Chatterbox Staggers Into 2022: Part II

It's the second quarter of the year and my second thread! Hoping that the image will work.



Entirely
by Louis MacNeice
(1907-1963)

If we could get the hang of it entirely
It would take too long;
All we know is the splash of words in passing
And falling twigs of song,
And when we try to eavesdrop on the great
Presences it is rarely
That by a stroke of luck we can appropriate
Even a phrase entirely.

If we could find our happiness entirely
In somebody else’s arms
We should not fear the spears of the spring nor the city’s
Yammering fire alarms
But, as it is, the spears each year go through
Our flesh and almost hourly
Bell or siren banishes the blue
Eyes of Love entirely.

And if the world were black or white entirely
And all the charts were plain
Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,
A prism of delight and pain,
We might be surer where we wished to go
Or again we might be merely
Bored but in brute reality there is no
Road that is right entirely.

The image is by Duncan Grant, a member of the Bloomsbury Group (he was the father of Virginia Woolf's niece, Angelica, whose mother was also an artist, Vanessa Bell.) Grant and Bell are buried beside each other. Angelica was brought up to see Vanessa's husband, Clive Bell, as her father. Yeah, complicated...

MacNeice wasn't directly a part of this group although he was linked to poets (like Spender) who were. (Grant painted Spender, for instance.) He and Grant flourished at roughly the same time -- in the years leading up to and following the Second World War, a time of tremendous upheaval in England and Ireland (MacNeice's birthplace.) Less well known than Auden, his style is unique but familiar: a relaxed, accessible modernism.

Both of these seem to me to be spring-like, in different ways. Grant opens a window, MacNeice is introspective.

Welcome to SPRING! My favorite seasons are these intervals between cold and heat -- spring and autumn.

For those of you who don't know me already, my name is Suzanne. I'm obsessed with books, love the two resident felines (Sir Fergus the Fat, whose lifetime ambition is to devour every single cat treat in existence, and Minka the Velveteen Kitten. So far, books aren't helping much with turning 60.

I live in Providence, RI, although I'm not "from" anywhere in particular. I'm a dual US/Canadian citizen, and these days I toy with the idea of repatriating to Canada with growing frequency. I was born in New Jersey, but "emigrated" at the age of six months, and didn't return until I was 32. I'm a former staffer with the Wall St. Journal, have lived all over the place, still work as a freelance journalist and ghost writing.

This year has been turbulent so far, and I'm really hoping for calmer waters ahead. My business partner unexpectedly decided she doesn't want to play any more, and to take her toys and go home. (That's the only way I can characterize this, I'm afraid!) Created a lot of turbulence and unnecessary agita, alas. But (cue Gloria Gaynor) I will survive.

My father has turned 86, and his condition is deteriorating. My goal right now is to find a residential facility for him before he reaches a point where nowhere will accept him. He won't safely be able to live independently. Estrangement from other family members continues, alas (both my parents are only children, so it's just my mother and brother.)

The only good news is that I'm reading a lot this year and finding a lot of good books (check out the list below). I'm now almost totally reliant on Kindle books and on audiobooks, as my vision is deteriorating. I use reading glasses, but can only wear them for about two hours at a stretch before my eyes start to water or feel strained.

I rarely post mini-reviews, but promise to keep flagging the most compelling or disappointing books. My ideal book? Anything in which I can completely immerse myself, and at the end, wish I hadn't read it, so that I could read it again for the first time... very year, I set out to imagine my thread as being a cyber version of my ideal literary salon would be like.

This is the seventh year running that I've hosted/organized/coordinated/whatever the non-fiction challenge. Well, I'd de-emphasize the challenge part, since basically it's really just a series of monthly themed reading threads devoted to non-fiction, hopefully giving participants insights into books they might otherwise never stumble across. We usually kick off with a month reading nonfiction tomes that have been nominated for/longlisted for some kind of award in the past, and this year's other challenges include "Wars" (I drew up this list late last year and had NO advance knowledge of what was going to happen) and "The Renaissance". Here's the April thread -- the emphasis is on "Armchair Travel". https://www.librarything.com/topic/340912

As always, the only "rules" of the road for this thread: please treat each other and everyone else's views with courtesy, civility and thoughtfulness, and leave the politics and drama for other kinds of social media. Pretty please.

Reserved for moi

Here's the reading list for the second quarter of the year!!

This is where you can find an ongoing list of what I've been reading this year. I always read far more than 75 books a year and so just keep a single ticker to track my total reading. I'll start new threads at the start of each quarter (hopefully) -- April 1, July 1 and October 1.

This year I'm once again setting my goal at 401 books. While I topped that in 2020, I fell short in 2021, so we'll see! So far, I'm doing rather well.

To see what I have been reading in real time, your best bet is to go to my library on LT, and look at the dedicated collection I've established there, under the label "Books Read in 2022". As I complete a book, I'll rate it and add it to the list. I'll also tag it, "Read in 2022". You'll be able to see it by either searching under that tag, or clicking on https://www.librarything.com/catalog/Chatterbox/booksreadin2022.

I do have some reading objectives. Last year, I did VERY poorly on these lists, so have kept each category to only 10 books, and five for re-reads, book bullets and books in French.



The April list:

120. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (finished 4/2/22) 4.4 stars (A)
121. What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (finished 4/2/22) 4 stars (A)
122. The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation by Cathy O'Neil (finished 4/3/22) 4.6 stars
123. Bruno's Challenge by Martin Walker (finished 4/3/22) 3.2 stars
124. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (finished 4/5/22) 4.15 stars
125. *Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (finished 4/6/22) 4.5 stars (A)
126. Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz (finished 4/7/22) 4.3 stars (A)
127. *The Villa on the Riviera by Elizabeth Edmondson (finished 4/8/22) 3.75 stars (A)
128. What China is Reading and Why It Matters by Megan Walsh (finished 4/8/22) 4 stars (A)
129. The Inconvenient Journalist by Dusko Doder (finished 4/9/22) 3.9 stars (A)
130. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré (finished 4/9/22) 4 stars
131.The Secret Life of Books: Why They Mean More Than Words by Tom Mole (finished 4/10/22) 5 stars
132. *The Firm by John Grisham (finished 4/11/22) 3.7 stars (A)
133. The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (finished 4/11/22) 3.5 stars (A)
134. *84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (finished 4/12/22) 5 stars
135. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (finished 4/12/22) 3.85 stars
136. In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom (finished 4/12/22) 4.3 stars
137. The Devil's Bargain by Stella Rimington (finished 4/13/22) 3.3 stars
138. One Point Two Billion by Mahesh Rao (finished 4/14/22) 3.85 stars
139. Horizon by Helen MacInnes (finished 4/15/22) 3.7 stars (A)
140. A Catalogue of Catastrophe by Jodi Taylor (finished 4/16/22) 4.2 stars (A)
141. Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara (finished 4/16/22) 3.6 stars
142. The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections by Eva Jurcyzk (finished 4/17/22) 3.5 stars
143. *Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (finished 4/17/22) 4.3 stars
144. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich (finished 4/19/22) 5 stars
145. *City of Gold and Shadow by Ellis Peters (finished 4/21/22) 3.8 stars (A)
146. When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain (finished 4/21/22) 4.15 stars
147. *The Darkest Hour by Tony Schumacher (finished 4/22/22) 3.75 stars (A)
148. No Turning Back: Life, Loss and Hope in Wartime Syria by Rania Abouzeid (finished 4/22/22) 4.2 stars
149. The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths (finished 4/23/22) 3.9 stars
150. The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon (finished 4/24/22) 3.8 stars
151. This Son of York by Anne Easter Smith (finished 4/24/22) 2.3 stars
152. *Body of a Girl by Michael Gilbert (finished 4/26/22) 3.5 stars
153. Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth Samet (finished 4/26/22) 4.75 stars (A)
154. *Mariana by Monica Dickens (finished 4/26/22) 4.15 stars
155. Perfect Strangers by Tasmina Perry (finished 4/27/22) 3.7 stars
156. *The British Lion by Tony Schumacher (finished 4/27/22) 4 stars (A)
157. Wahala by Nikki May (finished 4/27/22) 4 stars
158. How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (finished 4/28/22) 4.5 stars (A)
159. *The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman (finished 4/28/22) 4.15 stars (A)
160. Constellation by Adrien Bosc (finished 4/29/22) 4.3 stars
161. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (finished 4/29/22) 3.3 stars (A)
162. The Missing of Clairdelune by Christelle Debos (finished 4/30/22) 3.7 stars
163. Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs (finished 4/30/22) 4.35 stars
164. Desperate Undertaking by Lindsay Davis (finished 4/30/22) 4 stars

The May list:

165. The Island of Extraordinary Captives by Simon Parkin (finished 5/4/22) 4.15 stars
166. *This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart (finished 5/4/22) 4 stars (A)
167. Room and Board by Miriam Parker (finished 5/6/22) 3.4 stars
168. An Echo of Murder by Anne Perry (finished 5/6/22) 3.65 stars
169. Fascism: A Warning by Madeline Albright (finished 5/7/22) 4.1 stars
170. Aunt Dimity and the Enchanted Cottage by Nancy Atherton (finished 5/7/22) 3.4 stars (A)
171. Our Riches by Kaouther Adimi (finished 5/7/22) 5 stars
172. *The Night of the Assassins by Howard Blum (finished 5/8/22) 4.2 stars (A)
173. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (finished 5/9/22) 4.15 stars
174. Cul-de-Sac by Joy Fielding (finished 5/9/22) 3.35 stars
175. 1939: Countdown to War by Richard Overy (finished 5/12/22) 4 stars (A)
176. Elektra by Jennifer Saint (finished 5/13/22) 4.5 stars (A)
177. Murder at the 42nd Street Library by Con Lehane (finished 5/14/22) 3 stars
178. *The Tontine by Thomas Costain (finished 5/15/22) 4.1 stars
179. Violent Crimes by Phillip Margolin (finished 5/15/22) 3.1 stars
180. The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov (finished 5/16/22) 4.2 stars
181. The Deep by Alma Katsu (finished 5/17/22) 3 stars
182. The Hidden One by Linda Castillo (finished 5/19/22) 4.1 stars
183. The Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel (finished 5/20/22) 4.35 stars
184. The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan (finished 5/21/22) 4.3 stars (A)
185. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (finished 5/21/22) 3.8 stars
186. A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry (finished 5/23/22) 4.4 stars
187. Retail Gangster: The Insane Real-Life Story of Crazy Eddie by Gary Weiss (finished 5/23/22) 4.3 stars
188. *The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins (finished 5/24/22) 3.85 stars (A)
189. Double Sin and Other Stories by Agatha Christie (finished 5/25/22) 3 stars (A)
190. The Lying Dutchman by Graham Brack (finished 5/27/22) 3.65 stars
191. The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (finished 5/28/22) 3.4 stars
192. Readers, I Buried Them by Peter Lovesey (finished 5/29/22) 3.65 stars
193. *The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (finished 5/29/22) 3.7 stars (A)
194. The Age of the Strongman by Gideon Rachman (finished 5/30/22) 4.75 stars
195. The Missing American by Kwei Quartey (finished 5/30/22) 3.8 stars
196. A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology by Toby Wilkinson (finished 5/31/22) 4.3 stars (partly A)

The June List:

197. *My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart (finished 6/1/22) 4.15 stars (A)
198. The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths (finished 6/3/22) 4.4 stars (A)
199. The Every by Dave Eggers (finished 6/4/22) 3.4 stars
200. Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim (finished 6/4/22) 4.8 stars
201. The Killing in the Consulate by Jonathan Rugman (finished 6/8/22) 3.85 stars
202. First Principles: What America's Founders Learned From the Greeks and Romans by Thomas Ricks (finished 6/8/22) 4.65 stars
203. The Sweet Remnants of Summer by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 6/10/22) 4 stars
204. The Far Land by Brandon Presser (finished 6/10/22) 3.7 stars (A)
205. *The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw (finished 6/11/22) 4.2 stars (A)
206. Aid and Comfort by Ted Allbeury (finished 6/13/22) 3.75 stars
207. The Emergency: a Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher (finished 6/14/22) 3.9 stars
208. *The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid (finished 6/14/22) 4.3 stars (A)
209. The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle by Jennifer Ryan (finished 6/15/22) 3.35 stars
210. *First Among Equals by Jeffrey Archer (finished 6/15/22) 3.2 stars (A)
211. Bad Blood in Meantime by Murray Davies (finished 6/17/22) 3.9 stars
212. Birds, Beasts and Relatives by Gerald Durrell (finished 6/18/22) 4.1 stars
213. *The Verdict by Nick Stone (finished 6/19/22) 4.3 stars (A)
214. The Spy Who Knew Too Much by Howard Blum (finished 6/20/22) 4 stars (A)
215. The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O'Rourke (finished 6/22/22) 4.35 stars
216. Winter Work by Dan Fesperman (finished 6/22/22) 4.2 stars
217. The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta (finished 6/25/22) 3.4 stars
218. Gouzenko: The Untold Story by John Sawatsky (finished 6/26/22) 4 stars
219. Bewilderment by Richard Powers (finished 6/26/22) 5 stars
220. Aftermath by Harald Jähner (finished 6/27/22) 4.35 stars (partly A)
221. *The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (finished 6/28/22) 3.3 stars (A)
222. The Memory of Babel by Christelle Dabos (finished 6/28/22) 3.15 stars (A)
223. Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa (finished 6/29/22) 3.9 stars
224. The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz (finished 6/29/22) 3.8 stars
225. When We Were Bright and Beautiful by Jillian Medoff (finished 6/30/22) 4 stars

The July list:

