FlossieT's Common Reading: Further Confessions

Previously: Common reading, confessions thereof, January-init. April

Reading now:

The Gone-Away World - Nick Harkaway

This year's list (decided to dispense with the touchstones as correcting them again every time I added a book was getting old):

January
1. The Sewing Circles of Herat - Christina Lamb (326 pages)
2. Ghostwalk - Rebecca Stott (324 pages)
3. Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson (332 pages)
4. The Man in the Picture - Susan Hill (145 pages)
5. Don't Panic - Neil Gaiman (240 pages, or 241 if you count the acknowledgements...)
6. Through the Dark Woods - Joanna Swinney (152 pages)
7. Dead Lovely - Helen FitzGerald (298 pages)
8. The Master Bedroom - Tessa Hadley (309 pages)
9. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (328 pages)
10. A Bit on the Side - William Trevor (245 pages)
11. The Flying Troutmans - Miriam Toews (274 pages)

February
12. 84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff (97 pages)
13. Sleepyhead - Mark Billingham (405 pages)
14. I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You - Ally Carter (284 pages)
15. In the Woods - Tana French (592 pages)
16. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman (289 pages)
17. Coraline - Neil Gaiman (185 pages)
18. American Gods - Neil Gaiman (588 pages)
19. Ella Minnow Pea - Mark Dunn (203 pages)
20. The 13 Clocks and the Wonderful O - James Thurber (158 pages)
21. Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (338 pages)
22. Angels of the Flood - Joanna Hines (409 pages)
23. Cassandra at the Wedding - Dorothy Baker (225 pages)
24. No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay (437 pages)
25. Proust and the Squid - Maryanne Wolf (295 pages)
26. My Antonia - Willa Cather (372 pages)

March
27. Vicky Had One Eye Open - Darryl Samaraweera (211 pages)
28. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (374 pages)
29. What Should I Do With My Life? - Po Bronson (400 pages - I'm counting the gushing acknowledgements and the saccharine reading group guide)
30. The Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick (289 pages)
31. Tuesdays With Morrie - Mitch Albom (192 pages)
32. Death of an Englishman - Magdalen Nabb (238 pages)
33. The Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones (328 pages)
34. The Idle Parent - Tom Hodgkinson (?? drat forgot to check before giving it back)
35. Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl, I Learnt From Judy Blume - ed. Jennifer O'Connell (275 pages)
36. I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Sloane Crosley (230 pages)

April
37. Florence, A Delicate Case - David Leavitt (176 pages)
38. Imagined London - Anna Quindlen (162 pages)
39. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin (237 pages)
40. Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam (369 pages)
41. I Like My Job - Sarah Herman (285 pages)
42. Kabul in Winter - Ann Jones (308 pages)
43. Designs for a Happy Home - Matthew Reynolds (240 pages)
44. Molly Fox's Birthday - Deirdre Madden (221 pages)
45. Earth and Ashes - Atiq Rahimi (54 pages)
46. Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín (252 pages)

May
47. Flood and Fang - Marcus Sedgwick (247 pages)
48. The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels (336 pages)
49. The Twisted Heart - Rebecca Gowers (280 pages)
50. Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyre (c.250 pages)
51. All the Living - C.E. Morgan (c.190 pages)
52. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene (130 pages)
53. Hurting Distance - Sophie Hannah (408 pages)
54. Hens Dancing - Raffaella Barker (344 pages)
55. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels (294 pages)
56. Second Honeymoon - Joanna Trollope (383 pages)
57. Everything Will Be All Right - Tessa Hadley (422 pages)
58. Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda (279 pages)

June
59. Mr Toppit - Charles Elton (343 pages)
60. The Journal of Dora Damage - Belinda Starling (452 pages if you count all the various notes and acknowledgements - which I do)
61. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness (479 pages)
62. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness (519 pages)
63. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman (457 pages)

Not counting:
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry (re-read)

Wow Flossie what a great list! Gone are the days when I used to be able to have that same number by April!

From thread the last, I say to VioletBramble...BARROWMAN called him boyfriend...woo...that seems a surprise, but then again I know for lots of men the idea of "husband" implies a wife which just sounds icky to them so they go into the language's bag of tricks for a substitute and get the bloodless "spouse" and, well, and, errrmmm, nothing much else.

Cutesy-poopsie "other half," "better half," "ball and chain" (appropriate as that might be in a certain type of gay relationship), what? Personally, since I've had two wives and lots of hellish nightmares because of each of them, I don't associate "husband" with "wife" anymore. I haven't thought of an alternative, though, so any ideas? Flossie, you got any (since I'm hijacking your new thread already)?

Oh, I loved Maps for Lost Lovers. It was not without its flaws, particularly in the plot; but Aslam writes so beautifully.

>3 richardderus:: none whatsoever, I'm afraid. I can see why 'husband' might be undesirable, but I can't think of any other description that makes it clear that it's a relationship formalised in law or through the passage of a significant period of time. Most of the cutesie-poopsie and whatevers can be used interchangeably to refer to someone you're spending time with regardless of whether you're not sure about them yet or you know you intend to spend the rest of your lives together, so aren't much help (besides being cutesy).

>4 Cariola:: I've only read one chapter so far, but The Wasted Vigil was my absolute favourite book of last year, and I'm going to hear Aslam read from it during the Cambridge WordFest in a couple of weeks (assuming I can find someone to pick the kids up from school, that is...), so I thought I should acquaint myself with his earlier work.

Will have to pick up previous thread bits soon but not tonight... was singing at Easter vigil until v late and need sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

>3 richardderus: Richard - yeah , he def said boyfriend. I don't know how long ago that show was filmed though. Did he call him his husband in the book? I didn't know he had written a book. I'll have to look for that one.

Hi Flossie!

>6 VioletBramble:, I would check the book out of the library, truly I would...and he went with "boyfriend" there IIRC. But the book was written a while back.

ETA he uses "partner" as often as "boyfriend," and that's possibly even more bloodless than "spouse."

>7 richardderus:: I note Barrowman's autobiography is amongst the many casualties of the #amazonfail delisting...

ahem.

Right, replying to neglected posts on previous thread:

>312 & 317: flissp & richard, couldn't let you down. Even though so far no books, much Barrowman gossip.

>313, >315 & >316: Fourpawz, jmaloney & wunderkind - I'm both glad not to be completely alone and almost resolving to finish 1984 one day - almost. But not quite. I don't think I'm really an Orwell person at heart.

>314: Lois, I feel bad about not liking the Mueenuddin more, especially as it was SUCH a beautiful book, and I am hugely grateful to the nice lady at Bloomsbury who sent it to me. I think in part I came to it expecting something more overtly political, which got me off on the wrong foot. But I did feel his female characterisation wasn't all it could have been. I'm rather uncomfortable, though, that the reason I didn't think the rural stories worked so well is quite possibly largely composed of my own cultural ignorance. James Lasdun's piece in the Grauniad a couple of weeks ago was interesting - I read this when I was halfway through the book.

I do still find myself thinking about 'Our Lady of Paris' a fair bit (but then, that's the New Yorker-published one, isn't it?).

and finally on this thread!

>2 MissDotty:: TheLibraryNook, thanks for stopping by :) Being on this group is a humbling thing for one's reading, I find - others seem to be so more prolific, even when they can also lay claim to the reasons I would usually proffer for not making greater progress. I've definitely read more this year than I had at the same point last year, and lay some of the blame (cough) credit before LT.

>4 Cariola:: Cariola, I'm really enjoying the Aslam - found it hard to get into to start with, as the descriptions of the town he begins with are so abstractly beautiful I found it difficult to snag on a thread to lead me in further, but thoroughly absorbed now. About the only good thing I can say about family outing to the HEAVING HOLIDAY HELL that was Legoland Windsor is that at least all the unnecessary queuing gave me time to read. Although I imagine that there weren't all that many people holding chunky Faber hardbacks around the place, so I probably looked fairly eccentric.

Brief note on The Secret Scripture (Sebastian Barry), which I'm not counting towards my total as I only read it for the first time last year. Still love this book, and find it easier to 'forgive' the ending on a re-read than I did first time, when the sense of horror and dread as I began the last chapter did make me slightly nauseous. It's just so beautifully written, and the voice of Roseanne so perfectly realised - although interestingly, having heard Barry read twice from the book (once virtually via podcast!), he clearly 'hears' her voice with a much more urgent, excited, purposeful tone than I did in my head. Re-reading, I find Roseanne in my mind's ear now sounds like a blend of how she first 'sounded' and how Barry reads her. No great loss, his Irish accent is at least authentic ;-) Definitely want to read more Barry (next year?).

Better have some dinner now. I was intending to read a big chunk of Aslam tonight but it may now be rather smaller than I had planned.

family outing to the HEAVING HOLIDAY HELL that was Legoland Windsor Every parse-able unit of that statement made me simultaneously laugh and shudder. "Heaving Holiday Hell, how may I direct your call?" *chuckle*

I can only say that Barrowman was the LEAST justified case of classification as adult in my recent memory. Salacious detail? Oh heck no! What a carve-up!

The audience would just like to say that we are enjoying this exchange immensely and phrases like "HEAVING HOLIDAY HELL" in particular.

I've yet to read Amazon's rationalisation for this idiocy but I'm certain it exists somewhere in print.

I just loved Aslam's very poetic prose. Just beautiful writing.

Maybe I will have to give Barry another try. I did enjoy this book, it just didn't quite live up to the hype for me.

>9 richardderus: I KNOW. What were we thinking?? Still, the kids liked it. I, on the other hand, have sworn on my mother's life never to darken its doors again during school holiday time. (Kids unimpressed with this element of the day's events.)

>10 tiffin: There's a good round-up on the Seattle PI blog. "Technical glitch", apparently...

>11 Cariola: I've only read The Secret Scripture myself so can't speak to his other books (yet), but I really loved it. Despite all the prizes it hasn't really been massively hyped over here - don't think the Brits like people getting old.

Have finished Aslam but I need to sleep... comments over the weekend, probably, as working late tomorrow night (argh so soon after the last one too :-( )

>12 FlossieT: "Technical glitch" is so handy a dodge, no? And assigning blame to someone who works in France was clever too. Maybe it wasn't Amazon with an agenda, it seems unlikely to me anyway, but SOMEone knew what s/he was doing....

Living in right-wing hell all these years has made me paranoid. I need to lie down now.

>13 richardderus: if I was Kath I'd have a witty image up my sleeve of a cold flannel for you. But I'm not, so you'll just have to imagine it. Sorry. This is a no-frills reading experience over here.

40. Maps for Lost Lovers - Nadeem Aslam
(369 pages)

Can I just say: I'm going to see Nadeem Aslam at Cambridge WordFest this week and I'm geekily excited? Thanks.

The Wasted Vigil was my absolute favourite book of last year, and explored some complex themes in a very sensitive and even-handed manner. What really set it apart was the astonishing lyricisim of his writing, and the impressive achievement of poetic grace within what managed to remain very economical prose (she writes, uneconomically). I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it isn't - it's just so rare a talent it's hard to believe anyone could write like that. On the strength of that, I grabbed a lovely hb copy of Maps for Lost Lovers from the charity shop a few months back, even though the reviews I've seen are very mixed.

Set in a dreamlike town somewhere in England, largely peopled by immigrants, the novel explores over the course of a year the impact on the Pakistani community of the disappearance of Chanda and Jugnu, lovers who have set up house together in defiance of the social orthodoxy of their community. Technically "living in sin" by those standards, eventually it is disclosed that Chanda has been unable to obtain a divorce from her husband, an illegal immigrant who married her to gain citizenship, then promptly disappeared.

A lot of reviews have angrily denounced this as a deeply prejudiced book: it examines with uncomfortable closeness issues to do with marriage and divorce, especially the arranged kind, domestic violence, honour killings, women's rights and much more that has been sensationalised in the tabloid press over the years.

What made it particularly interesting for me were the sensitive portrayals of the devout women at the centre of the book. Although the fanaticism and obsession with playing by the rules is difficult for us to sympathise with, Aslam brings to life the sincerity of belief and family love that support dreadful actions.

There is some unevenness in the plot, and I found the opening chapters difficult to get through as they were just too poetic and descriptive to easily engage with (not ideal for an opening). Some of the characterisation does occasionally tend towards caricature. I'd give it a good 4 stars - it's an interesting book - but The Wasted Vigil is a much better exploration of many of the same themes, in a very similar society.

