FlossieT's Common Reading Confessions - Under 75 in 2010: Reading Fewer Books, Thinking Harder About

My bio in the Introductions thread

Reading Now
The Carnivorous Carnival - Lemony Snicket
The Brontës - Juliet Barker
The Striped World - Emma Jones

Read This Year

1. Dark Matter - Juli Zeh
2. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey
3. The Widow's Tale - Mick Jackson
4. The Mother's Tale - Camilla Noli
5. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
6. Brief Lives - Anita Brookner
7. A Room Swept White - Sophie Hannah
8. Girl in Translation - Jean Kwok
9. The Lessons - Naomi Alderman
10. Mousetrapped - Catherine Ryan Howard
11. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow
12. Relics of the Dead - Ariana Franklin
13. The News Where You Are - Catherine O'Flynn
14. The Rights of the Reader - Daniel Pennac
15. Like Bees to Honey - Caroline Smailes
16. The Reluctant Bride - Lucy Mangan
17. True Things About Me - Deborah Kay Davies
18. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
19. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson
20. Sex and Stravinsky - Barbara Trapido
21. The Ten-Year Nap - Meg Wolitzer
22. Ghost Light - Joseph O'Connor
23. Beside the Sea - Veronique Olmi
24. Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips
25. Wasted - Nicola Morgan
26. The Magicians - Lev Grossman
27. Saraswati Park - Anjali Joseph
28. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu
29. Faithful Place - Tana French
30. Skippy Dies - Paul Murray
Not-really-31. A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore
32. Room - Emma Donoghue
33. C - Tom McCarthy
34. February - Lisa Moore
35. Afterlife - Sean O'Brien
36. Bad Faith - Gillian Philip
37. Whatever You Love - Louise Doughty
38. This Perfect World - Suzanne Bugler
39. Jude: Level One - Julian Gough
40. Hearts and Minds - Amanda Craig
41. Dead Man's Cove - Lauren St John
42. Advice for Strays - Justine Kilkerr
43. A Light-Hearted Look at Murder - Mark Watson
44. Caribou Island - David Vann
Not-really 45. The Slitheen Excursion - Simon Guerrier
Not-really 46. Night of the Humans - David Llewellyn
47. One Day - David Nicholls
48. You're A Bad Man, Mr Gum - Andy Stanton (with 8YO)
49. Scaredycat - Mark Billingham
50. Lazybones - Mark Billingham
51. The Burning Girl - Mark Billingham
52. Lifeless - Mark Billingham
53. Buried - Mark Billingham
54. Bloodline - Mark Billingham
55. From the Dead - Mark Billingham
56. Mr Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire - Andy Stanton
57. Requiem for a Mezzo - Carola Dunn
58. The Night Climbers - Ivo Stourton
59. Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
60. The Brainstorm - Jenny Turner
Not-really 61. The Collected Tweets of Roland Hedley Jr - G.B. Trudeau
62. The Carhullan Army - Sarah Hall
63. The Old Child - Jenny Erpenbeck
64. The Book of Words - Jenny Erpenbeck
65. Any Human Heart - William Boyd
66. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
67. The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket
68. The Reptile Room - Lemony Snicket
69. The Wide Window - Lemony Snicket
70. The Miserable Mill - Lemony Snicket
71. The Austere Academy - Lemony Snicket
72. The Ersatz Elevator - Lemony Snicket
73. The Vile Village - Lemony Snicket
74. The Hostile Hospital - Lemony Snicket
Not-really-75. Mr Gum and the Goblins - Andy Stanton
Not-really-76. Mr Gum and the Power Crystals - Andy Stanton
Not-really-77. Mr Gum and the Dancing Bear - Andy Stanton
Not-really-78. What's for Dinner, Mr Gum? - Andy Stanton

Not counting (re-reads):
The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander
The Halfmen of O - Maurice Gee
The Priests of Ferris - Maurice Gee
Motherstone - Maurice Gee
The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness

Abandoned:
The Lie - Petra Hammesfahr

On Hold:
Visitation - Jenny Erpenbeck
School Blues - Daniel Pennac

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm sticking with the 75ers in 2010, since there's such a great atmosphere in the group. I apologise in advance, though, for probably not being the most active of members: I'm consciously trying to read less this year to free up time for other personal projects, and inevitably that will have to include less time on LT (especially because one of those personal projects is, cough, trying to blog a bit, cough cough). But if you stop by, do say hello, and I'll try and visit back. I'm planning to start with a good read-through of what you've all been up to (already! Cripes, it's busy on here).

Last year, I failed to hit most of my reading goals, so I'm going to set the bar pretty low in 2010. Some of last year's goals are carrying over.

1. Read all the books that I have borrowed from, or been forcibly lent by, friends and family.

2. Read more books that I already own than ones I acquire during the year or borrow (whether from others or from the library).

3. Read Anna Karenina (I hope to join the group read for this).

4. Read the Brontës: the novels I haven't already, good biographies and any interesting historical context, plus a re-read of the novels I've already read (maybe even Wuthering Heights if I can face it...)

5. Read more non-fiction than the pitiful 17 I managed last year (itself an improvement on 10 in 2008!).

I think that will do. Looking forward to chatting with you all.

edit: Drat. I fouled up my thread title. "Get better at copywriting and editing" should clearly be added to the list of personal projects.

Glad to see you back with us again for 2010, Rachael!

Happy New Year, Rachael! Your goals seem to be quite ambitious ones to me, especially the second one. Good luck!

Happy new year! Good luck with reaching your goals. I'm reading Anna Karenina too, or at least I'll try:)

I messed up my thread title too! Ah well... let's chalk our thread titles up to being 'charming' mistakes. Maybe the mistakes will be endearing enough to entice people to stop by... heehee.

>4 kidzdoc: Darryl, my book acquisition did slow down quite a bit towards the end of last year - I'm hoping I can stick to it, in which case reading old books should be easier. Fingers crossed.

>5 Apolline: nice to meet you, Apolline! I've got your thread open in another tab and will be on my way over shortly...

>6 dk_phoenix: I like "charming mistake" as an excuse, Faith - good call! And hey, in 3 months, if last year is any like this, we can start a new thread and silently erase the evidence.

Editing first post to add a link back to my bio in the introductions thread...

You have been duly starred!

Happy New Year, Rachael! Good luck with your reading goals.

Welcome back!

Happy New Year!

The only thing I will try this year is to keep up better with all threads.
In 2008 that went well, but when personal life interfered too much last year I lost most of the 75 thread and could not keep up.

Anita

Starred!

Have a good year 2010 with a lot of great books :D

Starred ;)

Like Anita, I'm resolving to be better at keeping up with the threads I'm interested in...meaning I have to let some go...so, Rachael, good knowin' ya, see ya sometime.

;-P

Happy New Year Rachael!
Thanks for the info on Cold Earth. Amazon has it being released here in April.

Thank you all so much for visiting! I've been trying not to post on others' threads just to tell everyone I starred them, as it is sooooo busy on here - but I've got such a lovely warm fuzzy glow from seeing your messages that I now feel a bit mean for not having done so.

Just noticed I completely failed to reply to Stasia's hello in >3 alcottacre:, which is surely near-unforgivable. Hi, Stasia, and Happy 2010! And also Ceri, Amy, Jim, Anita, Cait, Aga and Kelly (side note: I'm really enjoying the Introductions thread, but it's going to take me a looooooong time to stop thinking of you in my head as 'VB' or 'Violet').

Richard, I'm honoured you took time out of your busy schedule to let me know you'd be X-ing me. I would add a winking emoticon also, but a passionate and heavily pregnant journalist friend has challenged me to give them up for 2010, and I hate to think what might happen if I didn't. I hope you'll understand.

>15 VioletBramble: April, really? Gosh. OK, fair enough, that's quite a way away. Judylou didn't like it as much as me, if you want a second opinion before you hand over your dollars to Kieron & co at the Book Depository; I really enjoyed it, and usually books with unsympathetic characters fall flat with me.

I have officially given up trying to read all the 2010 threads today. I watched the final (sob) David Tennant Dr Who episode with the kids, and now every time I refresh the page (because visited links don't show up properly on the groups page, grrrr) there are so many more messages!! Am going to go back through everything I've starred 'sight unseen' because I followed the poster last year, and leave catching up and new discoveries for later in the month when things have stabilised a little. Oh, and I might even do a bit of reading.

Here's to some more great reading this year. Even if I sincerely intend to do less of it - I expect the rest of you will make up any shortfall several times over.

I return briefly to mourn David Tennant's passing as the Doctor with you. I liked Chris Eccleston fine, but Tennant...!

I rented the DVDs of "Torchwood: Children of Earth", BTW, and cried through most of it. Drat that Russell T Davies! He makes you fall in love with the characters and then does a change-up on you!

Oh. I forgot. I'm not supposed to be here. {insert appropriate emoticon here}

Well, hey, you won't read this, clearly, Richard, but: I am very sad. I was terrified of Dr Who as a child, and didn't watch a single episode during Christopher Eccleston's tenure. But the kids would watch it round at their friends', and then... well. My personal favourite episode(s) is(are) still The Family of Blood so I was pleased they sneaked that into their farewells.

There has been too much Tennant on the telly in the UK this Christmas (75 appearances in 3 weeks, according to one report), but I will still miss him horribly. Even if the last episode did feel just a tad like those concerts where the star keeps on delivering encores long after most of the audience has stopped applauding.

Ahem. Sorry. I don't really watch TV, honest. This is a rare exception.

I've always LOVED "Dr. Who" so I can't make anything like the same claim. I live with a 91-yr-old, so watching TV is about all we can do togther given that she doesn't go for long walks, play on the Internet, or cook, and I don't like playing poker (her passion).

But good storytelling is good storytelling, no matter the medium. I think the Who universe is rife with silliness and really can't stand up to a rigorous examination, but the stories are wonderful.

Happy New Year Rachael!

I'll be following your reading and adventures with your family again this year. :)

Deborah

I haven't managed to watch the final Tennant episode yet... I'm trying to put it off as I know I'll just be utterly depressed for the remainder of the day, but I'll have to just suck it up and watch it sooner or later... *sigh*!

I have been avoiding the Doctor Who threads over at Television Without Pity all evening because I know the UK viewers will be discussing the last episode. It doesn't air here until tomorrow night. I will have tissues ready. I have been watching the Tennant/Doctor Who marathon on BBC-A off and on since midnight. They're showing all the Tennant eps in order leading up to the final ep. Blink is on now. As a matter of fact I need to go get in the shower now so I don't miss the return of Captain Jack in the next episode.
#16 - please, feel free to continue to refer to me as VB or Violet. I actually like it.

Got you starred again. Just finished The Franchise Affair and loved it too.

Hi, lurked in your thread last year but since I'm attempting to keep up to date with all threads I plan on popping in now and then. Good luck w/you challenge

Hi Rachael,
Nice to see you again. Are you blogging yet? Let us know and we'll visit you there - it's always nice to have readers! All the best for 2010...

Hey, Rachael, no worries about missing the welcome clear back in message 3. The group is a bit overwhelming at the moment, so I understand completely!

Yes, Flossie m'dear you read my note correctly! :)

blessings!

>19 richardderus: "rife with silliness" is the mot juste (or, 'are the mots justes', perhaps). But such fun. I really like that the new incarnations for the 21st century have featured a teeny tad more emotional complexity than the old series. It's also a programme that works on so many levels that the prospect of watching it with one's children is actually palatable.

>20 arubabookwoman: hi Deborah - thanks for dropping by. I've plopped a star on you too (I may have told you that already).

>21 dk_phoenix: Faith, the new Doctor doesn't look as dismal (on the very unscientific basis of the few seconds he gets at the end of the episode) as I had feared. But it will indeed be a hard act to follow. I'm weighing up the question of whether to watch Dr Who Confidential now - several people have said they found the behind-the-scenes more tearjerking than the episode itself.

>22 VioletBramble: VB (since you like it, I think I'll stick to it!!), am wrestling with a sudden flare-up of bizarre parochial outrage that Dr Who makes it over to you so quickly - the time lag with American serials travelling in the other direction always seems so much greater! Plus I'm super-envious of the back-to-back marathon. The DVDs are so expensive and my birthday is so far away... ah well. Hope you enjoyed it?

>23 avatiakh: thanks Kerry - likewise!

>24 Carmenere: hi Lynda - thank you for saying hello. I never found you last year, I'm afraid, but enjoyed your posts on others' threads and have you starred this year. This group is just so busy - it's a bit daunting. I still haven't really figured out the optimum method for keeping up.

>25 muddy21: Marilyn, I've "technically" had a blog for several years but barely posted anything on it - it was meant to be a fun side project for me to keep my hand in during maternity leave, but I've never really made the most of the opportunity. I want to do more this year to try and push myself a bit to extend my technical skills, and maybe write a bit more. But since there's not much to see, I'm not exactly shouting about it just yet. When I'm feeling a bit more confident I'll probably put a link in my profile - will let you know. Thanks for asking.

>26 alcottacre: phew - glad no harm done, Stasia.

>27 suslyn: hurrah - three cheers for reciprocal thread visitations!

I read a massive 10 pages today (not counting the Saturday paper) - have started the Juliet Barker Brontë bio and wow, there are a lot of interesting, lengthy and extremely thoroughly referenced footnotes. I can tell it's going to take me a long time to read, but is going to be SO worth it.

Re the new Dr Who/Matt Smith - he was very good in Party Animals, but I still think that they should have gone with Paterson Joseph - I can't help feeling that Matt Smith will be too similar to David Tennant, but not quite him... :( (although Rachael, I agree, his introduction wasn't horrifying...)