226. An Island Wedding by Jenny Colgan (finished 7/1/22) 3.75 stars
227. The Poisonous Solicitor: The True Story of a 1920s Murder Mystery by Stephen Bates (finished 7/2/22) 3.85 stars (A)
228. Light of the Moon by Elizabeth Buchan (finished 7/3/22) 4 stars
229. The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager (finished 7/4/22) 5 stars (A)
230. The Devil's Light by Richard North Patterson (finished 7/5/22) 3.1 stars (A)
231. Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City by Tanya Talaga (finished 7/6/22) 4.55 stars
232. The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths (finished 7/7/22) 4.25 stars
233. The Diplomat's Wife by Michael Ridpath (finished 7/8/22) 3.65 stars
234. Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough (finished 7/8/22) 4.4 stars
235. Agent in Peril by Alex Gerlis (finished 7/11/22) 3.6 stars
236. This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future by Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns (finished 7/11/22) 3.85 stars (A)
237. The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura (finished 7/13/22) 4.5 stars
238. Red Warning by Matthew Quirk (finished 7/14/22) 3.85 stars (A)
239. Prisoners of the Castle by Ben Macintyre (finished 7/15/22) 4.35 stars
240. The Last Daughter of York by Nicola Cornick (finished 7/16/22) 3.7 stars (A)
241. The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark (finished 7/16/22) 4.1 stars
242. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe (finished 7/17/22) 4.45 stars
243. How to Treat People: A Nurse's Notes by Molly Case (finished 7/17/22) 4.25 stars
244. Conviction by Denise Mina (finished 7/18/22) 4.4 stars (A)
245. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper (finished 7/18/22) 4.1 stars
246. Next in Line by Jeffrey Archer (finished 7/18/22) 3.4 stars
247. The House With the Golden Door by Elodie Harper (finished 7/20/22) 4.1 stars
248. The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I by Lindsey Fitzharris (finished 7/21/22) 4.6 stars (A)
249. Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? by David Fromkin (finished 7/22/22) 4.2 stars
250. Alias Emma by Ava Glass (finished 7/22/22) 3.2 stars
251. Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries ed. by Martin Edwards (finished 7/23/22) 3.7 stars
252. The Fall of Robespierre: 24 Hours in Revolutionary Paris by Colin Jones (finished 7/24/22) 4.35 stars (A)
253. *The World, the Flesh and the Devil by Reay Tannahill (finished 7/24/22) 4.25 stars
254. Unthinkable by Jamie Raskin (finished 7/25/22) 3.8 stars
255. Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Daniel Silva (finished 7/26/22) 3.9 stars (A)
256. The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randal (finished 7/27/22) 2.85 stars (A)
257. The Last Winter by Porter Fox (finished 7/28/22) 4.2 stars
258. Antarctica by Claire Keegan (finished 7/28/22) 4.1 stars
259. Edith and Kim by Charlotte Philby (finished 7/29/22) 4.2 stars
260. *Death and the Penguin by Andrei Kurkov (finished 7/31/22) 4.5 stars

The August list:

261. *The Luxembourg Run by Stanley Ellin (finished 8/2/22) 4.15 stars
262. Our Man in Tokyo by Steve Kemper (finished 8/4/22) 4.6 stars (A)
263. Confidence by Denise Mina (finished 8/6/22) 4.4 stars (A)
264. Peril at the Exposition by Nev March (finished 8/6/22) 3.3 stars
265. *Fly Away Home by Marge Piercy (finished 8/8/22) 4 stars
266. Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson (finished 8/9/22) 4.35 stars (partly A)
267. The Swift and the Harrier by Minette Walters (finished 8/10/22) 4.2 stars
268. The Key to Deceit by Ashley Weaver (finished 8/10/22) 3.45 stars
269. *Catwings by Ursula LeGuin (finished 8/11/22) 4.5 stars
270. Savage Harvest by Carl Hoffman (finished 8/12/22) 4.2 stars (A)
271. *Voices of Summer by Diane Pearson (finished 8/12/22) 3.4 stars
272. When You Are Mine by Michael Robotham (finished 8/13/22) 4 stars (A)
273. The Gardener by Salley Vickers (finished 8/13/22) 4.15 stars
274. *Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers (finished 8/14/22) 5 stars
275. From the Shadows by James R. Benn (finished 8/16/22) 3.7 stars
276. *Too Early Lilac by E.M. Almedingen (finished 8/16/22) 3.5 stars
277. My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor (finished 8/17/22) 4.7 stars
278. A Spy's Life by Henry Porter (finished 8/18/22) 4 stars (A)
279. Where the Grass is Green and the Girls Are Pretty by Lauren Weisberger (finished 8/19/22) 3.4 stars
280. 1989 by Val McDermid (finished 8/20/22) 3.7 stars
281. *Empire State by Henry Porter (finished 8/20/22) 4 stars (A)
282. After the Ivory Tower Falls by Will Bunch (finished 8/21/22) 4.65 stars (A)
283. Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon (finished 8/21/22) 3.3 stars
284. The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid (finished 8/21/22) 3.5 stars
285. The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis (finished 8/22/22) 3.4 stars
286. The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (finished 8/23/22) 3.6 stars (A)
287. Denial by Jon Raymond (finished 8/23/22) 4.3 stars (A)
288. The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. Maclean (finished 8/24/22) 4 stars
289. Sinkable by Daniel Stone (finished 8/25/22) 4.3 stars (A)
290. *The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (finished 8/25/22) 3.9 stars (A)
291. Thirteen by Steve Kavanagh (finished 8/26/22) 4 stars
292. American Midnight by Adam Hochschild (finished 8/27/22) 5 stars
293. *The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright (finished 8/29/22) 4.5 stars (A)
294. The City Underground by Michael Russell (finished 8/30/22) 4.2 stars
295. Flush by Virginia Woolf (finished 8/30/22) 5 stars
296. *The Frozen Lake by Elizabeth Edmondson (finished 8/30/22) 3.7 stars (A)
297. Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson (finished 8/31/22) 4.35 stars
298. Dark Music by David Lagercrantz (finished 8/31/22) 3.65 stars

The September list:

299. Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris (finished 9/2/22) 4.75 stars
300. *Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (finished 9/2/22) 5 stars (A)
301. Advika and the Hollywood Wives by Kirthana Ramisetti (finished 9/3/22) 4.15 stars
302. *Going Clear by Lawrence Wright (finished 9/3/22) 4.35 stars (A)
303. Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li (finished 9/4/22)
5 stars
304. At Dusk by Hwang Sok-Yung (finished 9/4/22) 4.2 stars
305. The Soviet Sisters by Anika Scott (finished 9/5/22) 3.45 stars
306. Fifty-Fifty by Steve Cavanagh (finished 9/7/22) 4 stars
307. The Desperate Hours: One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines by Marie Brenner (finished 9/8/22) 4.7 stars (A)
308. *Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope (finished 9/8/22) 4.35 stars (A)
309. Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (finished 9/9/22) 4.4 stars
310. The Devil's Advocate by Steve Cavanagh (finished 9/10/22) 3.7 stars
311. Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie (finished 9/10/22) 4.2 stars
312. *Final Witness by Simon Tolkien (finished 9/11/22) 4 stars (A)
313. Welcome to the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan (finished 9/11/22) 3.5 stars
314. *Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (finished 9/12/22) 4.5 stars
315. The Escape Artist by Jonathan Freedland (finished 9/14/22) 4.4 stars
316. Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott (finished 9/15/22) 3.8 stars
317. *The Inheritance by Simon Tolkien (finished 9/16/22) 3.4 stars (A)
318. The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown (finished 9/17/22) 3.65 stars
319. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (finished 9/18/22) 4.6 stars
320. Thank You For Your Servitude by Mark Leibovitch (finished 9/19/22) 4.15 stars (A)
321. Murder Book by Thomas Perry (finished 9/19/22) 3.65 stars
322. The Last Queen by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (finished 9/20/22) 3.9 stars
323. Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson (finished 9/20/22) 3.8 stars
324. The Enigma Affair by Charlie Lovett (finished 9/22/22) 3.5 stars
325. Henrietta Maria by Leanda de Lisle (finished 9/23/22) 4.1 stars (A)
326. Orders From Berlin by Simon Tolkien (finished 9/24/22) 3.7 stars
327. Nothing But the Night by Greg King (finished 9/24/22) 4.1 stars (A)
328. Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show - Jonathan Karl (finished 9/25/22) 4.2 stars (A)
329. 1968 by Mark Kurlansky (finished 9/25/22) 4.3 stars
330. To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson (finished 9/26/22) 4.6 stars
331. At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop (finished 9/27/22) 4.35 stars
332. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (finished 9/27/22) 5 stars
333. *The Children of Men by P.D. James (finished 9/28/22) 4.5 stars
334. The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs (finished 9/29/22) 3.4 stars
335. *A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell (finished 9/29/22) 4.4 stars
336. Remain Silent by Susie Steiner (finished 9/30/22) 4.3 stars
337. Not Russian by Mikhail Shevelev (finished 9/30/22) 4.4 stars

The October List:

338. Death Interrupted by Blair Bigham (finished 10/3/22) 4 stars
339. The Palace Papers by Tina Brown (finished 10/3/22) 4.15 stars
340. The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths (finished 10/4/22) 4.35 stars
341. *The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn (finished 10/6/22) 5 stars (A)
342. *The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth (finished 10/6/22) 5 stars
343. Declassified: A Low-Key Guide to the High-Strung World of Classical Music by Arianna Warsaw-Fan Rauch (finished 10/7/22) 3.75 stars
344. The Unheard by Nicci French (finished 10/8/22) 4.25 stars
345. The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence (finished 10/9/22) 4.4 stars
346. *The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (finished 10/10/22) 4.5 stars (A)
347. We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper (finished 10/12/22) 4.2 stars
348. Accusation by Catherine Bush (finished 10/13/22) 4.35 stars
349. The She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth by Helen Castor (finished 10/15/22) 4.3 stars (A)
350. La disparition de Josef Mengele by Olivier Guez (finished 10/16/22) 4.2 stars
351. Sparring Partners by John Grisham (finished 10/18/22) 3.5 stars
352. The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication by Alexander Larman (finished 10/19/22)
353. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (finished 10/21/22) 4.2 stars
354. Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump by David Rothkopf (finished 10/21/22) 4.15 stars (A)
355. *The Charmed Circle by Catherine Gaskin (finished 10/22/22) 3.6 stars
356. Extraordinary People by Peter May (finished 10/24/22) 4.2 stars
357. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (finished 10/26/22) 4.65 stars
358. November Road by Lou Berney (finished 10/27/22) 4.5 stars
359. Wise Gals by Nathalia Holt (finished 10/29/22) 4 stars
360. Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Edward Dyson (finished 10/30/22) 4.15 stars
361. The Critic by Peter May (finished 10/30/22) 4 stars
362. Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones (finished 10/31/22) 4.1 stars (A)
363. The Partner Track by Helen Wan (finished 10/31/22) 4.2 stars

The November List:

364. Blacklight Blue by Peter May (finished 11/1/22) 3.6 stars
365. Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg (finished 11/2/22) 4.4 stars (A)
366. White Knights in the Black Orchestra by Tom Dunkel (finished 11/2/22) 4.15 stars (A)
367. Disappearance of a Scribe by Dana Stabenow (finished 11/5/22) 3.5 stars
368. About Time by Jodi Taylor (finished 11/8/22) 4.2 stars (A)
369. Library: A Catalogue of Wonders by Stuart Kells (finished 11/9/22) 4.35 stars
370. The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (finished 11/10/22) 4.4 stars
371. Saving Freud by Andrew Nagorski (finished 11/11/22) 3.75 stars (A)
372. This is the Night They Come for You by Robert Goddard (finished 11/11/22) 4.15 stars
373. The Enigma of Garlic by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 11/11/22) 3.9 stars
374. The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li (finished 11/12/22) 4.7 stars
375. *A Necessary Evil by Hannah March (finished 11/13/22) 3.85 stars
376. The Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick (finished 11/13/22) 4.2 stars (A)
377. American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal by Neil King (finished 11/15/22) 5 stars
378. *The Double Image by Helen MacInnes (finished 11/15/22) 3.3 stars (A)
379. American Resistance: The Inside Story of How the Deep State Saved the Nation by David Rothkopf (finished 11/17/22) 4.15 stars (A)
380. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann (finished 11/18/22) 4.7 stars
381. *Our Friends in Berlin by Anthony Quinn (finished 11/18/22) 4.5 stars
382. Freeze Frame by Peter May (finished 11/19/22) 3.7 stars
383. Survival on the Margins: Polish Jewish Refugees in the Wartime Soviet Union by Eliyana Adler (finished 11/20/22) 3.85 stars
384. The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (finished 11/20/22) 5 stars
385. Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey (finished 11/21/22) 4.1 stars (A)
386. All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell (finished 11/22/22) 4.3 stars
387. *The Crack in the Teacup by Michael Gilbert (finished 11/23/22) 4 stars
388. The Last Party by Clare Mackinstosh (finished 11/24/22) 4.2 stars (A)
389. Weapons of Mass Delusion by Robert Draper (finished 11/25/22) 4.3 stars
390. Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths (finished 11/25/22) 4.3 stars
391. One Person, One Vote: A Surprising History of Gerrymandering in the United States by Nick Seabrook (finished 11/25/22) 3.6 stars (A)
392. *Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien (finished 11/26/22) 4.7 stars (A)
393. Confessions of an Innocent Man by David Dow (finished 11/26/22) 3.75 stars
394. Dragonfly by Leila Meacham (finished 11/27/22) 2.5 stars
395. Whatever Happened to Tradition? by Tim Stanley (finished 11/27/22) 3.6 stars
396. Snow by John Banville (finished 11/28/22) 3.7 stars
397. *Post Captain by Patrick O'Brien (finished 11/29/22) 4.5 stars (A)
398. The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack (finished 11/30/22) 4.35 stars
399. Mr. Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd (finished 11/30/22) 2.3 stars

The December list:

