Kerry's (avatiakh) commonplace challenge part 2

My categories:

1) ANZAC - Australia / New Zealand literature
2) Israel & Jewish World literature
3) Nonfiction
4) Young at Heart - children's & YA
5) Scifi & fantasy
6) Books in Translation
7) The Big Read - doorstoppers & series
8) Challenges - CATS, TIOLI & Theme reading
9) Anthologies, short stories, essays, poetry
10) Thrillers - adventure, crime & espionage
+
Overflow / General Fiction

My 2017 challenge: http://www.librarything.com/topic/248332#

ANZAC - Australia / New Zealand literature

I ran the ANZAC challenge over in the 75er group in 2016 and hope to bring it back again in 2017 as a Bingo challenge. Currently in the planning stage.

1) Trust No One by Paul Cleave - Jan 06
2) The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth - Jan 10
3) Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher - Jan13
4) Tell the truth, shame the devil by Melina Marchetta
5) Blood Moon by Garry Disher
6) The dark days club by Alison Goodman
7) Whispering Death by Garry Disher
8) Signal Loss by Garry Disher
9) Missus by Ruth Park
10) The legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir
11) Girl in Between by Anna Daniels
12) Cut & Run by Alix Bosco
13) The Dark Days Pact by Alison Goodman
14) Heloise by Mandy Hager
15) Collision by Joanna Orwin
16) The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam
17) The rules of backyard cricket by Jock Serong
18) Perfect Couple by Derek Hansen
19) Towards another summer by Janet Frame
20) The Starlings by Vivienne Kelly
21) The necessary angel by C. K. Stead
22) The Life to come by Michelle de Kretser

Junior ANZAC:
1) The Sam and Lucy Fables by Alan Bagnall
2) The Severed Land by Maurice Gee
3) Ghosts of Parihaka by David Hair
4) Magic and Makutu by David Hair
5) the stars at oktober bend by Glenda Millard
6) The bone sparrow by Zana Fraillon
7) Ballad for a mad girl by Vikki Wakefield
8) Shooting Stars by Brian Falkner
9) Three Summers by Judith Clarke
10) The Blue Cat by Ursula Dubosarsky
11) Wilder Country by Mark Smith
12) 1914: Riding into war by Susan Brocker

Possibles:
American Blood by Ben Sanders
Tarzan Presley by Nigel Cox
The Sunken Road by Garry Disher
Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar
Wish by Peter Goldsworthy
Singing home the whale by Mandy Hager

Israel & Jewish World literature

Maybe do a Focus on a writer - not sure yet, possibly read more Amos Oz
1) The Realist by Asaf Hanuka (GN) - Jan 24
2) Bitter Herbs: A Little Chronicle by Marga Minco
3) The fighter by Jean-Jaques Greif
4) The man who never stopped sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld
5) All the rivers by Dorit Rabinyan
6) The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis
7) Ways to disappear by Idra Novey
8) Between Sky and Sea by Herz Bergner
9) Final stop, Algiers by Mishka Ben-David

Nonfiction:
1) The Lies they tell by Tuvia Tenenbom
2) A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York by Liana Finck
3) Pumpkinflowers by Matti Friedman
4) I sleep in Hitler's Room by Tuvia Tenenbom
5) No place to lay one's head by Françoise Frenkel

Juvenile:
1) Mister Doctor: Janusz Korczak and the Orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto by Irène Cohen-Janca - Feb 11
2) Lauren Yanofsky hates the Holocaust by Leanne Lieberman - Feb
3) Willy & Max by Amy Littlesugar - Feb
4) Shadow of the Wall by Christa Laird - Apr
5) The fighter by Jean-Jaques Greif - Apr

Lined up:
The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev
The Smile of the Lamb by David Grossman
The Secret Purposes by David Baddiel
The autobiography of God by Julius Lester
Louisa by Simone Zelitch
The song of names by Norman Lebrecht

Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport by Saul David
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
Nine Suitcases by Bela Zsolt

The Golem by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Judas by Amos Oz

Nonfiction

1) The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis by Darryl Cunningham (GN) - Jan 24
2) Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps' Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life by Patrick Van Horne - Feb 09
3) Schadenfreude: a love story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For by Rebecca Schuman
4) The man who broke into Auschwitz by Dens Avey
5) Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart by Krista Halverson
6) Misogynies by Joan Smith
7) Our Israeli Diary, 1978 : of that time, of that place by Antonia Fraser
8) The girl from Metropol Hotel: growing up in Communist Russia by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya
9) Out of the woods: a journey through depression and anxiety by Brent Williams - graphic memoir
10: Penguin Bloom: the odd little bird who saved a family by Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Grieve

Juvenile/Illustrated:
1) Religion : A Discovery in Comics by Margreet de Heer
2) Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela S. Turner
3) Such a lovely little war: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong
4) Becoming, unbecoming by Una - Apr
5) The red Virgin and the vision of Utopia by Mary & Bryan Talbot
6) To be a slave by Julius Lester
7) Lighter than my shadow by Katie Green
8) A Chinese Life by Philippe Ôtié & Li Kunwu
9) Munch by Steffen Kverneland
10) The Next Day by Jason Gilmore
11) No girls allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure by Susan Hughes
12) The best we could do by Thi Bui
13) Hostage by Guy DeLisle
14) Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: the complete Hipgnosis Catalogue by Aubrey Powell

Maybe do a focus either on travel writing or war
Possibles:
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
The anatomy of a moment by Javier Cercas
Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story by Rebecca Coffey

Young at Heart - children's & YA
Piles and piles of books in my house for this category.

Juvenile
1) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (reread) - finished 04 Jan
2) Spice and the Devil's Cave by Agnes Danforth Hewes - Jan 05
3) Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff - Jan 17
4) The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz - Jan 22
5) Goth girl and the ghost of a mouse by Chris Riddell - Jan 21
6) Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk - Feb 08
7) Rump:The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Liesl Shurtliff
8) The girl who drank the moon by Kelly Barnhill
9) Kings of the Boyne by Nicola Pierce
10) The Far Distant Oxus by Katharine Hull & Pamela Whitlock
11) The story of Diva and Flea by Mo Willems
12) The boy who dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
13) The girl who saved Christmas by Matt Haig
14) The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
15) The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen retold by Terence Blacker
16) The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Young Adult
1) The Leaving by Tara Altebrando - finished 7 Jan
2) I am Rosemarie by Marietta Moskin - Feb 07
3) Strange Star by Emma Carroll
4) Another Me by Eva Wiseman
5) Nothing tastes as good by Claire Hennessy
6) The Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin
7) The girl from everywhere by Heidi Heilig
8) We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan & Brian Conaghan
9) Boy Proof by Cecil Castellucci
10) The Accident Season by Moïra Fowley-Doyle
11) Girl Detached by Manuela Salvi
12) Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick
13) Release by Patrick Ness
14) The hate U give by Angie Thomas
15) Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine
16) Superpowerless by Chris Priestley
17) Exit, pursued by a bear by E.K. Johnston
18) Artichoke's Heart by Suzanne Supplee
19) one came home by Amy Timberlake
20) Moonrise by Sarah Crossan

Illustrated books - graphic novels etc
1) Bandette Volume 3: The House of the Green Mask by Paul Tobin - finished Feb 01
2) The thrilling adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua - Jan 22
3) Fist stick knife gun: a personal history of violence: a true story in black and white by Geoffrey Canada & Jamar Nicholas - Feb 10
4) The white cat and the monk: A Retelling of the Poem "Pangur Bán" by Jo Ellen Bogart - Feb 10
5) Jane, the fox and me by Fanny Britt - Feb 10
6) A year without mom by Dasha Tolstikova - Feb 11
7) The storyteller by Evan Turk - Feb 12
8) The Grand Mosque of Paris co-written and co-illustrated by Karen Gray Ruelle & Deborah Durland DeSai
9) Harvey by Hervé Bouchard
10) Cloth Lullaby: the woven life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Noveesky
11) Miracle Man: the story of Jesus by John Hendrix
12) Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier
13) Cardboard by Doug TenNapel
14) Rivers of London: Night Witch by Ben Aaronovitch
15) In Real Life by Cory Doctorow
16) One hundred nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg
17) The Encyclopedia of Early Earth: A Novel by Isabel Greenberg
18) Flight of the Raven by Jean-Pierre Gibrat
19) House held up by trees by Ted Kooser
20) Varmints by Helen Ward
21) One trick pony by Nathan Hale
22) The Golem of Prague by Irène Cohen-Janca
23) Once 9:53am terror in Buenos Aires by Ilan Stavans & Marcelo Brodsky
24) Kingsman: the secret service by Mark Millar

I might focus on British classics or 1001 Books. I'll update and put in a list of possibles
Ok, I've created a pinterest board of 1001 children's books you must read, just a selection of books i'd be interested in picking up for this category, plus my YA to read board from this year which I keep adding to.
https://uk.pinterest.com/jelsamina/1001-childrens-books/
https://uk.pinterest.com/jelsamina/ya-to-read/
The Twelfth of July by Joan Lingard
The Miller's Boy by Barbara Willard

some tidying up of series/trilogys etc
The FitzOsbornes at War by Michelle Cooper
Starry Night Troubles trilogy by Martin Waddell
Frankie's Story Troubles trilogy by Martin Waddell

Focus on SF Masterworks:
1)
2)
3)
scifi
1) The Incal(GN) by Alejandro Jodorowsky - moebius - 11 Jan
2) The Power by Naomi Alderman - 29 Jan
3) The World of Edena by Moebius - Feb 16
4) Orbital, Vol 1: Scars by Sylvain Runberg, illustrator: Serge Pellé
5) The Beautiful bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
6) The quiet earth by Craig Harrison
7) The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Focus on Dragons:
1)
2)
3)
fantasy:
1) Thraxas at the races by Martin Scott/Millar
2) To the green angel tower by Tad Williams
3) The bear and the nightingale by Katherine Arden
4) The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
5) Thraxas and the Elvish Isles by Martin Scott/Millar
6) How to stop time by Matt Haig
7) Thraxas and the sorcerers by Martin Scott/Millar
8)

