charbutton's 2009 reading #2

Previous 2009 thread

First forty books of 2009:

1. No Signposts in the Sea by Vita Sackville-West
*2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
3. Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West
4. Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
5. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
6. White Noise by Don Delillo
7. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
8. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
9. The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple
10. Century Rain by Alistair Reynolds
11. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
12. Fire and Steam: how the railways transformed Britain by Christian Wolmar
*13. The Mitfords: letters between six sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley
14. A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor
15. Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
16. Palestine by Joe Sacco
17. Vida by Marge Piercy
*18. The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt
19. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
20. Blood in the Fruit by L. Timmel Duchamp
21. The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
22. The State of Africa: a history of fifty years of independence by Martin Meredith
*23. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
24. Jungfrau and other Short Stories - Caine Prize for African Writing 7th collection
*25. This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun
26. At the Still Point by Mary Benson
*27. The Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski
*28. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
29. The Bell by Iris Murdoch
30. The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta
*31. The Weather in Africa by Martha Gellhorn
32. Deadlock by Sara Paretsky
33. My Driver by Maggie Gee
*34. The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
35. Tropical Fish: stories out of Entebbe by Doreen Baingana
36. Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
37. God's Bits of Wood by Sembene Ousmane
*38. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
*39. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
40. If this be Treason: translation and its dyscontents, a memoir by Gregory Rabassa

(Some touchstones playing up)

The starred titles are the ones I have enjoyed most.

Books not completed:

1. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro - I just couldn't get to grips with what was going on. But I will try it again.

Going back to the Rabassa discussion from your previous thread, maybe it IS a cultural difference, but I can't be sure because it's a couple of years since I read the book. I guess my point is that I might have found him arrogant, but if so it didn't make a big impression on me (since I don't remember it), and I really enjoyed reading the book, so I guess it didn't bother me if I did.

I've been wrestling with The Judge by Rebecca West for a couple of days but have given up after 70 odd pages. I hate not finishing a book.

BOOK 41: Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
(book club - Hazel's choice)

A brief and stark book written in the 1970s telling the story of Maria Wyeth, a woman who has ben married and divorced, whose child is in an institution and who has got involved in some kind of Hollywood life. Maria is an incredibly passive woman who feels no emotional connection to the people in her life, apart from her daughter. She feels nothing and, really, does nothing. Even when she becomes pregnant and has an abortion there is no sense that this is a positive decision.

The book is 168 pages long and reads very quickly (it took about 3 hours) and I feel that I only have a fleeting impresion of what Didion is conveying at the moment. I'll definitely re-read it next week before the book club discussion.

BOOK 42: North of South by Shiva Naipaul

In the 1970s Naipaul travelled to Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia in an attempt to understand what revolution and socialism meant for ordinary people. North of South provides an account of his experiences. It's an interesting read, particularly as he was a Trinidadian of Indian descent travelling through countries in which Asian communities were reviled if not openly persecuted. The most common remark directed at him by black Africans: 'There are Asians in Trinidad? You people get everywhere, don't you?'

Naipaul presents an overwhlemingly negative view of East Africa, although he is pretty even handed with his criticisms - black people come across as disorganised and frustrating; white people are ignorant and racist. He is scathing about the socialist slogans spouted by Tanzanians and holds the casual racism of American backpackers up for ridicule.

BOOK 43: Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi

An Egyptian woman called Firdaus recalls her life on the night before her execution. It is a life of violence, suffering and humiliation. The most memorable line of the book sums it up really - '...every single man I did get to know filled me with one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face.' While a work of fiction, Firdaus is based on the life of a woman el Saadawi met during a research visit to Qanatir Prison.

This should be a perfect book for me but I didn't enjoy it. I struggled to get into the rhythm of the writing with the consequence that I felt very detached from Firdaus. Or was the book deliberately written in that way? Firdaus herself seems very distant from what has happened to her.

BOOK 44: The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa

I purchased this after seeing its translator, Daniel Hahn, speaking at a London Review of Books event. Hahn seemed very nice, the writer/translator relationship was interesting (lots of contact during the process) and as I hadn't read a book from Angola, I thought I'd give it a go.

On the surface, this book is less obviously about 'African' issues that other novels I have read this summer. It doesn't discuss tribalism, racism, grinding poverty, village life or gender relationships.

Narrated from an unusual standpoint (I was most disappointed that the blurb explains who the narrator is - much better to discover it ourselves), The Book of Chameleons focuses on events that take place in the flat of Felix Venture, a man who sells lineage and family pedigrees to people wanting to improve their background to get on in the world.

I think this is very much an African story, about identity, history and memory and the unreliability of these three things.

Without having read anything about the book or its author to get more of an idea about this, I think Agualusa is commenting on how Angola is moving away from the horrors of its past, trying to develop a new identity for itself through changing interpretations of historical fact.

charbutton, you've been busy this past weekend. Those books on Africa sound fascinating, nice reviews.

The Africa books have been fascinating. I'm so glad I decided to focus my reading like this, there are so many wonderful books that I would probably never have found otherwise.

Another unfinished book...The Famished Road by Ben Okri. 40 pages in and it obviously isn't my kind of book. It can't hold my attention and I don't want to struggle through it.

charbutton, your thoughts about why The Book of Chameleons is an African story are very interesting; when I read it, I was a little put off by the author's being the son of Portuguese colonizers and wasn't sure how to focus on what was "African" about the novel, even though the author, in an interview included in the back of my edition, said he considered it a very African story. Thanks for giving me a new perspective.

And don't worry about not finishing books. Life is too short and there are too many books to read!

Rebecca, I didn't know anything about Agualusa before I read the book but I assumed he's black for some reason.

I gave up on The Famished Road, too...

I would say that The Famished Road is a not-for-everyone sort of book (I had to write a paper on the meaning of the title!), but I think I have come to appreciate it more as I have come to understand more about African culture and literary tradition. And one has to like magical realism also...

I think The Famished Road helped clarify that I really don't like magical realism at all!

BOOK 45: The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A collection of short stories, many about the experiences of Nigerian immigrants in America. All the stories were fine - none were bad, none were outstanding. I enjoyed reading all of them.

>15 charbutton:: oh dear, nor do I. And yet I'm trying to read all of the Booker winners ...

BOOK 46: By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Saleh Omar is arrives in Britain as an asylum seeker from Zanzibar. Latif Mahmud has also sought refuge in this country. As the book unfolds we learn how the lives of these two men are intertwined and, through narration from both points of view, how they experience the same events in different ways.

It has been fascinating to learn more about Zanzibar - officially a part of sub-Saharan Africa, but culturally similar to North Africa and the Middle East. I really want to visit!

Questions for LTers...

I work for the a charity in the UK. We're planning a fundraising drive focused on reading - asking people to hold book swaps and book clubs with participants making a donation. We also want to organise some sponsored reading but aren't sure how to do it (we don't have the resources to do this through schools), and I wondered if LT and book blogs are the way to go.

I'm not asking for money, so don't panic!

What I'm trying to figure out is if there's any mileage in asking people who blog about their books to, for example, donate £1 for each book they read in a month. It seems like lots of people set themselves reading challenges and could we add some kind of fundraising angle to it?

Would anyone out there actully consider doing this for a charity? Or are there others ways that we can engage the on-line community that involves sponsorship of some kind?

All ideas much appreciated. Thanks!

>18 charbutton:: I read my first Gurnah (Desertion) a couple of months back and really enjoyed it. I've heard By the Sea is also very good.

>19 charbutton:: Sure, that could work. I recall a recent blogger "read-a-thon" where several participants did sponsored reading for a charity of their choice. I don't know how successful it was as a fund-raiser, but I do know there were many bloggers participating. So the concept is not a foreign one.

>18 charbutton: I wasn't clear if you really liked the story or not... (maybe I'm being picky:-) I loved By the Sea and liked some of his others quite a bit.

>19 charbutton: hm. It could work, but it seems it would be a challenge to organize. Perhaps a chat with dovegreyreader might be a good place to start.

>21 avaland: Damn, you spotted the deliberate omission! I did enjoy it, but didn't love it. I'm not sure why not.

>20 lauralkeet:,21 thanks for the feedback. Luckily it's not my job to organise!