Well, I was doing really well with my book acquisition until this week.... Stasia and Catey have itemised their hauls recently so I'm hoping it's OK to follow suit!

BookMooch:
The Last Light of the Sun - Guy Gavriel Kay
The Affinity Bridge - George Mann
(plus a couple more pending...)

Lovely lady at Bloomsbury:
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin
The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels
Designs for a Happy Home - Matthew Reynolds (no touchstone)

Work:
Furniture - Lorraine Marriner (no touchstone, poetry)
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree - Ann Weisgarber (no touchstone, Orange-listed)
Intuition - Allegra Goodman
Saviors and Survivors - Mahmood Mamdani (no touchstone, on Darfur)
I Like My Job - Sarah Herman (no touchstone, graphic novel about office life)
Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate - Terry Eagleton (no touchstone, based on Terry Lectures given at Yale last year)

Borrowed from Mum:
Midaq Alley - Naguib Mahfouz
Brief Lives - Anita Brookner

I suppose I should just console myself that if I'd acquired at that rate for the rest of the month I really would be in trouble.

Listing these has just made me realise that I missed out...

41. I Like My Job - Sarah Herman
(285 pages, no touchstone, work page linked)

I wasn't going to count this as I'm not really a graphic novel person but it's just so charming I have to. The narrator works in some sort of clearly web-y, information-design or usability type job. The chapters deal with situations that will be familiar to people in modern office jobs - the performance review, leaving-do fatigue, administrivia, unexpected change, unwanted promotion - and are very funny in a quiet sort of way. "What was I interested in? I was interested in.... EVERYTHING. And nothing." - even better with the spare black-and-white drawings. Her depiction of a project colleague "going ballistic" when asked at the last minute to contribute a day's work to a nightmare project is genius, as is much of the stuff on PowerPoint. It ought to sell a gazillion copies if there is any justice in the world as it is lovely.

I would scan in an example or two of the best pages but the kids are desperate to go to the park...

ETA link for Sarah Herman book... and then again to re-correct the Brief Lives touchstone. sigh.

I've added The Wasted Vigil to my tbr mountain. Your description is great!

The fact that you think The Wasted Vigil is even better than Maps for Lost Lovers just proves that, like all good writers, Aslam is practising and learning and bettering his craft. All of which makes me excited to read The Wasted Vigil. I also have his first book somewhere in my stacks . . . something with Birds in the title.

It's Season of the Rain Birds. And may I add that I SO envy you getting the chance to meet him!

Rachael, you've sold me on The Wasted Vigil, a book I've had my eye on for some time. Thanks!

I read the other reviews of Maps for Lost Lovers and there seems to be an either love it or hate it response. For some, the cultural divide was too great but you didn't seem to have this problem, did you, Rachael?

Okay, I give up. I can't read YOUR thread now, either, Rachael. You join Stasia in my "oh help no" file...too many tempting goodies.

Fare thee well!

>16 Cariola: & >17 Cariola:: Cariola, The Wasted Vigil is currently the book I'd probably cite in answer to that meme question "If you could force everyone to read one book..." - I say 'probably' rather than definitely because the Ann Jones nonfic about Afghanistan that I've nearly finished might well edge it out at the moment, as it contains so many appalling facts about life in that country that Everyone Ought To Know. But then again, many people find it easier to engage with fiction to understand those sorts of things... I may not actually "meet" him - it's the first time I've been to this particular festival, and I have a feeling, based on the venue, that it may just be a straight reading with possibly audience questions; we'll see. Am definitely going to look out for Season of the Rain Birds.

>18 kidzdoc:: kidzdoc, yay! See above re Vigil evangelism :)

>19 tiffin:: tiffin, no, I think it's fair to say I didn't find it impassable. It is true that many of the events and attitudes he describes are really appalling, but there are one or two more "Westernised" characters in there to bridge the gap between the devoutly unquestioning and the Western reader, although the devout do get more airtime. Even with the devout, he can paint in shades of grey: Suraya, the "accidentally" divorced and exiled young woman who must marry again before she is allowed to re-marry her husband, is particularly interesting because she does question the justness of the situation she's in even as she does everything within her power to make it work out.

Aslam isn't trying either to apologise for or to outright condemn the society he's describing, but seems more interested in exploring the dynamics within it and their consequences. People who want a more Manichean read would, I think, be disappointed and even angered by it.

That division in the reviews was what put me off reading it sooner.

>20 richardderus:: richard, will you come back if I promise to read some really crap books for a bit? I'm really good at reading fluff.

#14: Great haul you got, Rachael!

I am joining Cariola in saying I am jealous of your getting to meet Aslam. I currently have all of his books on the Continent. One of these days, I may actually be able to find them to read them.

Lurking on your thread, Flossie, and moving up the Aslam books in my monumentally high pile.

>21 FlossieT: Rachael, I am not here so I cannot comment, but I observe into the aether that even your "fluff" is interesting.

My golem is leaving now.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin

I am interested in your thoughts on this one if you get to it. I heard a very interesting interview with him on NPR. I'd looked past the book because of a bad review from someone but get interested again with the interview.

Great haul is right!

I was sooo pleased to finally catch up on your old thread .. mais non, je ne suis pas fini!! noooooooo

>22 alcottacre: & >23 kiwidoc: Nadeem Aslam event was today. Wow. Really, really, really interesting, didn't read very much, but talked a lot about his background, how the process of writing works for him, etc. etc. - completely fascinating. Also reminded me just what an amazing book The Wasted Vigil is (although I didn't really need reminding!!). In the UK, it's out in pb in June too so possibly easier to pick up. More comments to follow soon-ish, I hope.

a propos of >24 richardderus:, if anyone visiting this thread happens to bump into richard, perhaps they could let him know that I just read a very fluffy book, but am planning on a run of Serious Fiction next? Thanks so much.

>25 blackdogbooks: BDB/Mac, I liked In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, but did think it had a couple of not insignificant flaws - and for me at least, did not live up to the astonishingly fulsome praise on the jacket. My comments are back on my 'old' thread (sorry for not linking directly but am being lazy... tough week and I'm meant to be going to bed! If I dig it out before you've been back I'll edit the link in.)

>26 suslyn: thanks suse :) and hi! I'm only really updating (and reading others' threads, sadly) a couple of times a week at the moment as am really short of time. So hopefully things shouldn't move on too fast.

Am going to update my running list with recent completions, but will leave comments for a later thread post! I meant to say POST. See, I really am tired.

#27: I'll bet the process of writing aspect was fascinating - it would have been for me. Lucky you, Flossie.

I have been keeping up with your thread but must have glossed over your thoughts on In Other Rooms, Other Wonders. Perhaps I heard the NPR story after I'd already read your thoughts and didn't add to my look out pile. I'll find it....no need to link.

>28 tiffin: Tiffin, it really was - and such an enormous relief to find that he works really hard at it. Definitely of the every-word-counts school.

English is not his first language either - he spoke no English at all until he emigrated to the UK at the age of 12. He went to university to study biochemistry because he didn't think his English was good enough - then dropped out to write after Peter Carey "told" him (via response to an audience question at an event he attended) that no one should ever think that they could never be published without connections in the industry.

>29 blackdogbooks: Mac, I'm wondering which story it was now - Our Lady of Paris seems the story with most general appeal.

OK, I'm behind on books finished.

42. Winter in Kabul - Ann Jones

This is such an astonishing and deeply important book that I don't think I can do it justice until I actually am on holiday (end of May) and have time to review properly. Please read it. And if you don't read it now, then I'll be along again in a few weeks with a more coherent argument as to why it is NECESSARY.

Huge thanks to MrsBond and allthesedarnbooks for suggesting this to fit into my Afghanistan reading project.

43. Designs for a Happy Home - Matthew Reynolds
(240 pages)

Anyone who's read Toby Litt's Finding Myself will recognise something of the staggeringly self-centred world view of that book's heroine in Alizia Tamé, narrator of Matthew Reynold's first novel and interior designer par excellence. Her schtick is the importance of your 'personal interior' in the design of your interior, and to that end, she is writing a book that incorporates personal testimony from herself, friends, family and colleagues as she seeks to expound her plan for world domination designing a "happy home". But although she can impose her genius on her surroundings, finding unusually inventive solutions to the design challenges she faces, the rest of her life refuses to be shaped.

As one might expect from a Dante scholar and LRB contributor(!), Reynolds shows some flashes of great writing here beneath the artificial plot device (which actually begins to seem less artificial after a couple of chapters - or maybe it's more that the artificiality begins to seem more 'normal' once you're thoroughly immersed in Alizia's world). Some of the big design set pieces are really quite entertaining - the funnel office stands out for me. On the whole, though, I found Alizia was just too self-centred and un-self-aware for this to work successfully. An enjoyable and interesting read, but not one to which I shall be returning. Lovely jacket though - Bloomsbury are turning out some really beautiful books at the moment.

(Small confession: Matthew Reynolds taught me at college and I had the world's most embarrassing crush on him - as in, the kind that renders you incapable of sensible speech, which was something of a problem when one had to speak up intelligently on Dante... anyway, I really had no choice but to read this. Now I feel I can move on :-))

44. Molly Fox's Birthday - Deirdre Madden
(221 pages)

Orange-shortlisted Molly Fox has been on my shelf for a bit, and kiwidoc and citizenkelly both loved her, so I had to bump it up.

Much as I hate to disagree with those ladies of excellent taste, I liked this, but didn't love it. Exploring Molly Fox via the shape she leaves behind is interesting, and a familiar theme in 'modern' Irish lit. However, I found the flashback style of narration a little awkward (there are one or two places where the narrator directly alludes to this style, which sits a bit awkwardly with what is meant to be, I think, a more realist portrayal). And I always get irked by things that use "had" all over the place: "Andrew had been studying...", "I had been living...", "Molly had been working...". Too much of that and you feel that the wrong book is being written.

CK and kiwidoc have done more justice to what is good about this book, and I'm only sorry I can't just say that I endorse their comments 100%. Please go and read their thoughts - if it's your kind of book, their words will no doubt be a better barometer.

Rachael

After your comments, I have to add Winter in Kabul to my tbr pile.

Yes, you've got me curious about Winter in Kabul. I'll be looking for your comments.

Like Cariola and Whisper, I'm intrigued. Really looking forward to your review!

Same here!

Oh Rachael...oh dear dear dear...Winter in Kabul, oh no no no...your recommendation will cause these good people to become saddened missionaries for this deeply disturbing book...shame. Sinful wicked shame on you.

were you a lit major?

Hey Suse - see you're catching up! Uni I attended doesn't "do" majors :-) (although it's becoming a bit more common in the UL to mix it up a bit). So yes - I did nothing BUT lit, although not all in English!!

45. Earth and Ashes - Atiq Rahimi
(54 pages)

Originally on my list thanks to akeela's endorsement last year, acquired from BookMooch thanks to a lovely angel in Australia, and then sat there for a while unread until.... recommended by Nadeem Aslam last week. I know, my borderline obsessive tendencies are really boring. Sorry.

Second-person narration is often derided as a gimmicky and sophomoric narrative technique, but Rahimi's short novella, translated from Dari, shows that it can be used incredibly powerfully, making the reader identify immediately with the narrator's plight.

The novel(la) is set in a sort of Beckettian nowhere in Afghanistan, after Soviet troops have bombed a village and killed most of the inhabitants. An old man, and his grandson, who has been deafened by the blast, are travelling together, to seek the missing generation - the old man's son, the boy's father - to tell him of the tragedy. Moving, unusual, thought-provoking - all that in only 54 pages of large print. Definitely looking out for more by Rahimi - Aslam said he won the Prix Goncourt recently and an English version of that novel is due out next year.

46. Brooklyn - Colm Tóibín
251 pages

I got about 100 pages in and wondered why I was sticking with this.... but I got there in the end. My first EVER novel read entirely electronically (PDF). Very sentimental, about the experience of an Irish emigrant to Brooklyn in the 1950s. The "heroine" is so impossibly passive that you want to take her by the shoulders and shake her by the end of the book - actually, well before that. She seems to fall on her feet for much of the narrative, and even the grim bits are not very grim but rather idealised.