Missed the Dr Who Confidential unfortunately - I'm sure they'll repeat it 60 times though... There was a lot of David Tennant this Christmas, wasn't there?! Mind you, I was annoyed not to get tickets to see his Hamlet, so quite glad they showed that - and the episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks he hosted was a particularly good one...

Last episodes were a bit disappointing I thought, although it did start to pick up in the second half. #22 VB/Kelly (I like it too, so shall continue to call you VB if that's OK ;) ) I wish they'd replayed "Blink" over here too - best episode in years I reckon...

Rachael. Happy New Year and duly starred - welcome to 2010! I'm afraid I'm going to continue to use emoticons or the poor-person version in punctuation, because, irritating as I agree with your mate they are, I have lots of bad email experiences in my past due to not being able to demonstrate that I was joking, so hope you'll forgive them on your thread! ;o)

...so, tell me - the Peter Carey - is that a Patrick Ness influence?! I bought Oscar and Lucinda after reading and loving The True History of the Kelly Gang, but never got around to it - I'll look forward to your comments...

Right, I'm running off to hide from all the posts that happened while I've been computer-less (aaaarrrrrgh!!!). To be tackled at a later date I think....

#29 Don't be too outraged - it's only these last two episodes we got a day after the UK airing. The Waters of Mars aired the week prior to the first part of the last ep. Over the summer BBC-A made a deal with the BBC to get the episodes over here quicker. Previously we watched Doctor Who air on the SciFi channel (now renamed SyFy - egads) about 6 months after the UK airing and 6 months before a BBC-A airing. The BBC realized it was missing out on revenue to SciFi and people watching it illegally on their computers prior to the BBC-A airings. It's all about money. We still got the Christmas special in the summer. And I agree, the DVDs are expensive, esp considering the number of episodes per series.

#31- Fliss - I think they should have gone with David Morrissey as the next doctor.(for real, not just the Christmas ep) I've always liked him and we don't get to see him in alot of things on this side of the pond. Blink is excellent and really creepy. Yes, it's okay - call me VB.

Oh, Paterson Joseph would have been great! Loved him in Green Wing. But then if he's already had other parts in Dr Who, that might get a bit confusing. Or just open up some opportunities for some really weird stories, perhaps.

I'm planning to iPlayer Dr Who Confidential. We got a shiny new TV for Christmas, after squinting at a 14" portable for the last 11 years, but it seems our aerial must need an upgrade for us to get digital. Am actually relieved - was dreading the wall-to-wall Dave that the men(boy)folk of the house will doubtless watch when we do eventually switch over. On the bright side, we can hook the laptop up to it and watch whatever we like off iPlayer. Still haven't watched Hamlet. I was outvoted by the rest of the family, who opted for Celebrity Total Wipeout. Really. If we weren't related....

And on the Blink front, someone somewhere did point out that Stephen Moffat wrote Blink, which bodes very well for the new series.

Emoticons are forgiven. It's not your New Year's Resolution, after all! I'm actually finding it very hard coping without them - generally expressive punctuation seems limited to ellipsis and exclamation marks, both of which I already overuse.

Peter Carey is part of my read-borrowed-books resolution. It was lent me by my middle son's teacher. Her youngest son is good mates with my eldest; when I picked him up from a sleepover a few weeks ago we were discussing books, and she pressed it on me enthusiastically. I have a vague idea that I shall attempt a last-in-first-out policy as I read through the loans, so that had to be first! Although I'd have to admit the endorsement probably didn't exactly hamper my choice.

I'm running away from posts too, and going to BED! Am doing well so far this year (on non-statistically-significant basis of two days) at getting up early and doing productive stuff before the kids are awake, but if I don't get enough sleep I may jeopardise my winning streak.

Sleep thee well, Rachael, flights of angels....

#33 I'd forgotten he was in Green Wing! Ah, you give me cravings to watch that again... Me either with Hamlet (got a PVR just before Christmas, so I went a little bit mad recording everything - it's going to take a while to catch up!) - but seriously - Celebrity Total Wipeout?!?! ;o) (sneaky punctuation emoticon there, snigger...)

I'll look forward to your thoughts on the Peter Carey!

Rachael

I'm simply stopping by to say hello.

H Rachael - HAPPY NEW YEAR to you and your family.

I am also reading the Bronte Biography - although it is one of about ten books on the go right now. I will look out for your review.

Did you post a link to your blog anywhere?

Finally found your thread and starred it! Good luck on your goals and I'm really interested to hear what you think of all the Brontes' books :)

gasp, pant - OK, so I've spent about 3 hours on LT this evening. I am now caught up on just the threads I've starred, with the exception of The Kitchen which at 241 unread posts is Just Too Damn Long To Even Think About Trying. I dare not go back to the group page to try to identify new threads I should be following as given I need to get up at 6 and I still have chores to do (it is 11.15 p.m. here), I would be tappity-tapping all night.

THE MADNESS MUST STOP.

At least now I feel able to post to my own thread without feeling (too) egotistical.

>35 flissp: fliss, am going quite slowly on the Peter Carey. I'm enjoying it, but it's very small print. It's also in very short chapters, which is working against it as building in so many natural break-points provides just too many opportunities for me to put it down easily.

>36 Whisper1: Hi Linda. You are lovely and I have NO idea how you manage to keep up with everyone on here.

>37 kiwidoc: Hi Karen - a review of the Brontë bio will likely be a very long time in coming. I'm reading very slowly, reading all of the references, and taking extensive notes, not to mention breaking off into wild scribbling tangential ideas in my notebook. As a result, I'm only up to page 90! Haven't posted a blog link - I'm still feeling my way really (and it may not work out: I have a strong suspicion that my tendency towards perfectionism may not play nicely with the write-quickly, post-often ethos of blogging. But I need some practice, and I need a code sandbox.)

>38 RebeccaAnn: Hi RebeccaAnn - nice to see you! I have you starred also, though I have to confess I am skimming fast through your Tamora Pierce reviews. The last thing I need right now is to discover another prolific author with multiple series...

First completed book doesn't 'count', as I'm not including re-reads. It's my thread and them's my rules.

The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander

Couldn't resist the excuse of a group read. I was given these books as birthday presents as a child, and I remember fondly unpacking the boxes from the UK (we were living in New Zealand at the time). Fortunately I managed to read them all well before their Disneyfication, though my editions all have Disney covers (which I can't find on LT so will absolutely have to scan in at some point. I was obsessed with this series, to the extent of writing several fanfic stories as school assignments.

I think this is probably the first time I've read this since reading The Lord of the Rings, so what struck me first was how derivative many of the episodes seemed when set against Tolkien's book. Gwydion = Aragorn; gwythaints = Ring Wraiths (sort of, when in flight); Horned King = chief Nazgul; Medwyn = cross between Rivendell and Tom Bombadil; etc. etc. But obviously this is rather more accessible to a younger reader than LotR.

Things I really liked: the way Taran's rather self-consciously portentous speech (he's in the hero's role so he has to speak like a hero, right?) plays off against Eilonwy's chatter and Fflewddur's boasting; Eilonwy's similes (I'd forgotten all about the way she speaks and quite how much I loved it aged 8ish); the way it sets the scene and the characters for the later books.

What it really did, though, was to make me hanker for said later books, and remember how effectively Alexander makes his characters grow up over the series. J.K. Rowling, eat your heart out.

Ha ha! That's fine. But if you do decide to try Tamora Pierce, know that her books are short and quick reads, so they don't bog you down too much. And while overall, the series is twentyish books, they come in quartets, duologies, and trilogies, so you can always stop and take a break :)

Interesting to hear you lived in NZ, Flossie. Where were you?

>41 kiwidoc: Wellington - lived in Karori, went to school in Khandallah. Cushla/cmt says she used to drive past my former house quite often on her way to work!

I wonder if you went to school with my niece- she went to school in Khandallah in the 90s. (Brigitte Shone) A bit of a long shot, really.

But worth a try! We moved back to the UK in the 80s, so I don't think we will have overlapped. I did have a bit of a nostalgic wander round the school on a trip in 1997, but it was out of school hours...

> 39 Rachael
I only discovered the Chronicles of Prydain long after reading LotR and saw some of the similarities too. I thought maybe they were both influenced by the same (Welsh, Kelth?) myths,
Anita

(just started reading The book of Three again)

I went to NZ from England in the 1970s and was really chided for my POMMIE accent. It made me lose it very fast. However, I didn't go home again.

Hi Rachael, a belated happy new year! I hope you are enjoying Oscar and Lucinda, slow reading experience though it may be. It's one of my favourite books, and I even like the film too. Ralph Fiennes with shocking red hair, can't be missed! I'm sure you know this already, but, in case you need further incentive to finish the book, Peter Carey is in conversation with John Mullan as part of the Guardian Review Book Club at the beginning of February (Wed 3, Kings Place, 19.00, £9.50), with Oscar and Lucinda the topic of conversation. I crossed the Irish Sea far too often last year and vowed this year to resist the temptation to hop on a plane anytime I see something that takes my fancy, but this is seriously tempting!

Have to agree with you re The Book of Three vs Lord of the Rings similarities - I had similar thoughts going through my mind all the way though... Sounds like the series will probably improve on me as I make my way through it (not that I didn't enjoy it, but it didn't completely catch my imagination in the way I think it would have done if I'd read it when I was small). Also enjoyed Eilonwy's chatter - one of the best bits I thought!

Impressed you've managed to catch up on all these threads - it's INSANE this year - I'm miles off catching up!

Phew, I found you. Its only taken me 11 days! I am doing the usual thing and not paying any attention to the useful 'star' feature and posting instead to get you onto my 'your posts'. What can I say, my brain is very odd at times and it doesn't like stars.

Hi people. I feel like a fraud posting here as I haven't finished another book, but I am trying to update myself on all my starred threads at least once a week, which means I ought to try and keep up with my own, at least.

>40 RebeccaAnn: O Pierce evangelist! As flissp has said elsewhere, her books seem to be hard to come by over here, so I have a good excuse for not acquainting myself just yet....

>45 FAMeulstee: Anita, I think you're spot-on regarding shared influences for LotR and Prydain, although Tolkien was more interested in Anglo-Saxon myth and history, as I understand it.

>46 kiwidoc: Karen, for seemingly interminable weeks after I moved back to the UK I was tormented by classmates begging me to say "kangaroo" for them. They couldn't distinguish between Aussie and Kiwi accents; I completely failed to get the, cough, cough, "joke" until a VERY long time afterwards - as of course, to me, the difference was TOTALLY OBVIOUS. Like you (inverted), I lost my NZ accent extraordinarily quickly. I may not have understood why they were doing it, but I sure as hell didn't want to stick out.

>47 MsMoto: Hi Eimear! How very lovely to see you here. Now I have another thread to go hunting for in the thick bog of the Groups page.... Oscar and Lucinda is a funny experience for me. For the longest time, I was admiring it as the work of a skilled artist without really engaging with it emotionally - but once Oscar and Lucinda actually meet, I completely fell in love with it. The first moment that Carey includes the titular phrase in the novel just made me tingle. The problem is that I have SO much else on at the moment, and being offered so many natural break points in the form of those short chapters inevitably means I go to sleep earlier than I might with a less neatly delineated work. I did see the Grauniad Book Club, but unfortunately Wednesday is not one of my "London days", and as I will have gone in on the Monday that week - also generally a "not London" day, I don't think I can obtain the necessary get-out-of-jail-free card from my co-babysitter. But I'm looking forward to the podcast (even though I have to admit that, having been to a few of those events now, John Mullan's interviewing style rather irritates me).

>48 flissp: fliss, do stick with Prydain. The Black Cauldron is darker than The Book of Three, but in my opinion, things really take off with book 3 (The Castle of Llyr). I may be biased, though, because Eilonwy is absolutely centre stage in that book and she was always my favourite character.

And I apologise if I gave the impression that I have caught up on all threads! I reckon I have around 80 threads starred for 2010: mainly people I followed last year, plus a few people who posted regularly on those threads but I never got round to following, plus a few new people who sounded like they read "my kind of stuff" from the introductions thread or were from the UK (I've suddenly come over all parochial). I am having one massive LT check once a week to try and keep things manageable. It has still taken me about 5 hours tonight to get to the point where I can post on my own thread. I may have to prune further, which makes me very sad.

>49 lunacat: hi Jenny! Thanks for dropping in. I didn't get the hang of stars at all last year, but realised that every time someone moved thread I was losing them because I wasn't posting. My solution is just to star everything I read and was vaguely interested in, whether I posted or not, and then being ruthless about always reading 'My Starred' first, and mopping up any strays via 'My Posts' if there's time. It's working OK so far.

Anyway. I haven't finished a book (as I say), but I have started another: a proof from Harvill Secker, Juli Zeh's Dark Matter (no touchstone, grrr; one of these days I must go and try to find out how one goes about getting a book into the touchstones). I've only read about 20 pages but so far I am loving it and can't wait to see what she has in store; it's a psychological thriller about quantum physics, and she has set the scene and established her characters so beautifully. Plus the translation is wonderfully fluid. Hoping to get it read & reviewed for Belletrista this month.

I also have been reading a lot on these threads about staying honest about one's book acquisition. I have made no promise not to acquire this year, though I am fully intending to read more that I already owned prior to 2010 than new arrivals. Anyway, here's how things stand so far in January.

Borrowed:
The Luminous Life of Lily Aphrodite - Beatrice Colin (no touchstone??)

