's trying to fix up, and the particular/y dangerous part of the coastline referred to as "The Kettle" - all reflect back to Cashin's struggle to recuperate.

It's a detective story, sure; but it's also a story about Australia, race relations, building trust and, yes, the resilience of the human spirit.

Gee, I checked in this evening and ended up with 3 books to get: Cold Earth, The Blue Manuscript and The Broken Shore. While looking to see if I could find moochable or Kindle copies, I discovered that The Blue Manuscript is currently available in hardcover from Amazon for $1.14 + shipping (free 2-day with Amazon Prime). How could I turn that up? Interestingly, I also found that The Broken Shore and some (but only some) of the Bourne books by Ludlum are unavailable for U.S. Kindle users but available elsewhere. (This happens in other countries too, apparently.) I wish I understood publishers better!

Eeep. Two more for the wishlist!

>161 auntmarge64: hard to pass up a good deal!
>162 wandering_star: you must have an amazing wishlist!

If by 'amazing' you mean 'far longer than I could read in several lifetimes', well, yes....

Wow! Lots to be interested in with Cold Earth but it's your The story is told in successive narratives, each shorter than the previous that captured me. The Shallows and Jane's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess sound interesting. And definitely Tunneling.

Tunneling to the Center of the Earth has jumped on to my wish list. Thanks a lot.

Gah three for the wishlist. Cold Earth, The Broken Shore and especially Tunneling to the Center of the Earth. Keep 'em coming Lois (I think).

>164 wandering_star: I suspected this. I think I remember your BookMooch wishlist...
>165 detailmuse: bit of a suspense-building trick, I imagine. Clever.

Thank you all, I pick these books up for purely selfish reasons:-) (except for the Peter Temple, that was sent from the Book Fairy).

I agreed with your thoughts on The Broken Shore, it's much more than a crime novel and the dialogue was especially well done.

I took a look at my reading thus far and calculated the gender balance out of curiosity. 57% of my overall reading is by authors who are women. Breaking it down:

Novels: 57% are by women. Of that 57%, nearly half are by Joyce Carol Oates!

Short fiction collections (single author) 93 percent are by author who are male!
Poetry collections (single poet). 77% are women.
Police procedurals. 33% are women (1 of 3).
Nonfiction: 80% are women (4 of 5).

Further in my Geek Moment:
My fiction reading is dominated thus far this year by US authors—actually 9 of 13 books are JCO—followed not far behind by UK & Irish authors. Canada, Australia, Europe (sans UK), Asia (south), Africa & the Middle East all come in at 3 books a piece. Last on the list is Central & So. America with only two books this year. Note: last year JCO was only 25% of my US reading:-)

What does all this mean? Probably nothing, but I like to step back and assess my reading from time to time.

>169 RidgewayGirl: I'm reading his Truth now, we'll see how it measures up (this one won the Miles Franklin Award).

Hmm, I always thought that JCO was Canadian--probably because I knew she taught in Windsor, Ontario. But you're much more up on her than I am!

>173 Cariola: I can answer that. She grew up in Western NY (Lockport). That's the reason a lot of her stories have a setting here in WNY although she changes the names of the towns around.

>173 Cariola: Oh, very American. She does a fair amount of writing around American myths, icons and obssession (i.e. Blonde, Black Water, A Bloodsmoor Romance, My Sister, My Love...etc). She was only teaching in Ontario for ten years but she and her first husband established the Ontario Review Press also. There's a relatively short bio on wikipedia, if you're interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Oates

>174 brenzi: True, but she sets books all over the place, all over NY, but, yes, Western NY is a particular favorite. Do you find that the "locals" see her favorably. Someone else here on LT who was from Rochester—I forget who— did not look upon her favorably.

Her work is so varied, it's amazing. I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, but I'm certainly fascinated with it (and definitely in awe).

>175 avaland: I think she also sets her stories in other locales, and then uses WNY names that most people wouldn't necessarily recognize. I thnk she's well thought of. I like her work and I know others who do as well and when she's come back to speak, she draws a big crowd.

From the March 2010 Smithsonian:

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

>176 brenzi: thanks, brenzi.
>177 AsYouKnow_Bob: thanks, bob. I think I saw this back in March. . . .