Makes me want to go back and re-read Joseph O'Connor's Star of the Sea, which is set earlier in the century but might help redress the balance and clear the palate.

Hey, I hope everyone knows that Friday 1 May is Buy Indie Day (see www.indiebound.org). What are you going to pick up? I've got my eye on Hemlock and After, which was on James Wood's 'best ever' list (published a decade or so ago in the Guardian and re-posted recently on someone's blog).

It's Labour Day here :)

I've added Kabul in Winter to my TBR's too. Thanks for the heads up.

Great review of Earth And Ashes, Rach! Glad you finally got around to it :)

Love the sound of Earth and Ashes. Darn.......I have taking to being very relieved when a book pops up that I don't want to read.

At least Brooklyn fulfills this for me.

#38: Rachael, in recognition of Indie Bound Day (and despite the fact that I've already purchased 28 books since Sunday!), I stopped by a used bookshop in San Francisco (Aardvark Books) that I have never visited. In addition to a friendly bookseller and an adorable, affectionate cat I found two books I had been looking for all week, Black Box by Amos Oz and The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín, along with A User's Guide to the Brain by John J. Ratey, M.D..

My next stop will be to the local post office, so that I can ship these books back to Atlanta!

I'm eagerly awaiting Brooklyn's release in the US next week.

To all who are intrigued by Winter in Kabul: I realised that I had been making the same mistake I make about 50% of the time and transposing the two nouns in the title... thank you, Carmenere, for the tactful correction :) It's actually called Kabul in Winter. I will definitely write more complete comments at some point, but the short summary is that it is a book about women in Afghanistan, which covers women in prison, women's rights, education, and the structure of American aid programmes, in a deeply thought-provoking manner. It's very thoroughly researched, but one of those great pieces of reportage that links all the detailed stats and background reports to a personal story. As Richard says, it is "deeply disturbing", but I think it's an incredibly important book.

>41 akeela:: akeela, thank you so much for alerting me to this. I've had some great recommendations off your list, and hope to get many more!

>42 lunacat:: luna, happy to lend Earth and Ashes to you if you'd like? I'd like to keep it, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it for some time and it's so slender, you can easily squeeze it in between other things.

>43 kidzdoc:: :-) I bought:



There were copies of The Blackwater Lightship in Galloway & Porter, where I did my shopping this morning, but I hope you can see why I was trying not to add any more to my stack...

One book to add: The Sugar Queen - Sarah Addison Allen (abandoned). This was on Stasia's list last year, and I was completely charmed by the idea of a girl who is followed around by the books that she needs (even when "needs" is not the same as "wants"), but I just didn't get on with this. Read 70 pages or so, then skipped to the last couple of chapters to 'find out what happened'. Ah well. Almost relieved that I have been able to demonstrate to myself that I'm capable of giving up on a book. I was getting worried.

I am really loving The Winter Vault, I must say. Not for those who like pacy and plotty, but beautiful thus far, and surprisingly readable - I was expecting something that needed a lot more 'unpacking' for ease of comprehension, but found it actually flows really well.

Edit to correct image link

#44: Sorry you did not like The Sugar Queen more, Rachael. I think I will stop recommending books, I am not doing very well at it today between you and Linda, lol.

I hope your next read is better!

>45 alcottacre: please don't stop recommending!! I just didn't get on with it - but there are many more books you've liked that I've loved :)

I cannot wait for your review of The Winter Vault. It looks very good!

what a lovely picture, Flossie! Hope you enjoy your new books!

Stasia

Please do NOT stop recommending books! e gads! I'm enthralled by the Sunday lists you post. I think I am the Messenger simply could not compare to The Book Thief.

And, Rachael is spot on with her comment that there are many more books you recommended that we love!

Count me in as another who cannot wait for your review of The Winter Vault! It is one of those books that always seems to be at the very front of whatever book store I enter - I am sure I will purchase it one of these days :)

I had no idea about Buy Indie Day! How could I miss out on a valid excuse for buying more books?! :)

#38: You're right about Eilis, the main character in Brooklyn, Rachael. I'm about 70 pages into it, and she is remarkably passive. I'm enjoying the book, though, it's the first Tóibín that I've read.

The NYT had a wonderful, lengthy feature on Toibin in last Sunday's edition. He talks a lot about his own family and what brought him to writing the book, which may explain some of the things you've brought up here.

>47 alcottacre: & 50: Stasia & Cait, I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Winter Vault and it is a wonderful book - one of those for which that Austen phrase about "telltale compression of the pages" seems so appropriate. I'm not reading it very fast, but mainly because I don't want it to end. Hopefully over the weekend!

>48 girlunderglass:: thanks, Eliza! I fear it may be quite some time before I actually get round to reading any of them though. My pace is really slow at the moment - there just seems to be so much other stuff that needs doing. And work is REALLY busy right now too.

>51 flissp:: flissp, Buy Indie Day was started in the US by IndieBound, a sort of association for independent bookstores. The guy who started it, Joe Finder, labelled it 'International Buy Indie Day', but since there isn't really a comparative association for indies over here (the Booksellers Association does some stuff for indies but it's not very focused) it wasn't very well promoted.

>52 kidzdoc: & >53 Cariola:: kidzdoc & Cariola, thanks for Tóibín thoughts. I've read a couple of those profiles and can sort of see where he's coming from, but to me the book just felt so idealistic. For example, the issue of race, when Eilis' store starts serving "coloured women" - the initial unpleasantness from the other women in her boarding house dies down remarkably quickly, just as it seems to be assimilated into normality for the store very fast. This just didn't ring true for me - and I felt he missed an opportunity to explore more deeply an interesting moment in the city's history.

Eilis' passivity didn't *really* begin to irk me until she went back to Ireland - that was the point at which I found myself wanting to shake her very hard!

Planning on catching up a bit on missing reviews - i.e. Kabul in Winter - this weekend so will be back later. And who knows, I may even finish The Winter Vault.

Rachael, your point about the rapid incorporation of race-blindness into Murrikan society is well-made. I lived through that era in a super-white world in wealthy suburban California. I was heaved from that comfy cocoon into the multiracial reality of poor South Texas just as things was hottin' up, as they say down south, and there was NO SENSE AT ALL of racial harmony.

I snort intolerantly at this type of fictional device, though I can say that I don't see that type of thinking in today's New York, either. Very polarized place.

#54 & 55: Ooh...I definitely have some comments on this, but I'm back on clinical service starting today. So, I'll probably respond tomorrow.

Just dropping by as I am catching up on threads! Have a lovely weekend, Rachael.

47. Flood and Fang - Marcus Sedgwick
247 pages

I had hopes that this would fill the void in my life left by the end of Mr Snicket's Baudelaire saga; narrated by a raven named Edgar, it concerns the misadventures of the distinctly-Addams-like Otherhand family, and Sedgwick has had such good reviews for his teen fiction. However, despite being shelved as YA, it felt like a book written for a much younger audience - a bit derivative and not as clever as I was hoping for. Oh well, at least it was a quick read. Recommended for around 8-10 years that likes a bit of a gothic giggle, but not really for anyone else.

48. The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels
336 pages

Astonishingly beautiful and very moving, I can't hope to do this justice in my current over-worked, sleep-deprived mode. Amongst the best I've read this year thus far - will come back and add more fully formed comments when I have time (and link back - probably not for a couple of weeks).

49. The Twisted Heart - Rebecca Gowers
280 pages

Add this to my list of recent reads with passive heroines. Kit, an insomniac graduate student of "Victorian true crime", stumbles through research into an unsolved mystery that may have inspired the murder of Nancy in Dickens' Oliver Twist, and through an unlikely relationship that springs up when she spontaneously decides to attend a dance class. This felt (a) like two different books stitched together (b) like there was a much darker and more interesting story struggling to get out. There is an unearthliness to the narrative voice, but it's not really clear whether this is intended to accurately convey the confusion in Kit engendered by her bizarre habits of sleeplessness, or whether it's just disjointed writing. Interesting enough, but not highly recommended unless you're interested in either Victorian true crime or slightly improbable odd-couple romance.

50. Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyre
c.250 pages (forgot to check before I packed it up to post on)

Late-arriving April book from my bookswap club. Silly plot (concerning corruption in an NHS Trust that comes to light after a rather nasty murder), improbably snappy dialogue, copious passages describing revolting bodily-fluid incidents of various kinds in great detail. Trainspotting without the heroin or the Scots dialect, but a good quick escapist read. Although the gleeful relish displayed in aforementioned episodes of effluvia was rather too strong for me to wholeheartedly enjoy it, I did find it mildly amusing in places. Brookmyre is routinely reviewed as "hysterical" so others with stronger stomachs will probably find this murder-mystery more entertaining than I did.

Haven't been on LT much as totally snowed under at work and pretty frantic out of it, so my apologies for not keeping up with others' threads. Looking forward to having the last week of May off (although I have realised that means I'm going to be extra-busy next week getting ready to go away...erk)

#44 - Haven't checked in for awhile so it was only today that I saw the stack of books you purchased! Love it! A new stack of books hold so much promise. Enjoy them all.
ps. I have The bookseller of kabul but have not read it as yet.

Rachael
I'm simply stopping by to say hello. I've added The Winter Vault to my tbr pile.
I hope you get some rest soon.

Hi Rachel! Looking forward to your Winter Vault review and sorry you haven't found a Lemony Snicket replacement!

Re the Christopher Brookmyre, he's one of my favourite fluff for the holidays authors, so I've read most of his stuff and I'll definitely agree with you on the bodily fluids in this one (and a couple more are equally revolting), but if you liked it for escapist reading otherwise, he's written others that I've enjoyed more, with less (?fewer) viscera that may be worth giving a go...

Hope the deluge of work starts to calm down a bit! Where are you off to next week?

Hope you're able to rest sometime!

The Winter Vault sounds good, I'll look out for it. I hope you get some 'you' time soon. take care

My daughter moved onto Philip Ardagh, Colin Thompson's The Floods series, and Ian Ogilvy's Measle and the Dragodon after Lemony Snicket. She's now reading Midnighters. I could recommend Catherine Jink's Evil Genius and others, but Lemony was special - did you ever get to see him 'perform', he is so entertaining and funny.
Anyway I have requested a copy of The Winter Vault from my library.

I survived this week!! Hurrah. Back soon & will reply properly (and try to catch up on everyone else too.....). If anyone is interested in literature in translation, I can highly recommend a small but somewhat stressful (for me) festival taking place in London in late June. It has been making my life hell for the last month or so, but I'm trying to see past that and reconnect with why it should be worth it... especially since I can spend a whole week NOT WORKING ON IT.

Glad you're almost back!

welcome ba

(85% of the message, since you're not all back)

Will she receive the 15% of the message when she is all here or is it lost to her forever?

Sadly, gone forever, into the unknowable depths of Unobserved-Phenomena-Land. Pity, really, when you think of the waste....

Just spent nearly 4 hours catching up on threads.... and that's just the ones that I had starred or posted in - and the oldest unread was only two weeks ago. That was painful. Think I had better accept that I am not going to discover any new people to follow this year from now on as I just do not have the time to dive into new unread threads :(

Given the above 4-hour thing, and vacation exhaustion (you know - when you stop firing on all cylinders and as a result totally collapse), I'm still not going to manage long-overdue comments on the two best books I've read so far this year (the ones with 'Winter' in the title). But I will at least cover recent books....

51. All the Living - C.E. Morgan
c.190 pages, book is upstairs so I'll have to correct this later

This deserves a much fuller review than I have brainpower to give it at the moment - VisibleGhost has also recently finished it if you'd like some perceptive comments. Thoughtfully drawn portrayal of young people with a relationship in crisis on a Kentucky tobacco farm. Vivid recreation of the landscape, insightful observations of human behaviour. I'd read one review attacking this as "anti-feminist", with particular reference to the character of Aloma being too subservient/submissive/ready to accept her lot, so was reading this with that set of antennae especially attuned. For much of the book, the opposite seemed to be true, but the denoument does let things down a little. Highly recommended.

52. The Third Man and The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene
130 pages

Vintage Classics giveaway book. I thought The Fallen Idol was the better book, possibly because it wasn't actually written with a film in mind (indeed, Greene's preface admits that he thought "the subject was unfilmable"; in fact, I think the thing I enjoyed most about these two short novellas was Greene's prefaces, each of which contained amusing and illuminating commentary on the process of converting a book into a film).

