Spot the Orange Penguin? Charl08 (Charlotte) reads in 2016 #15

If I'm not in, maybe I'm visiting the Penguin shop in Toronto*


From www.quillandquire.com
*A Girl can dream...

http://torontolife.com/culture/books/inside-penguin-random-house-canadas-bright-...

Total read 289

November 5
Oil on Water (Nigeria, M, Novel)
The Lonely City (UK, F, Memoir/ art history)
Hag-seed (Canada, F, Novel)
Days Without End (Ireland, M, Novel)
The Gene: an intimate history (US, M, Popular Science)

October 24
Perfidia ( US, M, Novel )
Saturnalia ( UK, F, Novel)
The Fires of the Gods (US, F, Novel )
Shadow Game (South Africa, M, Novel )
Fish Have No Feet (Iceland, M, Novel)
The Funeral Party ( Russia, F, Novel )
Village of Secrets (UK, F, History)
Pond (UK, F, Connected short stories?)
Behind God's Back (Finland, M, Novel)
City of Jackals (UK, M, Novel )

Swing Time (UK, F, Novel)
By Gaslight (US, M, Novel )
The Start of Everything (US, F, Novel )
Autumn (UK, F, Novel)
The Unrestored Woman (US/ India, F, Short Stories)
Behold the Dreamers (Cameroon, F, Novel)
Today Will Be Different (US, F, Novel)
Rush Me (US, F, Novel)
Taming the Duke (US, F, Novel)
Playback (UK, M, Novel - audio)
A Scot in the Dark (US, F, Novel)

Eileen (US, F, Novel )
The Madness of Lord Ian (US, F, Novel )
Do you want to start a Scandal (US, F, Novel )

Plus GN Ms Marvel Vol 4

September 22
Telling Tales ( UK, F, Poetry )
Conspiracy (UK, F, Novel )
Reader I Married Him (UK, F, Short Stories )
Istanbul Passage (US, M, Novel)
Born on a Tuesday (Nigeria, M, Novel)
Barbarian Days ( US, M, Autobiography)
A Masked Deception (Canada, F, Novel )
The Fortunes ( UK, M, Novel )
Between the World and Me ( US, M, Memoir)
The Schooldays of Jesus (South Africa, M, Novel )

How I Became a North Korean ( US, F, Novel )
The Golden Scales (UK, M, Novel )
A Man Lies Dreaming ( Israel, M, Novel )
The Cairo Affair (US, M, Novel)
Known and Strange Things (US, M, Non-fiction Art)
The Plague Road ( UK, F, Novel )
Nutshell ( UK, M, Novel )
Commonwealth (US, F, Novel )
Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time (South Africa, M, Biography)
Lady Cop Makes Trouble ( US, F, Novel )

Falling Awake (UK, F, Poetry )
Lumen ( US, F, Novel )

Plus GNs: Agatha: The Real life of Agatha Christie and Rinse, Spin, Repeat

Stats

November
M3 F2
Africa 1 Europe 2 (UK 1) US & Canada 2
Fiction 3 Non-fiction 2
Library 4 Netgalley 1

October
F 17 M 7
US 12 Africa 2 Europe 10 (UK 8)
Fiction 23 Non-fiction 1
Library 14 (digital 2, audio 2), Netgalley 4, Mine 6

September
F 10 M 12
Europe 9 (UK 8) US & Canada 10 Africa 3
Poetry 2 Fiction 15 Non-fiction 4
Library 18 Mine (Temporarily!) 1 Digital 3

Previous reads here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/223566
http://www.librarything.com/topic/230395

American / British /Canadian challenges books read

January
AAC Anne Tyler The Tin Can Tree
BAC Barry Unsworth Pascali's Island.
Susan Hill Strange Meeting
CAC Kim Thúy Ru
Robertson Davies What's bred in the Bone

February
AAC Richard Russo On Helwig Street (Read)
BAC Agatha Christie biography and White Mughals William Dalrymple read
CAC The Collected Stephen Leacock Read a couple of articles, decided it wasn't for me.
True story the life and death of my brother by Helen Humphreys (Read)

March
AAC Jane Smiley didn't fit this in - will have to try harder.
BAC Ali Smith The Firstperson and other stories Read
CAC Farley Mowat My Father's Son and Anita Rau Badami The Hero's Walk (Read)

April
AAC Poetry
BAC Middlemarch oops
CAC The Handmaid's Tale oops and Sweetland Read

May
AAC Work Song Read
BAC Jane Gardam The Sidmouth Letters Read
and Robert Goddard
CAC Emily St John Mandel Last night in Montreal Read

June
AAC Annie Proulx Barkskins currently reading
BAC Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent currently reading
CAC Timothy Findley Dinner Along the Amazon read

July

AAC
BAC Bernice Rubens The Sergeants' Tale Read
CAC One of the lovely Anne of Green Gables books

August
(Pass for African reading - my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!)

October
Michael Chabon - I'm a fan, but can't find the one of his I haven't read!
Kate Atkinson - I think I've read everything she's written
Laurence Hill - have ordered The Book of Negroes

Gratuitous lighthouse picture



And the swimming continues too

Guardian Reviews Fiction


The Mothers by Brit Bennett reviewed by Reni Eddo Lodge
"...isn’t explicitly feminist, in the same way that it isn’t explicitly a novel about “the black experience”. It makes all the points it needs to without being obvious."


Autumn by Ali Smith reviewed by Joanna Kavenna
"In the uneasy present of Smith’s novel, the EU referendum has just occurred and Britain is full of “people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually becoming dialogue”:

All across the country, there was misery and rejoicing. All across the country, what had happened whipped about by itself as if a live electric wire had snapped off a pylon in a storm and was whipping about in the air above the trees, the roofs, the traffic.

Bridget Jones' Baby by Helen Fielding reviewed by Zoe Williams
"...people’s most profound insecurities come out tentatively, they are conflicted, they are easily startled. Fielding presents them as cartoon starlings who flutter straight out and kiss you on the ear, then help you peg up your washing."


The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead reviewed by Alex Preston
"This is a book that wears its research lightly, but the subtly antique prose and detailed description combine to create a world that is entirely convincing."


Poetry - Sharon Olds' Odes reviewed "Throughout, there is a bold sexiness that goes beyond sex, that borders on camp, fey or funny– and is risky too. There are also marvellous odes on more conventional subjects: her sister, the wind, harmony."
Plus a poem:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/11/sharon-olds-odes-poetry-observer-r...

Comics update - including Margaret Atwood! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/12/angel-catbird-young-animal-doom-pa...

Ali Smith's book review in full, plus many more. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/12/autumn-ali-smith-review

Happy new thread Charlotte. Interesting that Ali Smith has quickly penned something on the EU Referendum. I must look out for that.

Happy new thread, Charlotte! I've heard a lot of talk about The Mothers and I've got it on my library wish list.
Have an outstanding weekend!

Happy new thread, Charlotte.
I wish we had something like penguin books, that shop in your thread topper looks awesome!

Happy Saturday, Charlotte! And Happy New Thread! I have also been hearing about The Mothers.

>6 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul. I'm looking forward to the series of four books. I really enjoy her writing.

>7 Carmenere: Thanks Lynda. I've been reading lots of good stuff about The Mothers too.

>8 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita - I wish there was a penguin shop round the corner.

>9 msf59: Thanks Mark. Will you look for an audio of The Mothers?

Guardian Non-fiction Reviews


Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge reviewed by Hari Kunzru
"Everyday, on average, seven young children and teens are killed by guns"....Rather than craft another polemic to add to library shelves already burdened woth them, he has chosen a date, Saturday 23 November 2013, and travelled across America to report the stories of every child and teen killed by firearms on that day."


Kind of Blue: a political memoir by Ken Clarke reviewed by David Hare
"...as orthodox and unchallenging as the smuggest of Soviet apparatchiks."


Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow reviewed by Colin Kidd
"Alone among the leading Founding Fathers he perceived the necessity of learning from the fiscal-military statecraft of ancien regime Europe, Britain included: the world was as it was, not as Jefferson and other dreamy friends of the French Revolution wished it to be."


SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben Macintyre reviewed by Richard Overy
"was an irregular unit, it's members drawn from an extraordinary range of backgrounds - a spectacles salesman, a textile merchant, a tomato farmer, and so on - woth a range of motives to match."
(I think the SAS are like the US SEALS - a secret elite force)

Happy Saturday, Charlotte! I just finished catching up with your previous thread, and I am sorry that you did not get the job.

I really love the thread topper - those shelves are SO cool.

Thanks Mamie. The good wishes are much appreciated. I'd happily hang out in that shop every day.

Happy new thread, Charlotte! Ooh, there's that Ken Clarke book again.

Yup. Surprisingly, the Guardian are not fans (imagine that! !)

>16 susanj67: I'm amazed.

:-)

Happy new one, Charlotte.
I found a special Halloween video for you.

Aw! A penguin! :-)

>5 charl08: I keep seeing The Mothers around - I just put it on my library wishlist.

I've added The Mothers and Another Day in the Death of America to the WL, Charlotte.

And happy new thread!

>19 ursula: It seems to have taken over litsy, as far as my feed is concerned anyway.

I've decided to take a break from the Giant Tomes and read Behind God's Back, the second in a crime series about a Finnish Jewish detective. I'm living dangerously (this is the first one I've read).

>20 katiekrug: Thanks Katie. Maybe you can buy then in a shiny new York bookstore. Like this one?



Or maybe this one. Sigh. I want to go.
http://untappedcities.com/2016/01/29/nycs-oldest-bookstore-argosy-books/

Hi Charlotte - I'll meet you at the Toronto bookstore at the top of your thread!

Lots of good books in "The Guardian" today...

And happy new thread.

>22 charl08: - Oooh, I've never been to Argosy! And The Wayne will be working in midtown, so I'll just make a point to go visit him :)

>23 BLBera: Any time Beth. I'm just waiting for a quick lottery win, and then I'm good to go!

>24 katiekrug: Sounds like a good plan Katie. Take pictures!

Happy New Thread, Charlotte. Underground Railroad is very popular here, but I have so many TBR's that I've yet to put a hold on the book at my library. One more storm to go here in Vancouver. We've had a series of two rain / wiind storms with wind between 50 - 80 km and a lot of downed trees. Right now it is not bad, but another storm is to hit us any time now. A lot of people have lost power, but so far , so good. I'm hoping we get through the rest of the day and evening without losiing power.

Enjoy Behind God's Back.

Happy New Thread, Charlotte!

The Penguin display up top gave me a chuckle. Nice find.

I liked Rogue Heroes. Another Day in the Death of America looks interesting.

>1 charl08: Fun to have a virtual visit to the new Penguin store in T.O. Reading the Diaz book right now higlighted and it's a wonder!
Thanks for the link!

Happy new thread!

North American bookstores are starting to call to me.........Powell's, The Tattered Cover, Strand..............

I should make a point of going to Strand next weekend... :-)

The publishers sent me a freebie of the Gary Younge book, so I have that; the Ron Chernow bio of Hamilton isn't new, I don't think? I think it came out in the US at least a decade ago, and may have been the catalyst for the musical, even. It's an excellent book, if a chunkster. Is it just being released in the UK? The Ben Macintyre book is good, if not as good as his book about Kim Philby -- more action oriented than personality (at least IMO).

It's hard to tell from that review snippet whether the Guardian reviewer liked the new Bridget Jones book or not! The last one kinda got panned by readers. I have liked some of her books and loathed others so I'm wary. I have fun with chick lit -- along with mysteries, it's my recreational reading. But I prob. wouldn't spend money on it. The Colson Whitehead was amazing...

Happy new thread! Nothing new for me in this week's Guardian reviews. The Underground Railroad is already on the WL, and I can get Chernow's Hamilton bio from the library if I ever get the nerve to tackle such a chunkster.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte! Yes, I will see if I can find The Mothers on audio but I think I will wait until an LT pal or two give it a thumbs up. That is become my Book Buddy Barometer.

>26 vancouverdeb: I've got Underground Railroad reserved Deborah. Looking forward to it.

>27 jnwelch: I would totally go to that shop if I ever got to Toronto.

I like Yonge's writing, so should get on with reading that really.

>28 mdoris: Diaz sounds great. Hope it continues to please. I looked at the pictures feom the Penguin shop and made up a wishlist to add to the Penguin collection. I love the notebooks. My fantasy house has one of these. Or two.



>29 banjo123: Thanks Rhonda.

>30 PaulCranswick: Where do I sign for that tour?!

>31 Chatterbox: Sounds like a lovely place to visit Suzanne. You are right, the review of the Hamilton book is because it is just being released now in the UK. As Susan pointed out, he's not exactly a well known figure here, but the musical opening presumably will affect that.