Just catching up with LT - great reviews and a couple of additions to my wishlist. Thanks!

Truth by Peter Temple (2009, Australian, winner of the 2010 Miles Franklin Award)

Set in contemporary Melbourne, with fires raging outside the city, this is a police procedural of the highest order. Like his previous book, The Broken Shore, this book is more literary than most procedurals but often has the feel of the more hard-boiled crime novels.

Head of Homicide Steven Villani and his team investigate the death of a young woman–a teenager really–in an allegedly super secure, high end apartment building above a casino. In another part of town, the death and torture of three drug dealers is discovered. And, again like his previous book, The Broken Shore, the story—the cases—become more and more complex—deliciously so—as you move through the book. It's not long before it's clear that the story is about fighting corruption and, as glaringly suggested by the book's title, the "true or actual state" of a matter.

Steven Vallani, our tormented hero, is horribly flawed. He's a crap husband, guilt-ridden and lousy father; he has more than a few past sins, and breathes the tempting air of corruption around him. When the reader is not solving crime with boyos, we are in the head of a very introspective and tormented Vallani, who seems to be trying to make some sense of his life (the fires burning outside Melbourne reflect a bit of crucible-like symbolism here).

Temple's vision of Melbourne is exceedingly bleak, with little, if anything, of redeeming value. There's a bit of a glimmer in Vallani's introspection, but not much. The dialog is wonderfully done, the prose more literary than most procedurals. Temple introduces us to a huge cast of characters, so many that I began to keep a list to keep them all straight (I should note here that there are no female characters of any real significance, a bit regressive, imo). I like how Temple has once again used nature to reflect what's going on in the story. This truly is a complex, thoroughly entertaining book, albeit bleak, bleak, bleak. And because of the latter, I think his previous book is the better of the two.

Truth won the Miles Franklin Award in Australia this year. The first "genre" book to do so. While reading it, I thought about this. I think of literary awards as an attempt to intentionally shape or give voice to a country's cultural values. I mean, we are often defined by our popular culture and we can't do much about that, but we can deliberately choose literature that says something about our country, our culture, give it lasting value but giving an award.

I haven't read that many of the Miles Franklin winners, just a few, so I can't speak to how this fits among them. I'm not Australian either, so my view is from the outside, but this book says to me: bleak, fundamentally and depressingly patriarchal, it offers a certain kind of macho courage at times that often borders on stupidity, it feels entirely regressive - like "Life on Mars", the American version. But my brilliant conclusion is that Steve Vallani is the modern equivalent of Ned Kelly and I know the Aussies love their Ned Kelly legend.

Peter Temple’s book Truth is a fake. He’s lifted a depressed jaded detective from Henning Mankell, given him an Italian name and plonked him down in Melbourne. But this isn’t the Melbourne I live in, it’s a dark and vicious city, its central business district “becoming more frightening than Johannesburg.” The police are corrupt, and they’re having shoot outs with armed criminals in public places, with terrified bystanders ducking for cover. There are no real people on the streets of Melbourne, no parks, no shops, not even trams.

The quite unreal leader of the opposition is on radio, talking about medical care, “a two hour wait to see a doctor who doesn’t speak English,” and childcare, “a disgrace. It’s safer to leave your kids with junkies in a park.” Zippy dialogue, but it certainly wouldn’t come out of the mouth of a mainstream Liberal politician; these are right-wing, racist, lunatic fringe opinions. Melbourne recorded the lowest right-wing loony vote in the country. Temple’s city isn’t Melbourne. Perhaps it is Johannesburg? Temple is, after all, from South Africa.

The Observer review, quoted in this copy of Truth, refers to Temple’s distinctive dialogue, “full of the mangled poetry and beautiful solecisms of ordinary speech.” Another untruth. It’s not ordinary speech; it’s overdone, and misses the laconic humour of everyday Australian speech. Because I live here, I can follow most of his elliptical references, for example the “robbers” is the armed robbery squad, which was disbanded in the eighties. It must be difficult for non-locals to understand what Temple is talking about a lot of the time, and think he’s being unnecessarily obscure.
Temple’s book is a competent police procedural, and a good read. It follows the usual clichéd macho police procedural conventions, and is set in a generic, corrupt city which has little in common with Melbourne. I have no idea why it won the Miles Franklin, which “is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases.” Perhaps police corruption is in vogue this year: one of the committee members has published a book on the Morans, one of Melbourne’s criminal families.