Even when the subject is a bit derivative, Greene's narrative technique is interesting - The Third Man has such a strong flavour of pulp fiction to it, but your interest is held by the device of having the plot narrated by an investigating policeman, who is piecing together much of what happened 'after the fact'. The Fallen Idol was much more interesting, and much more chilling, even though there was hardly anything resembling a plot (a young boy is left in a big Belgravia house with the butler and his wife while his parents go on holiday; marital disharmony results in tragedy and the end of innocence).

53. Hurting Distance - Sophie Hannah
408 pages

Sophie Hannah goes in my 'guilty pleasures' box. Her plots are full of holes (detectives constantly doing completely improbable things - in this book, for example, haring off to confront a probable suspect in a nasty rape case with the victim in tow) but nonetheless completely compelling. The central case(s) in this book were far more disturbing than in the other two I've read.

Unlike the Grauniad reviewer quoted on the cover (she writes smugly) I figured out the broad outlines of 'whodunnit' around page 80. This left me another 300ish pages to reflect on the similarities between plotty crime novels and jigsaw puzzles. In each case, it doesn't really matter whether you complete the frame very quickly, or indeed look at the picture on the box: the satisfaction derives from slotting all the pieces together, seeing the connections and also seeing what goes in the gaps.

54. Hens Dancing - Rafaella Barker
344 pages

Try as I might, I cannot remember why I put this on my list (and subsequently acquired it from BookMooch). It's just not my usual sort of book: pastel-coloured cover, overprivileged characters that somehow manage to run a sprawling Norfolk house and well-stocked garden, with titled neighbours and children in private schools, plus expensive bathroom remodelling that is used as a set for a glossy designer-handbag shoot, topped off with regular jaunts to snazzy bashes in London - all while doing very little discernible work, or at least none that can in any way explain how this lifestyle can possibly be funded without an undisclosed-in-the-narrative sideline in drug trafficking. Everyone is called things like Gawain, Tristan and Venetia.

Yet despite all of the above, I actually quite enjoyed this. The writing is surprisingly wry and witty (even granted its complete lack of reality calibration), and the narrator's relationships with her children were just so beautifully drawn. (Not-so) secretly, I think I mainly liked this because the narrator's family is the same shape as mine (two boys and a much younger girl), and the way she writes about her daughter - who is referred to throughout as 'the Beauty' - often captured something special and recognisably true about that mother-daughter relationship.

I note from the author biography that Rafaella Barker lives with her three children in their Norfolk house.

edit to fix touchstones and some typos

(thought I'd do replies-to-other-posts separately :))

>60 Whisper1:, >62 suslyn:, >63 lunacat:: hi Linda, Susan & lunacat! Thanks for waving at me even when I haven't been so active of late... I hope I get some rest soon too. I don't know why I'm still sitting here as I was so tired this morning that after being woken by the kids at 7, I promptly fell asleep again and was only woken at 9.30 by the middle child loudly informing my husband, "Mummy's very sleepy, Daddy, leave her alone."

>61 flissp:: flissp, this was the second Brookmyre I've read (the other was A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil), and while I enjoyed them both, I don't think he's really "for me" - the sort of thing I'd happily read if it was around, but not actively seek out. And I haven't gone anywhere this week - just at home, pottering (and hopefully doing a few nice things - going to try to do at least one nice long bike ride somewhere). I did have vague plans to visit family but work has been so busy I just didn't get my act together in time to sort it out.

>64 avatiakh:: thanks for the Snicket-replacement ideas, avatiakh - Lemony was indeed special. I've never seen him perform, aside from on the promo for The Composer is Dead - he doesn't seem to come to the UK much, unfortunately. I still hold out hope for another Baudelaire book someday.

>67 richardderus:: thanks for the partial welcome, Richard. Although I'm not sure I even deserved 85% given how long it is since I was on here (and even longer since I managed anything like active participation). Life, eh - it does have an inconvenient habit of getting in the way of stuff.

Right. I really must get some sleep or tomorrow will go the same way as today....

edit for typos. again. See, I sed I waz tireed.

Interesting group of books, Flossie. I only recognize that Greene books so it gives fodder for thought. Hope you get some sleep and rest - and a speedy recovery from your holiday!!!!

Sleep, Rachael, Sleep!!

>73 alcottacre: Stasia, don't do that! Your hypnotic powers are so great that they wing their way throught ether and I nearly nodded off!

~ TT

Yodeleehooohoooo Rachael! Your review of Hens Dancing made me howl so hard that my dog Stella came in, ears up, ready for trouble, when I read this: "Everyone is called things like Gawain, Tristan and Venetia."

I simply could not stop laughing. No one really names their children things like that! No sane, decent human being could look down at a pink, screaming bundle of adorable innocence and say, "Let's call it 'Gawain' so the school bullies will have a ready-made punching bag, okay dear?"

But it made me laugh, and I appreciate that!

Hope you're all rested up. I'm beginning to recover from the holiday weekend. I empathize.

75> Sadly, there was a flurry of Tristan namings following the film 'Legends of the Fall.' I've had a number of them in my classes.

>76 Cariola: NO!! Not really! "Tristan" is a name for a kid that, even at 50, I would want to beat up. I guess the new "Eddie Haskell" will be "Tristan Magdeburger" or something.

Come to think of it, what could one title the 2010s version of "Leave It to Beaver," given today's sensibilities?

I actually know someone named Tristan and I believe his parents got his name from James Herriot's books. I think his brother Calum's name also came from the same place.

My best friend loves the movie Legends of the Fall, and really wants to name one of her future kids Tristan. Her boyfriend disagrees - loudly! She might compromise and name a girl Tristanne instead.

I could write a book about bizarre names of kids that I've taken care of in hospital. The worst one I think was a boy named Precious. That would be a bad name for a girl, but I figured that this boy would either (a) get his butt kicked every day at school; (b) become a muscle bound stud out of necessity, and kick everyone else's butts, kids his age or anyone else; or (c) kick his mother's butt until she had his name formally changed to something more sensible.

Other bad names: Latrina (actually the name of a nurse at the hospital I work at), A'Tiny Miracle Jones, the ex-preemie twins Rontavious and Ronquavious (who we called Ron A and Ron B, except when their mother was around), and Sparkle.

I tutored parents in an early childhood setting a few years back, and there were twin boys named Morpheus & Neo so when the mum had a gorgeous baby girl, I thought to myself that Trinity will be a nice name, they named her Morticia.
Sorry to takeover your thread FlossieT

edit add: Tristan is the main character in Neil Gaiman's Stardust

Tristan is a perfectly good English name. However Rontavious and Ronquavious stopped me dead in the water. Even my gag reflex froze.

Rontavious and Ronquavious

I have sprained ribs from laughing so hard. "'Granddaddy Ronquavious, what was it like growing up with such a ludicrous name?' asked little Mary Anne, an innocent twinkle in her eye." "Hey Rontie, what's the story with you and Latrina?"

I went to high school with a young woman named Iona Cherry. No lie. She didn't, BTW, since she gave birth to "Lawrone Antwone" sophomore year.

Kidzdoc I was already laughing hard at Latrina, then Richard I read your post. Now I am choking on my wine! (help, someone call a doctor.)

When I was a residential assistant in a first year dorm one of the students was called Richard Holder.

Hi Rachael - I'm catching up too and hadn't checked your thread (or anywhere else here) for weeks. Hope you had a good holiday!

Right, now I'm turning this off to finish The Book That Has No End (but is so good that I feel my second ever author fan-mail coming on)...Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan. It just isn't light and frothy.

The cruelest name that a mother ever called a child has got to be Anne. Now I know that Anne sounds innocuous enough and it is a perfectly decent and serviceable name under most circumstances and not one that would make you cringe or think that there was anything wrong with it. It is such a lovely and beautiful name so how could it possibly be cruel of a parent to name their adorable offspring Anne? When their name is Mrs. Tique!

~ TT

If I remember correctly, the mother of Rontavious and Ronquavious, who were in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; a neonate is a baby 0-28 days of age) at the big city hospital in Atlanta, was a large woman with a booming voice, who wore slightly less makeup than a circus clown. You knew when she was coming, as her perfume preceded her by several seconds. She called the twins "Tay-Tay" and "Quay-Quay", and whenever she came, the twins' cardiorespiratory monitors would start beeping nonstop, as their heart rates and respiratory rates climbed to extreme levels, reflecting their horror and despair that this was the woman they would be eventually going home to. Unfortunately we did not have any preemie psychotherapists and couldn't put the twins on IV Prozac, as we would like to have done.

It is true that Tristan, in isolation, is a perfectly good English name - but it does tend to be bestowed, in the UK at least, by parents of a certain social background (or who have aspirations in that direction). I know one Tristan personally, who is a boisterous little thing; his big sister is named Azalea.

A Wagner-nut friend of mine also named her daughter Isolde.

My, those names are awful. Latrina is bad, but Rontavious and Ronquavious?? Where on earth did that come from? Too much gas & air?

More and more I am in sympathy with those draconian countries that require you to select your child's name from a pre-approved list. Some of these really do come under the 'cruel and unusual punishment' heading.

As much as I hate all these names you guys mentioned, (Anne Tique lol that's hilarious) at least you are not likely to meet more than on Tristan in your life. The problem here in Greece is they have this rather annoying (sometimes sweet but still annoying) custom of having to name the children after the grandparents. Especially in villages you really HAVE to do it, and since everyone in Athens is not really Athenian but comes from a village...well you get it: the result is that all the people you will meet in your life will pretty much be named Kostas, or Yiannis, or Yorgos or Nikos if they're boys and Maria, Anna, Eleni if they're girls. Just last week it was Konstanintos & Eleni's - religious holiday - and I had about twenty people I had to congratulate and send cards to (another annoying custom here - you have to remember everyone's Nameday because it's a big deal, sometimes more important than birthdays). And you have to say "Na heresai to onoma sou!" which means something like "Be glad of your name!" or "Enjoy your name!" - while I'm thinking it's pretty difficult to enjoy your name when you know that another 300000 people share it with you.

There you go: a little (unrequested) foray into local Greek customs for you :)

> 90 girlunderglass that is really interesting!

Rachael, I think that parents should be allowed a large degree of freedom to choose the name for their children. However, there are some names that should not be allowed. Oh, I completely forgot about the worst name of all time: Adolf Hitler Campbell, whose parents were upset that a supermarket would not agree to put "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler" on his birthday cake:

3-year-old Hitler can't get name on cake

Fortunately for this all-American family, the local WalMart agreed to the request. I wonder if they will do the same for Adolf's sister, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, who will turn 2 this year.

One of my favorite encounters from a few years ago was a conversation I had with the mother of a boy named Marktavious:

Insensitive pediatrician: Good morning, Ms. ___. How's Mark doing today?

Offended mother: His name is Marktavious!

Insensitive pediatrician: Okay...how's the baby doing today?

OK, I'm adding one. A girl once visited our home whose hippie parents named her Lovelight (as in "Let you lovelight shine all around").

These names are hilarious! I think my favourite is A'Tiny Miracle Jones - what were the parents thinking?!

Although, I do kind of like the name Isolde....

I have tears streaming down my face - this thread is absolutely HILARIOUS! Thanks for the laughs.

I had a friend years ago whose granddaughter was named Dovesong Along McFarland.

Naming your child Adolf Hitler is practically criminal IMHO. Why not just name him Satan or Beelzebub?

>90 girlunderglass:: GUG, I was reading an article about naming of German children prior to the 18th century and it sounded just like that. There was a formal naming pattern for each child: first boy after this person, second boy after that one, first girl after this person, second girl...

Not only that, but almost all boys were named John (Johann) and girls Ann (Anna) or Mary (Marie) as a first name, with the middle name being the distinguishing factor.

It explains why, when I did my family tree, I had so much trouble keeping track of the 7 "John Williams", the 6 "John Peters", the zillion "Anna Katerinas", etc.

hm...uuhm yes tadAD, unfortunately that was exactly my point: you reading an article sounding just like what I said, about naming German children prior to the 18th century. Prior to the 18th century!!! It is a rather archaic habit and it really should stop someday. Just come up with your own names for your children - how hard can that be? (I mean unless there is a special - sentimental - reason why you would want to name your child after someone dear to you of course. But I'm pretty sure the millions of Kostas are not named for sentimental reasons)

>98 girlunderglass:: Probably no one wants to be the first to offend the dear maternal grandfather (or whomever) by breaking the cycle.