Young people's scifi & fantasy
1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling
2) When the sea turned to silver by Grace Lin
3) Frogkisser! by Garth Nix
4) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
5) While we run by Karen Healey
6) Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling
7) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
8) That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston
9) The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
10) Father Christmas and Me by Matt Haig
11) Parkland by Victor Kelleher
12) Space Demons by Gillian Rubinstein
13) The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

Possibles
Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop - failed to read in 2016
Black powder by Naomi Novik
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The windup girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
The servants by Michael Marshall Smith
The Fifth Season by NK Jemison
The Emperor of the Eight Islands by Liarn Hearn
Roadside picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven

Books in Translation:

1) The Flaw by Antonis Samarakis (Greece) - finished 09 Jan
2) Wabi Sabi (Spain) by Francesc Miralles - finished 02 Feb
3) Silence by Shūsaku Endō (Japan)
4) The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman
5) Monsieur Linh and his child by Philippe Claudel
6) The Vampire of Ropraz by Jacques Chessex
7) Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub (Brazil)
8) The shell : memoirs of a hidden observer by Mustafa Khalifa (Syria)

Young People in translation:
1) War without friends by Evert Hartman (Holland) - Feb 02
2) Shylock's Daughter by Mirjam Pressler (Germany) - Feb 12
3) The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux (France) - Apr
4) The Servant by Fatima Sharafeddine (Lebanon)
5) Monsieur Cadichon: memoirs of a donkey by Comtesse de Ségur (France)
6) Dark Hours by Gudrun Pausewang (Germany)

Possibles:
The cat who came off the roof by Annie Schmidt
The Song of Seven by Tonke Dragt
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Mikhail Strogoff by Jules Verne
The sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus
The case of Sergeant Grischa by Arnold Zweig
The Book of Fate by Parinoush Saniee
New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani

The Big Read - doorstoppers & series -
Place for those doorstopper paperbacks that I avoid even though I've owned them for years and series reading, thought I'd have a go at Poldark.

1) Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
2) A suitable boy by Vikram Seth - finished Jun 05
3) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
4)
5)
6)

Group Read - possibles
Poldark by Winston Graham
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
A suitable boy by Vikram Seth
King Hereafter by Dorothy Dunnett
A Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
And the Land lay still by James Robertson
Underworld by Don DeLillo

Challenges - CATS, TIOLI & Theme reading

Hoping to participate in shared reading
1) The invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach - TIOLI shared read
2) Ross Poldark by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
3) Demelza by Winston Graham - Poldark group read - Apr 25
4) The Green Man by Kingsley Amis - BAC - Apr
5) The glorious heresies by Lisa McInerney - Orange Jan - Apr
6) Jeremy Poldark by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
7) Warleggan by Winston Graham - group read
8) The Black Moon by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
9) The Viceroy of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin - BAC
10) The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer - BAC
11) The Four Swans by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
12) The Angry Tide by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
13) The stranger from the sea by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
14) The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
15) The Loving Cup by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
16) The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham - Poldark group read
17) Bella Poldark by Winston Graham - Poldark group read

Anthologies, short stories, essays, poetry

1) From under the overcoat by Sue Orr
2) The tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare
3) The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane, illus. Jackie Morris
4)

Possibles:
Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature ed. Alberto Manguel
My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Oxford Book of Scottish Short Stories ed Douglas Dunn
First Light: a celebration of Alan Garner ed. Erica Wagner
Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy by Michael Moorcock

Thrillers - adventure, crime & espionage

1) A voice in the night by Andrea Camilleri (Montalbano #20) - Jan 18
2) The spring of Kasper Meier by Ben Fergusson - Jan 30
3) More Beer by Jakob Arjouni
4) One man, one murder by Jacob Arjourni
5) The Killing Hour by Paul Cleave
6) The Thirst by Jo Nesbø
7) Kismet by Jakob Arjouni
8) The Human Flies by Hans Olav Lahlum
9) Brother Kemal by Jakob Arjouni
10) The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney
11) The glory boys by Gerald Seymour
12) Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz
13) The forest of souls by Carla Banks
14) A nest of vipers by Andrea Camilleri
15) The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz
16) The store by James Patterson & Richard DiLallo
17) Seeking whom he may devour by Fred Vargas
18) The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
19) Death Under Sail by C. P. Snow
20) Moskva by Jack Grimwood
21) The Midnight Line by Lee Child
22) The Collaborator by Gerald Seymour
23) under the cold bright lights by Garry Disher

Possibles:
All That Followed by Gabriel Urza
The Whispering City by Sara Moliner
Moskva by Jack Grimwood
His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Gerald Seymour
The Ways of the World by Robert Goddard
Blood is Dirt by Robert Wilson
A Darkening Stain by Robert Wilson
Murder in Passy by Cara Black
Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen
The Night Manager by John Le Carre'
In cold blood by Truman Capote
The merchant's house by Kate Ellis

Overflow or General Fiction:

For all the books that don't fit elsewhere:
1) The Book Boy by Joanna Trollope - Jan 25
2) The grand tour by Adam O'Fallon Price - Feb 06
3) Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo
4) Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali
5) Wolf in white van by John Darnielle
6) Lillian Boxfish takes a walk by Kathleen Rooney
7) False Colours by Georgette Heyer
8) The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz
9) Arabella by Georgette Heyer
10) April Lady by Georgette Heyer
11) The husband's secret by Liane Moriaty
12) The weight of ink by Rachel Kadish
13) Shylock is my name: The Merchant of Venice Retold by Howard Jacobson
14) Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer
15) The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer
16) Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer
17: New boy by Tracy Chevalier

Possibles:
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
The virgin suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart by Krista Halverson (2016)
nonfiction

This is the official biography of the famous Shakespeare and Company which resides just a short stroll over the bridge from Notre Dame Cathedral. The shop's founder George Whitman, who died in his nineties in 2011, seemed to have never thrown out a single note, piece of paper, photo or poster since the shop began in 1951. It was first called the Mistral Bookshop and renamed with the blessing of Sylvia Beach in 1964 (the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's Birth). Sylvia Beach had founded the original Shakespeare & Co in 1919 which ran till the Nazis closed it down during WW2 and it never reopened.
The shop has run as a 'socialist paradise disguised as a bookshop' and over the years has welcomed thousands of 'tumbleweeds' or guests who stay in exchange for 2-3 hours work each day, a one page biography and the promise to read a book daily from the extensive library. The shop's motto "be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise", George opening the doors to all sorts of writers, artists, and intellectuals. There is always a cat in the shop, always named Kitty in honour of Anne Frank's cat. The shop is now run by his daughter, Sylvia who has modernised the shop without losing any of the charm (not hard as there was no telephone, cash register or computer when she took over in 2004 when she was just 23). She also reinvigorated the events run by the shop including an annual literary festival. In 2015 the shop expanded and now includes a bigger children's room as well as a cafe. They also host a writing award for best novella and have plans to step into publishing.

The book is a wonderful momento and includes many reminiscences from the famous and the not so famous who spent time there over the years, copies of many tumbleweed bios, photos from readings etc. The production values are very high and the research to produce the book took several years. This would make a wonderful gift to the bibliophile especially one who has visited the shop itself.
_
_
Bookshop and new co-owners Sylvia Whitman, her partner Daniel & baby
_

Krista Halverson:
For two years, from 2012 to 2014, I could be found tucked into George Whitman's former bedroom, his cat, Kitty, on my lap, reading and sorting Shakespeare and Company’s archives. It was the first and the most daunting task in creating a history book about the shop. George’s apartment, two floors above the bookstore, housed a century’s worth of correspondence, photographs, documents, author memorabilia and ephemera, both mundane and precious—all of it mostly unsorted, stashed into various old wine crates and big plastic tubs, stuffed under the bed and bureau and sink, and even piled atop the water tank in the bathroom. That’s where George’s daughter, Sylvia, unearthed one of Gregory Corso’s notebooks, with handwritten drafts of poems and sketches, from 1961.
"Over the years, millions of people have happened into Shakespeare and Company, finding new and antiquarian titles for purchase on the ground floor, and on the first floor discovering thousands of books in George's personal library. There visitors can read all day while reclining on cushioned benches, a cat curled up nearby, the opening notes of 'La valse d'Amélie" or Satie's 'Gymnopédies' drifting from the piano. At night, the benches transform into beds, where writers and artists are invited to sleep for free in exchange for helping out a few hours in the shop, writing a one-page autobiography, and promising to read a book a day. George named these guests 'Tumbleweeds' after the dry, rootless plants that roll across the American plains."

https://shakespeareandcompany.com/
Good article about literary histry of shop: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/11/shakespeare-and-company-paris-george-w...

George Whitman: 'I'm tired of people saying they don't have time to read. I don't have time for anything else."

The Viceroy Of Ouidah by Bruce Chatwin (1980)
novella
I really enjoyed this, lush descriptions of the decaying lifestyle of the poor Viceroy and his long lived daughter. Francisco Da Silva arrives in the barbaric kingdom of Dahomey (Benin) from Brasil in the early 1800s. He hopes to build a fortune in the slave trade and while he rises for a time to great wealth, all he leaves behind him is the da Silva name on his many mulatto children. A short fascinating read.

The best we could do by Thi Bui
graphic memoir
Tells the story of a family of Vietnamese refugees. The daughter who was only 2 or 3 when they left Saigon, revisits the childhood and school years of her parents. While her mother grew up in a family of privilege in a society where French rather than the native language was spoken, her father grew up in a rural village, poor and unloved. The threads of the story dip and weave through the years, a great read and excellent artwork.

The Thirst by Jo Nesbø (2017)
crime
Harry Hole #11. So after leaving Hole alone for a few years, Nesbø brings him back for another play. Once I got back into remembering all the characters and where they fit it was an enjoyable if somewhat gritty read. Lots of red herrings thrown into this one.