400. We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (finished 12/2/22) 4.4 stars
401. A Christmas Cracker by Trisha Ashley (finished 12/3/22) 3.8 stars
402. On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne (finished 12/3/22) 5 stars
403. The Magician by Colm Toibin (finished 12/4/22) 4.35 stars
404. Devil-Land: England Under Siege by Clare Jackson (finished 12/5/22) 4.3 stars (partly A)
405. Picture You Dead by Peter James (finished 12/5/22) 3.8 stars
406. All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay (finished 12/6/22) 3.85 stars
407. *The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (finished 12/7/22) 4 stars (A)
408. A Rogue's Company by Alison Montclair (finished 12/7/22) 3.6 stars
409. What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris (finished 12/8/22) 3.8 stars
410. Heart of the Nile by Will Thomas (finished 12/8/22) 3.6 stars
411. The Day the World Came to Town by Jim Defede (finished 12/9/22) 4.3 stars
412. The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang (finished 12/10/22) 4.45 stars
413. Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia's War Against Ukraine by Owen Matthews (finished 12/10/22) 4.7 stars (partly A)
414. The Skripal Files by Mark Urban (finished 12/11/22) 4.15 stars (A)
415. *Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge (finished 12/12/22) 4.35 stars
416. A Wedding in the Country by Katie Fforde (finished 12/12/22) 3.3 stars
417. Friends Like These by Kimberly McCreight (finished 12/13/22) 3.6 stars
418. The Little Drummer Girl by John LeCarré (finished 12/14/22) 4 stars (partly A)
419. Cold People by Tom Rob Smith (finished 12/14/22) 3 stars
420. The Verifiers by Jane Pek (finished 12/15/22) 4.35 stars
421. *Time After Time by Allen Appel (finished 12/16/22) 4.1 stars
422. Ithaca by Claire North (finished 12/17/22) 4 stars
423. A World of Curiousities by Louise Penny (finished 12/18/22) 4 stars
424. The Shooting at Chateau Rock by Martin Walker (finished 12/20/22) 3.7 stars
425. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (finished 12/21/22) 4.65 stars
426. Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey (finished 12/22/22) 4.5 stars
427. *Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr (finished 12/22/22) 4.3 stars (A)
428. Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams (finished 12/23/22) 3.7 stars
429. Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams (finished 12/24/22) 3.85 stars (A)
430. The Coldest Case by Martin Walker (finished 12/24/22) 3.8 stars
431. *Krakatoa by Simon Winchester (finished 12/25/22) 4.2 stars (A)
432. Santa Grint by Jodi Taylor (finished 12/25/22) 4 stars (A)
433. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (finished 12/26/22) 4.1 stars
434. Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose (finished 12/26/22) 3.7 stars
435. The Couple at the Table by Sophie Hannah (finished 12/27/22) 3.85 stars
436. Indians on Vacation by Thomas King (finished 12/27/22) 4.3 stars
437. The Passenger by Lisa Lutz (finished 12/28/22) 4.1 stars
438. Watergate: a New History by Garrett Graff (finished 12/29/22) 4.3 stars (A)
439. Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie (finished 12/30/22) 3.7 stars (A)
440. Tutankhamun by Joyce Tyldesley (finished 12/30/22) 4.2 stars
441. A Passage North by Anuk Aradpragasam (finished 12/31/22) 4 stars
442. Nefertiti by Michelle Moran (finished 12/31/22) 4.2 stars (A)

* -- re-read
(A) -- audiobook

My reading list for the first quarter (Jan 1-March 31, 2022)

The January list:

1. The Call of the Penguins by Hazel Prior (finished 1/1/22) 3.8 stars
2. Road of Bones by James R. Benn (finished 1/2/22) 3.85 stars (A)
3. *The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis (finished 1/2/22) 3.65 stars
4. Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner (finished 1/3/22) 4.35 stars
5. Never Far Away by Michael Koryta (finished 1/4/22) 3.8 stars
6. The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It by Mark Bowden & Matthew Teague (finished 1/6/22) 4.2 stars
7. The Queen's Men by Oliver Clements (finished 1/7/22) 4 stars (A)
8. *Carbonel by Barbara Sleigh (finished 1/7/22) 4.1 stars
9. The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave (finished 1/8/22) 3.5 stars
10. The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (finished 1/8/22) 4.35 stars
11. The Pimlico Murder by Mike Hollow (finished 1/9/22) 3.4 stars
12. The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading by Phyllis Rose (finished 1/10/22) 4.45 stars
13. The Traitor by V.S. Alexander (finished 1/11/22) 2.1 stars
14. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (finished 1/12/22) 4.4 stars
15. The Turnout by Megan Abbott (finished 1/12/22) 3.5 stars
16. *Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes (finished 1/13/22) 3.8 stars (A)
17. The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz (finished 1/14/22) 4.25 stars
18. Three Debts Paid by Anne Perry (finished 1/15/22) 3.2 stars
19. Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age by David Wessel (finished 1/16/22) 4.2 stars (A)
20. Acts & Omissions by Catherine Fox (finished 1/16/22) 4.1 stars
21. The Lark by E. Nesbit (finished 1/17/22) 3.6 stars
22. The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation by Rosemary Sullivan (finished 1/18/22) 4.5 stars (A)
23. *Word to Caesar by Geoffrey Trease (finished 1/19/22) 4.2 stars
24. Unseen Things Above by Catherine Fox (finished 1/20/22) 4.2 stars (A)
25. The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future by Stephen Marche (finished 1/21/22) 5 stars (A)
26. The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance by Ross King (finished 1/22/22) 4.5 stars (partly A)
27. Emma by Jane Austen (finished 1/23/22) 4.15 stars (A)
28. The Man in the Bunker by Rory Clements (finished 1/23/22) 4.2 stars
29. Something to Hide by Elizabeth George (finished 1/24/22) 4.3 stars
30. Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan (finished 1/25/22) 3.75 stars
31. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (finished 1/26/22) 5 stars
32. Realms of Glory by Catherine Fox (finished 1/26/22) 4.2 stars
33. *Box 88 by Charles Cumming (finished 1/27/22) 4.1 stars (A)
34. The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag (finished 1/29/22) 3.8 stars
35. Find Me by Alafair Burke (finished 1/29/22) 3.5 stars (A)
36. New York, New York, New York: Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation by Paul Dyja (finished 1/30/22) 4 stars
37. *The Polly Harris by Mary Treadgold (finished 1/30/22) 3.7 stars
38. How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith (finished 1/31/22) 5 stars (partly A)

The February list:

39. A Serious Widow by Constance Beresford-Howe (finished 2/1/22) 4 stars
40. I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg (finished 2/2/22) 4.75 stars
41. Tales From Lindford by Catherine Fox (finished 2/3/22) 4 stars
42. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (finished 2/5/22) 3.85 stars
43. Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler (finished 2/5/22) 4 stars
44. *The Great Mortality by John Kelly (finished 2/6/22) 4.3 stars (A)
45. Judas 62 by Charles Cumming (finished 2/7/22) 4.2 stars
46. The Library of Legends by Janie Chang (finished 2/7/22) 3.6 stars
47. *The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (finished 2/8/22) 5 stars
48. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (finished 2/8/22) 2 stars (A)
49. The Great Stewardess Rebellion by Nell McShane Wulfhart (finished 2/10/22) 4.2 stars
50. A Three-Dog Problem by S.J. Bennett (finished 2/11/22) 4 stars
51. *Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes (finished 2/12/22) 4.15 stars (A)
52. Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner (finished 2/12/22) 3.7 stars
53. The Race to Save the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (finished 2/13/22) 4.1 stars
54. The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb (finished 2/13/22) 4.35 stars
55. *The Romanov Conspiracy by Glenn Meade (finished 2/14/22) 3.5 stars (A)
56. The Eleventh Commandment by Jeffrey Archer (finished 2/15/22) 3.55 stars (A)
57. Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng (finished 2/15/22) 4.5 stars
58. Could It Happen Here?: Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit by Michael Adams (finished 2/16/22) 4 stars
59. A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins (finished 2/16/22) 3.6 stars
60. *Red Rising by Pierce Brown (finished 2/18/22) 4.3 stars (A)
61. Le Suspendu de Conakry by Jean-Christophe Rufin (finished 2/18/22) 4.1 stars (partly A)
62. The Circle by Dave Eggers (finished 2/20/22) 4.15 stars
63. Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (finished 2/20/22) 4.3 stars (A)
64. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (finished 2/21/22) 5 stars
65. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (finished 2/21/22) 4.5 stars
66. The Last White Rose by Alison Weir (finished 2/22/22) 3.2 stars
67. Jane and the Year Without a Summer by Stephanie Barron (finished 2/22/22) 3.85 stars (A)
68. *Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black (finished 2/23/22) 3.4 stars (A)
69. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner (finished 2/23/22) 4.15 stars (A)
70. The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (finished 2/24/22) 4.6 stars
71. The Fell by Sarah Moss (finished 2/24/22) 5 stars
72. The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill (finished 2/25/22) 4.1 stars
73. The Latinist by Mark Prins (finished 2/25/22) 3.85 stars
74. The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen L. Carter (finished 2/26/22) 3.5 stars (A)
75. Yesterday's Spy by Tom Bradby (finished 2/26/22) 4.1 stars
76. Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: Reporters Who Took On A World at War by Deborah Cohen (finished 2/27/22) 4 stars
77. *Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (finished 2/27/22) 3.7 stars (A)
78. The Finder by Will Ferguson (finished 2/28/22) 3.6 stars

The March list:

79. The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia and Political Warfare 1945-2020 by Tim Weiner (finished 3/2/22) 4.4 stars (A)
80. The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon (finished 3/3/22) 3.2 stars
81. *The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (finished 3/3/22) 4.7 stars
82. Love in the Time of Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 3/3/22) 3.8 stars
83. Pastoral Song by James Rebanks (finished 3/4/22) 4.5 stars
84. *Night & Day by Elizabeth Edmondson (finished 3/4/22) 3.7 stars
85. Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald (finished 3/5/22) 4.2 stars
86. One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner (finished 3/5/22) 3.35 stars
87. The Spy in Moscow Station by Eric Heseltine (finished 3/6/22) 3.85 stars (A)
88. Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King (finished 3/6/22) 5 stars
89. *A Winter's Tale by Trisha Ashley (finished 3/7/22) 4.1 stars
90. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John LeCarré (finished 3/8/22) 4.3 stars
91. Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre (finished 3/8/22) 4.4 stars (A)
92. Ariadne by Jennifer Saint (finished 3/9/22) 4.3 stars
93. Joan is Okay by Weike Wang (finished 3/10/22) 4.3 stars
94. The School of Mirrors by Eva Stachniak (finished 3/11/22) 4.4 stars
95. And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain by Elisabeth Åsbrink (finished 3/11/22) 4.3stars
96. *While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes (finished 3/12/22) 4 stars (A)
97. It Could Happen Here by Jonathan Greenblatt (finished 3/12/22) 3.75 stars
98. The Night Before Morning by Alistair Moffatt (finished 3/13/22) 4.1 stars
99. *Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (finished 3/15/22) 3.9 stars (A)
100. Fierce Poison by Will Thomas (finished 3/16/22) 4 stars
101. *Dark Invasion by Howard Blum (finished 3/17/22) 4.2 stars (A)
102. A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos (finished 3/18/22) 4.1 stars (partly A)
103. The Midcoast by Adam Wood (finished 3/18/22) 4.2 stars
104. The New Neighbor by Karen Cleveland (finished 3/19/22) 4 stars
105. The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon (finished 3/20/22) 4 stars (A)
106. Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson (finished 3/20/22) 4.3 stars
107. Agent Sniper by Tim Tate (finished 3/21/22) 4.15 stars (A)
108. King Richard: Nixon and Watergate -- An American Tragedy by Michael Dobbs (finished 3/23/22) 4.7 stars (A)
109. A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear (finished 3/24/22) 4.3 stars (A)
110. Nine Lives by Peter Swanson (finished 3/24/22) 4 stars (A)
111. A Game of Fear by Charles Todd (finished 3/25/22) 4 stars (A)
112. Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped by Gary Kasparov (finished 3/26/22) 4.25 stars (A)
113. Still Life by Sarah Winman (finished 3/27/22) 5 stars (partly A)
114. Hitler's British Traitors by Tim Tate (finished 3/27/22) 3.7 stars (A)
115. *Magpie Murders by Anthony Horwitz (finished 3/28/22) 4.35 stars (A)
116. After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (finished 3/29/22) 4.2 stars (A)
117. Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (finished 3/29/22) 5 stars
118. *Madensky Square by Eva Ibbotson (finished 3/30/22) 3.9 stars (A)
119. A Shot to Save the World by Greg Zuckerman (finished 3/31/22) 4.7 stars

Best of 2021: Fiction

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
The amazing next-to-most-recent book by this wonderful author explores identity in a mid-20th century tribal community, and delivers a number of moving/devastating character portrayals.

When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
A different kind of novel for me – and a difficult one to read. Based on the author’s experiences, it’s an exploration of family relationships and domestic abuse, firmly rooted in Indian culture and caste. Stunning literary achievement, but also troubling.

Writers & Lovers by Lily King
The protagonist here seems to have a lot of things in her favor (she’s white, adult, etc.) but she’s struggling to find her footing in the literary world and baffled by relationships. Elegant writing & superb characterizations.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
One of the first books I read in 2021, and it set a high bar. Ogawa takes fantasy and high-concept literature and turns the result into a subtle, compelling read.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
This is the first of two books I read by this new-to-me author, and I devoured the second one as soon as it was released after reading this one. She focuses on environmental themes (in this case, the demise of seabirds; in the second case, the rewilding of wolves) as backdrops for complex stories of women trying to cope with traumatic personal legacies. In the hands of a lesser writer, this novel could have been melodrama; instead, it’s a tour de force.

Article 353 by Tanguy Viel
A conversation between an accused man and a French jurist results in the teasing out of all the details surrounding a death – and reveals the socio-economic changes that have buffeted Europe in the last several decades in the process.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
This Turkish novelist is becoming one of my faves, each time I read one of her books. This may have been her best yet. We know the central character is dead – murdered – from the first pages, but by revisiting her own memories and those of her eclectic circle of “outsider” friends in Istanbul, we learn who she was and why those friends so deeply mourn the death of a woman who lived on the fringes of society. A real triumph.