BOOK 47: The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein

Hilda Bernstein and her husband Lionel, or Rusty, were communists activists fighting against apartheid in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s. Both were 'listed' by the government. This meant that they could not meet with other listed people and could not attend gatherings of any kind. Hilda was imprisioned; Rusty was arrested under the 90 day rule and was tried alongside Nelson Mandela for organising a revolution.

The World That Was Ours is Hilda's story of their lives, focusing particularly on Rusty's trial, and I found it fascinating. I have an interest in authoritarian regimes. I never cease to be amazed by the amount of thought that goes into maintaining an all-encompassing system of oppression and terror, and have an appreciation for the absurdities that this often creates.

Anyway, this book provides an insight into the control exercised by the SA government and the often devastating impact on the lives of those affected.

Book 48: Children of the New World: A Novel of the Algerian War by Assia Djebar

After struggling at first with the style of Djebar's writing and keeping track of the charaters and their relationships, I really got into this book and by the end was completely absorbed. Set during the Algerian war, Children of the New World follows the lives of various people living in one town during a 24 hour period.

The first thing to say about this book is how modern it feels. The writing and the themes have not dated at all (it was first published in 1962). Young men joining an insurgency against an outside power and the tensions between Western versus Islamic or traditional culture clearly resonate today (in fact there are many echoes of the Algerian struggle for independence in the current Iraq situation, particularly guerilla warfare and torture).

Many of the main charaters are women and we see the impact of the war on their lives. Cherifa, the wife of a resistance leader, has to leave her house for the first time to warn her husband about his imminent arrest. Lila's husband has gone to join the resistance and she has to live by herself. Hassiba, a young girl, goes to the maquis hiding in the mountains.

I think what I liked most about this book is that Djebar highlights the difficulties experienced by these women in a subtle and interesting way, rather than a 'look at these poor oppressed Muslim women' heavy-handed rant.

As I've said, I did have trouble getting into the rhythm of the writing for a while. Sentences are often long and contain several ideas. And I struggled with the character of Lila - i just couldn't get a grip of her. But I know that these are the things that will bring me back to this book again. There is more for me to discover.

Nice review Char, and I'm glad that you made mention of the difficulty getting into it in the beginning. I had started it several months ago, on avaland's recommendation, but also had trouble getting into it, so I put it aside. I'll certainly give it another go later this year.

I did think I wouldn't get through it, but I'm glad I didn't put it down.

I forgot to say in the review that reading this made me regret how little attention I paid to the part of my uni course that focused on Algeria. I got to watch 'The Battle of Algiers' (a film about the bomb attacks carried out by the resistance on European cafes and bars) and could have read some excellent books on the subject. Unfortunately beer was more important than learning at that point in my life!

I read My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir by Ted Morgan a couple of years ago, which was very good. And one of these years I'll get around to reading Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. I'd also like to read more about Camus's views of the war.

The Battle of Algiers is an amazing movie, and I was particularly amazed that it was all done by actors because it had the feel of a documentary. I also have A Savage War of Peace and hope to read it someday. And now I'll also take a look at Children of the New World. Darryl, did you ever read that biography of Frantz Fanon?

Not yet, Rebecca; hopefully I'll get to it this fall.

Well, as I said earlier, it isn't an easy read, but I brought it up because of the Algiers connection.

Right. Your comments didn't dissuade me from reading it, though. It is one of several biographies that I want to read before the year is out, along with the ones about Borges, Naipaul and Sartre.

Charlotte - Catching up and looking over you latest reviews. The World That Was Ours sounds fascinating, and By the Sea is sitting on that bookshelf I have (actually it's on an addendum bookshelf, but still...). Thanks for posting those.

27 & 28, I'm going to add A Savage War of Peace to my 'to buy' list. I've got Henri Alleg's La Question on my shelf that I read at uni. It's a memoir of his arrest and torture by the French in Algiers in the late 50s, written while he was imprisoned and smuggled out. I remember it being very disturbing. I'm sure there are translated versions available. I'm going to try and re-read the French version I have.

BOOK 49: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

A memoir in graphic novel form by the author of the Essential Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip.

Bechdel's family were pretty dysfunctional. Her father slept with young men throughout his marriage (his students, babysitters) and his Bechdel speculates that his death was probably suicide. Both her parents were distant and undemonstrative and it seems like family life was difficult for her.

The book should really have been titled 'All About My Father', as he and Bechdel's relationship with him are central. Her relationship with her mother is peripheral, possibly an indication of how much more connected Bechdel feels to her father. Or maybe it's easier to write about him because he's dead??

I'm in two minds about this book. On one hand, it tells the story of a difficult upbringing and the graphic novel form means that we don't get bogged down in pages and pages of dissection of everyone's feelings - there just isn't room for that kind of text. This does not mean that the writing is unemotional or shallow - Bechdel makes many points and uses literary allusions that I had to re-read several times and think about (I still don't understand all the stuff about Joyce).

On the other hand, I think the form does lend a distance to her story and Bechdel's little asides in the drawings ('yes, our house did really look like this', 'hoest to God we had a painting like this', which would be paragraphs of description in a prose work) increased this distance. It made me feel that she wasn't totally confident that readers would understand that this is a true (from her point of view) story and it needed to be reiterated regularly.

Overall I enjoyed reading it and will definitely go back to it again. I have a very bad habit of going through graphic novels far too quickly and I know there are ideas there that I missed first time round.

BOOK 50: Maru by Bessie Head

A young woman arrives in a Botswanan village to teach at the local school. She is a member of the Masarwa tribe, the lowest of the low as far as Black Botswanans are concerned, and her presence upsets the status quo and particularly the lives of the two men who fall in love with her.

On the back of the book Head is quoted as saying that she wanted to write 'an enduring novel of the hideousness of racial prejudice' and it is a refreshing change to be shown prejudice as a Black/Black, rather than a White/Black issue.

Unfortunately, for me this got lost as I didn't enjoy the book at all. If it had been any longer than 123 pages I don't think I would have finished it. The main problem was that three of the main characters fall in love with each other on sight, the kind of love that is immediately all encompassing. I just don't believe that. It doesn't matter the kind of story this appears in - Trollope, Tolstoy, whoever - it just seems totally unreal to me. Usually I can suspend my disbelief if the other parts of the story are interesting, but in Maru there isn't much more to the story.

It just wasn't my cup of tea.

Char, if you haven't seen the movie, "Daughter of Keltoum" by an Algerian film maker living in France, do so. It's a nice companion to Djebar's work.

I would also recommend Of Dreams and Assassins by Malika Mokeddem, another Algerian author. And I have just discovered that the University of Nebraska press has published another two novels of hers (and a forthcoming memoir).

Thanks for these suggestions Lois.

BOOK 51: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
(book club - Julianne's choice)

A young woman is employed as governess to two children living in the country. At first her charges seem perfect but she begins to discover that they are apparently unnaturally linked to the spirits of dead people.

I wasn't able to really let myself go with this supernatural tale and always felt a bit distant from the action, perhaps because I was very aware of the devices James uses to create atmosphere (a symptom of dissecting The Woman in White and Frankenstein at school??).

He does do this very well, dropping in little references that a late Victorian reader would recognise to reinforce that this is a mysterious and strange tale. The children have been living in India, a land of mysticism. The narrator links the situation to The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Eyre.

Despite the distance I felt, I was interested enough to try and second guess the plotline. Unfortunately I found the ending disappointing and abrupt.

BOOK 52: Road to Ghana by Alfred Hutchinson

This books provides a great counterpart to The World That Was Ours (message 23). Like Lionel Bernstein, Hutchinson was caught up in the Treason Trials in South Africa, 1956-8. Once acquitted, Hutchinson escaped SA with the aim of meeting up with his white girlfriend in Ghana.

Road to Ghana is the story of his journey, taking us through Botswana, Malawi, Tanzania as he flees the long arm of the South African police. It's a really enjoyable read that captures a feeling of life on the run and the sense of a pan-African fellowship in countries on the verge of independence.

Book 53: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The first thing to say is that I did not give this book the time it needs. I rushed through it and mainly read it on long journeys home from meetings, always dozing off after a while.

The second thing to say is that any writer who has a character say 'It's queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own...' is probably never going to win my heart!