The review was not positive about Bridget. I'm not sure about many things about the latest Bridget Jones book, as it doesn't make any sense given that Darcey was killed off in the third book of diaries when she came back to writing it after having declared she wouldn't ever again.... I'm afraid I read that that had happened in a review and decided I'd rather give it a miss, and leave the lovely characters at the end of the second book, making me laugh.

>32 cbl_tn: Impressive ducking of bb's there. I am waitng for the Railroad to reach my library. Hopefully after I've knocked off a few of the other library books...

>33 msf59: A BBB sounds like a good idea to me. Very useful.

I wonder if Fielding realized her error in writing Mad About the Boy (which really was dreadful, not the least for supposing that Bridget would fail to change at all after years of married life) and this is a do-over? I don't have any desire to see the movie, but if I'm trapped on a long flight and it's one of the movies on the list, I'll probably watch it.

>34 charl08: Let's start putting some money aside for a tour of those bookstores, Charlotte.

>35 RidgewayGirl: I do wish she'd just leave it alone. I liked Olivia Joules. If she wrote new characters, I'd read the new books.

>36 PaulCranswick: If I start saving now Paul, I reckon in about thirty years I'll be good to go. Mark your calendar!!

>37 charl08: Yes, exactly! But from what I've read, readers prefer familiar characters (note how successful series are) and publishers are loathe to publish a stand-alone novel by an author who has a popular series. There's pressure put on authors to continue to write a series, and to do so at a specific pace which, I have found, often means a series is only worth reading for the first three or half dozen books.

>39 RidgewayGirl: I do think she should be in a better position than most authors, surely, to resist that pressure? She can't be short of a bob or two...

Behind God's Back (Finland, M, Novel)
I think my favourite moment of this book was when one of the characters has his first house and is excited because he's going to have a private sauna. Of course. As you do. As crime fiction it was a bit lack lustre - a big info dump by one character near the end and an Agatha Christie moment where someone promises to phone with key information - guess what happens to them?!

City of Jackals (UK, M, Novel )
This was a much more complex prospect - Makana is still living on his hose boat on the Mile, solving crime. He gets mixed up in the death of a young man from South Sudan, and the stage is set for a complex mystery involving people smuggling, refugee rights and international missionaries working in Egypt . Add the murk of politics and traffic in a detailed picture of Cairo and this is a series I'll pick up to read more.

That Penguin shop in Toronto looks like fun!!

Putting The Mothers right onto the wish list and, of course, I'm still in the queue for The Underground Railroad.

Happy New Thread!

ETA: Wish list, smish list. I've put The Mothers on hold at the library.

Your thread is a dangerous place, Charlotte. I have been ducking (unsuccessfully) BBs, trying to catch up. Hope you have a great week.

Happy new thread, Charlotte.

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

Hi, Charlotte! I snagged The Mothers on audio and it is not a chunkster. Yah!!

Still will have to fit it into the rotation...sighs.

I'm still trying to think of something intelligent to say about Swing Time that isn't just a wall of gush about how much I love Zadie Smith, not least for saying the things I've vaguely wondered about - except she does it in an articulate way. I'm wondering if Madonna has picked it up yet (or maybe one of her PAs?!). Ouch.

>41 EBT1002: Hope they both come in quickly for you Ellen. I'm interested to see how much attention The Underground Railroad gets here, as slavery is not an area that is widely taught.

>42 Familyhistorian: Hope you have a good one too! I do love reading the reviews and finding out what is coming up.

>43 DianaNL: Ha! LOVE IT.

>44 scaifea: Thanks Amber. Your recent thread has made me want to look for Bedknobs and Broomsticks to watch again. Hopefully they'll show it for all the kids on half term in a couple of weeks on terrestrial.

>45 msf59: Oh I'm sure you'll manage Mark. Look forward to hearing what you make of it - you've got a role to play as part of the book barometer too!

>46 charl08: My library has Swing Time on order and I'm second in line to get my hands on it. Glad to know it'll be good!

Happy Monday, Charlotte.

>47 RidgewayGirl: Thanks Kay. It's getting mixed reviews, but I love her writing.

>48 BLBera: And to you Beth!

Swing Time

I remember there was always a girl with a secret, with something furtive and broken in her, and walking through the village with Aimee, entering people's homes, shaking their hands, accepting their food and drink, being hugged by their children, I often thought I saw her again, this girl who lives everywhere and at all times in history, who is sweeping the yard or pouring out tea or carrying someone else's baby on her hip, and looking over at you with a secret she can't tell.

I am a fan of Smith, despite having (ETA missed her first due to the) big media stuff about White Teeth (she was so young blah de blah, the kind of thing that makes me avoid a book altogether). A much savvier reading friend put me on to her through On Beauty, the story of two families mixed histories. I wish she still wrote for the Guardian Reviews about other people's books. I thought the only problem with The Embassy of Cambodia was it was too short, and NW struck all sorts of memories about living in London. So that is a really long winded way of saying that I was really pleased to get a Netgalley for this new book.



Told exclusively from the perspective of one young woman, child of a white working class guy and a woman from Jamaica who is so determined to pull herself up she has all but forgotten her daughter is there too. Swing Time is a reference to the musicals which she watches with her friend Tracey, a gifted dancer. Tracey's dad left long ago, and her mum is not working, 'on benefits', with a 'Kilburn facelift'. Smith catches the differences between a certain kind of aspirational family and a working class one: including the firm belief from parents that children can be somehow convinced that not having a particular doll is a *good* thing!

The story leaps between the narrator's childhood and her employment as a PA to an Australian singer-actress: long famous, young despite her years, fiercely fit and capable of dropping people without looking back. The singer, Aimee, decides to fund a school in Senegal. Our narrator is the pathfinder, exploring the options for supporting a girls' school, spending long periods in the Senegalese village to make plans with a more experienced development worker. And here her job gets horribly complicated. Smith nods to the freight of a British -Jamaican in West Africa: she visits the slave castles, tries to imagine herself back in time. But in the village she is given oven chips instead of rice to eat, not permitted to work or help, and treated firmly as an outsider. It was here that I most loved this book. Smith puts her finger on so many development gremlins: subtly and smartly, not offering glib solutions just raising things to the light and saying 'this is really odd: what is going on here?' The bit at the end with the baby might sound far fetched but for the news. Smith lets no one off lightly.

We all worshipped at the altar of the baby. The baby was starting from the beginning, the baby was uncompromised, the baby wasn't hustling. The baby needn't fake Aimee's signature on four thousand headshots headed for South Korea.... whatever happened afterwards, it wasn't out of any lack of love for the baby. The baby was surrounded by love. It was a question of what love gives you the right to do.

I can't wait to see your comments on Swing Time. I do have it reserved at my library.

I loved it. I can see why some reviewers were not so sold: some of the reasons I loved it were that I have lived bits of it. But that just makes me think more of her for 'getting it'.

I think Penguin are trying to overwhelm me with lovely goodies.* Just saw a post about these new covers.


I love the Penguin in the cooking pot!
From http://ericnyquist.com/Penguin-Classics

*Sadly, not in person. Just online.

Great review of Swing Time. I confess I've not read a book by Zadie Smith as yet. I might have owned a second hand copy of White Teeth at one time, but I might have sold it back to the second hand store, or it is sitting in my " stacks" :) Thumbed your review. Swing Time sounds appealing. Nearly finished The Parcel , which I think will be to your taste . Hot Milk finally came in on a hold today, but I won't get there in time to pick it up today. I'll get there tomorrow - and I'm so busy reading the Can Lit prizes - it might get a skip over. :) Bad Deborah!

Thanks for the thumb Deborah. I am Determined to Finish By Gaslight soon. It's So Long!

I can't wait to get my hands on Swing Time! Great review. I think my Peace Corps experience will resonate here.

Thanks for the review of Swing Time. I loved White Teeth.

This is a great review and I can't wait to finally get to this book. I haven't read all of hers, but liked both White Teeth (read in translation) and On Beauty very much although contrary to you I couldn't personally relate to much - my London experience being limited to 8 wonderful weeks 20 years ago when I did an internship in the City and lived in Croydon. This one sounds quite different, but maybe with those West African people in my life now, it will give me some more understanding.

Never read The Crucible and have no idea what it's about, but I'd buy it for its cover! :)

>56 BLBera: I think anyone who has ever been somewhere and thought about the impact of tourism, or read a headline about foreign adoptions and wondered how that works so Beth: I think her account of childhood will also resonate wth a lot of people!

>57 banjo123: Rhonda I need to read White Teeth - I often get turned off by marketing for the next big thing. It haually doesnt realte to the book! Now the hype is long over perhaps I can read it as a story.

>58 Deern: There's a lot about what happens to the community who are left behind when everyone leaves for better places - something I relate to living in a community with many by retirement homes!

I've never read the Crucible either but I love that cover.

I finished By Gaslight last night. This book, over 700 pages, set in the UK, the US and South Africa in the second half of the 19c was a wonderful read. Based on (but apparently taking great liberties with) the story of the Pinkerton agency, and the founder's hunt for an arch criminal, Edward Shade. In the process we go back to a heist in Port Elizabeth, see the carnage with the army of the Potomac and the grim underside of Victorian London.

Lovely review of Swing Time, Charlotte. And I'm with you - those new Penguin covers are excellent!

Thanks Amber. I'm going to avoid bookshops for a bit, otherwise I'd be so tempted by those penguins. I'll stick them on my Xmas list though.

The Crucible is excellent - worth reading with or without that amazing cover!

Thanks. It's in my fantasy library :-)

Thanks for that good review of Swing Time, Charlotte. I really liked her White Teeth, and I've been looking for another of hers to read.

I'm a fan - hope you can get hold of it. I want a paper copy!

I loved White Teeth, Charlotte - it lives up its hype. By Gaslight sounds great - but 700 pages?!

Yeah. It's a beach read. Maybe a two week holiday beach read...

After the day writing about my many skills, (ha!) wide range of knowledge and comprehensive experience, I'm in the mood for a mini crime spree. Fortunately mum has plenty out from the library just now, so I've picked up The Start of Everything.

The Start of Everything was just what I wanted - police procedural set in Cambridge, with recognisable settings and an interesting crime - I wasn't sure who did it. I don't know enough about autism to assess the character Mathilde for authenticity, but she and the book made for a compelling read.

By Gaslight sounds like it would be one I would like but I picked it up in the bookstore and put it right back. Too hefty right now!

It reads like he has done a mountain of research about the 19c - so many details about places and people of the time. But not a short read at all...

I'm going to keep an eye out for it. I'll probably read it on my iPad if it is indeed large.

It's not the kind of book I can get in a handbag. Maybe the paperback will be more manageable...?

Now reading Autumn - I wish it was a paper copy, but as it was free, of course I'm really not complaining.

I love the cover...

I really like Ali Smith:

Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about. Then the seedheads rattle, the seeds fall out. Then there’s even more language waiting to come up.

Have you seen Harland Miller's art? Clearly I love it :)

Someone Knows My Name, or whatever title you know that book by was a 5 star read for me. It still resonates with me , even now. Glad to hear that you are continuing to help to volunteer with the refugees in your area. ( as on Anita's thread) . I've finished both The Wonder and The Parcel, but I've yet to put any comments about the books on my threads. I think you would enjoy both of them. I think that The Wonder will appeal to a broad audience and is an interesting story that is a page turner. The Parcel is fantastic, but I suspect that content will only appeal to " serious readers" - like most of us on LT. It is a tough read, but very interesting and heartbreaking.

>75 LovingLit: Well he's (now) hanging on the walls of my fantasy (fictional?) Library. Thanks! Love it.

>76 vancouverdeb: It was The Book of... here Deborah. I'm going to read it as soon as it comes in! I'll hope The Parcel arrives soonish over here. Sounds intriguing.

Autumn

This isn’t fiction, the man says. This is the Post Office.

I liked How to Be Both and this novel picked up Smith's themes around time, relationships and really looking at art. With Elisabeth, a young art historian, we remember her childhood with Mr Gluck, the neighbour who introduced her to the work of Pauline Boty. She reads to him in the hospital bed and lives in a hostile post-Brexit-vote village. The dry humour is laced with anger at the intolerance and little Englander attitude.

Recommended.

You got me with Autumn, Charlotte.

It's out today, isn't it (or was that the Zadie Smith?)? Must get it NOW! :))

Edit: 15 EUR, and that a day after Hag-Seed's 13. *sigh*
Anyway, got it!

I've got Gaslight out from the library , but as appealing as it is, I think I'll wait to purchase it. I've got so many TBR's in mind, I don't think I can read 750 pages right now. Oh the reading life!

>78 BLBera: Hope that you like it Beth. I so enjoy her style - she has a way of catching the comedy / tragedy of the everyday encounter.

>79 Deern: Ouch! Hope you enjoy them, and that your process testing goes well. It all sounds very complex to me.