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Another novelist whose work never/rarely disappoints; this is an earlier novel, whose main character also is an outsider (an exotic dancer). She’s caught on camera with a suspicious character, and her life starts to collapse in slow motion. I loved the gradual unfolding of the narrative, and the sense of inevitable doom that Flanagan creates.

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara
Brings to life the vivid lives of children living in a Mumbai slum, who have their joys and ambitions. Then a serial killer seems to be targeting these throw-away kids – and their peers decide it’s up to them to solve the case. It’s a novel, not a mystery, since the main narrative strand is the way the series of crimes mirrors/sheds light on the community. What I loved most was the fact that it gave distinctive & original voices to these characters.

Pilgrims by Mathew Kneale
The first of the pilgrims we meet in this book is a young man who wants to save his cat’s soul by going, first to a local shrine, and later to Rome. Stage by stage of his journey, the scope broadens to include his companions. With a nod in Chaucer’s direction (natch), the characters represent/capture the experiences of each strata of feudal society: “converted” Jews escaping pogroms in England, a murderous and bigamous noblewoman, and a merchant’s widow with an ailing son and envious sister.

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee
A contemporary scholar of Woolf is traveling to do research in the US before heading to a conference; her unhappy teenage daughter is stuck at a boarding school back in the UK. What happens when the scholar accidentally causes Virginia Woolf to re-manifest herself in the modern United States? Some of the more superficial plot themes involve how Woolf might view our more egalitarian and technologically-driven world (she can’t find her favorite kind of pen); the underlying narrative is about how Woolf’s life and experiences might affect those of mother and daughter.

Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo
This is the second amazing novel I’ve read by this young (she’s only 31!) Nigerian author (the previous book was “Welcome to Lagos”.) What would it be like to discover as a mixed-race adult British woman that your father actually is an autocratic leader of an African nation? That’s the premise – and it works.

The Bad Muslim Discount by Syed M. Masood
Two families – one from Pakistan, the other from Iraq – take very different paths to arrive in the United States, and different members have wildly disparate experiences once there. Anvar has zero interest in making Islam great again, in contrast to his brother, and delights in being the “bad Muslim”. Then his path crosses with that of Safwa, who has few choices but to be a good Muslim daughter – whatever that might mean. Witty but with real insight.

Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Finally got around to the third of this author’s trio of great novels. Each of three is VERY distinctive (one is quasi-autobiographical, a study of a mediocre academic clinging on to his life in the Midwest; one is an epistolary novel set against the backdrop of the first years of the Roman Empire; this is a Western!) What was the West like? Williams dispels the romantic aura thoroughly in an unputdownable novel.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
A Canadian novel that blew me away, revolving around the experiences of a group of young men and women who kinda sorta survived residential schools. This is extremely topical – but the novel itself doesn’t feel like it’s jumping on a bandwagon but instead as if it’s dealing with a perennial and compelling topic. READ IT.

Best of 2021:Non-Fiction

Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury by Evan Osnos
With everything I read by Osnos, I become more impressed. There has been a flurry of books about Trumpian populism and the events of 2020 (the pandemic and the election and its aftermath) but this is one of the most thoughtful, well-written and analytical.

Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Lots of folks have already read this survey of the dysfunctional Sackler family, the Oxycontin saga, etc. The author knits together all the puzzle pieces in a detailed survey that will be one of those iconic books. It gets off to a slow-ish start, and puts the drama to one side in favor of substance, but stick with it.

Elderhood by Louise Aronsohn
I’m aging – sometimes I realize it; sometimes I forget that my chronological age is out of step with how I see the world. Aronsohn does a brilliant job of (from the POV of a geriatrician) spelling out why the way we see aging and being an “elder” doesn’t always serve seniors well, either socially or medically and addressing what it means to age “well”. I expect I’ll be revisiting this.

You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by Elizabeth Becker
When I was a preteen, Vietnam was the first “news story” I remember following (followed thereafter by Watergate). And I read Frances Fitzgerald’s amazing book “The Fire in the Lake” in my early 20s, while living in Japan. This book – by a journalist whose book about Cambodia’s war and its aftermath is also among my memorable reads – chronicles the pioneering work done by Fitzgerald and two other reporters, who were able to put their own unique stamp on reporting and photojournalism during Vietnam, and transformed the nature of war reporting. They cleared the way for the impressive work done by so many amazing women since then, as well as redefining what it means to report from a war zone. Kudos to both Becker and her subjects.

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu
Owusu’s mother was Armenian American; her father, Ghanaian. Like me she grew up in countries she didn’t “belong” to and struggled with developing a sense of identity and belonging. That’s what drew me to this memoir; what kept me reading was Owusu’s piercing honesty and lyrical writing as she wrote about the disruptions that followed the death of her father when she was only 13 and the complexity of family ties.

The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights by Dorothy Wickenden
Harriet Tubman’s name is familiar; so, too, may be that of Frances Seward’s husband, a member of Lincoln’s cabinet and a powerful force in Civil War-era politics. Martha Coffin Wright, the third member of this trio, is probably less well known, but this Quaker was a powerful force in working alongside people like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for women’s rights, and with Tubman for emancipation. This captures the life stories of women in the first half of the 19th century in the USA brilliantly, while also taking a refreshingly different look at their causes and women’s activism in the era.

The Writing of the Gods: the Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick
I’ve long been fascinated by the topic of this book, which is why I picked it up. What I ended up finding engrossing was the way Dolnick broadened the focus to include the nature of written communication and the shift from image-based language to alphabets. Wowza.

It’s What I Do by Lynsey Addario
Timely, since Addario is one of the New York Times photographers responsible for capturing the toll of the fighting underway in Ukraine. She’s worked in war zones for decades and won numerous prizes. Why does she do it? What’s it like? She asks herself those questions with ruthless rigor throughout. If you want to think about conflict in a different way and are recoiling from the relentless coverage of war as a spectator sport, this will restore a sense of perspective. (apologies for the wordplay; accidental…)

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
Anyone interested in India should include Dalrymple’s books in reading lists. Yes, he’s a Brit and has his own focus, area of interest and POV – so don’t read his books at the expense of those by Indian writers. That said, the evolution of the relationship between the Moghul Empire from a trading agreement to India becoming a colony of the UK has shaped today’s India, and including a comprehensive analysis from a British POV of those interactions is vital. Dalrymple also happens to be a great prose stylist, IMHO.

Under a White Sky: the Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
This is an anthology of some of Kolbert’s writing, and follows logically from her previous book, “The Sixth Extinction.” If we live in an unsustainable world today, what lies ahead? What are the solutions? Kolbert’s analysis of this question is chilling. Read it to get a good grip on what we’re facing.

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues that Made History by Alex von Tunzelman
A few of these statue conflicts have dominated headlines in their own countries; others are less well-known. If you want to put the controversy about Civil War statues in the US in a broader context, this is a good place to start. It will prod a lot of people into thinking about topics like the role of public art, the question of who we commemorate in statues and why, and about history itself.

Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough & Jason Stanford
Welp, Bryan Burrough. What else can I say? Oh yeah, I watched that movie about the heroic last stand. And since then have learned that (as with many such tales) the reality doesn’t measure up to the myth. So why has that heroic saga proved so enduring? Who has promoted it, and who has tried to create a broader context? What does it say about how we view our history? As we re-evaluate topics like who writes history and what is worth being passed along (by whom, how and why), this is a slyly fascinating and lively narrative.

Just Us by Claudia Rankine
This popped up on countless “best of” lists, which is one reason I read it. Do yourself a favor and when you pick it up, grab a “real” copy in order to fully appreciate the book’s design, which combines prose and images in a very careful way to enhance the impact on the reader. The content? Oh, yeah, it’s about how to transcend questions of whiteness and privilege and reach out to and understand each other. And much, much more.

Stakes is High: Life After the American Dream by Mychal Denzel Smith
A commanding and eloquent voice tackles an increasingly-familiar topic: the way that ‘race’ and ‘white privilege’ show how hollow or limited the argument is that the US is truly exceptional. The critique won’t be new to anyone who has their head above the parapet, but Smith’s ideas for redefining the nature of the national dream will (or should) provoke a lot of thought and discussion.

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker
Half of the dozen children born the to the upwardly-mobile Galvin family during the baby boom era ended up being diagnosed with schizophrenia. How on earth??? Part family tragedy, part medical detective yarn, this unputdownable book explores the difficult topic of mental illness and what that means for everyone in a family.

Climbing Mt. TBR Part I (New, But Unread)

Horse by Geraldine Brooks
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
The Foundling by Ann Leary
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Read
On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne Read
Five Tuesdays in Winter by Lily King Read
The Magician by Colm Toibin Read
The Final Case by David Guterson DNF
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel Read

Climbing Mt. TBR Part II – The Hall of Shame

Mr. Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd Read
The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian
Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce
The Historians by Cecilia Eckback
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Plot – Jean Hanff Korelitz Read
Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams Read
Snow by John Banville Read
The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam

Around the World in 10 Books

The Republic by Joost de Vries (Netherlands)
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (Japan) Read
Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers (South Africa)
The Italian by Shukri Mabkhout (Tunisia)
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop (Senegal) Read
The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov (Moldova) Read
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru) Read
The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag (Sweden) Read
A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam (Sri Lanka) Read
At Dusk by Hwang Sok-yong (Korea) Read

Non-Fiction Mania

We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins Read
Last Call at the Hotel Imperial by Deborah Cohen Read
Looking for the Good War by Elizabeth D. Samet Read
New York, New York by Thomas Dyja Read
The Sinner and the Saint by Kevin Birmingham
A Shot to Save the World by Greg Zuckerman Read
The Vanishing by Janine di Giovanni
Only the Rich Can Play by David Wessel Read
The Last Winter by Porter Fox Read
The Vanished Collection by Pauline Baer de Perignon Read

Reading targets #2

Travel

Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs Read
To the Island of Tides: A Journey to Lindisfarne by Alistair Moffatt
Marco Polo – John Man
Out Of Istanbul: A Long Walk of Discovery Along the Silk Road by Bernard Ollivier
The National Road – Dispatches from a Changing America by Tom Zoellner
Northland by Porter Fox
Under Another Sky: Journeys in Roman Britain by Charlotte Higgins
American Ramble by Neil King Read
The Broken Road – Patrick Leigh Fermor
Travels With a Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Mystery & Suspense

The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan Read
The New Neighbor by Karen Cleveland Read
The Couple at the Table by Sophie Hannah Read
Friends Like These by Kimberly McCreight Read
The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon Read
The Passenger by Lisa Lutz Read
The Unheard by Nicci French Read
The House by Tom Watson
We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz
Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson Read

Series & Sequels

The Pimlico Murder by Mike Hollow - Read
Picture You Dead by Peter James Read
Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan
The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths Read
A Catalogue of Catastrophe by Jodi Taylor Read
The Cannonball Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu
A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry Read
The Shooting at Chateau Rock by Martin Walker Read
What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch Read
Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey Read

Canadiana

Fight Night by Miriam Toews
Accusation by Catherine Bush Read
The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill Read
The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack Read
Indians on Vacation by Thomas King Read
Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson Read
Autopsy of a Boring Wife by Marie-Renée Lavoie Read
The Finder by Will Ferguson Read
A Serious Widow by Constance Beresford-Howe Read

Lighter Fare

The Last Debutantes – Georgie Blaylock DNF
Before Lunch - Angela Thirkell
Call of the Penguins by Hazel Prior Read
A Christmas Cracker by Trisha Ashley Read
A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe DNF
Dragonfly by Leila Meacham Read
Love in the Time of Bertie – Alexander McCall Smith Read
The Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis Read
A Wedding in the Country – Katie Fforde Read
Bruno’s Challenge And Other Stories of the French Countryside – Martin Walker Read

New-to-me authors/Debut authors

Acts & Omissions by Catherine Fox Read
The Red Arrow by William Brewer
The Verifiers by Jane Pek Read
Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey Read
Hades Argentina by Daniel Loedel
Still Life by Sarah Winman Read
The Pages by Hugo Hamilton
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb Read
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler Read
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd Read

Reading targets #4

Re-Reads

1. Mariana by Monica Dickens Read
2. The World, the Flesh and the Devil by Reay Tannahill Read
3. The Ship That Flew by Hilda Lewis Read
4. While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes Read
5. The Tilsit Inheritance by Catherine Gaskin
6. Csardas by Diane Pearson
7. A Crack in the Teacup by Michael Gilbert Read
8.
9.
10.

Livres en français

1. Le train d'Erlingen de Boualem Sansal
2. Le suspendu de Conakry de Jean-Christophe Rufin Read
3. Allocha de Henri Troyat
4. La disparition de Josef Mengele de Olivier Guez Read
5. L'homme qui regardait la nuit de Gilbert Sinoué

LT Book Bullets

1. The Fell by Sarah Moss Read
2. What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris Read
3. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Revolutionary Reads

1. Benjamin Franklin in London by George Goodwin
2. Revolution Song by Russell Shorto
3. Tom Paine by John Keane
4. The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents by Joseph Ellis
5. To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and the Ambiguities of the American Founders by Bernard Bailyn
6. First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks Read
7. 1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton

Well, getting the image right was a PITA. I could get a PNG format, but couldn't convert it to JPEG OR find a JPG format image online.

Happy new thread, Suzanne. I haven't read it yet but Five Little Indians just won the Canada Reads competition. Hoping that gives it the publicity it deserves.

Happy second thread, Suz.
Thank you for remembering Louis Macneice - one of my favourite poets.

Happy new thread, Suzanne.

Happy new one!

Happy new thread!

Is it odd that I prefer wishes for a happy new thread than a happy birthday, or just a sign of encroaching age???

Have been sticking to audiobooks this week as I battle a migraine. Now that's finally clearing up, so maybe I'll read a "real" book this weekend. Oh, and catch up on work.

Happy new thread! I'm glad to hear that the migraine is easing! I love audiobooks, but I wouldn't like it if they were my only option.