Lois, I wouldn’t read too much into this award. It doesn’t have to market Australia, or present the country in a positive light. In 2004 Shirley Hazzard won for The Great Fire, a book that spits loathing for Australians and celebrates a main character who comes close to being a paedophile. In 1995 Helen Demidenko won for The Hand That Signed the Paper. The Miles Franklin committee said, “ Helen Demidenko’s first novel displays a powerful literary imagination coupled to a strong sense of history, and brings to light a hitherto unspeakable aspect of the Australian migrant experience." Demidenko’s Ukrainian background was widely publicised, but unfortunately her name turned out to be Darville, and she’d emigrated from Britain, not the Ukraine. There’s often controversy about the committee’s choice.

Touch stone problems.

Hmm, with such strong reactions, I'll have to bump this one up the wishlist so that I can draw my own conclusions. I did really enjoy The Broken Shore though.

>181 pamelad: Geesh, Pam, that's the best response I think I've ever had on a thread of mine:-) As you know, I very much looked forward to your take on the book. I read a lot of police procedurals, and I do rate this one highly, but my perspective of course cannot be Australian(and now you know why I can't read American mysteries). The crap husband/father...etc is not new; yes, it's reminiscent of Wallander, and even more so of Erlandur (Indridason's series; the back of the first book, I think, called him a "loser"). I don't think I can agree with regards to the bit about the dialog you quoted; I thought it had touches of classic American crime novels (i.e. Chandler...).

The other thing I forgot to include in my review, but I think I mentioned to you elsewhere, is that I felt generally that the police force he has created is terribly retro - I mean, one female in the homicide division and she's doing pretty much the same thing I was doing in the 70s (except I was on a teletype machine and one rudimentary computer). And the banter and use of certain expletives also seemed a bit out of date, reflecting a time—at least over here in the Northeast of the US—when police officers were less educated than they are now. With the exception of the one police analyst mentioned, all the women were either ex-wives, victims, prostitutes, or wives of powerful men. Knock, knock, what century are you in, Peter Temple?

Your theory about it being Jo'burg is interesting...

>182 RidgewayGirl: When you do, let me know and I'll send you my list of characters! You'll need it!

On the upside, I know Åke Edwardsson has a new Erik Winter novel coming out in translation this month from Penguin, and I've been reading some of Karin Alvegan's psychological crime novels. And I have the lasted Ian Rankin book on order. I have been interested in anything he's put out since Rebus retired, but this one looked interesting.

Missing (Saknad) by Karin Alvtegan (Swedish, 2000, T 2003)

Publishers are frantically scrambling now to find another Steig Larsson, but as we all know it's not just the story, but the timing and many other factors that come together to create super bestseller. Nordic crime has been "hot" for while now—even before Steig Larsson's books were translated—thanks to writers like Henning Mankell and Karin Fossum. I have read most of Mankell's Wallander series, and about three of Fossum's Konrad Seer mysteries (the Fossums didn't really grab me). I also read Åke Edwardson and Asa Larsson, and two Icelandic authors, but this is my first Karin Alvtegan. (I read Akeela's great review of her new book "Shadow" for the forthcoming issue of Belletrista and remembered I had seen some of her titles in the bookstore and, well...)

Alvtegan's Missing is not a police procedural or a standard thriller—she's unlikely to be the "next" Steig Larsson—but a psychological crime novel in the vein of Australian Patricia Carlon and UK's Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell). In this novel, we are introduced to a young homeless woman, Sybilla, who, to get a nice bed and a bath occasionally, will scam a gullible man into booking her one (a little flirting, a lost wallet, damsel in distress, a man hoping to score...). But Sybilla's latest scam victim winds up brutally murdered, she becomes the prime suspect and is now not just homeless but on the run.

While Alvtegan is following Sybilla on the run, she is also telling us a fascinating story of how a woman from a privileged family ended up homeless, and in the process the reader swings back and forth between believing our protagonist is innocent or possibly guilty. If she's innocent, how would she—part of the disenfranchised of society—prove it?