>80 vancouverdeb: I got a bit frustrated with By Gaslight with so many books piling up behind it! It was a good read nonetheless. I would have thought it would make an excellent book for a long journey or even a regular commute on the kindle. Partcularly I'd not read much about the American Civil War and thought he did a good job in that setting without being overwhelming this reader.

"This isn’t fiction, the man says. This is the Post Office." Great quote! Grins...

I have to read more Ali Smith. I am enjoying The Association of Small Bombs but I can not see it surpassing The Underground Railroad, IMHO.

I really like that quote Mark.

I am trying to get her back catalogue, but going pretty slowly.

Still waiting for both the books.you mention. Patiently, as ever...

>53 charl08: Oh. My. Word. How are we supposed to resist those?

Happy Thursday, Charlotte! By Gaslight looks good, but I will await your final thoughts. Adding The Start of Everything to the list, though.

I'm not sure I'm going to write any more than >60 charl08: - unless you have questions. Any questions I can answer, of course.

Now reading Grammar for English Language Teachers. Harumph. I am not a fan of grammar. Can't we all learn by reading a lot and just absorbing it?*

Past simple:
I read the book.
I didn't read the book.

I read the book on the sofa in the evening (precise details of the past)

Past perfect simple (event took place, marking a sequence of events)
Everyone had read the book (before me!)
I hadn't read the book (so I kept quiet in the meeting).

Past continuous (something that started before a point and is still in progress)
She was still reading at 2 am!

If the action stopped at a key point.
She was reading when the kindle broke.

To set a place in a narrative
She was reading as normal when lightning flashed and she entered the pages of her book**

Habitual action (emphasise repetition)
She was always complaining she didn't get enough time to read.

Past perfect simple
(Head explodes. Or rather) She had been trying to understand English grammar since eight that evening. Her head exploded ( in a metaphorical fashion...)

*No. I guess not.
**From my proposed new book 'teaching English with Sci fi and speculative fiction' ;-)

Now reading Have read An Unrestored woman



Wonderful collection of stories inspired and linked to Partition, particularly focusing on women's experiences (many were abducted during the violence). The stories go much further back in time, to the 19c, as well as forward to contemporary migrants to the US and India. There is a notable inclusion of LGBT experiences, loving and sad in equal measure as characters deal with silences as well as the physical destruction accompanying the new nations.

Highly recommended,and thanks to Cariola for the recommendation on her thread.

Her review is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/16096207/reviews/134133141

>85 charl08: My bad, Charlotte, I misread that and was thinking you were still reading it for some reason. I might have ordered four of those lovely orange Penguins up there in >53 charl08:.

>89 charl08: It's not a real review is it - I think I was exhausted by the length of the book! (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it )

I'm rather envious of that penguin purchase - photo of the new stack will be demanded in due course...

>86 charl08: Thank you for that! :))

I'm hoping by Wednesday I can understand enough of the reasons for this past tense that if I get a question (the usual teacher is away) I would be able to explain it... Hmmm....

I'm going to try it with football examples as most of the guys seem to watch football!

Oh, gosh, I love the grammar of verb tenses! But that's just the Latin prof. in me, I think... Best of luck!

>89 charl08: It totally counts, Charlotte. I will post a photo pf the gorgeous new penguins as soon as they arrive.

Happy Friday to you!

>92 scaifea: Amber, oh dear. I wish I loved grammar. I fear the relationship in my case is more like red shirt on landing party- misunderstood alien.

>93 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. The dog totally ate my homework :-)
Happy Friday.

This is what happens when you don't update your LT account... Oops.

Poetry Friday anyone?

From Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy

Hour

Love's time's beggar, but even a single hour,
bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich.
We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers
or wine, but the whole of the summer sky and a grass ditch...

I don't love grammar, but I sure know a lot more about it since learning Italian. Not only because they have real conjugations for all those tenses, but also because they use them a lot more strictly (and sometimes differently) than we do.

I do think it's interesting how different languages work. I just get really frustrated by not being able to have a good explanation for how my own language works, and how every rule has an exception...

I finished Behold the Dreamers, a book I got as an ARC through Netgalley. I really struggled with the opening chapters of the novel (I don't much want to read about Wall Street).



Beth liked it a lot more and I picked it up again as a result. The second half - when Wall Street had collapsed (not exactly a spoiler there) and (some of) the Cameroonian family started to question what was the point of leaving home to travel to a country with severe economic problems, was a lot more interesting to me, something I'd not read before. For me, the novel would have been more compelling if she'd assumed knowedge (of mad Wall Street lives and hard illegal migrant ones) she focussed on at the start and maybe just gave us what led to the return. A good, if not great novel. The humour and pointed comments about some assumptions made about 'Africa' made for a lighter read than the topic might suggest.

“My mother asked me to bring back a RAZR for her so she can have the nicest phone among all her friends who she goes to farm with. Don’t ask me why she takes her cell phone to the farm. There’s no network there. She saw a RAZR in a Nigerian movie, she wants it.”

Like Ursula, I don't think I was ever taught much about grammar, except when I took French for 5 years in high-school. ( Just one class per year, not immersion French). Agreed - a book about Wall Street would not really grab me .

I think it wasn't the fashion when I was in school. Now a friend teaches children under 11 and they know so much about the structure of English at such a young age.

I'm now reading Today Will Be Different , not unconnected to the fact that Hag-Seed and The Underground Railroad have come in at the library :-)

I managed to create a review of The Parcel, Charlotte. I think it is book that I could well imagine you reading. Ah, Today Will Be Different. I hope to get to that, but this time round I had to return it to the library unread. Too many books, to little time!

Hi Charlotte - Sorry Behold the Dreamers didn't work better for you - I thought the first part set up the contrast between the two families - both enthralled by the idea of the American Dream...

You got me with An Unrestored Woman - I'll definitely search that one out.

Poetry Friday is a good idea, Charlotte, but then again I would say that wouldn't I?

I suppose that an impromptu limerick will have to suffice

Our North-Western gem, Charlotte
Is noted for reading quite a lot:
Despite my having little to say
Since apparently it is Poetry Friday
I thought it right just to give it a shot.

Have a lovely weekend. xx

>86 charl08: I love your book idea, Charlotte! I didn't learn anything about grammar either (apart from the basic parts of speech). I *did* just read a lot and absorb it, but I suppose I've had a lifetime to do that and ESL learners don't.

I have The Underground Railroad reserved but there's no sign of it yet. I hope it's good!

>102 vancouverdeb: I'm hoping that the Parcel turns up over here soon Deborah. You've convinced me!

>103 BLBera: I liked it a lot - not least because when do you get the chance to read about characters from Cameroon? - but I felt like it was very similar to other stories(fiction and non) I've read about migration (at the start). I think I got battered wth the American dream through doing Death of a Salesman for exams at school. Funny how being taught a book for marks seems to mean it loses its appeal...

>104 PaulCranswick: I wouldn't attempt my own Paul (although thanks for that) - just wanting to give myself a reminder to pick up some poetry from my own shelves.

>105 susanj67: I can't even remember being taught the terms verbs and nouns. Althought that may well say more about my memory than anything else.

I do remember starting French at 11 and the teacher having to do all sorts of background work to even give us a sense of how to understand how to learn the structure of a sentence. (I have to say I'm quite glad - friend who described the US system having been between the two, made the deconstruction of grammar sound like years worth of very tedious times).

(No offence Amber if you are reading this bit! I just mean for me as a learner)

The Guardian Fiction Reviews


A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers reviewed by Adam Roberts
"...an overlapping sequel to Small Angry Planet which includes many of the same things that made the first book such a success: a believably grimy hi-tech world, complex characters, varied alien species, and above all the sheer likability of the whole. It has the same weaknesses, too: a tendency for characters to pootle about rather than move the larger plot forward, and a slight sense of authorial thumb-in-the-balance when it comes to stressing the upsides, never the downsides, of cultural, sexual and inter-species diversity."


Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine Fine by Diane Williams reviewed by Steven Poole
"All this is evoked in miniature, with tremendous economy. So the reader is going to have to work out her own line readings. "


The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam reviewed by Randy Boyagoda
"....novel both implicitly and explicitly raises crucial questions about the aesthetic and ethical stakes involved in regarding the suffering of others."


A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay reviewed by Alison Flood
"...one of the most frightening books I’ve read this, or any, year."


There May Be a Castle by Piers Torday reviewed by Tony Bradman
"...30 pages in, everything changes. The car hits a patch of black ice and crashes, spinning off the road..."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/15/there-may-be-a-castle-piers-torday...

Lots more reviews at www.guardian.co.uk/books

>104 PaulCranswick: Was meant of course as a throwaway missive but a slight homage to our leading book chewer of 2016 thus far.

>107 charl08: I didn't say thanks did I Paul. Sorry! Thanks! I'm still hoping a copy of the Penguin poetry collection wl turn up in a second hand book haul (it's the thrill of the chase...)

>109 charl08: Hay-on-Wye had plenty of Penguin anthologies - just sayin'. xx

Happy weekend, Charlotte. I've finished Boko Haram. It's a must-read.

Glad someone liked it Barbara! I think I am a history / Nigeria snob. With no justification at all :-(

>110 PaulCranswick: Hmmm. Hay on Wye. Now that would be nice :-)

Guardian Reviews Non-fiction


The Silhouette by Georges Vigarello reviewed by Kathryn Hughes
"Vigarello has written an elegant, clever book. At least, I think he has. A clunky translation from the French means that the text feels turgid..."


A History of Pictures by David Hockney and Martin Gayford reviewed by Clive James
"Hockney gets beyond scholarly knowledge into the realm of the streaming sparks. Not that he is short of proper learning. From the day of his first money, he started hitting galleries all over the world. "


The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1966-1989 reviewed by Chris Power
"...anyone hoping to find answers to the many riddles inhabiting Beckett’s poetry, short stories, plays and novels will not find them here. “I simply know next to nothing about my work in this way,” Beckett writes to the academic James Knowlson in 1972. “As little as a plumber of the history of hydraulics.”"


Estuary: out from London to the seaby Rachel Lichtenstein reviewed by Blake Morrison
"Part urban-industrial sprawl, part wild marshland, the Thames Estuary is an area of 800 nautical square miles, stretching down past Clacton in Essex and Whitstable in Kent and out into the North Sea. Its people have often been treated with condescension .... Through her travels, interviews and researches, Lichtenstein restores its edgy pride and celebrates its muddy beauty."

Lots more including Marlon james on action required for diverse books...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/21/marlon-james-calls-for-action-on-d...

Today Will Be Different
I enjoyed this follow up to Where Did You Go Bernadette - same kind of humour, quirky family as an articulate woman tries to make sense of her 'first world problems'. I want to move to Seattle (today).

Happy Saturday, Charlotte. I have Behold the Dreamers saved on audio. Glad to hear you ended up liking it.

Thanks for the Guardian reviews.

FYI- I might be starting The Genius of Birds later on. Just sayin'...

I successfully resisted the lure of this week's Guardian reviews. ;-)

>115 msf59: Hope you like that bit of genius as much as I did Mark.

>116 cbl_tn: Impressive work. I want All the Art Books...

Hi, Charlotte.

Hmm. I very much enjoyed Small Angry Planet. I'll look forward to your take on A Closed and Common Orbit. Fingers crossed it's a decent follow-up.

>113 charl08: Its people have often been treated with condescension... Often by the Guardian! But this one looks good, and will go onto my wishlist. Thanks for the reviews :-)

>118 jnwelch: I liked the first book too. Thought the reviewer missed the point - been plenty of planetary exploration with people shooting at each other.

>119 susanj67: I'll avoid getting defensive about 'my' newspaper Susan! I fancy reading the book though.

Annoyingly, the library was closed when I got there (despite there being minutes to go before the official closing time, mutter mutter). On the plus side, that means I might clear some more of the backlog...

I finally laid my hands on a copy of The Wonder by Emma Donoghue yesterday and I can't stop reading it.

Happy Saturday, Charlotte! I have A Closed and Common Orbit on my Kindle waiting patiently for me - hoping to get to it next month.

>121 RidgewayGirl: Glad to hear that!

>122 Crazymamie: Hope it's as good as the first one. I would like to be on that spaceship for a trip. Hope they're making a tv or film script somewhere...

I have had a cracking headache this afternoon, so have retreated to a comfy blanket and a comfy book Rush Me. Just what was required. The young hero and heroine sorted it all out in about three hours, and I was distracted enough for the painkillers to kick in...

Sorry to hear about your headache, Charlotte. Glad you were able to tame it with painkilllers. Thanks for your Saturday reviews. I've yet to look into my newspaper and see what have to feature.

>123 charl08: Charlotte, the headache sounds awful. Thank goodness the painkillers worked. I hope you're feeling better today.

That's very poor about the library closing early! What if you ran out of stuff to read?!

Sorry to hear about your headache. I hope you'll feel much better by now.
Happy Sunday, Charlotte.