This is tax weekend for me. I am going to spend the rest of the afternoon filling out my 1040. And then doing the state income tax.

I'm trying to manage my father's health and his finances, etc. etc. AND do a complete reset of the LLC accounts now that that tax return has been filed. My biz partner has decided to pursue photography, so only about 18 months after setting up, we are now going to be a solo venture. Which in some ways is a relief, but creates a tremendous # of short-term headaches with respect to paperwork, etc. Now trying to work on the website to remove her from the scene. Apparently that has to happen simultaneously with filing the legal docs? But we're stuck in that I can't open a new corporate bank account until I have all the docs in place, and she insists that once that's done, she be removed from current bank account immediately, and I can't be the sole person on the account without going in person to Virginia. Bloody hell. If I'm not nuts now, I soon shall be.

Meanwhile, am really enjoying The Secret Life of Books by Tom Mole, one of my two Kindle Xmas Swap books from the lovely Berly! I'm so glad I saved it to read right now, as it's the perfect stress buster. Mole encourages readers to think of their books as physical items that forge connections over time and space and carry messages of all kinds about what was read and how it was read. He hooked me in the preface, when one of his university professors is forcibly encouraged to de-accession some of his admittedly overwhelming book collection. "Giving up some of his books felt like giving up part of his mind," he writes.

So, that said -- I finished Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but it never really became any more compelling. Partly it's the oblique style and cryptic jargon (lamplighters??) and partly the fact that the tension never really emerges. That said, I loved the recent filmed version, so... Anyway, this paperback can go onto the deaccession pile here!!

I'm here for very short visits, but I'm always happy to see a new Chatterbox thread. Hope it's a happy one - that all those business/financial hoops you have to jump through right now for yourself and your father sort of roll away so that you can relax.
Off to look at the T. Mole and a few more. Thank you, as always, Suzanne!

>20 Chatterbox:
That's a BB - Secret Life of Books.

So, my landlord has just informed me (via snail mail, though she lives upstairs??) that she won't be renewing my lease.

So, hive mind, any ideas? Is this the time for me to move back to Canada? Rents are soaring and I'm panicking. It could not have come at a worse time.

>23 Chatterbox:
Where is your father living? if he is in Canada it might be a good time to move. Is your landlord raising the rent? Or is she just plain not renewing your lease?

Yes, my father is in Canada. I left Canada in 1994... It would be better, but a big upheaval.

She is not renewing my lease. She gave me three different reasons, which cannot coexist simultaneously (she wants to renovate, she wants to live here herself, she wants to find another tenant.)

Hmm... apartments are getting hard to find in Toronto and expensive. If you are considering a move- find a good agent to help you in your plans. Hamilton became a place of choice for a number of artists because the rents were cheaper. But... I don't know. My niece lives in Ottawa- I'll ask her what the situation is there.

As Cyrel said, this city (Toronto) is becoming almost too expensive to live in. Does your dad live in a place you could move into while you look around? As a transition? Culturally, TO is a great place but housing-wise, it's tough to break into these days. If I hadn't bought my house 21 years ago, before the market went bonkers, I would never be able to afford it now.

>26 torontoc: Mind meld!! A friend of mine has a house in Hamilton and shares space with tenants. She's doing renovations now but will have a third-floor space opening up now, and two more rooms opening up in the coming six to 12 months. It's a possibility. I would have to get rid of a LOT of stuff and put more in storage.

I would love to live in Ottawa, but it's a bit too far from my father for now. Down the road, that's the transition I would like to make if I do move back. Toronto? I have a lot of friends there, but yes, the rents are surreal. I had to sell my house as an absentee owner back in 1994, when interest rates doubled, so I actually recorded a loss on it. I checked later, and it had doubled in value (about five/six years later?)

Rents in Providence also have skyrocketed. The tradeoff in staying here would be less hassle in a move/a less costly move.

A friend of mine bought a house in Hamilton and does come into Toronto by bus for appointments and the Art Gallery. Hamilton has become very popular.

The big question is do you want to move back to Canada? The advantages to that move are that you will be closer to family and thus more able to take care of needs. You are a Canadian citizen so there might be benefits to that which are not available to you here.

I know that I am delaying retirement and moving simply because I don't want to live closer to my family. I am afraid that I will become an unpaid care giver and I am not ready to step into that role - yet.

>30 benitastrnad: I don't think I have a choice any more about the unpaid caregiver. Either I try to do it remotely, from this side of the border, or on the other side of the border. Or I can just shrug my shoulders and say WTF.

My blood pressure has skyrocketed in the last two days, I confess! So I'm listening to the audio of the just-released new episode of the St. Mary's books by Jodi Taylor.

>31 Chatterbox: I've just whizzed through it - A Catalogue of Catastrophe - in print and I shall read the audio version next week and pick up all the details I missed by reading so fast!

>27 jessibud2: And just to amplify -- my father has a smallish one bedroom apartment. Even if I asked him to move into a larger place, it wouldn't work well -- he blasts the TV during the day because he gets bored, and I would need peace and quiet to make work phone calls since I've been working from home since loooongg before the pandemic made it quasi-fashionable. Hamilton also is less pricey than Guelph, where he lives. Apartments here in Providence are almost at Toronto levels, unbelievably.

>32 CDVicarage: Just finished Catalogue of Catastrophe and really enjoyed it. I didn't love the fact that it ended with a cliffhanger (sigh) and felt it was a bit to-and-fro, but still a lot of fun, and I relish Max's approach to life.

I'm so sorry to hear about your housing crisis. Moving is stressful under the best of conditions. I hope you find a survivable solution, either in Providence or Canada.
I always look through your books when I visit your thread. I noticed you were rereading Helen McInnes. I remember reading her about forty years ago (I'm actually that old!) and enjoyed them. I'm going to reread them again so thanks for the reminder.
I'll be sending good wishes your way.

>34 Oregonreader: Thanks for the good wishes, and I'm that old, too! I think I read the first of her books when I was 13 or 14, so, around the mid-1970s. I got a little bored with the "evil Communist" tropes, but they are fun to revisit and thus far, the narrators of her earlier books (they seem to be being released in original order of publication for audio) have been very good.

I still have no idea of what I'll do. Everything feels insurmountable right now.

Going to look at an affordable and (judging by pics) nice place here in Providence this evening. Please keep fingers and toes crossed for me... There's a lot of interest in the place, apparently, which is one hurdle; another is that I may have to pay rent on two places for two months, which would be suboptimal. It worked for me when I was moving here from NYC, precisely because I needed a longer overlap and because I could afford to do this to lock in a place. Right now? It would be real stretch.

More on recent reading later when I'm not on deadline, don't have a migraine, yadda yadda yadda....

>36 Chatterbox: Keeping my fingers and toes crossed for you, Suzanne.
And belated congratulations on reaching 2 x 75.

>37 FAMeulstee: Thanks, the boost worked! I've found a new place to live. Hurrah. Much smaller, but I like it. Surplus books can go downstairs.

>38 Chatterbox: Yay! That's wonderful news. In Providence it sounds like?

Yup! Only a five minute walk from where I am now, quieter street. Basement storage. Cheaper! though I will have to pay two rents for a few months, gulp.

Congrats! It will be worth it, at least knowing that worry is off the list now.

Happy new thread, Suzanne. I love seeing your lists!

Well done on reaching 2x75 already, Suz, and even more so on finding a place that seems to fit the bill. Isn't it funny how we are forced to consider where the books will go?

Congratulations, Suzanne. Practically in your current neighborhood, with a place for the books, pet friendly (obviously), quieter, and - OMG - cheaper!!! How amazing. Extremely hard to find in these hideous times and yet - you did it.

This is good news for sure! Glad to hear it.

The landlord is a writer (playwright and working on college content) himself, so that helped. But he chose which of us would get to fill out the application by (a) guessing a number between 1 and 100 himself and writing it down and then (b) getting each of us to guess a number, and picking the person whose guess was closest to his own. He picked 46, I won with 59 (the age I wish I still was...) Eccentric, and gave me hope that this will work out. They have an elderly white cat upstairs who came to meet me while I was filling out the application. There are lots of windows for Sir Fergus and Minka to look out of, so I will just make sure that there are bits of furniture or something that they can perch on to keep an eye on the street outside.

Well, May is going to be a very sluggish reading month for me, between preparing for my move, work and trying to deal with my father's multiplying care needs long distance. Between that migraines, I'm going a little nuts.

That said, I wanted to flag a gem of a book; the ARC of something I picked up at the last ALA bookfest that I attended in Philly, just weeks before the pandemic shut everything down. It's Our Riches by an Algerian/French author, Kaouther Adimi, and it's the fictionalized narrative of the rise and fall of an iconic bookstore in colonial Algiers, set against the backdrop of literary history and Algeria's history. Bookish people will find it a joy to read, and I loved the combination of diary entries, a kind of omniscient third-person narrator, and the discoveries made by Ryad, a French Algerian who ends up with the task of "cleaning out" what's left in the former bookstore (whose owner was the first publisher of Camus...) in order for a beignet (doughnut) store to open its doors...

>47 Chatterbox: I am sorry to hear that you are having to deal with your father's care long distance. I cannot imagine how tough that must be!

Thanks for the recommendation of Our Riches. I will see if I can track down a copy.

>48 alcottacre: If you can't let me know; I can snail mail it to you. That is, if you let me know by the weekend. I put it in a box that will be sealed this weekend...

Good to see that you got a great book at the last ALA. They are going to be meeting in Washington, D.C. this summer for the first time since Philadelphia.

>50 benitastrnad: OMIGOD. Must find a way to get there and collect MORE BOOKS!!

>49 Chatterbox: Well, I missed the weekend deadline, but I appreciate the offer nonetheless :)

So pleased that you found a new place to live fairly easily. Hope the move goes well.
I've taken note of Our riches which has an alternate title A bookshop in Algiers. My library has copies under both titles.

Hope everything is ok, Suz?

Bit worried not to see you posting.

See >4 Chatterbox: - Suzanne's reading list still being updated, most recently on 23 June.

Hope you're ok and am finding some good reading/listening, Suzanne.

>55 elkiedee: Well pointed-out, Luci.

(((((Hugs))))) to you and Suz.

Sorry, Paul. Haven't had enough energy for posting recently, as I'm packing books in boxes, trying to get work done, trying to manage my father's care remotely, etc, etc. All while battling more migraines than usual, thanks to a string of defective auto-injectors from Aimovig/Amgen.

This weekend I've temporarily escaped reality. Finally got a working autoinjector so I'm back on the anti-migraine meds. Am in DC for the ALA (American Library Association) conference for the first time since Philadelphia in January 2020, in the beforetimes. It's wonderful to see people and feel a part of something bigger. I'm staying with an old friend from my high school days in Arlington, and yesterday we finally made it to the Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian, which was amazing but had so much to absorb that it will require at least a second visit. Hung out for a couple of hours with my wonderful second cousin Nancy, who does Very Important library stuff (meta library, I don't really understand it) at Stanford. Blitzed the exhibition section and scored some fabulous advance review copies of books I want to read, including the upcoming novel by Mohsin Hamid, and Ben Macintyre's next wartime narrative nonfiction book,, all about Colditz. 24 ARCs and counting. Sigh. I have NO self restraint, even after having to pack up thousands of books to move into a much smaller apartment.

That said, my reading is flagging this month. Not terribly surprising, suppose.

>57 Chatterbox: Miss you when you are not posting, dear lady and I just wanted you to know that your friends are still thinking about you. xx

We have the same compulsions - I don't know how on earth I'm going to get my books to the UK or how the heck I will be able to house them in what will surely be more limited space.

>57 Chatterbox: Great to know that you've made it to an event, and hoping for some vicarious excitement about your ARCs.

Well, I scored a copy of Emma Donoghue's new novel "The Haven", and the upcoming book by Elly Griffiths in the Ruth Galloway series. The range is a bit more limited and the event smaller. So I'm glad to have found some stuff that I really want to read and a few new-to-me interesting books and titles. Not to mention reconnecting with friends and book people! Had dinner last night with AnneinDC, which was fab -- an amazing French bistro that had the most delectable non-alcoholic drink, made of lemongrass, lavender, lime juice and soda. Tasted like "limeade" but with more of a kick in the taste -- tangy as well as tart, but very subtle. Tonight was Laotian food with my friend Harlan.

>60 Chatterbox: You have quickly taken me from worried to jealous!

>57 Chatterbox: and >60 Chatterbox: GLAD you're at ALA and GLAD you're back among us and have access to working Aimovig injectors. Hooray for meeting AnneinDC! I was thinking tonight about how successful LT meet-ups have been for me. I can't wait to see the lists! Enjoy! Enjoy!

I currently have three jobs. One is moving. One is remote caretaking (father). One is actual income-generating work.

It would be nice if my clients actually paid me for #3!!

Awaiting nearly $3k now, which I will need to pay movers on the 28th. ARGHHHHHH.

Otherwise, things are OK. Listened to Denise Mina's "Conviction" yesterday on audiobook while I packed boxes and loved it. I really relish an unreliable or dislikable narrator, I confess, even if I anticipated the twists in this plot.

A few standout books this month so far. The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura is very intriguing, even if she's unapologetically elitist in some of her recommendations. A new form of privilege -- my local and national languages are also the universal language... Also The Family Roe, which was a compelling and fascinating look at the history of abortion from all perspectives -- the doctors, the lawyers, the women's movement, the pro-life activists -- with the story of "Jane Roe", aka Norma McCorvey, at its center. The author is careful to chronicle and let the characters speak for themselves, rather than let his POV take over. Then, Seven Fallen Feathers is an eloquent book by Tanya Talaga about the ways in which the end to Canada's residential school system didn't end an era of educational discrimination and trauma for First Nations peoples. HIGHLY recommended for anyone looking for insight into indigenous communities today.

So, I've read two fun books this month (fun as in I enjoyed/relished them; not terribly "fun" stories necessarily...) and am now going to move on rapidly to their sequels.