Kismet by Jakob Arjouni (2001)
crime
Kayankaya #4. I've already got #5 downloaded from the library as I enjoy these adventures in the crime ridden streets of Frankfurt. Kayankaya is a private investigator who this time gets roped in to dissuade some brutal gangsters from taking protection money at a local Brazilian restaurant. The situation sounds bad and gets worse very fast.

Hostage by Guy DeLisle (2017)
graphic biography

Tells the story of Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe André who was taken hostage and held in Chechnya in 1997. While page after page is just the repetitive days of André handcuffed to a radiator, the story is rather riveting. DeLisle conveys the desperation and solitary life of isolation and lack of movement, when a trip to the bathroom becomes the highlight of the day.
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>13 avatiakh: Lovely-looking book and great quote about making time for reading!

Happy new thread, Kerry!

>19 rabbitprincess: I enjoyed reading this, the design & layout is quite stunning. The main text was in a very large font, sort of unusual but allowed for the indulgence in images etc.

>20 lkernagh: Thanks for visiting.

A suitable boy by Vikram Seth (1993)
fiction
From wikipedia: 'At 1,349 pages (1,488 pages softcover) and 591,552 words, the book is one of the longest novels ever published in a single volume in the English language.'
I loved this sprawling novel set in early 1950s India. The main thread is Mrs Ruta Mehra's search for a suitable marriage prospect for her youngest daughter Lata, who is in her last year of university study. The story revolves around four very different Indian families, all related through marriage and takes place around the first post-independence elections. The novel's length allows an expansive approach to the story, lots of wonderful cultural references of religious festivals, daily life in rural villages and university cities, classical Indian poetry, music and song. Politics features heavily alongside religious tensions, caste issues, partition problems etc etc. Well worth the time invested.
A sequel, A suitable girl will be published later this year, it will be set in contemporary India.

As well, the BBC have announced an tv adaption of A suitable boy, their first period drama with an all non-white cast. 'The announcement follows a warning from Ofcom, the BBC’s new regulator, that its television output is too white and fails to appeal to viewers from ethnic minorities.
Piers Wenger, the BBC’s head of drama, said it was “a deliberate gamble” to adapt a drama with no white characters.
“Historically, the story of British colonial rule has been the approach that British writers and producers have taken to telling a story set outside the UK,” Wenger said.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/04/bbc-adapt-vikram-seths-suitable-boy-f...

I've been doing the Apr-Jun group read of this, though most of my reading was in May, then I raced through the last part in just a couple of days.

Release by Patrick Ness (2017)
YA
Ness has stated that this was his attempt at a Mrs Dalloway & Forever... hybrid. The result is a look at a day in the life of gay teenager, Adam, a day when everything is changing. Being Ness, he also includes a smaller side story of a lost spirit, a Queen and faun who also spend the day seeking a truth.
This is a beautifully tender novel, including scenes of intimacy and confrontation. The day ends in a farewell party, a party that Adam has spent the whole day preparing for and yet dreading.

The Golem of Prague by Irène Cohen-Janca (2017)
illustrated story

A retelling of the Golem of Prague story set in 1892, a young boy sneaks into the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague late at night to look for the remains of the golem said to have lain there for hundreds of years.
The artwork by Maurizio A. C. Quarello is perfect for this story.

Girl in Between by Anna Daniels (2017)
fiction / ANZAC

I won this debut novel in a goodreads giveaway, I seem to have had a bit of luck with the Australian books that get offered as I've won three so far this year.
This is a light and frothy romance novel, not my thing really, but I enjoyed the humour and the Rockhampton (Rocky) setting was a change from the normal Sydney/Melbourne. I was surprised by the amount of f-words in the dialogue.
Apart from that it was a standard falling in love met with a few obstacles but happy ever after type read.

32 yr old Lucy is between jobs, careers, homes and men. Living back at home in north Queensland after a high profile media job in Melbourne, she's lost the love of her life and is now pouring all her energies into writing a historical novel while feeling sorry for herself and a bit over the hill. When the new neighbour moves in, she's helped by her two handsome Sydney-based sons. Lucy is immediately smitten with Oscar but he's in a relationship though there is a definite spark between them. Her best friend, the carefree Rosie, eventually gets Lucy out of her rut by convincing her to move back to London where they'd had a ball 8 or so years earlier.

What I really liked was the great use of Aussie slang and general everyday Aussie-ness of the book.

Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: the complete Hipgnosis Catalogue by Aubrey Powell (2017)
nonfiction
This was a nostalgic look at old LP covers and yet far far more than that. The text tells the story of how the Hipgnosis creative studio emerged in the late 1960s, came into its own in the 1970s and then faded away in the early 1980s with the rise of music videos and CDs. The studio was formed by Aubrey (Po) Powell, Storm Thorgerson and Peter Christopherson, friends and flatmates in the early days of Pink Floyd and designers of most of PF's album covers. Before the time of computers, Photoshop and digital art they truly broke new creative ground in graphic design and photography. The catalogue shows every LP cover they worked on and also the story behind many of them.
An unexpectedly fascinating read. The introduction is by Peter Gabriel.
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The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer (1959)
fiction
Set in the south of England this story incorporates a touch of smuggling into the plot. I enjoyed it though I'm not that keen when Heyer's plots revolve around a romance between cousins, also her use of slang overwhelms me at times.

Pumpkinflowers by Matti Friedman (2016)
nonfiction
Interesting read. Journalist Friedman writes of his time as a soldier serving in the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in the late 1990s. His unit was based in south Lebanon on a hilltop called Pumpkin just north of the crusader castle, Beaufort. The book is divided into three parts, 1) what happened around Pumpkin prior to his own service there, focusing on a soldier called Avi who lost his life in the 1997 helicopter crash that killed 73 IDF personnel being ferried into the Pumpkin base. 2) Friedman's own time of service and also the rise of the kibbutznik Four Mothers movement that raised awareness of the IDF's role in south Lebanon at the time 3) After his service, the IDF withdrawal in September 2000 and the increasingly dangerous role the Hezbollah have played in regional and now international politics since then. Plus Friedman's own 2002 journey through Lebanon using his Canadian passport, where he revisited the area where he'd served, walked among the people who were/are at war with his country and his own reflections over ten years later on all that has transpired.
For me the book is a tribute to the soldiers who served especially those who lost their lives. It's also a wonderful look at how conflict is seen from the perspective of an 18 year old soldier rather than a memoir from the desk of some ex-colonel talking strategy. The daily routine in the outpost, the suddenness of death or permanent injury, what being courageous really means.
The word 'flowers' in the title refers to how the IDF identified the wounded in their radio contacts.

I sleep in Hitler's room : An American Jew Visits Germany by Tuvia Tenenbom (2011)
nonfiction

An interesting read, I've now read all three of Tenenbom's books and have to say his style of writing is quite unique, an acquired taste. This was his first book and covers the time he spent travelling around Germany for several months in 2010. He had a deal with a German publisher who decided at the last minute not to go ahead with the book in German unless Tenenbom took out some of the text. Tenenbom refused and ended up self-publishing an English language edition himself.
Tenenbom travels through Germany and talks to people he meets on the street, schools, factories, in bars, mosques, synagogues and churches. He interviews some high profile people, leading restaurateurs, media people such as the editor of Bild, politicians such as Helmut Schimdt. He seeks out Turkish immigrants, leftist activists and Neo-Nazis and chats away, gets everybody's take on what it means to be German.
I started the book thinking that I couldn't read 330 odd pages of his writing, but by the halfway point I was just interested in meeting all these interesting random characters with him and seeing what they had to say.
Tenenbom sums up to say that he felt there was a deeply rooted and possibly hidden antisemitism in Germany and that with decades of Turkish immigration there is even more. He meets more German people who admit to having a Jewish grandparent or some such Jewish heritage than he meets Germans willing to acknowledge a parent or grandparent who was a Nazi. As Tenenbom is a theatre actor and speaks several languages, he does not always present himself as an American Jew, so is able to win the confidence of the people he meets.
The title comes from his stay in the Hotel Elephant in Weimar, a hotel that Hitler stayed in over 25 times on his many visits to the town. He asked to stay in Hitler's room and did.
A German (in English) take on Tenenbom's book: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-story-behind-tuvia-tenenbom-and-...

It was interesting to read this alongside reading a recent news article about French/German Arte/WDR deciding not to run a documentary they commissioned about antisemitism, “Chosen and Excluded — Jew Hatred in Europe” because content was too honest. 'Michael Wolffsohn, a German historian who was part of the team evaluating the film, said: “This is by far the best, most intelligent and most historically profound film on this subject, which is sadly extremely topical.”'
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/chosen-and-excluded-tv-film-on-migrant-muslim...

>26 avatiakh: Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: the complete Hipgnosis Catalogue by Aubrey Powell sparks my interest. I'm a big fan of PF and love the album covers, there are so many interesting stories behind them. My daughter-in-law would love this too so I have her next birthday present all arranged! Two birds with one book!

>30 VivienneR: I hope you find it interesting. There are quite a lot of these album cover books out there.

Misogynies by Joan Smith (1989)
nonfiction

Smith's experiences as a journalist covering the Yorkshire Ripper are the mainstay of this bunch of essays. An interesting read for all that it's a bit dated. The most useful thing I learnt from it is that I will never bother to read Sophie's Choice.
Smith covers topics such as Margaret Thatcher, Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe, Roman women, page 3 girls, the Catholic Church, US bomber pilots & the Freikops, 1980s films such as Jagged Edge, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent (and the book), the novel Sophie's Choice and finally a longer piece on the Yorkshire Ripper and the West Yorkshire police investigation. The essays are thought provoking, I learnt a couple of new words and while Princess Di and Thatcher are blasts from the past the ideas are still relevant. I don't normally read this type of book but am pleased I stumbled across this.

I found out about the book when reading the notes in Una's graphic memoir becoming, unbecoming, she'd found the book a lifechanger.