>124 vancouverdeb: Thanks Deborah. Just left with a slightly dizzy feeling this morning, which should make hiking fun today...

>125 susanj67: I was going to complain and then I remembered have eighteen books out. Ha! Not exactly about to run out any time soon. Thanks for the sympathy.

Hi Charlotte - I am on the list for Today will be different - I really enjoyed Bernadette.

Thanks for the Guardian reviews - nothing really pops out this week - thank goodness!

>126 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara. I was walking for a couple of hours today and it was lovely to be out in the fresh air.

>128 BLBera: I enjoyed it a lot, and it went in a different direction than I expected, so that was good.

Hi Charlotte, I finally got my mitts on Waterlog on ILL (inter-library loan) and it's good so went and ordered it. I want to read it slowly. My only criticism so far is that I wish there was an accomanying map so I could see where these wonderful swims happened. You probably have the geography all figured out so there would be no need for you.

Oh lord, I always hated grammar! My dad was an English professor so I was privileged to grow up in a household where I did, in fact, absorb the language. Trying to "understand" it made me crazy. I just wanted to read!

>130 mdoris: Hope you enjoy it. I don't know all the places - I quite often have Google maps open when reading a book like that.

>131 EBT1002: I think I did pretty well 'just' reading the language in context, but talking to people who are trying to learn the language is so frustrating.

"Why do you say that?"
"We just do"
"Why is the verb like that?"
"It just is".

NB Punctuation not so much.

Oh dear, I'm seeing financial issues coming my way. My car needs a check-up, the yearly insurance payment is due any day now, I need to plan Christmas presents and book my flight, and now there are numerous BBs hitting me, all for "need to purchase" new books! How can the sequel of Small Angry Planet already be out?!? And then there's the Tremblay and the Poole and the Bradman, and the NF section looks interesting as well... And didn't I want to spend the rest of the year with brain candy?
Finished Autumn and am in love with it - I wish the next one was due already! :)

Oh I loved Autumn. She caught so much about what I was feeling about the vote to leave Europe and intolerance.

I think the reason there's a second (angry planet) book now is that she wrote the first a while ago - it was unconventional published through a kickstarter campaign and only then got an old fashioned publisher and became well known.
But I might have got that wrong. I'm feeling a bit off again today - time for some painkillers and bed I think.

ETA 2014.

Hoping you feel better very soon, Charlotte.

Sorry to hear you aren't feeling well, Charlotte. Hope the meds and bed do the trick.

Sorry to hear that you are feeling unwell, Charlotte. I hope you are soon feeling better.

As for spelling , you should have met my dad :-) He was an airline pilot, so he did have some smarts. But I recall him writing up reports for his work and calling out to me ( when I was 6 of 7 ) . " How do you spell haz" - with an "s " or a "z". I'd tell him " s" . Or how do you spell "of " - he thought if made more sense for it to be spelled " ov." And English was his first and only language. He was all for Esperanto. LOL! My dad was quite a character. I miss him a lot.

>135 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. I got to the chemist yesterday (pharmacy) so hoping things get back to normal now.

>136 ronincats: Thanks! Feeling much more the thing this morning.

>137 vancouverdeb: Sounds like your dad was a lot of fun Deborah. Mine worked in printing for much of his life, and likes to remind me his English is better than a lot of people he worked with (despite having left school at 16) who had degrees and so on.

>139 susanj67: Charlotte, it's good to hear you're feeling better, but I'm wary of headaches that last and last, unless you can trace them to e.g. a pulled muscle, trapped nerve etc. So don't be brave - go to the doctor if it comes back.

My Dad is not one of life's spellers. He was a pattern-maker, so he has an amazing eye for things that are e.g. a millimeter out of plumb, and when we had to have our school exercise books covered he did ours with wallpaper offcuts, a metal rule and a Stanley knife and they were perfect. But the spelling, not so much. His messy handwriting hid it for a long time, but then came email... :-)

>139 susanj67: Thanks Susan. I know why I've got the headache - there was a bit of a snafu with the GP prescription. I agree that ignoring pain when yu don't know why it's there is not so smart. Believe me, I err on the other side of that. My most hyperchondriac thing at the moment is around moles - my poor cousin didn't get his checked up enough, and I do worry about skin cancer. I was pretty careful when in hot places, but still...

I've just been talking to my mum about her dad. Both my grandfathers seem to have taken a very proactive approach to careers - my grandad took my mum to London (from Cumbria) and persuaded the nursing school to give her an interview. My grandad on the other side called in a load of favours from friends and set up his kids in different trades (with limited choice for them, as far as I can gather). Almost like arranged marriages, but with jobs!

Ooh I love messy handwriting. Years in dusty archives mean I'm particularly good at people who went to school around 1900 or so. This has a limited appeal to employers, I suspect...

To catch up with the books -

I reread The Taming of the Duke which to my knowledge is the only regency novel to deal with alcoholism AND feature regency panto. I listened to Playback, the unabridged version, and some plot points in the BBC play are, shall we say, a bit clearer now. Not least Linda Loring, who randomly turns up in Poodle Springs I thought, but this makes clear it's actually not like that. Then I picked up Sarah Maclean's new book, which wins on worst punny title (Scot in the Dark, boom boom!). She was trying to say something useful about shame and nudity and celebrity (through a romance story set in regency London), but I wasn't convinced by it (I think, and meanly will write it here, Tessa Dare does this stuff much better).
Points for not overdoing the Scottish twee though.

>140 charl08: Charlotte, your grandfathers do sound very pro-active! I'm not sure how my father came to do an apprenticeship as his own father was a book-keeper, but anyway he left school at 14 to take it up. I was never really sure what a pattern-maker was, and by the time I was born he was managing a factory, but one day at the Museum of London in Docklands I saw a display in their "Port of London" section and it was an exact duplicate of my father's chest of tools (unsurprisingly, because everything came from the UK in those days, whereas now it's mostly all cheap Chinese stuff). I read the little card and finally I found out :-) My firm is always urging us to update our diversity statistics on the intranet, in the seemingly vain hope that we will magically change from mostly middle-class white people into something else, but I can at least tick the box for first in the family to go to University :-)

Charlotte, just must pop in to say that Do Not Say We Have Nothing has won Canada's Governor General literary prize for Fiction. A nice start!

My dad was a character indeed, but he truly had trouble with spelling until he was about ? 40 or so. I am not sure why. He was a keen reader of most everything , but he felt that spelling was just too complex and it did not make sense to him. My dad did quite poorly in school, but an uncle lent him money to become a bush pilot here in Canada, and couple of years he was hired on as pilot with what is now known as Air Canada. Flew Boeing 747's and that sort of thing, but spelling was not his cup of tea. I think he was a bit of a * wild child* in his youth. :)

Happy Tuesday, Charlotte! I am loving all this talk of dads here. Mine was a great speller and loved history - he really had a head for dates which always amazed me. No matter what I was studying in history, he knew the dates and the backstory. He had a more boring job than the other dads mentioned here - he worked in the enamel room in a wire factory. He served in WWII as a teenager and came back home to find that it was tough to get a job - he followed his older brother to a larger city and they both got factory jobs. He worked there until he retired.

I am glad to hear that you have been to the chemist, so I hope the meds do the trick, and that you are feeling better very soon. In the meantime, I think that you should read more romance if only so that you can share your thoughts here. Gave me a giggle. I have actually read Taming a Duke and Sarah Maclean (though not that latest one!), so I feel like I have insight into your comments. *blinks* PLEASE, read more romance. That is all.

Oh, by the way, two of the Orange Classic Penguins arrived yesterday, and they are even more gorgeous in person. I might have gone online and immediately ordered the remaining eight in the series.

Can I tell you all a story about a job application that made me snort this afternoon?
A government dept based in Liverpool that makes passports is recruiting. Guess what you need to apply to work in Liverpool? A passport. Ha!
(They cost £70, leaving the applicant with a princely few pounds from the weekly allowance...)

Susan I like the story of finding out what your dad does. I went to see my dad's work as part of a IT project at school. It was quite a bizarre set up (it was a very old company trying to change its ways without much success). I was quite sure I wasn't ever going to work in printing.

Deborah glad your dad found a job that didn't need good spelling. Being a pilot sounds good to me.

Mamie, thanks for the review comments. You made me laugh. I think I've probably read too many reviews on Smart Bitches Trashy Books and stolen their snark. Everytime you mention your dad there is so much warmth there. I would have liked to meet him.

Orange penguins?
Sigh.
I just went to the Penguin Classics site. I want ALL THE BOOKS...

Oh, and I wanted a gif to celebrate Do Not Say We Have Nothing winning the Giller Governor General's prize ...

I'm tempted by Proust, even...

>148 charl08: - Is that one of the Penguin clothbound classics? I started hoarding collecting those... It began with the Austen novels and kind of snowballed from there.

ETA: I checked and I have 13 of them, so that's not too terrible. My favorite designs are for Huck Finn and Frankenstein.

>149 katiekrug: Me, too!

I have exactly double of you, Katie. I think that is a sign that you should buy 13 more so that we can be twins.

>151 Crazymamie: - OMG yes! But maybe when I have a more permanent address.....

Thanks for giving me a giggle ladies.

26 seems like it needs rounding up to me...

Ah well. At least Thien won something else today.

"Paul Beatty has become the first American writer to win the Man Booker prize, for a caustic satire on US racial politics that judges said put him up there with Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift.

The 54-year-old Los Angeles-born writer won for The Sellout, a laugh-out-loud novel whose main character wants to assert his African American identity by, outrageously and transgressively, bringing back slavery and segregation..."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/25/paul-beatty-wins-man-booker-prize-...

Bummer, eh, Charlotte! The Sell-out takes the Man Booker! Well, as I mentioned on my thread, Madeleine Thien still has the Canadian Giller to possibly win , and it pays out $100,000, more than the Man Booker prize. She also has a few other books that have been noted , at least in Canada, Simple Recipes and Dogs at the Perimeter and Certainty .Simple Recipes was required reading for my younger son's Can Lit course in 1st year university here, so I think she has made a name for herself here in Canada. I think, unlike many writers, as you mention, she does okay financially.

>152 katiekrug: Deal!

>153 charl08: Charlotte, you are incorrigible. Bad for my wallet but very good for my heart.

>148 charl08: etc The various Penguin series coming out are very collectible aren't they? Shame there are so many repeats.

Nightmare scenario with The Sellout. I placed it bottom of the longlist pile so of course it wins.

While I didn't love The Sellout, I do think it's a worthy winner. It does do interesting things.

>132 charl08: I love that conversation.

>158 RidgewayGirl: I agree. I think Amanda Foreman's comments (on the website) are spot on:

"Beatty has admitted readers might find it a difficult book to digest but the historian Amanda Foreman, who chaired this year’s judging panel, said that was no bad thing.

'Fiction should not be comfortable,' Foreman said. 'The truth is rarely pretty and this is a book that nails the reader to the cross with cheerful abandon … that is why the novel works.'"

I can't say The Sellout made me uncomfortable - I can usually handle some rough fun/ un-pc satire very well. I just didn't "get" it, and except for some parts in the middle I didn't find it funny at all although I was prepared to love it and to accept any un-pc stuff coming my way. Hm...
Some years ago they found Me, Cheeta to be a LOL novel (I believe it never made it on the SL), and I found it dreadfully boring. I clearly don't share the jury's sense of humor.

Very glad that Thien won the other prize! :)

Edit: Just saw thet Me, Cheeta was on the SL in 2008

>155 vancouverdeb: Bummer indeed Deborah! I did so like the Thien. Maybe I'll ask for the Sellout for Xmas and read it never when I have some space on my TBR pile.

>156 Crazymamie: I'm a book buying enabler. Oh dear.

>157 PaulCranswick: The repeat thing has tempted me to focus on one book - Master and Margarita has some amazing covers which would be great. I do pick up copies of Things Fall Apart when it has a nice cover. Fortunately for my wallet they don't appear that often in the shops I go in...

>158 RidgewayGirl: Good to get a positive spin on it Kay!

>159 EBT1002: Nice quotes there. I admire Foreman, am reminded that I want to read her books. Provoking discussion about the role of books and literature seems a good thing.

>160 Deern: I liked Me Cheeta ok but wasn't convinced it deserved to be on a lit list. I should just read the book so I can make some useful comment.

I too am glad Thien won elsewhere - sharing out the prizes seems like a good idea.

There are seven people in the queue for the library's e-copy of The Sellout, not that I am allowed to join myself onto it or anything, and probably shouldn't have been looking. I saw the hard copy recently, but that is out too.

I like the Minions up there!

Right Susan. You have to lead by example, not lead me off into the wilds of new reservations!

I'm just back from attempting to teach grammar. Ha. I think they understood me about half, and made educated guesses for the rest. Fun though.

