Chatterbox's 2013 Adventures in Bibliomania -- Episode Eight

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
thought the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pries
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations --
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

(From Dream Work by Mary Oliver)

Welcome to my eighth thread of the year....

A guide to the ratings, which are highly subjective:
1.5 or less: A tree gave its life so that this book could be printed and distributed?
1.5 to 2.7: Are you really prepared to give up hours of your life for this?? I wouldn't recommend doing so...
2.8 to 3.3: Do you need something to fill in some time waiting to see the dentist? Either reasonably good within a ho-hum genre (chick lit or thrillers), something that's OK to read when you've nothing else with you, or that you'll find adequate to pass the time and forget later on.
3.4 to 3.8: Want to know what a thumping good read is like, or a book that has a fascinating premise, but doesn't quite deliver? This is where you'll find 'em.
3.9 to 4.4: So, you want a hearty endorsement? These books have what it takes to make me happy I read them.
4.5 to 5: The books that I wish I hadn't read yet, so I could experience the joy of discovering them again for the first time. Sometimes disquieting, sometimes sentimental faves, sometimes dramatic -- they are a highly personal/subjective collection!

Stars/scores are given in brackets after the book details.

Asterisks (*) mark books that I have re-read. I'll be trying to keep re-reads to 5% of the total this year. Audiobooks will be marked as such. I'm going to try to increase my non-fiction reading in the final months of the year.

This is the running tally of my total 2013 reading, which includes the books I have read for the 2013 Categories challenge:




And this is where I'll log what I'm reading for the 75 books challenge. I'm now embarking on my fourth batch of 75 books for the year.




An asterisk will mark any re-reads.

1. Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir (4.1), STARTED 9/3/13, FINISHED 9/11/13 (non-fiction)
2. *The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir (4.1), STARTED 9/5/13, FINISHED 9/11/13 (fiction)
3. A Cruise to Die For by Aaron & Charlotte Elkins (2.8), STARTED 9/10/13, FINISHED 9/12/13 (fiction)
4. Hanns & Rudolf by Thomas Harding (3.3), STARTED 9/8/13, FINISHED 9/13/13 (non-fiction)
5. *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (4.2) STARTED 9/8/13, FINISHED 9/13/13 (fiction)
6. Fallen Land by Patrick Flanery (4.5), STARTED 9/11/13, FINISHED 9/14/13 (fiction)
7. *Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (4), STARTED 9/13/13, FINISHED 9/15/15 (fiction)
8. The Girl in Berlin by Elizabeth Wilson (3.6), STARTED 9/14/13, FINISHED 9/15/13 (fiction)
9. Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch (4.2), STARTED 9/6/13, FINISHED 9/16/13 (fiction)
10. *The Strangled Queen by Maurice Druon (3.5), STARTED 9/17/13, FINISHED 9/18/13 (fiction)
11. The Men Who United the States (4.1) by Simon Winchester, STARTED 9/4/13, FINISHED 9/18/13 (non-fiction)
12. Searching for Zion (3.9) by Emily Raboteau, STARTED 9/17/13, FINISHED 9/19/13 (non-fiction)
13. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (3), STARTED 9/2/13, FINISHED 9/19/13 (fiction)
14. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (4.2), STARTED 9/19/13, FINISHED 9/21/13 (fiction)
15. *Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling (3.9), STARTED 9/15/13, FINISHED 9/22/13 (fiction)
16. Loss of Innocence by Richard North Patterson (3.3), STARTED 9/22/13, FINISHED 9/23/13 (fiction)
17. *Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart (4) STARTED 9/23/13, FINISHED 9/24/13 (fiction)
18. Love Potion Number 10 by Betsy Woodman (3.4), STARTED 9/24/13, FINISHED 9/15/13 (fiction)
19. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (3.9), STARTED 9/2/13, FINISHED 9/27/13 (fiction/audiobook)
20. (a) The Man in the Snow by Rory Clements (4), READ 9/26/13 (fiction)
(b) Broken Voices by Andrew Taylor (4.5) READ 9/28/13 (fiction)
(c) Facing the Music by Jane Gardam, (3.5) READ 9/27/13 (fiction)
(d) Redeemable by Aly Monroe (4), READ 9/27/13 (fiction)
21. Double Image by Helen MacInnes (3.9) STARTED 9/15/13, FINISHED 9/28/13 (fiction)
22. Don't Cry, Tai Lake by Qiu Xiaolong (3.5) STARTED 9/27/13, FINISHED 9/29/13 (fiction)
23. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (4.5) READ 9/29/13 (fiction)
24. (a) The Bo Xilai Scandal by Financial Times reporters (4.2) READ 9/29/13 (non-fiction)
(b) Lying by Sam Harris (3.8), READ 9/29/13 (non-fiction)
(c) The Getaway Car by Ann Patchett (4.8), READ 9/30/13 (non-fiction)
(d) Is America Working? by Financial Times reporters (4), READ 9/30/13 (non-fiction)
25. A Walk in the Park by Jill Mansell (3.2), STARTED 9/27/13, FINISHED 9/30/13 (fiction)
27. Zoo by James Patterson (3.3), READ 9/30/13 (fiction)
28. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (4.3) STARTED 9/5/13, FINISHED 9/30/13 (fiction/audiobook)
29. Sweet Thunder by Ivan Doig (4), STARTED 10/01/13, FINISHED 10/04/13 (fiction)
30. *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (4), STARTED 9/27/13, FINISHED 10/15/13 (fiction)
31. The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett (4.2), READ 10/6/13 (drama)
32. Zealot by Reza Aslan (4.3), STARTED 9/18/13, FINISHED 10/6/13 (non-fiction)
33. Walking Home by Simon Armitage (4.7), STARTED 10/6/13, FINISHED 10/8/13 (non-fiction)
34. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep by Rumer Godden (3.8), STARTED 10/8/13, FINISHED 10/9/13 (non-fiction)
35. The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit (4.25) STARTED SEPT/13, FINISHED 10/12/13 (non-fiction)
36. Bad Blood by Arne Dahl (2.75) STARTED 10/9/13, FINISHED 10/13/13 (fiction)
37. Justice Hall by Laurie R. King (4.2) STARTED 10/11/13, FINISHED 10/13/13 (fiction)
38. A Marker to Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik (4.3) STARTED 10/13/13, FINISHED 10/14/13 (fiction)
39. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin (3.9), STARTED 10/1/13, FINISHED 10/14/13 (fiction)
40. Calcutta: Two Years in the City by Amit Chaudhuri (3.1), STARTED 10/3/13, FINISHED 10/17/13 (non-fiction)
41. Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois (3.3) STARTED 10/14/13, FINISHED 10/16/13 (fiction)
42. Claire of the Sea Light by Edwige Danticat (4.3) STARTED 10/15/13, FINISHED 10/16/13 (fiction)
43. Top Down by Jim Lehrer (2.8) STARTED 10/17/13, FINISHED 10/18/13 (fiction)
44. Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Said Sayrafiezadeh, 4.4 STARTED 10/19/13, FINISHED 10/21/13 (fiction)
45. Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George, (3.75) STARTED 10/18/13, FINISHED 10/24/13 (fiction)
46. Dream Work by Mary Oliver, (4.5) STARTED 10/2/13, FINISHED 10/23/13 (poetry)
47. On the Noodle Road by Jen Lin-Liu (4), STARTED 10/17/13, FINISHED 10/25/13 (non-fiction)
48. Winter Wonderland by Belinda Jones (2.6), READ 10/26/13 (fiction)
49. Fate of the States by Meredith Whitney (3.8) STARTED 10/25/13, FINISHED 10/26/13 (non-fiction)
50. The Alienist by Caleb Carr (4.3) STARTED 10/24/13, FINISHED 10/27/13 (fiction)
51. Daily Rituals by Mason Currey (4) STARTED 10/27/13, FINISHED 10/28/13 (non-fiction)
52. Breach of Trust by Andrew Bacevich (4.1) STARTED 10/14/13, FINISHED 10/30/13 (non-fiction)
53. The Truth by Terry Pratchett (4) STARTED 10/29/13, FINISHED 10/30/13 (fiction)
54. *Blackout by Connie Willis (3.8) STARTED 10/15/13, FINISHED 10/30/13 (fiction; audiobook)
55. Blowback by Valerie Plame & Sarah Lovett (3), STARTED 10/30/13, FINISHED 10/31/13 (fiction)
56. Promise Land by Jessica Lamb Shapiro (3.2), STARTED 10/18/13, FINISHED 10/31/13 (non-fiction)
57. The Mountain of Light by Indu Sundaresan (4), STARTED 11/1/13, FINISHED 11/2/13 (fiction)
58. Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson (4.3) STARTED 11/1/13, FINISHED 11/3/13 (fiction)
59. The Idealist by Nina Munk (4.1) STARTED 10/28/13, FINISHED 11/4/13 (non-fiction)
60. The Tudor Conspiracy by CW Gortner (3.65) STARTED 11/3/13, FINISHED 11/5/13 (fiction)
61. Aftermath: The remnants of war by Donovan Webster (4.3) STARTED 11/6/13, FINISHED 11/7/13 (non-fiction)
62. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett (5), READ 11/8/13 (non-fiction)
63. The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson (4), STARTED 11/5/13, FINISHED 11/9/13 (fiction)
64. *All Clear by Connie Willis (3.9), STARTED 10/31/13, FINISHED 11/10/13 (fiction/audiobook)
65. Valley of the Shadow by Carola Dunna (3.2), STARTED 11/9/13, FINISHED 11/10/13 (fiction)
66. Wish Upon a Star by Trisha Ashley (3.4) READ 11/10/13 (fiction)
67. The Vintage Girl by Hester Browne (4) READ 11/13/13 (fiction)
68. *The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard (4.1), STARTED 11/10/13, FINISHED 11/15/13 (fiction/audiobook)
69. Brave Genius by Sean B. Carroll (4.4), STARTED 11/4/13, FINISHED 11/16/13 (non-fiction)
70. Sycamore Row by John Grisham (4), STARTED 11/15/13, FINISHED 11/17/13 (fiction)
71. Mortal Bonds by Michael Sears (3.8), STARTED 11/17/13, FINISHED 11/18/13 (fiction)
72. Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio & Steven Davis (4.5), STARTED 11/18/13, FINISHED 11/20/13 (non-fiction)
73. My Antonia by Willa Cather (4.5), READ 11/21/13 (fiction)
74. Enigma of China by Qiu Xiaolong (3.2), STARTED 11/18/13, FINISHED 11/26/13 (fiction)
75. A Nantucket Christmas by Nancy Thayer (2.85), READ 11/26/13 (fiction)

*Re-read

Yes, the Man Booker Prize has already been awarded, but I'm still reading nominees.




1. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin. Read in March, 4.5 stars
2. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris. STARTED 7/31/13, FINISHED 8/2/13, 3.75 stars
3. The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan. STARTED 8/19/13, FINISHED 8/23/13 4.1 stars
4. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri STARTED 8/23/13, FINISHED 8/25/13 4.4 stars
5. Harvest by Jim Crace, STARTED 8/26/13, FINISHED 8/30/13 4.5 stars
6. Unexploded by Alison MacLeod, STARTED 8/27/13, FINISHED 8/30/13, 4.25 stars
7. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, STARTED 9/2/13, FINISHED 9/19/13, 3 stars

... and I'm also working on a PaulCranswick-imposed challenge in October, trying to read a book for each of the categories below. I don't think I'm going to make it, though!




1 Debut Novels PARIS WAS THE PLACE by Susan Conley (Finished 10/06/13)
2 New Novels A MARKER TO MEASURE DRIFT by Alexander Maksik (Finished 10/14/13)
3 Modern Fiction (post 1945) CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT by Edwige Danticat (Finished 10/16/13)
4 Classical Fiction (pre 1945) THE ASPERN PAPERS by Henry James (Finished 10/17/13)
5 In translation (into any language)
6 Historical Fiction WORTHY BROWN'S DAUGHTER by Phillip Margolin (Finished 10/25/13)
7 Alternate History THE WINDSOR FACTION by DJ TAYLOR (Finished 10/29/13)
8 Humour/Satire THE TRUTH by Terry Pratchett (Finished 10/31/13)
9 Romance THE TIGHTROPE WALKER by Dorothy Gilman (Finished 10/10/13)
10 Chick Lit WINTER WONDERLAND by Belinda Jones (Finished 10/26/13)
11 Young Adult HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS by JK ROWLING (Finished 10/05/13)
12 Westerns SWEET THUNDER by IVAN DOIG (Finished 10/04/13)
13 Sci-Fi BLACKOUT by Connie Willis (Finished 9/30/13
14 Fantasy A CLASH OF KINGS by George R.R. Martin (Finished 10/14/13)
15 Horror THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr (Finished 10/27/13) (Bram Stoker award nominee)
16. Cozy Mystery PAGAN SPRING by GM Malliet (Finished 10/21/13)
17 Historical Mystery JUSTICE HALL by Laurie R. King (Finished 10/13/13)
18 Police Procedural JUST ONE EVIL ACT by Elizabeth George (Finished 10/24/13)
19. Scandicrime BAD BLOOD by Arne Dahl (Finished 10/12/13)
20. Thriller CROSS AND BURN by Val McDermid (Finished 10/9/13)
21. Spy Novel BLOWBACK by Valerie Plame & Sarah Lovett (Finished 10/31/13)
22 Short Stories BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ENEMY by Said Sayrafiezadeh (Finished 10/21/13)
23 Poetry DREAM WORK by Mary Oliver (Finished 10/23/13)
24 Plays THE HABIT OF ART by Alan Bennett (Finished 10/6/13)
25 Criticism & Essays THE FARAWAY NEARBY by Rebecca Solnit (Finished 10/12/13)
26 Biography/Memoir A TIME TO DANCE, NO TIME TO WEEP by Rumer Godden (Finished 10/10/13)
27 Arts -- Music/Dance/Drama/Literature DAILY RITUALS by Mason Currey (Finished 10/28/13)
28 History
29 Economics/Finance FATE OF THE STATES by Meredith Whitney (Finished 10/26/13)
30 Politics BREACH OF TRUST by Andrew Bacevich (Finished 9/30/13)
31 Current Affairs
32 Travel CALCUTTA: TWO YEARS IN THE CITY by Amit Chaudhuri (finished 10/17/13)
33 Sports
34 Food ON THE NOODLE ROAD: FROM BEIJING TO ROME by Jen Lin-Liu (Finished 10/25/13)
35 Science/Nature WALKING HOME by Simon Armitage (Finished 10/7/13)
36 Philosophy / Religion ZEALOT by Reza Aslan (Finished 10/6/13)
37 Self Help / Motivational PROMISE LAND by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro (Finished 10/31/13)

And here's a short list of what I've read since my last update, although I'll fill in the detailed comments later on.

350. Brief Encounters with the Enemy by Said Sayrafiezadeh is a wonderful collection of short stories, all told in the first person by youngish men living in an anonymous city, struggling to deal with the tedium of the everyday (whether unemployed or stuck telemarketing) or somehow caught up in an anonymous war with an anonymous enemy -- the foreign country is referred to only by its geographic components -- the peninsula, the mountains, the valley, etc. Running throughout is a strand of futility, whether in war or "peace". Not exactly stories to make you feel happy and bubbly -- but beautiful writing and thoughtful themes. Definitely worth seeking out. 4.4 stars.

351. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess is a classic I had never read, perhaps because I saw the film at a formative age (my late teens or thereabouts) and honestly had no interest in reading more about mindless violence. That said, there were moments when I did read it (for my book circle) where I was halted in my tracks and made to really think about what Burgess is doing, such as the final sentences in the first section, in which Alex stops his elaborate nadsat (sp?) slang when confronted with what lies ahead of him and we realize that underneath all the flamboyance that what we're reading about is a 15-year-old boy. Still not likely to be a book that I re-read, but not unhappy that I got around to it; the discussion was certainly intriguing. 4 stars. For my 2013 Categories Challenge.

352. Just One Evil Act by Elizabeth George is the 18th (yes really!) in what used to be an excellent series and now is only OK. Part of the problem is that this drags on and on and on; part of it is that this time, the crime is shoved almost to the background and what we're really witnessing is a meltdown on the part of Sgt. Barbara Havers. These series has lost a lot of its charm for me in recent years, and in this one, the character development (which had been a highlight) kind of hijacked the overall plot. So, only 3.75 stars.

353. Pagan Spring by G.M. Malliet is a rare cozy mystery series that I find somewhat interesting, though each time I am hoping for something better. In this case, the solution is handed to the reader at the end -- a pet peeve of mine -- and I found myself not really caring much at all who dunnit or why. 3.2 stars. For my 2013 Categories Challenge.

354. Dream Work by Mary Oliver is a wonderful collection of poems by this iconic contemporary writer that I'd had in my bookshelf, unread, for some time. You'll see one of my faves up top. I just got another book of hers from the library on the strength of this. I'd been reading bits and pieces of Oliver's work for years, but had never really sat down to read my way through an entire collection before. 4.5 stars.

Placeholding post, complete with garnish of winces and cringes for painful tooth issues. *smooch*

Good poem to start this thread, Suzanne.

I like that poem, Suz, and I'm not much of a poetry appreciator...

Sorry to hear of your dental woes, Suzanne, Fingers crossed that all gets repaired in a painless and timely manner.

Hi Suz - great poem. I'm sorry to read about your bridge - that sounds so painful and such an annoying thing to have happen! Hope you can see an oral surgeon soon.

Thanks all -- especially for the deer (or is it a moose -- the hump isn't distinctive enough for me to tell) as my animal du thread, Robert...

Two more:

355. Worthy Brown's Daughter by Phillip Margolin is apparently the first attempt by this author (who made his name writing contemporary potboiler suspense novels) to write fiction -- which explains a lot. It's historical, set in 1850s Oregon, and that historical setting is the most interesting part of the book for me. There are a couple of different mysteries or puzzles (that aren't really all that mysterious) that the main character, an early Oregon attorney, has to wade his way through, but this never really engaged me. Pedestrian writing, as well -- at least it was a fast read. An Amazon Vine pick. 3.2 stars. For my 2013 Categories Challenge.

356. On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome With Love and Pasta by Jen Lin-Liu is an intriguing look at the culinary delights of the Silk Road, from China to India, with the emphasis being on the noodle of the title and its journey one end of the Noodle Road to the other. It's not always consistent -- and the noodles disappear for quite a while in Iran and parts of central Asia, as well as much of Turkey, which kind of undermines the main point -- but as a combination of travel and cookery book, it's entertaining and worthwhile. Stuffed full of trivia about the places the author visits on her culinary pilgrimage, too. 4 stars.

It's a wapiti.

Robert

Ouch! Hope your dental problems are fixed soon!