Bought:
Roget's Thesaurus (150th anniversary edition, my God it's beautiful)
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (Pevear & Volokhonsky translation, Penguin Classics)
The Beacon - Susan Hill
Patrick Brontë: Father of Genius - Dudley Green
Haworth Through Time (no touchstone again, small press)
An Abundance of Katherines - John Green (warehouse sale)
The Rainbow Opera - Elizabeth Knox (warehouse sale)
Exposure - Mal Peet (warehouse sale)
Safety - Tegan Bennett Daylight (warehouse sale)
The Highest Tide - Jim Lynch (warehouse sale)
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld (charity shop, British Red Cross)
Love - Elizabeth von Armin (charity shop, British Red Cross)
84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff (charity shop, British Red Cross)

Mooched:
Life A User's Manual - Georges Perec (all the way from the fabulous Lman in Australia!)

Free from work:
Hearts and Minds - Amanda Craig
The Spirit Level - Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
As the Earth Turns Silver - Alison Wong
One Moment, One Day - Sarah Rayner (no touchstone again, debut novel that looks suspiciously like "chicklit with A-levels")
This Perfect World - Suzanne Bugler
The Patience Stone - Atiq Rahimi

Free, for Belletrista review:
Dark Matter - Juli Zeh (again, no touchstone - sorry)

N.B. most, if not all, of these are not in my library yet as I have not yet done any cataloguing. N.B.2. I have not posted all the books I bought in late December in the Borders closing-down sale as that would be even more embarrassing. N.B.3. I have also not included the books I bought for the kids.

I have been thinking about the question of how much I have saved on books in the last year by getting them cheap or "free" owing to work. That is a post for a later date. Definitely.

>51 FlossieT: Oscar and Lucinda has been sitting on my tbr for ages, now I want to read it. I read My life as a fake last year which was my first Carey and while I admired the writing I wasn't that in love with the characters. It was not a keeper.

I'm also not listing everything I buy - only highlights! I've just started reading As the earth turns silver for squeakychu's TIOLI challenge.

Kerry, Lucinda is a really impressive creation: prickly, independent, determined, and the sort of interesting female character I didn't really believe male authors knew how to create. I'd never have thought I could enjoy a story about compulsive gamblers but Carey really gets inside their heads. It's the first of his I've ever read too - the reviews for His Illegal Self were fairly mixed so although that was a recent one I decided to pass. I've had Illywhacker recommended to me too, though. I will definitely be looking for more Peter Carey in future. Nadeem Aslam told a great story last year when I saw him at Cambridge Wordfest, about going to see Peter Carey read when he (Aslam) was a student. When it got to audience questions, he got one from someone saying, "Didn't you just get published because you were in publishing already and had all the right contacts?" Carey apparently stood up and came right to the front of the stage to address the audience en masse, declaring, "No one should should try to "get a book published". You must write the best book that you can! And if you write the best book you can, it will be published." Aslam says he went away and decided to write the best book he could, "because Peter Carey had told me - told me! - that it could be done."

I was so pleased to see As the Earth Turns Silver on the shelf - in fact there were two copies! It's coming out in the UK later this year (can't remember when offhand, but I think February-March-ish). I really wish we reviewed more debut novels. In fact, I wish we reviewed more novels full stop.

Dark Matter sounds intriguing - look forward to hearing more!

Nice to see your "other" reading, F. T. ! ;-)

The Spirit Level sounds interesting. I also need to get to Life A User's Manual one of these days. Speaking of being behind on threads, I think this is the first time this year I've read yours. You might not of read a lot of books this year but you touchstoned a lot. I spent several minutes checking those out. See you in another month or two. That's about how fast I'm getting threads read.

Message #52
Rachael, I really like the idea of listing the books you obtained and the source.

In order to curb my obsession, I think I'll borrow your system.

Happy Sunday to you!

Rachel, I tried to skim Oscar and Lucinda last year for a book group meeting last year, but found that I just couldn't. Even though it was my third time, I had to slow way down to both appreciate Carey's writing and to get the important details straight again. I loved both this book and The True History of the Kelly Gang.

P.S. If you want a rec from the list of books above that you've bought recently, The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch was an easy/fast and thoroughly enjoyable YA book. The two teachers I gave it to both loved it and are each using it as a resource in their classes.

Just found your thread! Back soon to catch up on what you've been reading.

Rachael

I added The Highest Tide to the list of books I hope to read next month.

Thanks for this recommendation!

Rachael! Come back to us for a day! ;o)

Don't know if/when you'll get to see this but I agree that your aims are quite ambitious. 17 non fiction books doesn't seem so low to me - last year I finished 49 books in total, and I think only 4 of those were non fiction, I would be very satisfied to manage 17 this year!

>62 flissp:, hmmm, I don't know... I feel bad about only posting on my thread but I just haven't a hope of keeping up with everyone else's. Not a hope.

Plus I am reading practically nothing. I mean, I had consciously intended to keep my reading down this year, but this is getting a bit silly.

it is good to see a message of you Rachael!
Don't feel bad about not posting on other threads, I did the same for 6 months last year, when life interfered with my readings.

I know what you mean, Rachael ... I find it hard to keep up with all the threads that I want to, so sometimes I have to randomly select those starred threads to read. And I've cut down on the number of people I've starred this year too because it was just getting too difficult.

I'll pop in every now again to see what you're reading. You have nice list going for you there.

Rachael! Glad to see you coming up for air. Just post every now and again so we know you are hanging in.

Hi, Rachael! I'm also finding it difficult to keep up with posts this year, especially on days that I'm working. I'm keeping up, as best I can, with a small number of starred threads on a daily basis, and checking other selected but not starred threads weekly, if I can.

I hope that you continue to post here, even if it's only infrequently, as I'm very interested to know what you're reading.

Rachael, seeing a post from you made me smile. You are missed.

All good wishes to you!

*rendered in imitative voice of FlossieT's mum*
You guys stop knocking on the door and asking FlossieT to come out to play. She'll come out when she's ready. ;)

Oh, you are all very lovely. Especially you, VG - it has been one of those months where I have felt dragged in about 87 different directions at once, and it has been EXHAUSTING.

Naturally, this is why I'm still sitting here at 10 to 1 when I had intended to get an early night.

Anyway. I'm going to backtrack a wee bit to (mumble mumble) days ago and actually respond to some posts (which contain questions you've probably all forgotten by now, but my inner completer-finisher has not entirely left me). Then there may be some words about books, if I haven't fallen asleep.

>55 wandering_star: wandering_star, Dark Matter was FAB. Really enjoyed it. My Belletrista review should be in the next issue from early March, will post a couple of quick thoughts later on here.

>57 VisibleGhost: VisibleGhost, I'd really like to get to The Spirit Level soon. It's had a lot of interest here, and the book was completely updated with new research for the paperback edition. Pickett and Wilkinson spoke at "my" bookshop last Thursday, but I had to head off early - am looking forward to catching up via the audio recording. And I'll try to cut down on the touchstoning.

Lovely to see you posting again Rachael. I hope you have a less hectic time in March.

>58 Whisper1: Linda, I don't think I'll be listing ALL my acquisitions as that would just be embarrassing... but it kind of took my fancy at that point! I do need to spend a bit of quality time with my barcode scanner as I haven't catalogued any new books for ages (though I've acquired tonnes), and I've promised to loan it to a friend in March.

>63 elkiedee: hello Luci, and thanks for stopping by! I really want to read more non-fiction; my husband keeps accusing me of not sufficiently engaging with the 'real world', and he does have a point, to a certain extent. I rarely read a non-fiction book that I really dislike, it's just I don't always find them as relaxing to read as pure story.

>66 cameling:/68 Caroline & Darryl, I have to admit that I have rather ruthlessly un-starred a lot of threads just now (important note: please be assured that nobody who has thus far posted on my thread has been un-starred!!) as I was finding it impossible to follow even those people I'd starred at the start of the year, which choice was heavily based on (1) people I loved from previous years (2) interesting bios in the introductions thread (3) pure whim. The activity seems to grow by an order of magnitude every year.

>65 FAMeulstee:/67/69 Anita, Stasia, Linda, thank you - so nice to see you!

I've not been reading or posting for two main reasons: one, we seem to have been a LOT busier this month in the evenings and at weekends, so my 'free' time has been in short supply; two, what 'free' time I have had has been largely spent researching and writing a piece about the Orange Prize for Belletrista, which will be in the March/April issue. Being me, I couldn't stick to Lois's suggestion of just interviewing Kate Mosse - no, I had to decide that it would only be a properly rounded piece if I also interviewed a previous judge and an award-winner... The upshot of all this is that I ended up with about 87 times as much research material as there is in the finished piece (which is still, strictly speaking, too long for a web article). I have learned a LOT from the experience - about the Orange Prize in particular, but also about my own limits, tendencies, interests and habits, and about where I need to improve my research techniques for "next time". I'd never have believed I'd got that rusty since uni... or maybe it's not that I'm rusty, just that there is no longer so much time to indulge my preferred approach to research (i.e. learning masses and masses more than ever makes it into the finished product). And that if I'm writing for a publication rather than my own personal interest and/or education, I need to be a LOT more disciplined and focused about things.

Anyway. That is now done and submitted, so I promised myself a quick LT catch-up. Which hasn't been quick.

Well, welcome back...it's nice to see you again!

>72 avatiakh: hi Kerry! Thanks - and me too re a quieter March. It's not looking good to start with, as I've got a lot of events in the diary, including a rather distressing funeral in just over a week's time and my youngest daughter's birthday. On the other hand, I'm less committed to stuff outside of my regular day job and family, so... fingers crossed. A couple of reviews owed for Belle again, but I've got most of the month to do them.

OK, books!!

1. Dark Matter - Juli Zeh

Just very quick comments here, will post a link to my Belle review once it's up. Really enjoyed this - it's written within the conventions of suspense novels, but Zeh is a much more literary writer than that might suggest, and this is really a thriller about academics with an interest in quantum physics. Zeh is fantastic at setting up lots of complicated backstory with a few carefully chosen details and a minimum of "he had"s (a pet hate of mine). What I loved most about this book was the way she used the physical theories that her characters were preoccupied with to inform the style and structure of the book - it's all about fragmented, alternative realities, and she uses various different characters and methods to interrogate the whole idea. Just brilliant.

The basic plot involves a kidnapped child - Liam disappears from a service station while en route to a scout camp, and his father Sebastian receives a cryptic phone call apparently informing him that in order to ensure his son's safe return, he must first kill another man. The way Juli Zeh wins sympathy from the reader for Sebastian, and gets us to understand how he persuades himself of what he must do, is just so impressive.

Hmm, that wasn't very brief. Sorry. It was great though.

2. Oscar and Lucinda - Peter Carey

This isn't going to be a proper review as I could not hope to do this book justice at this time of night, but I MUST get it down. It's the first Peter Carey I have ever read, and I can say with complete confidence that it won't be the last, because I loved it.

Which is odd, in a way, because it took a good 200 pages before I felt like that. For the first half of the book, I read through admiration rather than adoration: appreciating Carey's structure and style, but not really liking the characters or finding anything, emotionally, to really hook into. But when Carey first brought Oscar and Lucinda together aboard the Leviathan, I realised that I was totally and utterly absorbed - as in, it had already happened to me, so subtly and skilfully I hadn't noticed, but there was no way I was getting out now.

I am just in awe of Carey's style; the book is knitted together so beautifully, but the real miracle for me is in the myriad little details: the observations of how people speak, and move, and think; the insightful and unusual metaphors that just completely open up a scene for you. I could never write like this in a million years - 500-odd pages of tiny weeny type, and every word seems so carefully weighted, intended.

Lucinda is also one of the most impressively realised female characters I've ever seen from the pen of a male author: her independence of spirit and the way she struggles to process her less governable emotions, and to understand them, is masterfully done. I totally and utterly believed in her.

I should not really be surprised to have loved this so much - two of my absolute favourite (for different reasons) writers, Patrick Ness and Nadeem Aslam, have both singled out Peter Carey as a writer they admire enormously - but the blurby synopses I'd read of Oscar and Lucinda just did not make me want to pick up the book at all. In fact, the incident focused on by most of the blurbs only occupies about the last 80 pages of the book - it's really about so much more: belief, and honour, and courage, and definitely about the pioneering instinct.

Oh, and it's also very funny.

Leaping straight into my all-time favourite books list (to which I cannot set a number as I've never dared to try and count it, but it's going to reside pretty high up).

I can do the next three much more quickly (well, sort of)

3. The Widow's Tale - Mick Jackson

An LT ER book that took me completely by surprise, because I never got an email from the profile notification letting me know I'd won it. And because I have one very, very delinquent ER review owed from AGES ago which I had assumed would rule me out.

Am not going to review this fully here as I need to do my ER duty properly; it's essentially an extended monologue by an elderly woman coming to terms with the loss of her husband, re-examining her life before his death and trying to figuring out a way to live now that he is gone. Will post a link to my review when it's done; I liked it, but did not love it, and had one or two 'issues' with some elements.

4. The Mother's Tale - Camilla Noli

Horrible, horrible, horrible book. The only reason I finished this is that I was desperately hoping the evil (she really is evil) narrator would get her come-uppance by the end of the book. SPOILER ALERT: she doesn't END SPOILER I think this may be the first book in my life that I have ever contemplated actually throwing away, as not only do I not want it in my house, I don't want anyone else to read it either. YUK.

5. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster

No, I have never read this before. Yes, I have an English degree. Sue me, as they used to say once upon a time. I borrowed this from my mum back in 2008, when my husband and I went to Florence for a short break to celebrate our wedding aniversary, but never got round to reading it then. The borrowed-books resolution got me started on it.