So what did I make of the book given the two points above? My overwhelming feelings after finishing this book were discomfort and disgust.

Discomfort with the way black people are described. On a different thread tomcatMurr pointed me to an article in which Chinua Achebe decries Conrad as a racist because he describes black men as ugly. Is this a result of the times in which the book was written or was this Conrad personal opinion? I don't know enough about the man to determine this. All I know is that it's hard to read.

Disgust with the whole colonial project. It was just so gruesomely arrogant.

Having said all this, I will return to this book and read it properly. I'm interested in the way Kurtz is built up to be a near-mythical figure and have some idea that this may reflect how the image of 'the African' was developed?

I had a similar reaction of disgust. It seemed that the depiction of Africa had little to do with a real place with many cultures and more to do with mythologizing it into a place of barbarism to be a backdrop to a depiction of Kurtz, supposedly a character who dissolves into barbarism having lost his thin veneer of civilization. Talk about blame the victim. Horrible things were done in the Congo, but they had nothing to do with the barbarity of the natives.

Read it eons ago, as a university student. I hated it.

I can't help but mention King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. I see it's already in Charlotte's library, but not solla's or Paola's. I can recommend it highly. One of the arguments in the book is that Conrad, who spent time in Belgian Congo, was trying to capture the atmosphere he experienced and that he described things almost exactly as he saw it. In the book he is quoted as having said/written "Heart of Darkness is experience...pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case.” Of course, that doesn't mean that he ever had any understanding of (or sympathy for) the native Africans there.

Anyway, you all have an interesting response. I thought Conrad left an ambivalent feeling in the reader. He captures something awful, but it's not clear that he was horrified by it in quite the same way we are.

It's not in my library, but it is on my list on my library account of books I want to check out at some point. I was thinking of that book, having read a review, when I said what I did. And I think it is Conrad's attitude about it - as expressed through the teller - my memory isn't serving me here, I think there was a teller, relating a story he'd heard from someone else, and I'm not sure from which of those two the ambivalence came, but it had a sense of fascination with Kurtz, at least equal to any horror, maybe a fascination with the power to do that - anyway it was that was really repulsive. Although, I guess it did actually bring the conditions in the Congo to light somewhat, and that caused some changes, so that is good.

#44 solla - rereading your post #41, I think I misunderstood it when I posted #43. What I thought you were saying was that Conrad was essentially making the Congo up from myth. But, now I see you meant he simply did not understand the African side of what he witnessed, and instead described it all as some general barbarism. Hopefully I got that right now.

Thank you, Daniel, for suggesting King Leopold's Ghost. I had heard of the book, and now I will look for a copy.
I have always admired Conrad's writing style and his command of the language. As a non native speaker of English myself, I am well aware of the challenges a foreign language presents in term of speaking and writing.

Boy, I am having trouble with using English as a first language today. I just read what I last wrote in #44, and discovered I had written that I had a fascination with Kurtz, when what I meant to say was that a fascination seemed to be expressed by the book. - I just corrected it, changing the I to it. I don't have a fascination with violence. I am more inclined to view it as an absence of imagination.

#45 dchaikin - yes you interpreted what I said correctly, though I think it goes beyond not understanding the African side, also that he used it as a kind of archetype or symbol.

I think Kurtz would have been a fascinating figure to readers of the time as a man who had 'gone native'. I think this adds to the contemporary idea of a magical African barbarism that even someone like Kurtz (whose, according to his fiancee was a fine man) would be powerless to resist. It reinforces the idea of Africans as an uncontrollable, uncivilisable 'other'.

(Not sure if any uncivilisable is a word!)

BOOK 54: The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga

A sequel to Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not takes forward the story of Tambu. Tambu is a young black woman who attends a mainly-white convent boarding school in Rhodesia. As she moves towards graduation, her country moves towards independence.

In a weird way this feels like an alternative, more brutal version of Mallory Towers. All the borading school elements are there - sports, tuck, first formers and fourth formers, friendship groups. However, this is reality not a sanitised version of school life. Tambu and the five other black girls have their own dormitory, are not alolowed to use the same bathroom as the white girls and know everyone shrinks from the possibility of physical contact with them.

Tambu herself is often an unlikeable character. She is aggresive, unkind and superior. She is, however, also desperately sad, lonely, confused about her identity and about the political reality in which she lives. She rejects her mother and her village life for the opportunities that a white education seem to promise, yet her attempts to excell are stymied by the racism of the Rhodesian system. So she doesn't want to be connected to the black way of life, but can't be white. She tries to distinguish herself from other black people but ends up in a dead end job, 'part of such undistinguished humanity'.

This is a great book. My only criticism is that some of the timescales feel rushed, particuarly as Tambu moves from school to work, like the author is saying that some parts of her life aren't important because they don't fit with the story.

I thought it a bit, while reading, and now after looking at the reactions to Heart of Darkness - which i haven't read for 40 yrs - i'm convinced that Piñol's Pandora in the Congo which I just finished, is very much an "anti" HofDarkness. Terrible behaviour, but w/out the odd redemption that's proffered Kurtz iirc. But more in Piñol's style, which is everything Conrad's isn't (and Conrad WAS an exceptionally "clean" writer). "Pandora" is baroque, arch, sometimes LOL, overly self-aware, meta-fictional w/ a vengeance - and i think, now, that perhaps that vengeance was aimed very directly at HofD and not just a sendup of the fabulist/fabulous old "ripping yarns." "Pandora" certainly has its problems but now i do wish some one else would read it w/ Conrad in mind.

(I think that at its time HofD WAS, both part and parcel of the myth that Europeans had created of the "dark continent" - but also was a critique of European imperialism. The Belgian Congo WAS the region suspected of being the worst of the worst, and HofD verified the horror. But still was not able to get through to the existence of Africa as "real" and leaving the continent and its peoples as symbols, tortured symbols to be sure, but there to reflect European sins and sensibilities and not as peoples in themselves - if this makes any sense).

corrected my inadvertent apostrophe problem.

#50 It makes a lot of sense, and was very much what I was trying to say. I've added it to my list of books (my library supports book lists online) but don't know when I will be able to read it. Just this week, after waiting months for some books on hold, three of them came at once with page counts of 1200, 900 and 500, and since they are in demand, I'm sure I won't be able to renew them, which means I have 3 weeks.

#49 Sounds like an interesting book - what is the time period?

>Back to Heart of Darkness, the film Apocalypse Now about the Vietnam War draws heavily on Heart of Darkness for its plot and message - so much so that I was furious Conrad wasn't recognized in the credits.

Mary, that film is what inspired me to pick up the book.

Thanks for the HoD comments - really interesting.

>51 solla:, late 70s/early 80s I think. Although war is part of the story, there's actually little historical detail in the book so I had to check Wikipedia!

BOOK 55: Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

My second Reynolds of the year. After a few months of little sci-fi, I plunged back in with a 600 page space opera set in Reynold's Revelation Space universe.

Unfortunately Chasm City is not as successful as Revelation Space or Redemption Ark, the second in that series. R Space and R Ark have a grand, sweeping feel taking in several groups of people whose histories and future are linked.

Although it takes a similar long view of history and the impact of long past events, Chasm City focuses on the story of only one man, Tanner Mirabel, who has come to Chasm City to seek revenge for the death of a woman he was tasked to protect. Chasm City was once a centre of wealth, opulence and progress. Arriving seven years after the end of a devatsating plague, Mirabel is confronted with a city of decay and amorality.

There's no doubting that this book is as absorbing as the other Reynolds I have read. Unfortunately the story of one man, however complex, is too little to fill the large number of pages and it started to get predictable towards the end.

>43 dchaikin: I have to agree with Dan's recommendation of King Leopold's Ghost, it puts the era in perspective. I never have liked Conrad either, but it became more interesting to me after reading KL's Ghost.

BOOK 56: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Yep, she's right, they don't!

I really expected to like this book. It was interesting and I learnt some American history, about which I know practically nothing apart from the fact that we used to own some of it and now we don't! I think it is a useful introduction to women's history and takes in a wider range of women's experiences than similar works.