Alvtegan has taken a story of a woman coming into her own and put it under extreme pressure. The results is a thoroughly engaging story with delicious slow building suspense. The action-packed ending is a bit less credible, but rest of the book is so good I was easily willing to forgive that.

Nice review Lois. Have you read any of Larsson's books? (P.S., I see you reading Gail Jones Dreams of Speaking, which is high on my TBR. Look forward to your review).

>185 dchaikin: Steig? no. I remember my former boss at the bookstore telling me about them before publication—she was reading the first one then—and they sounded more of a thriller which is something I'm not attracted to (although they do make for good audio books for a road trip). And now, of course, the more popular a book becomes, the less I want to read it, but I'll probably see the movie (the Swedish one) at some point.

Yes, I am reading the Gail Jones and really enjoying it, but this one lyrical and contemplative and at the moment I'm a bit distracted so I've set it aside for a bit. I've recently acquired her two short fiction collections and her first novel, Black Mirror, so I think I have all of her fiction and am looking forward to getting to it (my literary eyes are often bigger than my literary stomach though).

A couple of extra comments on Truth.

Lois, until recently the Victorian Police Commissioner was a woman. In fact she still is, but is no longer the police commissioner. There are plenty of female police officers out investigating crimes, not just sitting in offices.

Can quite understand your reluctance to read American police procedurals. I am incensed at Temple's portrayal of Melbourne. Wondering now whether the mean streets of Stockholm are all that dangerous either.

>187 pamelad: Wondering now whether the mean streets of Stockholm are all that dangerous either.

I suspect not:-) Nor Iceland which I plan on visiting in November.

And yes, I think your anger comes through:-)

I can't say that I havenever read American mysteries, but it's infrequent now and I don't follow a series. Thinking back, I did read a fair amount of them, especially during my bookstore era, and listened to even more on my then long commute. I prefer the cerebral in a procedural, but then I might also have gone for living history or a science buzz. I'm much less inclined towards guns & cowboy action.

>187 pamelad: no Melbournian uproar generally over the book? I'm still wondering how it presents "Australian life in any of its phases"? The loser phase? The corrupt phase? the bleak phase?

Still, as an outsider I thought it a great, but horribly bleak procedural but certainly not as good as The Broken Shore. And I'm not sure I've come across a procedural where nature and the outside environs are drawn so as to mirror the protagonist's inner turmoil (which happens in both books).

Betrayal by Karin Alvtegan (Sweden 2003, T 2005, psychological suspense)

Betrayal is a good psychological suspense novel that takes the reader into the minds of its main characters. When we are introduced to them, Eva, is a definite type-A personality, is having marital problems and suspects her husband of having an affair; and Jonah, who is more than a little creepy, is glued to the bedside of a somewhat older lover, who is in a coma after a tragic accident. The narrative shifts back and forth between this unrelated twosome and we come to know their thought processes rather intimately. In their own ways both of these characters are moving from their perceived betrayals, closer and closer to a breaking point, or an edge of some kind, and Alvtegan does a good job working the psychological suspense throughout. It should be no surprise that the two characters will eventually connect in the story.

This was a good read—at different times gripping or creepy or interesting—but the characters in this story were less sympathetic to me than in her previous book I read, Missing, which I thought was very good. Still, it's in the vein of Patricia Carlon or Rendell's Barbara Vine books and an enjoyable, quick read.

Alvtegen's books remind me of the best of Barbara Vine as well.

Admittedly, it's been ages since I've read a Barbara Vine (so I'm glad you confirmed the comparison!)

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates (1996)

Zombie takes us into the mind of a serial killer—a thirty-something year old, white man—living in the greater Detroit area. It's narrated by the killer himself. He's been picked up once for sexual abuse of a 10 year old African American boy, but got off easy because his father was a prominent professor at the local university and had "connections". Quentin (the killer's name, although he refers to himself in the story as Q___ P____) is obsessed with making his very own zombie (in his mind zombie=slave) and has killed several in his attempts to do so.

The book is repulsively riveting, at times rather gruesome, and blessedly short. There's a racial undercurrent to the story, but my sense is that primarily JCO wanted to show the reader that despite how monstrous a person is, he is still quite recognizably human. I did find it interesting that she didn't include some sympathetic story about his upbringing, something that would suggest why he was the way he was; in fact, she shows us that he has had a privileged upbringing with lots of love. The book is thought-provoking in that way but definitely not for the faint of heart.