Today's mysterious job search request: can they have an up to date photo. Apparently six months ago (the one on file) is no good. Mind boggles.

>163 charl08: A photo taken 6 months ago isn't good enough??? What are they expecting, you do a complete make over every few weeks or so? I am flabbergasted...

>164 FAMeulstee: I was tempted to ask whether they thought I'd gone for a dramatic image change, Anita! The mysteries of bureaucracy.

I'm still reading Eileen. It's a shorty, but I'm being quite slow given the lesson planning and doing the lesson and the job things as well. I spent a while looking at sporting articles as many of the guys seem to follow football. I wanted to use a 'real' article to try and encourage them to pick one up.

Like an idiot I didn't realise that they would have little or no interest (and so importantly a strong motivation to want to understand) in the England team... next time I'll choose one about Liverpool or Arsenal instead. It felt good to be doing something instead of just being an extra pair of hands. I like being able to talk to small groups and get a sense of really knowing what's going on with their language level.

*wave* I am so far behind again, Lol

I so enjoyed all the stories of fathers and grandfathers! So cool. I have one about grammar and my grandfather. My grandfather only went to school through the 8th grade, and then he quit school to work on the farm so his younger siblings could go to school. He was a successful sheep rancher and continued to read and learn throughout his life, as well as teaching himself to play the violin. He used to send me letters with grammar mistakes in them. I was meant to correct them and send them back. Sometimes I did. :)

Just checked my library - 6 copies of The Sellout are out, 1 copy to be had in the city! Yes! Not that popular!!!!! Contrast that to Do Not Say We Have Nothing, 16 copies, and 39 holds. Still, not a bad line up time for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Just to be clear to the memory of my beloved dad, he was very bright and well read - just was not much of a speller. He died 9 years ago at the young age of 66, of lymphoma, an aggressive cancer. It was quite an awful 24 months. 3 different types of Chemo, all the radiation he could have for his life, and it spread to his heart and lungs. We were able to have my dad pass away at home as per his wishes. I really miss him. My dad really loved his job and both of my brothers are now also airline pilots. What better testimony to my dad than his sons following in his footsteps? And for the record, he encouraged me to be a pilot! But I said - dad - I'm afraid of flying. He said - maybe if you are the controls, you would not be. Sorry , no! :)

Anyway, off that sad topic and onto your new job. So you are onto teaching a class? Permanent, part time, a try out time? Sounds great.

And as for odd stories about you needing a new photograph - get this! My brother married a girl from Germany, born in 1970 or so. So he and his wife and my parents were crossing the border into the USA from Canada , and my German born sister in law gets called into the USA border services and asked - what was she doing during WW11? Ah, she was not yet born. I guess they thought she had had some REALLY good plastic surgery! :)

>163 charl08: Charlotte, I'm doing my best to lead by example, but it's very hard not to be led astray here. How odd about the photo. Are you at least allowed to take it yourself? The passport request further up also seemed strange, unless it's a shortcut through checks that they would otherwise have to run.

>166 nittnut: My gran and I had a falling out over her giving me one of my letters back with my spelling mistakes on it. It was a sensitive subject.
I was seven I think!

Hope the new house works it a bit better - a porch (is that the right word?) sounds nice. There are some houses nearish us with beautiful wooden verandahs that I covet.

>167 vancouverdeb: >168 vancouverdeb: Sadly (or perhaps a good thing) I'm volunteering not being paid. This way less stress but hopefully good experience.

I'm sorry about your dad's final illness. As you say, his sons following him is a great tribute. And hat a pity you don't like flying. Was there a bad flight that caused the fear, or have you always had it? (And lol re the border guards. I guess history wasn't their strong suit!)

>169 susanj67: I'm relying on you Susan...
I am still fuming about the passport one. Why should I have to pay 70 quid to prove I'm eligible to work (because your records are so rubbish you can't manage an expired passport)! The guy said " for security reasons" but I don't think they've thought through the implications. Maybe I'm underestimating the number of minimum wage earners with passports.

I'm surprised how many people are disappointed by The Sellout winning the Booker. I see more disappointment than excitement, it seems.

>171 The_Hibernator: I heard a great interview with the publisher last night, who said they went into fiction to get people reading about issues who wouldn't pick up their non-fiction books.(They also published Marlon James).

Hm... both in Germany and Italy you don't need a passport unless you want to travel extra-EU, but you're required to have a valid identity card with your address and to carry it with you at all times. That costs way less (20 EUR?) because it doesn't have those ***** security and photo standards. There isn't much you can do without it, not even join a fitness club.

So while I agree that no new picture should be needed after 6 months (and aren't we over that whole picture business anyway in job search?), the request for a valid document issued by the state doesn't seem strange to me. Isn't there anything cheaper and as official in the UK? Like an NHS card or something?

>172 charl08: This is something I can relate to, I've been doing that a lot. Also because the facts stay longer in my memory if connected to characters. With last year's winner it definitely worked, I would probably never have read an NF about Jamaica. Here however... the only bit I felt like reading up on were "the Little Rascals".

My sister is visiting. I'm employing the smile and nod strategy, not entirely satisfactorily. We have exceeded our 24 hours good humour maximum. Fortunately for our mutual mental health she's away tomorrow.

>173 Deern: The ID card was attempted here a few years ago, but was abandoned by the government after years and many pounds of state funds. Ironically given recent revelations about how much data the state security agencies were collecting on us, one of the reasons I was unconvinced was about personal freedoms - our right not to be stalked by the state. People do use driving licenses (I don't drive). Everyone has a National Insurance number which ought to be a unique identifier but clearly doesn't work that way (I've been told before in Sweden or Norway they have one number for everything. No idea on fraud rates though).

I finished Eileen and I really don't know what I think about it. I don't think it was that remarkable to be honest. I read quite a lot of crime and don't think the writing was compensation for an odd plot that didn't really convince me. Compared to Lucy Barton in terms of structure (older woman looking back on her life) I liked this less.

Finally got The Book of Negroes from the library. Good stuff (but a chunkster).

Also, I have to find a friend with Netflix by the end of next month...

http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/gilmore-girls/feature/a783182/gilmore-girls-reunion...

>174 charl08: Charlotte, you can do it! Just start a countdown calendar in your head if necessary :-) Also I have heard that smiling actually prompts you to feel happy. Maybe not with a clenched jaw.

>175 charl08: The Book of Negroes is good. I can't believe I've read something before you!

>175 charl08: Netflix is still offering its free trial month, so a person *could*, say, sign up, watch some things (like maybe four episodes of Gilmore Girls) and then unsubscribe. Just saying. Or even if you stay with it, it's a month-by-month thing and you can cancel any time you like. I loved that Digital Spy link - thanks for posting it! I half thought I might take that Friday off so I could watch them, but darn it I have a presentation to give in the middle of the day. I will just have to stay away from spoilers over that weekend.

Thanks for the netflix tip. The trailer looks so good :-).

I am enjoying the Lawrence Hill a lot, can see myself looking for more of his books.

Happy Friday, Charlotte. Hope the week went well. I gave The Book of Negroes 5 stars. It will be a top read of the year for me. Glad you are enjoying it.

I want to watch that mini-series too.

I liked The Genius of Birds. Lots of fun facts, but the "sciencey" stuff bogged it down in places for me. It was nice to see her reference chickadees and nuthatches so much, since I have been them at the feeder. Smiles...

And the same to you Mark. Always interesting to hear how different books strike us :-)

Well, well, well! I guess my library finally found a reason to order Do Not Say We Have Nothing. They've ordered an audiobook version, I don't like cd's, but I still requested it. Looking forward to see/hear what everyone else has been raving about.

Glad to hear that, Lynda. Hope it arrives soonish.

Horrible news from the Midlands for local libraries:
'There’s nowhere else for children': Walsall locals react to library closure plans
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/26/theres-nowhere-else-for-children-wa...

Hi Charlotte. Hope all is well with you. What a lot of pretty covers...

Hey Beth, plenty to choose from. I have a few hours invigilation work next week and another interview the week after next. So things may be looking up...

Book Reviews

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry reviewed by Alex Clark
"...a profound meditation on the nature of national identity, enforced emigration and the dispersal of a people into lands frequently inhospitable and alienating..."

Guapa by Saleem Haddad reviewed by Robin Yassin Kassab
"Rasa’s struggle for self-definition, mirroring the complex battles for self-determination being fought out in Arab societies, is the novel’s central theme."
This sounds wonderful.

The Dark Circle by Linda Grant reviewed byChristine Kent
"From Dickens to Camus to Solzhenitsyn, disease and cure (along with their institutions and instruments) have been so well used as metaphors that careful handling by Grant of the enclosed world of the sanatorium is imperative, if it is not to seem stale. But she is far too subtle a novelist to miss this, and from the outset The Dark Circle dispels such anxieties."

Sci fiction roundup
Includes Everything Belongs to the Future and The Tourist
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/28/eric-brown-science-fiction-and-fan...

Barry review (and lots more) via
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/28/days-without-end-by-sebastian-barr...

Oh, sorry about your sister! :) I am very close to my sisters, but I could picture going a little crazy if my mom stayed at my place, or my sisters - in law. Yeah, I'd go crazy pretty fast, bless their hearts.

I've found a book that you must read and it's only 99 pages! Wenjack by Joseph Boyden. It is newly released in Canada, and as Mark would say , this is one I'll be warbling about for a long , long time . Looking forward to the Guardian Reviews.

Yeah that's it Deborah. She's away now on a religious weekend (just one of the many ways we are rather different) so mutual sighs of relief...

You make me chuckle, Charlotte. Yeah, I've got a sister in law who is a pediatrician and she thinks she " operates on a whole different plane " then the rest of us mere mortals. She is also very moody. She has a good heart , but you know.... Other sister in law - so bossy and can't keep an opinion to herself . Apparently my brothers are happy with their wives, but you know how it is... :)

Families eh :-)
(I've added your recommendation to my wish list!)

Guardian non-fiction


Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture by Jace Clayton reviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu
"...at his most suggestive when, true to his title, he discusses the relationship between the movement of sounds and of migrant bodies. In Barcelona he has a friend, Mark, an undocumented African musician who lives out a kind of “Mediterranean gothic”, squatting in an ex’s apartment, unable to use electric lights after dark for fear of alerting others to his presence. In Casablanca, he heads to a market where the “inorganic tang of injection-molded plastics off-gassing complex, probably carcinogenic, polymer molecules mingles with sweat and diesel exhaust”. "


The Rookie: an odyssey through chess by Stephen Moss reviewed by Marcel Theroux
"...an erudite survey of the literature chess has spawned, much of which perpetuates the notion of the chess-player as an obsessive misfit."


Enough Said by Mark Thompson reviewed bySteven Poole
"We are living...through “a crisis of political language”, characterised by lies, spin and demagoguery..."


Television: a Biography by David Thomson
"engagingly anecdotal, excitingly speculative survey unfurls as a history, Thomson’s subtitle calls it a biography, perhaps because the dominance of television began around the time when he was born, which gave it, at least in its early years, an authority he describes as “parental”..."


The Corruption of Capitalism by Guy Standing reviewed by Katrina Forrester
"The economist Guy Standing is known for his descriptions of a different kind of class – the “precariat”, defined by the insecurity and instability of the work it performs.... In his new book, Standing says such workers are increasingly conscious of themselves as a class, in part because they see clearly what they’re not: rentiers."

Uproot reviewed (and more including Zadie Smith on dance and lit) here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/27/uproot-travels-in-21st-century-mus...

I had to roll my eyes during the discussion of sisters in law. Mine has spent years complaining about me to my mother. Or repeating complaints made by my father or my brother about me to her to my mother. Now, the said sister in law is a psychiatrist. Might you not think that if she has a problem with me, she could bring it to my attention directly, rather than dumping on my mother? (Including my posting pics of my niece and nephews on my very, very private FB page -- absolute forbidden to me now, after she complained not to me, but to my mother, that I posted a pic that I had taken of my mother with my niece there.) ARGHHH. For context, never once in the last 16 years have they visited me -- and one of her other complaints is that I don't visit Toronto often enough. Well, they're not paying for my tickets, and they expect Xmas gifts, birthday gifts, etc.

On a separate note, a friend of mine worked as the copy editor on The Book of Negroes.

>186 vancouverdeb: VERY excited by anything new by Joseph Boyden, however short. Must must must own it instantly.

I took a BB for Days Without End. It's not due out in the US until January so I'll have to wait a while.

>168 vancouverdeb: Deborah's story about her SIL crossing the US-Canadian border reminded me of a story about my great-aunt. One of my grandmother's brothers - the only one to serve in WWII - married a German woman. I think they met after the war in college or grad school. They lived in central Indiana and they had a cabin in Canada where they would vacation every year. The US border guards always asked where they were from. My great-aunt never lost her heavy German accent. She discovered that she could say "Kokomo, Indiana" without an accent. She actually lived in West Lafayette, but Kokomo was close enough. It saved her a lot of trouble at the border crossing!