However, for me it was a disappointment. I understand what Thatcher Ulrich is saying about well-behaved women, but I then spent much of the book annoyed that she proceeded to discuss a range of 'misbehaving' women - Amazons, runaway slaves, political activists - with little reference to those who are hidden from us because they behaved well. What I wanted to read was an analysis of the changing notions of female behaviour and examples of how we can trace well-behaved women and the way their lives ran alongside those of their misbehaving, and therefore more noticable, sisters.

The final sentence says 'well-behaved women make history when they do the unexpected, when they create and preserve records, and when later generations care'. I disagree somewhat. Well-behaved women make history when they get on with their lives, not just when they do the unexpected. We just have to work hard to find out about them. I think there were threads of this in the book, but they were overshadowed by the stories of badly behaved women and I felt that this negated the notion of finding those women overlooked by history.

I do agree that later generations have to care about these women for them to come to the fore and started to feel a bit guilty that my Masters dissertation focused only on women who were having sex with the wrong men or taking drugs. Maybe I should re-think my PhD ideas and focus on women's lives that didn't appear in the newspapers.

BOOK 57: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

A male-narrated Rebecca complete with a naive, unwordly young person lacking adult guidance at the mercy of a mysterious older woman, with Cornwall as the backdrop.

I enjoyed reading it and was absorbed but don't think it's an outstanding piece of literature.

Back from hols, with 11 new books added to my catalogue! Several reviews to follow...

Any advice on how to add a book to LT manually? I picked up a book of Billy Childish's poetry after seeing him talk/sing/read on Friday night, but it's not on here already and doesn't have an ISBN.

BOOK 58: When I Forgot by Elina Hirvonen

I read this wonderful book a few months ago but couldn't mention it until the launch of Belletrista, a new website founded by avaland to promote women's reading from around the world. Here's my review: http://belletrista.com/2009/issue1/reviews_3.html

BOOK 59: White Mughals by William Dalrymple

I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I've returned to it because it focuses on events in Hyderabad which I visited earlier this year.

The white Mughals were men from the East India Company who took on Indian customs, costumes and religions and who often lived with Indian women during their posting to the country. The book focuses on James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the British representative at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad in the late 17th/early 18th centuries. James fell in love with and married a Mughal princess and it is likely that he converted to Islam.

This is a richly detailed book, full of information taken not only from military and similar records but also the personal letters of some of the protagonists that gives the story a human touch. Dalrymple is an engaging writer who clearly has a deep knowledge of his subject and of the wider context of Anglo-Indian politics and the relationships between Islam and Hinduism that today seem unlikely.

BOOK 60: A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter

An interesting review of some of the most important British women writers from 1840. I can see that when it was originally published in 1977 it would have created contoversy and would have uncovered some writers who had been long forgotten. I think perhaps some of this punch has been lost over time because we now know so much more about the writers included in this study.

I don't feel like I got much from this book for several reasons. First, I have read few of the authors metioned and of those I know, I have only read one or two works and didn't enjoy them. That said, it has prompted me to re-consider reading George Eliot and to have another go at Virginia Woolf.

Secondly, I am not au fait with the theories of literary criticism, psychology or philosophy so many of the points were lost on me.

Thirdly, while the title of the book says that it is about British writers there was no indication of where an author was Scottish, Welsh or Irish. Perhaps Showalter felt nationality did not impact on writing or, as an American, she did not appreciate the differences in 'national' experience that make up Britain.

I would also have been interested in more discussion about who was writing during the period under discussion. There is little mention of working class women writers and I'm assuming that as time wore on there were more opportunities for women without university education to get published. Having said that, I seem to remember a stat quoted that showed that the majority of women published after WWII had been to university. Anyway, a discussion of class issues would have been useful.

After making all these criticisms, this is a book that I will come back to over time when I read works and writers that Showalter discusses.

Finally, I have to say that I am shocked that Virago published a book that contains so many typos. Numbers are inserted in error (e.g. 'the 18905' - a mistake that appears at the beginning of two chapters), apostrophes are missed out or mis-used and I think a couple of symbols appear in the middle of words. It was seriously annoying to read!

BOOK 61: JPod by Douglas Coupland

Loved it! A somewhat fantastical tale of the lives of computer programmers in Vancouver. It's very funny, very sad and surprisingly deep when I look back on it. On the surface it seems like the main characters have little in their lives beyond work, consumerism and cynicism, but they actually have a close bond of friendship. It's interesting that a book published 3 years ago can feel slightly dated, I suppose because there are so many pop culture references that are constantly changing.

The thing that concerned me about the book was the amount of geeky computer jokes that I understood! Even references to C++. It's a sign that I have had too many relationships with nerds!

>61 charbutton:: I also enjoyed White Mughals several years ago.

>63 charbutton:: The thing that concerned me about the book was the amount of geeky computer jokes that I understood! Even references to C++. At least they weren't COBOL jokes, because then you'd feel both old and geeky!

BOOK 62: Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945 by Jon Savage

Savage's detailed work takes us through the development of youth culture in Britain, America, France and Germany into the powerful consumer group now known as 'teenagers'. He details the impact of key events on young people (prohibition, 1929 crash, world wars) and shows how young people are seen to carry the hopes of a nation, only to disappoint their elders with their wayward behaviour. It will come as no surprise that the concept of an influential youth 'movement' has always concerned older generations, with the regular appearence of moral panics about youth delinquency and degeneracy in the four countries discussed across a period of 70 years.

While I did not discover anything startlingly new in terms of analysis, I did learn a lot about the various youth groupings that have arisen at different periods from flappers to jitterbuggers to the Hitler Youth. The impact of specific cultures on youth movements and the transnational comparisons and connections are really interesting - youth groups that developed in Germany in the early 20th century, for example, focused on the outdoors and healthy activities in a way that clubs in the other countries didn't.

Inevitably, this book discusses those groups that came to the attention of contemporary newspapers and social commentators and this skews the work towards those young people who garnered criticism for their apparently deviant lifestyles or who were part of large movements/clubs. I would have liked to know more about what life was like for teenagers who weren't zoot-suiters or biff boys, what my grandparents and great-grandparents lives may have been like. However, this kind of detail can often be hard to find in primary sources and its inclusion would have made what is already a 465-page, small print hard-back far too unwieldy!

BOOK 63: The Galaxy Primes by E. E. 'Doc' Smith

I picked this book out of a large sci-fi shelf in a secondhand bookshop hoping to find an interesting new author. Oh dear.

Before I started reading, I knew that a sci-fi story written in 1965 probably wasn't going to portray women in a particularly positive light. I was right as the first few sentences show: 'Her hair was a brilliant green. So was her spectacularly filled halter. So were her tight short-shorts...' At the risk of sounding like a humourless feminist who sees discrimination everywhere, Smith's depiction of women in the book is deeply annoying. The two main female characters are at the mercy of their emotions - one is very kind and good; the other is wild and uncontrollable - and this prevents them from the attaining the depth of logical thought that the men achieve. When the uncontrollable woman 'grows up', she sees her life only in terms of being a wife and mother. The most respected couple are successful becuse of the female's 'empathy and sympathy' and the male's 'driving force'. I know that a reader has to consider the time in which a book is written, but it still made me angry!

I wish I could say that the book had redeeming features that took my attention away from the gender issue but unfortunately that wasn't the case. There is no depth to this story at all. A group of telepathic humans build a spaceship and explore the galaxy. They find many more planets populated by telepathic humanoids but express no surprise at this. We are given details of their exploits on a couple of these planets which consist solely in intervening uninvited into conflicts and wars with no discussion about the moral right they might have to do this (hmmmm, perhaps this book has more relevance to our times that I thought!).

When reading a sci-fi story I often accept that I won't understand the science bits and don't bother to try, just accepting that faster than light travel is possible etc. But there's usually some kind of development of theories that I can follow. Not in this book. A character suddenly says they have a theory which they don't really need to explain because their telepathic companions can instantly understand what they mean. The poor untelepathic reader is left none the wiser.

An awful book that's going straight into my give away pile. Any takers??

Eeewwww. No thanks, charbutton!
(Great review, though !)

Ow! I've laughed so much that my coffee's gone up my nose!

oh dear, sorry!

Great review but the book.....YUCK!

>65 charbutton:, The book about teenagers sounds pretty interesting. I was surprised recently to learn that the "teenager" designation is a fairly recent invention - people were previously either children or adults.