I don't think I'm ever going to be a big E.M. Forster fan. I still haven't quite forgiven him for Aspects of the Novel, which I had to read for one of my finals papers. And this is, obviously, very much a period piece: the particular social structures and attitudes it is analysing, while probably still in existence in little pockets of English society, are certainly no longer as prevalent. I also didn't feel he entirely 'got' Lucy - I could see, I think, what he was trying to do, but he just didn't convince me that he'd entirely got inside Lucy's head. Maybe asking for psychological realism that early on in the 20th century is unrealistic...

On the other hand, I loved all the stuff about Florence, especially the critical scene in the Piazza della Signoria, and it has helped me understand a bit more about how I read romantic relationships in novels, what does and doesn't work, and so on. And I did like the more comedic elements of the book. It won't be one of my favourites, but I'm glad to have read it (and now I can watch the film with a completely clear conscience too!).

Hopefully it will be a bit less than a month before I'm able to post again...

I'm sorry that you did not enjoy The Mother's Tale. Thanks for the heads up.. I will avoid this one.

Dark Matter sounds interesting and I've added that to my wish list.

I haven't yet read Oscar and Lucinda - I can't remember why I've been putting it off even though it's already in my TBR tower .. hmm.... perhaps I should reconsider its position in the tower and see if I can find it to read.

Hope you have a better month ahead.

Hey, Racheal, The Anubis Gates discussion should start tomorrow--see you there!!

I must read Oscar and Lucinda, and other books by Peter Carey; thanks for that great review, Rachael.

Great to see you back. (I think I'm repeating myself but just in case...)

I said on another thread that Possession might be the oldest TBR on my shelves, but now that you mention it Oscar and Lucinda has been there longer. I heard the start of a podcast with Peter Carey the other night, talking about the book, and decided not to listen till I've read it.

Can't wait to read the Orange prize interview - sounds great.

#76 Re Dark Matter this is really a thriller about academics with an interest in quantum physics - wishlist add!

Also added Oscar and Lucinda. And welcome back! Hope March improves..

Fingers crossed to a quiet, peaceful and easy March. Hopefully it will achieve these things by the end of said month. I've decided mine is worryingly full and I don't have nearly as much going on as you.

I've been thinking of you loads, and will continue to miss you as you do 'life' things as opposed to online things!

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame ;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is-
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Preparing to sing this for aforementioned funeral next week and just wanted to share it. Hopkins was such an incredible writer.

Wow -- tks for posting the poem... I didn't know it had been set to music, am now off to discover by whom and download... It sounds like it would make a great song for someone like Bryn Terfel.

Also wanted to note that I loved your description of forcible loans by friends, et. al. I am definitely guilty of being a forcible lender...

Have you read Howard's End? I can forgive Forster a lot; that book, I think, is much stronger than anything else he ever wrote. And every time I'm in Kew Gardens in bluebell season, I flash back to that book!

I love Howard's End; only read it a few years ago and couldn't believe I hadn't read it sooner. The movie, available from Netflix, is good too.

#84 That's a beautiful poem Rachael. I'd love to know who it's been set to music by.

Rachael

I'm stopping by to thank you once again for sending the Waterhouse link regarding the Royal Academy show.

I've forwarded the link to others who enjoy his art. Yours is a gift that keeps on giving.

Thanks again!

>85 Chatterbox:/86/87 it was set by a friend of Emile's (Emile is the man who's died) - they had it at their wedding. I don't know if that (given the wedding, I mean) would be my choice for a funeral, personally, but all I have to do is sing, not opine.

It's beautiful - very much in the British-song tradition (Vaughan Williams/Finzi/Butterworth). No MIDI/recording but DM me if you'd like a scan of the score & I can email. Chatterbox - Amanda & Emile had a baritone sing it for their wedding; I'm a mezzo, strictly speaking, so am doing it up the octave.

good luck Rachael. I hope the funeral isn't sad for you.

Hugs
Linda

Interesting, Rachael -- I did look for an online version, but didn't find anything. I did kind of think it might be VW or Butterworth or one of that ilk. (am a big fan of all...) Alas, not able to read music easily, so the score wouldn't help! I haven't sung since I was 14 or so, but back then was a mezzo. Loved it, but no real musical talent aside from the ability to detect pitch better than my classical guitar teacher, which just made him more frustrated that I couldn't manage to play the darn thing.

Hope the funeral is OK; fingers crossed. I see what you mean with the song choice, although I'd be more worried about juxtaposing a happy event with a heartbreaking one & my ability to cope.

Oh, if I kick off any time soon, I'll opt for "Connais-tu le pays" from Mignon -- and it's squarely in mezzo territory, Rachael!

"Wicked, wicked life; yet all ends in Death;
Durance vile we escape
To shores yet uncharted"

Seems to me there's more, but I can't remember who wrote it.

#64 ;o)

#70 VG, I feel suitably chastised! ;)

#66, 68 & 73 Me too. I've found I'm spending far too much time on LT during the day (it's soooo hard to resist when I'm sitting at my PC, supposedly doing lots of background reading - there's only so much endocrine pancreas I can take in one go!). The problem is that there are certain threads that I can only keep track on if I check them every day (which is why, having been away, I'm so behind on everyone's threads at the moment...).

I've also done the "ruthless un-starring" - the only issue with that is that I seem to keep on needing to re-star people. I have no will-power.

#76 The only Peter Carey book that I've read to date is The True History of the Kelly Gang, but I loved it and I've had (and been meaning to read) Oscar and Lucinda for years. Clearly it's going to have to be bumped to the top of my reading list - along with the others I keep seeming to buy. I think Patrick Ness must have sent us subliminal ~*BUY PETER CAREY*~ messages. Damn.

#77 Re The Widow's Tale - I bet I can beat you with my delinquent review for Vilnius Poker (the shame! the shame!). I'll look forward to your review - I'm intrigued by the "issues" comment!

Re A Room with a View, I'm sorry you don't enjoy him more, particularly this one, as I've always enjoyed reading E. M. Forster. That said, I do agree with you about Lucy. The character that I really liked though, was her foolish aunt... The film is a rather good adaptation, in my opinion - hope you like it better!

Re Howards End (#85 & 86), my mum keeps telling me that I should read that (as being his best work) too...

#84 Beautiful. I'm so sorry about the funeral for your friend - I hope it goes as well as it can and is as much of a celebration of his life as possible. How sad to sing something that represents such a hopeful moment at his funeral - I suppose though that when someone you love dies, it is impossible not to think of them every waking hour, so maybe it will help a little bit to think of a happy occasion.

...and, of course, happy birthday to your daughter and congratulations on a fantastic, (author approved!) Belletrista article!

>88 Whisper1: & >90 Whisper1: Linda, you are just so thoughtful and lovely. I still feel bad I didn't actually make it in the end to see the Waterhouse firsthand. My mum is a Friend of the Royal Academy and loved it. I hope the funeral should be manageable - as long as I don't think too hard about those left behind I should get through it. But it is so sad.

>91 Chatterbox: Suzanne, rehearsing this evening, I'm wondering if it's something to do with the ceremonial element: something about marking the beginning and the end of their life together with the same music.

>92 richardderus: Thanks, Richard (and hello again). It's just hard to keep ideas like that in mind when the person who has died is so young and leaves so much behind him. See above about not-thinking-too-much... hmm, may need a Julian Barnes re-read soon.

>93 flissp: thanks for such a meticulous reply, Fliss!! I know what you mean about re-starring. But it was something to aspire to, anyway.

Oscar and Lucinda took me ages to read because it's composed in really, really short sections - I think the longest is only about 20 pages or something - so it was just TOO easy to read 1 or 2 sections at bedtime and then go to sleep. And it is really, really small print. But it was lovely. Just got My Life as a Fake from Fopp for very few of your Earth pounds even though I'm meant to be reading borrowed books. oops.

I did like Room With a View, but the whole thing about Lucy's perspective bothered me - he held her at arm's length, and that made me cross; I know it's 'of the period' in doing so, but I don't have to like it. As for Howards End, I think I need to forget On Beauty before I try that...

My delinquent review for Man in the Dark is MUCH older than Vilnius Poker... it shocked me because I only realised I hadn't written it when they introduced that feature that emails you to point out you haven't done it. Maybe if I try and write it when I do my Widow's Tale. And I've now won another in February. Argh. It's a funny Internet use of the word "win", isn't it - like "winning" on eBay.

AND. Thank you for the congratulations. I really did bounce round my dining room squealing in an exceptionally childish manner when I got Kate's email this morning. My New Year's Resolution not to use smilies is, once again, SEVERELY tested. Maybe I'll make do with a lot of exclamation marks.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit:

I forgot to say that my reviews of Cold Earth and Dark Matter are now both online in issue 4 of Belletrista:

* Dark Matter

* Cold Earth

(under a pseudonym!)

...as well as my piece on the Orange Prize, cause of the happy bouncing just alluded to.

Bravo, Rachael! Your Orange Prize article is spectacular, and it's the best literary article I've read this year. I love the idea of an Orange Prize for translation, I hope that it comes to fruition.

However...

I really did bounce round my dining room squealing in an exceptionally childish manner when I got Kate's email this morning.

One wonders what the children thought of this display of exuberance. :)

>96 kidzdoc: ah, the boys were at school and the little girl was engrossed in raisins, crackers and Charlie & Lola. It made my husband laugh though.

Wonderful piece on the Orange Prize, Rachael! Thanks for being both thorough and concise. A rare combination.

>98 richardderus: 'concise' is HARD WORK. I have a document containing about 3000 words of cuts - i.e. nearly as long as the article came out at in the end - and the interviews came to over 16,000 words of transcription... sob. There is a really interesting article to be written about the gender politics surrounding the Prize over the years, but unfortunately that wasn't the piece I was supposed to be writing.

(and: thank you!)

Intriguing piece on the Orange; I do wish that readers didn't create boundaries for themselves (i.e., this is a 'woman's book', etc.) Although, curiously, I sometimes find women doing it for themselves -- I know women who won't read books where the main character is male, because they feel they won't identify. I do wish a prize that was gender-specific could be seen in the same light as one like the Giller or the Man Booker that is reserved for writers from specific countries.

I'd love to read more translated literature -- even getting a better idea of what is out there. I've just subscribed to Archipelago, but even that is not always 'new' stuff. I'm an eclectic reader, and I'm not always going to give up my mysteries or non-fiction reading to read an obscure literary novel by a Slovak woman, for instance, but I'd certainly like to know more of what is out there and have more of a choice...

I do think African writers are getting a lot more exposure now. How many Japanese women are getting their work translated? If you're not Natsuo Kirino, you're outta luck...

>100 Chatterbox: I do wish a prize that was gender-specific could be seen in the same light as one like the Giller or the Man Booker that is reserved for writers from specific countries.

YES!! That was exactly Kate's point when she said, "all Prizes have eligibility criteria". The article that you're describing is essentially the one that I cut out (in painful 100-word chunks) from the main piece because it threatened to overwhelm the main purpose of the piece - i.e. to celebrate/evaluate the Prize over its 15 years.

Belletrista is a good guide for translated literature. In the UK, there is the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, whose longlist is out relatively soon, which is worth keeping an eye on. Similarly, the UK reading charity Booktrust has a site for translated fiction (although their lovely web editor left quite recently so I don't think it's being very actively maintained). Open Letter books at the University of Rochester, plus their blog, 3 Percent, are also great resources.

There are probably more - but those are what immediately springs to mind!

In addition to what Rachael mentioned, the magazine World Literature Today and the online web magazine Words Without Borders are excellent resources for literature in translation.

>100 Chatterbox: ff:

Regarding the "I do wish a prize that was gender-specific could be seen in the same light as one...": for me, the interesting question would be, "Why isn't it seen in the same light?" In reading about the Orange Prize, I find a lot of the answers on both sides a little...I'm not sure of the word I want here, perhaps glib or facile?

It's one of those issues that I think would be an interesting discussion over a long weekend at a vacation house somewhere, one which might end up opening a few horizons.

Rachel, what a great Orange article. I had no idea how the Orange came to be established before reading your article. I was also surprised to read that there was some hostile reception to it.

My gosh, I have caught up here. Did love your Orange article; am glad someone else is a mad researcher as well, ending up feeling like you are moving the Sahara with a teaspoon. Will never read The Mother's Tale as long as I live, as I tend to agree with you about books. Adore Gerard Manley Hopkins too. You will likely have sung by now, so hope it went well.

Rachael..
What an incredible person you are...a mother, a wife, an accomplished singer, a wonderfully skilled writer, and an all around great human being....

>106 Whisper1: What Linda said. Yeup. That's the stuff!

Tad@103, I suspect it's seen differently because it's a subset of "all", and it's assumed that anything where the playing field isn't aboslutely level automatically means that the competition isn't even.

Of course, that then begs the question of what is considered to be 'best' and what kind of judging leads to it...

I agree -- definitely a weeklong debate....!!

BTW, the longlist for the 2010 Orange Prize will be announced on March 17th. Which books should be on this list?

>108 Chatterbox:: I don't know, Suzanne. I agree there's some of that, but I don't think it explains everything. After all, the Giller (to use a prize you named) isn't open to "all", yet it doesn't seem to excite the same reaction. I think there's a whole dynamic centered around "degrees of otherness" and "exclusion" that comes into play in these things.

I see this variance of reaction in social settings. Take a large group united by some common interest (e.g., kids all on the same team). Have some social event open to only a subset of that group and you get a negative reaction. However, if the subset is defined by something socially uncharged such as "Varsity team" vs. "Junior team", the reaction is small. If it's defined by sex, the reaction is comparatively large.