Note: She does something very different with The Triumph of the Spider Monkey, her other book about a serial killer.

Oil on Water by Helon Habila (2010, Nigerian)

Oil on Water is a mesmerizing story of two journalists who make a perilous trek into the forest in pursuit of "the story" - in this case, to interview the kidnappers of a white woman, a wife of a local oil executive. Rufus is a young journalist hoping to prove himself to his editor and co-workers, and Zaq is a veteran journalist, perhaps the most well-known in Nigeria, and clearly an alcoholic. They travel with a group of journalists for the interview but discover that the parties involved are not where they said they would be and that the island has seen some fighting. All of the journalist return at this point, except for Rufus and Zaq who continue on still in pursuit of "the story" and "the truth."

The two hire a man and his young son to take them by boat deeper into the jungle in pursuit of the kidnappers. The trip is perilous and, for the reader, riveting. Along the way we learn about Zaq and about Rufus, about the profound and devastating effects of the oil industry on Nigeria's land and people. Turns out "the story" is many stories, and "the truth" is something much bigger than Rufus imagined.

I was amazed that so much was told in such few pages. There is a lot going on and that, in addition to some flashbacks, does occasionally cause some confusion (where are we?), but I thought it a minor flaw. Habila's characters are wonderfully drawn, his prose carefully and beautifully crafted; he brings Nigeria vividly to life. The oil industry looms large in Nigeria and it's devastating is made all the more powerful coming on the heels of the Gulf oil disaster. The corruption and greed makes knowing who the "bad" and the "good" guys are. And in all this, a great affection for the land and its people comes through.

A short book, a great read. I enjoyed his previous boo, Measuring Time also.

Lois - I still remember your review of Measuring Time. I'll add Oil on Water to the wishlist too.

or I would add it, but amazon/overcat can't find it. :/ ...adding manually...

>196 dchaikin:,97 I got it from the BD. I think you'd like it. It's not a dense book, but tangled, like the forest they travel through. And I'm sure someone has mentioned The Heart of Darkness in reference to this book as seems to done with any journey set in Africa, but I choose not to go there.

Continuing with some essays in In Rough Country by JCO, as begun in #129 above.

"The Myth of the 'American Idea' " (2007) A very short essay which, I believe, appeared in the Atlantic, touches briefly on the idea of freedom, but really addresses the myth of American exceptionalism - that we are somehow special and set apart or above other countries. With regards to freedom, she quotes D. H. Lawrence from 1923:

Freedom...? The land of the free! This is the land of the free! Why, if I say anything that displeases them, the free mob will lynch me, and that's my freedom. Free? Why, I have never lived in any country where the individual has such an abject fear of his fellow countrymen. Because, as I say, they are free to lynch him the moment he shows he is not one of them (from "The Spirit of Place"

"In the Absence of Mentors/Monsters: Notes on Writerly Influences"

This was a really interesting autobiographical bit where Oates talks about the fact that she never really had a mentor, and has enjoyed mostly a solitary kind of writer's life; but she talks here about the some of the people and things that have undoubtably influenced her writing. She talks about her early influences - the books her grandmother gave her, especially Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (and later, Faulkner & others); influential teachers (who, though encouraging, were not mentors), her early "hardscrabble" school experience in a one room schoolhouse. She talks about her friendly rivalry with Donald Barthelme, who, on the day after Nabokov's death, casually said to her, "Happy? Nabokov died yesterday, we all move up a notch." And also her friendship with John Gardner, who sought to convert her to his idea of "moral fiction" (she calls him an "American Tolstoy").

Very interesting stuff. I couldn't help but think of some of the things we had in common - the one room schoolhouse, for one - and then I thought about the one book I was a bit obsessed with at about the age she was rapt over Alice, and that would be a large, old volume of unsanitized Grimm's Fairy Tales. And as I read her tribute to the place Alice's adventures had in her life, I couldn't help but wonder what a difference a book might make...

Apt quote! That mood is very much alive these days. Tolerance? What a quaint notion!

>199 sibylline: I know, it struck me that way also.