>66 charbutton:, that sci-fi book sounds like a real winner. Makes me think of Barbarella.

BOOK 64: In A Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

This was a good read to follow The Galaxy Primes - proof that writers are able to write outside of their time, subverting their genre to present an unexpected novel.

Published in 1947, In A Lonely Place is a pulp fiction crime novel about a series of rapes and murders of young women in the Los Angeles area. It's a gripping read. I'm not quite sure how to review it without ruining the experience for others, so apologies if what I write below is a bit vague or disjointed.

The story is told from the point of view (although in the third rather than first person) of Dix Steele, a veteran of the Second World War, who wants money and success. Steele is deeply misogynistic, egotistical and restless. It's unsettling to spend the whole of the book with him without respite. So far, it's what might be expected from a 'hard-boiled' post-war novel.

However Hughes subtly changes the characteristics of pulp fiction crime, challenging the way that gender is presented in these types of books. For example, Steele is not a typical American man. He rejects the notion that he should work hard to achieve the American dream - he appropriates other people's lives to gain money.

The women of the novel are also not as we might expect. Those who are murdered are not whining, weak victims who provoke their killer thereby justifying his behaviour. They just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and it is clear that the cause of the crimes lie solely with the weaknesses of the murderer. The violent attacks occur 'off-screen' so there's no voyeuristic thrill for the reader. And the two women who have bigger roles are strong and are at the heart of the story's resolution.

The playing with gender stereotypes does not detract from the atmosphere of the novel. It's chilling and creepy, enhanced by the sparse prose. There are also a couple of flashes of black humour that I really enjoyed.

In case you hadn't already guessed, this was a great book! It's part of a series of female-authored pulp fictions from the 1930s - 1950s published by The Feminist Press and I'll definitely be ordering more books from the series. I'll also be looking up more of Dorothy B. Hughes's work.

One note of warning: in the book's blurb, Steele is described as a 'cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder'. Don't be confused, as I was, when there is no mention of animal medicine in the story!! D'oh!

Char, although I have not purchased any of the pulp series you mention, I have them all on my Amazon wishlist. Your review makes them even more appetizing!

>66 charbutton: ha ha! I winced as I was scrolling down your thread and saw the E.E. Doc Smith. I just knew it wasn't going to be good for you. Kudos for getting through it. I think most 'old' SF, with rare exception, can only be read now for sentimental reasons. It's one thing to read a classic and have to keep in mind the cultural context in which it is written, but it's another to do it with a literature that is supposed to be about the future. I remember starting to read Allen Steele's Orbital Decay (1989), set on a space station in the future, and all the women were in secondary roles. The future felt distinctly like the 70s. *shudder* I never finished it, and have touched another Steele novel because of it (I know, terrible to judge an author by one book, eh?)

It's so disappointing. I only came to SF a few years ago and wanted to understand how the genre has developed over the years. Now I'm not sure I'll bother!

charbutton@66,

The Galaxy Primes might be the worst SF book you could have picked; even I didn't get through it as a 14-year-old male, back in 1965. E. E. Smith was 75 then, and the Sixties were happening in SF much as in the rest of the world. Open treatment of sexual themes was becoming publishable, after decades when that was excluded from most markets. Primes is just one of many unfortunate experiments that many older writers attempted with their new freedom. Any random paperback from the 1970s and having a woman author would have been a much better bet; there are many contemporary novels written by authors who understand and respect women.

76, yes next time I will think before I pick! Any recommendations from the 70s?

Here are a few good ones from the 70's

Poul Anderson: "Tau Zero"
Robert Silverberg: "The World Inside"
John Brunner: "The Sheep Look Up"
Robert Merle: "Malevil"
Larry Niven: "The Mote in God's Eye"
Joanna Russ: "The Female Man"
C. J. Cherryh: "Brothers of Earth
John Varley: "Titan"

>78 usnmm2:, Thanks very much for these titles, I'll have a look at them.

After a week or so with little access to a computer, I have a few reviews to catch up on...



BOOK 65: Meridian by Alice Walker

The problem with not writing a review as soon as the book is finished is that I often forgot the important details, so apologies if this is a bit sketchy.

Meridian was written in 1976 and published by the Women's Press in 1982. That made me nervous for two reasons. First, was it going to so overly political that any actual story would be lost? Secondly, Women's Press books can be very hit and miss. Well, I shouldn't have worried. I ended up giving Meridian four stars. I should have had more faith in Ms Walker!

The story is about three people. Meridian Hill is a woman who, after marrying far too young, gives her child away so she can go to college. She later becomes deeply involved in civil rights work in the south of America after a bombing of a church in her neighbourhood. Truman is her lover who she meets through this rights work but who drifts away from the cause. Lynne is a white woman who becomes Truman's lover and wife.

Through these characters Walker explores race, political activism, inter-racial relationships and motherhood. I'm hard pressed to remember exactly why the story worked but I know it did. I found it engrossing and enjoyable.

One part that I'm still thinking about is Meridian's abandonment of her son. It's dealt with briefly and we have no sense that Meridian regrets this act at all. Is it realistic that she did not think of him? It seems so odd that there's hardly any mention of him in the book and I can't decide whether that's because Meridian didn't care about him or that Walker felt that he was incidental to the plot. Or is this a comment on the bonds between black women and children being disrupted during slavery? I'm not sure.

I should mention that I'm using a new system to choose books. I have about 230 on the TBR pile, small compared to some, but I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with the choice and always end up going to what has arrived most recently.

So I'm now playing 'book raffle'. I have a plastic bag full of folded up bits of paper with numbers on that correspond to books on my TBR list.

There are advantages and disadvantages. I wouldn't have picked up Meridian because I was worried that it would disappoint me. But I'm also struggling through no. 121 on the list, Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd.

BOOK 66: Identity by Milan Kundera

A quick read but I think that's a good thing - I'm not sure I could have spent much longer in the company of Chantal and Jean-Marc!

The book opens with Chantal waiting for Jean-Marc to join her at a hotel in Normandy. She goes for a walk on the beach, he searches for her and sees her standing on the beach looking at the sea. Except it wasn't Chantal. He had been looking at another woman. On this seemingly insignificant moment hangs the future of C and J-M's relationship.

My opening sentence is probably a bit harsh. I did enjoy the book and the overall feeling of the essential unknowability of other people, and of ourselves as well I suppose - I particularly liked the part in which C and J-M ascribe entirely different reasons for the writing of some letters which helps you see how far apart they have drifted. Kundera conveys a real sense of claustrophobia in their relationship that certainly infects the reader too. There were interesting sections on the nature of friendship.

However, I just didn't quite understand why the incident of mistaken identity on the beach led to the unravelling of their lives. And I don't really get on with books in which characters 'think too much', or in which people give long philosophical speeches because that doesn't seem real to me. Perhaps I'm just moving in the wrong circles??

I didn't make it through the Thames:Sacred River in the 3 week I had it on loan from the library. I expected to like it as I like history, geology, but somehow it just never caught my interest.

>82 charbutton:: I couldn't get into Kundera, either. I read Unbearable Lightness of Being and it was something close to unbearable!

I love your "book raffle" idea - might have to instigate that when I get home (with 3 months' worth of new Polish books for the TBR pile, obviously). My usual system is to wait for the right time to come for each book - but for lots of them that's going to be never because there'll always be something shouting a bit louder for my attention.

>83 solla:, I will save my rant for when I write a review but it's safe to say that I have marked a large number pages in the book so I can cite many specific examples of why Ackroyd is arrogant and annoying!

>81 charbutton:, The lottery system sounds disciplined! I would be the kind of person who would adopt that system and then immediately refuse to read the first book I picked, just because I'm stubborn!

I'm curious where the raffle will take you. It would never work for me, I need some kind of predictive structure, even if I don't follow it.

Interesting responses to Peter Ackroyd. I just opened a book by him called Albion : The Origins of the English Imagination, but I'm having a lot of trouble with the writing. It seems to be confusing in a very unnecessary way.

Rachel, that's the problem I was having. There are books that I've bought but don't know that I'll ever be in the mood to pick up - a history of Byzantium, a biography of Churchill, the Boudica fantasy story that was a present from my brother (I think he bought it because its about a woman and is historical - bless him for trying)...