One is the aforementioned Conviction by Denise Mina; a sequel with the same two principal characters, Confidence, has just appeared and I used one of my Audible credits for that. The other sequel I just picked up this evening is The House With the Golden Door by Elodie Harper. I got that from ALA (an advance reading copy; it will be out in September in the US) and when I realized it was a sequel, I grabbed the first book, The Wolf Den, in a Kindle sale for 99p in the UK. I suppose I was a bit wary -- while historical fiction set in pre-eruption Pompeii, the main characters are all prostitutes in a brothel (the author studied Latin, and drew on Pompeiian graffiti to shape her story). But it was a gripping story of enslaved young women and their battles to control their fate. Now I'm equally engaged in the sequel, and am almost halfway through it already!!

I think I'm talking to myself on my thread now, a bad habit!!

>65 Chatterbox: I'm here and listening! I'll definitely look into the Harper trilogy - great recommendation. Right now I'm listening to Rose Nicolson from the Walter Scott longlist. Good luck with moving and settling in!

I'm here too. Always interested but often without much to say.

>66 vivians: Thanks for the reminder of the Walter Scott longlist! There are some books on that I'd like to read, including Learwife. The Harper trilogy isn't up to that standard, alas, but it's compelling and vivid -- what in my definition amounts to a "thumping good read". If you'd like, I'll save the ARC of book #2 for you to read when I've finished, since it won't be available until September.

>67 ronincats: Thanks for the wave, Roni! I've been remiss about visiting others' threads, so I really shouldn't grumble.

Overwhelmed by the move, the need to work, and now the heatwave!! Temps of 95 F to 100 F, and humidex (or whatever they're calling "it feels as if it's...." temps these days)

Icing on the cake -- the person I was counting on to route my book discards to a used book drive bailed on me at the last minute, without telling me. So I've had 30-odd bags of books sitting in my front hall since Thursday evening. As you can all imagine I'm allergic to throwing books in the trash. But I won't have room. So now I'll need to box THEM up and put them in the basement storage area. ARGHHHHH.

>68 Chatterbox:
Boxing books seems to be a "thing" these days. Since my library is closing February 1 for good, we are boxing and routing books to several different places at the same time. The difference between us - I put in a work order for Logistics. They come and get the boxes and take them to wherever they are routed.

I feel sorry for you working in that heat. I hope the move gets done as in a year or so, I will be moving as well. My move will be across the country - back to the plains.

>69 benitastrnad: I want to put in a work order with someone, LOL...

My only moving advice is -- start soon, and hire pros.

Oh heavens! I can't imagine moving in this heat - not to mention your other contingencies. Courage to do what you have to, Suzanne!

Meanwhile, you strike me again and again. I'm off to Amazon just to see.....

>71 LizzieD: Yup, it's been a bit of a nightmare. My current landlady (soon to be former...) has been giving me grief about all kinds of stuff, eating into the time I need to pack.

I can remember those golden days when moving offices meant only boxing up and putting in a work order.

One lovely year I moved from Brooklyn office to Manhattan office and one box never showed up in the new locale. LOOONG investigation uncovered that some moving guy thought it was marked as Trash and dumped it.

The lesson learned: I never really needed those files anyway as i had them all backed up on network drives and suchlike. And the ones i didn't need - i didn't miss. A Good lesson about letting go.

Hope you're well, Susanne. You are much missed in these parts.

Best of luck with moving and everything else, Suzanne.

Well, I'm OUT of the old place and my boxes, cats and I are IN the new place. Unpacking will take a while, LOL. Of course, the move was full of misadventure -- overcharging and under-performance by movers, notably. My ankle (arthritis) is agonizingly painful. But I will get unpacked, and the cats are happy.

I hope this new home works out for you, your cats and your books.

>75 Chatterbox: We have recently moved and I was surprised at how quickly everything was unpacked, BUT I don't know where anything is, and my books are spread randomly throughout the house, so there will need to be another 'unpacking' soon. Moral: slow and steady takes less time and effort in the end!

>75 Chatterbox: WONDERFUL!!!! I'm sorry about your ankle, but I hope that this new place will be much, much, much more satisfactory than the one you just left. Happy cats are good!

I am so glad I came over here to see what is up with you -- I hope your new home will work out well. An eccentric writer landlord with a cat sounds potentially excellent.

Also that you got to go to the ALA convention. It's weird but so good to go and do the things one used to simply do, isn't it? I've done a ton of music things this summer, enough to be sated, in fact, and very grateful that I did not contract IT while doing so.

As I write one of our cats is staring fixedly at something truly microscopic on the windowsill. Cats!

Cats indeed...

Sir Fergus has an ear infection and while the first round of treatment (antibiotic eardrops and steroids) have cleared up the visible problem, I'm worried that he's becoming apathetic/lethargic and not really curious or interested about what's going on any more. He returns to the vet on Tuesday. Send purrs and vibes, please...

Just dropping a note to comment on how much I relished re-reading Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers. My grandfather pushed the book into my hands in August 1980, when I was stuck with little to do before returning to university for my second year. I loved it then and still do, and I appreciate some of the details even more now, I think. I only wish I'd met my own Peter Wimsey, able to banter intellectually!

yes I always wanted my college days to be filled with intellectual banter / flirting while strolling through sun dappled quads with other Bright Young Things.

Ahh, youth!

>81 Chatterbox: I think that Dorothy Sayers may have wished for her own Peter Wimsey too. She's an intriguing character herself, and Square Haunting made me want to read more about her, and some of the other books. I've read Gaudy Night twice, and listened to Have His Carcase perhaps 20 years ago on audio, at a point when listening to unabridged audio still meant lots of cassettes (or CDs, which had mostly replaced other formats for music but were only just beginning to come into borrowing stock for audio books). I think I have all but two of the Wimsey books (including all in which Harriet is a character) now in coordinated Kindle editions - I had Murder Must Advertise in a very battered US paperback but on my Kindle wishlist for years.

>82 magicians_nephew:, Well, I also liked the fact that Harriet is probably about 30 or maybe slightly older, and that Lord Peter is 45, so not exactly "bright young things"! Indeed, Harriet is a bit dismayed by the undergrads...

Sir Fergus the Fat is recovering from his infection, hallelujah...

Hallelujah indeed for Sir Fergus the Fat! That's good news. I don't think you know that we've taken in yet another feline - a charming tiny kitten that my DH has named Batman. He was a stray who wandered into our yard, and DH started feeding him. It took about a month for him to become touchable, but he's socialized for us now although he hasn't been allowed freedom among the other five. I'm not quite sure how we'll manage that.

You know that I am a huge Sayers fan. I also love the Edward Petherbridge/Harriet Walter video series; they were perfectly cast for my taste, and I'm sorry that they couldn't make Busman's Honeymoon.

>83 elkiedee: Ngaio Marsh remarked somewhere that it was too bad the DLS had fallen in love with her own creation, but I can't find the quotation on the Internet.

>86 LizzieD: Welcome to Batman! What a great name for a feisty kitten. Hope the integration goes as smoothly as possible...

I can't remember which actor it was who portrayed Wimsey that I didn't like -- he played up Wimsey's "camp"/foppish attributes to the extent that it became annoying. I'll check that out.

>87 Chatterbox: Ian Carmichael made a name for himself playing Bertie Wooster, and then somehow got hired to play Lord Peter as if PDW was Bertie. (shuddering delicately)

As the French say, "It is magnificent but it is not Peter Wimsey".

>88 magicians_nephew: I'm shuddering much less delicately. Wooster = Wimsey? Perish the thought. Harriet would never have fallen for a Bertie Wooster...

You have had a time of it, Suzanne. Good to see that you have a new place to live although that still involves the joy of moving.

I just realized that I have a book by Mo Moulton about Dorothy Sayers that would be a great fit for a TIOLI challenge in September -- hurrah!

>90 Familyhistorian: Thanks... It's 2 a.m. and I have just woken up from a moving-related stress dream -- STILL, a month later! But I am so grateful that the worst is over and that I can take my time (kinda sorta) settling in. Obviously, need to get everything sorted out in my super small space so that I can work more efficiently, but it's on track...

>91 Chatterbox: Is that Mutual Admiration Society? I bought it a few months ago and it sounds very interesting, but I feel I should prioritise another library book as my next non fiction read (if only to make space for some of the books that are shown as "on order" on the catalogue(s)). If you do read it before I do (as seems very likely), I look forward to your thoughts on it.

I've been envying you the forthcoming Joseph O'Connor novel, which I think you've rated quite highly. It was listed on the UK Netgalley and I asked for it on the basis that Penguin Random House will probably say no, but just occasionally..... and yesterday was one of those occasions.

I bought Mutual Admiration Society a few months after reading Square Haunting, I think - and it also made me want to read more Dorothy Sayers and Virginia Woolf. I have some of HD's work in Virago editions but I may go for the more conventionally written novels first.

>91 Chatterbox: Yes, it's The Mutual Admiration Society. I got an ARC, I think at one of the ALA bookfests I went to, and have had it lurking unread for some time. I loved Square Haunting and revisiting Gaudy Night was the prod I needed to set aside this group biography. Now I just need the time to read it!!

The Joseph O'Connor book will appear via Europa Editions here, and they usually approve my NetGalley requests and keep me supplied with books, thankfully. That one was super; I knew the broad story, thanks to that movie from the 1970s (?), "The Scarlet and the Black". The novel was much more nuanced. Intriguingly, Europa bills it as being the first in a "Rome Escape Line" trilogy, so I'll be very interested to see what volume 2 will be like!

Meanwhile, I added the new novel by Robert Harris to my UK Kindle today. Act of Oblivion deals with the quest to bring to "justice" the men who signed the death warrant of Charles I, after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660/61. Several ended up in New England (two in New Haven, now home to Yale University), and thus right in my back yard, and it's a story that intrigues me a lot, so I'll be bumping that up my TBR list.

In other book news -- The Last White Man remains one of my disappointing books of the year; Mohsin Hamid can write, the plot is fascinating, but the message is very heavy handed and the whole narrative collapses under its weight.

On the flip side, I adored Flush by Virginia Woolf. It could have been whimsical, but in Woolf's hands, it's an unputdownable little book, one that I'd put alongside A Room of One's Own.

Ooh, I'm envious of getting Europa editions, but although I get lots of rejections I still get lots of acceptances and am autoapproved for Quercus and Serpents' Tail, and I got the new Kate Atkinson book Shrines of Gaiety which is out this month. I loved it and and particularly appreciated it after my eye troubles in the spring.

I was able to snag Shrines of Gaiety as an ARC at ALA in June, which was fab. I would love to be auto-approved for Quercus -- they have a great array of books that I end up buying. I get a monthly e-mail from Knopf that gives me auto-approvals for a lot of their titles, though.

>95 Chatterbox: I quite often buy books that I've read via Netgalley or from the library as Kindle deals, daily or otherwise. But although several other Kate Atkinson books have been Kindle offers, and many Elly Griffiths books do come up as such (and often within 6 months of publication), I don't think I've had an Atkinson novel via Netgalley or previously, any other review source, and Life after Life and A God in Ruins are the last books by her to come up as Kindle offers (I'm not sure how long it took). Again, I've done this with several of Anthony Quinn's historical books set at various points in 20th century England (London and Oxford, I think) originally, this way, but others have come via the library.

>93 Chatterbox:
WOW! You have ambitious reading plans for this month. I am still doing lots of meetings with students and so that cuts into my evening reading time. However, that retirement date is inching closer and that means my reading time will increase.

I am so glad that you got some really good books at ALA. I have the Deon Meyer book on the bedside stand, but haven't started it yet. It is in the immediate queue. Then it will get to you.

>97 benitastrnad: No rush with the Deon Meyer tome. I have some others that will keep me busy, including some previous books in the same series, so I'm not nibbling at my fingers.

Finished the new Robert Harris book -- it was compelling, if not even in terms of pacing. (So, not as good as An Officer and a Spy). But as good as the Cicero trilogy and MUCH better than the underwhelming V2.

Also finished the audiobook re-read of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Every time I turn to one of his books, I discover something new to appreciate or think about, and this was no exception. It's encouraging me to pick up The Buried Giant this month, if I can.

I noticed a new UK Kindle innovation tonight - has "Weekly Kindle Deals" appeared as a heading on Amzon.com? It's a bit confusing because there have clearly been deals which aren't daily or monthly for a while, and I often notice something on ereaderiq or emails from Kind of Book that is either well concealed or not in other Deals at all.

>99 elkiedee: I know that there are periodic special deals, often involving Amazon-published books, and these seem to be more frequent on the UK site than in the US. I'm trying NOT to check daily to preserve my too-limited cash, LOL.

>100 Chatterbox: Very wise, especially at the moment. I tend to ignore the Amazon publications, with exceptions for authors who wrote good books but lost their contract, or who have done a deal to get out of print books reissued and continue a series. I'm sure that the multiple deals are designed to ensnare us and keep us confused.

>98 Chatterbox: Oooo! I have Never Let Me Go on my most immediate Read Now table. You encourage me to finish something so that I can get to it.

I just don't understand why the overall LT star rating of Portrait of a Thief by Grace Li is so low. (Hopefully my five-star rating boosted that a bit...) Nope, this is not a Kazuo Ishiguro novel or anything of that ilk. What it IS is a tremendously entertaining and moving and thought-provoking "caper/heist" homage that ends up triggering thoughts about all kinds of stuff, like identity and heritage. A mixed group of five Chinese-Americans in their early 20s are offered a bounty to steal and "repatriate" iconic works of art pillaged by colonial powers during the sack of the Summer Palace in Beijing. It's a fortune for some, but for others, the reason to take part is to address their sense of being part of a distinctive Chinese art tradition or to restore their connections to their homeland. Some were born in the US, some emigrated at an early age, some more recently. Loyalties to family, to traditions, to friends, to a sense of identity or heritage or nation -- the author deftly plays with all of these. And she rarely takes the easy route, even when it would make the narrative tighter and more reader-friendly. I found this satisfying and fascinating -- normally it would be somewhere between 4 and 4.5 stars for me, but it's so memorable and so squarely on topic (I began reading it a few days before the FBI raided the Met and seized items to be returned to Egypt and Italy....) that I think this will end up being one of the most memorable books I read in 2022, and thus worthy of the full 5 stars. I'll be curious to see what the author does for an encore.