Ugh about your dental problems; hope you can get them fixed pronto.

Oh my Suzanne, dental problems are so hard to deal with but this sounds particularly awful. Good luck getting it taken care of.

Thanks... it all seems somewhat stable right now, but as recent history has demonstrated, that could be very ephemeral. I can just see a cat hitting the underside of my jaw, or my elbow when I'm about to eat, thus sending a fork or spoon right toward the teeth in question...

Aha, Robert, an elk... or something of that ilk... :-)

Two more books that I have to report back on with details:

357. Winter Wonderland by Belinda Jones redefines the concept of fluffy books. I picked it up a while back because it's set against the background of Quebec City's winter carnival, but the bits about that sound like gushing tourist board propaganda (although they might make people interested in checking it out for themselves) and the author also gushes about the Quebecois. Fine and dandy, but there's so little context that it's absurd. The romance is mildly entertaining, leaving the only mildly interesting bit as the "Malhomme", a guy who dresses up as the Bonhomme, the mascot of the carnival, but who uses his disguise to be mischevious or worse. Not very believable, and as I said, very lightweight. 2.6 stars. Not unless you're desperate for a mindless romance.

358. Fate of the States by Meredith Whitney does a more than adept job of diagnosing the problems associated with government finances in the United States, deftly linking the housing/credit bubbles and overspending on the part of state and municipal governments. Whitney does a great job of explaining, is readily understood terms, just what is going on with public sector pensions, and the unsustainability of promises made in an effort to win election or keep civil servants from walking off the job in the absence of pay increases. (Sadly, she's also correct in predicting that this is going to emerge as a new American fault line: after a decade of no wage growth, American private sector workers who have to largely provide for their own retirements via a 401(k) -- even with employee matching -- and make sensible investment decisions, and who will work into their 60s if they can find a job, find it hard to get accustomed to the idea that they are also paying for a fire chief to retire at 55 with a $100k pension that has a 3% cost of living adjustment annually at a time when actual inflation is closer to 1.5%...) Whitney's argument falls apart, however, when she tries to contend that the "corridor states" in the middle of the country are a model for where we should be. She praises Texas, fair enough in some respects, but overlooks the fact that that state is characterized by a big surge of government spending (a bad thing, she has already argued) and also appears low down on the list of states with college education rates, as well as remaining one of the most poverty-stricken in the nation. (She also hails Louisiana, which has similar demographics and hardly emerges as a model for good governance.) Whitney is focused on the latest boom in energy production, and points to Alberta as a model of what can happen. That strikes me as odd for someone as fascinated by history as she claims to be: Alberta had its own big boom in the 1970s and early 1980s (when the late premier Peter Lougheed famously said he was ready to let "those Eastern bastards freeze in the dark") but then the bottom fell out of the energy market in early 1981 and didn't fully recover for two decades. Calgary in the late 1980s was a depressed place, as are all single industry cities when that happens, and I suspect that North Dakota will eventually discover this when their resource boom falters. This kind of selective logic and tunnel vision makes the book's broader argument and prescriptions less than convincing.

A bunch of my Amazon Vine picks arrived today, along with the hardware necessary to build the SEI Book Tower that I purchased a year ago. I'm going to finally get around to assembling it tomorrow, I hope.

...and still more...

359. The Alienist by Caleb Carr was a "thumping good read", in spades. (Technically, it's going in as a horror novel, as it was a nominee for the Bram Stoker award, but it's not of the contemporary Exorcist ilk, more a kind of suspense novel that draws on the banality of evil for its horror, a la Poe.) Set in NYC of 1896, it captures the city of the time brilliantly, as an early psychologist, a newspaper reporter, Teddy Roosevelt and some of his more iconoclastic NYC cops (at a time when TR was trying to shakeup the NYPD) pursue an early serial killer. Hampered, of course, by the fact that nobody really thought about this kind of creature at the time. They stumble through modern techniques like fingerprinting, even as one of the detectives tries to scientifically test the idea that the sight of a murderer can be imprinted on the eyeballs of his victim. The last chapters of this long but engrossing novel move at a breakneck pace, as the protagonists close in on their quarry as he focuses on his own quarry. Truly an excellent read, and why I hadn't read it already I cannot imagine. 4.6 stars.

360. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey is a fun book to read it fits and starts. As the title implies, it's chockablock full of short descriptions of how a few hundred artists of all kinds -- choreographers, sculptors, architects, poets, writers, composers -- have worked, the rituals that make them tick. Stravinsky used to stand on his head -- and so did Saul Bellow. Lots of them took walks. A surprising number relied on artificial assistance from booze or drugs of various kinds. Indeed, for many, the only common element proves to be the existence of some kind of ritual. Don't read this all at once, as it will start to feel repetitive. But it's fun to dip into. While I'm not sure I would have splashed out to buy this, I'll be a bit sorry to return it to the library, as it's the kind of book it would be amusing to pull off the shelf to look at now and again; perhaps I'll keep my eyes open for a dirt-cheap copy down the road.

Suz did you ever read Do Not Ask What Good We Do? ?

Came out last year - I thought a very good tour d'horizon of the Tea Party and its influence on the Republicans and on America.

I enjoyed the Book Circle discussion of l'Orange - glad you were there to contribute.

Grinning joyfully to think the fun you will have from The Alienist

Thanks for the tip, Jim -- I'd not seen it but have just requested it from the library. And realized that the new novels by John Grisham and Donna Tartt are waiting to be picked up, which I probably won't be able to manage before Friday. By then, another new mystery should be waiting for me, and after reading The Alienist I'm going to hunt down the other Caleb Carr novel featuring the main character...

Hi Suzanne - Sorry to hear of the recent health troubles!

I've not been around for a while, but I sought out your Hild review and I'm thrilled that you liked it. I'm hoping to get a hard cover version when it comes out (is it out yet?), because I still want to see a gosh darn map. That was rough.

Also, I must check out your column.

Kerri -- thanks for the visit! Yes, the absence of a good map was a problem for me, too. Part of it was that I couldn't always connect the "today" places in northern England with the names given them back then. The book comes out in hardcover November 12, so not long to go!

Oh bloody hell about your teeth. I like that book of Mary Oliver's and I especially like that poem. But oh, your teeth...oms and white beams, Suz.

Also wishing you well with your dental woes. I used to read Margolin's crime novels but got a bit tired of them.

When do you get to see someone about your dental woes?

Judy, no idea. I finally heard back from the folks that the hospital referred me to. The clinics won't take me because I'm not on some form of social assistance, and the dentist won't because he doesn't do restorative dentistry. His office manager pointed out to me sternly that they don't make referrals or suggestions. So I may have to go see my (very expensive but pleasant) NYC dentist. For now, all is -- temporarily -- OK, although this has been a big warning shot across the bow.

You've probably already thought of this but can your NYC dentist give you a referral to someone in Providence?

I asked, but he never answered the question directly; I kinda doubt it. To the extent that I don't have emergencies, it's manageable. I'm not a straightforward dental patient, alas. After having gone the first half of my life with only two cavities and having to have had my wisdom teeth out, the second half has been nuclear mutant dental meltdown for reasons that have been attributed to everything from medication and diet to hormonal changes. Who knows? All I know is that the structure of dental insurance -- which is fab for people who might need only a singl root canal per year -- is horrible for those of us with real problems, when combined with the cost of dental treatment. I can be $8k out of pocket on dental expenses in a single year and even when I had insurance, be able to recoup only $1,800 from them. Unlike medical insurance, you're really not protected against a disaster scenario.

It's trtuye even for those of us who have dental insurance. A single crown can be more than the max.

I was surprised that you were referred to an oral surgeon. A prosthedontist should be able to fix or re-anchor a bridge.

I've always wished that dental health was part of health insurance. Why isn't an infected tooth considered to be just as dangerous as any other infection a patient might have? It's a major flaw in our system. We could opt for Delta Dental when I worked and twenty or thirty years ago it was a nice benefit but then in the last ten years or so of my career it went completely away, lost in the negotiating process.

Bonnie, it really should be. A dental infection, left untreated, can lead to blood poisoning, for instance.
Judy, yes, the example of 8k vs 1.8k was a real-life one from when I had insurance. (that I paid a few bucks a month for). And if you don't happen to have the rest of what you need, well, fugheddaboutit.

Not enough time for reading today. Just realized it's 10 p.m. and I'm still working on one of the two things I need to get done tonight. Tomorrow I'll only have two things to write -- oh, and a magazine feature to edit. A Mike Bloomberg profile that apparently looks too much like a Valentine, and into which I must inject some snark. Or at least some balance.

Gotta catch up on the book reporting yet again, and then re-immerse myself in work.

361. The Tightrope Walker by Dorothy Gilman was a slightly disappointing re-read of a book that I read after discovering the "Mrs Pollifax" mysteries in the early 1980s, but that hasn't worn all that well. I re-read this fairly frequently about 30 years ago, but it's probably been more than 20 years since I picked it up. Still, decided to listen to an audiobook, which was entertaining, but there's not enough here for me to really like. Anemic. 3.1 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

362. The Windsor Faction by D.J. Taylor (for my 2013 Categories Challenge) Another, much bigger disappointment. This should have checked all my boxes. Alternate history; World War II; billed as a suspenseful read. It was a dreary plod through the phony war with a bunch of milquetoast characters who failed to make me care that they were alive at all, much less engage me in their concerns. It's like walking into a fascinating old house, and then reading a guide to it that focuses on the mould, the termite activity and damp. If that makes sense. Oddly, the writing was frequently excellent, but it alternated with rambling stuff and the whole tale jumped so much from one character to another, all of whom seemed to drift in a desultory fashion through life to the extent to which when the suspense/intrigue that should have been there all along finally showed up, far too late (in the final 30 pages or so) it, too, was strangely muted. Blech. I started reading this at the beginning of the month, and only kept on out of sheer stubborness. Avoid. 1.8 stars.

363. Breach of Trust by Andrew Bacevich is an intriguing ER book that arrived this summer & that I finally got around to reading (she admitted shame-facedly.) The author is a former military officer (spent two decades there) who built a second career in academia, so this critique of the lack of connection between the American public and the now-professional/volunteer military, and what that means for the formation of policy, is worth reading on that count alone. Bacevich comes to this from a POV that many will label "left", but the stuff he's criticizing should concern us all, regardless of nationality or political hue. Because he's pointing out that a misguided policy process produces toxic results for everyone out there. Straightforward argument, dense and well-reasoned, but best taken in small doses in order to ponder it all. 4.2 stars.

364. The Truth by Terry Pratchett is another fun romp set in Discworld, where William de Worde discovers -- gasp -- the power of the press, from headlines to photos and the importance of spelling names correctly. And he also discovers some real news to investigate: a possible kidnap of the real Lord Vetinari and the replacement of him with a lookalike faux patrician. One or two small plot holes, but the snark and satire are tremendous fun, as ever. Featuring DEATH, Gaspode the talking dog, and some fave City Watch folks.

365. Blackout by Connie Willis actually made for a better second read (or in this case, listen) than the original. I think it's because when Polly is wittering on about her "deadline", as she gets trapped after time-traveling to the London Blitz of September 1940, I now understand what she means. Similarly, I understand how the myriad strands of the tale fit together, so I'm not frustrated by not understanding any more. So I can just pay attention to the story instead of being distracted as I try to puzzle this stuff out. The basics of the tale: three time travelers get stranded in WW2. The endless agonizing about what to do -- where is the retrieval team? Why doesn't the drop open? -- is sometimes tedious, but overall a good yarn. Although of a far inferior quality in terms of literary quality, it's far more engaging a read than The Windsor Faction and I'm moving right on to its sequel, All Clear. Because you really need to read/listen to them back to back, IMHO. 3.9 stars.

Suzanne, nice new thread. Congrats on #8. So sorry about the dental emergency. I hope you can get your bridge fixed soon so you can eat some solid food.

I've had The Alienist on the shelf for years now and didn't realize what I was missing! It's in the Must Read Soon pile now. Thank you for calling it to my attention.

Thanks, Donna!

Yes, I was in the same boat as you are re The Alienist; kicking myself for having neglected such an interesting book for so long -- I certainly had been aware of it since it came out. I'm now hunting down the second book featuring some of the same characters via the library...

Suz if you like alt-history you must have read The Guns of the South, no?

Nope... I'm not all that interested in the Civil War as a period (Ken Burns notwithstanding) and while I did glance at that once, the idea of using weaponry that hadn't been invented at the time was just too weird -- breaking the kind of rules that I like my alt history/time travel to adhere to.

Just picked up a bunch of library holds, including that Washington book you recommended, Goldfinch, the new John Grisham and a few more, and spotted a collection of short stories by Connie Willis. They seem to include some involving her time travelers so I nabbed 'em.

Book updates later.

Wow, after nearly 20 years with no trick or treaters, was cleaned out in two hours last night. Next year I'll have to buy more candy.

We have very active trick or treating in our building, so I try to restrict them to two pieces of candy each on the grounds that I need enough for everybody. Some of them are good about it, but some manage to squirrel away more!

I read The Alienist eons ago or at least in the 90s I think and loved it but never read anything else by Caleb Carr.

So sorry about the dental problems. It is strange that dental (and also some vision problems) are considered separate. In fact, you have to wonder. Dentists aren't MD's are they? That must be part of it, different track from way back.

I hope you had fun with your trick or treating. My spousal unit loves Hallowe'en and at our old house down in the village and then in Philly he could indulge. The last three years here have been sad for him, but this year he was invited to come and help at our library so he went and had a fabulous time!

I liked The Alienist when I read it.

OK, my final books of October -- which were a bit disappointing.

366. Blowback by Valerie Plame (with Sarah Lovett) was an ARC that I picked up at BookExpo because -- well, why not? Who wouldn't want to read a spy novel written by a former covert CIA operative? Sadly, it didn't measure up to the standards being set by Homeland on TV (even in the latter's not-up-to-snuff third season.) It's a pedestrian "thriller" in which chills and thrills are largely lacking. It's James Patterson without the choppy prose and breathless short chapters and with polysyllables. I prefer the likes of Charles Cumming. This gets only 2.9 stars. Not actively bad, just not much there there. Still, it was free...

367. Promise Land by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro was a NetGalley offering, and a mildly amusing tour of the self-help industry. That said, fairly predictable, both in terms of what is there to be learned and the overall point (d'uh, self help ain't all it cracked up to be, except for those authors...) There's also a fairly high degree of snark as opposed to genuine wit. I'd suggest instead turning to Barbara Ehrenreich's scathing but powerful Bright Sided, which focuses on the perils of positive thinking. 3 stars.

OK, off to do some more reading...

Suz; not sure if you just came up short in my challenge or not but you certainly ran it close. I for my part with, non-functioning eyes for a goodly spell, never had a chance and am now left with about ten part finished books to chew through over my long weekend.

Enjoyed reading the Mary Oliver poem above.

Have a lovely weekend dear lady.

Thank you Paul, yes, once again the challenge was too much... Well, kinda. You had originally suggested 32 categories, but that missed out on some categories, so I tidied 'em up and organized them and ended up with 37, and read 33. Missed out on sports, history (odd), in translation and current affairs.

Put your brain to work, and you can come up with one for me for December or January!

Hi Suzanne - Great reviews! I've yet to read my first Connie Willis, but have Doomsday Book waiting in the pile (I've been avoiding it due to length, I think.) I'm also about to embark on a Discworld novel sometime soon, so we'll see how that goes...

Good to hear positive things about Bright Sided. I was a little disappointed with my last Ehrenreich (the one about white collar workers), but have wanted to check this one out (I loved Nickle and Dimed, of course.)

Ehrenreich has her hobby horses, and does tend to ride 'em into the ground, but Nickel and Dimed was a great read, based on a thoughtful and really unchallengeable approach to the research, and as long as you aren't a big believer in positive thinking as a solution to life's troubles, there's lots there to both amuse and inform!

First book of the month, thankfully a step up from the last 2:

368. Mountain of Light by Indu Sundaresan is an intriguing piece of historical fiction that made me think of what Edward Rutherfurd could do in his books if he weren't so obsessed with detail data dumping and constructing improbable historical linkages over vast periods of time. Sundaresan places the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the heart of this story, and focuses on a digestible time frame: the final 50 years of its known history in India, with a brief final chapter that brings the tale of those involved with the diamond up to the end of the 19th century. Starting at the beginning of that century, we meet dethroned Afghan Emir Shah Shujah, held hostage by Ranjit Singh, the maharajah of the Punjab, until he relinquishes the massive diamond, and move on to Ranjit Singh's court, his encounters with Lord Auckland and the Eden sisters, the forced relinquishment of the diamond to the British and its secret transportation to England to be presented to Queen Victoria. I confess that I did get frustrated by the fact that we meet most characters only briefly and don't get to follow them through the length of the novel; had the author chosen to tell the tale of just one of these groups of characters at full length, I think it would have been fascinating. As it is, it's just interesting, and a good read for historical fiction fans. 4 stars.

Hi Suz, hope you're doing ok after your dental mishap.

Looking forward to hearing your comments on The Goldfinch.

What about a nationality challenge Suz? Read books by authors from different countries. Or more difficult perhaps cover the US states?

Paul, that sounds as if it might put so many constraints around my reading that I wouldn't be able to read the books that I need/want to read in any given month. In a typical month, at least half of my reading is dictated by ARCs that must be read & reviewed, library books that must go back, etc. It might be feasible to do a "set in" country challenge, but the idea of reading a few dozen books by authors form a few dozen countries in a month makes me feel that I'm back in school!

Upstairs neighbor was awake all night, banging and bashing overhead until about 6:30 a.m. No friends, and the music wasn't oppressively bad this time, but.... I'm concluding that it's like fleas -- the warmer it is, the more active they are. (Well, I don't have first hand info on the latter, but that's what I've been told) So, since the temperatures fell sharply last night (shall have to close the bedroom window again) maybe I'll be OK again for the next few weeks?

Linda, am looking forward to the new Donna Tartt -- all 760 or so pages. I've still got to read The Luminaries -- in that case, it's the need for an uninterrupted period of time in which to read it, as every time I've had to put it to one side, I have needed to restart in order to re-immerse myself in it. I'm sure that once I get far enough in, that won't be an issue, but thus far...

Today's plan is to wrap up two nearly-finished books and do some work. Wow, exciting, no?? :-)

369. Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson is finally finished! Not sure why I have stalled early in this book so frequently, but I have -- repeatedly. Once I was finally launched into it, however, it turned into a thumping good read and probably the best in this series, IMHO. It's a bit of an outlier, as it's more puzzle than mystery (despite the fact there are at least two murders) and because the main narrative is "framed" by two episodes set 17 or 18 years after the main action, and after the death of the main character, real life mystery novelist Josephine Tey. The result is a book that is as much character study as intense action drama, which happens to be just what I like. Making it more intriguing is that it's set against the backdrop of Alfred Hitchcock's decision to turn one of Tey's novels, A Shilling for Candles, into a film, and so throughout there are nods and winks to Tey's work (eg The Franchise Affair) and Hitchcock's films (especially Vertigo and Frenzy). A very good yarn. 4.3 stars.