Great article on the Orange Prize and great reviews for Dark Matter and Cold Earth, those are both on the wishlist now.

Going back to the music being played at wedding and funeral etc.

I strongly believe, but wouldn't bet my life on the fact, that a hymn that was sung at my parent's wedding was also sung at my father's funeral. I have never felt that kind of melancholy in thinking about it though. Instead, I will always think of him when I hear it, and would like it at my own wedding as well, if anyone ever wants to marry me!

Hi Rachael,

I was driving home from taking my mother grocery shopping this afternoon, when what did I see on the car ahead of me but a license plate that said "MRTCAKE" - for a brief moment I thought maybe your OH was here in New England running an errand for you! :o)

Tad@108 -- true re Giller, but then, that's a Canadian prize that not too many folks outside Canada know about! :-) I think that race-based prizes would arouse just as much reaction, at least here in the US. Heavens, I've just realized that as a woman with dual US/Canadian citizenship, I'm eligible for pretty nearly every major literary prize out there, from the Pulitzer to the Booker and the Giller. I'd better get writing the "great Canadian/US/mishmash/confused identity novel"...

A great thread here, Rachael, and glad to see you are getting some kudos for the fabu OP article. And resulting comments are terrific.

Just wanted to stop by to let you know how much I enjoyed your article in Belletrista about the Orange Prize. It actually inadvertently generated a lot of buzz on one of the other threads about male vs. female authors.

Bonnie! Thank you - will you let me know which thread so I can have a look??

...just whistling through, no time to catch up properly, but I WILL do...

PS this will probably get me a slap on the wrist from the LT Gods, but, having just posted this link to the YA reading and interesting links threads, I want to add it here for completeness. I feel very strongly that the UK Guardian has a completely bizarre definition of "best" in their "10 of the best" Saturday Review column. YA author Lucy Coats feels the same - so has written a blog post (with your votes in the comments) on what should be the 'real' "top 10 heroes/'sheroes'" in children's/YA fiction. Do go and share your thoughts, won't you?

>117 FlossieT: here's the thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/85330. The discussion starts at around post 50 and goes on for quite a bit.

Ah, thanks Bonnie! I actually have Tad's thread starred but haven't caught up for a while (70 unread, oops)....

#120

You think that's bad, I just waltzed over there and discovered I had lost said thread so I had 110 to read. Thank goodness for sick leave ;)

#95 (Yes, I am very behind) I'm intrigued by your comment that you need to forget On Beauty before reading Howard's End - why is this? I own both, but have read neither...

Good to know I'm not alone in the VERY belated ER review status. Bizarrely, I also ended up with an unexpected February list book (Beside the Sea) - I'd been convinced that they weren't going to send me any more until I'd updated Vilnius Poker. I REALLY MUST get round to reading that - it's just hanging over me now!

Very interesting discussions over reading sex bias all over the place. It's something I've never really thought about much - I assumed that I was fairly even Stevens, but apparently, looking at the LT statistics (which will be flawed in my case as I've got quite a few unread books in my library), I apparently read 2/3 male, 1/3 female. I suspect that that bias is largely to do with certain authors that I've read a lot by... Hmmm. I should probably be commenting on Tad's thread on this one!

#118 VERY odd list! I'm with Lucy Coats.

#122, Zadie Smith intended On Beauty as an homage to Howard's End. I can see what she was trying to do but, while I really love Howard's End, I found On Beauty disappointing for a variety of reasons.

Not knowledgeable enough about YA to comment, Floss, but I did check out the Guardian's list.

#123 Thanks Rebecca. Right, I think I shall have to read Howard's End first then... On Beauty was given to me by a friend, so I really do have to read it at some point...

Hi there, Rachael, drive-by hug

Heya Flossie ... enjoying the discussions here. And that is no surprise :)

Hi Rachael. Just catching up on threads. Wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your article on the Orange Prize and your review of Cold Earth. Less than three weeks before it's released here in the US. Woo!

Finally caught up in your thread. So much interesting discussion! I wanted to throw my encouragement in for Howard's End as well as Passage to India. They're the only Forster I've read, but I loved them both and they shot straight to my all-time favorites list. This may just be my own fancy, but I love the animistic sense of character that Forster brings to locations. Anyway, let the bad associations fade, but definitely give him another try!

I'm with Foxen on that!!!

I just read MOUSETRAPPED yesterday in one sitting (very rare thing for me). Absolutely loved it to bits.

Hi Rachael. Just thought I would stop by to see how you were doing.

>132 souloftherose: Hi Heather! I'm OK, just about; this year is turning out really busy, and I've been doing very little reading; even less time posting on LT. Actually, what I seem to have been doing a LOT of is watching TV/DVDs: for the first time ever I'm actually following Lost live rather than catching up post-hoc with the box set, and am also supporting the 8YO in his burgeoning Doctor Who obsession (with similar box-set-related requirements...).

I've also been doing a lot of re-reading, which is not something I normally allow myself to indulge in; can't think now what made me do it, but I had a sudden compulsion to re-read Maurice Gee's Halfmen of O trilogy. Relieved to find it still as fantastic as it ever was.

Quick book update (not proper reviews). Splitting over a couple of posts since it's been a while...

6. Brief Lives - Anita Brookner - a borrowed book (tick!). I read a glowing review of Brookner's latest by Hilary Mantel, which said you could "start anywhere" with her novels, so I did. Found this one a bit depressing, to be honest; it's beautifully written, true, and rings true psychologically, but oh my, I find that kind of passivity really distressing to read about.

7. A Room Swept White - Sophie Hannah - indulging my insatiable Sophie Hannah habit with the new one, which I have to admit I bought in hardback, on the day of publication... Trademark knotty plot, with an unreliable narrator and implausible holes, but barrelling along so fast you don't have time to care too much. This one is about a series of women connected with prominent cot-death cases who suddenly begin being bumped off, with mysterious cards with apparently random numbers left on their corpses - or being posted to other people, presumably as a "you'll be next" threat.

8. Girl in Translation - Jean Kwok - debut fiction, about a bright girl emigrating, with her mother, to the US from Hong Kong, and succeeding against the odds. I liked this but didn't love it; the 'twist' near the end didn't really convince me, but the descriptions of the deprivations of the desperate immigrants rang very true (illegal sweatshops, condemned flats, the language barrier and the impact on education). Can see this being a big book-club-style hit - maybe for people who loved e.g. Wild Swans or Brick Lane?

Part 2 follows shortly...

9. The Lessons - Naomi Alderman - second novel from Alderman, who won the Orange New Writers' prize for Disobedience. Plotwise, it's a bit derivative: young naif out of his depth at Oxford drawn into sophisticated circle surrounding charismatic antihero type with emotional instability issues and concealed but fierce commitment to Catholicism - sort of Brideshead crossed with The Secret History. Fortunately I am a TOTAL SUCKER for this kind of book: The Secret History is one of my all-time favourites, and a similar circle in Tana French's The Likeness was one of my favourite things about that book. I struggled a bit with the first half, while they're all still cavorting in their crumbling mansion in Oxford: in places the book verges on caricature, or is just plain WRONG. But fortunately the rest of the novel goes on to examine their lives afterwards, and by the denouement I'd stopped wanting to bang the narrator's head against the wall and actually became quite moved by his situation. On balance, recommended.

10. Mousetrapped - Catherine Ryan Howard - the first self-published book I've ever read, and a Twitter-inspired purchase... Ryan Howard has been blogging the process of self-publishing, from decision to fufilment, in detail, an enterprise that has been in equal parts entertaining and educational. I really felt the least I could do after enjoying her blogs (and tweets) so much was purchase and read the end product. Great fun - a memoir of roughly 18 months spent working at Disney World, by a mildly obsessive and very witty Irish girl. Almost made me interested in space, which is something that hasn't happened since Space Camp (also namechecked in the book, natch). Some lovely set pieces (I especially liked the Kazakhstani gang that are not really meant to be sharing her apartment with her); it would be interesting to see what she'd do with a whole book about the space angle, as although Disney is the premise for the book (hence the title), it's in the segments about the Apollo missions, shuttle launches and so on, that her passion really shines through. Recommended for those that like witty travelogues.

11. Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - Cory Doctorow - ...and after that, how could I not follow it up with this, which has been on my TBR for a while? Spec fic about a future in which death has been cured, and life can be infinitely extended through means of 'refreshing from backup' into a new, cloned body if the old one wears out - or centuries (or merely boring bus journeys) can be skipped by 'deadheading'. Everyone's position in society is controlled by 'Whuffie', a number determined by the respect accorded to you by those with whom you interact - low-Whuffie individuals may find that someone decides to drive off with their car, since no one really cares about them. Our hero, Jules, works for an 'ad-hocracy' charged with running one of the areas in the Magic Kingdom, and the story that unfolds is about his attempts to unravel the mystery of his murder, and of the fierce competition between ad-hocs as they try to soup up the rides they look after. Much more enjoyable to read on the heels of Mousetrapped as I knew next to nothing about Disney World before I read that, and it forms a pretty key part of the background.

And most of those have been read in the last week or so... have come out of reading funk with a vengeance. And shall probably now fall silent again for a month or so. Sorry.

I confess to having purchased the new Sophie Hannah book also -- and to having paid to have it shipped to the US!

I just read The Lessons and reviewed it for the Bookbag too. I think you liked it more than me though.

I'm so glad you popped up and caught us up a bit on your life AND your reading :)

xox

Rachael!! Glad to see you are still alive and kicking!

FlossieT, a nice, thorough, insightful article on the Orange. Now that the Orange is established and likely to survive, I almost want to agitate for a non-fiction Orange to accompany the fiction one.

Uh-Oh, sipping from the Cory Doctorow cup of weirdness leads to strange perceptions of present-day corporatism. The mouse has an evil side!

I'm weighing Dark Matter in my 'should I read it or not' scales based on your review.

>135 Chatterbox: Suzanne, Hannah is a real "guilty pleasure" for me - I can see all the holes and the implausibilities, and I rarely like or believe in her characters, but somehow, I just don't care. They are almost always finish-at-3am-type books for me. I think I liked this one best out of all, though that was partly because there wasn't much Charlie Zailer, who annoys the hell out of me.

>136 elkiedee: Luci, up until about the last 30 pages, I found James infuriating, and the silliness of much of what had gone before was getting to me. But the, um, crisis in the denouement and the final outcome went some way to redeeming it for me. And I can't help myself - I do love those sorts of whacky-group novels. Let me know when your review is online..?

>137 suslyn:/138 Suse & Stasia, hello back and thank you for 'waving'. I'm sorry to have become so passive but... it's a big year for so many reasons. My eldest is moving up to secondary school, and the youngest will be starting primary, in September, so there've been all those applications to deal with; also my husband's back in the lab and working towards fellowship applications in the autumn, so the pressure is on. I'm trying to enjoy it as it whizzes past, but sometimes it's hard not to just wish it all behind us.

>139 VisibleGhost: VG, non-fiction is interesting! I wonder if it's possible to make the same argument? Thinking about it, I read an awful lot of non-fiction by women, so my perception would be that there's less of an issue there that needs addressing, but I've never subjected that to any kind of quantitative analysis. I liked Doctorow, though am not sure I'll read more; reminded me a bit of Jennifer Government, which I read a looooong time ago now.

Dark Matter is ace and I really liked it. The second-best book I've read this year after Oscar and Lucinda.

I've just learned that you poor people in America haven't yet had any episodes of the new Doctor Who!! This feels like karma for the four-day wait we have for Lost after you guys get it on Tuesday. You have a treat in store, DW fans, though Matt Smith is very different from David Tennant... "A madman with a box."

>140 FlossieT:: This feels like karma for the four-day wait we have for Lost after you guys get it on Tuesday.

How, with only four episodes left, they're going to wrap this up when they're creating new story lines each episode.........

Probably going to to a Sopranos and just end it without resolving anything.

> My review is up. The Lessons is being serialised as Book at Bedtime this week - I haven't caught it and I've put the TV on now, but I might try and catch up on Iplayer if I get to it in the next few days.

It's great when a book grabs you so much that you don't care about the "little stuff"... I couldn't survive without my escapist self-indulgences! The first of Sophie Hannah's book was a DNF the first time I tried it, but I went back and re-read it after getting a free copy of book 3 or 4 from amazon vine. This time around it clicked. Impossibly convoluted plots, but as you say, who cares? Have you read Susan Hill's new crime series? I v. much like that, and have just received #5. Perhaps my guilty indulgence for the weekend...

Good to see you pop up again Rachael!

Mousetrapped sounds interesting and I already have Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom on the wishlist.

I was really enjoying the new Doctor Who series, which I didn't think was possible given how much I loved the David Tennant/Catherine Tate combination, until yesterday's episode - what happened?!? I was completely uninterested throughout. My only consolation is that next week's episode is written by Steven Moffat again and features the return of the weeping angels!

I'm sad to say that I stopped watching Lost half way through series 3 (I think) when I stopped having access to Sky. I loved it at the time but I'm not sure whether I've got the energy to try and catch up now.

Wait - how can you not love the Daleks, especially now they are multi-coloured?

What?!? I'm afraid the new Doctor had me when he said, 'You're Scottish, fry something!"

#145 I know - I don't understand it. I'm worried there's something wrong with me! But I loved the first two episodes of this series (that was a great line Pam) so maybe I was just having a 'meh' day.