Cut & Run by Alix Bosco (2009)
crime /ANZAC

Alix Bosco is a pen name of NZ writer Greg McGee, he was uncovered in 2011 after much speculation as to who was behind the two Alix Bosco books. When Cut & Run won the inaugural Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel in 2010 he was under much pressure to fess up as the publisher had to claim the trophy on his behalf.
As far as crime novels go this was a great read especially for me as the setting was so local. Not often do you have the action set so close to where you live and go about your daily business so this had an extra factor of pleasure for me.
When Anna Markunas, ex-social worker and now legal researcher, begins work on a murder case, a young and promising Pasifika rugby star has been shot, presumably by a school friend from his past. Ten years earlier, she had helped the accused, his mother and younger brother flee an abusive family situation and she immediately feels that something is not quite right with his adamant guilty plea.

The Dark Days Pact by Alison Goodman (2017)
fantasy /ANZAC
The second book in the Lady Helen series or probably trilogy. The next book is due out next year. I enjoyed this alternate history story set in 1812. Lady Helen and her maid, Darby, are both undertaking intensive training in their roles as Reclaimer and Terrane while Lady Helen must to all appearances still appear as a gentlewoman of society.

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis (2014)
fiction

This was highly enjoyable. An Israeli politician has fled the country with his mistress after voting against his party's wishes, blackmail hadn't worked on him and the morning's newspapers will be headlining his affair. He arrives in Yalta, a resort he once holidayed in as a child. Before Israel he had a history as one of the Soviet Jews jailed for their politics. Now in Yalta he's about to meet the man who betrayed him to the KGB all those years ago. The action just covers a day or so with a lot of reflection on the past.
Bezmozgis is a Latvian born Canadian.

From a National Post review: 'One of the most fascinating spectacles in fiction is the plight of the character who makes the profoundly wrong decision and can never undo the damage caused by it. Remorse is futile....It is a very sinewy piece of fiction, with no extravagance of metaphor, and minimal but effective description of shabby buildings and decaying landscapes. All this takes place, of course, prior to Putin’s invasion of Crimea, an event which will only intensify the reader’s appreciation of the centuries-old conflict and hatreds and sense of territory that have marked the novel’s setting and that are deftly evoked by the author. The Betrayers is an endlessly fascinating exchange of philosophical views' http://nationalpost.com

Lillian Boxfish takes a walk by Kathleen Rooney (2017)
fiction

Another stellar read. This is fiction based on the life and work of Margaret Fishback, poet and ad woman.
We meet Lillian on New Year's Eve about to welcome in 1985, she's in her 80s. Despite the city being unsafe, she's lived here all her adult life and enjoys her long daily walks. This evening she walks through downtown Manhatten, revisiting all the places that have been important and we slowly find out about her life as an ad woman at Macy's in the 1920s/30s, the people and events that have been significant in her life.
Rooney writes in the author notes that she decided to combine her research on Fishback with her own passion for cities and flânerie.

wikipedia - During the 1930s Fishback was reputed to be the world's highest-paid female advertising copywriter.

Heloise by Mandy Hager (2017)
historical fiction
Before starting this I knew very little about Heloise and Peter Abelard so I found this quite a fascinating read. I feel that Hager has kept as true to the original story as she could. I went to a talk she gave on the book so know that she consulted Heloise academic Constant Mews and he checked her manuscript before publication and gave her the thumbs up. Hager has indulged the romance but also given us a richly political and philosophical novel, an absorbing read.
Set in France during the early years of the 12th century, this is the story of the forbidden love between Heloise, a learned young woman, and Peter Abelard, theologian and philosopher, one of the great thinkers of the period.

The narrative is full of quotes, from the letters they wrote each other and also from works that Heloise used for inspiration. At the suggestion of Dr Constant Mews, Hager also read many of the books that Heloise, herself, studied. I feel that this has given the book its character, making it much more than just a romantic historical novel to being fairly robust. Every quote in the book is sourced in the end notes. Hager also includes a reference list which I will use to start an LT Heloise & Abelard booklist.

There's a good summing up of the story of Heloise & Abelard by Cassandra Clark here: https://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2015/05/medieval-times-the-true-lov...

The Four Swans by Winston Graham (1976)
fiction
Poldark #6. Another compelling read and will be picking up the next one straight away.

The Human Flies by Hans Olav Lahlum (2010)
crime

Kolbjørn Kristiansen #1. I saw this book in a bookshop a few months ago, really liked the cover so requested it from the library and after a few borrows managed to get it read. I only realised on finishing the book that it's the first in a series. Hans Olav Lahlum is a Norwegian historian turned crime writer and these books are set in 1960s Oslo but the plots usually involve WW2 in some way. The first book is dedicated to his (great?) aunt, Dagmar Lahlum who was accused of being a Nazi collaborator and served time in prison as the British authorities would not back up her story, but many years later (probably after her death) her role as an agent and lover of British spy Eddie Chapman became known on the publication of the Agent Zigzag books. She spent her postwar life living under this cloud and the writer remembers being warned as a child to never mention the war in front of his aunt.

Kolbjørn Kristiansen investigates the murder of Harald Olesen, hero of the resistance against the Nazi occupation. The building contains 8 apartments and it quickly becomes clear that the killer must be one of the occupants. This is very much like an Agatha Christie setup and a very compelling read. Kristiansen is a bit naive, a bit of a bumbler and lucky to be helped along by Patricia, a bright young woman who is confined to a wheelchair and a crime fiction addict. Together they make a great team.

Hans Olav Lahlum:
P.S. About sources and further reading: Dagmar’s relationship with Eddie Chapman was first made public in the two Chapman biographies from 2007, Nicholas Booth’s Zigzag. The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman and Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag. A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal. Both brought to light interesting material about the case from British archives and other British sources. Four years later, their war story was covered on screen in the documentary Double Agent: The Eddie Chapman Story, produced by Walker George Films for BBC2.

I had fun reading the wikipedia page for the writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Olav_Lahlum

Dagmar Lahlum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagmar_Lahlum

Brother Kemal by Jakob Arjouni (2012)
crime
Fifth and final book in the Kayankaya series. Excellent final story. Kayankaya helps bring a runaway teen back to her mother and also takes on the job of bodyguard to a Moroccan writer at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Fall out from the first case collides with his second one. I've really enjoyed this series and once again express my dismay that Jakob Bothe (Arjouni) passed away too soon. This final book was written after he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

From the 2013 Guardian obit - 'Two of his literary heroes, their books lining the work-room in Berlin where I talked to him last September, were Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon. From the American, he took the figure of the private eye as a flawed but honest outsider; from the Belgian, he learned the importance of psychological characterisation. But while these mentors clearly informed the creation of Kayankaya, with the detective's status as the son of Turkish immigrants giving a fresh twist to the tradition of the investigator as an odd one out, Arjouni brought to the form an eye for social and historical detail that was entirely his own. Kismet (2001) deals with the consequences in Europe of the Balkan wars, while One Man, One Murder (1992), which won the German Crime Fiction prize, has a background of sex trafficking. Characteristically, the final Kayankaya book explores the limits of free speech and religious tolerance as the private eye protects an author under death threat from Islamists at the Frankfurt book fair.' https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jan/18/jakob-arjouni

Ways to disappear by Idra Novey (2016)
fiction

Novey's debut novel, before this she was more known as a translator of Brazilian fiction. This book won the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. While not going down as a 5 star read of the year, I have to admit I rather enjoyed this novel.

Emma is stuck in the middle of a Pittsburgh winter, her fiancee won't shut up about planning their wedding, in fact she's starting to realise that the relationship is not really a great idea and the possibility of a wedding is making her finally confront this. In the midst of all this angst she hears that the Brazilian writer who she has translated and formed a warm bond with has suddenly disappeared.
Emma jumps on a plane to Rio, to help find the author or to run away from her relationship, and finds that Beatriz Yagoda has absconded after running up a huge online gambling debt.

From The Forward: 'In her delightful debut novel, “Ways to Disappear,” Idra Novey makes a gutsy decision: to cast a Portuguese translator as an action hero. Her formula satisfies like a caipirinha served by a green-eyed Adonis in low-slung swim trunks...Readers first glimpse modest Beatriz, an elegant lady in her sixties, by looking up her skirt. In a down and out section of Copacabana, she goes off the grid by scrambling up an almond tree with a suitcase, her ample behind displayed to domino players below. Rather than appearing fearful, the hiding fugitive looks relieved. At the end of the first chapter, Novey teases with a curious visual that ensures ravenous reading. Beatriz doesn’t just sit on a branch. Rather, she “perched there so serenely with her open book and cigar that Julio wished her well and went home for some beans.”'

http://forward.com/sisterhood/340022/beach-read-a-manhunt-in-brazil-arouses-a-bu...

The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon (2013)
fantasy

Bone Season #1. This is dystopian mixed with the supernatural set in 2059. The book centres around 19 yr old Paige who is a clairvoyant with special skills who lives in a bleak, dystopian London, a city where clairvoyants are hunted down by the ruling faction, Scion. She's part of a gang, whose mix of skills enables them to survive. Then Paige is kidnapped and taken to Oxford, a penal colony.
I found this quite bleak and unrelenting to start with, but just before the halfway point I got hooked and the rest of the book fairly flew by. The book was one of my 75er Christmas gift books and one I was pleased to receive. I'll definitely read the next book, there will be seven books in the series and the third one has just been released.

The novel got mixed reviews when it first came out, many calling it too derivative and a Harry Potter/HungerGames mashup. I didn't really feel this and I'm listening to HP & the Order of the Phoenix at the moment. As a reader I felt there was a tad too much viciousness or violence but the story had enough going for it for me to read on.

Guardian review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/04/bone-season-samantha-shannon-revie... -
'It's in the nature of fantasy fiction to be derivative: woven from many strands of pre-loved narrative, some of them very ancient; cobbled together from a fertile jumble of well-used magical and spooky elements, in old and new combinations. The Bone Season is certainly no exception to this rule. In the early chapters, as Paige, the cynical cyberpunk antihero, sulks her way around a grungy, alternate-reality London or darts disembodied through the silvery flickers of the aether, we're in the familiar steampunk territory of modern urban fantasy, where Matrix-style digital trickery has shaded into magic.'