I've never been to Greece and know relatively little about its modern culture beyond what "everyone" knows. Is it rather hidebound in all ways?

Rachael

I've been very busy at work, helping students put the finishing touches on the yearbook, thus I'm behind in reading and/responding to the posts. I'm taking a quick break and catching up on your thread. I too loved your description of Hen's Dancing. This book has been on my library shelf for awhile. I obtained a copy from bookcloseouts.com for a reasonable price last year...
Now I think I simply have to read it...soon.

I'm the product of a family with naming traditions...the oldest son is {Father's First Name}{Mother's Maiden Name} {Father's Last Name}, hence my moniker. Being raised Cat'lic, I got to add a confirmation name, and my mother liked it better than my traditional middle name, so I got four initials. Embarrasse de richesse, eh what?

My second sister didn't fare so well, in her opinion...her name, since she was the second child, had to be "Winter" and her middle name needed to start with a "Y". My mother (also a Winter) was getting ready to jettison this rule, but my father beat her to the registrar, and she became "Winter Ynez."

I can still make her mad by threatening to reveal her middle name. She's 58. That is the power of childhood humiliation.

*blink* Were we talking about books somewhere in here?

>101 richardderus: "*blink* Were we talking about books somewhere in here?"

That's what makes LT so great, the way topics of conversations meander:)

My friend Phil's folks were hopeful, but, sadly, not prophetic. His initials read PHD Blount! :) My dad's folks had 10 kids. She got to choose the first name, he chose the middle. HOG GIG... whatever he could do to make their lives miserable.

When researching my family, a family member discovered that one of our ancestors had the unfortunate name 'Enough'.

After 13 children, the father (a vicar) insisted that the fourteenth child, a girl, be called Enough. It worked, she was the youngest of the children.

A girl at school I knew was called Heaven-Leigh. Unfortunately, she was a huge bully, persecuted a lot of people including me and often got suspended. Seems she didn't live up to her name!

As an addition, thinking about intials as well, my greatuncle who died in WWII aged just 20 was named Arthur Roy Saggs. ARS. The full irony is that he was never called Arthur, they fully intended to use Roy as his name from the start!

</b>Arthur Roy Saggs. So the cruel boys would have called him...

...

...

..."Saggy Arse Roy"

*flees*

edited/turn off bold

I know its bad but there was no need to write it in bold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I know its nothing to do with you really, before I get pounced on). My poor greatuncle. It just always struck us as so immensely ridiculous given that they were never using Arthur as a first name anyway.

I always felt sorry for Frank Zappa's kids.

>108 lunacat: The 1930s humorist H. Allen Smith had a whole routine about people with fancy names "parting them on the side" which he felt should be left to poor schmoes with last names like "Smith."

As I recall, his example was "A guy with a moniker like 'James Arthur Throcklepidgeon' is just showing off when he changes it to 'J. Arthur Throcklepidgeon.'"

Now I use "J. Arthur Throcklepidgeon" as my all-purpose get-over-yourself name. Applied to Jonathan Safran Foer, Joyce Carol Oates, et alii.

ETA: 109...Moon Unit didn't come out so bad, but Dweezil...!

Bob Geldof's kids also have it pretty bad. (I got very confused when looking up to check the names as I accidentally put in Bob Dylan instead!)

Fifi Trixiebelle (Fifi is a dog's name, one of those small white ones that old people have)

Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa

Little Pixie

Heavenly Hiranni Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof (his adopted daughter).

I also know someone who named her daughters

Wednesday Angel + Natane Star. The Natane is pronounced nAtahhhhnay

Celebrities so often give their children odd names. I have to say, the one I really detest is Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter, Apple.

how about Michael Jackson's third kid:

Prince Michael Jackson II - also known as Blanket Jackson.

Blanket!! Who would call their kid Blanket?? A big white fluffy dog, sure, but your kid?

>111 lunacat: He should be sued. That's unconscionable. (Pick any one for "that.")

>112 Cait86: "Apple" is as pretentious as Grace Slick's daughter "god" who was later renamed "China" oof.

How 'bout the environmental design prof at TAMU Rodney Hill who named his kids Brook and Bunker? (Boy howdy -- you've never been in a more wonderful place than his warren of a home!! And the kids' rooms! Joy! -- it might have even made up for their names... maybe)

Two of the Beckham kids are Romeo and Brooklyn (both boys); I forget the other one's name, but I'm sure it's no less 'unique.' The Kidman-Urban baby is named Sunday Rose. Then there's Coco Arquette.

lunacat, I'll have to invoke your ancestors and gasp "Enough!!" as I'm crying with laughter at some of these... my husband keeps asking me anxiously if I'm all right!

>94 Cait86:, Cait86, I like 'Isolde' as a word-sound, but what a terribly tragic tale to associate a child with - and you can bet there will be some overeducated teacher that can't resist showing off his erudition by relating it to her loudly at the start of some new school year, probably when she's at a tender stage of adolescence, and deeply and profoundly embarrassed by the attention. Everyone I ever knew named 'Cassandra' had to go through something similar.

>101 richardderus: & >102 MissDotty:, richard and LibraryNook, I'm always relieved when the conversation wanders off-piste as I seem to read such weird books (or at least, not ones many other people have read!!). Having said which - >100 Whisper1:, Linda, I think you'll like Hens Dancing. Nothing much happens, but it's a lovely light read with some good comic moments, funny enough to make up for the rarefied atmosphere.

>116 Cariola: my favourite joke when Brooklyn was born was to do with the inherent risk of naming a child after their place of conception (can't remember whose joke it was, unfortunately, to give proper credit). The comedian gave a few examples, ending with what might have happened had the Beckhams been overnighting at a small village not far from me: poor Brooklyn might have been left rejoicing in the moniker:

'Six Mile Bottom Beckham'.

And of course I had to Google Beckham names after that... the third one is called 'Cruz', poor boy.

With Vancouver being such a cosmopolitian city, we often come across immigrants arriving with little english and names that do not jive well in another language:

eg. a family from East Indian brought their child in to the ER called Yanel Butt

Also a hippie from a peripheral community near Vancouver had a last name of Rabbit and she called her kids Jack, Peter and Bugs.

When my hubbie was working in Boston, he saw quite a few hispanics who named their girls feMAle. They copied the name female off the wrist band, thinking that name was assigned to the child!!!

And thinking of some doctors with names that make you laugh there was a Dr. Butcher (surgeon), Dr. Brain (neurology), Mr. Smallpeace (Urologist) and Dr. Dick (Urologist). You would think they would change their names, wouldn't you.

ALL these are verified true names of real people. Honest.

When I broke my foot, my orthopedist was Dr. Ricketts.

When my mother worked at a local bank back in the early fifties, it was the custom, whenever some one new began work there, for one of the other employees to take them to the room where the signature cards for depsitors were kept so that they could get a gander at the truly memorable names. Ethyl Bethel was pretty funny, but the all-time winner was the one for the lady whose name was - Cora F. Ucker.

I'm just catching up on threads after the weekend and have been cackling away at all these horrific names (my colleagues, quite rightly, are probably wondering if I'm doing any work this morning). Lunacat, I think Enough is an inspired name! ;)

My mum used to teach at a private school in London where a lot of politicians and high flyers etc send their kids - some of the names she comes back with... Probably shouldn't recite any here though.

Re surnames, mine is *****. Can you imagine the life-long teasing, even without a dodgy forename?! I've tussled with doing a PhD in the past and one of the (admittedly not very good) arguments on the side of doing one is that it would be fantastic to be called Dr ***** ;) ...My sister is, but she got married last year and is actually giving it up! I can't quite forgive her! ...she does work with anxious children though, so maybe it's understandable...

I've definitely come across a Dr D'eath in the past too.

Rachel, re Christopher Brookmyre, yep, sounds like he's not for you, I'll give up trying to convert! Enjoy half term - hope you manage to catch up on your sleep...

...And I keep meaning to say well done for doing the Reach bike ride - I wish I'd known about it - it looks like it was fun and it's very pretty around there. I should keep a better eye on the Cambridge Cycle Campaign website. A bunch of us keep meaning to do the London to Cambridge again, but everyone always seems to be busy that weekend, so it'd be nice to do one of the other ones - particularly as it looks like it's going to be a beautiful year (in spite of today!)

edited to remove my surname as don't want to keep it online...

The other name that springs to mind that was really cruel was what Mr. and Mrs. Duck called thir son. No, not Donald, William! Think about it.

~ TT

My dad was a communications officer for the Louisiana State Police for many years. His favorite memorable name rom all the driver licenses he ran was Delicious Peters. Peters was her married name. Yes, she *chose* to have that name.

>118 kiwidoc: There's a dentist in town named Dr. Tooth. Really.

Tortoise, I went to school with a Donald Ducker. I was gobsmacked by it. Cari, we had a Dr. Foote, Podiatrist, in town here. And there are two lawyers, Crappe and Murphy, whom the locals call "sh*t and potatoes". Oh, and the real estate company: Bowes and Cocks. My first true love called his first child "Rainbow". I can't help but think I dodged a bullet there.

hehe all good stuff

#123 Ha! That truly made me LOL.

I once had a doctor named Dr. Herts.

>123 drneutron: Delicious Peters, Truly Scrumptious, Pussy Galore. All great names.

~ TT

There is a surgeon on staff at the hospital where I work named Dr. Hacker. And an oral surgeon named Dr. Cocayne.

And I knew a man once (long deceased) whose name was Richard Wackher.

Rachael? Oh, Raaachaeeel! Come home, all is forgiven!

going to be a bit of a shock when she gets back ;)

LOL -- maybe we can keep it going and drive the # up to 200?

I had a friend in high school named Debbie Acock. No lie - she named a guy named Roach and now goes by Debbie Acock Roach.

>132 alcottacre: Stasia, that is too brilliant, you must have made that up!

~ TT

You reminded me of a friend who's last name wasn't sooo bad, Glasscock, but he and his bro got ribbed with all sorts of names made of 'synonyms' for those two words. He changed his name, as they had vowed as boys, to Glasscott. His brother was incensed!

>134 suslyn: It would be worse if either one of them was named Peter or Dick.

In one of my past jobs, I ran across a guy named Lowe Hole. The receptionist thought his middle initial made it even funnier, so she always paged him as "Lowe A. Hole."

#133: Nope, TT. I always find that truth is stranger than fiction.

I hope I shall be forgiven if I take a time-out from the name talk and say something about books....

For the record, there are still proper comments owing for:
Kabul in Winter - Ann Jones
The Winter Vault - Anne Michaels

and now also

55. Fugitive Pieces - Anne Michaels
294 pages

IOU a proper review for this too. Wonderful book. Actually picked this up because the Guardian Book Club this month is on Fugitive Pieces and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself from reading the column, so I thought I ought to read the book first. It's gradually becoming clear to me that the sort of book I am loving best at present is the sort that is:

- poetically written without being overly wordy
- intensely visual
- strongly themed around meditations on the nature of truth and history.

Fugitive Pieces scores top marks on all these counts, although it is not without its flaws. Also incredibly well researched.

56. Second Honeymoon - Joanna Trollope
383 pages

A bit of fluff. Diverting enough. Actress Edie struggles to process the 'empty nest' feelings when her third child Ben finally moves out at the age of 22; her husband Russell, meanwhile, is hoping to get his wife back. Predictably, everything goes pear-shaped and the baby birds all flit home again under various circumstances. Enjoyable enough, but the sexual politics are infuriatingly stone-age in places - in Trollope-world, it is completely acceptable to split up with your adored girlfriend because she is more successful financially than you are. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

57. Everything Will Be All Right - Tessa Hadley
422 pages

Not as disappointing as The Master Bedroom, which I read late last year, but nothing like as good as Accidents in the Home - which I'm beginning to think I must re-read in order to assess whether my reaction to that was in some way hormonally or otherwise induced, since nothing I've read by Hadley since has matched what I remember as being her 'form' in that book.