Wow! BB early in the morning, which I take with thanks.

What happened at the Met? I haven't heard anything about it.

>105 benitastrnad: Here's a link to one of the stories about the Met. I apologize, it was actually the Manhattan DA's office that got the warrant, not the FBI... *red faced correction*

https://abc7chicago.com/metropolitan-museum-of-art-nyc-stolen-artifacts-seized/1...

>106 Chatterbox: Hm. The headline 'possibly stolen' makes me pause. Who is going to ascertain the status of each of these items? Of course the stolen ones should be returned.

>107 ffortsa: This has been a long-simmering debate. There are lots of items that were looted and that have zero provenance in museums worldwide. In some cases, they can be tied to specific sites that were looted, and I think that's what is happening here. Specifically, these were stolen from archaeological sites or otherwise "appropriated" and sold on the art market's dark underside. (In contrast to, say, the Elgin Marbles, which is a completely different kind of controversy...) If you're interested, read Loot by Sharon Waxman; there are some other good books that show how investigators compare and contrast records of. known looting/illicit trade to find out where some undocumented objects originally came from.

I plan to read (sometime in the coming months) a book on a similar theme, dealing with requests to return objects appropriated by the US belonging originally to Native Americans. These topics are so entwined with colonial rule that questions of ownership/theft become very tangled. Did the Egyptians (de facto ruled by the French and British) have the moral 'right' to let objects leave the country? What about the famous Benin bronzes? What do art objects lose when they are removed from their context; what do descendants of their creators lose in the sense of their heritage? One person's just solution is another's dangerous meddling. Russia/the USSR seized artworks as a form of reparation -- even though some originally belonged to Jews who died in the Holocaust. The Elgin marbles ended up in England when Greece was still a Turkish province; if I recall correctly, it was the ruling Turks who signed off on that transaction.

At least the Mona Lisa is safe. Da Vinci brought it to France along with him... :-)

I had a blast reading Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. This is not a serious book and it doesn't take itself seriously, but it's a hoot. Imagine four women, former pro assassins (for worthy causes, targeting war criminals, sexual predators and dictators, etc.) now "retiring", only to find themselves targets of their own organization. Can they fend off the attackers and figure out how to get their lives back on track? Are their skills still there? If the reader steps back and thinks about the carnage, and cold-blooded murders, it's a bit disconcerting, but Raybourn has managed to write this in a way that those awkward episodes of violence aren't what the story is about. It's froth, but fun.

>109 Chatterbox: I just finished this book and really enjoyed it! What a concept!!!

>109 Chatterbox: Oooh. I may have to buy that book. There are 106 holds on 2 copies in the NYPL, and no e version, at least not yet. But it sounds delish.

No digital version in the library, you mean? Because mine is a Kindle version. (If it were a real book, it would be winging its way down to NYC for you, but alas...) And yes, it's the absolutely perfect brain candy, undemanding, witty with just the right dash of suspense. As long as you can suspend disbelief!!

>112 Chatterbox: Yes, I meant no e book from the library. If it comes up on a Kindle sale I might indulge, otherwise I might even put my own hold on the paper. Do you think it would be good audio?

>113 ffortsa: Might work well as an audio. It's fast-paced, but it does move back and forth in time, so you'd have to pay attention to that. Would depend on the narrator.

I am in the middle of the Veronica Speedwell series by Raybourn and enjoying it greatly, so I have just put Killers of a Certain Age on the hold list at the library (4th in line). (Opted for the physical book)

I think I preferred "Killers" to the Veronica Speedwell series -- I find that main character too eccentric to be completely credible. Then again, I may just be overly cynical...

>116 Chatterbox: I enjoyed the first 2 books, but the romance in the series is a little bit zany and a little bit angsty. That combination put me off. I tried again with the most recent volume, and the husband plot twist was too much.

>117 libraryperilous: Yes, it's all a little improbable for me, and not in a way that I enjoyed. "Killers" is equally improbable, but it felt like a hybrid of a romp and a serious thriller, so it was lots of fun.

Managed to fall again today -- as I did in June 2020, I stumbled over a patch of uneven pavement, and just as I did then, it was on my way home from the food co-op. Thankfully, nothing broken this time, I'm sure -- some bad cuts, some grazes, a really swollen knee and some spectacular bruises emerging, a painful baby finger on my right hand which is making typing slow, but it's all fixable. If annoying. I squashed my blueberries, which is even more annoying.

Oh shoot. I'm sorry about the fall, Suzanne. I hope that you're taking some pain-killer to make the rest of your day bearable. I so dread falling for my mother and for myself. Take care of yourself! I'm glad that it's not worse.

>119 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy -- yes, I worry a lot about my father falling, and then it's me tripping on one of the too-many uneven paving stones. I think I have cracked one of my ribs, since I can't lift my right arm without pain. My dermatologist (who has done ER rotations in her 'spare' time) thinks that's what happened. Thank heavens for ice packs!

Ouch, hope you feel better soon.

Serena Mackesy's most recent book (new in last few months) as Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls is one of this month's Kindle deals at 99p. Like her third AM novel The Darkest Secret this is a story very reminiscent of a real life story of nasty behaviour in glamorous holiday destinations, with very wealthy characters exploiting teenagers on a beautiful Mediterranean island where their money is important to many of the locals. Disturbing, but quite a page turner.

>121 elkiedee: Oooh, tks for the heads up! It's now on my Kindle... (the illicit UK one...) That AND the new novel by Donal Ryan, win/win.

Yeah, struggling a bit here. My father's wellbeing is really deteriorating and I'm scrambling to address it and find alternative accommodations in assisted living, but there's minimal support and a lot of folks just tell me directly or indirectly that I should move back to Canada to care for him. I feel like reminding them this is the 2020s, not the 1920s or 1820s. And that if I do that, I will be sabotaging my own life beyond repair. ARGH.

>122 Chatterbox: Grrr for you. From what you've posted you're doing your best to help your dad, but I agree it's totally unreasonable to expect you to throw your life away, or to dismiss that you've made and remade your life in the US, including moving from New York to Providence. Hugs and even if you can't say it to these people, do remind yourself of that and that you have the right not to self sabotage.

The people who tell you what to do are - well, I'm not supposed to say that word here. Maybe they would care to step up? You don't need to make any excuses, just say no.

What Luci and Judy said! Though I know it's easier said than done.

Dear Suzanne, your friends here are exactly right. If your father were amenable to moving to Providence so that you could support him in assisted living, that would be one thing. You move to Canada? No. You get to make your choices for your own life just like every other adult. I join the Katie, Judy, Luci chorus.

Thank you all so much for your support. I've decided to head up in the next week or so, as things really deteriorated over the weekend, and today he couldn't get ready to go to a doctor's appointment. I spoke to the eye doctor and rescheduled, and he was rather scathing. (Doctor was, I mean). Thankfully I have my lovely second cousin Ian, who is calm and sensible, to help me make solid decisions. He lives near Ottawa, though -- a bit of a schlep from Guelph (which is near Kitchener/Waterloo, in southern Ontario). Dad still wasn't completely dressed when his helper arrived at 5 p.m. to assist with dinner, and hadn't taken any of his meds. In part because he stopped answering the phone. I just don't know how much of this is because he loses energy because he's not eating properly, how much is because his med compliance is becoming more erratic for various reasons (including manual dexterity even with 'easy open' pill containers) or if it's Parkinson's.

Argh.

So I read The Palace Papers, a useful corrective to all the mythologizing surrounding the royals, if somewhat sad. And then I dreamed that I was giving the Queen advice on the best place to order Peking duck in Beijing. Good grief.

>127 Chatterbox: ((((HUGS)))) to you Suz. Do take good care of yourself and don't neglect your health. (Pot calling kettle black).

Stick to your guns, Suzanne! And look after yourself

I don't know about specific agencies in the Guelph area- is there one that can can your father more help at home?

>131 torontoc: I've been trying to do that for years, literally. The only thing they will qualify him for at present (another assessment scheduled for tomorrow, subsequent to my nagging) is help with showering and dressing 2x a week. Which he hasn't needed until literally the last week or two. And it doesn't help when help with this shows up at 2 p.m., as happened previously. I just called the GP's office and the receptionist told me blandly that the first "appointment" I can get to discuss his care is NEXT TUESDAY. (I was asking for 10 minutes on the phone on an emergency basis, to see whether the disorientation/panic of being transported to a hospital outweighs the growing problems at home.) Still trying to sort out travel arrangements. If I thought I could leave it until the 18th, it would be OK, but...

Ugh, sorry to hear about your worries re your dad.

A hidden 99p UK Kindle deal, not among the daily offers or others but spotted via ereaderiq, that I've had on my Netgalley TBR for ages but have snapped up as a "proper" ebook, is The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective, a book about a woman who was inspired by crime fiction to try her hand at a career in this line.

Welp, I've spent the last month, pretty much, in Canada. Stressful, exhausting, draining -- insert adjective of choice here. I came home after 10 days -- but then got a call that everything had fallen apart and after 36 hours at home, had to race back again. I've now overseen the second move of the year -- this one, of my father into an assisted living facility. After caring for him day & night and sleeping on his sofa, trying to coax him to eat & take his pills, and (vainly) keep up with my work, all while teaching him how to use Depends. Words fail me.

So did reading, by and large.

Oh well. I'm home again, at least for a few days or a week. We'll see.

I hope all goes well for your Dad. Sounds like you had a difficult time, I hope you get some time to yourself in the next few days.

I'm enjoying Martin Fletcher's The List at the moment.

>63 Chatterbox: I am sooo out of the loop, but I just finished The Family Roe, clicked over to the book page, and saw yours was one of the few Conversation threads listed. I see you too are dealing with elderly parent decline, and from my experience these past two plus years locally, I can barely imagine the difficulties having to make arrangements from a distance. You have my sympathy.

>136 qebo: Thanks so much. Distance adds practical difficulties, but the emotional rollercoaster is pretty much the same, I suspect...

At least now he is in a residential facility, I have less anxiety about having something horrible happen and feeling responsible for that, as if I could have done something to prevent it.

But it's a struggle. Makes me realize viscerally what a tragedy aging can be.

I am in the same position as you are right now, me in Toronto, my mum in Montreal, also in a care facility. I just got home from a week there. It's exhausting, on all levels...It's hard to NOT want to control everything and *fix* everything. But we can only do what we can do...

>138 jessibud2: We can't fix everything, though expectations that we can are tough to shrug off... Sigh. Hang in there. I'll be back in Toronto/Guelph in late January, I think.

Did you have any trouble traveling to and from? Didn't I remember that you had some kind of problem traveling to Canada - or was that connected with your Dad? I am off to Bozeman, MT for 5 days with my sister, starting on Thanksgiving Day.

>140 benitastrnad: That was related to pandemic restrictions, all of which have ended, thankfully. There still are relatively few flights, and they can be quite pricey, but no longer a requirement to quarantine/test/prove you are negative in order to cross the border either way. Thus removing what were to me prohibitive aspects involved in traveling, just in the nick of time!

Thank you as always for books, thank you for this group and thanks for you. Have a lovely day, Suz.

November may have been a bumpy month, but it also has yielded a bumper crop of good books.

The Book of Goose is a remarkable novel, the latest by Yiyun Li. I remember reading her earlier work, The Vagrants, but for some reason didn't really follow up by reading much else by her. This one wasn't easy -- hard-to-like characters in grim circumstances -- but rewarding.

American Ramble is a great travel book by someone I know, Neil King, a former colleague. It ranks right up there with some of the greats, IMO.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd was a gamble, but one that I'm very glad I made. There's an element of fantasy and/or magical realism here; while the book is in essence a "thumping good read" rather than a literary tour de force, it was a real page-turner with a creative plot and well-crafted characters.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng was another remarkable book by this author. I'd avoided reading it because the description made it sound like simply a variant on the same twist -- Japanese folks in Malaysia, the legacy of World War II and colonialism, etc. -- but it's got quite a different plot and feel. Was delighted to discover that his third book (only a decade since the last one...) is due out in the UK in March.

I've been reading the "Enzo Macleod" mysteries, and while enjoying them as brain candy, they're at heart not that intriguing. The major character, Enzo, is someone for whom women fall at the drop of a hat, and it sounds like wish fulfillment on the author's part. (A bit like Stieg Larsson with Mikael Blomkvist or whatever his name was...)

If I look back to late October, I can find some standouts there, too. I finally read November Road by Lou Berney, and it's got some intriguing and convincing characters as well as a fab sense of time and place. Our Missing Hearts was the first book I've read by Celeste Ng, and it falls into the category of "thumping good read", a solid dystopian novel that has an all-too convincing premise.

Oh golly, I knew your Dad was deteriorating but not how bad it had gotten. So glad you were able to get him into assisted living. I hope he'll do ok at that level for awhile. Too easy for me to drone on about how hard it was with my mother, we never could seem to keep up, so no sooner did we get her settled in one situation than we had to shift her to another. And most of it because she made the wrong choice at a critical moment: turning down her 'turn' at a little cottage on the premises where it is likely she could have stayed for the whole ordeal with the right help.

My sister is unwell (too long a story) and has lived in Canada since college days (McGill) and there is no question that as frustrating and expensive as our care is, the Canadian system is in dire straits, some of it ethical. One ends up wondering if 'they' (the deciders) delay (and sometimes conversely demand) you do (or don't do) certain things in the hopes that you will die before the problem comes back. Cost-saving measure, ultimately. It's ugly and creepy.

My main comment is that no matter what you do, all in or as much as you can without ruining your own life, it won't ever 'feel' like enough. Over time that feeling has gentled in my soul. I did all I could. I know she suffered and was unhappy, but I couldn't make it all work for her.