I'm not sure how long I'll stick to it but it's working for now.

BOOK 67: The Promise of Happiness by Justin Cartwright
(book club - Yashoda's choice)

Hmmmmm. I should really hate this book. It's about a middle class family, a fact that is regularly rammed down the readers throat with constant repetition that some of the characters live/have lived in Islington and Hoxton in London, places that reek of three-wheeled pushchairs, achingly trendy clothes for the young 'uns, Habitat furniture and people with nicknames like 'Ju-Ju'. One friend thinks the book feels similar to Ian McEwan. I hated Atonement with a passion so this comparison prepared me to really dislike the Promise of Happiness.

In many ways I did dislike it. As I've said, Cartwright seems to be going out of his way to reinforce the middle-classness of the Judd family around who the story centres. Apart from their Islington roots, the parents have moved to Cornwall, the mother tries Rick Stein recipes, the youngest daughter uses cocaine, the son is about to make an fortune selling his internet company.

The eldest daughter, Juliet (Ju-Ju), is slightly different. She's just completing a sentence of two years in New York prisons for art theft. The novel starts just as she's released and follows each of the family members over the next few weeks as they all prepare for her to return home. And it's this that saves the book for me. It provides me with a reason for the crisis that her father is going through that affects everyone else and explains why his wife puts up with him being such a prick. I enjoyed reading about how this seemingly comfortable family have dealt with an event of such incomprehension, shame and guilt. Unfortunately the too-neat ending then ruins this and potentially gives everyone except Ju-Ju a very easy route out of the shame and embarrassment.

As well as the class thing being over-emphasised, Cartwright is keen to stress the deeply emotional relationship between Juliet and her father, Charles, to the point where it feels creepy and a bit incestuous. There's also an odd sexual tension between Juliet and her brother, Charlie. It's all very weird and I don't quite understand what Cartwright is trying to say with this plotline.

Overall I enjoyed reading about Juliet's experiences and the repercussions on her family, but other aspects of the story were unsatisfying.

>89 charbutton: Couldn't you rig the raffle and have the Boudica fantasy story come up next? I can't wait! Actually it's reviewing for Belletrista that makes me think that something like your raffle idea might work for me. I've always resisted very strongly any attempts to push me towards a particular book at a particular time, preferring to wait till it grabs me - but I have no problem at all with reading books for Belle when I have to, so maybe I could live with a more disciplined approach to my TBR pile after all!

>91 rachbxl:, But Rachel, don't you think that part of the reason you have no problems reviewing for Belle is because you know someone you know and like is depending on you to read a particular book? I hate structured reading, but I too have no problem reading for Belle because the impetus is outside me; if I just told myself to read something, I know I would rebel against myself. I do it all the time - that's why I have failed category challenges two years in a row. I also fail when people I don't really know or have some personal relationship with tell me to read something - I joined the "Go Read That Book!" group and promptly failed to read what they told me to, even though it was a book in my TBR pile that seemed interesting. I think it is because I didn't know the people or really care if I "let them down" by not reading it & I don't think they really needed me to read it, the way Lois depends on us to do what we say we're going to do.

Lois's outside 'pressure' certainly helps!

My other half has suggested the lottery idea before but I too wanted to read books as and when I fancied them. But at the moment I feel a bit overwhelmed by the choices. For example, I have more than 50 Virago Modern Classics to read and just don't have the mental energy to decide which to go for. So this system suits me right now.

I did consider the Book Nudgers group but knew that I'd feel the same as you - I'm not very good at following orders!

BOOK 68: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Leo Gursky is a Polish Jew living in New York growing older and more lonely. He and his friend Bruno have an unspoken agreement to check up on each other each day to make sure one of them hasn't died during the night. A long time ago, Leo wrote a book. Many years later this book was given as a love token from a man to a woman, people who would become the parents of Alma Singer, a fourteen year old girl also living in New York. As the book progresses, Leo and Alma's lives move closer together.

The History of Love deals with loss and grief; I found some of it deeply moving.

However, either the plot was overly convoluted or I'm having memory problems - I just couldn't retain the events that connected the main characters and spent lots of the book trying to remember how they were linked. but I think that's more my problem than a fault of the writing.

>92 fannyprice:, 93 FP, I think you might be right about Belle in that the fact that Lois is depending on me to read a particular book at a particular time removes the resentment I feel at being "pushed" into reading something. I understand what you're saying about the Go read that book! group; same thing happened to me with Book nudgers - even though the books were all off my TBR pile and all things I do want to read! I think what attracts me about Char's raffle is that when I take the time to look over my TBR shelves properly I get alternately excited about the fantastic books I've had stashed away for ages and forgotten about, and frustrated that these potentially fantastic books have been stashed away and forgotten about. A raffle might just breathe some fresh air in, and push to the top of the pile some books I'd otherwise not even think to pick up. Maybe. Anyway, it's all speculation for the moment as my bookshelves and I are tragically apart for a few months ;-(

ETA spelling

>94 charbutton: Interested to see what you had to say about The History of Love, Char. I think I need to give it another go. (But what if it doesn't come up in the raffle? Oh no!)

>96 rachbxl:, what did you struggle with when you tried it before? I don't think it's a great book, or at least not as great as I was expecting after I saw recommendations and reviews on LT. I expect it will end up on my 'give away' pile as I don't need to read it again.

But parts of it did touch me. Like Alma I lost my father early in childhood so it was interesting to read how she and her family coped with that and the memories the children did or didn't have about their dad.

>97 charbutton: Don't remember really. Like you I'd heard great things about it so I expected to be swept away by it, but I just couldn't get into it so I put it down after a few chapters. Maybe I'll try it again with revised expectations.

I'm super excited because I'm going to hear Ngugi Wa Thiong'o speak on 31st. He will be discussing international literature to mark the 25th anniversary of Wasafiri, a literary magazine focusing on contemporary international writing.

That IS very exciting and Wasafiri looks very interesting too.

I'm trying really hard not to subscribe to Wasafiri - it's too expensive! One issue set me back £10.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o was an interesting, but very nervous, speaker. His theme was the problem of African authors writing in English/French/Portugese. He believes that the use of English by Igbo, Yorubans etc is a continuing form of enslavement, perpetuated by the publishing industry and by awards that encourage writing in English. wa Thiong'o has chosen to write his novels in Kikuyu and have them translated into English (or translate them himself).

BOOK 69: Kick the Tin by Doris Kartinyeri

Kick the Tin is the memoir of an Aborigine woman stolen from her parents by the Australian authorities when she was less than a month old.

Read my review in issue 2 of Belletrista: http://www.belletrista.com/2009/issue2/reviews_20.php

(and when you've finished, read the rest of the wonderful site!)

BOOK 70: Anna In-Between (no touchstone) by Elizabeth Nunez

Anna returns from New York to her home island (unnamed) in the Caribbean to visit her parents. She rarely comes home and has a difficult relationship with her mother, which is tested further when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer.

The title of the book conveys both the strengths and weaknesses of this book.

Anna is certainly in between. She is in between her parents,feeling like she intrudes into their very close relationship. She is in between cultures and identities. She has left behind her Caribbean heritage and embraced the US way of life but she doesn't know where she fits in - is she Caribbean black, American black or African-American black?

The weakness of the book is that her 'in-betweenness' is very heavily signposted from the title onwards. As I read I felt that Nunez was making life too easy for me. The issues of history, racism, publishing of black writers' work and the injustices of the US healthcare system are rammed home in an unsubtle way and that really detracted from what could have been an enjoyable and effective book.

#101, charbutton, That was also what Ngugi was writing about in the most recent book by him that I read, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, which was a collection of talks he has given over the past several years.

And yes, the price of Wasifiri is giving me pause too, but it does look so intriguing . . .

BOOK 71: Thames: Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd

Thank God that book's finally finished.

Ackroyd's history of the river Thames was a real struggle to get through. His writing style is difficult and there is no sense of context to the information he gives. I could give example after example of the things that annoyed me, but will limit myself (with difficulty) to a few that illustrate the main problems I had with his work.

First, Ackroyd constantly mythologises the river throughout the book. The first 40-odd pages were nearly impossible to get through because he grounded little of this in fact about ancient river rituals and worship that occured at or near the Thames. This information is not provided until nearly 300 pages later.