Collision by Joanna Orwin (2009)
fiction

This novel follows the historical events meticulously. Orwin invents just two fictional characters, one a young French ensign and the other a young Maori warrior to carry the story. It's a well written account that depicts the collision in cultural understanding of the first major extended contact between Europeans and the Maori people.
In 1772 Marion du Fresne's two ships came to the Bay of Islands, seeking urgent water supplies and repairs to masts from an earlier collision between the two ships. He also seeked respite for a large number of crew suffering from scurvy. The local Maori tribes made them feel welcome and the Frenchmen spent several weeks interacting with the locals, trading and getting on with repairs. However underneath the good relations was a great cultural clash, the French not realising that at almost every turn they were upsetting local protocols.
Du Fresne misread every warning given him by his men, refusing to see the Maori as anything more than a friendly 'noble savage' along the lines of Rosseau's theory. It did not end well.This disastrous first meeting between the French and the Maori is one of the reasons that New Zealand became a British colony and not a French one.

I found this a very good read, it would have been even more riveting if I had not recently read Anne Salmond's nonfiction account of the same events in her book Two Worlds: first meetings between Maori and Europeans, 1642-1772. Orwin's fictional Maori character conveyed much more of the misunderstandings between the two peoples. Orwin is a renown writer of historical YA and children's fiction and I'm fairly sure this is her first adult novel.

For a quick read of the incident: https://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1m13/marion-du-fresne-marc-joseph

The Blood Miracles by Lisa McInerney (2017)
fiction

This is the sequel to The Glorious Heresies and I'm sure there could be more books. This follows on directly after the first book and focuses directly on young Ryan Cusack. Cusack has just so much potential and it's distressing to see him sink lower and lower into the criminal world of Cork. However once the local crime leaders have their hooks into you it just isn't easy to pull out as you know too many secrets and they know where your family live.
Not as great a read as the first book but a good second innings.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (2003)
children's

Re-read, this time by listening to Stephen Fry's narration of the book. I'm slowly remaking my way through the series again, listening when I'm in the car by myself. I'm enjoying the details and need to start my re-watch of the movies.

Between Sky and Sea by Herz Bergner (1946)
fiction /ANZAC

This was translated from Yiddish back when it was first written, at the time Melbourne, Australia had a thriving Yiddish literary scene. Text Publishing has recently republished the book as part of their Text Classics series. The book won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal for Book of the Year in 1948.

Enjoy is not the word I'm looking for as this was a fairly traumatising but beautifully written novel. I did like it very much especially how the plot revolved around the passengers on the ship, the here and now with just enough back story to add pathos. The story is set on a dilapidated Greek ship making its way from Athens to Australia, the ship is turned away from port after port when the officials realise that almost every passenger is a Jewish refugee, so supplies on board are rationed, water is scarce. The passengers are forced to confront their fate, their lost past and life on board ship where the crew are not sympathetic, spirals into a turbulent mess.
The two main characters Ida and Nathan are especially haunted, Nathan had married Ida's sister but the attraction between the two had always been there. They both lost their spouses and children in a bombing, so feel immense guilt at surviving and being thrown at last together.

Bergner had arrived in Australia in 1938 and became part of a thriving Yiddish culture there. The book was written during the war years when it became clear the Jews were being persecuted by the Nazis and much worse. The newspaper stories about Jews being closed out of 'friendly' countries for want of visas, the British closing of Jewish immigration quotas to the Palestinian Mandate are all evident here in the text.

The Holocaust was a demarcation point for Yiddish writers. Between Sky & Sea was one of the earliest fictional accounts of the brutal and inconceivable events of the times. The writing is propelled by a sense of urgency. Bergner wrote the novel in Melbourne as the news was filtering through that a catastrophe was taking place in the Jewish communities of Europe. His people were being enslaved and murdered, or forced into flight. And he was well aware of their plight. In January 1942, Bergner published an essay pleading the case for increased European migration to Australia. Once flourishing Jewish communities, he pointed out, were being wiped from the face of the earth.

Bergner would have known of the ill-fated voyage of the St Louis, the ocean liner that left Germany in May 1939 with over 900 Jewish asylum seekers on board fleeing from the Third Reich. The ship was turned back from Cuba and not permitted to land in the USA and Canada. The refusal prompted several passengers to attempt suicide and led to a near mutiny. As the St Louis sailed back to Europe, a group of passengers took over the bridge and occupied it until their rebellion was put down. Through intense negotiations and the support of the captain, Gustav Schroeder, the passengers were able to disembark in Antwerp before the ship returned to Germany. Nevertheless, 254 of the passengers perished in the Holocaust.

https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/arnold-zable-s-introduction-to-between-sk...

The Angry Tide by Winston Graham (1978)
fiction
Poldark (7). Another good read in this series. I don't think I have any more books in the series so will have to check the library option from now on.

Our Israeli Diary, 1978 : of that time, of that place by Antonia Fraser (2017)
nonfiction

This is a great little read. Last year Fraser was cleaning out her cupboards and came across the diary she kept of a short one week sojourn she took to Israel with her partner, Harold Pinter. It was a first trip for both of them. The diary has been published in its basic form and is interesting for all its brevity. They visit the typical places and meet interesting people, the mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kolleck, Shimon Peres, attend events alongside visiting Jacqueline Kennedy. Also meet members of Pinter's family who made aliyah many years earlier. They suffer from the heat, too much alcohol from time to time. It's the equivalent of opening a time capsule.
Anything Fraser doesn't really like she describes as 'horrible', artworks, food, people, architecture. She writes about the reading they've done to prep for the trip as well as brought with them.
They read Abba Eban: an autobiography, Moshe Dyan's memoir Story of my life, O Jerusalem, The Bad Sister by Emma Tennant, and Success by Martin Amis. While in Jerusalem Fraser obtains and reads Masada by Yigael Yadin, a biography of Menachum Begin (he is the current PM) and The Scrolls from the Dead Sea by Edmund Wilson. Quite a lot of reading in one week, especially one as busy as they have.

I've done most of the same tourist visits that they did, on my last visit I finally got to Herodium. Fraser also writes of a visit to The Manuscript Library of the Armenian Patriarchate in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. These manscripts sound wonderful.

The girl from Metropol Hotel: growing up in Communist Russia by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (2017)
memoir

This is a collection of vignettes of Petrushevskaya's childhood. A really riveting read of such an unusual childhood, homeless, at times unloved and wild. She grows up unsupervised, starving and resilient. Her family was once one of the elites, her grandfather an international authority on linguistics but now fallen from Stalin's favour as are most of the family's adults - Bolshevik intellectuals, executed or sent to exile, others left to survive as untouchable Pariahs through the war years as best they can.
I'm a big fan of Petrushevskaya's books and now having read this memoir I'm in total awe that she managed to survive, let alone grow up and win the Pushkin Prize in 1991.

from the NYTimes review: 'Like a stained-glass Chagall window, Petrushevskaya’s Soviet-era memoir creates a larger panorama out of tiny, vivid chapters, shattered fragments of different color and shape. She throws the misery of her daily life into relief through the use of fairy-tale metaphors familiar to fans of her fiction: At the end of a chapter about being mistreated by other children at the sanitarium, she writes: “The circle of animal faces had never crushed the girl; it remained behind, among the tall trees of the park, in the enchanted kingdom of wild berries.” Ultimately, the girl emerges not only uncrushed but one of Russia’s best, and most beloved, contemporary authors, which brings to mind Auden’s famous words about Yeats: “Mad Ireland hurt him into poetry.” This memoir shows us how Soviet life hurt Ludmilla Petrushevskaya into crystalline prose.' https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/books/review/girl-from-the-metropol-hotel-lud...

>37 avatiakh: I read a novel a while ago called Peter Abelard by Helen Waddell, and I remember really enjoying it!

Wow - you've been doing lots of great reading! Taking BBs for The Betrayers, Bone Season, Collision and Between Sky and Sea.

I noticed that today is your 10th Anniversary with LT. Happy Thingaversary!

>50 christina_reads: I'll have to check that one out

>51 LisaMorr: So hard when you collect BBs from visiting threads.

>52 DeltaQueen50: Thanks you. I posted on my 75er thread -
My LT thingaversary is coming up, special 10th anniversary this time round. I finally took the plunge at betterworldbooks the other day and ordered the ones that had been spending some time sitting in the shopping basket, the free shipping makes this the best place for me to shop for used books:

The roots of heaven by Romain Gary
The Wilder Shores of Love by Lesley Branch - Gary's wife
Letters by Mary Wortley Montagu
Biography of a Germ by Arno Karlen
The Conformist by Alberto Moravia
Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade by Patrick Dennis
The Maker Of Heavenly Trousers by Daniele Varè
In a Dark Wood by Marcel Moring
Julian by Gore Vidal
The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa
Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli

Happy Thingaversary! Congrats on the new Tenner badge.

Happy thingaversary! Enjoy the badge and the new books!

Thanks, I've been away for a week or so but back into it all. Have several books to update.

Shooting Stars by Brian Falkner (2016)
YA

I really enjoy Brian's books and this one was also a great read. I don't like the cover which put me off reading it for several months even though the book got excellent reviews here in NZ.
This is about a 15yr old boy, Egan, who has been raised by his mother in remote bush, he's grown completely isolated from other human contact since he was a baby. When his mother doesn't return from a supplies trip, he's forced to go out into the world with only the 30 rules from his code of honour to help him.
Falkner's next publication looks to be a collection of short stories.

Three Summers by Judith Clarke (2012)
YA
I love the cover of this one, however even though I bought it when it first came out, I never got round to reading it. Clarke wrote One Whole and Perfect Day which I really loved and possibly my love for that book stalled me from picking up this one....and I was right, I was disappointed. The writing is still very good but I just didn't engage at all with the plot or the characters.
It's 1959 in a rural Australian town, 17yr old Ruth has just received her scholarship results in the mail, she'll be off to Sydney university in a few weeks while her best friend is staying home to marry.
Throughout her life Ruth is haunted by local boy Tam Finn, he got several of the local girls in trouble, was disinherited by his father. He has some sort of enchanted hold on Ruth, though he has long wandered away from the town.
Once retired and home from a career in London, Ruth fosters a damaged young girl who reminds her in some ways of Tam Finn, she wonders if he could have been her grandfather.