>369. Wow, sounds great. This one is instantly going on my Wishlist.

Becky, Upson has chosen to view Tey as a closeted gay woman who finds true love over the course of these novels. I'm not at all convinced by this, as the evidence doesn't argue for it one way or another, and it reads to me like a bit of special pleading (or perhaps an editor saying, you've got to give her a love interest to make her more conventional). IRL, my understanding of Tey was that resolutely avoided romantic entanglements of all kinds, just as her main characters did (eg Alan Grant). This is the one aspect of these novels that annoys me, since it feels gratuitous -- we're talking about a real life character for whom there is simply no evidence in either direction (it ain't Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears) and I don't see this as necessary to either the character development or to the plots, so it has become a little annoying. Might have been 4.5 stars without this.

You will want to start this series at the beginning, however, with An Expert in Murder.

Sigh, my heavy-footed neighbor, who was up all night banging around upstairs, is now tromping up and down like the proverbial herd of cattle.

And I'm watching the final episodes of season 3 of Game of Thrones.

I'm going to read the fifth book in the Nicola Upson series in the coming week or so.

I've been headachey and stressed, so not around much. But have finished two more books.

370. The Idealist by Nina Munk is a thoughtful and devastating look at Jeffrey Sachs and his crusade to deploy "shock therapy" to the problem of Africa's extreme poverty. Munk is a keen observer and has no axe to grind, and is thus a trustworthy observer of the ideals and the problems in trying to implement them, from human nature to the inherent issues of "top down" solutions to challenges such as this, and Sachs's own personality. The only real flaw is that she doesn't step back from the specific to the general, and put either the campaign or its results in a broader context. To the extent that this was a flawed endeavor, the question arises as to why -- was it the goal, the strategy, something inherent, or something we can learn from? Even if Munk didn't have a specific view on this, posing those questions would have been a valuable exercise. 4.1 stars -- a good read for those who read Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Era of Plenty by Scott Kilman & Roger Thurow.

371. The Tudor Conspiracy by CW Gortner is a swashbuckling novel that swashes and buckles in the appropriate places, reminding me a lot of 1950s costume dramas. The protagonist is a young man in the train of Lady Elizabeth (whom Gortner oddly chooses to refer to as princess) at the time of Mary Tudor's successful ascension to the throne in 1553/1554. But some Spaniards would love to frame Elizabeth in a conspiracy against Mary, and Brendan (whose mysterious parentage ties him to Elizabeth) has to fight to save her. A romp & fun, quite good on the basic history if you can get past the occasional unlikely bits, like Brendan's parentage and some language issues, like his referring to Elizabeth by her first name. Fine for modern readers, but something that would never have happened IRL. Good fun, and possible to read without the first in the series. (I read that eons ago, when it was still a self-published mystery, before Gortner landed an agent & contract with The Last Queen, and haven't re-read it since.) 3.65 stars.

Going to NYC tomorrow midday (Megabus again -- oh joy...) for a work dinner, and then on Thursday night, the Patti LuPone concert at Carnegie Hall -- treat to self.

Treats to self are good! Feel better...

Tks, Katie! It was an enjoyable Goldman Sachs Asset Mgt dinner, and I wound up sitting next to the most interesting person that I've met from there after we were at the same table last year. So that was good -- and there were some other interesting folks at my table, making for a far-ranging & fascinating discussion!

This, of course, is after I discovered that I had left my iPod at home and the MegaBus driver was singing along (out of tune) to the radio most of the way. I had my Kindle Fire on hand and emergency downloaded some music to listen to (I had brought my headphones) only to realize then that I had ALSO forgotten my charger (which works on both the Kindle Fire and the cellphone). Sigh. Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but...

Then had to race to the fiscal times offices to bang out a story about the Twitter IPO -- a special request from one of the portals that picks up a lot of content and had told my editor that my previous Twitter piece was the best thing he'd read this week. Flattery, it seems, will get you extra effort. Now I can finally relax for a short while until Twitter starts trading in the morning. Oy vey.

Meanwhile:

372. To Kill a Tsar by Andrew Williams: I was puzzled to see this has such a low rating and almost no reviews, as I found it a very interesting and intriguing novel, albeit one with a slightly inconclusive end. Spread over 1879 to 1881, it's the story of the group of pre-Bolshevik terrorists who conspire to murder Tsar Alexander II, and a young Anglo-Russian doctor who falls in love with one of their number. It's a compelling picture of a conspiracy amidst the authoritarian world of Tsarist Russia. Even though I knew what happens, more or less, it was still a v. good read, if not brilliant. Recommended. 4 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

I know someone who can make your heavy-footed neighbor an offer she (is it a she?) can't refuse, if need be. {grin}

I have a sister-in-law who is 5-foot-nothing and weighs 85 pounds dripping wet, yet she has the heaviest tread of any human being I know. Don't know how she does it.

Hoping for less stressful/headachy days for you. You are missed when you're not at LT!

How do you get the Game of Thrones episodes? Or have they released them earlier this year. I heard somewhere they were the most pirated series of all time.

Lucy, a friend of mine sent me season three. I have deliberately chosen not to enquire too deeply as to how he sourced them. I choose to believe that he DVRed them and has the technical know-how to send 'em to me in digital form.

Becky, exactly!!! Some people sound like giant heffalumps. I once had a dancer as a housemate, 25 years ago or so. When she went downstairs in the mornings, the whole house rattled.

Suzanne, I thought you might be interested in this Kindle one:

Jung Chang's new biography of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China appears to be only 99p (bit of a surprise offer, that one).

Sorry, I see you've already got a hardback copy.

A bio of Ada Lovelace (early person in the history of computing, often overlooked) is also one of today's Kindle daily deals.

Actually, I spotted that Jung Chang, too, and added it! I don't know why it's showing up as a hardcover, but for 99p, I could not resist! and saw no reason to do so. So I succumbed. The Ada Lovelace bio was less tempting for me, at least. But I spotted a new chick lit book from Hester Browne for only 56p or something absurd like that, and her tomes tend to be just the ticket for times when I'm feeling gloomy about life (as so often happens in November.)

I shall not regale you with the annoying things that have happened in the last 24 hours, but instead focus on the highlights of the last 48, which include receiving an overdue check (hurrah!), which meant I could replace my worn out pair of black pants that make an appearance in winter when I have work events; a most excellent dinner (treat to myself after receiving said check) at Boucheron Bakery in the Time Warner center (a lovely white bean soup with carmelized onions, red pepper marmelade and some slivers of roasted parsnips; salmon with wild mushrooms, a red cabbage thingummy, some miscellaneous greens and just the right dollop of a creamy sauce, and then a quite good creme brulee. After the exquisite first dishes, I could resist a dessert. You know, I don't think I've ever had even a disappointing meal there.

And now I'm back in Providence after an overly expensive and not altogether pleasant train ride. Why do I sit next the obnoxious 20-somethings on Acela? This one spent the entire trip tossing her long glossy hair around in my face, when she wasn't scowling at me and telling me I must have knocked the plug for her laptop out of the power strip beside me. (I hadn't.) When we got off the train in Providence, the quiet car is right by the elevator. She gets on the elevator and then just stands there, blocking the way for anybody else who wanted to get on. So the thing -- which can hold at least a dozen passengers -- went up with only 3, and another 20-odd people still on the platform, rather furious. Sigh.

But I promised I wouldn't vent. I'm going to go read the rest of the Ann Patchett essay collection, which is delightful.

Two more books, both excellent.

373. Aftermath: The Remnants of War by Donovan Webster is, as the title suggests, a book devoted to the topic of what is left behind when the armies stop fighting, pack up their kit bags and go home. Webster has focused on some of the big conflicts of the 20th century, and different kinds of "leftovers", from unexploded WW1 ordnance scattered across France (including gas-filled shells...) still being found when he was writing in the 1990s, to the impact of Agent Orange in Vietnam, land mines in Kuwait and the "bone fields" of Siberia. My only problem isn't with the book, but the fact it hasn't been updated! It's provocative, well-researched and immensely readable. If you're interested in the history of the two world wars and what followed them, you owe it to yourself to read this. I can't remember who suggested I pick it up, but I'm grateful. Having spent a couple of summers working as a tour guide at a WW1 battlefield in France, where each year some picknickers would find that a shell had worked its way up through the soil, or a sheep would blow itself up, this really resonated. Wars may end, but they never really go away. 4.3 stars.

374. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett is simply a perfect collection of essays, many of which are biographical, or at least that point the reader toward a greater understanding of Patchett as a person and as a writer. There's a hymn to the short story, a speech delivered at Clemson, the wonderful piece on becoming a writer (published independently as The Getaway Car), many others... including the introductory piece, whose comments on freelance writing made me laugh until I got hiccups. Devoured in one evening. Miss it at your peril. In some ways I think I prefer Patchett's non-fiction to her books, although I've yet to read Bel Canto. (Yes, I know...)

Oh -- I plan to spend as much time as humanly possible this weekend curled up with books and cats. Other than grocery shopping with a friend on Sunday, I see no reason to do anything else...

Good luck with your plans for the weekend Suz....sounds like the sort of weekend I would like, sans les chats.

Sounds like you have lovely weekend plans! Hope your neighbors aren't too loud!

It's been (relatively) peaceful on the home front, thanks!

The person in the neighborhood that I met when I first started looking for a place to live in Providence had lunch with our mutual friend Susan on Friday. He told Susan he'd had a call from my landlord to thank him for finding him such a good tenant. Even third hand (I heard this from Susan), that's great to hear, after all the sturm und drang in Brooklyn!

375. Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford was very "meh" for me. I think the best way to explain my reaction is to say that while I might one day read the Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, I feel absolutely no urgency about doing so and would only do so via a library copy. The backdrop is interesting -- Seattle's Chinatown in the 1920s and 1930s, with lots of detail and color. But the story is sentimental and predictable: young boy rediscovers on early cinema a woman he is convinced is his mother. Lots of stuff about his tough life in Depression-era orphanage; lots of stuff about his Chinese mother's tough experiences as a young adult and single mother. All of which really didn't stick that much. 3.3 stars. For my 2013 Categories Challenge

376. The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upson is the fifth in the series of mysteries featuring Josephine Tey, which I read immediately after finally finishing #4, and it's quite a departure. In all the others, there have been murder mysteries in which Josephine and her circle become involved in, in one way or another. In this, Josephine has been left a cottage by her godmother, with the proviso that she must sort through her godmother's letters. There are mysteries, but the nature of them isn't clear. One is firmly in the past -- a historic crime (a true one), the murder of a young woman by her lover -- and another is the nature of her godmother's death, but in many ways this felt more like reading a spooky crime novel than a mystery. Very atmospheric, but in many ways not as engaging as the previous book in the series. 4 stars.

377. All Clear by Connie Willis is the conclusion of the two books involving time travelers stuck in WW2 England, when all finally is revealed. The whole time travel stuff is enough to make one's brain hurt -- "he couldn't have found us, because then we wouldn't still be here, so it doesn't matter that he's going off to try to find a way out now" kinda thing -- and some of the complexities surrounding placing clues that a retrieval team will find in the future becomes wearing, as does figuring out how so many time travelers from different points in the future could cross paths (or nearly so) at the SAME point in the past made my head spin, but the resolution was satisfying. I stick to my original decision that Willis should have been told to make this a single volume and cut, cut, cut. She could easily have pulled off the same feat in a single 700/800 page book rather than 1,200 or so pages in two books. This time around, I listened the audiobook & the narrator is quite good, for folks as likes this kind of approach.

.... and one more!

378. The Valley of the Shadow by Carola Dunn is third in an OK cozy mystery series that I have now been forced to conclude is inexplicably set some time in the mid/late 1970s. (Records, no cell phones, and Indians being tossed out of Uganda and Kenya.) It's set in Cornwall, which is why I read it, and in this book the main character's niece, a detective, rescues a drowning young man who, on regaining consciousness, gasps out something about his family being stranded in a smuggler's cave. It's a pretty bare bones and minimalist plot: who are the people smugglers, and can the rescue teams find the family members? Not much meat here, really, but a pleasant enough read after ghosty mysteries and time travel. 3.2 stars.

I'm immersing myself slowly but steadily in two very good but loooong books -- one is Margaret Macmillan's new tome, about the outbreak of WW2, and the other a kind of joint biography of Camus and a biologist friend, Jacques Monod, who, the author plans to argue, resolved questions of what is life and what life is for in the middle decades of the 20th century. Neither is precisely a light read, so I suspect I'll be reading those for much of the rest of the month, and levening it with some fiction.

Must get back to thread-visiting; I have been too stressed to do that of late.

I had no idea that Camus was a friend of Jacques Monod. He was a very influential biologist whose book, Chance and Necessity, I read when I was a biology major back in college. That is by way of saying I remember none of it, except that I read. it. Monod won the Nobel Prize with a man named Jacob, and I remember it only as Jacob-Monot. Their work focused on how genes control the expression of proteins, or ta least that's how I remember it.

Rebecca, yes, based on the introduction I think that after Watson & Crick they were some of the most pioneering biologists in the DNA area of that early era. They were involved in rDNA and laid the foundations for genetic engineering. I'm still at the point where both Camus and Monod were involved in the French resistance, in different roles, with the author analyzing how that helped shape their philosophies. Monod seems to have been a bit of a late bloomer -- one of those folks who has so many areas of interest that he finds it hard to focus on just one. By the age of 30, he still hadn't completed his PhD, at the time the war broke out.

I'm not convinced that the author isn't trying too hard to draw analogies between the two men, but their individual stories and the parallels are certainly intriguing.

The Camus-Monod book sounds very interesting; I remember reading about Monod (and Jacob) during my undergraduate Molecular Biology course. I'll be interested to hear more about it.

Will keep you posted on it, Darryl! I thought when I started reading that it might be up your alley, blending science & literature & philosophy.

Meanwhile, to the ultra-lightweight:

379. Wish Upon a Star by Trisha Ashley is a novel by my fave chick lit author, who won that title thanks to her trademark snark and a healthy dose of wit. Yes, these are formula books in that they revolve around women and romance, but the women are independent and strong and anything but formulaic and often very funny. That said, this book didn't measure up to her earlier ones; a bit too sentimental, with the tale being squashed between two Christmases and involving a child too good to be true. If you want to check out her novels, avoid this one. I thought it was OK escapist fare, but not one I'll be re-reading. 3.4 stars.

I'm currently engrossed in two very different WW2 books -- the Monod/Camus tome, which I'm now about halfway through (and the war has just ended), and a novel, Black Roses, set in Berlin in 1933 which is close to turning into a thumping good read.

Too much work to do, however, when all I really want to do is crawl under my duvet and read. Especially since I put the flannel cover on last night and it's warm and cozy underneath it, in contrast to the outside temps, which are supposedly doing a nose-dive into the 20s tonight!!

Suzanne - just going to pick your brains and ask if you can recommend a good historical fiction about Eleanor of Aquitane that's focusing on the 2nd Crusade. Also some historical fiction set in Morocco.

69: Two of Jane Thynne's first 3 novels are on offer for Kindle still at quite a good price - The Weighing of the Heart and Patrimony at £1.53 and £2.05.

Kerri, there aren't a lot of great historical novels about Eleanor, oddly enough. The best are by Sharon Penman, but she's only picking up the story insofar as it overlaps with that of the Plantagenets, so it doesn't cover the crusade.

The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick covers this period. I haven't read it yet, but her history is reliable even if the story has a modern voice and a romantic tone. If you've read any of her novels, you'll know what I mean. She does do intensive research.

Personally, I liked Beloved Enemy by Ellen Jones, because its style appeals more to me. That said, the author makes a bit of a controversial decision about the relationship between Eleanor and her uncle on crusade that I thought pushed the envelope. Still, it may be your best option.

There's a novel by Christy English that I'm not all that interested in reading as I've not been impressed by her books. And the ever-reliable Jean Plaidy has The Courts of Love, which I think also covers the early period. (It's been eons since I read Plaidy...)

The books about her later life also are underwhelming, alas, especially Alison Weir's Captive Queen, of which I had high hopes.

Historical fiction set in Morocco? Wow. Tougher.

The Sultan's Wife by Jane Johnson springs to mind. Set in Moulay Ismail's court in Meknes, if I recall correctly. Also The Tenth Gift. She has written a third novel that is based in the Sahara -- The Salt Road. Again, historical fiction with a tinge of romance.

Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf is a wonderful novel, even if only part of Leo's wanderings involve Morocco.

There may be some others in French, but a cursory look at Amazon.fr isn't causing anything to pop up.

#71 -- Luci, yes, I snaffled one of them, but can't remember which one now. Have you read either/both?

Oh thanks Suzanne. I have Leo Africanus and will look out for the Chadwick and the Ellen Jones ones. I haven't read Chadwick before but I borrowed a box set of her Conquest novels from my mother last month. I've been reading Penman's Eleanor novels and am up to Devil's Brood but thought that it would be more interesting to read about the crusade.

I'm almost done on Andalus and that's led me to books about Morocco.

72: Not yet, Suzanne, I've only just read Black Roses, which I think you drew to my attention when you bought it a few months ago, so I had it on an alert list for price drops when it went on offer - it's more expensive again now.

Shall look forward to yr thoughts when you've finished them, Luci-- you can be the pioneer! I did like this one, though. Finished it yesterday, but have dreadful cold & fever today so don't feel like doing any updates yet.

So Andalus is god, Kerri? I'll have to bump Duende up the list. I love flamenco.

I've had Leo Africanus on my amazon wishlist for years - literally. I had kind of forgotten why, exactly, I thought I wanted to read it. Thanks for mentioning it here, Suzanne. I think I may know where there is a used copy of it that can be acquired locally...

Stopping by after a bit of an absence - I hope you did have a pleasant restful weekend, lots of reading and no annoying people.

I didn't know about the Monod-Camus connection. Quite interesting.

Hi Suz - I finished Andalus on my flight to Hkg. there was quite a bit that I liked but it's not really helpful for a first time reader on the region. sort of like a long rambling conversation but the parts about the language and odd bits of history were really interesting.
I've brought the Leo africanus book with me.

Charlotte, it's odd, because I don't recall having read much of Leo Africanus, although I know I own a copy and I really like Amin Maalouf. (Although I think I've read more of his non-fiction than his novels.)