This is a family saga sort of book, covering 4 generations of women forging lives for themselves and their children without the help of their menfolk (who are usually at least one of dead, useless or absent). I think my reaction to this book was not helped whatsoever by the fact that I find books where everyone thinks they're terribly clever for being "sexually liberated" insufferable (get over yourselves, for goodness' sake). Anyway, it felt like a slightly better-written Rosamund Pilcher: tortured adolescence, check (twice); arty bohemian college years, check; stroppy ungrateful teenage daughter, check; movie-star-good-looks unfaithful husband, check; groundbreaking but dowdy and slightly embittered career woman, check; etc. etc. etc.

Oh dear, it's much easier to be rude about what I didn't like. Sorry. I did care about the characters, up to a point, but there were very few points of real originality.

Right, now I need some advice on reading "censorship", please. My son belongs to the Puffin Post book club, and six times a year can choose a book from their magazine and order it "for free" (to him, it cost me an arm and a leg at Christmas....). He selected his latest while I was away in London, and I am far from convinced about its suitability: it's actually a teen book (he's 10), it's very violent and quite scary, and it's one of those Da-Vinci-Code-a-like books that twines in and out of real historical events so as to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction in a rather worrying way.

I saw it lying about after he unwrapped it and immediately thought it looked like it might be more than he could handle, so picked it up and am now about 2/3rds of the way through. I'm quite enjoying it myself **as an adult** (it's far from original but the plot cracks along at top speed), but I do have serious concerns about him reading it.

My problem is, I do not feel at all comfortable with reading censorship, not having (to my knowledge) been subjected to it myself when I was growing up (beyond an unsavoury joke book that was confiscated after my brother and I, in all innocence, related some of the less tasteful jokes to sensitive elderly relatives). This is the first time I've ever contemplated stopping him from reading something (and he does read quite a few "teen" books), and I'm really not sure how to handle it. I don't want him to feel that I'm being unfair and treating him like a baby - but I'm struggling with how best to communicate my concerns to him in a way he can understand and appreciate.

I feel there's an opportunity here to educate him in the differences between fact and fiction, and how to process that difference, but I'm not quite sure how to explain it (or indeed, whether I am hopelessly underestimating him and he actually would have no trouble discerning the difference). Should I maybe try and find him a good non-fiction book on the topics it's playing fast and loose with first? offer to reimburse him so he can replace it with something else? something else I haven't thought of yet to lessen the blow? argh. Either way, the book is jolly violent and I don't feel comfortable with him calibrating his 'norms' for reading on that scale.

Advice would be very much appreciated.

How old is your son, Flossie.

It is an interesting point that you make about censorship - I unwittingly gave my kids some books in YA categories that I would blush to read (now my daughter is 18 she has pointed this out to me). I assumed that the YA category meant that violence and sex and adult themed stuff would be missing. How wrong was I.

I think we have a responsibility to give our kids reading stuff that is appropriate (it is just a matter of defining appropriate and I think it differs according to maturity and age, etc). I definitely would not give a 7 year old a Jackie Collins book to read!!

Rachael, since your son is 10, perhaps it is a book that both of you could read together? That way you could add your input as you go along.

Oops, sorry - I didn't read the '10' in your post. I think Stasia's comments are good. Read it together.

Dear Rachael -

Both the censorship of reading materials and the mixing of fiction and fact seem like the two areas of concern for you. You know him. You know his level of maturity.

If the book is so plot driven, he will probably just let the fiction, posing as fact, just wash over him in the excitement of the reading. Has he mentioned why he chose that book? One of his friends may have told him about it, or he may have seen it in the book shop.

It is similar to what films pre-adolescents are allowed to watch or way too suggestive (or explicit) programs on the telly.

I am so glad that my reading was not censored when I was a young person. It is definitely how I learned to look at the world in new ways. The fictional worlds got sorted later from the facts as I matured.

Whenever you are ready, take the time to listen to him. I bet he's a very discerning young person growing up in your nurturing family! You are really doing a good job in your role as parent, Rachael. Brilliant!

With warmest regards to you and your son -

womansheart

I weigh in on the "read anything, discuss everything" side of the question. It's necessary for parents to actually be parents, but not necessarily cops.

I read Captains and the Kings at 12, and it was over my head...then my mother asked, oh so casually, what I thought about the book. I said I didn't understand some of it, and the conversation taught me what she wanted me to know about power, sex, immorality, corruption, and fiction.

Am I scarred for life? Uh-huh...but not by books, movies, TV, or news. By the actions and/or inactions of the people who raised me. The world outside is less important than the one inside the walls of the home, I stick to this, in spite of all the idiotic hand-wringing and hullabaloo about "stranger danger" and video games and what-all else.

Interact with your son honestly, he'll return the favor. End of story.

That was my experience, anyway, and I sure hope it will be yours. You're on track to raise a fine kid, based on your concerns!

edited/close underline

Great advice above. I agree with it all.

Ditto. That was very wise advice, and I don't have anything to add other than complete agreement with what the others said.

Rachael, I was never censored or restricted in my reading and I appreciate(d) that. There were a few occasions when some of the content of a book was a bit too "adult" for me but I self-censored by skipping over those parts if they made me feel uncomfortable. You might tell him you've read the book and are concerned about the degree of violence and scariness in it, opening up a discussion about that. My concern when my lads were young was that this would innure them to these things, normalising them the way the video games, etc., do and making them appear as an acceptable part of our culture. If it were me, my focus would be on discussing this as abnormal and, if applicable, abhorrent. I never said no to my two but if I was concerned, I did try to make them think and have perspective.

And hope you were ok about the bursts of silliness on your thread.

Seems sage :) I vote for the read together bit if that works. Honesty always seems good too -- you could express your concerns. I remember 10 -- you understand a lot more than many folks think at that age.

I'm not sure that parental oversight in the home really counts as 'censorship'.... Isn't that part of parenting? I'd guess you veto certain movies and music...

I agree with what everyone has said about talking to your son about the book, and making sure that he understands the violence, etc.

But what I really wanted to comment on is that I think it is fantastic that your son wants to read in the first place, Rachael. That Puffin Post program sounds great - I checked out the website, LOL - and if he chose the book on his own, well, at least he was choosing to read!

Thank you, everyone, for such wise and supportive advice. I finished the book last night, and the gore/horror does multiply rather exponentially in the last 50 pages or so. I know I'd have been terrified by it myself when I was 10! But then I'm fairly feeble about that kind of thing... my son used to be (nearly had to be taken out of 'Finding Nemo' - admittedly at under 5 years of age - because he was so distressed by Marlin's constantly frustrated quest) but is getting better.

Reading together would probably be the ideal, but he reads so fast now that he finds it irritating to go at the slower pace imposed by reading aloud. The slight issue is, he can be a bit secretive sometimes and is not very good at asking about things he's not sure about - he needs quite a bit of prompting. So possibly some combination of mentioning my concerns in a low-key way before he reads, with a follow-up conversation when he's finished, might work. And in fact, knowing him, he'll ask me what I thought of it as he's aware I've been reading it - he really seems to like it when we read the same books.

As I say - my own reading was never (OK, very very nearly never) restricted and I read an awful lot of trash (cough, Virginia Andrews) - and some great books too. I seem to have survived, just about.

>147 Cait86: Cait - he does read a LOT! Usually I'm around when he's choosing and we talk about what looks good, but I was away... and his dad is definitely NOT a reader. I did feel a little bit nervous about giving him a Puffin Post sub for Christmas, fearing I was committing that awful sin of buying someone something you rather wanted yourself, but he was gratifyingly over the moon, and really looks forward to each new issue.

In fact, I'm no longer in immediate danger from the particular book I'm concerned about, as he went to a signing by one of his favourite authors on Saturday, and then was indulged in the bookshop by Grandma afterwards... so there are 4 or 5 even newer books to be excited about!!

:)

In fact, I'm no longer in immediate danger from the particular book I'm concerned about, as he went to a signing by one of his favourite authors on Saturday, and then was indulged in the bookshop by Grandma afterwards... so there are 4 or 5 even newer books to be excited about!!

Sounds like my kind of Grandma!!

I hope when I eventually have kids - many, many years in the future - they are excited about reading too. My dad definitely passed on the reading gene to me, but my sister totally missed it.

All 3 of my sons turned out to be avid readers, and that is one of the things I am most proud of. Even my granddaughter (2-1/2),when she sees me, says "Read book!" it just makes me happy all over!

Of the other two, the little one has the makings of a reader (loves books, can already form a few letters better than either of her brothers could at that age); the middle one can read just about anything he chooses to - but he doesn't generally choose to :( Naturally I blame myself - I never read (in the past tense) to him as much as the other two as he is such a livewire he would never sit still long enough; now that he is taking more of an interest, our potential reading-together time is usually squeezed out either by my work or by his being much more interested in other stuff (usually fantasy roleplay type things). Ah well. He does read - it's just that it tends to be in the manner of a competitive sport (how many pages have I read? How many chapters are there in this book? Can I finish this book before my teacher finishes reading it in class?) rather than for pure enjoyment of the story.

Have been on a bit of a tidying-up-the-catalogue jag this evening. Some progress made, but I chose to pause - coincidentally - when I had hit 1001 books, which pleased me aesthetically. (Although a LARGE number of those are wishlist books so don't really count.)

Just finished my latest book, and in a quandary about what to read next... I had The Journal of Dora Damage lined up, continuing my run of books-with-black-and-red-covers, but then a nice new box of books arrived from the Book People today with many alternative temptations. Not a good time to exhibit the alleged even-handed, longwinded decision-making of a Libra.

I had that competitive sport stage ... got hooked somewhere along the way -- there's hope for him yet! :) Sounds like a great group!

What Suse said.

I know that behavior like Middleman's looks competitiveness to innies, but us outies are often using this type of behavior to get organized. It's more a means of making sure we know the scope of the problem ("I'm committed to reading this, how much of it is there?"), how we're doing at solving it ("of the three hundred pages in this book I've committed to read, how many are left? How many am I reading a day? How long will that mean I'll spend solving this problem?"), and what improvements that means we need to make in our problem-solving ("can I fit in three chapters a day instead of two? I'll be done x days sooner that way...").

And of course, we want you to praise us for being so good at solving the problem, not knowing that innies don't ordinarily like solved problems anywhere near as much as us outies do.

Richard, that's a fantastically helpful explanation. How very humbling to get such spot-on parenting advice over the Internet... it is true that he and I think very differently, but I've never seen it put so succinctly before. Thanks. I will endeavour to be ever more fulsome in my praise!!

Any tips for how to persuade 'outies' to read something other than the same 10-15 books over and over again?

>155 FlossieT: Yes.

NOW you've done it! You've gone and asked me for advice. Stand back!

Talk about the books. You see him reading Fanny Hill for the four hundredth time, ask him where he is in the book, what his favorite bit is, why does the main character interest him so much, and all without making any kind of a deal about it at all. Just questions. Respond with, "Oh! I get it!" or "Huh. That's interesting." in as sincere a tone as you can manage. And do this each and every time you see Fanny Hill in his grubby little mitts.

After 1) showing that you're interested, 2) demonstrating that you're available to listen to his ideas, 3) noticing what he's doing, he'll get so damn sick of talking about Fanny Hill that he'll never look at the damned thing again. And you'll have learned some very important things by knowing what the book is actually about, what he's getting out of reading it, and what he's NOT getting out of reading it.

It worked with me, since I read One Hundred and One Dalmatians at least three gazillion times and faced this exact treatment from my older sisters; it worked with my daughter, who got so tired of explaining Robert Jordan novels to me that she asked me what else I thought would appeal to her, and for my sins, I got her hooked on George RR Martin.

My mother, may she rot in peace, said a very, very wise thing to me as she lay dying: "Daaahhhliiinnn, isn't it a pity that the only part of life we're really ready for is the one we just finished?" So why not share? If it helps, yay! If it is turned away as meddling or doesn't help, at least I tried. And I will always regret NOT trying over failing.

#156

Your last sentence just hit a real chord for me. I am someone who is always very apprehensive over trying new things but invariably regret it if I don't try them. I took a deep breath after I read that and really thought about its implications.

Maybe something will actually come from the thought process! Thank you.

Just a quick fly-by to catch up on what you have been up to.
I lost track of you for a while :(

so so many good books!