I have her The Winds of Heaven to read.

The glory boys by Gerald Seymour (1976)
fiction
This is an older thriller that I picked up from the library, mainly because the plot revolved round a Palestinian terrorist plot to assassinate an Israeli nuclear scientist. It starts off well but I found that last 25% of the novel a bit of a slog to read, just too much introspection and not enough action. I'll keep reading Seymour as I've enjoyed some of his more recent ones.

From under the overcoat by Sue Orr (2011)
short stories

I've been waiting a long time to read this one. I went to a talk way back when, where Orr discussed her book. Each story has been inspired by a well known short story, several are classics. I put off reading it as I thought that maybe I should read the original stories first and so never got round to reading either.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I loved the first story and then found the rest a bit less stellar. At the end of the book Orr details the stories that each one is based on which was interesting. At the very end is the original story 'The Overcoat' by Gogol (1842). I have to admit that I almost cheated and didn't read the Gogol story as I felt that I'd read the book by the time I got to it.

The first story which I enjoyed a lot was 'Journeyman' and was inspired by 'Boule de Suif' by Guy De Maupassant. This was about a young father, David, who earns a great salary but most of it ends up purchasing special medication for his infant son. They live on an extremely tight budget so when he's invited by co-workers for a golfing weekend he's inclined to not accept. Once away at the remote and luxurious resort he discovers the $400 he's put aside for the weekend barely covers a night's accommodation and the reader sweats alongside David as he worries how he's to survive the weekend and pay for it. His co-workers are all big spenders, used to the good life, and oblivious to David's dilemma.

Once 9:53am terror in Buenos Aires by Ilan Stavans & Marcelo Brodsky (2011 Spanish) (2016 Eng)
fotonovela

My library purchased this on my request and I hope other readers benefit from it as well. Fotonovelas have been very popular in Latin America and I don't think I've come across one in English before. Stavans writes about how he and Brodsky collaborated on this project and how it all came together in the afterword.
Basically the fotonovela requires a script, storyboard and actors, costuming, permissions for photographing in the street, in special areas etc, so is quite complex for all that the finished product appears quite 'simple'.

The story is a fictional re-enactment of the hours before the 1994 AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) bombing in Buenos Aires. It was known that the Iranian terrorists spent time in the Once (On-ce) neighbourhood before driving to the AMIA building in their van. Stavans and Brodsky show a photographer taking street scenes, becoming interested in a young blonde woman in a red shirt (she turns out to be with the terrorists) and following her, also meeting with a group of religious Jews and making arrangements to photograph a yeshiva. He hears gossip about Middle Easterners hanging around on the street and when he sees and photographs them he is assaulted and his camera is thrown on a rubbish truck. Not long after a massive 'boom' fills the air. 85 people were killed and over 300 injured. The perpetrators were never caught, but it is known that they were Iranian. There have been accusations of cover-ups, bribery etc at government level.

I found the fotonovella approach quite fascinating as a creative project. Reading Stavans' afterword really helped me understand the complexity of putting it together. I'm fairly familiar with the bustling Once neighbourhood as I've spent quite a bit of time there on numerous visits to BA, it would also be familiar to readers of The Ministry of Special Cases

Stavans: 'Since the post-1994 investigations have done nothing but hide them behind innuendoes, my explicit objective was to give the terrorist a face. I used the format of the fotonovela to give them a physicality they otherwise lacked.
Shooting took a total of three days. Brodsky took close to ten thousand pictures. In the months that followed he organized the material and began collaboration with a designer who developed the narrative while also inserting dialogic balloons and other comic-strip devices.
Ultimately, my dream was to use the very tools of popular culture in order to produce rigorous knowledge and to disseminate that knowledge in an alternative scholarly format. I wanted it to look like a comic yet deliver a serious message about the intersection of politics and religious freedom in Latin America. I wanted to amuse and stimulate, to provoke thought and generate discussion. Mostly, I wanted to reach a diverse audience beyond the Ivory Tower.'
__

While we run by Karen Healey (2014)
YA scifi
The sequel to When we wake. I should have read this closer to reading the first book as I found myself not really attuned to the characters anymore. The story itself is quite interesting, set in a future Australia that is devastated by climate change and investing in cyronics. In the first book we were introduced to Tegan who was cyronically frozen back in 2027 and brought to life in 2128, the first successful rebirth. In this sequel the story is from the POV of Abdi, who manages to be both vulnerable and once on the run, resourceful.
The book is fairly political dealing with third world refugees, an elite society and corrupt government, propaganda etc. The teen characters are diverse including Abdi, ex-Muslim from Djibouti; Bethari, devout Muslim; Joph, transgender lesbian. This feels too PC in some ways, there is deliberately no teen white male character in the books. That said I love this cover. Adding the cover for When we wake which features Tegan for comparison.

The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam (2017)
fiction

An interesting read. I've loved everything Amsterdam has written, this is different from his previous books, it deals with euthanasia. In real life when he's not writing books Amsterdam works as a palliative care nurse so he can bring considerable experience of caring for the terminally ill to this novel.

Evan's new nursing job is as a suicide assistant. He's there at the final reckoning for the terminally ill, to go through all the official signing offs before finally handing the fatal dose of Nembutal to the patient. It isn't easy and his supervisor warns him about becoming part of the proceedings rather than being a neutral presence in the room. The support each patient receives from loved ones varies and there are at times complications. Evan finds he can't talk about what he does out of work as people have strong views on the subject. The plot involves Evan's complicated relationship with his mother who is fiercely independent but now requiring more help than she'll admit to needing. The final scenes between Evan and his mother are beautifully written.

Fiction is, in many ways, an ideal medium for examining a contentious subject such as euthanasia. At once hypothetical and immediate, a novel has the potential to de-essentialise the issue, dramatise its complexity, make palpable its human dimension.
For a novel that addresses a life-and-death subject, The Easy Way Out strikes an unusual tone. In fact, one of the things that makes it an interesting book is that, though it has its moments of pathos, it is not overly earnest or solemn. Evan’s narration is worldly, wry and at times sardonic.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/steven-amsterdams-the-easy-way-out-f...

False Colours by Georgette Heyer (1963)
fiction
This was rather fun. A twin has to step in for his brother who has not returned from a few days away, there is an important dinner date and possibility of a betrothal.

The rules of backyard cricket by Jock Serong (2016)
crime

Bloody brilliant. Two brothers, both excellent cricketers, the younger brother, Darren, has the talent and cocky larrikan nature while Wally has the balanced temperament and is the quiet achiever. While Darren's star flames out too early through injury, Wally's career in test cricket is lengthy. Darren's behaviour, the lack of discipline, dabbling in drugs and booze, reflects badly at times on his older more steadier brother.
The book begins with Darren stuffed in the boot of a car, shot in the knee, ankles and wrists bound with cable ties, his mouth gagged by duct tape. Each chapter starts with his current situation, trying fruitlessly to free himself, and then goes on to tells his life story, from the early backyard cricket games with his brother, his downfall through to how and why he finds himself in this particular situation.
I'm definitely going to read more by this Australian writer, this is his second book and his third has just been published, On the Java Ridge.

Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz (2016)
thriller
A little implausible but once you engage with the plot it's great entertainment and nonstop action. I stayed up late to finish it as the pages started to fly by. Orphan Evan Smoak has been trained since childhood to be one of a group of deadly government assassins. Known only as 'Orphan X', he's been highly successful but now for various reasons he's out of the program and has set himself up in LA. He runs a private mission from time to time to help ordinary people out of really bad situations. One thing Evan hasn't learnt in his training is how to have a relationship with real people. What makes this stand out from just the typical thriller is the more normal side of life with Evan forced to participate with the people living in his apartment building, having to attend property maintenance meetings etc etc.
I'll be reading the next one.

Thraxas and the Elvish Isles by Martin Scott/Millar (2000)
fantasy
Thraxas #4. Possibly you could call this pulp fantasy but all I know is I find them very fun reads. This time Thraxas travels to the Elvish Isles to uncover a mystery around the burning of a sacred Elvish tree, his friend's daughter is accused of the crime. As always his sidekick, Makri, ends up coming with him.

The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz (2017)
fiction

I found this novel highly entertaining even though I didn't like any of the characters. Anyway Naomi is the ex-activist principal of a liberal college. She's happy for the students to protest, she considers it a healthy part of their educational experience and she looks back happily on her own memories of feminist activism. However when a new protest starts up, she finds herself on the wrong side and facing a protest that proceeds in a very modern way.
The students are protesting that a popular teacher has not been given tenure and must now leave the college. Because of privacy concerns, the details surrounding his tenure can't be made public, but the college has acted very appropriately.
The book revolves around the current issues facing American colleges, issues of identity politics, safe spaces and college admissions process.

Arabella by Georgette Heyer (1949)
fiction

Found this one to be an enchanting read. Arabella is quite the adorable heroine.

The stranger from the sea by Winston Graham (1981)
fiction

Poldark #8. Still worth reading this series though I find the Poldark children less enthralling than their parents, there is enough story here to keep me interested.