Good to see you, Lucy! I haven't been visiting anyone's threads of late, I'm ashamed to say. The weekend was reasonably quiet, until work descended on me on Monday and this cold bug tiptoed its way to the forefront over the course of yesterday. Piffle. Still, an excuse to stay in bed and read mindless novels, as well as further into the Camus/Monod tome. (Oh, and my landlord hinted that Kathy the noisy woman upstairs may not be staying on for long...)

Kerri, have you read The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal? It's a great historical introduction to the melange of civilizations that combined to make Andalucia so distinct a part of Spain.

380. Black Roses by Jane Thynne turned into a compelling read after a misplaced prologue (I'd suggest any other readers skip it, it doesn't really add anything and it kind of serves as a spoiler.) Aspiring actress Clara Vine gets a casual tip in early 1933 that Berlin cinemas are looking for multilingual actresses, and off she goes on a whim, to escape the suffocating embrace of her family and stolid elderly suitor. Only to find that Berlin in the early days of Nazi rule, while far from dull, is also far from safe. When I look back on the book, sure, there were holes and improbable twists, but I didn't recognize any of those while I was reading, so intent I was on getting from one page to the next as rapidly as possible. 4.2 stars. For my categories challenge.

381. The Vintage Girl by Hester Browne is classic chick lit and the perfect novel to read in bed with a sore throat, fever and head cold. Evie is a klutz and a romantic who leaps at the chance to head off to Scotland to value the contents of an old castle, thanks to her sister's connections. But when she is called on to step into Alice's shoes at the last minute for a Scottish ball -- full of tricky reels and complicated relationships -- all kinds of stuff follows... Yes, fairy tales for grownups, but hey, we all still like cotton candy when we're grown up, don't we?? 4 stars -- an extra half-star for sheer readability. Romantic but not sentimental.

My wishlist has grown by leaps and bounds after catching up here, Suzanne. I have added Black Roses and I see there is either a sequel or a 2nd in a planned series due to come out in 2014 called "The Winter Garden". I went ahead and added The Weighing of the Heart to my Kindle since the price was right. I am also adding two of Jane Johnson's books to my wishlist, The Tenth Gift and The Salt Road.

I preordered Wish Upon A Star hoping for a nice Christmas read, so I was sorry that it isn't as good as some of her others.

Judy, if it's any consolation, you've had your revenge -- I had to add "The Winter Garden" to my wish list. While doing so, I noted that Thynne's husband is mystery writer Phillip Kerr, whose books follow German sleuth Bernie Gunther from 1933 through to the 1950s (when he travels to Latin America, including Argentina and Cuba). So I'm now less surprised at her ability to capture the era so well!

Whenever I see Black Rose I think of Thomas B. Costain's 1940s novel about an Englishman in Mongolia. Mama had it.

I still have it... Costain's is the singular, however; Thynne's novel is plural!! :-)

I did like that Costain novel. Englishman who is bastard son of a Norman noble, opts to leave after his father leaves him only his boots and bequeaths his service to the king. Our Hero says no thanks, and heads off to Byzantium, along with his sidekick, a notable archer. They end up joining a caravan there that will follow the silk road, and have all kinds of adventures, before Walter & Tristan return to England and have to face up to their problems. It's actually a very good novel -- richly detailed. The movie is too 1950s Hollywood for me, though.

Oh, for anyone who is curious to click on:

Today's Guardian column:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/14/gay-marriage-financial-planning-tax...
...and related webchat
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/14/doma-marriage-finance-chat

Hi Suz- You are always reading something interesting. I love that. I saw you mention essays on another thread. I snagged the new Patchett collection from ALA, so hopefully I can squeeze that one in. I just read/listened to one of David Foster Wallace's collections and absolutely loved it.
I would like to read more of these, so any recs would be more than welcome.

I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays a couple years ago and loved that one.

Fascinating Guardian column. I'm curious, do you pick your own topics, or are you given suggestions? Do you have a list of ideas for future columns, or do you go with something topical? Do you contact all the people you quote, and how do you find them? These are probably stupid questions, but I find the range of the topics you write about amazing. (Not to mention the millions of books you've read, and more importantly, remember.)

Read the column. Not sure why two people married would get less social security than not married. As I read it, if you have the quarters in, you can claim what you are entitled to based on your own work history. If your spouse dies, you have the choice of your own or survivor benefits. Am I wrong?

Judy, I'd have to go back to my interview notes or talk to him to clarify to the detail that you are looking for. I think what he is referring to is the after-tax impact of the Social Security payments, however. Want me to pursue?

With this, it's a bit of a mix as to who picks the column topics. For the DOMA one, it was written to coincide with the webchat. The one that will be published on Sunday is about fees, and that was my idea. I have a list of "evergreen" topics that I can turn to if inspiration doesn't strike, but by and large, I like to go with something topical whenever possible. I ALWAYS contact people I quote (unless it's someone like Ben Bernanke, who has made a comment in a press conference), and I find them all kinds of ways. In this column, the first guy I quote is a high school friend who agreed to talk to me; the BNY Mellon financial advisor was rounded up by his PR department; the second one was our webchat guest, and the woman we found by issuing a Twitter plea!

Basically, my brain functions like a highly selective giant piece of flypaper, I suspect.

Mark: check out the annual "Best American Essays" collections, which date back to the late 1980s. There are some very good essays in those, although not all are of equal merit. Phillip Lopate has edited one or two collections, as well, including The Art of the Personal Essay, which I like for its broad historical scope. I think I mentioned Virginia Woolf's Common Reader collections, which would be great for you since a lot of them are aimed at people who like reading about writers. That's something to be going on with!! I also really enjoy George Orwell's essays -- there is a four volume Penguin paperback collection that was published back in the 1980s and is probably out there via a second-hand seller.

Quick book update:

382. The Last Policeman by Ben Winters was, as I had been warned, less than overwhelming. The premise was interesting -- is it worth trying to solve a suicide that just might be murder if an asteroid is going to hit the earth in six months and destroy the planet? -- but the execution was meh... If I read the sequel, it will be only out of mild curiosity, and only if it comes from the library. 3.3 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

383. Saving Mozart by Raphael Jerusalmy was a short and interesting little novel, whose narrator, Otto Steiner, is an inmate in a TB sanitarium in Salzburg at the outbreak of WW2. He's an atheist of Jewish heritage, and a former musician/music critic, whose musical life constricts as his physical resources diminish and as he and his former patients are shoved into the attic to make way for wounded soldiers. The last straw is when it seems clear that the Nazi ethos is going to take over the annual Salzburg Festival, and Steiner decides to strike back in a quirky way. You won't guess what it is until the end, but let's just say it's a very indirect and very musical way of having the last word. Entertaining, if not great. Another find from Europa Editions. 3.9 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

384. The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard is the first in what is now a five-book series of novels following the fortunes of members of the Cazalet family, from 1937 into the postwar years. I read the first four as they were first published from the 1980s onward, but hadn't re-read any of them and so had forgotten many of the details. And these are novels in which detail matters -- this book opens with the details of a single day in 1937, seen through the eyes of the members of the family and their staff, through which we learn about their personalities and the issues that grip them -- womanizing Edward, very pregnant Sybil, Rachel, who is turn between her duty to her aging parents and love for her friend Sid; and among the children, Polly, who is young enough to still adore her cat and wonder how to find a gas mask to fit him; Clary, wrestling with her relationship with her stepmother; Neville, who thinks keeping a jellyfish as a pet might be kinda cool. This novel ends with Chamberlain's return from Munich, but ably captures the sense of looming terror of war. There are moments of great humor as the children realize that they'll have to follow through on promises that they made in order to avert war, and tremendously poignant scenes, as with Miss Milliment, an impoverished gentlewoman who serves as the girl's governess and ekes out a living in truly horrible circumstances. 4.1 stars. I listened to the audiobook version of this, but think I'll be reading the subsequent volumes before moving on to the just-published fifth and final one. Requires a bit of effort at first, but gradually the story grabs hold of you.

I've only got another 100 pages left of Brave Genius, the Camus/Monod book -- hurrah! It is very good, in spite of the occasional weakness.

Mark has given me an idea for a 2014 Categories challenge. I was starting to find the format too constrictive in the later months of the year -- too much like prescribed reading -- and each year the # of books to be read climbs. So for 2014, I think I'll focus on essays instead of books. I want to read my way through the Virginia Woolf collected essays, there are some essays in the annual "Best American" collections I haven't read, and there are usually lots of interesting offerings in the world of Kindle singles, too. Now I just need to think up 14 categories!!

Thanks, Suz, but you're busy enough, and it's not like Jim and I are going to tie the official knot tomorrow. However, if you get more inquiries or a correction, I'd love to know sometime or other. Otherwise when I get time, I'll call the SS office in NY and get their take on it, or check the website. It could be that it's all dependent on taxes, as you said - filing as single people might save some dough if the total is high enough.

I've got the guy's e-mail, so I can shoot him a note, Judy.

Here's the link for my 2014 Categories challenge: I've figured out a way to break down essays into 14 different rough categories, happily enough! I may report on those essays in my 75 group thread, but I won't be counting them as "books" for the purpose of my ticker, etc., so all of my book reading will be confined to this thread.

OK, off to watch an episode of Sherlock Series 2. My obnoxious neighbor has just headed out for the night (at midnight) and I suspect will come back drunk and noisy, so I'll watch an episode and then try to get a few hours' sleep before that happens.

H well. If it's just passing the work to him, why not? 🆒

Some good UK Kindle bargains today

Heather alerted me to a couple and I spotted the rest looking to see what else was on offer

99p

Deborah Moggach, Heartbreak Hotel
Jenny Colgan The Loveliest Chocolate Shop in Paris chicklit
Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart - (Booker list)
Khaled Hossein And the Mountains Echoed
Nicci French, Waiting for Wednesday
Anne-Marie Casey, An Englishwoman in New York
Sophie Hannah, The Orphan Choir
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

History - William Dalyrmple, The Return of a King - history of Afghanistan

Lottie Moggach, Kiss Me First 66p

Wow, Luci, that is a long list!! Most of those I've already read, or have on hand (I got The Orphan Choir approved by NetGalley this past week...) Pity about the Donal Ryan tome, however, as I paid rather a lot for my Kindle version. Thanks for the alert!!

I did note that on the UK Amazon site, for those that have UK Kindles, the Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard are almost all steeply discounted -- 99p or so.

Judy, got an answer back from the financial planner, and it is that yes, it is the tax that makes social security income lower when taken as a married couple vs collected as two separate individuals.

I'm actually going to venture outdoors this afternoon for the first time in nearly a week. The sun is shining and although my head still feels like a balloon and I'm sneezing away, the fever is GONE. So I'll go for a walk.

385. Brave Genius by Sean Carroll: I'm just cutting & pasting my Amazon review of this, as I'm too tired to write something fresh! What is life, and what makes life worthwhile, are the questions that two key members of the French intelligensia of the mid-20th century wrestled with in their different fields, each winning a Nobel prize and commanding respect (even adulation) both within and outside their own communities.

Sean Carroll has done yeoman work by even conceiving of a twin biography devoted to these two great thinkers: Albert Camus, who found and expressed a philosophical response to nihilism by recognizing the absurd and confronting it in novels, plays and essays; and Jacques Monod, whose leaps of genius enabled him to make tremendous breakthroughs in the field of molecular biology that cleared the way for big chunks of modern genetic research, becoming one of the most significant early contributors to such research after Watson & Crick (the two guys who first described DNA). The very fact that Carroll could link their separative life stories in as coherent and fascinating a manner as he did is remarkable; that it often proved un-putdownable was a big bonus. (Well, except when I had to get up and work the morning after a late-night reading binge, that is...)

The only major problem I had with the book and the only reason I can't give it 5 stars is that Carroll sometimes feels too much as if he is trying to push his main thesis -- that the work of the two men was inextricably linked. Based on what is in the book itself, I simply don't think that there is enough evidence to make that case. Yes, both men were peers, roughly speaking, coming to maturity in the years of the Second World War when the campaign against fascism crystallized their philosophical ideas. But while reading it, I kept thinking back to a wonderful art exhibit I saw about a decade ago, whose curators showed clearly how explicitly Matisse and Picasso exchanged ideas, quarreled with each other in their art, and spurred each other on to fresh heights. In contrast, throughout the first half of this book, Monod and Camus lead lives that while they are roughly parallel, don't overlap much at all. For neither of them does the other seem to be an inspiration to think differently, or someone whose ideas provoke fresh lines of inquiry, although when they first meet after World War II ends, they clearly recognize how much they have in common and draw on each other for support and encouragement. (That seemed especially true of Camus, whose rift with Jean-Paul Sartre over the former's repudiation of Communism was a perfect example of the rift among European leftists of the time.) Clearly they respected and admired each other, as Carroll demonstrates, but he doesn't chronicle a pattern of the sharing of ideas as they are being formulated. In other words, the two men were clearly wrestling with similar kinds of questions about the nature of human existence at a critical point in time and in response to many of the same events, but this chronicle left me with the sense that they were doing so independent of each other.

That's not intended to detract what is an utterly fascinating chronicle of a key period in European intellectual history, covering the struggle between resistance and collaboration during the war up to the even more complex intellectual battles waged around the Cold War, totalitarianism and up to the 1968 student revolts in Paris, in which Monod played a key role. For anyone seriously interested in the intellectual history of the 20th century, this is a must-read book, unless you've already got an advance degree in the subject. Carroll seems to me to do a better job of making the details of Camus's philosophy accessible to the general reader than he does with Monod's science, but that may simply be because I'm more familiar with the former than the latter (and anyway, Carroll does include an appendix devoted to the science, which proved immensely helpful to me.)

I've rated it 4.4 stars.

#51 - I'm going to plop The Idealist on my wishlist. I used to keep up with this topic, but have fallen behind in recent years.

As always, thanks for sharing your columns - I quite enjoy them.

I'm thinking of exploring a bit more historical fiction, so I've appreciated the discussion above, even though I have little idea of what anyone is talking about. Ha! Speaking of that, I went down a Nicola Griffith interview Youtube wormhole the other day and she was going on and on about Patrick O'Brian, who I assume everyone knows about but me. I assume he's like the Beatles of historical fiction? Anyway, I'll probably give him a try.

I'm glad you're feeling a bit better!

Pondering the idea of someone being "the Beatles of historical fiction" and chortling mildly to myself...

O'Brian wrote a series (21 of them) of novels set in the Napoleonic era and featuring a sea-going captain, Jack Aubrey, and his best friend, medical officer and scientific polymath (and spy) Stephen Maturin. They are fascinating, although this is one of those v.v. rare instances where I'd recommend you to the audiobook rather than the books. What feels like dense writing and archaic terminology on the page somehow doesn't matter in the marvellous narration by Patrick Tull. I have about six hours of the final book to listen to, and I've been postponing it for months because I was too emotionally caught up in the series and didn't want it to end...

Probably a basic building block of historical fiction is Jean Plaidy, who wrote very, very plain vanilla books set mostly in England but venturing occasionally into Italy, Spain and France. They're readable (I cut my teeth on them when I was 9 or 10) but compared to something like Hild, they start feeling skeletal.

Some suggestions:

Katherine by Anya Seton, written several decades ago now, is another richly detailed chronicle of a woman's life, in this case, the daughter of a herald in the mid/late 14th century. Obscure, right? Well, except that Katherine's sister, Philippa, married one Geoffrey Chaucer, and Katherine went on to become mistress of John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III, and her descendants still sit on the English throne today. By far the best of Seton's books, although if you're interested in colonial America, try The Winthrop Woman, or there's a novel about Aaron Burr's daughter, My Theodosia that I seem to remember was quite good (though I haven't read it in 25 years or so.)

I'm sure you've followed some of the chat about Hilary Mantel and Wolf Hall, so I won't belabor that here, but if I had to point to one novel about the Tudors, that would probably be it. Although there's a fun and interesting (albeit very long) book about Henry VIII, The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George, that I'd recommend enthusiastically.

Reay Tannahill has, IMO, been overlooked unjustly in the historical fiction world. She has two rather funny novels about a woman running a castle, Having the Builders In and Having the Decorators In that are simply fun and tongue in cheek, but also capture the atmosphere of the era (early 14th century, I think.) Her book about Mary Queen of Scots, Fatal Majesty, is the one I've enjoyed the most about Mary Stuart, there's a good novel about Richard III, The Seventh Son, but my fave of hers probably is still a little known one about a little-known period of Scottish history and the end of the Avignon papacy, The World, the Flesh and the Devil.

An interesting newer writer is Eva Stachniak, who wrote a good novel about the early years of Catherine the Great, The Winter Palace, and has a sequel coming soon.

Beyond that, it really depends on whether you want Literary novels or more potboilerish/formula stuff. There's lots of the latter, and among the former, novels that are seen as much as Literary Works as they are Historical Fiction, with Geraldine Brooks being a great example. I love Geraldine's novels, but some writers try to distance themselves from historical fiction by describing what they do as writing novels with a historical setting rather than historical fiction. They're trying to distance themselves from the genre label. I tend to be annoyed by writers like that, even if I like their books! (Strikes me as wanting to have one's cake while simultaneously devouring it....)

Among formula novels, there is Philippa Gregory. I liked some of her earlier books, such as The Other Boleyn Girl, but have reached the point where I can't stand the affectations in her writing, such as the endless repetition of rather banal ideas, and her self-importance (she likes to describe herself as Dr. Philippa Gregory, a historian, when her doctorate is in English, not history...)

Hopefully that is of some interest!

386. Sycamore Row by John Grisham was my Sunday book, and a thumping good read, even though I could guess the bare bones of what the great surprise of the final pages turned out to be and, to some extent, the denouement. That didn't matter, since it was engaging and interesting enough, and reminded me of what Grisham can do when he isn't dialing it in as he has in at least half of his novels. This features Jake Brigance, the lawyer in A Time to Kill (played by Matthew McConaughey in the film version), which was published before The Firm made Grisham a star. Those two books remain my faves of Grisham's, but this is a worthwhile successor, set in 1988, a few years after the events in Brigance's groundbreaking trial. You don't need to read the first book, although it would be fun to read them back to back. The plot? A man dying of cancer kills himself, leaving his unexpected fortune to his black housekeeper and cutting his family out the will altogether. The result? A big kerfuffle, and a trial. It's more puzzle than mystery, and not a lot of action drama, but that was fine. 4 stars.

>97 Chatterbox: Great post Suzanne. Unfortunately my teetering tower just collapsed from the additional weight;-) I've been a fan of historical fiction for a long time but never read anything about the English aristocracy until I read Wolf Hall. I love Andrea Barrett's HF especially Ship Fever and Voyage of the Narwhal, Isabel Allende's books, Louise Erdrich's Master Butcher's Singing Club, Kate Grenville's The Secret River. More recently I loved The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson, Atwood's Alias Grace, William Boyd's Restless, Dunmore's The Siege and The Betrayal, the Joseph Boyden books, J. G. Farrell's Troubles, Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke, Helen Humphreys The Frozen Thames and Coventry, Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name, Andrea Levy's Small Island.....