Ackroyd needs to accept that the river is not a person! The river does not 'offer...the stilling of human voices', is not melancholy and does not have an 'inexhaustible' appetite for death. It's a body of water that follows physical laws. People see in it what they want to see. It is a river. That's it. That said, crossing Waterloo Bridge at sunset is one of the most uplifting experiences I know. That's why I love London. But surely that's about my and my feelings, not because the river is doing anything mystical!

He also describes characteristics of the river that manifest themselves in the people living nearby. He notes that people in the Docklands area sang by the river on New Year's Eve, as if this musicality of the working class was caused by and unique to the Thames, conveniently ignoring the singing of the Welsh miners and the brass bands of miners in the North of England.

Secondly, the decision to write about the Thames on a thematic rather than chronological or geographic basis means that we jump from ritual to industry back to ritual to nature to art with no sense of context or development over time. It feels like he was trying to use a 'different' writing style for the sake of trying to be interesting rather than because this is the best way to tell the river's story. Information is fired at us in a scater-gun fashion with little coherence. Ackroyd also uses a lot of unnecessary facts to push home a single point.

Finally, Ackroyd makes a really arrogant statement. He believes that 'in some sense...the Thames becomes the image of the nation.' I think many outside of London would object to that. He also says, when talking about some of the music compositions that have been inspired by the water, that the 'myth of the Thames runs deeply through the national psyche'. Well, if you live in Essex, London and the Thames Valley, maybe it does. I don't think the Thames has any impact on the psyche of those living in Liverpool, Newcastle or anywhere else in the UK.

Rant over!

BOOK 72: Young Entry by M. J. Farrell aka Molly Keane

Young Entry tells the story of Prudence Lingfield-Turrett, a nineteen year old living under the guardianship of her cousins in 1920s Ireland. She's a member of the rural aristocracy, her only loves are dogs, hunting and her best friend Peter (female).

Prudence is a delightfully charming character, always getting into trouble and distressing her guardians, not because she is maliciously naughty but because she is naive and unthinking - very teenage-like behaviour! She is scared of the prospect of relationships and sex and is devastated when Peter falls in love and gets engaged.

This is Keane's first novel, written when she was twenty. She worte about what she knew and I think this lends an air of authenticity to the Prudence's character and the descriptions of the Irish countryside and hunting. There are flaws, but I enjoyed the story too much to worry about these.

BOOK 73: Bound for Glory by Woody Guthrie

In Bound for Glory Woody Guthrie, 'the father of American folk music', writes about the first thirty-odd years of his life. Born in 1912 he grew up in an Oklahoman oil town, a place of opportunity but also grinding poverty. He had a happy childhood despite the death of his sister and his mother's increasing mental ill-health. In his late teens he started to ride the box cars across American with hundreds of other men (he never mentions women using the trains) searching for work in one new place after another. This nomadic lifestyle, although sharpened by the Great Depression, suits Guthrie. When he has the chance to stay in a relative's grand house or try out for a show biz job, he jumps on the first train out of town to escape the shackles those opportunities would entail.

Despite Guthrie writing about his own life, this book is, at heart, a biography of the American working class and under-classes at a time of economic and social desperation. Its obvious that he had a great love for the people he met and travelled with. His sense of equality and justice, to be found in so much of his music, comes through clearly.

He also has a great way with words. There is a great passage in which he describes how, as a child, he watched bacteria through a microscope. He compares them to two men squaring up for a fight, in wonderful detail.

very entertaining review of Thames.

Thanks!

Thank God that book's finally finished.

Great review of Thames. I agree with everything you say, although there were a few bits and pieces of the book that I actually liked. The pretty blue cover, for one.

I'm sure there were good bits, I just couldn't see them through the red mist of anger that descended right at the beginning of the book! I don't remember London: The Biography riling me so much.

I have one of his fiction works on my shelf - Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem - I think it will be a while before I want to give that a go!

BOOK 74: Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Reading Love in a Cold Climate was a bit like eating a huge cream cake. It feels great at the time - decadent and a little bit naughty. But when it's finished you feel guilty and unsatisfied. (yes, I did finish reading it not long after gobbling a cake that I really shouldn't have had!)

Fanny, a somewhat drab and not too wealthy young woman, tells the story of her friend Polly Hampton who is rich, beautiful and runs off with the most unsuitable man. Set in the 1920s Mitford gives us a glimpse of life between the wars, when the horrors of the trenches were starting to fade and the fascist threat had not yet appeared.

The book is certainly amusing and I did enjoy it at the time. There are some really nice touches. I love Fanny's Uncle Matthew despite, or perhaps because of, his permanent ill-temper. He believes that a person will die within a year if you write their name on a piece of paper and keep it in a drawer. Consequently drawers in his home are full of the names of not only local people who have annoyed him but also Ghandi, Bernard Shaw and the Kaiser. Someone comments that he couldn't have been given a post in the Colonial Office in case he was placed anywhere where there were black people. Awful, but it's not unsurprising that an early-twentieth English country gentleman would be like that. I had an image of him dashing across the Serengeti, trying to shoot the 'natives' with a blunderbuss for the good of the Empire!

But the heavy-handed stereotyping of the gay character (a sign of the times? Possibly a reflection of Mitford's own views) and the unsatisfactory ending (the resolution of Polly's life is dealt with in one paragraph) did lessen my enjoyment.

111- I'm sure there were good bits, I just couldn't see them through the red mist of anger that descended right at the beginning of the book! I don't remember London: The Biography riling me so much.

Well, and I'm only a tourist so I don't have the history and emotional investment in the place the way a resident does.

BOOK 75: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

A sci-fi classic about man's first steps beyond the Moon in search of extra-terrestrial life.

I didn't actually know much about this book and haven't seen the film so was a little surprised when the story started with a group of monkeys. I hate monkeys.

Despite that inauspicious beginning, I enjoyed the story of the first humans to venture to Jupiter and Saturn. However, I found the ending quite unsatisfying and bit abrupt. There are 200 pages of build up to 50 pages of finale, much of which is description of the physical surroundings rather than of the creature/entity that is found at the end of the journey. It just didn't quite work for me.

I hate monkeys.

So do I! A lot of people are surprised when I say that, so it's nice to meet another non-monkey person. I also don't usually like stories set in space, so this sounds like a good one to skip. Thanks for reading it and reporting, so I don't have to!

Well, I like monkeys but appreciate your honesty! I haven't read the book but I've seen the beginning of the film and even though I like monkeys, it bored me to tears and I've never watched more than about 10 minutes.

>115 Nickelini:, I'll let you know if i come across any other monkey/sci fi books so you can avoid those too!

BOOK 76: Stretto by L. Timmel Duchamp

Stretto is the fifth and final book of the Marq'ssan Cycle, a series of books that starts when the extra-terrestrial Marq'ssan intervene in Earth events to prevent humans threatening the rest of the galaxy. (see the previous part of this thread for a review of the fourth book and a bit of background on the story)

Despite this sci-fi concept, the Cycle is really a treatise on power, obsession, obession with power and powerful obsessions.

Stretto picks up several years after Blood in the Fruit. The renegade Elizabeth Weatherall has returned to the Executive, purged it of her enemies and is apparently making life better by eliminating human rights abuses and starting to negotiate with the Marq'ssan, although she still personally works in a manipulative and violent way.

The end of series will probably never live up to my expectations and Stretto didn't quite deliver what I wanted, although I'm not sure what exactly I did want from it! I think it wasn't helped by much of the narrative being carried through the diaries of two people that I didn't like.

Also, there was much less detail about the life in the Free Zone and about how the 'anarchists' were coping with 'ruling' their territory, which I'm much more interested in than the personal relationships between the characters.

However, I did really enjoy the Cycle and found it thought-provoking.

BOOK 77: An Apple From A Tree by Margaret Elphinstone

I got this from bookmooch because it's by Elphinstone. If I'd read the blurb first I wouldn't have bothered! Folklore, myth, magic. Not my thing at all. But the book lottery decided that this was my next book and I was determined to get through it, even if just to get it off my TBR and create a space on my shelf.