Perfect Couple by Derek Hansen (2001)
fiction

Read for my ANZAC challenge - read a book about a marriage.
This was right on topic but a fairly dated read perhaps. Rowan and Sandra have what seems like a perfect marriage, with two delightful little girls. Rowan is building a successful advertising business but has a problem, he sleeps around quite a bit. The couple take a holiday in Fiji and they're delighted that Sandra soon falls pregnant, the ultrasound confirms it's Rowan's long hoped for son...but when he's born, let's just say he's definitely not Rowan's son, he's definitely half-Fijian. The fallout affects not only the marriage, but also Rowan's business.
I've enjoyed Hansen's other books, this is a bit different, not really my thing, but I still found it interesting as Rowan's manly pride, self esteem etc etc really took a beating and as he works in advertising, status is everything

No place to lay one's head by Françoise Frenkel (1945)
memoir
This was written in 1943 by the author, mostly to recount her time in southern France and her attempts to cross into Switzerland, to escape the Nazis. The book was not well known and has only recently been translated to English by Australian Stephanie Smee, which is how it caught my eye. I loved Smee's translations of the children's books by Countess de Segur. There's an introduction by Patrick Modiano.
Frenkel was originally from Poland, she lived in Paris while studying French literature, and then moved to Berlin where she opened a successful French language bookshop in 1921. In 1939 she was forced to abandon her shop and home and return to Paris. From there she ended up living in the south of France, but even there the roundups of Jews began. It was quite perilous for foreign born Jews, they had to keep applying for permits to stay and many were sent to internment camps in France. Frenkel managed to obtain a visa to Switzerland but still had to get across the border. She was successful on the third attempt, after spending time in a French jail and a trial for attempting to leave France without the necessary exit visa.
Not much is known about Frenkel's life after the war except that she moved back to France and lived in the south. None of her Polish family is thought to have survived, her husband who is not mentioned in the book, left Berlin in 1933 and was transported from Paris to Auschwitz in 1942.

Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub (2011 Brazil) (2014 Eng)
fiction

I read this too slowly for it to have much of an impact on me, more a novel to admire than be absorbed by. I found the lack of page numbers quite annoying, the paragraphs in each chapter are numbered instead. The author was named one of Granta's 'Best Young Brazilian Novelists' and this is his fifth novel but first to be translated to English. The book won a couple of awards in Brazil.

The protagonist grapples with an event from his early adolescence, he considers it a pivotal moment in his life, as he also deals with fallout from his father's own moment and the experiences of his grandfather in Auschwitz. His father was 14, when he walked in on the scene of his grandfather's suicide. His own moment was at the Bar Mitzvah of an unpopular schoolmate when he and his friends decided not to catch him when the boy is thrown in the air, an act that causes the boy injury.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling (2005)
YA
Harry Potter #6. I'm doing a slow listen of the Stephen Fry narration of these books. Can't say I'm finding the story that compelling this time round, but will keep on and get the last book done.

The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (1954)
children's fiction

First in a series of books about Roman Britain that I would have loved to read as a child but don't think I ever did. Anyway it's long been on my radar to read Sutcliff's books and finally I've made a start.
The book concerns a missing legion of Roman soldiers who marched north into the wilds of Scotland and never returned. Marcus, the son of the leader of the legion, is the main character. Although it is a children's book, all the characters are adults.
I enjoyed this and will be making my way through her other books.

The Blue Cat by Ursula Dubosarsky (2017)
children's

Meh. This sort of story doesn't appeal to me. Columba is a young Australian girl living in Sydney and we see World War Two through her eyes; the German Jewish refugee boy who doesn't speak English, a brief encounter with American soldiers off to war, the news headlines, a practice air raid siren. There's a blue cat in there as well but only features on a couple of pages.
I enjoyed her other books and this one is quite evocative of the times, but a little too bland.

How to stop time by Matt Haig (2017)
fiction
I enjoy Haig's books and this was great, the ending could have been slightly more dramatic, but overall the book did its job. Tom has a condition that he only ages one year in every ten, so he's lived through about 400 years by the time we catch up with him. He had to leave his one true love in Elizabethan times when local superstitions about witches and enchantments had made their lives unbearable and unsafe. All these years later he still regrets leaving. What I loved with this book is the jumping around in time, with the constant return to the present where his latest role is that of History teacher in London.

The hate U give by Angie Thomas (2017)
YA
I noticed this book getting a lot of praise and hype so had to have a look for myself.
What I like is how in the moment it is, Thomas is writing about concerns that the BLM movement evolved from; the police shooting of a youth who has been pulled over for a minor traffic offense. Starr, the main character, happens to be in the car with him at the time.
I can see why it is getting the attention, the book will certainly generate discussion, though I found it overlong and not gritty enough like say Clockers, which is an adult novel, but one that could be read by this age group. Perhaps this is because Starr lives in two worlds, her home in the broken neighbourhood with drive-by shootings, gangs and drugs and the safe elite high school in a nearby suburb that her parents have managed to get her and her brother into, a school with only three African American students. So there are quite a few issues with identity and I found some of the peripheral characters a little too one-dimensional. That said I can see that Thomas was probably aiming to appeal to the general YA reader, to introduce them to a world they might not usually enter, so kudos for that balancing act.

An extract from The Atlantic review:

Thomas’s book derives its title from the rapper Tupac Shakur’s philosophy of THUG LIFE—which purportedly stands for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody”—and it’s a motif the novel returns to a few times. The acronym tattooed across Tupac’s abdomen could be read as an embrace of a dangerous lifestyle. But, as Khalil explains to Starr, just minutes before the cop pulls them over, it’s really an indictment of systemic inequality and hostility: “What society gives us as youth, it bites them in the ass when we wild out.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/03/the-hate-u-give-angie-...

The forest of souls by Carla Banks (2005)
fiction
Carla Banks is a pseudonym of Danuta Reah. One side of my husband's family came from Minsk in Belarus and I was looking earlier this year for some fiction set in Belarus and this was one of very few books that I came across at the time. Set mainly in the UK, the story begins with a murder of an academic researcher, involves her best friend, also an academic and a journalist who is writing a book on the experiences of East European immigrants who made their way to England after WW2. He's also interested in stories of war criminals posing as refugees. The story involves how many in the Minsk region first saw the Nazis as liberators, freeing them from the Red Army, though quickly this idea dissipated as stories of mass killings in the nearby forests began to circulate.
While the subject matter was quite disheartening, the overall story was interesting and the solving of the crime became of less concern than the unmasking of who was in England under a stolen identity.

A nest of vipers by Andrea Camilleri (2017 Eng)
crime
Montalbano #21. Interesting author's note that Camilleri wrote this earlier in the series but publication was held back as the plot was a little similar to another one. Because of this perhaps Livia gets a slightly better deal in the story than she's been having in the last couple of outings. Anyway I loved reentering Montalbano's world once again and I've just put book #22 The pyramid of mud which is due out early next year on hold at the library.

April Lady by Georgette Heyer (1957)
fiction
Another Heyer and I have 3 or 4 left of the hardbacks I picked up and am reading through before giving to my mother for her Heyer collection. Anyway this one is not a favourite. Nell is about 18yrs and married to an older Giles who's in his 30s, it's actually a love match except that neither of them are aware that the other married for love. Add in Nell's spendthrift gambling brother, Giles' younger impetuous sister who is under his guardianship and a few too many pressing bills for expensive gowns that Nell can't pay for due to loaning money to her brother.

The husband's secret by Liane Moriaty (2013)
fiction
This was one of my 75er santa books, so I've now read two and have two left to read, a better record for me than previous years.
This was a good yarn, well told and a convincing plot. Cecilia is happily married these past 10 or 15 years, a wonderful husband, 3 lovely young daughters and a thriving career in tupperware sales. Then when looking in the attic for an old souvenir she comes across a sealed envelope, written by her husband at the time of the birth of their first daughter, one of those 'to be opened in event of my death' ones. Should she open it and discover her husband's darkest secret or continue along with her perfect life and pretend she'd never found it.

The shell : memoirs of a hidden observer by Mustafa Khalifa (2008 Arabic) (2016 Eng)
fiction
This is based on Khalifa's own story of his imprisonment in one of Syria's most notorious prisons, Tadmur. Brutal but necessary reading that helps you understand why the civil war had to happen.

'He went to university in France, where he studied art and film direction, and was arrested at the Damascus airport when he returned from Paris. From 1982-1994, Khalifa was held without trial at various state security prisons, including the infamous Tadmur Military Prison, a detention center described as a “kingdom of death and madness” by poet Faraj Bayraqdar and the “absolute prison” by dissident Yassin al-Haj Salih. The Shell is his first and only book, and has been lauded as one of the finest examples of Arabic prison literature.' http://www.andotherstories.org/author/mustafa-khalifa/

The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurwitz (2017)
fiction
Orphan X #2. Reasonable second in series and I'll keep reading for the escapism value. One of those thriller type reads where the hero, Evan Moake, is basically invincible no matter what gets thrown at him, add in a side serving of MacGyver style survival skills. The villain in this installment was utterly despicable and had poor Evan in his clutches for most of the book.

Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine (2007)
YA
Alternate US title: Me, the missing and the Dead. I liked the previous book by Valentine I read and this has long been on my tbr list so added it to Anita's TIOLI colours of the rainbow challenge.
I quite liked the idea of the plot, though felt the ending was a bit rushed. Lucas Swain, a 16yr old Londoner, becomes obsessed with finding out about an old lady, Violet Park, whose ashes are in an urn that was left in a taxi cab over five years earlier. The urn has spent those five years sitting on a dusty shelf in the office where he has by chance come to get a cab home late one night. Once started on his quest he discovers several leads quite close to home, it's almost like the old lady is calling to him

Your recent reading includes some very interesting reads and I have taken a BB for both Shooting Stars and for The Rules of Backyard Cricket.

Forest of souls sounds interesting - but my library doesn't have it, so I'm putting it on my wish list. Recently checked out one of Camilleri's mysteries on audio - this is a new series for me.

You've been getting in some great reading. The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong is a BB for me.

Back to pick some up more BBs: The Rules of Backyard Cricket, Orphan X and How to Stop Time. I also have the 2 Heyers you liked waiting to be read.

So many interesting books in your thread, impressive! And even though I'm not reading children's books and graphic novels myself, I enjoy to llok at the beautiful art you are sharing with us. I've also listed a few BBs, surprise, surprise... :)

I enjoyed checking out what you've read since June. So many interesting topics covered. I've been listening to the Harry Potter books, too, but the Jim Dale version. It's frustrating since I always lose the book before finished and then have to be on the waitlist to get it again.

>80 avatiakh: I've finished only 8 of the Montalbano series but am liking them a lot so far, so it's great to see you're still enjoying them at #21.

Oh thanks everyone for visiting. I've been neglecting my challenge quite a lot so will do an update this weekend.
>86 DeltaQueen50: >88 VivienneR: >89 LisaMorr: The RUles of Backyard Cricket was very good. I hope it becomes available

>87 markon: That book seems to be quite obscure. I ended up buying a cheapish large print copy through abebooks.