Well I could go on and on. But no English monarchies other than Mantel's two books. I do have Rose Tremain's Restoration on my shelf and that's to do with Charles II.

I'm wondering if you have read Company of Liars by Karen Maitland and/or Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann, two books on my shelves that I know very little about?

Thanks so much for the recommendation of Ann Patchett's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. I finished it last night and really enjoyed the whole book.

#97 - Wow, thank you for the recommendations! I'm off to see if my library has the audio versions of the O'Brian novels.

I've read Wolf Hall (and, quite frankly, didn't love it), but I'm terribly grateful for the other recommendations.

They're trying to distance themselves from the genre label. I tend to be annoyed by writers like that, even if I like their books! Sounds a bit like Ms. Atwood (bless her heart/I love her) and science fiction.

Bonnie, I've not yet read Company of Liars, although I do have a couple of Karen Maitland's books on my watchlist. Your reading list is a great example of the kinds of historical novels that somehow escape being labeled as "historical fiction" (and some of whose authors fiercely reject the title...) Pure by Andrew Miller is another that I would toss out there. Mantel herself has been a bid scathing about historical fiction as a category and conflated it with bodice rippers. I think the suggestions I made above all fall into the middle ground. They're not as literary as some that you have read (oh, and if you haven't read Geraldine Brooks's novels, I'd urge you to do that, starting with March and Caleb's Crossing!) but their not historical romance or pedestrian tomes, either.

That said, there are some thumping good reads that are bodice rippers. For instance, anyone who liked Gone with the Wind really really needs to read Forever Amber.

There are some authors that I'm ambivalent about. Sometimes, I like Sharon Penman's novels. Sometimes they just irritate me, when it feels as if the dialog is just another way of communicating historical information to the reader: the characters are spelling out in words of one syllable, what they haven't already witnessed, in conversations with each other that would never have taken place in reality because some of the conversation would never have needed to be passed on this way and the rest they couldn't have been as knowledgeable about. Oh well, nothing is perfect!

Heidi -- I'm so glad that was a hit! I suspected it might be; lovely personal essays, elegantly written and effortless to read.

Kerri, sorry that Wolf Hall wasn't a hit. You might want to take a glance at A Place of Greater Safety if you have any interest in the French Revolution?

I picked up a historical novel at the library today by an author I've never tried, Gillian Bradshaw. She seems to write a lot set in the ancient world, and this is based in Alexandria in its glory days. I just happened to catch a glimpse of it while heading past the Bs en route to Willa Cather. (I have to read My Antonia for my book circle discussion Thursday night...)

387. Mortal Bonds by Michael Sears is a thriller set around the financial world, and I have to say that here's a rare example of someone emerging from that world who can actually write. It's Sear's second thriller with plots rooted in the post-crisis financial landscape, but even though I hadn't read the first, this was very easy to follow. Basically, the protagonist, one former disgraced trader named Jason Stafford, has been retained by a Madoff-like family to figure out what happened to what the Feds claim is $3 billion in missing cash. Stafford puts his life in jeopardy and tangles with drug dealers and Interpol in the quest. Nothing dramatically new or different here, but it was entertaining and worth a look if you want something of this ilk. I probably wouldn't pay money for it, but it was an ARC from Amazon Vine's Last Harvest, so I didn't have to... *grin* 3.8 stars.

Just want to report in that I'm enjoying An officer and a spy. It doesn't focus on Dreyfus himself so far and is more on the intelligence agency and how it operates. Quite fascinating.

I'm enjoying your columns very much. No surprise, they are eminently readable.

I read Margaret George's The Autobiography of Henry VIII on the train, traveling from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. I loved the book--long (which was what I wanted for the train), well-written, well-researched, and entertaining.

I'm also glad to hear that the newest Grisham is a good read, Sycamore Row. Smart of him to return to Jake Brigance.

I haven't read it, but I have The Bearkeeper's Daughter by Gillian Bradshaw. I think it might be about Theodora.

What a great topic - and complex indeed.

My fingers are hurting from NaNo-ing. Your columns for The Guardian delight, as always. I hate Ann Patchett's moist novels, so should I try her essays? I loathe Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace, too, but their essays aren't agonizing. Advice, please.

Have you read Farewell, Great King? Ancient historical spy novel. I remember it as fun.

Resuming radio silence.

Hi Suz- Thanks for the essay recs. I have taken note. Have you read Christopher Hitchens? I have not but just located the audio of Hitch-22, his memoir. He writes essays and other musings, correct?

Christopher Hitchens died of cancer 2 years ago - his writing was polemical and often on controversial subjects - particular targets of his criticism included God God is Not Great and Mother Theresa The Missionary Position. He was emphatically an atheist, and remained so until his death, but his political views on lots of other things shifted a lot. The memoir is a good read.

Wowza, lots of visitors!

Luci, yes, that book is about Theodora. The library seems to have a complete collection of Bradshaw's novels, but after reading Stella Duffy's excellent two books about Theodora, I decided to try something different.

Richard, I hadn't even heard of this novel, although I'm a fan of Jill Paton Walsh. She has written an excellent series of mysteries on her own and is now ghosting the literary homages to Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. I also loved A Desert in Bohemia and I have The Serpentine Cave from the library. Tks for the tip!

Mark, as Luci notes, Hitchens was an extremely polemical but very very smart writer. (An odd overlap -- I became friendly with his elder daughter last year -- she worked in the bakery that I used to go to once or twice a week in Brooklyn. She's now starting to forge a career in film-making.) What I liked about Hitchens' writing is that even when I disagreed with the conclusion, I could almost always understand how he arrived at that position. Increasingly rare phenomenon... I'd dip into his big essay collection, Arguably, or perhaps read the short collection of the essays he wrote (mostly for Vanity Fair) as he was dying, Mortality. He would have been a frustrating but fascinating person to know, I suspect. Oh, other works by Hitchens that I particularly like: Why Orwell Matters and Letters to a Young Contrarian. The latter is short and witty -- I'd start there and with Mortality, and if you like his vvoice, move on to some of his other writing. Other than Mother Theresa, I think his most controversial stance was to break with the "left" on the Iraq war. (I don't count his outspoken atheism as being especially controversial these days, but he found himself in odd company on the Iraq question, making common cause with non-atheists for different philosophical reasons.)

OK, must get back to work now...

I have read and enjoyed all of Geraldine Brooks' novels except Caleb's Crossing which I will get to next year. I read Forever Amber under the covers with a flashlight when I was thirteen and found it way in the back of the bottom drawer of my mother's dresser LOL. The depiction of the plague was the thing that stayed with me rather than the sex which may have sailed over my head, somehow. At that time, young teenagers were not as knowing as those of today. I own Pure and really must get to it soon. I also want to read The Winter Palace which you mentioned up in #97. Last year I read and loved the Massie bio Catherine the Great so the Stachniak would be a great follow up and I see my library has it.

Bonnie, yes, I read the Stachniak novel and Massie's bio within a few weeks of each other, which was great. I'm trying to make time to read Empress of the Night, which I got from NetGalley, by the end of the month. Since my Thanksgiving plans fell through, maybe I'll save it for then, along with Margaret Macmillan's WW1 tome.

Suz- Thanks for the thorough info on Hitchens. I will add those to my list. Have you read his memoir?

Mark, no, I haven't. It's a massive tome! I expect that I probably will one day, but I don't feel any sense of urgency. Not because I think it won't be interesting, but rather because Hitchens put so much of his life & opinions into his other writing, I feel as if I have a baseline already (plus all the other stuff that I have ended up reading about him over the years...)

388. Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven Davis: I'm not especially obsessed with American presidents, or the Kennedy assassination, etc., so much of the background detail here was, if not new, then very comprehensively assembled and presented. This was an exceptionally intriguing and compelling book, even though it was also quite straightforward -- a chronicle of the months and years leading up to Kennedy's assassination and beginning back as he enters the final stages of his campaign. The focus of the tale is the city of Dallas itself, however, and its political culture and mood, which over the years leading up to the assassination had become increasingly rabid to the point of sounding deranged. I'm reasonably sure that Oswald was a lone shooter, but after reading this, I'm not in the least surprised that some people like to think of broader conspiracies, given the ugly and angry face offs over attempts at integration and allegations of communism, debates that indicated Dallas citizens saw the USA as a republic rather than a democracy (and viewed the two as mutually exclusive) and ugly public scenes in which even LBJ and his wife were nearly assaulted. It's a chronicle of facts, not opinions, but it's the way those opinions are linked together to form a narrative leading up to what the reader knows will be the climactic date of November 22 1963, and the fact that it's written in the present tense that actually caused me at some points to literally hold my breath in suspense.

Then there is the question of whether the authors intended their readers to draw parallels with the state of political discourse today amidst the stark left/write political schism, and the all too evident fact that those at both extremes simply have no interest in understanding alternate points of view, much less according them any validity. The result? We're trapped in our own echo chambers, listening only to the opinions of those with whom we agree, and yelling with increasing hostility at those with whom we disagree. Consider this: "We need to have a community that can live together and disagree amiably without the deep-seated bigotry and hatred that I sense is burning in the hearts and minds of too large a portion of our citizenship today." Written by Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus, whose dream was to create in Dallas a cosmopolitan urban center, it's just one of the comments by the small handful trapped in the middle in the early 1960s and one I found poignant not only because Marcus clearly had his community's best interests at heart, but also because it could have been written today, too.

If you're remotely interested in the era, read this. The assassination itself is merely the climax of the tale; the story is a broader one about the evolution of an America that is slowly starting to see race and religion become less stark dividing lines, but that is finding them replaced by equally adamant insistence that "my way is the only right way" politically. It's a wonder that there weren't 7 or 8 individual shooters out there on November 22 1963, given the frenzied climate and debate.

Not a perfect book, but certainly very good. 4.5 stars.

The echo chambers on left and right are so loud largely, I think, because the divide has grown so dramatically...and being in the leftist chamber, I say it's because the right's echo chamber bought a bigger amplifier than my side did!

My midweek column, about estate planning: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/20/death-planning-will-inheritance

Richard, what fascinated me is the extent to which there are parallels between 1963 and 2013, which suggested that the divide has been there all along. Perhaps we simply manage it better in some contexts than others -- notably, when the economy is growing and so overall economic tension is less? Regardless, neither camp will ever persuade the other, so unless one believes in a dictatorship by a minority from the extreme of either end, or is comfortable existing in a world characterized by the kind of politics we've witnessed this year... Well, I keep thinking of Gandhi's comment that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the world blind and toothless. Either we find a way to govern that everyone can subscribe to or we inhabit a world that none of us may like any better -- one, for instance, in which China and Russia dominate, with what that implies about free speech, human rights, the environment, etc. We'll squabble our way into absurdity and irrelevance. We're already a laughingstock in parts of the world. One Canadian policymaker told me last week, "well, we've only got one giant lunatic here, Rob Ford -- I've lost track of how many you have down there." And the more the debate gets stuck on "I'm right and you're just wrong", the less likely we are to resolve it all. And yes, the Tea Party nutcases scare me witless, in the same way that the hate-filled racists that the authors of this book describe do. But the irony is that by trying to shut them down, we could end up in the kind of world they'd like to create anyway, by default. I'm not sure what the answer is, but every time I dig into and analyze a policy issue (eg banking regulation) I'm convinced it's not going to be the product of an echo chamber.

Good God a book that helps to explain how we may have gotten where we are today in this political void where no one is willing to consider anything but what they KNOW is the correct path? I may have to consider reading this because, of course, you make it sound absolutely compelling Suzanne, darn you.

What happened to the center and why don't we have anybody staking a claim there where I am sure many of we voters reside?

I have to agree with your Canadian friend although Ford is such an absolute caricature that I think we have no one to compare really. But there are very few politicians who are worthy of revere, almost none, as a matter of fact none I can think of offhand. No statesmen at all. Most people have such a low opinion of anyone involved in politics or government that it's hard to see how things will ever improve and if you're suggesting this has all been building since Kennedy was assassinated then it will not be solved in my lifetime.

I worry about another assassination too.

Bonnie, I'm not sure it answers any of these questions! (Alas...) Nor does it really deal with where we have been in the intervening 50 years. But there parallels really resonated with me and made me realize that what exasperates me more than the views of the Tea Party types is their absolute insistence that they are infallible and RIGHT and the rest of the world is WRONG. It explains why I can often have a more interesting discussion with someone who is the to the right of me than with someone with whom I share more points of view but who can only state and restate those opinions, not discuss pragmatic ways to achieve some of them. Of course, all of this may mean that I deserve to have a giant label slapped on my forehead: BEWARE: UTOPIAN.

It's a nasty situation, I agree. I wish I felt the smallest tiniest fraction of confidence in the ability of the world-view around the USA to develop some modicum of plasticity.

Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic. I'd like to be overly pessimistic about this. Wave your magic Canadadust dispenser and cause it to be so? Please? (Oh, and a little extra ooomph on the single-payer insurance issue wouldn't come amiss.)

If my Canadadust dispenser worked, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in. (And beware what you wish for: it might produce a repro Rob Ford...)

I just don't get the idea of an insurance based health care system, however low cost - don't see how it's viable for a lot of people, like anyone with pre-existing conditions and very long term treatment needs - epilepsy, cancer whether in remission or people who survive a long time after initial diagnosis - 4, 5, 6, 17 years but never get to the remission stage.

Luci, I agree with you. But efficiency wasn't the starting point of the whole healthcare reform debate here. Rather, it was an absolute conviction on the part of a significant chunk of the American population that don't want anyone telling them what to do. For some reason, they conflate a single-payer system with that, and a free market/insurance based system with choice. And choice, by definition (another example of absolutes at work in the American psyche) is always best. So if you can phrase the debate in those terms, the facts on the other side don't matter. Frankly, I think the ACA is a bastardized compromise that will probably be a nightmare to implement but it's the only kind of solution that would ever have been passed by an American Congress in this century. That said -- there is a provision now that you can't be denied insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions, and there's no lifetime maximum. Meaning that the odds of someone having to choose between keeping a roof over their head or their medical bills have tilted slightly more in favor of both. There is rationing in all systems, it's just that here it's most explicit that it is the market, rather than need/age/prognosis, that shapes it, and obviously that's far more distasteful.

#121 efficiency wasn't the starting point of the whole healthcare reform debate here. Lack of efficiency is always brought home to someone outside the US whenever we buy travel insurance. Insurance is always more expensive to the US as they allow twice as much for medical costs than anywhere else in the world.

Brutal multi-day headache that I hope is starting to ebb now. If so, it will have run for about 72 hours. I had been hoping that the last 7 weeks or so, in which headaches had been reasonably short-lived and/or easy to consign to perdition, had marked a new pattern. Evidently not.

Kerri, meant to say earlier that I'm hoping to read An Officer and a Spy sooner rather than later. Although I really wish that Harris would get busy with book #3 in the Cicero series!

I'll update with notes on the following books tomorrow.

389. Ripper by Isabel Allende carries a big "avoid" warning on it, at least in my opinion. AT first I thought, wow, how intriguing, a noted literary novelist tackling a new genre. But if you're going to venture into the world of mystery and suspense, the novel you write should have an element of mystery, suspense or intrigue, and there ain't much of that here. Allende has really written a novel about a loosely-connected network of characters involved in some implausible situations. Yeah, it's well written, in linguistic terms, but the plot is laughable. Avoid. 2.5 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

390. My Antonia by Willa Cather was a delight to read for my RL book circle. I had read O Pioneers last year, which was just OK, but I found the language and the characters int this so much more engaging and interesting, and Cather's lyrical descriptions of the land she is writing about in Nebraska were at times quite overwhelming and more than worth the time invested to read it. Definitely, a must-read. 4.5 stars.

391. In the Woods by Tana French was a revelation. I've had a couple of books in this series hanging around the house for some time, but for unknown reasons never picked one up to read it. When I did start (I alternated between listening and reading this) it was a revelation. Rob Ryan, the narrator, has secrets in his past that my affect his investigation into the murder of a young girl; Ryan's own agonies with memory and trust cause problems with the inquiry and his longstanding friendship with his closest friend, his partner Cassie Maddox. The next book focuses on Cassie, and I promptly downloaded that onto my Kindle to read. Big happy discovery that there are more books in this series to read: highly recommended! 4.6 stars. For my 2013 categories challenge.

Greetings Suzanne! I braved the book infested waters here to check out how things are going with you. Hope this morning's headache is short-lived.
Salt Road, Dallas 1963 and Brave Genius are finding their way to my wish list. Thanks for your stellar reviews. Ooo, need to add the Mozart book.....(scrolling, scrolling, scrolling) ah, there it is, Saving Mozart.

So many people are infuriated by the individual insurance mandate. Yet, originally, it was proposed as (and ought to still be) a personal responsibility provision. The uninsured add so much to the healthcare costs of the rest of us.

The other point that isn't being addressed is that, during the past few years, we're at, I believe, an all-time low in terms of healthcare cost inflation.

As for my reading, I just finished that dull Lehrer novel (an ER book), the good Greenfield alternate history of JFK (another ER book), and I may start another JFK book, though nonfiction. Not sure about another JFK book as my enthusiasm for the topic is flagging after attending a lecture on Friday and watching several shows on the subject, as well.

Linda, yes, you're right about the rate of inflation in healthcare costs having slumped, mostly because plans are cutting back what they will pay for (or reimbursement rates) and transferring the costs to the individual policy holders. The good part of that is that many healthcare "consumers" are shopping around (although I confess I still wince at the idea of demanding that someone just diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer "shop around" for the most affordable treatment, as one friend of mine has just had to do.) The slightly more worrying part is that this can leave people without access to treatment or medications that their doctors say they need but that their policies will no longer cover.

A big question is why people are uninsured. Yes, uninsured folks add to the costs. But why are they uninsured? Perhaps because they work for places like WalMart that don't offer insurance. (Or small employers, most of whom don't.) And the odds are that if their employer can't afford to buy them policies, they can't afford to pay employees enough to buy policies on the open markets that have existed up until now. I just think back to the state of affairs in NY, which I gather is going to change very much for the better under the ACA. There was ONE policy that I, as an individual with a household income above $30,000, was permitted to purchase for myself. The monthly cost? $1,850. Flat. Didn't depend on my health or anything else, because the only questions Blue Cross asked were my age, gender and zip code. Oh, and none of the policies that I could purchase on the individual market covered my migraine medication, meaning I would have to keep forking over $480 or so a month for that. It's not about being personally responsible. It's about literally not having enough money to buy that policy. In some months it would have been OK. But some months, I wouldn't have had any money for food, utilities or subway if I had had to set that much aside for the insurance. There was a hospital-only policy for $375 a month, but that would have covered only the hospital part of a bill as an inpatient, but not doctor's fees or medications (just bed & board & nursing care). I would love not to have been uninsured, and I suspect that most of the people I know who have been getting by without insurance see it the same way. (I can at least assure you that I've not been adding to anyone's costs, because I simply haven't been seeing doctors for anything other than a bona fide crisis, when I pay out of pocket.)