The book consists of five stories that bring together the natural, supernatural and the contemporary world; all are based in or have a connection to Scotland. In all of the stories someone is seeking inspiration to change their life or has their life changed because of an encounter with nature/magic. I know very little about folklore and myth so I'm sure many of the allusions are lost on me.

In the end it wasn't that bad - I was happy to read it and didn't feel like I wanted to give up on it. However, I had difficulty suspending my disbelief enough to believe in a woman meeting a bright green man who can read her mind, and I felt that Elphinstone was a bit heavy handed in the way she presented gender and environment issues. This will go on my give away pile; I won't want to read it again.

BOOK 78: Women's Fiction of the Second World War: Gender, Power and Resistance by Gill Plain

I really can't do this book justice. It's taken me months to read and I've lost the thread of Plain's arguments. So all I can say is that it looks at how women writers were trying to explain the war through an examination of the writing of Dorothy L. Sayers, Stevie Smith, Virginia Woolf, Naomi Mitchison and Elizabeth Bowen. I remember enjoying the sections on Sayers and Smith but got lost during the Woolf discussion and never got back into it.

BOOK 79: The Wilding by Maria McCann

My first book from the Early Reviewer programme.

The Wilding is set in rural England in 1672. It's narrated by Jonathan Dymond, a young cider maker who lives with his parents and is putting off the day he has to get married. Early in the book Jonathan's uncle dies. Jonathan finds a fragment of his uncle's last letter which hints at some family secrets so he visits his widowed aunt to seek answers to the mystery that could end up destroying his family.

The Wilding reads like a Sunday night period drama. It's easy to read, relaxing and enjoyable. It requires no real effort, it is not complex. It certainly isn't great literature but then I guess it doesn't claim to be. I didn't mind reading it but I don't need to go back to it.

I do have one criticism. At a couple of points in the book McCann seems to suddenly remember that she's writing a book set in the 17th century so throws in a couple of lines about contemporary thinking that jar. I can't find an example to quote exactly, but do remember one when Jonathan is talking about some of the women in his life. A sentence is then stuck on the end of this to the effect that 'of course women can't be trusted, they are a duplicitous sex'. I'm sure there's a more sophisticated way of introducing these ideas.

Actually, I have another criticism. A vagina should never be called a 'honey pot'.

'honey pot'???????

GHASTLY!

I know! I was annoyed that it was fine for Janthan to call his penis a 'prick' - unpoetic and probably quite accurate for the time - but McCann, or the publishers, didn't have the guts to use 'cunt' which I would think is a much more accurate word for that time period. Unless that word was too coarse for someone of Jonathan's class (lower middle class) to use? Prick seems just as coarse to me.

The problem, so it seems to me, is that way too often historical fiction is not accurate as far as language goes. How many times one realizes that characters living in, say, the 18th century, speak like we do?
I might be pedantic, but it gets on my nerves.

I totally agree with you re the use of 'cunt' and 'prick'.

I think it is difficult for a writer - you don't want the text to be inaccessible to today's audience but should try and stay true to the historical period. I'm trying to think of good examples, but as I said I don't read much historical fiction and I suppose only notice the problem when the writing is bad.

BOOK 80: Quartet by Jean Rhys

I should really dislike the heroines in many of Jean's Rhys's stories. They are so passive, I want to shake them until their teeth rattle! They allow horrible things to happen to them, allow themsleves to be dictated to by the whims of men and women of stronger characters. They make me thinks of ears of corn, buffeted by outside elements, losing bits of themselves along the way, but seem to remain standing somehow.

However I don't dislike them. I'm fascinated by them and I don't really know why.

Quartet is the thinly disguised tale of Rhys's first marriage and affair with Ford Madox Ford. Marya, an English woman in Paris, marries a Polish emigre. He has some vague profession in art dealing - she doesn't enquire about the details. Her husband is arrested on several fraud charges and sentenced to a year's imprisonment. Marya is taken up by the Heidlers, an English couple, who give her shelter. Marya begins an affair with the husband with the knowledge and collusion of the wife.

I think I'm attracted to Rhys's stories for a couple of reasons. The first is that I get a voyeuristic frisson from reading about the demi-monde of inter-war London and Paris. Despite the nasty seediness, it still seems glamorous somehow. Secondly, I'm fascinated by how many insults and how much poverty and degradation these women can absorb. There is something attractive about their release of any sense of responsibility or need to make decisions - something that frightens and intrigues me. Finally there is a lack of emotion in Rhys's stark prose that I enjoy.

BOOK 81: Radio Free Albemuth by Philip K. Dick

Radio Free Albemuth is the story of Nicholas Brady, a Berkeley drop-out working in a record store. He starts to hear a voice that he believes is contact from another world. He follows the voice and the information it imparts and eventually starts to challenge the totalitarian regime that has taken over 1960s America.

Nicholas's story is told by his friend, Philip K. Dick, a science fiction and author of the Hugo Award winning The Man in the High Castle. The life and writing of the fictional Dick mirror that of the real Dick (the Dick that wrote Radio Free Albemuth). Nicholas names the voice that speaks to him VALIS, the title of a book by the real-life (if that phrase can be used) Dick. Scenes in Radio Free Albemuth will be familiar to readers of A Scanner Darkly, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and probably other Dick works that I haven't yet read. I also recognised a couple of episodes of Dick's life that I had read in I am Alive and You Are Dead, Emmanuel Carrere's excellent biography of the real-life Dick. I think the point of this is to make readers question our accepted reality as Nicholas and Phil had to when VALIS started to make contact.

I have to admit that I didn't give Radio Free Albemuth my full attention and I'll need to re-read the religious discussions. But I did enjoy it and know that I'll go back to it each time I read another Dick work to see how it is referenced.

I'm glad to hear that you think I Am Alive And You Are Dead is excellent, because it's been sitting on my To-Read Pile for quite a while. I keep putting it off, thinking I should read more of Dick's work before tackling it, since I've only read a few of his novels, and it looked like the book might discuss his work in some depth. Is that a reasonable concern, do you think, or should I just dive on into it?

I had probably read a few of the better known titles and didn't feel that I missed out by not knowing his other books. Definitely dive in!

That's reassuring to know! I will dive in, then, at whatever point in my assault on Mount TBR seems appropriate.

Two more books to finish off my 2009 reading:



BOOK 82: Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta

A great Nigerian coming-of-age story - read my review in the upcoming issue of Belletrista (www.belletrista.com)



BOOK 83: The American Future: A History by Simon Schama

Schama uses examples from American 18th, 19th and 20th century history - divied thematically into the military, religion, immigration, the Indians and land - to explain some of the choices facing voters in 2008.

I know next to nothing about American history so this was a really interesting read. Schama is a lively writer and although I have no other information to enable me to judge his take on, for example, the characters involved in the war of independence and the civil war, I do enjoy reading his work. This book has helped me question some assumptions I make about the US, the role of religion and the American dream. He's also helped me think again about what a daunting task the first politicians had before them and how these considerations still resonate now. For example, should America have an army and if so what should it's role be?

He doesn't shy away from presenting the uglier side of American history, but his admiration for American values and possibilities comes through strongly.

So that was 2009. Thanks to everyone for their recommendations and inspiration...and for the ever-increasing TBR pile!

See you tomorrow on the Club Read 2010 thread.

Re Book #83, I didn't realize he'd published a book about American history. I loved his History of Britain TV series, viewing it at a time when a) I knew very little about British history and b) was a new resident in the country and felt I "should." Now I'm a huge Schama fan. I wouldn't mind reading his take on my own country ...

See you in 2010!

He's also written Rough Crossings about the Brits, slaves and the American Revolution which was equally as interesting.

What I liked about The American Future was that he highlighted points about America that the British and other Europeans find hard to understand about the US and why that might be. I also think that we're very cynical about the US here and it was refreshing to read a Brit writing affectionately, but realistically, about America.

And I've bought his book about the French Revolution, Citizens, after reading Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety and wanting learn more about the revolution (and I also have a book he wrote about art, history, and landscape, Landscape and Memory, which has been on my TBR forever). Schama certainly seems to be a multifaceted thinker and writer.

I didn't know about Citizens - I'll add it to my wish list. Thanks!

>134 charbutton:: I saw a televised lecture about Rough Crossings which did sound very interesting. We then picked up a copy of it in a used bookshop. But it still sits unread on the shelves ...