Good luck with your sister's visit. I have three, so I understand about family dynamics and sisters.

The reviews are resistable this week. Enough Said sounds interesting.

Good luck with job interview - what is the job?

My sister-in-law is here today but since I love her to bits and she distracts her sister enough so I have a free run at LT, I am not complaining.

Will look for the new Linda Grant book coming out over here. She is a bit underrated IMO.

Have a lovely weekend, Charlotte.

>191 Chatterbox: I was always sad we had so little family in this country as a kid. I suspect it cut down the falling out though.

>192 cbl_tn: I had no idea German accents were viewed with such suspicion for so long. Does the border control form still ask if you're a nazi? I can't remember.

I've got an ARC of the Barry - must get on with it.

>193 BLBera: Thanks for the luck.

The job is more admin, but an interesting setting, and at least from the job description sounds busy, which I would like.

>194 PaulCranswick: I'm sure we're all thanking your SIL for giving you some LT time. I like Linda Grant, I think When I lived in Modern Times is the one that springs to mind.

I was picking up leaves in the garden and spotted this - it hasn't flowered all summer!

>196 charl08: The definition of a late bloomer!! :-)

It's bizarre Suzanne. Hoping it's a bit more traditionally timed next year, as I do like the colour.

Reading Middlemarch via the Serial app continues: cue Victorian raised eyebrow..
"...His very name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarship."

>196 charl08: Nice looking, Charlotte, is it an Anemone blanda?
If so, it could be very early, it should flower in March, but when the weather in fall is on the warm side it occasionally flowers (much) earlier.

I don't know! It was in a pot with a fuschia at the beginning of last yearthis year, and I split them and gave them each their own - and both went mad. It would be fun if it flowered properly now.

Oh, enjoy Middlemarch! Casaubon is so beautifully drawn and Dorothea is marvelous and while the book is occasionally long-winded, it is also perfect.

Before anyone thinks I dislike all of my SIL's and BIL's , actually I love my brothers in law, especially my sister's husband. I would rely on him in any crisis if my husband was not around he is the kindest , nicest fellow a girl could find. My husband and I and my sister and BIL rented in the same apartment building in the early years of our marriages and then we purchased a semi-detached home - with my sister and her husband on one side and me and my husband on the other side. My husband's sister is a fabulous girl ( lady ) too and I love her to bits.

But my dear brother's wives - I try..... .

>201 RidgewayGirl: Thanks. I've still got.episode three to read for today, must get to it.

>202 vancouverdeb: I promise not to make assumptions about your relationships with your extended family. Nod and smile I say... I like the idea of living next door to family. Possibly more the idea than the reality though.

Back to Neurotribes.

Hmm. I didn't get too far with Neurotribes The Gene: an intimate history, or Oil on Water . I sent off another application though, and got some activities ready for Wednesday's class, so not a total loss.

I do wish I had more siblings, so I had more divergence in SILs and BILs! (and that my parents had HAD siblings, so that I had cousins, etc...) I'm feeling family-deprived right about now.

>202 vancouverdeb: I never make assumptions about people's relationships, overall -- just about their current level of frustration with individuals... :-)

>204 charl08: Not a fan of Oil on Water? Oh dear... I enjoyed it, and it prompted me to seek out more Nigerian/African writers (and more by Habila, which I still haven't done...) Still, not all books work for everyone.

I'm in the midst of more light reading, before venturing into another Verso heavyweight, about refugees and the state. And Sally Mann's memoir, which prob. isn't that dense, but is literally heavy, poundage-wise.

My sister and her family and me and my family have now lived in separate places for 23 years or so, but those early years with little kids together worked out really well! Nod and smile :) I can only do that because I can vent to my sisters and friends! :) Both of our husbands worked shift work and that was a help for my sister and me.

>172 charl08: I guess that's one way to do it. Just publish the same issues in fiction. Though this technique supposes that these people who won't pick up nonfiction 1) care and 2) will understand the round-about way that fiction has.

I'm tempted to listen to the book as audio, but I have so many other books I'm "supposed" to be reading right now.

Phew! all caught up. *grin*
Hope you have a great week!

>204 charl08: I seem to have had a brain melt last night - I meant Mukherjee's book.

>205 Chatterbox: I like Oil on Water a lot - just seemed to lack the job yesterday to get far with my reading. Well, serious reading.
I still think Waiting for an Angel is Habila's best, although it leaves more open to interpretation than this one.

Good luck with the heavyweights.

>206 vancouverdeb: Company when raising small people must have been lovely. And yes, venting helps too :-)

>207 The_Hibernator: I think they're counting on the way knowing someone can affect your attitude to an issue you've previously regarded as irrelevant. But yes, that assumes that the book.grips your attention and make you feel like you know someone. I loved Marlon James's book, and I wouldn't have picked up non-fiction about Jamaican drug gangs.

>208 nittnut: Hey Jenn. Fingers crossed for house number three to be structurally sound...

>190 charl08: I like the look of the television book, which is now on the wishlist. And the capitalism one about the "precariat" also looks promising, particularly in light of the decision about Uber last week. The case will go all the way to the Supreme Court, so we are a way off finding out whether the decision "sticks", but it could have a huge effect on the way companies staff themselves.

>196 charl08: Yay for the late-blooming flower! It has been very warm, though. Today's forecast mentioned winds from Iceland in the next few days, though. Better than an ash cloud, I suppose.

I saw the TV book on the Guardian and it made me a bit sad. When there's a biography, it means the era of it is dying. Well, okay - for me it had its best times back when there were 3 channels. I consume much TV nowadays but don't enjoy it much. Watching recorded stuff with the finger on the fast-forward button, when once the Saturday night shows were family events. *nostalgic sigh*

No siblings and no in-laws of any kind and in 45 years I got used to not missing them. Would have loved to have an older sister when I was a kid, but I doubt she would have loved having me. :)

Have a great week!

Did Neurotribes not work for you, Charlotte? I liked that one a lot as a survey of the territory.

>210 susanj67: They're the kind of books I think I ought to read (but don't). The user case is an interesting one. I'm not sure what the distinctions will be (beyond a better ordering system) to the usual mini cab company.

I still haven't listed my planned reads. Maybe I'll just pull them off the shelf as the mood takes me.

>211 Deern: I'm going through a patch where I don't watch much live. I like the catch-up services. BBC has just changed the law so they can charge people to watch iPlayer (the licence fee) which seems a bit mean to me.

>212 jnwelch: Hi Joe, for some reason I got the title mixed up with my current read. I meant 'not got any further with' rather than 'had given up on'! Neurotribes I read and liked a while back.

>213 charl08: Charlotte, I never list my planned reads, mostly because I'm such a magpie that I'd never stick to them, but maybe I will for November, what with saying no to library books etc. It can be part of turning over a whole new leaf.

I'm not sure how Uber differs from a mini-cab company in employment law terms as I would have thought that both lots of drivers are part of the "gig" economy which we are hearing so much about now. But mini-cab drivers would presumably have brought similar proceedings years ago if that was the case. There must be a difference - I will ask my friend who does employment law.

Goodness, it is dark outside! And my lights just went off and we can no longer switch them on using the phone. I had a Kristin Scott Thomas/English Patient moment.

The Madness of Lord Ian
I am no expert on the autism spectrum (and sometimes I mix up the titled of books about it ^^) but having read a few books that stress not everyone with autism has rainman-like skills, I wondered about this one. It seemed a bit too easy.

The crime plot reminded me a bit of Scooby Doo (big reveal at the end, lots of running around dodgy places) and there was one line about the light catching on someone's moustache as he stood outside that had me imagining a moustache shaped spotlight (a bit like the bat signal in Batman). So a 'hmm' rating from me.

Do You Want a Scandal
I like Tessa Dare, and this book rather neatly brought together two of her series. Sadly not in Spinster Spindle Cove, but you can't have everything. Featuring a moppet convinced he has heard a MUR-DER, and amusing set pieces* featuring an aubergine (and bonus points for calling it an aubergine), I finished it in one galloping go. Points for acknowledging why the awful mothers in so many regency era plota were awful too.
Nods to Northanger Abbey were also fun.

*Not like that. PG rated thread.

>214 susanj67: Oh I loved the English Patient. Sigh.

I've been fairly rubbish at keeping to lists so think I will just read whatever comes to hand.

(Switch on with your phone? Like Hive? Ooh, the future...)

Not like Hive - we just used to be able to press a button on the phone and turn the office lights back on. They go off if you sit very quietly. The fatal flaw in the scheme was if you were on a conference call, though...Now there's a switch on the wall, so we can put conference calls on speaker and scoot across the room to do it. Unless the roomie's there, in which case she does it. I have nothing like Hive at home, but I did find my lost box of light-bulbs yesterday, so the place is looking pretty bright :-)

I do like the sound of Hive. My old office had an auto switch on the lights that only worked in one direction. Not good when coming out of the office late at night!

I'm enjoying Hag-seed. Funny stuff.

I loved Hag-Seed!

I'm enjoying it so much Beth. Completely engrossed in the story.

Just had to write one of those job applications where I just wanted to write: please give me a chance! I think I could do this, and it's the most interesting one I've seen for ages... Hey ho.

>213 charl08: Oh good! I would've been disappointed if you hadn't liked Neurotribes.

>219 BLBera: I'm excited - I just got notice that I'll be getting an "ER" copy of Hag-seed. I'm shaking my head a bit, because it's going to be about the non-ER-iest book I've ever gotten through the LT program, but it's cool to get it for free.

>220 charl08: Oh I so want you to get that job! I think you would be perfect for any job that strikes your fancy, Charlotte.

>221 jnwelch: Ha! Me too Joe, me too.

Jealous of your ER copy of Hag-Seed. This is one I'd like to own.

>222 vancouverdeb: I wish I shared your confidence Deborah. I think this job will have lots of applicants so they will be able to pick someone experienced. I could do with not writing any more application forms for a while though :-)

Going to try and finish Hag-seed before tomorrow so I can return it before the refugees' English lesson.

What Deborah said. And I'm crossing crossables that this job will be yours!
Hag-Seed was so much fun, I wish I'd started that Shakespeare series with one of the others, I fear it can't get better.

>224 Deern: Have spent the morning invigilating an exam. Mild palpitations until I realised this did not mean me doing an exam... Thanks for the encouragement!

Oil on Water
Great book, looking at the oil regions of Nigeria, the Delta. Rufus is a journalist who has seen first hand what oil can do to a community: his sister still bears the scars of an explosion. He becomes embroiled in a kidnapping plot, venturing deeper and deeper into the swamps to try and find a proof of life for the oil companies. Meeting a mad army officer, a drunk former hero and a guilty medic, he witnesses oil's seepage and degradation of once poor, but healthy communities. Beautifully written with plenty to think about.

>225 charl08: Charlotte, good luck with the job application. The employer may well want someone that they can shape to their own requirements, so don't assume that lack of experience is a bad thing.

I keep having a dream in which A-levels are coming up (oddly, as we didn't have them in New Zealand) and I haven't attended class or done any of the readings and suddenly a whole year has slipped away and I'm going to have to repeat it. Thirty-odd years on from finishing school, this is worrying. So I sympathise! I suppose invigilating is harder now than when I was at school, as you have to watch them for electronic gadgetry and not just stay awake.

>226 susanj67: Haha, I know this so well! :))) And recently I'm no longer dreaming of my high-school exams having become invalid, having to re-take them and being the only one of my class who since has forgotten everything, now I upgraded to an invalid university diploma!

>226 susanj67: Thanks Susan. I have those dreams too.
I do think you would have made an excellent careers adviser in another life.

>227 Deern: I usually have a moment still in the dream where I start thinking - hang on, I've got a degree already... It's like my mind switches on and tries to work things out!

I've started Sebastian Barry's new one. Very good so far.

>227 Deern: "now I upgraded to an invalid university diploma!" Oh no! I hope the same thing doesn't happen to me!

>228 charl08: "I usually have a moment still in the dream where I start thinking - hang on, I've got a degree already..." and also this! Either that, or I wake up and it slowly dawns on me that everything's OK. In a way, it's better than waking up from the dream where my flat turns out to have extra rooms I suppose. Because then I just want the rooms.

>228 charl08:, >230 susanj67: I'm always enormously relieved when I wake up from that dream. Last time they asked me at uni if at least in the meantime I had learned French (my uni was by the French border), and I told them that I now spoke Italian after 7 years in IT. To which they answered "that's of no use for us at all". Which all probably means that I still feel guilty (towards my parents?) for not having made more of my education career-wise. The extra rooms dream is great - it's said to mean unused creative potential in your life. Something is already there ready for use, you just have to find and open the door.

>230 susanj67: Are the extra rooms in your current flat? How does the dream explain what has happened to your neighbours' sq footage - or does that not come up.