Now in RI, with the new law, it becomes more affordable -- about half of this. The headache is the paperwork, because until I have a primary care doc in a particular system, I can't sign up. So I have to find a primary care doc first. Then I'll need to be able to pay the first three months' premiums altogether, which will be a big financial hit.

I think one aspect of this that no one is really addressing is that we are slowly slowly shifting away from full time employees to a more contract-driven labor market. I'm talking about a decades-long transition period, but at the end of it (and I think the muddled/confused policymaking on insurance is going to make it slightly faster) we will have most citizens buying their own insurance on the open market. And the supply/demand laws don't favor insurance costs remaining low in that kind of context. The insurance companies will be negotiating with each of us as individuals, not as a big entity (employers, professional associations, etc.) And the insurance companies have an obligation to generate profits for their own investors, and do only what is absolutely necessary in terms of designing good plans in order to do this. There's a parallel to what happened in banking pre-crisis.

Anyway...

The headache was a 72-hour killer that started on Thursday afternoon (so I was trying to follow book group discussions with a migraine), lasted the rest of my time in NYC and only abated this morning (Sunday). I'm taking it very easy today so that I don't have a repeat next week. It was a deeply unpleasant few days.

It's also freezing cold here -- 27 Fahrenheit outside and high winds rattling all the windows. Winter isn't just coming (pace, "Game of Thrones), it's here!

I suspect the JFK anniversary stuff was always destined to eat into our enthusiasm for the subject. I had hoped for better from that Lehrer novel, but was happy with the history I read, and that will be as far as my Kennedy stuff goes. (Though the Stephen King novel was excellent...)

Will need to update all my reading later, but will just add this to the completed list for now.

392. Hour of the Rat by LIsa Brackmann was an OK/interesting enough mystery featuring an Iraq war veteran who inexplicably has ended up representing a dissident artist's work in China. I didn't get that, but I admit I didn't read the first book in the series, and there wasn't enough background here to make it clear, or to make Ellie a coherent, fully-rounded character whose actions are understandable and logical. A former army buddy, suffering from a traumatic brain injury, enlists her to help him find his brother, who has vanished from view in China. Cue some implausible plot twists. It's not actively bad, but Ellie dashing all over the country isn't quite convincing, either. The backdrop to the story -- of China's environmental degradation -- is intriguing but a tad-heavy handed (as it is in another novel I'm reading before it has to go back to the library.) 3.3 stars, adequate but not superbly compelling. For my 2013 Categories challenge.

However, my intro to Tana French's books means I've already "Kindled" the next in the series, The Likeness. It may end up being the antidote to a dreadful and depressing dystopian tome I'm reading now, Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles. It's an Amazon Vine book, so must be finished and reviewed. ARGH.

I suddenly feel much better about returning Lighthouse Island, unread, to the library last week...

Joanne, I'm not sure how to describe my distaste for it. I'm halfway through and Jiles's view of the world as it could be (dystopian) is so bleak that it's affecting my view of the world IRL. Also, her characters seem to be more symbols than real individuals, with everything else similarly exaggerated. It's hard to immerse myself in the tale, as a result. Her imagined world is one without plot -- there are no longer numbered years, cities with names, etc. -- and that perspective seems to have taken over the nature of the book itself, if that makes sense.

Sigh.

OK, must go do some work!

Suz, hope your headaches are better.

I read one last thing about JFK, an interesting little Kindle single about the flight back from Dallas on Air Force One. Quite possibly the best Kindle single I've ever read. Just about the perfect length for it.

Now, I'll put that subject aside for awhile and get back to regular reading, I think.

Thanks, Linda -- yes, the headache finally cleared yesterday afternoon. But it was fairly scary, and I'm still dealing with the medication hangover. Hate this nonsense.

I would never have known you were fighting a migraine last week. You must have great resources for managing pain.

By the end of the evening, when everyone was talking at once, I simply couldn't follow it and I was at my wit's end. It had started late that afternoon, and I had no time to rest and fend it off, alas. But yes, I do have years of experience in "faking it". Although by Friday evening, no one would have been fooled -- I looked like a deranged raccoon. I think this is the worst major multi-day one (as opposed to one that keeps coming back and that I keep killing, day after day) that I've had in at least two months. It completely wrecked my time in NYC.

That's really too bad.

Quite apart from headache problems - I find it very annoying when everyone talks at once in our group. We have a much more orderly setup in our first Tuesday of the month group, and I think we often get more said - and heard - because of that.

Even then, I often wish I were in a class or seminar situation with other people interested in teasing out the structure and themes and other aspects of the books we read. Iit would be more demanding of me, but I think more rewarding overall.

I'm in a poetry-read-aloud group that meets the first Saturday of each month. Until this year, we were reading epic poetry, but this year we decided to tackle the Norton collection. Our leader is a retired professor and published poet, and has a gentle style of leading us into discovery that is quite charming.

Actually, the trouble I was having was after the main discussion, when I had two different people asking me two different questions at once, about which translation to read for Dead Souls, to spell the author's name, etc. etc. and something else as well. It was just too much! It would be interesting to have a group leader, but that would be a completely different dynamic, and I usually find the discussions are meaty enough for me. I was in a Shakespeare reading group that I loved that functioned in a similar fashion, but that wasn't as set in stone in terms of routines, etc., and thus became more flexible. I'm not sure that I want to be in a class-type structure; I know an open discussion can be anarchic and sometimes chaotic, but it appeals more than feeling "educated" does right now.

393. Lighthouse Island by Paulette Jiles turned out to be slightly more engaging or interesting than it seemed in the first half of the book, but only marginally so, and it's still not a book that I would recommend. The writing is downright poetic, but Jiles fails at the primary task for anyone writing a dystopian novel: building a convincing alternative universe. It isn't that the ideas aren't there, but rather that they are too clearly ideas rather than compelling views of a possibly real world. Her situations and characters are vehicles for those ideas, not interesting in their own right, and Nadia's quest to reach the elusive Lighthouse Island ultimate proves to be ironically easy and accomplished (spoiler alert) only with the kind of deus ex machina that no self-respecting novelist should allow anywhere near their plot. Similarly, the final pages contain WAAAY too many unbelievable coincidences. 3 stars. I wouldn't bother, honestly. For my 2013 categories challenge.

ETA: I've also updated all my other recent reads with comments, above. Now must go try to sleep!

Hurrah! Won an ER book for the November batch -- the upcoming thriller from Olen Steinhauer. Quite psyched by this. Also got four more ARCs from Amazon Vine today.

Good for you. I'm back to winning sports books from ER. Haven't won one of those in a few months.

Maybe someday on the Vine program...

Have you signed up for NetGalley yet, Linda? If not -- that's a good way to boost # of free books and reviews!

Steering very clear of Ripper, thanks for the warning. In the Woods hasn't clicked with me yet. So many love it so much, so it's got to be me....

Sad to hear about Lighthouse Island, but I admit it isn't a surprise to me. Something...off...about it from the get-go to my suspicious eye.

I've gotten a few books via Net Galley but often get turned down there. Keeping my fingers crossed on a baseball book right now.

Moving on up on Amazon though.

Glad to see you feeling better! You and Linda and Stasia deal with varying levels of chronic pain in a way that confounds and humbles me. Wish none of you had to.
I'm eagerly waiting what you have to say about *Luminaries*.

Happily for me, sadly for Linda, I can't begin to compare my intermittent chronic pain with her constant stuff. Nor Richard's, for that matter. When it's bad, it's very very bad, but when it's not -- it's gone. Thankfully, I'm not battling this 24/7. I probably would have killed myself by now.

Richard -- re In the Woods, yup, it's you!! :-)

I'm drawing up a reading list for the Thanksgiving weekend, which will be an exceptionally quiet one. I had been planning to go to friends here for dinner, but something came up and they had to cancel. My alternative would have required braving the horrible crowds of travelers and going back to NYC again, which I just couldn't do (nor could I find a cat sitter at short notice.) So, it's books and a stuffed turkey breast from Whole Foods.

Reading list candidates:

-- Margaret Macmillan's new book on the runup to WW1
-- An Officer and a Spy, by Robert Harris, which I couldn't resist starting and have already become engrossed in
-- The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson
-- A Nantucket Christmas by Nancy Thayer (the mindless reading...) -- DONE
-- Queen's Gambit by Elizbeth Fremantle --- DONE
-- Blind Goddess by Anne Holt
-- I'll make a start on On Paper by Nicholas Basbanes
-- Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
-- Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart
-- Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo
-- Empress of the Night by Eva Stachniak
-- Marking Time by Elizabeth Jane Howard (about half-finished; volume #2 of the Cazalet chronicles)

Oh boo. I was hoping you'd had a change of heart about Thanksgiving. *sniff* Now there will be too much stuffing. *waaah*

*perk* The new Imogen Robertson? Really? And, ummm, wouldst be willing to lend it me after the weekend read? Hmmm? Pretty please?

Sure, Richard, I can pop it in the mail to you -- although it's not a Gabriel Crowther mystery, but what may be a standalone book.

Sorry about Tksgiving -- I just can't face two return trips in less than a week; the logistics are truly terrifying even without the risk of another migraine; I'd be too exhausted to enjoy & then having to turn around on Friday and come home again... I am confident in your ability to cope with excess stuffing for whatever meat dish you folks are cooking up.

Well, one of those mindless books just got read, and another was finally completed.

394. Enigma of China by Qiu Xiaolong is as puzzling as its title. Once again, the mystery just seems to drift along aimlessly, as the main character wafts through his investigation, spouting poetry, eating great food and pondering on the political changes that China has seen. If it weren't so unfocused, and if so many of the conclusions didn't just arrive out of the blue in a final denouement, it would be less frustrating; if it weren't full of potential, it would less annoying. As it stands, it's 3.25 stars. I have one book in this series that I already own that's unread, but every successive one I read (this was just published this year) makes me sadder that the author bolted from Soho Press, whose editors seem to have done a great job whipping his prose and ideas into shape. Got this one from the library, as I have no interest in spending money on these books going forward, but am not all that eager to read the next. A giant "meh".

395. A Nantucket Christmas by Nancy Thayer is only for those with an above-average tolerance for sugary sweet holiday tales. Again, this is an author who once did better work, writing thoughtful "women's novels", but who has relapsed into a kind of feel-good romance trope. This one was particularly disappointing, as the language and level of sophistication was kinda middle school level, albeit written for adults. Not preachy, and the novella offered 90 minutes of mindless reading while I try to ward off another headache, but disappointing. Still, it was an Amazon Vine choice -- from Last Harvest, to boot, a kind of graveyard for under-loved ARCs, meaning I didn't have to use one of my primary/limited Vine choices to get a copy -- and free is always good. 2.8 stars.

I'm kinda glad that volume #2 of the Cazalet chronicles and the Robert Harris novel are shaping up so well, even if the jury is still out on Queen's Gambit.

And now it's time for my fifth batch of 75 books of the year -- which I certainly won't finish before 2013 draws to a close!

The guide to the ratings is up in post #2, along with the general comments. As always: asterisks mark re-reads and I'll note all audiobooks. Also, I'll continue to log my reading for my Categories challenge here, but it won't be tabulated in this list, but over on that thread in the appropriate challenge.




1. The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan (5), STARTED 11/23/13, FINISHED 11/30/13 (non-fiction)
2. This Shining Land by Rosalind Laker (3.2), STARTED 11/18/13, FINISHED 11/20/13 (fiction)
3. A Christmas Hope by Anne Perry (3.3) STARTED 12/2/13, FINISHED 12/3/13 (fiction)
4. The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart (4.2), STARTED 12/4/13, FINISHED 12/7/13 (fiction)
5. Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto (4.7), STARTED 12/6/13, FINISHED 12/10/13 (non-fiction)
6. The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran (3.5), STARTED 12/1/13, FINISHED 12/11/13 (fiction)
7. A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin (4.2), STARTED 11/11/13, FINISHED 12/11/13 (fiction) (audiobook)
8. Behind a Shattered Glass by Tasha Alexander (3.5), STARTED 12/11/13, FINISHED 12/12/13 (fiction)
9. The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich (3.3), STARTED 11/30/13, FINISHED 12/13/13 (fiction)

I really enjoyed every bit of An officer and a spy, it was my second Robert Harris book and I'll definitely be reading his Cicero books.
I'm finding the audio of a dying light in Cordoba to be mostly yawn-inducing but will possibly continue this series in book form at some stage. I've got the audio of Having the builders in which I'll probably go for next, I saw you recommend Tannahill's book a while back.

This year it's a ham...and I understand, of course, about the hassles of Grand Central to Penn to RVC and back again, but I will miss seeing you.

#123 - I loved My Antonia too. It was a book I almost gave up on, but my book stubbornness made me push on and by the end, I was in tears (due to beautiful writing.) Antonia is definitely one of my favorite characters of all time.

I'm looking forward to the next one in the Tana French series too.

I hope you're feeling better!

Richard, trust me, you wouldn't want to see me right now! Another headache is brewing, probably because the air pressure has nosedived as the storm system settles in for a big celebration here today. Adding 4 plus hours of travel on overcrowded trains just to get to Penn with irritable travelers, and I would be a wreck! Blech. Of course, I may yet change my mind if the forecast high winds knock out any power lines! (Or if I can't resist the craving for ham...)

The wind is really lashing rain against the windows, and because the house is on a corner lot, the force of the wind is so strong that for a couple of points this morning, I felt the whole house vibrate. This isn't analogous to the hurricane we had last year, thank heavens, but the rapid changes in pressure (temperature has doubled since Monday to hit 60 degrees here) and the winds are reminiscent of that. VERY glad to be indoors and cocooning.

Kerri, definitely read the Cicero books! I'm not equally fond of all Harris's novels but many are very good indeed. And I think his Fatherland was one of the first alternative history novels I ever read, way back when it was first published. I still have The Fear Index here unread, so must get to that soonish.

I'm not entirely sure I'd call Antonia one of my fave characters ever -- in a way, as our book group discussed, she is almost an archetype, focused on living in the day in a way that oddly makes her less complex and thus (to me) less interesting as a person. But the combination of her character and Cather's almost visceral sense of how to write about the landscape is startlingly wonderful. Early in the New Year I'll be reading Death Comes for the Archbishop for Mark's American literature challenge.

I'm interested in the new Margaret MacMillan too, as I learned a lot from Paris 1919: The Six Months that Changed the World.

Hope the headache isn't too bad this time.

in a way, as our book group discussed, she is almost an archetype Yeah, I see where that's probably true, but I also remember her being incredibly vivid and well-constructed (of course it's been a while, so maybe she's morphed into something more complex in my brain. Ha!). I suppose it's also possible that Cather wrote her in such a magical way that I'm projecting my own stuff onto her. Or something like that. I just think her journey really resonates with me. There aren't many novels that turn me into a blubbering idiot, but that was one of them (and it was on the train too, so it was embarrassing.)

I'll either read Death Comes for the Archbishop or Song of the Lark. LT Joe's compelling review of Song of the Lark earlier this year really makes me want to read it.

In the Woods, good news! I have it on my shelf and will line it up for a 2014 read.

I'll also be reading Death Comes for the Archbishop in January--it's here on my tbr pile.

Suz, have you read anything by Chang-Rae Lee? I've won his new novel through ER. It's a dystopian novel, his first of this type but his 6th novel.

Roni -- nope, I haven't yet. I think I have (or had) one of 'em, but have never read any. I think I actually requested that dystopian novel but after the Paulette Jiles experience am quite relieved that I didn't get it! That has diminished my appetite for dystopian novels with apocalyptic elements -- they make me feel WAY too bleak.

Brave Genius and Dallas 1963 both sound very good. I'll add them to my wish list.

That's great, Darryl -- I think you'll find both interesting/fascinating, for different reasons. The latter is by far the lighter read (albeit still dealing with some serious and seriously fascinating themes); I'd suggest tackling the former when you're able to set aside a couple of days to devote to it. I found the science sometimes a bit overwhelming, and suspect you'll find it straightforward -- I'll be interested to see what you think about the parts of the book devoted to Camus & his philosophy.

I need to find a bio of Simone de Beauvoir sometime in 2014. I remember being fascinated by her in my early 20s, and read The Mandarins, some of her nonfiction and her own four-volume memoirs.

I'm so overloaded with Amazon ARCs right now that I opted to choose a DVD set (a British TV series, mystery, called "The Fall", set in N. Ireland and featuring Gillian Anderson, that got raves. Also the upcoming Charles Todd mystery featuring Ian Rutledge, and an interesting book about a year in the Congo, Stringer, influenced by rave plugs from the likes of Barbara Demick and Pico Iyer. (Either of them could tell me to jump off a cliff, and I'd obey blindly, probably.) I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that My Life In Middlemarch is still available next month...

Rebecca, the new Macmillan is EXCELLENT but (not surprising) dense and requires a lot of focus and concentration on my part. I plan to buckle down over the weekend.

Kerri, perhaps archetype was the wrong word choice on my part. I completely agree with you that Antonia emerges from the pages of the book as a vivid and a "real" character. And in a way, she was perhaps the perfect juxtaposition for Cather's lyrical landscape descriptions -- just as the natural world goes from day to day, so does Antonia? I'll be looking forward to more Cather, which is great as O Pioneers had left me feeling lukewarm. A reminder not to judge an author by a single book!

Catching up on my Fiscal Times columns, but stalled on my next Guardian column. I think I need to let it percolate until tomorrow, which conveniently gives me an excuse, ahem, sorry, a reason, to go off and read for a while.

You have perfectly described many of my migraine experiences here. I also struggle to deal with multiple people speaking at once when the headache is upon me and rapid changes in barometric pressure typically set me off. Sorry you are dealing with a bad stretch.

I am planning to read Death Comes for the Archbishop in January as well. I read My Antonia a few years ago and liked it.

Alright Suzanne, it looks as if I'm really going to have to look for the Cazalet series what with both you and Peggy loving it. And the Robert Harris sounds good too. Until I read Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union Harris' Fatherland was the only alternate history I had ever read and that was eons ago. I thought it was very, very good. I'll definitely pass on the Thayer. I'm just not drawn to chick lit. If I didn't ignore books in that genre I might be adding just about everything you read LOL. Minus the ability to read more than a small fraction of the number of books you read.