Hi Rachael! I just started reading Cold Earth, thanks to your recommendation. Liking it so far.
We finally - last night- got the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who. I really enjoyed the ep. I do think the personalities of The Doctor and Amy are a little too similar at this point though. I actually liked them so I will give them a chance. Tennant and Tate are my favorite pairing as well. They had a Doctor Who marathon on BBC-A from 5am until the new ep at 9pm. I wish they would stop showing Planet of the Dead - it's boring and adds little continuity wise. This episode would have creeped me out if I had seen it as a child. If you are willing to sit quietly in your kitchen while a strange man spits food all over the place --- that must be one scary crack in your bedroom wall.
I stopped watching Lost after the 3rd season. My sister is DVRing all this seasons eps. We will watch them in a Lost marathon at the end of the season. I want to know how it all ends but I have no faith that the writers will come up with something plausible.

Boo hiss on not feeling well, Rachael! Better soon, I hope.

Just got a Breaking News Bulletin on your recent surgery. Hope the soreness goes away soon. Read lots of good books while you're recovering!

Take care of yourself, and get better soon. Hope you get to read some good books (if the kids let you) while you're at home.

Rachael, finding your thread (again) has been s nice bonus on my LT browsing (bad! should be reading, you know, an actual book), and I'm looking forward to having the time to go over your Orange Prize article. Congratulationson getting all this work done; hope you are feeling up to snuff soon; and also hope all family hectic-ness soon resolves into more peaceful patterns. Thanks for some great new reading ideas and a delightful thread.

Thanks for the well wishes, everyone (here and on my profile!). I'm recovering gradually, but it was quite a shock, and surprisingly debilitating. I would say "at least I'll have a chance to catch up on LT while I'm off work", but (1) I don't have the stamina for anything much at the moment (2) I see that the group activity has ratcheted up even beyond the astonishing levels it had reached before I went AWOL!! But I may at least try and catch my own thread up a bit more in the next few days. Not that I have read very much, or very much to write home about (apart from Monsters of Men, which made me bawl my eyes out).

Back later... and thank you again. x

>153 FlossieT: Welcome, Rachael, and husband your strength carefully in the recovery period. Speaking from emergency-gall-bladder-surgery perspective, it's the one thing that you **must** do. DO NOT PUSH YOURSELF!

xo

What Richard said, Rachael!

Best wishes from Canuckia as well, Rach. I always look at forced down time as a gift: no one squawks at you if you lie about reading. Read on, MacDuff!

Take care of yourself. Remember it is all going to get better from where you are now. {{{{hugs}}}

Hope that now, a week+ later, you're feeling much much better!!

Hey, Rachael, hope all is going well and you are slowly regaining some strength! {{{{hugs}}}}!

Hi! I've been catching up on threads as I've been awol on LT since March. I hope your recovery is going well and you've had some good reading time while you've been resting :)

>161 Kittybee: I know that AWOL thing, Kittybee.... thank you for dropping by, anyway!

So, pretty much back to normal now. Of course I didn't have time to catch up. Work re-entry was very bumpy and I had a few weeks of working shorter hours while I re-adjusted. But now I only have one week to go before holidays!! So that's good.

Brief comments on my reads this year, because I just came back to update my thread and couldn't remember what I'd read in the last month. I think I've reconstructed it, but I have this horrible feeling that there are one or two volumes missing...

12. Relics of the Dead - Ariana Franklin - another Adelia mystery, this one set in Glastonbury. Guessed the 'twist' relatively early on, but it was a fun read with a great sense of atmosphere. Recommended for historical-mystery readers.

13. The News Where You Are - Catherine O'Flynn - didn't enjoy this as much as her first, What Was Lost - the mystery is less compelling, and I really missed the fascinating pen-portraits What Was Lost supplied that contributed to the fantastic recreation of the atmosphere of the average British shopping centre - but it's a nice enough read, with gentle humour and some thoughtful reflection on urban development in Britain.

14. The Rights of the Reader - Daniel Pennac - loved loved loved loved LOVED this. A manifesto for reading, illustrated in the Walker Books edition I read by Quentin Blake. Very funny, heartfelt, pitched really at teachers and parents with a view to making reading appealing again for children and teens, but with SO much in it for avid readers of all ages to relate to. He amplifies each point of his manifesto in a chapter - and my plan had been to post just the manifesto itself, to whet your appetites, but I can't flippin' well find the book now. So that will have to come later. READ IT ANYWAY. It's ace. (Even though saying that, I think, probably completely flies in the face of his manifesto....)

15. Like Bees to Honey - Caroline Smailes - another Twitter discovery: Caroline has been tweeting and blogging about the various stages of getting this to print, so when it turned up on the shelves at work I just had to pick it up (and it has a GORGEOUS cover to boot). Really lovely book: set mainly in Malta, about a mother, Nina, her son Christopher, and the family she left behind in Malta when she moved to the UK; the basic premise is that Malta is a sort of 'departure lounge' for the dead, where spirits come to acclimatise to the idea that they have left their old lives behind and have to properly move on. Surprisingly deeply spiritual, in an age when that's not at all fashionable, and from an imprint that is otherwise noted for the Atheist's Guide to Christmas. Lots of fun with typography (one of my favourite things). I sobbed for most of the first 100 pages. Only thing to detract from it for me was one character that I didn't think really worked or added much, who got a couple of extended monologues - but really, most of it was great.

16. The Reluctant Bride - Lucy Mangan - couldn't believe it when this turned up at work; totally random, the things that get sent in... Lucy Mangan is a columnist for the UK Guardian, whose persona is essentially a chaotic, biblophilic woolly liberal, married to a committed Conservative ('Tory Boy'). Since this is basically me, I have always loved her stuff, so was looking forward to this, her book about how she met and eventually got married to her Tory Boy. Very, very, very funny, if you are British; I suspect a lot of the cultural references may go over your head if your American. Anyway, I loved it.

That's five books, time to start another post...

17. True Things About Me - Deborah Kay Davies - this is an absolute car-crash-in-slow-motion book; first-person narrative from a woman experiencing some sort of mental breakdown and getting herself involved in a horribly abusive relationship. Well-written, compelling, but deeply disturbing.

18. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness - SOB it's all over. And SOB I did at length, on a train (fortunately not all that crowded). Yeah, basically I'm a bit of a wuss. Sorry. I found it harder to get into this than the other two because of the introduction of a third voice alongside Todd and Viola, but once you've adjusted to the new and distinctive style of that voice, it's really gripping. The man is a GENIUS and I can't wait to see him again in Edinburgh. TWO WEEKS TO GO!!

19. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson - think I might be just a little bit in love with Jackson Brodie, fictional character or not. This isn't as good as When Will There Be Good News?, but then I thought that was really very good indeed. Strangely like Catherine O'Flynn - similar preoccupations with urban development, and set partly in a shopping centre, with the somewhat unorthodox separation of a small girl from a woman who may or may not be her mother forming the nexus of a plot that takes in family secrets, past adoptions, police corruption and unsolved murders.

20. Sex and Stravinsky - Barbara Trapido - comic-opera Trapido, with families being shuffled and dealt out again in new combinations. I found this one a bit more unsettling than some of her previous ones because of some (no spoilers) specific elements in the reshuffle that I felt were slightly glossed over, when they by all rights should have been major emotional events.

21. The Ten-Year Nap - Meg Wolitzer - been meaning to read this for ages. Friends and mothers in middle-class-ish New York deal with the way their lives are panning out, and the choices they make about work, school, motherhood. Packaged in the UK as a real chick-lit novel, but it's better than that - like a superior Little Earthquakes (which actually I quite enjoyed too).

Next 5 coming up...

Welcome back Rachael. I also felt the pain finishing Monsters of Men, I tried to spin out my reading of it, but I got hooked and couldn't put it down. I was lucky that Patrick Ness visited New Zealand earlier this year and so I got to see him in action.

22. Ghost Light - Joseph O'Connor - loved this. John Millington Synge and the actress who loved him, Molly Algood - both the story of their courtship, and her story many years down the line, washed up and in penury in London, as she makes her way to record a radio play at the BBC. I'm completely fascinated by Yeats, the Abbey Theatre and that whole period in Irish lit, so it was sold to me before I'd even read a page. Gorgeous book, very poetic, although the second-person passages might put some people off.

23. Beside the Sea - Veronique Olmi - an ER book, which I MUST review properly. This is an incredible book - another tale of mental breakdown, this time of a struggling mother who takes her two boys abruptly out of school and off on a trip to the seaside. But it's so intense - the mother's voice is heatbreakingly rendered (all credit to both author and translator), and I got about halfway through and just had to put it down for several months as I found it too intense. Peirene Press are doing great things. NB DO NOT READ THE JACKET COPY FOR THIS - MASSIVE SPOILER.

24. Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips - I know I said I wouldn't count re-reads but I want to count this, mainly so I can record for posterity how much I enjoy the joke of Zeus smiting Apollo for daring to suggest that Doctor Who is not a god. Which felt very topical on a re-read, as we neared the end of season 5 of the 'new' version. The gods are alive and well and living in Hampstead - all in the same house, and struggling to get along - or to get anywhere much. Things go even more awry when a mild-mannered mortal cleaner, Alice, ends up entangled in their squabbling. Very funny, very clever.

25. Wasted - Nicola Morgan - won this YA novel from the Scottish Book Trust: Jack is obsessed with chance and luck; he meets Jess, a singer (by chance, natch), and persuades her to join his band, which has just lost its lead vocalist with days to go before they're due to play at the leavers' prom. The novel mimics Jack's obsession with deciding his life on a coin toss, by imagining the toss of a coin at pivotal points in the narrative, and then exploring what might have happened if... Nicely done.

26. The Magicians - Lev Grossman - I really, really enjoyed about the first four-fifths of this, and then thought it rather fell apart at the end. A school for wizardry, but with teenagers that resemble something a bit more recognisable from the 21st century: drink, sex, drugs etc etc and general bad teen behaviour. It works because it's so dry - lots of really clever referencing of other books in similar genres, but very lightly done, so it never gets too look-at-me-I'm-sending-up-Harry-Potter, annoyingly self-satisfied - just very witty. But yes - the end lets it down, I thought - and the narrator completely lost my sympathy at one point in the book, where essentially he moped around bemoaning a bad decision he'd made until I wanted to slam his head into a hard surface to snap him out of it.

And another five done... the end is in sight...

27. Saraswati Park - Anjali Joseph - started this with a certain amount of trepidation, convinced it was going to make me sick with envy, as I was Anjali's "academic contact" at college (i.e., I had to write to her over the holidays before she started with advice about which books to ignore on the reading list which lectures not to bother going to, etc etc), so I've known her for, um, quite a while now. But this was lovely: a family story set in a Mumbai suburb (one which I gather is imaginary), where the city is vividly imagined without completely dominating the story at the expense of character development. It focuses mainly on Mohan, a letter-writer who daydreams of being a 'real' writer, and his nephew Ashish, sent to live with Mohan while he repeats his last year of college (and struggles with his feelings for his best friend). If you loved Amit Chaudhuri's Freedom Song, you'll probably like this too (and indeed, Chaudhuri has given this a fulsome cover blurb).

28. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu - spotted this a month or two back in the Corvus catalogue, having unaccountably missed it first time round, and then.... yes, there is a theme here, it turned up on the shelf at work. This is being marketed as a sort of cross between Douglas Adams and Douglas Coupland; it is funny, but perhaps not quite as riotously, laugh-out-loud funny as the jacket suggests; and actually, inside it is a quiet reflection on father-and-son relationships, and what an obsession can do to that (should play nicely to the Lost junkies, anyway). The premise is that time-machine repairman Charles Yu accidentally meets - and then shoots - himself, throwing him into a 'time loop' from which he has to try and figure out how to escape; but actually, that doesn't even happen until halfway through the book - the first half is more interested in world-building and exploring the family background. Really enjoyed it.

29. Faithful Place - Tana French - YAY Tana French. Laura Miller gave this a great review on Salon that I think summed it up well. She's crossed her usual style with something a bit more Roddy Doyle, with a large, dysfunctional Dublin family in a small, dysfunctional Dublin community. Her main character this time is Frank Mackey, the undercover operative that we met back in The Likeness, who persuaded Cassie to take on the case that forms the backbone of that book. Really enjoyed this - the only real issue I had was that Frank is meant to loathe his family, to have not seen them for 20-odd years, because they are so utterly awful - yet somehow French failed to convince me of that. Mackey Senior is effectively depicted as a monster, but the Mackey siblings are all a bit too smoothed-off at the corners to completely hook you in to believing he needed to estrange himself from them. But that's fairly minor. Cracking.

30. Skippy Dies - Paul Murray - just finished tonight. I'm not doing a proper Booker longlist read, but I am trying to read the ones I have already. Really enjoyed this, although it won't be everyone's cup of tea: explores the workings of adolescent boys, of middle-aged men that haven't really developed beyond adolescents, and of public schools. I was a bit disappointed that he seems to have almost deliberately toned down the 'Irishness' of it - there's a lot of Irish heritage in the background, cultural, mythological, political, but the foreground is the boys, and the boys only really care about the things that teenage boys care about: porn, drugs, calling each other silly names, sneaking out to see the girls from the convent next door - you get the picture. I liked it a lot, and some of the writing is really special, but I don't think it has 'Booker' written all over it, sadly.

There you are. All caught up. See you in another 20 books' time, no doubt.... crikey, I've been rubbish this year.

edit to make the touchstones 'stick'

>164 avatiakh: Hi Kerry! I really didn't want it to end... heartbreaking stuff. How fantastic that he made it over to New Zealand too (and actually, fantastic that they've managed simultaneous publication!).

So good to see posts from you. You have been on my mind. Please take good care of yourself and don't over do it.