>231 Deern: Gosh the people in your dream are mean. Italian is definitely a good thing. I seem to spend half my dreams looking for lost things - shoes, bags. I'd like to have a beach holiday dream or a floating in the pool dream...

Barely awake after a busier day than usual. I was hoping to finish Hag-seed but can't keep my eyes open!

I prefer not to dream, or at least not remember them! Last night I was locked up in psych ward in my dreams. Not a good dream at all! Perhaps from reading The Break by Katherena Vermette, where one of the teenage girls escaped from juvy hall?

>226 susanj67: funny dream! I don't know if I have ever had an exam dream! Just exam fear....

I do have extreme dreams though, extremely complicated plots and guest appearances by all sorts from my RL Nd even from Lt!

>233 vancouverdeb: Oh that's scarey stuff Deborah. I don't think I've ever dreamed about a book. Not that I remember. Must have made a big impact on you.

>234 LovingLit: Funny dreams sound good. I once dreamt my school installed a monkey gym in between the two sides - so everyone had to climb ropes and bars to get between classrooms. Surreal.

Carrying on with The Gene: an intimate history. I had no idea there was so much residual stuff along with the DNA, just doing nothing...'it is encrusted with history...'

I'll probably read The Gene early next year. Hopefully it will be chosen for next year's Wellcome Book Prize longlist, which will be announced in January IIRC.

It's a great read Darryl. Every time I think he's gone too far with the scientific theory he comes back to history or the history of the science and it gives me a breather.

That's good to hear. I have a strong science background, as I was a Microbiology major in university and was a graduate student in Molecular Biology before I decided to go to medical school, so the theory would be both familiar and interesting to me.

Oh I'm sure Darryl. Not my field At All!

I met up with a friend who has gone to med school after her PhD (in social sciences). We got to talking about this book and she was saying how much more the med students who have just left school know about DNA - it just hadn't made the curriculum when we were at school (or in some cases, even been discovered).

Learning about art in The Lonely City



This was a great read. Although it's added several books to the wish list, including a GN, 7 miles a second.

Loving the talk about dreams. I had exam dreams/nightmares for about 25 years after schooling was finished about not being prepared and the panic involved. Nice those days are over.
About to start Hag-Seed and just put the new Sebastian Barry on reserve. Thanks for the tip! I've loved his other books.

25 Years, Mary? Oh no! That's terrible. Glad they're done and dusted.

The Barry is really fun so far. Hope you get it soon.

>232 charl08: Charlotte, no, it's always in New Zealand, for some reason. I must be resigned to the fact that extra room just isn't going to happen in London :-)

>231 Deern: Nathalie, I can't work out what it is, though - which door to open :-)

I'm very tempted by the gene book. Maybe in 26 days I'll be able to give in to temptation :-)

>243 susanj67: I like that it's in NZ. Do you have a view too?

I'm reallly tempted to skip the last chapter of hard science and just read the last section which is case studies of people and how their lives link with gene therapy. But I'm fighting on...

I've brought home two of Boyden's earlier books as consolation prizes for not being able to get my hands on Wenjack. Hope I can finagle them into my other planned reads.

Happy Friday, Charlotte! I had to go to the threadbook to find you again, as you had somehow lost your star. Very sad and tragic. I had a lot of fun catching up with you, though, and loved reading about family and dreams. SO interesting. I have five sisters (which I do not recommend), and I can only tolerate three of them (but not at the same time). Two of them are sweeties, but they disagree on basically everything. And as the youngest of the six of us (by quite a bit), I'm often told that I don't know what I'm talking about, which is how I got my username - from the repeated phrase "...but that's just crazy, Mamie."

Hoping that your day is full of fabulous!

Ah, "sister-talk", now that's a BIG subject. I have 2 sisters and we won't discuss that but I dearly miss my SIL.
>246 Crazymamie: I simply cannot imagine 5 sisters Marnie!

Oh my goodness I was so tired last night I went to bed at 8, finished the last few pages of Hag-seed and then all but passed out until this morning.

>245 Carmenere: Oh I so want to read Wenjack after Deborah's warbling.

>246 Crazymamie: Your kitten pictures are adorable. I've been trying to persuade my mum and dad that they should get a pet (links to lowering blood pressure, apart from anything else) but even beautiful Mayhem has not convinced mum that pets are worth the cleaning time.

>247 mdoris: I can't imagine five either.

My mum has wondered if the fourth child would have been the charm for brown eyes.
Despite reading this gene book I don't know what the odds are of that.

Hag-Seed
I really loved this clever version of The Tempest, set in a Canadian prison running a literacy class. I particularly thought the way she incorporated different readings of the play into the narrative was clever a smart reference to the Hogarth project, whilst good reading at the same time.

I'm hoping to get tickets for the broadcast Tempest in cinemas in January.

>248 charl08: Charlotte, your sleep sounds lovely. I had clomping from upstairs last night, but at least I could sleep in :-) Glad you enjoyed Hag-Seed.

Guardian Reviews Non-fiction

Coming Out by Jeffrey Weeks reviewed by David Shariatmadari
"... it was first published in 1977, in a decade when Dennis Altman prophesied “the end of the homosexual” – a world where being gay or straight wouldn’t matter. A second edition in 1990 took in the Aids crisis, and this version, with a new foreword and postscript, brings us up to date. The action begins in the late 19th century..."

The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 by Richard J Evans reviewed byChristopher Kissane
"...traces a unifying thread. Nineteenth-century Europeans sought power above all else: over themselves, over each other, over nature and even over the wider world."

Grand Hotel Abyss by Stuart Jeffries reviewed byOwen Hatherley

"...sets out to be an easily accessible, funny history of one of the more formidable intellectual movements of the 20th century. This could be foolhardy..."

Bolshoi Confidential by Simon Morrison reviewed byLucy Ash
"an intoxicating mix of grandeur and gossip...."

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramovic reviewed byRachel Cooke
"... the world’s best-known performance artist, knows this Marina all too well. So what is she like? In her book, she tells her ghost writer, the American author James Kaplan, that there are three Marinas. The first is a “warrior”: brave, determined, and physically strong. The second is a “spiritual” woman who sees dead people, believes in fasting and silence, and likes to consult with shamans. As for the third, this is “the little Marina who thinks everything she does is wrong, the Marina who’s fat, ugly, and unwanted...”

Lots more here
www.guardian.co.uk/books

>249 susanj67: I think it was trying to explain CVs to someone who comes from Iran. An hour of me thinking 'why do we do it like that?!' Fun, but tiring.

We've just got through an evening of Guy Fawkes fireworks. I reckon our neighbours do bigger fireworks extravaganzas each consecutive year, tonight was constant noise for over 2 hours. Last year we lost our cat on 5 Nov, he came back 10 days later then disappeared forever a month after that on Xmas Eve. Haven't seen our remaining feline all night.

Oh, I don't have a sister and my mother was an only child, so no sister stories in our family - well I have two daughters but they're separated by 14 yrs and 3 brothers so Dana starting school had a big sister at university already.

Have you seen the Linda Grant article - ‘I can't write after lunch, in a public place, or when anyone is in the house'
The novelist on the need for ritual, intense solitude and her dreams of owning a desk from the Conran Shop

Sorry to hear about your cats and the fireworks. This sort of problem was on the TV with the vet talking about keeping pets inside, but I'm guessing if it's your neighbour thats not much protection? (As you can probably tell, I know next to nothing about keeping pets).

Five children? Wow. You must have a busy place when everyone gets together :-)

I love Linda Grant. Thanks for the link.

Happy Saturday, Charlotte. It looks like I have been neglecting your thread. Deepest apologies, but baseball is over and I can focus back on books and bookish friends.

Hope you are doing well.

Linda Grant for 2017 British Author Challenge anyone?

Have a lovely weekend, Charlotte.

Thanks for sharing the photos and the article of Penguin Random House books...Here are images of some of my collection:

>

>247 mdoris: It was an experience because they do NOT get along with each other.

>252 avatiakh: Kerry, my oldest sister is fifteen years older than I am - I was the flower girl in her wedding! My mom had two sisters that she got along with very well, and one that she didn't speak to. The two that she had a very close relationship with were my two favorite aunts, and they were all fast friends up until the end. They were lovely together.

Happy Saturday, Charlotte. I think pets are totally worth the cleaning up after. Craig's mom always fusses after our toy poodles, and I think it would be good for her to have a dog, but she will not hear of it. She lives by herself, so I think a dog would be excellent company - especially a small one that doesn't shed and would not require walking. But no. *sigh*

I've already got a hold on the audio version of the Marina Abramovic book at the library!

You're really making me want to read Hag-Seed, but I simply don't have time at the moment. Perhaps I'll suggest it for my book club once the queue at the library has settled a bit.

Oh good, I'm glad you liked Hag-seed, Charlotte. I'm not surprised, but I'm encouraged to hear it. I can't wait until it arrives.

>254 msf59: I wouldn't say neglected Mark! You had, y'know, reasons...

>255 PaulCranswick: Definitely voting for Linda Grant, Paul!

>256 Whisper1: Love those pictures Linda. Nice.

>257 Crazymamie: That's my idea about the pets too, my mum is very busy with church but my dad could do with a dog I think.

>258 ursula: Cool. Does she narrate it herself?

>259 The_Hibernator: I think it would be a great bookclub read - especially if you've read any of the books about prison book clubs (or maybe at the same time?)

>260 jnwelch: Hope it turns up soon Joe. I liked the Tyler Shakespeare a lot, but I liked this one more.
I think.

Emma Watson leaves books on the tube...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/03/emma-watson-free-copies-maya-angel...

Guardian Fiction reviews

Crime roundup
Darktown by Thomas Mullen, Tall Oaks by Chris Whitaker, The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson, The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe, Undertow by Elizabeth Heathcote
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/04/the-best-recent-crime-novels-revie...
(Dark town sounds brilliant)

Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin reviewed by Cathi Unworth
"Shadows and time are the big themes that weave through this novel."
Whee! Another Rebus! :-)

Swing Time by Zadie Smith reviewed by Aminatta Forna
"...subtle distinctions of class and race will drive them apart. This is the territory of Zadie Smith at her finest."

I Hate the Internet by Jarett Kobek reviewed by Steven Poole
"...one of its manifold charms is that it repeatedly insists it is a “bad novel”. This is a good thing, at least in this bad novel’s satirically paranoid scheme, for it argues that the “good novel” – the American literary novel, “which paired pointless sex with ruminations on the nature of mortgages” – was an invention of the CIA..."

The Power by Naomi Alderman reviewed by Justine Jordan
"constructed as a big, brash, page-turning, drug-running, globetrotting thriller....But it’s also endlessly nuanced and thought-provoking..."
Love the idea of a novel where teenage girls suddenly discover a secret power. Clever!

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble reviewed by Alfred Hickling
"...can perhaps best be understood as a fictional meditation hovering between the twin poles of De Beauvoir’s essay and Beckett’s play..."
Not sure how bleak this one is going to be...?

No way that I could ever catch up here, Charlotte. I am envious of all you're reading while I'm just not getting to the few little ones I have going. For some reason (did you mention it somewhere else?), I've been picking up and putting down Someone Knows My Name, which is the USA's title for The Book of Negroes. I HATE that they did that, but this was the copy that came to hand. Maybe I'll try it when I finish my tiny little ER ARC.
I am/was a grammar maven; my mind works well in the grammar mode.
My daddy was the funniest man on earth, having inherited his wit from his father, who was the funniest man on earth until 1959. Now my DH is the funniest man on earth. Daddy read all the time when he wasn't at work or noodling around his workshop (never very successfully) or flying. He did fly a B-24 in the Pacific theater of WWII, one of very few men in cadet training in Texas who had no college.
Hope you're feeling 100% again.
I love the Guardian's nodding at current fiction. Thanks!

>263 charl08: I'm so glad that Darktown got a write-up in The Guardian. It really is an excellent novel - the plot works and the historical underpinnings are fantastically well done. And the characters are a part of their time and place, and not just modern people dressed up. The British cover is also much better than the American one. I mean, look:

vs

BB for The Pursuit of Power from the NF list. I may need to order this one for the library where I work. I'll be able to check out and read the library copy.

Hah! My poor mom held out for a blue eyed child! She had blue eyes and my dad had brown, but all five of we kids ended up with hazel to brown eyes. My used to look around the table and say - I've given birth to a bunch of cows ( guys and girls ) just a joking reference to our brown eyes. I'm quite sure I understand the relatively simple genetics around that and I was so proud to produce the first grandchild with yes - BLUE EYES! ( My husband's eyes are green ) . Though personally I like brown eyes as much as green, grey , blue etc.

Had a lot of fun last night. My nephew in law graduated from what I call The Cop Shop aka he has done his training to be a cop. ( Also has a BA in Criminology) I have promised to call him "Constable" :) We had family " do" with a lot of fun!