#156 - Great advice, Richard! Though I certainly hope Rachael's son isn't reading Fanny Hill....LOL

Sorry to revert to the topic of names, but I just got a birth announcement from a colleague. Their three-year old son is named Emerson. They named the new daughter Lake.

Could the next one be destined to be Palmer?

uh, is there a problem reading the same books 10-15 times? I did/do that too... and look where it got me :) Seriously when I was that age I re-read and re-read -- they were my friends, i loved them and we visited! LOL But I do like the questions bit a lot -- what a fount you are dear Richard :)

ETA >160 Cariola: What's the last name? I just gotta know LOL

Richard, I'm not going to create a medical miracle by getting pregnant again just so I can practise your recommendations but I do wish you had been around when I was raising my two - I love your insights and would happily have used you as a resource!

>157 lunacat: luna, then I have succeeded, and without even trying. That is the only thing I've ever wanted to do, make a difference one by one, to those who can use the hard-won knowledge I can share. Thanks.

>159 Cait86: cait, you and me both! But even if he does later, it should still be up for discussion.

>160 Cariola: Cariola, my son-in-law is named Emerson. It was rough on him in high school, so he started using his middle name, Cody. I never knew about the Emerson until I saw the wedding invitations. That poor kid...although in a world with lots of Madisons and Taylors, I guess things are different.

>161 suslyn: Suse, oh heck no! It's when that's ALL a kid reads, not adventuring further into the lake of lit, that it becomes a worrisome thing. It signals an unwillingness to be open that can sometimes turn into trouble, and can be a marker of some disturbance in the child's world that could benefit from parental attention.

I still re-read books! I've never given up the idea that I can still learn something even on a well-worn path. Usually can, too.

>162 tiffin: Tui, thanks! I worry about sounding like the pompous, Frasier-esque know-it-all that I really am. As for having more kids...ye GODDESSES isn't the swan-song of the ovary a hymn of joy anymore?!?

lastly >158 mckait: you ignore me, so I call you by a number nyah

163> I didn't think Emerson was that odd, especially since his parents are American Lit professors. It was the Emerson, Lake (& Palmer?) that I thought was really weird.

Frasier richardear, I would never ignore you.

>164 Cariola: Cariola, I think "Lake" is as awful a thing to do to a kid as "River" or "Leaf" is...the "Palmer" idea makes me think that someone watched "All My Children" back in the heyday of Palmer Courtland.

Think if they have a FOURTH child, since the third isn't even a sure bet yet, that they'll start on another band? "Crosby" then "Stills" then "Nash" then "Young" or summat?

>165 mckait: all will be forgiven when you email me the code to do strikethroughs. I've lost and forgotten it.

*choo* at the animation.

166> Or maybe Earth, Wind and Fire?

>167 Cariola: what a gruesomely probable thing that is....

#164/166: Catey is dating a boy named Lake, lol.

I can't think of anything to top Crosby/Stills/Nash. In fact, the only other ensemble name that comes to mind is boringly normal: Peter, Paul and Mary.

>156 richardderus:: Richard, thank you. Book of the moment is The Witches, of which I think I can just about face asking those questions over and over and over again. (Having said which - we read half of a fantastic book together at bedtime last night: Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable, by Nicola Davies. Did you know that if blue whales eat pink shrimp, their poo looks like strawberry ice cream? I didn't, and it was just the sort of factoid to captivate a 7 year-old.)

Talking of Robert Jordan & George Martin makes me think of my bro, who I started off on the gateway drug of David Eddings (RIP). Now reads much more SF & fantasy than I ever did.

>158 mckait:: thanks, Kath! Appreciate the fly-by - am doing a lot of that myself... I think I read weird books. And too much trash. Must do better.

>161 suslyn:/163: on reading & re-reading - exactly as Richard says: the re-reading per se is not a problem; it's the unwillingness to try anything else, even things that he will probably like. I know my brother (see above) was the same. Actually even my eldest is, to a certain extent, but he is at least interested in principle in extending his range. As long as it doesn't include The Children of Green Knowe, which to my total devastation he is convinced is the Worst Book Ever Written.

Books:

58. Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda
279 pages

This is the YA book that gave me such concern above. In no way original, it's a sort of gleeful mashup of Buffy, King Arthur and Paradise Lost, with a teenage heroine. Billi (short for Bilqis - her mother was Islamic) SangReal is the youngest of the Knights Templar, and opens the book facing her Ordeal - the killing of an undead child. That's really just like the pre-title sequence in the Bond movie since it doesn't serve much purpose other than to grab your attention and introduce the theme of Billi's "difficult" relationship with her dad, Arthur. Quite a lot of fantasy gore and horror, but actually quite well-written, on the whole. At least 3 stars if not 3.5, but not quite sure who to recommend it to as it's not the sort of book I normally read. I finished it though which has to say something.

59. Mr Toppit - Charles Elton
343 pages

The cover tagline says, "Once upon a time a book broke a family", but actually the family seems pretty ready to be broken. The Hayseed Chronicles is a series of childrens' books by one Arthur Hayman, who names the lead character after his own son, Luke. The books become insanely popular, and a hospital radio DJ in California, Laurie, plays a small part in this. Mr Toppit explores what happens to Luke and Laurie, and to the people they're connected to (in particular Luke's sister Rachel, who does not appear in the Chronicles), as a result of the books' popularity - in particular, what it means to be "ordinary" when the lens of celebrity is focused fiercely on you.

Great fun, but a bit uneven: the central revelation of secrets in Luke and Laurie's family feels a bit contrived; some of the pastiche falls flat; could have done with a little more ruthless editing.

60. The Journal of Dora Damage - Belinda Starling (452 pages if you count all the various notes and acknowledgements - which I do)

The first 100 pages of this were stonkingly good but after that it went a bit mental. Dora is a wonderful creation: resourceful, brave, worldly without being sleazy (when the book opens, at least), her desperation to keep her family afloat - in particular, ensuring the care of her epileptic daughter Lucinda - when her bookbinder husband can no longer work leads her to take on a series of increasingly dodgy commissions - even though, as a woman, she is technically in breach of union regulations, which do not permit women to be professional bookbinders.

People who liked Jane Harris' The Observations may well like this, although it's a lot more explicit than that book. Essentially, it's a Dickensian pastiche tale of the lower classes being exploited by the eccentric upper classes, complete with a cheesy "God bless us, every one!" Christmas scene. Some interesting observations about the role of women, but various elements feel a little (OK, sometimes a LOT) implausible. One of the reviews quoted calls it "a romp" and I think that's probably fair. I loved all the stuff about bookbinding, and it does have the special quality of a book that has been thoroughly researched without the research hanging about the book's ankles like lead weights. But ultimately it gets a bit silly - characters that seemed fair set to become nicely rounded in the first 100 pages become Dickensian caricatures.

Cripes, I have just under 1000 pages to read by Sunday night. Better get off LT and get reading.

>170 FlossieT: Rachael, book #58 sounds perfectly vile. I can see that this would give you some quavery-tummy moments.

Book 60 makes me want to hurl it against a brick wall, but I suspect my Dickensophobia has something to do with that. The mere speaking-aloud of the words "Little Dorritt" cause me to froth and flail.

>171 richardderus: I was quite disappointed by Dora Damage, to be honest - as I say, I really enjoyed the first 100 pages, thought the character development was good and the plot interesting, but once the Dickensian caricaturing really kicked in it began to grate horribly, and the plot just went loopy. I feel much the same way about Charlie as you do...

>172 FlossieT: Don't say that so loudly, the Dickensians will use Mafia techniques on us to get us to recant

NEVER. Even with the thumbscrews.

>174 FlossieT: Apostate! Heretic! Book Police, Book Police, here's one!!

(sorry dearie, but I would have made a terrible Resistance fighter...rooms with bright lights and rubber hoses terrify me)

As an English lit professor, I shamefully confess that I've never been able to make it through an entire novel by Dickens.

Cari, that was like me and Hardy. He always made me yearn for laudenam and a quick end. I think, re Dickens, that if you nonDickensians had had the opportunity to read him in serial form in the newspaper, as many of his books were originally published, that you would have liked him better. Especially with others around you talking about the latest instalment and the not-so-subtle attacks on things like class inequality and child labour being part of the package. Maybe you could recreate that format by reading a chapter every 4-5 days while reading other things and carrying on with life. ;) His thumpers like Bleak House and Great Expectations work well that way. I took a whole month to reread "Bleak House" that way not long ago. *hiding rubber hose behind back*

>176 Cariola: "Hi my yclepture is Cariola and I'm a non-Dickensisan."

"Hi Cariola!"

Let the Secret Meeting commence. Sister FlossieT, please pass the Creed of the Anti-Dickensians to our newest member.

>177 tiffin: Et tu, Tui? Here I thought I was safe at last.

No, I'm not a real Dickensian, Richard, but I can read him. As for the hose, I never miss an opportunity to be silly.

May I please sign the Creed of the Anti-Dickensians. I recently vowed to never even attempt another Dickens novel. I stand by this.

Welcome to our noble Guild, Sister Luna*choo*.

Tui, dear one, I even forgive you the ability to read Dickens. And *THAT* is forbearance!

Dropping in to say hallo as I haven't in a bit!

Rachel, you're book no. 60 sounds like an interesting idea - what a shame it didn't quite pull it off for you - worth a go anyway do you think, or better off trying to get through the backlog?

#177 I think tiffin has a point - I am not a Dickens fanatic, but I've still enjoyed those I've read - however, all three of them I've read very slowly in dribs and drabs (first term at university, lunch-time reading at work...) - I don't think I could have read them all in one go. I suppose they were episodic when they were written...

...I may have to start an alternative club, for those of us who are on the fence about Dickens ;)

Still here... I do read Dickens, sorry. ;->

I was not on the fence for many years. An eigth grade English teacher forced a reading of Great Expectations. I hated it and refused any more Dickens. When I married, my wife came to the marriage with a whole bucket of Dickens. As I tossed them onto our shelves, I sneered and mocked. After 10 or 11 years of convincing, I started with A Christmas Carol, an innocent and non-threatening way to start. Who wouldn't like A Christmas Carol? Then, I went on to A Tale of Two Cities and I have officially jumped the fence. Don't know what's next but I am going to read more.

>184 blackdogbooks: How About Our Mutual Friend? - my favourite Dickens :D

The one that keeps bubbling up in my mind is The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Of course, I don't know when I'll get to any of them. I have a TBR stack for this month which may bleed into next month and then I have a new stack to follow that already picked out which focuses on my 100 best lists. ON that list are a couple of longer titles. Then, I think I may be close to the October Halloween reading!

Well, of the three that I've read (the other two were Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby), I think Edwin Drood is probably my favourite to date. That said, it is incredibly frustrating that there's no ending...

Ah yes, but not all mysteries have a ending!

True - but this one ends even before the mystery fully explodes! I'd still recommend it though!

David Copperfield seems to be one that a lot of Dickens readers recommend. I've read a fair amount of Dickens, and it's in my top 3.

Not all Dickens is created equal. I risk eviction from the Guild, I know, but I did once enjoy A Tale of Two Cities. But that's it. Bring on the hose - I'm ready.

I'm going to comment on my next two books as a pair, as I read them back-to-back. Let the record show that despite a long-standing intention to turn my book comments into proper LibraryThing reviews, I haven't yet managed it. The second of these two books is the first title for a long time where I have felt compelled to do so.

61. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
479 pages
62. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
519 pages

I've had the first of these on my TBR list ever since the Guardian reviewed it. In between that review and my finally acquiring it (on International Buy Indie Day - see above!), it's gone on to win the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize. In the mysterious ways of the TBR Towers, it took the advent of a new book to get me to read it - I snagged a copy of The Ask and the Answer via Twitter. In order to fulfil my obligation to provide a review, I obviously had to read the first book. Good job we were at home this weekend.

I knew I was going to love this book from the moment I read the epigraph, which is my absolute favourite passage from Middlemarch: "...we should die of that roar that lies on the other side of silence." I was not disappointed. The Knife of Never Letting Go is stunningly good. Patrick Ness has created a dystopia that feels absolutely internally consistent - not once did the words "yes, but..." even flicker across my mind.