Argh, Heidi, sorry you are grappling with these beasts too. Really, someone needs to find a cure...

Bonnie, delighted that my book bullet has struck home!! I'm planning to finish the Robert Harris book tonight/tomorrow.

After a weird & warm day (temps topped out around 62 outdoors and nearly 70 indoors!) it's getting colder by the minute, and will hit an overnight low in the low 20s! Wow...

At least my headache never really got very bad, although I think had I tried to venture to NYC on a bus or train, it would be game over by now.

396. Queen's Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle is a historical novel that others have raved about but that I'll limit myself to saying it was quite good. The queen of the title is Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth and last queen, and probably had I not read a lot about her and her life and times over the years, I would have appreciated it significantly more. Certainly Fremantle does a good job of providing interesting glimpses at some of the main protagonists and avoiding some of the major traps, from anachronisms to telling the story through some kind of romantic soft focus or turning it into "history with dialogue". (I particularly found her view of Elizabeth, the future Elizabeth I, interesting...) A solid novel, with lots of period detail and capturing what it must have been like to be Katherine, bullied into marriage and fearing for her life. Fremantle also does a decent job of offering a theory for how one of the country's wisest women allowed herself to be seduced by one of its most foolish and reckless men. 4 stars. Am going to stick this in my 2013 Categories challenge, too.

Hi Suzanne, I know you are going to have a quiet Thanksgiving but I hope it's enjoyable. I'll keep my fingers crossed that the headache doesn't blow up so that you can relax and get lost in a book or two.

Happy Thanksgiving, Suz, and may it be headache-free!

Dallas 1963 does sound like a compelling read. SO glad you have delved into the Tana French 'verse - my favorite so far is the third one. I have the 4th one but am hoarding it.

Enjoy your quiet day. When I was younger we had a cast of thousands - over twenty - now I have it down to 4 and that feels just right!

Happy Thanksreading, Suz! I'll miss seeing you at table, but avoiding a migraine is trumps here. Those damn things are killers.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! It is indeed blissfully quiet, at least for now, with the only noises being the cats demanding that I put down my book and feed them!

Happy Thanksgiving, Suz!

BTW, how does Thanksgiving in the US compare to the Canadian version?

Far more over the top here, Darryl... I think in the U.S., it's the single most important family holiday but the Canadian version isn't an excuse for the mass displacement of two thirds of the population! Typically, it's a nice long weekend and a good dinner.

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Malaysia or the UK as you know Suz, but as I am thankful for all my LT pals I do want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and I hope as a start those pesky migraines leave you well and truly alone.

Happy day of Thanks and relaxation, Suzanne. Enjoy the peaceful purr of kitties and a few good books.

Hope your Thanksgiving has been even better than you hoped.

Happy Thanksgiving, Suz!

I'm out of here before I get riddled with book bullets.

Cushla, riddled??? Exaggeration, surely... I think "peppered" might be more accurate? tee hee....

I've been reading my way through the Margaret Macmillan tome (excellent) and Robert Harris's book, which dovetail nicely. I may end up punting the Imogen Robertson book to next weekend, simply because reading a third book set in precisely the same part of the world and the same era would be a little too much, I think. Instead, I've also started The Orphan Master's Son.

Only mildly headachey, which is good, since I have to do some work this afternoon. But I picked up my migraine meds today (and bought some new gloves and a $10 fleece at Old Navy) so I should be able to contain it. Obnoxious neighbor returned home at 4 a.m, turned on the radio and started dancing upstairs. Happily, she stopped within an hour, giving me a chance to listen to another 45 minutes or so of volume 3 of the Game of Thrones opus.

I'm sensing a need for a curse to be issued. I shall proceed apace.

Thank you! It's a lot better than it was last week, but after a longish respite from acute migraines, it's annoying.

OK, have finished the "must write" column, and can put the other two off until Sunday, so I'm going back to curl up with books, cats & music. Perfection.

Sounds like a lovely afternoon!

OK, peppered then. Riddled over the last few years though!! I might try to join you on the Margaret Macmillan tome but not till I've finished Masters and Commanders. Just saw the Robert Harris book at Marsden Bokos but was VERY good and did not buy it (for NZ$38 it was easy to resist.)

Ouch!!! I understand the economics of it, but book prices chez vous are rather extraordinary.

Yes, Cushla, back-to-back reads of big epic history tomes are not to be contemplated.

A quick update, in a break from the monumental yet magisterial Margaret Macmillan tome...

397. An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris is, quite simply, an excellent novel. Nope, it's not literary fiction, but hovers in that no man's land: well written but essentially simply a dramatic novel rather than a Great Work of Art. In other words, the epitome of a 'thumping good read'. It's the tale of the Dreyfus case that rocked France in the final decade of the 19th century and whose legacy spilled over into the pre-WW1 period, told through the eyes of Georges Picquart. An army major when we first meet him witnessing the ceremonial disgracing of convicted spy Alfred Dreyfus, when the latter is shipped off to Devil's Island, Picquart is given charge of the French Army's covert intelligence arm and its motley band of officers and informers. Picquart, already the odd man out, soon stumbles over evidence that there may be another spy around -- or is it really "another" spy? Could Dreyfus actually be innocent? Harris manages to stick rigidly to historical facts without undermining the sense of suspense that lingers throughout. This isn't really a mystery, or a suspense novel, but it reads like one, and even though I already knew the basic facts of the case I read with bated breath. At times, the pace slows down a bit, and there's sometimes a bit of repetition, but that's minor. And it seems churlish to give it 4.7 or 4.8 stars when I really want to say -- 5 stars. For my 2013 Categories challenge. If you're remotely interested in historical fiction, or political/espionage intrigue, you've got to read it.

FIVE.

owowowowow help help the book bullets are riddling me ow

Yes, this is a book bullet that SHOULD strike you. It's an excellent novel.

I'll finish the Margaret Macmillan book today, and perhaps the two other novels I'm reading. Depends on the head, which right now is not doing well. It doesn't help that the hot water pipes that run through my apartment to heat upstairs have been clanging constantly for hours -- the sound is like someone banging on them with a hammer. Every 5 to 20 seconds. The cats are flinching each time it happens. The landlord does plan to upgrade the heating system, but he can't do it in winter while the noisy woman upstairs is in residence. So there's an extra reason for hoping she leaves soon!!

Quick notes on two books finished earlier this evening, and one that I had overlooked recording. One more that I'll probably wrap up reading; The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich.

398. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson was an odd book to experience. On the one hand, it's tremendously imaginative, as the author literally thinks his way into the head of a North Korean citizen, so anonymous that he is named after one of the revolution's martyrs, and yet who insists to all and sundry that he isn't really an orphan. (His orphan name is Jun Do, misheard by Americans as John Doe...) It's the tension between the everyman situation and the individuality of Jun Do that's at the heart of the novel, but however well written and intriguing this was, it wasn't an easy or straightforward book to read, and it wasn't until I was halfway through that it no longer fell like a labor, and I started to grasp what Johnson was doing. It's one of those books I ended up appreciating, understanding, but never really engaging with on a visceral level. 4.1 stars. I can see why it won the Pulitzer, but it's not a book that I can say was truly a great reading experience. For my 2013 categories challenge.

399. This Shining Land by Rosalind Laker is a re-read of a novel I read first in the early 1980s or thereabouts, when I had a slightly higher tolerance for romantic fiction. I liked Laker's other books because most of her historical heroines were engaged in some kind of art or craft -- mask-making in 17th century Venice, painting in the Netherlands during its golden age, couture in Paris in the era of Worth and the Empress Eugenie, etc., but this is an earlier novel, and not as good. It's drawn on Laker's own personal knowledge of the Norwegian resistance movement during World War II, and while it's interesting for that, it wasn't worth a re-read. 3.2 stars. Not bad, just not all that good. I tripped over it in the library stacks recently.

400. The War that Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan is an excellent, excellent book that captures every element of the increasingly narrow path followed by Europe's great powers in the years leading up to 1914, from the jostling for alliances, to the increasing importance of popular opinion (and the forms that popular opinion took, from pacifism to nationalist jingoism). I'm reasonably well-informed when it comes to this history, but MacMillan constantly introduced ideas, facts and observations that made me stop to ponder, in addition to great character sketches not only of the prime movers but of subsidiary figures. She has a great sense of irony (noting that the assassinated Franz Ferdinand was one of the few Austro-Hungarian leaders who really were aware of how unprepared the dual monarchy was for war, and the disconnect between the way the armies assumed war would be conducted and the innovations in technology that were about to change the nature of warfare. While not dealing with this chronologically, the book has the feel and pace of a "tick tock"; somewhere in the background, a clock is ticking down as one after another, choices are made that lead inexorably to war. I still remember my high school history teacher introducing us to WWI in the autumn of my junior year, and laying out the causes -- I don't know whether he compared Europe to a tinderbox awaiting a spark or whether I did in the essays we had to write, but MacMillan has eloquently captured not just the facts but the feelings. Excellent, and a full 5 stars.

Wow, two five star books in as many days???

#397 and #400 Shot down dead by two BBs, right between the eyes. Wow!

You have really captured how I felt about The Orphan Master's Son and which I rated 4 stars too. I just didn't get all the hullabaloo about it. And I think I read Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden fairly shortly afterwards so that I could ascertain how closely to RL Johnson got because something about the book just didn't ring true for me but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I'd suggest reading Barbara Demick's book about North Korea -- non-fiction -- rather than this novel. It's both more engaging and more vivid, and I don't know why...

I think I should put together a recommended reading list of WWI books now that the anniversary is almost upon us...

Bonnie, I hope you recover rapidly enough to read them!!

I have The Orphan Master's Son around here somewhere. Having just read Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, I was going to move it up a notch or two on the To Read list. I already had the MacMillan on my WL. I have her Paris 1919 but haven't read it yet. Story of my life...

ETA: Cross-posted... Would love to have your list of recommended WWI reading!

I have read Demick's book Suzanne and that was before I read Johnson's book. I'd love to see your WWI list too. I have Paul Fussel's The Great War and Modern Memory on my shelf and I'm going to be participating in the Virago Group's WWI Theme Read next year.

Shall put one together!

I need to find a "therapy read" today; I had extraordinarily vivid dreams last night, of real people in my life (mostly in my past) to the extent that I actually woke up with tears streaming down my face! This is not good... Sometimes I enjoy the fact that my dreams are often like going to the movies, but not this time! Still, at least it wasn't a dream based on series 4 of "Whitechapel", which was the DVD that I was watching late last night until I switched to "Hopscotch", which remains my favorite witty caper movie of all time (Walter Matthau & Glenda Jackson).

But I'm rambling.

Gloomy, grey day today. Was going to rake leaves, but not while the sky is dripping! All in all, not a good start to December.

Glad you liked The War That Ended Peace so much -- I'm looking forward to reading it eventually. And I'd like to see your WWI list too!

Spent a few hours unpacking a couple more boxes of books, and while at first the only Doris Lessing books I located were the ones that I DON'T plan to read this month (eg, Diaries of Jane Somers and Story of a Non-Marrying Man), I finally located Love, Again and the book of CBC Massey Lectures, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside. I strongly suspect that Doris Lessing is the author who can lay claim to generating the single largest chunk of unread books in my home. *bemused*

Oh well, at least it was an incentive to sort out those final boxes. And now I'm going to go and bake mincemeat tarts. (Sorry, Richard...)

Well, this has been a sub-par reading day, to put it mildly. Perhaps only 30 pages in two different books. I just hope it isn't one of the dreaded "book funks"... I suspect, however, that it's just a general "life funk". I spent a large chunk of the day napping, or dutifully churning out a column.

There is a big, massive Kindle book sale today at Amazon for Cyber Monday although alas and alack, most of the titles are ones that you may well have seen already in other such sales (I notice that some of them featured in the Cyber Monday sale a year ago, as that's when I bought them.) So far, I haven't spotted anything I need, but the books include the complete oeuvres (more or less) of Pearl Buck, Barbara Pym, Irwin Shaw, Eileen Goudge, Alison Lurie, Leon Uris and a host of other names familiar from the 70s and 80s. There are some offerings from Iris Murdoch, Mary McCarthy and Muriel Spark and you can assemble key novels/series from Lawrence Durrell, but there's nothing astonishing or even all that new here if you've perused previous blockbuster sales. I'll post later if I find anything particularly intriguing.

Pity about the MacMillan, 0.5 stars. I saw that and realized I didn't need to read the review at all!

*potters off to eat some more southern mincemeat pie*

Also eagerly awaiting your WW1 list. I've added the MacMillan book to my tbr list and now will go off to amazon's kindle sale and hope that some of those low prices filter through to my location.

>189 Chatterbox:: yeah, I had high hopes for the Kindle book sale but most of what I was interested in I already own, or have read and don't especially need to own. Sigh.

180, 181: Suzanne...and Bonnie, I am almost halfway through The Orphan Master's Son for Thursday night's book group. When Jun Do travelled to Texas, the book lost credibility with me, although the tiger meat ploy was humorous and creative. I'm looking forward to discussing it with a small group.

ETA: I found three books on the Amazon sale after spending way too much time there.

Donna, yes, it started to feel a bit like "Forrest Gump" by then, with the protagonist being an even odder kind of bird -- allowing himself to be buffeted through life and almost refusing to take advantage of the situation he is in (eg, not defecting in Texas). He's neither passive nor active, and the reason for this was never presented clearly, IMO.

OK, will work on WWI list. Since oddly seem to have little interest in reading right now (quick, call the medics), it will give me something to do.

I did decide to get half a dozen more of the Miss Silver books by Patricia Wentworth for my Kindle. I have a whole row of rather dilapidated paperbacks, which I'm only keeping for sentimental reasons. I don't know if I'll be able to throw them out, but would like to know that if one falls apart, I will still have a digital version.

OK, I succumbed to some more Amazon sale books: specifically, adding to my Kindle stash of mysteries by John Harvey (the fabulous Charlie Resnick tomes) as well as the Robert Janes St Cyr mysteries set in Occupied Paris, which a mystery bookseller acquaintance of mine has been raving about for decades. Literally. At some point, I'll have to read one of them, as I think I now own nearly the entire series!!

I heard Robert Janes speak at a mystery conference years ago. The books in Occupied Paris sounded fabulous. Maybe my Santa Thing or Swap Santa will bring me one of them.

I think you are entitled to a day or so's book funk after notching up no 400 of the year Suz. I did notice that the post that succeeded your book funk post was one enthusiastic about an amazon sale!

Paul, I am excited by the magnitude of the sale -- but rather unhappy by the fact that these are all the same books that have been offered at previous big Kindle sales. I'm just buying the series books that I didn't buy then.

This does seem to be a biggish funk -- not much reading today either.

We get a lot of repeat offers here as well, but you mentioned some quite impressive offerings there that we haven't been offered once here. Actually, a lot of my Pyms are VMCs so I wouldn't Kindle those, and those that aren't are not THAT expensive, but they're a price I'd be happy to pay for a book I want to read and don't have, but makes me think twice about buying as a replacement for print.

Am considering the £2.99 or less monthly list which is new out - this month they've got it up when they were meant to for once. There are some repeats and at first I was quite disappointed but I have bought 7.

Luci, there are only two on that list that tempt me, one of which I already have on Kindle, and the other being Ackroyd's volume about the Tudors, which I have a NetGalley version of. I'll check to see how "clean" the layout/formatting is of that before I made a decision.

Chilly, chilly, chilly here!

I took advantage of the cyber sale to restock my Lord Peyer Wimsey books, kindle version, and the Brandstetter books, which I haven't read for ages. But after a while, I got tired of scanning lists and gave up. Truth is, I have so many kindle titles waiting to be read, they are beginning to collect as the physical ones have in the past. Better to read what is here than pile on any more!

I didn't look far enough to see more than the repeats, but I will have to check out the St. Cyrs and Resnicks. Thanks, Suz.
I can very much empathize with the crowded Kindle, Judy.

I also snaffled a copy of Cheaper by the Dozen. My mother picked up a sale copy for me in the dim and distant past, and I think I know where it might be, but it's not in very good shape these days, so...

I've really enjoyed your comments on The Orphan Master's Son. I had similar problems with it but was not a quarter so elegant in my review. I could never decide if I was supposed to believe that all that stuff could happen to Jun Do or not!

Big thumbs up. I had the same reaction when I read it.

- This refers to 'Into the Woods'. I guess the 'reply' feature is not that fancy yet ...

Contrary to rumors, I am not dead, squashed under a pile of books. I'm just in a life funk and a book funk. I'll come back to report on my puny month-to-date reading sometime later. But I have to admit I spent the afternoon raking leaves rather than reading. Voluntarily.

Physical labor like that can help clear the head. Or at least make for some good sleeping...

I hope the funk is on it's way out.

>206 Chatterbox: *there there, pat pat* I'll make extra grog when you're here at Christmas.

Life and book funks are allowed. Sometimes we need a good funk to just stop for a bit and do a bit of constructive nothing. There's nothing for it but to just funk along with it. I would have gone into a royal funk right after that guy rearranged your teeth for you but you soldiered on. And you've had months of bad heads. So funk it all as long as you need to.

#206 I have to admit I spent the afternoon raking leaves That's on the agenda for us this afternoon, but non-voluntarily in my case.

Suz - there is a human being within the reading machine! I hope the fresh air and exercise helps clear the cobwebs and allows you to get close to your reading targets. xx

Sorry to hear about your life funk/book funk. One thing is certain is that both'll be over before you know it. Hang in there.

Hi Suzanne, I am also sorry to hear about the funk. Hopefully the exercise and fresh air that you got while raking leaves will help. Sometimes when I am in a reading funk I simply sort through my book shelves, tidying and rearranging but usually there will be one book that jumps out at me, demanding to be read immediately.

Thanks, all. I can deal with a book funk, but the massive scale of life funk atop it is daunting.

yes, life funks are the pits. Sorry you're in one.

My commiserations too. Exercise is good, but mostly for me it just needs to be lived through. The sun will come out again, and that's the thing to hang onto.

This is how a funk feels to me:



And you must know I wish you well because funny cat pictures are SO not my thing and now my Google history shows me searching for them :)

Just in case there is an urgent need for funny cat pictures there is a LibraryThing thread to help out.

Robert

Thanks for the funny cat pictures -- they are always fabulous and welcome. I've been entertaining myself by playing laser tag with the resident felines. It's the only game I ever win with them. I certainly lose badly when it comes to "chase the knitting yarn"... Appreciate your sacrifice, especially, Katie!

I think/hope my upstairs neighbor (obnoxious noisy one) might be moving out. At any rate, she just loaded up a lot of boxes and bags into the back of a flatbed truck. No furniture has left the apartment yet, however.

I've started reading Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto, and it's excellent. It's one of, ahem, nine books that must be read & reviewed by Thursday week, ahead of Amazon Vine day. Ho hum. Luckily it's good!