Love to you,
Linda

Hi, Rachael! It's great to see you back here, and I hope that you're doing well.

Let's see. Both books by Catherine O'Flynn look interesting, as does the Olmi. I'll definitely read the Murray as part of my 2010 Bookerfest; I read 11 of the 13 books from last year's longlist, and I hope to read at least that many this year. I just finished the first part of In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut, which was very good, and I'm sure that I'll finish it this weekend.

I'm curious to hear what your husband thinks about the Cameron/Clegg government, and its plans for revamping the NHS.

Have missed you here this year--you always read such interesting and sometimes obscure books. Hope you can stop by more often!

Lovely to see you back, jealous of you getting to read Kate Atkinson and Joseph O'Connor, though I have the first of those on order (bargain at Waterstones and a further 96p of loyalty card points off).

Hey, Rachael, good to see you resurfacing! Looks like you've gotten through a lot of good reading. I have the first of the Patrick Ness books in my TBR pile, but have been waiting until I can read all three without interruption.

Hey, Rachael! Welcome back stranger :)

Rachael! Wonderful to see you back!

Some wonderful-sounding books there. The Olmi is already wishlisted, and I'm adding a couple of others.

I'm very tempted to re-read Gods Behaving Badly as well...

What a great list, Rachael. I (sob) added several to my wishlist. Your reads are always amazing to me, as I've not heard of most of them. I'm so glad you're at last feeling better; hope that feeling continues and good things come your way. Besides just the books, I mean.

Hey, Rachael, just catching up. Glad to hear about the Wolitzer as I enjoyed her The Position but I suppose I'm not all that interested in young mothers in NYC. It's good to see what you've been reading.

>166 FlossieT:: The Yu book sounds funny and interesting. Onto the pile with it!

Hi Rachael, loved catching up on your reading. Several books have hit the wishlist. Have a great holiday!

Well this was a dangerous read but a really enjoyable one, Ms. Rachael! Glad you are rebounding and hope your hols are restorative, bookish and full of good weather.

Enjoyed the book catch up, although I think I'm going to have to read through them properly again at some point when I'm not supposed to be asleep. See you with Patrick Ness next Sunday!

Catching up, and my, but that's a big stack of books you've read recently! Glad you're feeling better!

I enjoyed your lists! Thx for sharing -- don't push yourself too hard :)

>166 FlossieT: Thanks for reminding me of the Tana French books. Really enjoyed the first one and am looking forward to the next 2. Hope you are still getting some good books read!

Rachael--it's time to surface and say hi!

20 books was about right... hello again. V quick rundown of recent reads (c.5 per post)

Not-really-31. A Gate at the Stairs - Lorrie Moore - one I forgot that I finished while convalescing. Really disappointed by this - I love Lorrie Moore's stories, and I really enjoyed Anagrams, but something about this just didn't work for me; it set up a beautifully tense atmosphere, but then didn't reall deliver; it seemed to peter out a bit, and the business with the Brazilian boyfriend (no spoilers) felt unnecessary and obvious. Beautifully written as ever, but just didn't hold together for me.

32. Room - Emma Donoghue - more Booker longlist reading. I actually really "enjoyed" this - it's done with a very light touch, and is more concerned about the relationship between the mother and son, and his acclimatisation to the outside world, than it is about the business of abuse and captivity. This has annoyed some reviewers - James Wood called it "exploitative and a little cheap" - who clearly wanted something more tortured and intense, and it's true that the lightness can sometimes leave you feeling a little uneasy. I'll be re-reading this in the next couple of weeks for a real-life book group (of which I have, foolishly, joined 2 at once, as well as a weekly close-reading group...) and may feel differently about it second time through.

33. C - Tom McCarthy - continuing with the Booker - I have to admit I found this very hard work: I really needed to concentrate while reading it to keep track of who everyone was and what they were doing. There's a lot of detailed description that has the paradoxical effect of making it harder to visualise what's being described - failure to see the wood for the trees, if you like. But once I got about 40 pages in, and the first sequence of Serge's listening in to the wireless, it really took off for me. Some incredible writing in this, stuffed full of interesting ideas, and some very funny set pieces (the scene with the medium is wonderful). Interesting that both this and Skippy Dies pick up on the fact that radio telegraphy was first investigated as it was believed it might be a means of communicating with the dead. It was widely labelled "experimental", but that's not really accurate - it's actually very conventionally structured, just the style is very 'literary'.

34. February - Lisa Moore - last of my Booker reads. Gentle and moving story of the widow of a (real-life) Canadian oil rig disaster. Some good moments but this hasn't really stayed with me, for some reason.

35. Afterlife - Sean O'Brien - another entry in the clique-of-privileged-20-somethings-lounge-around-and-get-into-trouble, a la Secret History. I had great hopes for this but found it ultimately a bit disappointing; there's some fantastic writing and scene-setting, but the characters are all a bit thin and 2D, and the plot just seems a bit forced.

Next 5 following....

36. Bad Faith - Gillian Philip - picked this up in Edinburgh, even though I didn't manage to get to any of Gillian's events. Sort of Handmaid's Tale for teens, without all the sex/fertility stuff - warring Christian factions have come to a truce to form a government (and police state). Lots of satisfying twists and turns, and a fantastically punchy ending.

37. Whatever You Love - Louise Doughty - one of the best I've read this year. A mother loses her daughter to a hit-and-run accident; the novel is her clear-eyed account of her own disintegration after the accident, and of some of the events that got her there. An emotionally powerful read, especially if you've got children. Didn't want to put it down.

38. This Perfect World - Suzanne Bugler - hate to use this word again, but - 'disappointing'. Blurbed as the "next Sophie Hannah", but it never delivers on the tension it creates - the denouement is feeble, and the characters (especially the narrator) are paper-thin. Avoid.

39. Jude: Level One - Julian Gough - comic novel. No, wait, come back! This was really good fun - very much in the tradition of Tristram Shandy, lovely naive narrator. Elements of the burlesque, mistaken identities, misguided quests, silly puns and visual jokes etc etc etc. There's a Level 2 and 3, which Level One says are available online from Old Street Publishing, and which I haven't got onto yet as one was enough for the kind of mood I'm in (and the book will stand by itself) - a great palate-cleanser.

40. Hearts and Minds - Amanda Craig - seems very wrong that this didn't make it onto the Orange shortlist. A coincidence-strewn, thoughtful book about London and the impact of immigration on Britain (and Britons, of all types), all broadly structured around a murder mystery. Some of the characters have a touch of Central Casting about them, but it's mostly so good you don't really mind too much. Definitely want to find more Amanda Craig to read after this one.

Next 5 to follow... but later - the whirlwind of Saturday activities continues & I have a child to get to ballet...

edited for touchstones and because I got Suzanne Bugler's name wrong, oops.

Welcome back, though I've been following some of your doings on Twitter. I've read and loved 3 of your 10 - Craig, Donoghue and Doughty, and I have the Lorrie Moore.

Interesting that Berne is being billed as the "next Sophie Hannah" - I've not read it but I've had one of her books for ages - it must date back to before Sophie Hannah was established as a crime writer (I also have her first 3 novels, and only got round to reading Gripless this year).

And I see you've been catching up with Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne books as well, look forward to your comments.

Glad to see you back even briefly, Rachael! Looks like you have had some good reading recently. I am adding several to the BlackHole.

Hi Rachael! I'm glad to see you back here, as well.

I'm tempted to pass on A Gate at the Stairs; I may still read it, since I already own it and because the story is set (I think) in Madison, Wisconsin, where my best friends live (and Lorrie Moore teaches at UW-Madison).

I'm glad that you also enjoyed Room; it's my co-favorite amongst the nine Booker Prize longlisted books I've read so far, along with The Finkler Question (have you read the Jacobson yet?).

Interesting comments about C; you clearly liked it far more than I did.

I think I'll move February to the bottom of my Bookerthon.

I intend to read Hearts and Minds for my Orange Prize 1010 challenge this year (along with The Rehearsal, which I know you liked), so I'm glad to read that you enjoyed it. BTW, have you read anything by Maggie Gee? I read The White Family earlier this month, and absolutely loved it.

I'm quite eager to read reviews of the last 10 books you read; have a fun Saturday!

Hallo Rachael!

...yet another reason for me to go out and get my own copy of Room rather than waiting for it to come in again at the library (33 people on the waiting list! get some more copies!!)...

I only discovered Lorrie Moore this summer (Who Will Run the Frog Hospital) - as you're a fan, are there any you'd recommend particularly?

Re Amanda Craig - of a tiny sampling of two books that I've read by her, I've found her wildly variable. I absolutely loved In a Dark Wood (and would whole-heartedly recommend it to you, if you're on the look out for more by her), but, having raced out to get something else by her (Love in Idleness), was very disappointed. It's not a bad book as such, just very average... I'll look out for Hearts and Minds.

Good to see you back again Rachael!

I've heard good things about Hearts and Minds from other people in the group so I will add your recommendation to theirs and hopefully get round to getting hold of a copy at some point!

I've heard nothing but good things about Room but for some reason I still feel unsure whether I want to read it or not... I think the subject matter makes me feel uneasy.

>187 elkiedee: Luci argh my mistake - Suzanne BUGLER. Not Berne. Sorry. Louise Doughty is my favourite so far, I think: that final chapter just tore me apart. The Thorne-athon has been great fun: I grabbed a proof of From the Dead off the shelves at the start of the summer but never got round to reading it - then had had a long run of slightly disappointing books and badly needed a palate-cleanser.

>189 alcottacre: Stasia hello!!

>190 kidzdoc: Darryl so you were spot-on with the Finkler Question.... will have to go look up your thoughts now - I've rashly joined two book groups at once and that's their December choice.

>191 flissp: fliss please long-term-borrow my copy of Room! I need to clear the decks... plus i STILL have your Blindness, which I have no excuse whatsoever for keeping now I have a copy of my own. Shall FB you... I love love love Lorrie Moore. Self-Help was the first I ever read, but I also loved Birds of America and Anagrams. Her Collected Stories was out in PB in the UK either this year or late last, and has one or two new ones in it. Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) has a cameo in one of them! He won the right at a charity auction... she made him a sleazy masseur.

Shame about Amanda Craig - I'd got Love in Idleness down as a possible. Will look out for In a Dark Wood.

>192 souloftherose: Heather Hearts & Minds is good - although I do keep wanting to send my Home Office friend a copy saying: is this AT ALL FAIR? Along with Chris Cleave's The Other Hand.... Room is done with an exceptionally light touch, and is more about the child and his relationship with his mother and with the world than it is about the abuser/abused relationship. Some people have seen this as a significant shortcoming of the book.

#194: Room is done with an exceptionally light touch, and is more about the child and his relationship with his mother and with the world than it is about the abuser/abused relationship. Some people have seen this as a significant shortcoming of the book.

I did not see it as a shortcoming of the book. I very much enjoyed the book as written.

>195 alcottacre: Stasia James Wood called it "exploitative and a little cheap", and he's not the only person I've seen lay into it - the gist of it seems to be that because Donoghue has chosen to focus on the child's perspective, and his relationship with his mother and then the outside world, it makes the book a lesser thing - that it ought to have grappled more intensely with the abuse story. I can sort of see his point - something along the lines of needing to fully acknowledge the horrors perpetrated and treat the victims' suffering with respect - but on the other hand, to me a book that focused entirely on that angle would have been more exploitative - like misery lit, but worse.

OK, let's see if I can dash through the next few books...

41. Dead Man's Cove - Lauren St John - probably what you'd call "middle-grade lit" in the US - I liked this a lot. Very Enid Blyton in its location (a seaside in Cornwall), heroine (plucky, resourceful Laura Marlin) and plot (mysterious goings-on by night), but updated for a modern audience, with themes of immigration, racism and family break-up hinted at. Laura is a long-term orphan who "suddenly" discovers she has a living blood relative who agrees to take her in (the explanation in the book does give you enough plausibiity to keep reading, honest), but the living relative is a decidedly odd character, and strange things are happening in the Cornish village in which he has decided to take up residence. Kind of wish I'd actually read this in Cornwall. Managed to persuade my 11YO to read it too (he gave it 8/10!).

42. Advice for Strays - Justine Kilkerr - spotted in publisher's catalogue originally, sounded intriguing (and I like reading debuts) - then it was shortlisted for the Guardian's 'Not the Booker' Prize (a sort of crowdsourced contest run alongside the Booker, aimed at discovering great books that the Guardian books blog's visitors feel should have been shortlisted), so it seemed as good a time as any to read it. Marnie's schizophrenic father has gone missing, but as she struggles to deal with the situation, she finds what she has instead is the return of an imaginary childhood friend. Who doesn't seem to be all that imaginary as he is a strong enough presence to frighten off all the neighbourhood cats (the 'LOST' notices posted by Marnie's neighbours introduce each section). This is a very unusual & unexpectedly moving book. Not for you if you're not all that keen on magic realism, though.

43. A Lighthearted Look at Murder - Mark Watson - I have to admit to having a minor crush on Mark Watson, at the same time as being sick with jealousy: stand-up comedian, first from Cambridge, several novels published AND he's younger than me. Gaaaaah. He's got a new one out this year - Eleven - which I know next to nothing about other than it was launched in Edinburgh this summer, but I happened to catch 10 minutes of his show, also in Edinburgh, as part of the Amnesty benefit comedy event. And then this was on the library's equivalent of "by the till" shelves... and it's set (partly) in Cambridge, and I love books set in Cambridge. Starts strongly, but then sort of peters out towards the end, and is never quite as laugh-out-loud funny as you hope it's going to. Essentially a story-within-a-story: aimless Alex, living with her wealthy banker brother and his mate, decides on a whim to join a scheme writing to prisoners under life sentences. She's matched with German Andreas, who then gradually relates a bizarre tale of giantism and Hitler impersonations (I kid you not), via the manuscript of his autobiography, which he has written in German, and which Alex therefore needs to get translated by her brother's mate.... Definitely unique.