Todd Hewitt is the last boy left in Prentisstown, after the women all succumbed to a mysterious germ and died - a germ that also renders men's thoughts audible to everyone around them, so that everyone goes about their daily toil swimming in the Noise, a kind of constant jabber and chatter of everyone's thoughts. Todd is approaching his 13th birthday (although in this society a year has 13 months, so he's actually a bit more than 14), when he will become a man and, he hopes, finally gain a bit more control over his life. Unfortunately for him, he stumbles across something that shouldn't exist - a patch of absolute silence. Before too long, it becomes apparent that his life to date is built on a raft of lies - and now that he is beginning to learn the truth, he's going to have to leave Prentisstown, and fast.

The book tears along at breakneck speed - I found myself gulping it down in chunks, but having to pause, quite literally, to breathe. As he runs from the threat behind him - because Prentisstown isn't going to let him go that easily - Todd is desperately trying to unlearn everything he has relied on to date, constantly having to struggle to come to terms with new and shocking evidence about what really lies in the history of his home town.

Just about the only fault I can find with this is the slightly deus-ex-machina device employed in the reappearance of Todd's guardian, Ben, towards the end of the book. Ben finally explains a lot of what has been hinted at in the rest of the book, which I felt could have been allowed to come out a lot earlier, in little snippets. But it's a minor complaint, and no doubt supports the consistency of Todd's characterisation: in the first-person narrative, a lot of the more shocking things that Todd learns from the Noise of the people he encounters as he runs, he refuses to acknowledge (and hence doesn't repeat to the reader).

The end, when it finally comes, is like being hit in the stomach with a sack of flour. Which is why it was a good job I could go straight on to The Ask and the Answer. A propos of which, I must start by saying, as in my (yay!) proper review:

DON'T READ THIS BOOK NOW.

Don't say I didn't warn you, OK? Because when you finish (if you're anything like me, at 2am, freezing cold, cramped and teary) you're going to want to read the final book in the trilogy straight away - which is a problem, as to the best of my knowledge, there's no publication date yet set for it.

No longer running, Todd and Viola are struggling to adjust to life apart from each other - and to the authoritarian rules and restrictions of the town for which they spent so much of Book 1 searching. Rumours of a "cure" for the Noise proved to be true, but the first act of the town's new President is to confiscate and ration the cure. Todd and Viola are put to work - she in a house of healing, he in the President's service - and as their separation lengthens, and the buzz of returning Noise gradually grows louder, doubts creep in.

The pace of The Ask and the Answer, at the outset, is steadier than The Knife of Never Letting Go - although admittedly, that isn't saying much. Ness explores the sinister undercurrents, double bluffs and whispering campaigns of the new town, this time through a dual narrative, shared equally between Todd and Viola. But as the sanctions imposed on its inhabitants worsen, the uneasy peace cannot hold, and before long the town is at war, the guerilla fighters of the Answer struggling against the dark power of the Ask to free the town's women, and those who try to defend them. Along with Todd and Viola, the reader is plunged into the furious and confusing mayhem of civil war, as the plot increasingly gathers speed, hurtling towards an almost unbearably tense final confrontation between Todd, Viola and their chillingly inscrutable enemy.

This book is about big, important questions: who can you trust? What really matters to you? How far would you go to further a cause you believe in - or protect someone you love? Who are you really underneath - and how sure are you of that? It is also an outstanding contribution to the genre of dystopian fiction, reminiscent at times of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, while also touching on issues of gender politics and eugenics familiar from novels such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake.

Highly, highly recommended. When I read the last page I wanted to turn straight back to the beginning and start again.

I also need to say that the hardback I was sent of The Ask and the Answer is one of the most beautiful books I've owned for some time: fantastic typography, silver foil, nifty cellophane jacket (that probably will turn brittle and won't last, but right now it looks gorgeous). In fact, I have to confess that I am planning a trip into town tomorrow morning after dropping the kids off at school, as I know one of the bookshops had a couple of copies of the same edition of the first book recently; it definitely feels to me like one of those series that I'm going to end up owning multiple copies of - dog-eared reading ones, and nice HBs "for best".

Edit for the inevitable typoes

Ok, you've got me convinced, Flossie. I'll track down the first book, if I can.

Oh Rachael...apostate Rachael...enjoying a Dickens novel...! The sadness, the sadness....

BTW, loving the sound of the Patrick Ness books! Must procure.

Wonderful wonderful reviews of Patrick Ness's books. I own both in hardcover so appreciate your desire to have them. Fabulous books, I read Book 1 last year and got Book 2 within a week of it coming out and reading MsMoto's review over on the 100 book challenge. Can't wait for the final one.

I'd never heard of Patrick Ness but now I'm adding him to my wishlist. (My LibraryThing wishlist!!!!! is anyone else planning on spending an evening playing with collections?)

I own Dickens but haven't read any... just like Henry James...

#185 I haven't read much Dickens but I loved Our Mutual Friend.
#195 Collections is proving to be lots of fun

oh wow - i'm definitely going to have to search for the Patrick Ness books!

>192 tiffin:, >193 richardderus:, >195 cushlareads:, >197 flissp: - Tiffin, Richard, Cushla, Fliss, go, acquire!! (Although you can borrow my copy if you like, fliss :)) There's a great interview with Ness on the Walker Books site that I found last night when I was desperately hunting for a publication date for book 3:

http://www.walker.co.uk/Patrick-Ness/q-a.aspx

They are billed as YA fiction but there is absolutely no condecension to the reader - this is stuff to grow up on, and contrary to all my anxious mitherings above about my son's recent dodgy book choice, these are books I would have absolutely no doubts about him reading - true, they're dark, but I think there's a lot to think about.

I was expecting to enjoy them, but they far surpassed my hopes.

>182 flissp:: fliss, you asked about Dora Damage way back... I think maybe if you're less hostile to Dickensiana than me, you might well enjoy it more. I was mainly disappointed because the first 100 pages were so good that when the characterisation broke down into caricature and the plot went loopy, it was a real shame - it could have been a MUCH better book. Anyway, if you feel like it let me know - I was planning to put it up on ReadItSwapIt but I can save it for you instead.

>191 FlossieT:: ...a germ that also renders men's thoughts audible to everyone around them...

If only you knew how much this is the fabric of nightmares I have occasionally. ;-)

>199 TadAD: well, exactly! That's one of the more chilling scenes at the start of the first book - when Todd walks through the town and through the Noise. Also a great piece of typographical design.

I'm sad because the bookshop had run out of lovely HB Knives of Never Letting Go :-( They may have some in their warehouse but I'm away at the next warehouse sale. poo.

Have you read The Crash of Hennington? That's the only Ness book I own and have heard good things about as well.

>201 christiguc:: hello, christiguc! No, I haven't - I've had Topics About Which I Know Nothing on the wishlist for ages though. In the Walker interview linked above Ness recommends Topics over Hennington in his "quickfire round" - but having looked at the reviews, Hennington sounds like it has a lot in common with the two I just read - I'll look out for it! Thank you.

Just wanted to offer my most profuse thanks to whichever lovely person (because I'll bet it's one of you lot!) gave me a thumbs-up for my review of The Ask and the Answer. Makes it feel extra-specially worthwhile :)

'Twas more than one of us, Rachael.

Oh, my... it was only 1 when I went to bed last night!! Thank you, lovely lovely people - I am pathetically happy to have been of interest.

Hi Rachael, am visiting your thread after a long long time and you seem to have read quite a lot since then!

Will drop by later for more comments and before I leave, congratulations on your hot review for The Ask and the Answer

It was a very well-written and informative review, Rachael, and well deserving of all those 8 thumbs!!

What ronincats said ;) ...although I think you should put the first part of your review up as as review for the first book (if you follow my drift), because that was the bit that captured me completely!

Ooh and yes please, if you really don't mind lending it to me, I'd love to borrow it (swift guilty glance in the direction of Vilinus Poker...)

You delivered again, Miss T!

I only give thumbs if I think they are deserved. You got one, Floss.

and on the Planet!!

Roni, BDB, Tiffin, Stasia and anyone else who I've forgotten, risking sounding like a stuck record but... thank you very much indeed. I am SO bad at getting round to write 'proper' reviews - the effort involved always feels disproportional to the output - and it's really lovely to hear that you liked it.

Fliss - will drop it round sometime soonish, although probably not next week which is looking HELLISH... football season is over now so I'm not round your way as much as I used to be but there's bound to be a trip to the library before too long.

I'm a bit late on the name trip that this thread has been on but I have to add a few since I love looking at names.

My son's culinary arts instructors were Chef Garlick and Chef Bean.

At work we had two patients in a room that were Lewis and Clarke and down the hall we had Hite and Waite. (I couldn't make this stuff up!)

My favorite is from my husband. At work he had a client's daughter, La-a. It was pronounced La-dash-a. Her mom said that the dash wasn't silent!

I loved you review for The Ask and the Answer. I have to read the book now!

Thank you Rachel - that will be fantastic whenever suits you (and maybe I might make some progress with Vilnius Poker in the meantime...)!

...and the thumbs up was definitely deserved ;)

Two more bad names from patients that were on our service (General Pediatrics) in the hospital this week: Heavenly, and Modesty (which is quite ironic, given that her mother is a prostitute).

Oh, Darryl... I'd really love to read that as a poetic hope for something better for the next generation.

Incidentally, look out for your next LRB - Brooklyn review... Seriously, I'm beginning to wonder if I read a different book.

Finished work just after 10pm and then had to endure crowded train journey home jammed in with drunk man who was desperate to enforce his musical taste on the entire carriage, and who didn't take long to become involved in loud conversation with drunk girl opposite who fervently believed in fairies. It's taking me a little longer than usual to wind down tonight.

It sounds as though those two are made for each other!

Today I discharged from the hospital a girl who is now my all-time favorite patient, provided I don't acquire what she has! She was a very cute 6 yr old with spina bifida who acquired salmonellosis (intestinal infection with the Salmonella bacterium) after eating egg salad last weekend. Today she absolutely smothered me with hugs and kisses, told me she loved me a half dozen times, and held onto me so that I couldn't leave her room! She told me that I had to go home with her and her mother. When I asked her how I should get to her house, she said "You sit in the back of Mommy's car with me, and she can drive us to my house." Her mother and I were in tears with laughter at this, and several other comments she made. Her mother took photos and a video, which she said she would post on Facebook this weekend; once she does, I'll select a photo or two and post it on my thread.

Sadly they got out at different stations so 'tis not meant to be. Alas, alack.

That is such a cute story, though: has really cheered me up - thank you.

The daughter of a good friend had a fairly serious lung condition as a baby that required surgical intervention, and it was years before she would go near my husband (who is a doctor). Her mother's theory was that she had rapidly developed an antennae for doctor detection, and also put all doctors in the same mental box marked 'Bad People - Avoid At All Costs'. It's nice to know that not all paediatric care leads to fear of medical personnel!

>213 cal8769: hi, Cal! I love Hite and Waite. You couldn't make that up, really. One of the few quotes from Anna Quindlen's Imagined London that I appreciated: "reality is often more heavy-handed than we can afford to be."

That is a great quote!

Favorite work names from my days as a student-loan collector: Velvet Browne-Couch
Fluffy Cardigan
TimberLee Wood
Eustachia Proctor
Tron'quelle Shabazz
Bruce Brace
Electra Carson (that's an old Buick)
Finn Quinn

That's what I can remember. I called an old friend from that job on his birthday, and we lauughed for a half-hour about Electra Carson. We both drove Electras back in the day.

My niece whose last name is Abbott met and fell in love with a man whose last name is Costello. They both owned VW Beetles. Their engagement announcements showed their Beetles crashed into each other (fender bender only) with the caption "Abbott meets Costello." They've now been happily married for 5 years.

222> Now that's just plain cute!

You can't make that stuff up!

Really, really enjoyed your review of The Ask and Answer and The Knife of Never Letting Go. I can't say that I have every heard of Ness but I am certainly a convert after reading your amazing reviews.

Thanks very much, Trish! Someone else (sorry I can't remember who) mentioned on their thread recently the point about giving back to the LT community by posting centrally rather than just on the group, which has me all fired up about trying harder to write "proper" reviews. I have a bit of a backlog though...

Feel free to carry on swapping silly names on this thread - in the meantime, I'm going to be adding books over here :-)

Popping up to say I'm still lurking, liking and learning :)

glitter-graphics.com

Nice to see you, Belva & Suse! You can find more books over here...