I'm looking forward to that one too, Suz, because I really liked his book about early New York, back when it was New Amsterdam.

And I because I read his other major book, Descartes' Bones!

Suz, I'm happy that the neighbour might be moving out. And I really hope the life funk goes soon.

I am not clicking on that Amsterdam book. I think if I do I might buy it. Willpower and fatigure are inversely related! I'm not clicking on Descartes' Bones either...

Edited to add: well, you know that was really doomed to fail. 2 minutes. Descartes' Bones is on my wishlist now, because I do not own any other meaty non-fiction that might be worth reading before I go looking for something else. *sarcasm button off now*

Is that a new personal best/worst, Cushla?? LOL...

I'm hoping re the neighbor. Her car is back for the night, but two loads of stuff went elsewhere tonight. So something is happening... :-)

Hoping that the funk is leaving - along with the next door neighbor :)

Early Christmas present!!??

Hi Suzanne - Sorry to hear about the funks - I hope they both go away soon.

Good news about the neighbor! Here's hoping the new ones are well-behaved. But could you move to the top apartment? It would eliminate the late night stomping, at least.

My ER book arrived today -- the new Olen Steinhauer spy thriller, The Cairo Affair. So that's good news. My heartburn has abated (another nasty middle-aged trick that didn't bother me at all until my late 40s), which is good. And the Amsterdam book is good. I heard from two RL friends yesterday, which was nice.

I'm accentuating the positive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3jdbFOidds Or trying to do so, at any rate.

Quick book update: A lot of tremendously lightweight & frivolous stuff, I have to confess.

401. A Christmas Hope by Anne Perry is the latest in Perry's Christmas novellas. I won this in the October ER book list, but it has yet to materialize, so I eventually got it from the library. Meh. It's an OK short mystery -- a whodunnit -- in which the main protagonist is a peripheral character from Perry's William Monk series. Unless you're addicted to the author & the Xmas books, I would say, don't bother. It's not all that meaty, and the short length emphasizes the sometimes sententious tone. 3.3 stars.

402. The Orchid House by Lucinda Riley is a book I've been meaning to read for a while, in part because part of it is set in Thailand and in part because it's one of those novels that has plots involving both past and present. It's a kind of sweetly romantic tale, with some satisfying twists and turns, but the Thailand bit is somewhat perfunctory and at least one of those twists was downright bizarre & implausible. Still, entertaining. For my 2013 categories challenge. 3.5 stars.

403. The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart is a book that I rated for LT but have almost no memory of having read, beyond one or two scenes, so it was probably a good idea to read it again (or for the first time?) since I KNOW that I've not yet read The Wicked Day, the fourth & final book in Stewart's series about Merlin and Arthur. I have really loved this series thus far -- the magic and "seeing" is there, but doesn't dominate or overwhelm the narrative and I love the way Stewart grounds both Arthur and Merlin firmly in "real" British dark ages history. Oh, and it's also a great yarn. The thumping good read factor is very high here. 4.2 stars.

404. The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig is another two-stranded narrative -- one in the present, one in the past (from 1906 to 1928 or so, and New York to Kenya and England). It's another family mystery, unraveled by modern day lawyer Clemmie, who has sacrificed spending time with her family, especially beloved grandmother Addie, to boost her career. Then everything reaches a climax and Addie finds herself unearthing a family puzzle rooted in some "White Mischief" style antics in Kenya during the late 1920s. It strains credulity, rather, but it's a reasonably entertaining read. I think I prefer Willig's Pink Carnation novels, which are unapologetically silly in a way this isn't, and which thus temper the sugary romantic element. I had fun with those books; this one was OK, but... 3.4 stars.

Clearly, both Amsterdam and The Hope Factory are on target to be better than most of these.

Aha, more stuff leaving the house now, with noisy upstairs neighbor. Some empty dresser drawers are out front on the porch now... This augurs well. (For me, anyway.)

It doesn't sound as if you liked A Christmas Hope any more than I did. At least it's short!

I loved The Island at the Center of the World when I read it several years ago. Amsterdam sounds intriguing. I've added it to my library TBR list for now, but it may end up as a book I'll want to purchase.

Carrie, I'm even tempted to buy a real copy of the Amsterdam book myself (I've got an ARC thanks to Amazon Vine) if only to have an index, notes and illustrations in complete format. I've only got 60 or so pages to go, and it's really excellent -- a tour de force.

The Amsterdam book sounds great. Our annual meeting is there next year, and I am hoping to see more of the city than on my first - very brief - visit last March.

I just had a great idea if it's not too late ---- slip the funk in among the neighbor's things and let her take it with her.

It sounds like the funk might be going out the door with all the furniture...

You remind me that I really need to re-read Mary Stewart's Arthurian series again. It has been too long!

Hey Suzanne, could it be that your early morning dancer is waltzing off to another location? Crossables crossed for you.

Everything crossable crossed that Leadfoot Louise is indeed moving out. Maybe the LT hex put on her by everyone who visits you here actually worked! Serendipity, whatever the reason. Is it too much to ask that a quiet, bookish soul who loves cats might move in upstairs?

There were three or four carloads of stuff, including some large items, that left last night, and although she did come back late in the evening, judging by the volume & nature of what is going out, either her ex bf/husband (she called him her husband, landlord says he was bf) had a LOT of stuff that he is only now carting away with her help, or she is moving. I will report back when it's more clear what is happening. If this were the end of the month and there were a truck out front, it would be very clear what's afoot, but this is kinda like Kremlinology -- reading in between the lines and trying to draw sensible conclusions.

The Wicked Day is such a downer compared to the rest of Stewart'd Merlinia series- probably because our trusty guide Merlin is largely offstage.

405. Amsterdam: History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto isn't a perfect book. He makes the perennial error of calling Amsterdam the site of the world's first stock exchange (it was actually Hamburg, 1558; I know because I wrote a chunk about this), and he keeps repeating himself on the concept of "gedogen", or tolerance of ostensibly illegal behavior, whether religious dissent in the mid-16th century or soft drugs in the late 20th century. But overall, it's a tour de force that makes excellent reading, a philosophical, political, social and geographic study of Amsterdam over the last 500 years and the central role it has played (directly and indirectly) in expanding classical liberal ideals. (please note that what I mean and Shorto refers to as "liberal" has little to do with what the Fox pundits call liberal here in the US -- it refers to the emphasis on freedom of the individual and the belief that only when that is there can those individuals work collaboratively to create a healthy society.) I kept tripping over tidbits of information and insights that were epiphanies, such as the fact that because so much of Dutch land was reclaimed from the sea by communities working together, its residents never really had to struggle against a feudal regime: from the beginning, land ownership was far, far broader, with tremendous ramifications both economically and politically. He links the creation of the herring fleets to that of the famed East India Company, and spends a healthy amount of time on Spinoza and his legacy. I did feel that the 18th and 19th centuries were a bit shortchanged, in relative terms, but thought his views on how the good side of the Dutch system can produce an ugly kind of complacency -- let's just work with each other, regardless of who the 'other' happens to be -- was interesting, and he also touches on the recent challenges to the historic willingness of the Dutch to serve as an asylum (dating back to the days of Spinoza's ancestors; it's no coincidence that the Pilgrims who headed to Mass. set sail from the Netherlands.) All in all, a crisp, lively narrative and a fascinating tale. 4.7 stars.

406. The Hope Factory by Lavanya Sankaran was an OK read that was most interesting to me as a glimpse inside contemporary India and its tensions. Plot-wise, it's relatively slow moving and not that remarkable: two individuals at very different social levels, factory owner Anand and his wife's household servant Kamala, struggle to better their position in a very Darwinian environment, facing quite different challenges. The Indian slang was left unexplained, and while some of it became clear from the context, it still grew to irritate me because it was so frequent. (I read an ARC, but a glimpse of the finished book suggests that there's no glossary there, either). It felt as if the author were writing for fellow-Indians rather than for a broader audience, which is fine, but it limited my enjoyment even as it increased my conviction that it paints an authentic portrait of the challenges of life in today's India. So, it's only OK: 3.5 stars.

... and one more:

407. A Storm of Swords is the third in the "Game of Thrones" series by George R. R. Martin. Thus far, I've been listening to the audiobooks (and this was an astounding 46 hours long...) but I'm going to switch to reading them, as the reviews of the later audiobooks in the series are quite bad. Apparently the narrator changed pronunciations of names and places, and even changed the voices of the characters, and I think I'd find that too jarring. I've enjoyed listening to them -- it's a great way to tackle a complex narrative -- but it won't kill me to make a change. So, that said, I'm incredibly impressed by the world-building and the way Martin sowed the seeds of later plot twists and developments earlier on in the series. This one ends with a death and an apparent comeback from the dead among the list of characters, so it's going to be tempting to move straight ahead, but I've got a stack of Amazon Vine books that must be read within a week. I'm still averse to dragons in books, but I find I really enjoy some of the characters whose behavior I deplore, like Jaime Lannister, and relish the irony of Tyrion. Daenerys feels too much like a figure from a B movie of the 1950s, though. Bottom line: 4.2 stars. Interesting and memorable fiction for entertainment purposes, although wow, it's long.

I like the George R.R. Martin series but I have to say I feel like the author has lost control of his narrative. I have read through Dance with Dragons which is the latest one that's been published and while I enjoyed it, I feel Martin has lost his way. Five books in and he is still adding significant characters and plot lines...sigh.....

Heidi, I have worried about that. I can see the broad themes emerging, but how he's going to resolve it all is beyond me. That said, I've still got two books to read. It certainly redefines the meaning of a "sprawling narrative"!!

408. Behind the Shattered Glass by Tasha Alexander was an overdue library book that HAD to be read and returned (which it now is) and turned out to be quite entertaining, if not excellent. It's the latest in a series of historical mysteries set in late Victorian England, with a sleuthy couple -- she, an aristocrat, he, an investigator who works for the Palace and the country. This time, a neighboring Marquess stumbles across their threshold and drops dead, and they have to find out whodunnit. What I liked most about this is that Lady Emily's first person singular narration this time is broken up by the third person POV of one of her housemaids, who proves to play a crucial role in solving the crime. Entertaining. 3.6 stars.

Now, back to my mammoth stack of ARCs that must be completed -- somehow -- between now and next Thursday.

Here's the list:

The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich -- almost finished
On Paper by Nicholas Basbanes -- about 25% of the way through -- interesting though I don't like his tone some of the time
Pure Gold Baby by Margaret Drabble
Bitter River by Julia Keller (trying a new mystery writer)
In the Night of Time by Antonio Munoz Molina (really wanted to read this but hadn't realized it was 600 pages long...)
Sanctuary Line by Jane Urquhart
Careless People by Sarah Churchwell (really looking forward to this one...)
Confessions of Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey (about 1/3 of the way through it -- predictable
After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman

Guess what I'll be doing this weekend, besides watching the snow fall on Saturday afternoon/evening?? I'm actually rather annoyed at myself for over-requesting stuff from Amazon Vine. I have another 8 books waiting for me, that will have to be read by the third Thursday in January. Since there's other stuff I want to read, I'm a bit annoyed at myself.

It's quite cold outdoors -- 20 degrees F. I just caught Tigger-the-terror-cat towing his favorite blanket (a very dilapidated and elderly mohair throw that he now sees as his property) with his teeth so that it's right in front of one of the big hot air vents (forced air gas furnace is a blessing!!), then curling up on it and going blissfully back to sleep. He's even snoring.

I've never read the fourth book in Mary Stewart's series. It was written so much later, for one, after I'd read the first three, and yes, that part of the story is a real downer. I was very happy with where and how the third book ended.

Good reading, Suz! You can do it!

Tigger update: forget about the blanket. He has moved so that he is now snoozing right ON TOP of one of the hot air vents in my study. Great for him, not sure it's good for warming up the study (or my heating bills) as he is blocking the whole thing...

Guess what just ended up on my iPad Suzanne?? Does Amsterdam: History of the World's Most Liberal City ring a bell? Now how did that happen? The fact that it was only $7.99 certainly helped.

-20C (-4F) last night here, Suz. Flannelette sheets, down duvet weather, by gar. Cat and dog seeking out their cosy spots here too.

Lol at Tigger. Years ago we had an old cat that did the same.
I just read an article about 'America's great game' by Hugh Wilford and wondered if you were planning on reading it.

Suz a friend of mine came home a few years ago and found a RATHER X-rated movie on her cable bill that she did not remember ordering.

Happened during the day when she was at work too.

Fianally worked out that the cat would go and sit on the cable box (for warmth) and somehow in shifting positions this way and that way had gone and ordered the movie.

Jim, ROTFL! That said, the cable box is definitely Molly's favorite place in the world. year-round. In fact, I think she has killed this one -- it's not working at all and I have a sneaking suspicion that when they say "don't block the air vents" they may have been thinking about not putting other devices on top of it, but that it also applies to self-mobile devices like cats.

Wow, it has warmed up to a whole 24 degrees! But I can feel the looming snow storm in a niggly micro-headache. Trying to chase it off now.

>249 magicians_nephew:: Great story!!

#245 He has moved so that he is now snoozing right ON TOP of one of the hot air vents in my study. LOL - that sounds a very CAT place to sit!

Sitting here wondering if it's possible to develop allergies at the age of 50 or so. I keep sneezing or feeling as if I need to sneeze, and my eyes are bloodshot. The irony: I've never been allergic to anything much in my life (except tetracyline and whooping cough vaccine).

Deeply annoying.

Yes you can. There are probably also allergens or irritants in the air around you too. I was really allergic to the building I worked in. I used, at the suggestion of my doctor, Naphcon A in my eyes. It stung going in, but it relieved them immensely. I have had a photic sneeze reflex all my life; I learned from that that sneezing can be a relief if you just allow it and have a handkerchief at hand.

I can be clearing my throat continuously around home and go off to a movie theater for an opera and be the quietest person in the auditorium.

Robert

Both my husband and I developed allergies later in life. He was first and it took us awhile to figure out why he was getting stuffed up and sneezing, but it finally twigged that certain pollens can set him off. I followed a few years later, again with some kind of pollens triggering my attacks.

Wonder when your furnace & ducts were last serviced or cleaned, Suz? Maybe ask the landlord about this? Bad Things can live there, especially if the old gal before you didn't clean very thoroughly.

Tui, the ductwork is all brand new -- landlord replaced the old furnace with a forced air gas furnace when he bought the place. When I first saw it, the new vents/grates hadn't even been installed. I just hope that whatever it is (a) isn't cat dander and (b) passes quickly!

OK, weird -- my noisy upstairs neighbor seems to be upstairs -- even though I saw her bed & all kinds of furniture carried out and she hasn't been here for two nights. Lots of banging and thumping going on, and it's nearly 1 a.m.

409. The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich is one of those pesky ARCs that have been staring at my reproachfully. I can't help feeling that it would make a better action movie than it does a book: it's fine as far as it goes, but not as suspenseful as it should be and with an overly complicated plot. Basically: the head of the Federal Reserve, the NYSE and some other financial guru are killed in a freak accident but the stock exchange head is able to send a final text to his estranged son, a hedge fund guru, before he dies, hinting at a vast conspiracy. So far, so predictable. By far the best by this author was The Devil's Banker and this doesn't measure up. 3.3 stars.

The good news is that Netflix will deliver my next DVD -- disc one of the miniseries of "The Cazalets", based on The Light Years and some of its sequels. It appears to be unavailable to buy now, alas, but I suspect that will change, given that it's a period piece drama, that one of the actors is Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey fame) and that Elizabeth Jane Howard now has book #5 in the series out. When I finish with my ARC-mania, I'm going to go back to book #2, Marking Time.

Any mould lurking anywhere, like in the basement? And, horror of horrors, there is a condition called librarian's lung, caused by the dust from books and their bindings. Oh please no! And hmmmm about the neighbour. The I've-read-too-many-mysteries mind is saying maybe all the furniture belonged to the ex and she's up there rattling around because he took it all back. I'll shurrup because between the librarian's lung and the neighbour staying, I've probably kick-started another funk.

Suzanne, I've discovered that a lot of weird and not so wacky things can transpire with a 50 year old's body. *sigh*

Tui, well, she opted to indulge in a bit of nooky on the kitchen floor immediately above my bedroom at 5 a.m... (believe me -- it was very loud and unmistakable) I'm hoping that they were only there for privacy and that the lease expires at the end of the month?

Librarian's lung??? I got some antihistamine stuff that the pharmacist swears will clear this up and popped the first one today.

Snow starting to swirl. DVDs not here yet and it's quiet, so I should get some reading done once I unpack the groceries. Today's purchases included a snow shovel!!

So let's hope your neighbour was christening the pad on the way out.....she sounds screwed up enough to do so.

Hoping you have a great weekend in her permanent absence.

Hi Suz- I enjoyed your comments on A Song of Ice and Fire. He does get windy, doesn't he? It gets much worse in his last book. That could have easily been half the length. That is what is so enjoyable about the HBO series, is how stream-lined it is. Have you seen it yet?

Mark, yes, I watched the series after I was about 100 pages into book #3, and then watched straight through to the end of series 3. Interesting -- it borrowed stuff from the later books (just small stuff) and inserted it earlier in the narrative, and eliminated a few peripheral characters or introduced them differently. One of the differences that intrigues me is the character of Shay (sp?) who is made more of a romantic heroine in the series than her behavior would suggest in the books. Interestingly, the final quarter of book #3 took me into fresh territory that will clearly be covered in series 4! So now I'm ahead of the narrative again. I've started reading book #4, but finding it slow after listening to the narration. The negative comments about the narration of book 4 are so pronounced that I'm now really ambivalent -- I'd prefer to listen to it while unpacking more boxes, doing dishes, laundry, etc. But... Have you been listening or reading, Mark?

Sigh, batty noisy woman may not have left. She seems to have swapped her newish SUV for an old clunker. And she and her buddies were upstairs partying from midnight until 6 a.m. This is like Kremlinology: trying to figure out what is going on.

Used up an entire 20 pound bag of Driveway Melt on the sidewalk this morning!

Any way to ask the landlord whazzup?

I read the first 4 books in print and I think I read and listened to book 5. And I remember the narration being a bit uneven. Looking forward to the HBO series starting up again in the Spring.

Yes, yes you can get allergies as an adult of any age really. I was diagnosed with asthma at around age 45. Let's hope the upstairs tenants are gone shortly. Unbelievable.

I swear, it requires Kremlinology to figure out what's going on upstairs. Tui, I think if I ask the landlord again, it will cross the border into nagging about things that aren't technically my business.

I think the allergy meds over the counter have really chased away whatever was bugging me, thankfully -- took one yesterday and one today and it feels so much better!

Time to move along to my next & final thread of the year.