44. Caribou Island - David Vann - this was waiting on my desk when I got back from holiday, which cheered me up no end; David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, which I read last summer, was a New York Times Notable Book in 2008, and this is sort of his 'follow-up'. This is not the sort of book you read to feel warm and fuzzy about human nature: the characters are, mostly, deeply flawed and selfish people, and there is a great deal about man's ability to act like savages, especially when exposed to the elements. But the writing is incredibly powerful, and Vann's sense of place is really something special. The novel centres on a couple around retirement age, building a cabin together on an island in Alaska, he with misguided enthusiasm and practically no planning, she because she believes that if she doesn't participate willingly, her husband will leave her, and she's not sure she can cope with that. It also takes in their children, their children's partners, and a few others who drift into and out of their orbit. An impressive work, but not one to read if you are in a dark, despairing sort of mood (unless you want to indulge said mood even further).

45 and 46 were a couple of Doctor Who novels which I've been reading with the 8YO. I'm going to "count" them because they were, technically, proper books, but I'm not sure I was terribly impressed by either of them...

Ah. Have just realised that the next book on my list was David Nicholls' One Day. This made me very cross so I don't think I will write it up now.... later.

#196: I completely disagree with the standpoint that because Donoghue did not make the book about the abuse story that the book is a lesser thing. I think Donoghue did exactly what she wanted to do with the book and did it very well. If James Wood (whoever he is) wants a book about abuse, then he should write it.

Hi Rachael! So far The Finkler Question is meeting with mixed reviews amongst the 75ers, and, as I mentioned on my thread, several heated comments on the Amazon US web site. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Have you read any of his other books? I picked up Kalooki Nights in London in September, and I'll probably read it in late December or early January.

I'll read James Wood's review of Room in the LRB in the next day or two, but I certainly didn't find it to be "exploitative", "cheap" or "prison-lit lite".

Nice reviews; I'll add Caribou Island to my wish list.

Hi Rachael! Nice to see you back at LT. Glad you're feeling better.
Thanks for the review of Room. I'm still deciding if I'd like to read that one. I will be moving A Gate at the Stairs further down on the reading pile. No one seems to like that one.

I've nearly finished The Finkler Question - I definitely preferred Room and The Long Song of the others on the shortlist, and The Siege from the longlist.

Rachel,
Nice reviews! You got me with Dead Man's Cove. I'll have to try my library for that one. Enjoy your reading.

drive-by hug, Rachael

same from me, Rachael! {{{{drive-by}}}}

Rachael
To say I've missed your posts is an understatement. It is so good to see that you are back!

You have done incredible damage to my willpower and, potentially, to my budget! I pondered Lucy Mangan, before deciding I didn't want to read a book about weddings, even one involving reluctant brides. (Instead of getting comments/inquiries about when will I get married, I have now progressed/regressed to -- it's so selfish not to marry and have children, what is the point to your life, etc, you will regret it...)

Re Room, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Donoghue was writing about the parent/child tie, about finding a way to live in oppressive circumstances, and doing so through the eyes of a child. It wasn't a novel about abuse, per se, so why would critics evaluate it on that basis? Makes me rather irritable. The abuse factor was, I thought, a literary device to explain their isolation from the world. Well, not completely, but that isolation and what it says about the nature of human ties and 'reality' seemed to me to be the issues that she wanted to explore in the book. It's one thing to criticize a book for failing to accomplish what it obviously set out to do; another to criticize it for not being what you think it should be.

I've still got Skippy Dies on my Kindle. So many books, so little time... But I've added What Was Lost and Hearts and Minds to my wish list from Amazon.co.uk. And I'll bump up Saraswati Park, which I think I heard about from Darryl. Yes, it's deeply depressing when people younger than you are overachieve dramatically. It's even worse when you're in your late 40s and this has been happening for decades! I console myself with the thought that I'll probably be a Grandma Moses rather than a young prodigy, and that this will ensure I am not spoiled by fame. ??!! ROTFL...

Hallo Rachael! Hope all's well with you and your crowd?

I'm very behind the times with my LT reading at the moment, so bear with me...

So agree with your point re Room in #196 - and actually, I don't think that you do lose the true horror of the abuse story anyway - it's just muffled.

Thank you so much for your offer to loan it to me - I'm glad I own it now anyway - and do hang on to Blindness for as long as it takes you to get to it - I doubt I'll reread it any time soon, and I can always come and bang on your door if I suddenly feel the desperate need (don't worry, I promise I won't)!

I like the sound of Advice for Strays - actually, I'm sure I've come across that already somewhere. I shall have to look out for it... No.s 43 & 44 I shall steer clear of however...

Actually, speaking of books set in Cambridge, have you come across the "Cambridgeshire Book of the Decade" thingy in your library travels? I've got the list here. Can't say I've made much (?any) dent in them as work has been frantic, but thought you might be interested in case there are any you haven't read. They mostly seem to be mysteries. Didn't make it very far with The Cambridge Curry Club myself and I know you liked Ghostwalk even less than I did, but maybe the others... Actually, I think the winner is being announced tonight.

Re One Day - David Nicholls - so glad this made someone else cross - every other review I've read of it seems to think it's fantastic. Grumble grumble. I very much enjoyed Starter for Ten, so I was particularly upset with it...

Hi Rachael...I really, really hope that, no matter how many books you plan to or get to read in 2011, you'll be coming back to the 75er group. The new forum is up and it looks kinda funny and unfinished because you're not there yet.

Happy Christmas, in case I get even further behind in thread-reading!

#207 There's ALREADY a thread for 2011?! Help!

No excuses, little missie Flissy, you *march* over there and start a thread! Quick sticks!

Yes SUH!

BTW Richard, can you start a new thread soon, so I can catch up with you too?! ;o)

Merry Christmas, Rachael! Er, it's after midnight in the UK, so I hope that yesterday was a Merry Christmas for you and your family.

I do need some new threads, Rachael, odd as it seems....

Happy St. Stephen's Day! Or Boxing Day! Whichever you prefer, my dear, may it be a happy, happy occasion!

Rachael, please do join us in 2011. You are sorely missed.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas, Rachael, and happy Boxing Day!

Just chiming in with the wish that you will join us again in 2011, Rachael!

I hope you and yours had a lovely Christmas!

Brief check-in - thank you for lovely messages - will reply properly later (in 2011??). I had intended to update this thread properly as a final stamp on 2010, but when I totted up my latest reads, I realised I was SO close to 75 it was silly not to try... even though I intended to read less than 75 this year. Hmm, maybe I should just finish my current read and stop. Actually the last 7 or so are cheats really as they are "kind of" re-reads, and they're really short: Lemony Snicket's Unfortunate Events (up to book 8), which I have never read actually in print, but listened to - in the car mainly, and missed out chunks if I happened to miss a journey. Anyway. I'm going to count them. Here's to 74...

OK, my counting is totally spurious anyway, and most of what I've read this year has been children's books. I've made it to 78 (kind of, sort of, whatever) or "artichoke", as it's known in the Base Flossie number system. SUPER fast rundown of what looks like half my reading year (gulp).

47. One Day - David Nicholls - wittily written. HATED the characters with a passion. Emma is a drip, Dexter an arse. This puts me in the minority as most people seem to have adored this book. I am always happy when I find someone who didn't.

48. You're A Bad Man, Mr Gum - Andy Stanton (with 8YO) - and all other Mr Gums, up to book 6 now - Andy Stanton IS the new Roald Dahl. Funny, surreal, disgusting, with infinite potential for funny voices when reading aloud. The 8YO has read all of them, we're re-reading them together as our bedtime books. Loving them to pieces.

49. Scaredycat - Mark Billingham - and all the rest of the Tom Thorne books (through to 55) - ploughed through these (it's been a year of re-reads and series). Glad I haven't seen the Sky series as the casting was ALL WRONG. Twisty plotting, ambivalent heroes, multiple points of view. Great books.

57. Requiem for a Mezzo - Carola Dunn - slightly silly faux-period mysteries in which everyone says "spiffing" all the time. Bought it mainly for the title. Enjoyed but probably won't read the rest of the series.

58. The Night Climbers - Ivo Stourton - another in the long line of "books that I really, really hoped would be as good as The Secret History but weren't". Sometime in the New Year I will write this (and many others of its ilk) up as Recipe for Poor Imitation of Donna Tartt, but not now. A bit overwritten, enjoyable mainly (for me) for the Cambridge setting.

59. Dark Matter - Michelle Paver - reviewed for Writeaway UK, good ghost story somewhat deflated by its ending; suffers from the "Oh, is that it?" problem of your imagination coming up with scarier stuff than the "explanation". Up until about page 150, VERY scary, though.

60. The Brainstorm - Jenny Turner - had this on the shelf for aeons, inspired to pick it up by coincidentally re-discovering on the shelf in the same week that a Fiction Uncovered contributor picked it. Good, interesting, worth reading if you've ever worked in an office, and especially if you've ever done a stint at a newspaper or other print publication, but perhaps not quite as brilliant as I'd been hoping.

Not-really 61. The Collected Tweets of Roland Hedley Jr - G.B. Trudeau - self-explanatory, almost. I love GBT. Bought this in Edinburgh (he shook my hand at the signing, swoon), a very quick read.

62. The Carhullan Army - Sarah Hall - another "been meaning to read this for ages" - if I were a novelist I would want to be Sarah Hall. Incredible sense of place, lyricism but not at the expense of plot, reinvents herself with every book. This is a sort of Handmaid's Tale set in the Lake District - themes of fertility control and climate change against spectacular scenery.

63. The Old Child - Jenny Erpenbeck / 64. The Book of Words - Jenny Erpenbeck - read these in a two-pack edition. Brain-meltingly weird and totally original; about the disintegration of language, and especially, in the Book of Words, under fascist regimes. Reminded me a little of John Berger's From A to X (although of course the Book of Words came first).

65. Any Human Heart - William Boyd - read this partly because it was about to be on the telly, partly because John at work highly recommends WB. Have to say I was a bit disappointed. Again, the majority opinion is against me, but I found Logan unutterably sexist, and the female characters horribly underwritten (the TV version was even worse - I couldn't watch it after the first episode). Don't care if it's period-accurate for the characters; I don't have to like it or give it airtime. I did enjoy the sweep-of-history thing, though, and especially enjoyed the bits about Joyce (all cut from the TV version).

Last run...

66. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - YES! I DID IT! ONE reading goal for this year achieved, anyway. Have joined two book groups and one of them picked this as their December book (one of the participants is Russian). Mixed reactions to this. Bits of it were amazing, but overall, it suffered from the fact that I was reading it to a deadline. I could have done with starting this in the Christmas holidays when I had the space to read in a really-sinking-into-it fashion. Also I fear I am becoming much more conservative in my middle age.

67. The Bad Beginning (&FF, up to book 8, The Hostile Hospital) - Lemony Snicket - as above, I promised myself I would re-read (well - sort of re-read, sort of read for the first time - it's a very grey area) this series over the Christmas holidays. These books are just brilliant. Stuffed with clever allusions to the canon of 20th-century American lit (def on the to-read for next year now - Salinger's To Esmé with Love and Squalor), witty, dark, and packed to the gunnels(sp?) with fabulous vocabulary without condescending to its target audience - word definition as artform, with each explanation of some complex word or expression acting as humorous commentary on the plot. I love these books.

There, that's me for 2010. Re reading goals: I managed to read Anna Karenina, but otherwise it's a big fat FAIL. Mostly new books (although the ratio was better), still loans outstanding, and only 3 non-fiction books all year (and one of those was humour...). Oh well.

Quick mopping up of replies to posts...

>205 Chatterbox: Suzanne (and others) - completely agree that that wasn't the book Donoghue was writing. Judging her on her own terms, I enjoyed it. Stepping back a little, it still makes me feel uncomfortable that the setting is relegated to backstory/premise. Sort of in the same way that films seem to be getting more and more violent/sweary nowadays. It troubles me that we accept a societal baseline of misery that seems to be ever rising (even if gradually). Like all recovering idealists, I still basically WANT to believe that people are fundamentally good, and I'm finding that I'm more and more disappointed.

>206 flissp: Fliss, you can have my copy of Advice for Strays if you like - I've had a big ruthless clearout and put it in a box of "books that I liked but will never, in all honesty, re-read", which I tried, with very little success, to persuade Christmas visitors to take away with them... I do need to give you Blindness back as I now have my own copy - was in a goodie bag I got from a Harvill Secker event I went to way back near the start of the year! Seems daft to hang on to yours when I have my own. Saw the Cambridgeshire book thing somewhere but I don't think I followed it up - I've an idea I was vaguely disappointed by the initial list and decided it wasn't worth pursuing. I would really like to read The Wild Places though - new scary book group were talking about it at the start of Dec and it sounds pretty good. Case Histories I enjoyed, but I don't think it's her best - my favourite Brodie is still When Will There Be Good News?

Now, 2011. I'd been kind of thinking I'd defect from the 75ers as I've found it impossible to keep up with the rest of you this year as it was... but now a bit worried none of you will find me if I hang out somewhere else. Dilemma.

Dilemma quickly resolved. Find me here for 2011. See you on the other side...

Happy New Year, Rachael!