>264 LizzieD: My excuse with Laurence Hill is that people requested the other books I had out, so I had to get reading super quick.
Are you available for grammar coaching?
I so wish I had asked my gran or my aunt more when they were around - both were good at this stuff. I think I'm getting better... I hope...

>265 RidgewayGirl: I love that cover. Well done Brit publisher!

>266 cbl_tn: That sounds like a great strategy to me.

>267 vancouverdeb: Glad you've been having a good time Deborah. Sounds like a brilliant reason for a good family party. So nice to celebrate the good times together. If I've understood anything from this gene book, it's that nothing in genes is simple.

Days Without End

Sometimes you know you ain’t a clever man. But likewise sometimes the fog of usual thoughts clears off in a sudden breeze of sense and you see things clear a moment like a clearing country. We blunder through and call it wisdom but it ain’t. They say we be Christians and suchlike but we ain’t. They say we are creatures raised by God above the animals but any man that has lived knows that’s damned lies. We are going forth that day to call Caught-His-Horse-First a murderer in silent judgement. But it was us killed his wife and his child.

Brilliantly sharp account of a young Irish migrant to America caught up in tragic events of US policy, from the Civil War to massacres of Native Americans. Barry introduces his character smitten with John Cole, a fellow dancer and soldier, and it is part of the charm of this book that their relationship is such a happy one amidst the horrors of war. Recommended.

So, I'm supposed to be reading my TBR pile. I've got lots of Netgalley reviews that I need to read the books for..

So this is fifteen books that I'm going to try and read by the end of the month.

The Power Naomi Alderman

Transit Rachel Cusk

Miss Treadway & the Field of Stars Miranda Emmerson

Three Daughters of Eve Elif Shafak

Mistress of the Just Land David Ashton

The Wangs vs. the World Jade Chang

To the Bright Edge of the World Eowyn Ivey

Defiance Stephen Taylor

Dear Amy Helen Callaghan

The Road More Travelled various

Another Day in the Death of America Gary Younge

The Chibok Girls Helon Habila

The Dark Circle Linda Grant

Homegoing Yaa Gyasi

The Long, Long Life of Trees Fiona Stafford

>268 charl08: If I've understood anything from this gene book, it's that nothing in genes is simple.
But some genes do act simple, Charlotte ;-)
Eye-color, and one I studied exstentive: the color of coat in Chow Chows, act simple, so you can predict chances well enough.

But the more we know about genes, the more complex it all gets. I added The gene : an intimate history to mount TBR, the Dutch translation was published recently.

>271 FAMeulstee: Being able to predict how dogs look must be handy if you're breeding them.

I've just got to the bit about the impact of wartime famine in the Netherlands on subsequent generations' genes for obesity and other health problems. Mind boggling!

Hope it's a good translation. I've still got to read the Congo book, which was translated the other way. Must get on with that.

I didn't know there were multiple books on prison book clubs. That's an interesting genre. :)

>272 charl08: Both Frank's parents suffered the wartime famine, Charlotte, and indeed Frank is obese...
Some time ago I saw on TV an explanation how they think this "extra information" is transfered, very interesting!

I am reading now Darwin's On the origin of species and am puzzled how much he figured out, without any knowledge of genes and DNA.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte! The eye color discussion continues - so fun. Alas, Craig and I both have variations of blue (his are blue, mine are grey), so all of our children have the same. I love brown eyes, but they are sadly lacking at the Pecan Paradisio. Well...two of our dogs (Barnum and Bella) have brown eyes. Heh.

Thanks for that link to the Emma Watson article - that is so fabulous! What a great idea, and I love the name of her bookclub. And the Guardian Crime roundup was fun - Darktown looks good, and it is set in Georgia. I also thought that The Child Garden sounded interesting.

Charlotte, that's a good list :-) Also it led me to my elibrary page (to add something to the wishlist, not to reserve it) and I found that it's all changed to a new format, and many more books have been added. So thanks...I think :-) Also thanks for the Guardian reviews. I love the sound of The Power.

Hi Charlotte - I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the job you would really like to get.

So many good books. I'm going to see if my library has the Barry and Oil and Water. Your reading for this month sounds great. I'd like to read the Cusk although I wonder if I should reread Outline; it's a sequel, right? The Shafak also sounds good, but I know I have a couple of older ones by her here...

Darktown also sounds good.

I'm happy to see the Hag-Seed love continuing.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

>273 The_Hibernator: There are, and I want to read them all Rachel!
There's Shakespeare Saved My Life which Atwood cites in her acknowledgements. That one's good. Then there's the Prison Book Club, which I bought (and which isn't so good, imho. The lady who wrote it went to bookgroups, but didn't really know the members very well, and I just found her attitude a bit grating). The one I want to read is about a prison librarian (so it still counts, right?!). I forget the title.*

>274 FAMeulstee: Hopefully scientists knowing about the gene inheritance will help treatment for descendents.

Darwin is covered in the book - what I can't get over is how Mendel's work was ignored for so long. I guess I knew a bit more about Darwin than I did Mendel.

>275 Crazymamie: I'm thinking I should do a biology course online and learn how it works again. I don't get the red haired recessive thing either.

I like the idea of leaving a book on the tube too. I do think if I picked up a book signed by Ms Watson I'd be tempted to hold onto it though - I wondered how many will be re-dropped.

>276 susanj67: I think I'm going to read The Power next. Some light relief from the genes. How many books have you got on your lists? I went and pruned mine recently ( but I still have 20 lists!)

>277 BLBera: Hey Beth. Thanks for the wishes. I have an interview coming up this week, and got a random email from a recruiter saying they think they have a job that might suit me.
The job I thought sounded like fun was for the BBC (and they haven't got back to me, so I think it's a no from them!!) It was for writing educational materials for their website, and I love their stuff.

Re the Cusk book I can't imagine how it's a sequel, so will let you know how much knowledge is assumed...

*ETA it's Running the Books

>261 charl08: She does narrate it herself. I'm sure it will be an interesting story.

My eyes are a super dark brown (it's hard to distinguish the pupils), and both my kids have brown eyes (their dad's are blue). But the one with dark hair got lighter eyes, and the blonde got darker ones. We'll see if they have any blue-eyed children, if they have children at all. :)

>278 charl08: Charlotte, I have 185 items on my hard-copy library wishlist and 49 on the ebooks wishlist. Just two years of reading and I could finish 'em all! The hard copy one would probably have fewer items if I went through and deleted things that I have actually read. When I reserve something, or find it on the shelf, it doesn't automatically come off the list, so from time to time I prune a bit.

>279 ursula: I like the idea of bios narrated by the author. Brown eyed children sounds right to me (!!)

>280 susanj67: I haven't found the ebooks wishlist yet. Maybe that's a good thing!

Only 80 pages to go of genetics!

Oh, writing for the BBC! That would be fun.

Two books that I added to my list due to Atwood's recommendations were Running the Books and The Enchanted.

Good luck with your interview.

>282 BLBera: I think I'll ask the library of they can order the prison librarian one Beth. Next month!

Now reading: The Power

The shape of power is always the same; it is the shape of a tree. Root to tip, central trunk branching and re‑branching, spreading wider in ever‑thinner, searching fingers. The shape of power is the out‑line of a living thing straining outward, sending its fine tendrils a little further, and a little further yet. This is the shape of rivers...

The prediction of eye colour is fairly simple, I'll agree with Anita, as long as you know if you know the parents and grandparents eye colours. I write out a chart of how easy it is to predict eye colour, which is either pigmented brown ,hazel0 versus unpigmented ( blue and all the variations , like grey , green ). I knew that my kids had a 50 % chance of having unpigmented eyes, amazingly it turned out that way - one blue, one brown eyed son.

Hair colour , that is more difficult. My son who is married to a girl of Chinese ethnicity, well, I can predict if I get a grandchild, for certain my grandchild will are all have dark brown eyes. :) I think I can predict that any grandchildren I have will also have black or very dark brown hair . Of course my eldest could surprise some day by having kids.

>270 charl08: Quite the TBR pile! But you, Charlotte, have no problem with that!

Yeah I think what was confusing me was a simple explanation of dominant and recessive genes we were given at school - I found this site that explains the school version - and the more complex one that you and Anita referred to.

http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask306

I like the way the writer stresses that these stats are not a guarantee, lol.

Bring on the grammar, Charlotte! Really.

>263 charl08: and >265 RidgewayGirl: Adding Darktown to the wish list. And I'm already in the queue for Swing Time and pleased to read the positive review of it.

Have a great week!

>251 charl08: they don't do CVs in Iran?

>285 charl08: argh! Statistics! The only class I failed. Ever.

>286 LizzieD: I'd love some tips on helping tesol speakers with choosing past tense forms (and will save any proper queries!)

>287 EBT1002: I will now go on a great long waffle about how much I live Zadie Smith, Ellen. Or maybe not! I do think she's is able to write fiction about British lives that is both identifiable and that also makes me (the reader?) question some things I take for granted about society. I was amused to see someone on Litsy had got a selfie with her as part of the current book tour. She manages to look simultaneously cool and ironic about the whole photo business (I think).

>288 LovingLit: Good question. If they do, I'm not sure what it looks like or is called. The format was a big topic of discussion! I thought that we would just be borrowing vocab from my old ones to try and start constructing a parallel English document, but it seemed not. I do try always to ask some stuff about terms in Farsi (or Arabic or...) partly for interest, partly to try and show that I would struggle with the same operation if we were doing the reverse process, but I didn't ask that. Will do, and report back. Thanks Megan.
On Friday I also got to make friends with a little one whose parents are claiming asylum, while 'mum' practiced her English with my mum. The kids are heartbreaking. Just want to wrap them up in woolies and try to make things better with toys. Fortunately souls wiser in the ways of childrearing are in charge.

My MSc required stats as part of the govt funding. I think it was a great example of good intentions in govt policy, without the follow through. Even people who had already studied Maths to a higher level said they found the course a challenge.

The Gene: an intimate history
Yay! I finished the latest brick of a book!

Fascinating, well written account of the development of our understanding of genes, right up to the current ethical dilemmas about 'fixing' the genome: who decides what gets altered - and what do we lose in that process? I find the history or medicine, done well, gripping reading, and this fits that category. The isolation and innovation of early scientists like Mendel was striking for me.

I recently watched a very moving documentary presented and written by an actress with a son with Downs, about the implications of a new inutero test for the syndrome, reading the serious analysis of a gifted scientist on the same ethical dilemma reinforced this aspect of a powerful read.

It's my understanding that Statistics is a nightmare. My son failed it (or barely passed? I can't remember) and my daughter is taking it right now. She's doing all right but not enjoying it (beware of anyone who enjoys it). And I don't know that there's that much of a relationship between higher math and stats - my husband would be at sea trying to teach stats in spite of his PhD in Math. I mean, he could do it of course but it's totally different than what he is normally involved with.

ETA: I just asked my husband what the deal is and he said that he thinks the main reason a lot of people have trouble with it is because often aimed at people who haven't taken a lot of higher level math and so the whys of what's going on aren't (or can't be) explained so it just looks like a lot of magic and people end up not really understanding what's going on (and maybe not caring, as long as it works).

Oh, dear! What does it say about me that my very favorite course in college was Probability and Statistics?! LOVED it!

You are making me want to read that gene book, Charlotte -I might have to tackle it next year. Here's hoping that Monday is kind to you.

>291 Crazymamie: Well obviously we already know to beware of you, since you so kindly warn us with your username. ;)

True.

>285 charl08: What I loved when we were breeding dogs was that my bitches understood my love for genetics and statistics :-)
Over the years (in 5 litters out of 3 bitches) we had exactly 50% male puppies and 50% female puppies.

Our perfect litter was a litter of 4, black shorthair male x our red shorthair female. Both parents had a longhair parent.
2 males and 2 females
2 blacks and 2 reds
3 shorthair and 1 longhair

>290 ursula: I think your husband's right. One of my siblings did it, and did it well, but said that the key was a teacher who was willing to go through it step by step and explain it all, not just jump straight to the complex calculations. I was left with a suspicion of a lot of statistical processes, which has helped a lot when reading articles that tend to privilege the stats - the idea you can 'correct' for missing data (e.g. on the national census, which is supposed to cover EVERYONE) with maths makes steam come out my ears! And some of the questionnaires I've seen supposedly put out by professional organisations. I have no idea how people are even able to use the information they generate.

>291 Crazymamie: Hope you like it. I want to read his first book about cancer, but not just now.

>292 ursula: >293 Crazymamie: :-) Ladies you make me smile. Thank you.

>294 FAMeulstee: Lol Anita. Hope you charged more for your stat loving pups!

Free book about segregation from the U of Chicago this month.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html

Been one of these days today. Time for a new thread I think!

>298 charl08: LOL!