Just this morning I read that passage in This is Happiness when Noe's mother fell at home in Dublin (p.278 in my book, a hardcover) at the end of chapter 32. Fathers, are, of course, different, but not entirely. And even less so, I expect, for those who have had warm and generous fathers.

>144 sibylline: I think the Canadian system can work well but not when it confronts complex needs. Like dental insurance, it's best for preventative and non-urgent care. On the one hand, my mother has had extremely good cardiac care, living in Toronto (more specialists, plus when it's life-threatening and immediate, they tend to get off their posteriors.) With my Dad, it's mostly been the support stuff -- now that he's in a facility, ironically he gets the PSW (personal social worker) support 2x daily, whereas at home I struggled to get approval for 3x a week... (My mother is living with my brother; neither currently is speaking to me as I've been helping my father and in the process found out that they took about $13k out of his bank accounts without his knowledge or consent. Sigh.)

I do suspect that it's a bit Darwinian -- but then, is there any GOOD approach to providing/funding care? The UK's hybrid model is no better; ours may provide excellent care for those who can afford it, but it's crap at equitable distribution. (Arguably, in Canada, everyone is at the same disadvantage?)

I'm in touch with my high school English teacher who helped run the IB program. Her husband, who taught IB Anthropology and other subjects, including the mandatory Theory of Knowledge course, is in the early stages of some kind of cognitive decline, and she is struggling with what's involved in being a caregiver. It is very tough to retain one's sense of humor and perspective, and one's patience, in this situation. I think I have done better than I anticipated, perhaps because I had to deal with all this stuff with Gideon before (well, not the cognitive stuff, just different severe illness and end-of-life stuff). I'm just tired and drained.

On a related note -- I found myself thinking about how state-administered healthcare is demonized as socialism, and how readily people swap the label communism for socialism. After reading Whatever Happened to Tradition?, I found myself both irritated and challenged. The author approaches this from a Eurocentric pov, as well as from the pov of a Catholic believer, and laments the loss of traditions. But he also makes assertions that I find troubling, eg that traditions don't require people to behave badly to others (eg racism) Well, theoretically, no, but you don't have to look far to seize on examples of the ways that people have used tradition to do precisely that. There's a solid argument in favor of remembering our collective history and our ties to others in the community, but in a globalized world, how do we adjust to also be inclusive? I've yet to find anyone who has answered that question satisfactorily. Yes, there are lots of those on the left who have written about how people should and must behave and what they should and must "let go", and who have strong definitions of progress. But I, at least, have learned to question the idea that progress is inevitably good (look at social media...) and we get nowhere at all by telling people what they should/must do if they are to be "good".

Speaking of "good", in a completely different way, a very good thriller by Henry Porter, Remembrance Day, is coming out on audiobook, and I just got NetGalley approval to listen to it. Which is excellent, as I am battling migraines (weeks without my Aimovig while in Canada, plus lousy weather) and am struggling to read.

>145 Chatterbox: I think that here in the "United" Kingdom we now have more than one system as there are some differences in Scotland and Wales. And I think the NHS is still a bit better than the US system - I'm not really sure how Canada works, but in any insurance based system there are too many things that are going to be difficult to insure. We do have a problem with the medical vs care issue, made worse by the privatisation of care services whether home based or residential. Mike's mum was in a residential home for her last 5 years, and I don't think it was especially terrible or especially good, though the staff seemed pleasant enough, but some months before she died, the owners were found dead in an apparent suicide pact, prompted by financial woes. Which raises a question of whether relying on private care homes is sustainable.

The Ontario (and Canadian, in general) health care system is in tatters and only getting worse. Poor Tommy Douglas, father of socialized medicine in Canada. Probably spinning in his grave..

By the way, just as an FYI, PSW stands for Personal Support Worker, not social worker.

It's terrifying what lies ahead for us, when we get to that point. I hope I am no longer around by then, to be honest. After everything I have learned and seen, caring long distance for my own mother, I can't see things getting better any time soon. :-(

>147 jessibud2: Sorry re PSW -- I knew that but migraine intervened.

I agree re things getting worse. A friend of mine has told me she is going to turn to MAID when the time comes rather than rely on the healthcare system. And she's a legal professional. Sigh.

ETA: My father does have an excellent GP; he is very fortunate. And the practice makes time for him whenever it's needed. He's had decent medical care, but (a) I can detect signs of stress among the specialists he has consulted and (b) there have been significant gaps in the care/support for him when he tried to age in place.

In the rural areas of the U.S. the health care is crap. Plan and simple. CRAP! The reason- people with medical degrees don't want to practice in rural areas. There are many reasons, but they all trace back to money. Too many patients, not enough support personal (nurses, social workers, psychiatric, physical therapists, home health care, housekeepers, etc. etc.) income disparities, and easier life style when living in large cities. Incentives to get medical personal to go to rural areas don't seem to be working, so the health care available is just plain not good. What totally irritates me is that it is these very areas that would have benefited from the American's Health Care Act, but it was these very areas that were so against it.

I am facing many of the above mentioned problems with my aging mother. It takes an incredible amount of time to deal with her health care. It is a full time job.

>148 Chatterbox: - I have had that discussion (re MAID) with a few friends and though I don't feel anywhere near it yet, I agree that relying on the health care system as it currently is and the direction it's heading, is not an appealing prospect. Just in the past week, I heard a discussion about this on the radio, too.

>145 Chatterbox: >146 elkiedee: We are also in same process of moving my mother into a residential home. She lives in Wales at the moment and the savings limit there (£50,000) is much higher than in England. I've found two homes that I think would be suitable - I think certainly I would be happier there than in her current situation, where she is very isolated.

>151 SandDune: Wishing you much luck with this process. I agree that it seems quite logical that someone would be more content where they have amenities and companionship, but I also realize more and more that people see this move as some kind of ending rather than a beginning. Many have already experienced other losses, eg. hearing, vision, mobility, cognitive, etc. The loss of independence and self-determination is a tough one, even when someone is prepared to acknowledge its inevitability. My father's cousin is in the midst of this process now; my HS English teacher and I have been chatting online about her husband (another former teacher), who has always been a curmudgeon but now is also deaf and struggling with cognitive problems -- and who is in denial. Sigh. No easy answers to this one.

A few bookish notes.

Finished Colm Toibin's tome about Thomas Mann finally. Alas, it's nowhere close to being as good as The Master, about Henry James. Still, even ho-hum Toibin is better than excellent novels by others, and The Magician certainly has moments that are extremely strong, while at the same time presenting themes and ideas about family ties and exile that intrigued me.

The more I read by Lawrence Osborne, the more impressed I am. His latest, On Java Road, is set against the backdrop of the Hong Kong protests, and really vividly captures the feel of Hong Kong. But it's another book about exiles, and cosmopolitans versus nationalists, and fraught relationships against the backdrop of geopolitical strife. Osborne strikes precisely the right balance, and never succumbs to the temptation to indulge in melodrama.

We Are Bellingcat is a great intro to the kind of data-driven open-source reporting that is helping to reshape journalism. Stylistically, this was underwhelming, but the first-person narrative by its founder was compelling, and I have a lot of respect for (and interest in) this as a way to make 'conventional' journalism more credible. Appropriately, there are hundreds of footnotes for each chapter... (On a separate note, I was on a Zoom call this afternoon with some of my former WSJ colleagues; we're in the process of former a collective/nonprofit to work with local news organizations and provide editing support, mentorship, etc. etc. I think this will be absolutely fascinating.)

>152 Chatterbox: people see this move as some kind of ending rather than a beginning I used to think that moving my mother into a residential home would be very much a last resort. But over the last few months it’s become clear that she is desperately lonely in her current situation, and that is making her very unhappy. And her worry about minor issues is also causing her a huge amount of anxiety. None of that can be resolved in her current situation. (Actually they probably could to a certain extent, but not with someone as stubborn as my mother). If she lived nearer to us in the same sort of accommodation then it would probably be manageable for a little longer. But she needs someone who can pop in for just half an hour or so several times a week, not someone who can go for several days periodically.

I am also having this same problem with my mother. It is so hard to deal with these things long distance and in our case there is no facilities close to our family and friends that would provide the kind of services that my mother needs. I am trying to deal with all of this long distance and it is so frustrating and hard to do. I have made the decision to retire February 1st, 2023 and will be moving somewhere closer to my mother. I tried a few years ago to get my mother to move down here where I would be more on-the-spot, but she didn't want to leave her family and friends. I understand but it may come to that anyway. I am also not of the right temperament to make a good full-time caregiver, but I have decided that I will be moving somewhere closer to her in the coming year.

So much to respond to here. I'm glad your Dad is getting good care and I agree absolutely about Canadian health care being in a mess and also that it is best for preventative and non-urgent. It is also OK for extremely urgent. My sister falls somewhere in the middle, she's ill, it's most likely auto-immune related but . . . . difficult to diagnose and to treat, no doubt about that.

Tradition. What a bottomless pit of a topic! Tradition is useful until it isn't. Nothing stays the same, does it, so traditions must shift and adjust too. I also wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't mean different things to different people.

I can't make up my mind about Toibin.

So, if Lucy can't make up her mind about Toibin, I find myself stumped by John LeCarré. Specifically, the female characters in some of his novels. Ann Smiley is one-dimensional, as are the others I've encountered thus far in his Smiley novels. And I just finished reading The Little Drummer Girl, in which one of the main characters is a young woman, Charlie. Now, the plot requires her to be troubled, but I found her (in the book) unconvincing. It's a great role on screen for a good actress (as the recent mini-series just demonstrated) who can impose a strong personality on the role of a manipulated woman. I admire the writing, the plot is remarkable but... I thought Charlie was being used by everyone around her, including her creator. Sigh. Is this just me??

Two quite different 'thumping good reads', separated by nearly 40 years.

Time After Time by Allen Appel was first published in the mid-1980s, and I think I picked up a paperback copy around 1986 or 1987. (So there are no mobile phones and no Internet here; the main character watches movies on VHS....) It's one of the first books I read about time travel, and the main character finds himself suddenly being yanked back to the time of the Russian Revolution. There are others in this series, although I've never read them, so I may fall down that rabbit hole in the new year. I don't think I've re-read this one since, oh, 1990 or so!

The Verifiers by Jane Pek is a brand new book -- it appeared on the list of books to look out for published 2x annually by the Millions, and it's a hoot. She also makes all her characters diverse without hammering it home, which I loved. That's just who they happen to be; it's not the 'message' of the narrative and the plot takes center stage. Which is great. Imagine that there was a company dedicated to checking out the truthfulness of your online romantic matches? Yup... Now, imagine that one of its clients ends up dead, and the only person who seems to care is the newest/youngest recruit?

Several notches above pure brain candy, both of these are interesting or smart, and both are definitely engaging and suspenseful. If you only picked one, I'd suggest The Verifiers, which is quite literally unputdownable.

>157 Chatterbox: - I have that time travel book on my shelf (probably from the same time you've had it) though I have yet to read it. My favourite time travel book ever, though, is Jack Finney's Time and Again. I have been waiting decades for the right person to make it into a film. A Ron Howard or a Spielberg. Done right, it would be terrific. Done badly, I would probably hate it. It's one of the few books I have reread a couple of times, and I am not a rereader, generally speaking.

>158 jessibud2: Shelley, I agree wholeheartedly except that I am a rereader, and the Finney never fails!

Hi, Suze!

>158 jessibud2: I've heard of that and definitely should give it a try! I love the idea of time travel; I think the first book(s) I ever read on this theme were back in childhood, when I picked up A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley and Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer. I actually remember buying the latter at about the age of 9, when a friend of mine and our mothers went to some kind of book festival in London.

>160 Chatterbox:- I read the Utley book but the Finney was my first in this genre and really got me hooked. There is a sequel which I own but never read. I think I'm a bit afraid of disappointment. Another I loved was Ken Grimwood's Replay and Darryl Brock's If I Never Get Back, both of which also have sequels which I own but haven't read. Maybe that should be a goal for me for next year!

Happy Christmas from my Christmas gnome!

>162 SandDune: Thanks, Rhian, to you and the Welsh Christmas gnome!! And happy christmas to you and the family as well...

>158 jessibud2: Belatedly -- I picked up the Finney book in an Audible sale, so I may listen to it this weekend!

Meanwhile, I find myself reading/listening to a lot of linked books. I'm finishing listening to Meet Me in Atlantis by Mark Adams, which made me want to re-read Krakatoa by Simon Winchester; separately, i had finished a mildly interesting novel partly set in Hawaii and remarkably, when I picked up Winchester's book, it mentioned the private island that served as a model for part of the setting for Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams. Williams CLAIMS she is not using Amelia Earhart as a basis for one of her two characters, but I think that's balderdash.

Just got a call from my father's retirement facility to tell me he tested positive for COVID today. Thankfully, he apparently just has the sniffles, and everyone else who is down with it also is only mildly unwell, with cold-like symptoms. I'm not planning to tell him, and the facility won't either -- they think he won't understand but I think he will and he'll catastrophize and assume he's about to die.

Off to make myself a late lunch so that my migraine doesn't worsen.... last night was pretty grim.

Merry Christmas to all!!

>164 Chatterbox: - Suzanne, if you can get hold of the hard copy of Time and Again as well, try to. I also have the audio in my collection but there is a visual aspect to the physical novel that you miss in the audio and I think you'd enjoy it. It definitely adds an interesting and unique dimension to the story.

>165 jessibud2: I will try, but I managed to crack my reading glasses, so until I can afford to replace them, my non-Kindle/audiobook reading will be de minimis, alas... I'm rather cross with myself about this.

Do enjoy Time Travel books. Making notes of some of the suggestions tendered above.

if Ann Smiley is a one note character (although brought to lovely couplex life by Sian Phillips in the TV serial) What about Connie The Russia Maven? We get a lot of her life in both Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the later books of the Karla trilogy.

I still remember the muddle they made of Little Drummer Girl when they cast Diane Keaton in the role. Haven't looked in at the new production