>89 LisaMorr: I've just got one Georgette Heyer left to read now. I had several hardbacks I'd picked up in a charity shop to pass on to my mother and thought I'd read them first.

>90 Chrischi_HH: I do like to expose the illustrations to a wider audience so glad to read that you enjoy them.

>91 mamzel: I've moved on now to reread through audio the Philip Pullman's Golden Compass trilogy. He's just released La Belle Sauvage which is set in the same world, so I thought I'd do a catch up first.

>92 mathgirl40: I read all new releases by Ian Rankin, Camilleri and Lee Child at present. I request them through the library as soon as I hear about them and generally get near the front of the queue.

Superpowerless by Chris Priestley (2017)
YA
Impressive, Chris Priestley just gets better and better. 16 yr old David lost his father about 3 years earlier and since then he's isolated himself from his classmates and mother. He's moved up to the attic, where his father had his office, and spends his time spying on neighbours with a telescope and reading his Dad's old comic collection. He imagines himself as some sort of superhero. Into his life comes Holly, a university dropout, she's got her own baggage.

The weight of ink by Rachel Kadish (2017)
fiction
This is a five star read for me. The story is divided between 21st century academia and the 17th century Jewish community in London. For the two scholars of Jewish history it's a race against others to discover the secrets in a bundle of old papers found during renovations to an historic home in London. And it's the story of Esther, a young Sephardic Jewess who values learning over marriage, a concept not acceptable in 17th century society. Just wonderful, both timelines were equally engaging.

Exit, pursued by a bear by E.K. Johnston (2016)
YA
I'm enjoying all that I read by Johnston. I have her Spindle, sequel to A Thousand Nights to read, but first I'm hanging out for her October release, That Inevitable Victorian Thing which is speculative fiction and sounds quite interesting.
Exit, pursued by a bear is a contemporary take on Shakespeare's The winter's tale in that it's about a very strong friendship. It's also a reaction to her anger at a Canadian politician wanting to recriminalise abortion. I liked it, especially the cheerleading aspects which surprised me as I've never thought much about cheerleading before. Johnston says in the author notes that she wanted to write a book that shows how getting the support you need from police, health institutions, counsellors, teachers, parents and friends can help a survivor to not become a permanent victim. This is another worthwhile addition to the YA canon.
Hermione is in her last year of high-school and co-captain of the school's cheerleading squad. When the squad goes to a summer camp with a couple of other schools, a date-rape drug is slipped into her drink and she is found a few hours later, unconscious and obviously the victim of an assault. While she has no memory of what happened, she also decides that she's not going to allow it to turn her into a victim and she's aided by her best friend, co-captain Polly. There's gossip, social media speculation etc etc to be confronted as well as the chance that she'll suffer a relapse. She has to trust the boys in her squad as she is one of the fliers and the routines depend on the squad working together flawlessly. The squad heads to the national finals.

There's an interview with E.K. Johnston here: http://www.momadvice.com/post/sundays-with-writers-exit-pursued-by-a-bear-by-e-k...

Thraxas and the sorcerers by Martin Scott/Millar (2001)
fantasy
Thraxas #5 of 10. I've now reached the end of my Thraxas paperbacks, the next 5 are available as e-books at my library but I'll take a break and get some other series reading done as there's quite a few interesting sequels etc getting published in October. In this one Thaxas is hired to be in the background of the election of a new Grand Sorcerer, making sure that all remains above board as much bribery and skulduggery must happen due to the political implications of the event.

Monsieur Cadichon: memoirs of a donkey by Comtesse de Ségur (2011 Eng) (1860 French)
childrens

Delightful tales told by Cadichon, the donkey about his life, his various owners both good and bad, his behaviour both good and bad and his path to redemption. This was very amusing and also a great glimpse of 19th century storytelling for children. I've loved all the children's books by the Comtesse that I've read so far. All have been freshly translated in the past few years by Australian Stephanie Smee. I only have the last two books in the Fleurville trilogy to read.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen retold by Terence Blacker & illustrator Willie Rushton (1990)
childrens

This was a fun silly read of tall tales of Baron Munchausen's adventures. '...hilarious re-telling of Rudolph Erich Raspe's famous tall tales.'

Artichoke's Heart by Suzanne Supplee (2008)
YA
Rosemary is a delightful heroine in this story. She's smart & funny and quite overweight. She has secret stashes of snickers bars and M&Ms under her bed and a resistant attitude to weight issues. However this Christmas she over indulges and realises that she needs to take control of her life rather than just reacting to everything, easier said than done when you have self-esteem issues. Supplee deals with the obesity issue with sensitivity.

The tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare (1592)
play
I listened to the audio while following along with the print edition. Some words/phrases were different and/or order changed. I had started out with The Hollow Crown dvd but big chunks of dialogue were missing. Anyway the Naxos audiobook was excellent with Kenneth Branagh as Richard and brought the text alive.

Shylock is my name: The Merchant of Venice Retold by Howard Jacobson (2016)
fiction

This is part of the Hogarth series on Shakespeare retellings. The book is set in present day England, and Shylock is a house guest at the home of Strulovitch whose story begins to be a reflection of Shylock's own. It's hard to know if Shylock is really there, he has ghost-like qualities at times. I struggled through the parts which are probably the most philosophical, where Shylock and Strulovitch converse at length. It's a fairly unhappy tale and Jacobson is really strong at putting everything on the table, warts and all.
I think he succeeds with the retelling though I can't see this ever being a popular read.

Wilder Country by Mark Smith (2017)
YA
The Road to Winter #2. This Australian dystopian adventure series is fairly action packed and a quick read. The world has been hit by a virus that's wiped out most of the population. In the first book we're introduced to young teen, Finn, who is by himself now, living in a small coastal Western Australian town with occasional trading visits to Ben, an older guy who lives on a rural property. Into his world comes Rose, pregnant and hunted by the Wilders, a violent gang that uses force to get what they need.
Now in the second book, Finn and Kas, Rose's sister, go into Wilder country, looking for Rose's kidnapped baby.
Rose and Kas are sileys or asylum seekers in the past. In this book Finn and Kas come across more siley survivors, a more menacing bunch who call themselves No-landers and have introduced a warlord like culture from their homeland. These sileys are more likely to kill to conquer and look to become more powerful and brutal than the Wilders.
Its been interesting to read two YA dystopian novels written recently that both give prominence to asylum seekers.
The other books were Karen Healey's When we wake & While we run.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (2007)
YA

So since late last year I've been listening to Stephen Fry narrate the HP series. This was a revisit to the series as I'd read the books when they first came out, generally devouring the books in a couple of sessions to avoid any mention of spoilers. The first three books I also read aloud several times to my children when they were little.
So now I'm done, I found Harry to be an annoying and angry teen for most of the last few books. The second half of this last book became quite exciting as finally the final confrontation was to be had.
Overall a good series, though less compelling than the first visit. My favourite book remains The Prisoner of Azkaban.

I've been watching the new The Worst Witch tv series on Netflix. I read the book yonks ago, and this new series is fun, less scary than HP so if anyone is looking for a juvenile magical series this would be it. The book was first published back in 1974.

2017 with Bella Ramsey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3fHWN0FtBs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0W4I0mt_fs
1998 with Felicity Jones: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2l1k4d

The store by James Patterson & Richard DiLallo (2017)
fiction

My first Patterson and probably my last. It's a clumsy thriller, the villian being an Amazon.com type clone that has taken drones, surveillance and big brother tactics to the extreme. When their latest 'history of rap' manuscript has been turned down by both their independent publisher and The Store's publishing team, Jacob and Megan decide to research and write an expose of the internet giant. They move their family to New Burg to start their new jobs in the warehouse division of The Store. New Burg is really creepy in a Stepford Wives-ish way.
Not compelling reading though one I wanted to read once I heard about the book as Patterson had slammed Amazon in the past, especially when we all thought e-books might take over and they had such a monopoly on those
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/05/29/james-patterson-amazon-hach...

'Prolific best-selling author James Patterson told CNBC on Friday that his new work of fiction about an out-of-control big e-commerce retailer is not really about Amazon or its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos.
"I'm not out here to necessarily beat up Amazon as much as deal with this whole area of monopolies and megalomaniacs," Patterson said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "This is a strange era … of techy billionaires who are kind of running the world now."' https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/11/james-patterson-new-book-isnt-about-amazon-and-b...

Till now amazon has only had a digital store in Australia, but next year they'll also be selling a full range of products online to both Australia and New Zealand. So their monopoly of the world's retail continues to grow and I really start to wonder if they can ever be stopped from being so dominant.
https://ajp.com.au/news/amazon-australias-not-ready/
http://www.smh.com.au/business/innovation/red-flags-raised-over-amazons-australi...
'Amazon effect' has spooked local retailers

..and Europe is starting to crack down on Amazon's ability to evade tax
Europe’s Tax Beef With American Tech Giants

I'd rather be a fairy princess by Petra Kotrotsos and Christina Irini Arathimos (2017)
picturebook, new zealand

19 yr old Petra & collaborator Christina have written and ilustrated a children's story about Petra's childhood, she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma when she was six and had to have chemotherapy. 'First diagnosed aged 6, she successfully fought it four times by the age of 15. She underwent several rounds of chemotherapy, radiation and a spinal reconstruction.'
Quite a straightforward book to share with children about dealing with cancer at a young age.
Both authors are from Wellington's Greek community.

Wellington cancer patient and author Petra Kotrotsos shares her book with six year old Victoria at Wellington Hospital. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/94445258/when-cancer-attacks-you-have-to...

https://makaropress.co.nz/submarine-books-2/id-rather-be-a-fairy-princess-by-pet...

Meet the parents by Peter Bently ills Sara Ogilvie (2014)
picturebook
Fun read about how chaotic life can be for children and how useful parents are even if they don't always do what you want.



The covers of my book are too far apart! (and other grumbles) by Vivian French and ill. Nigel Baines
picturebook
The title speaks to reluctant readers, though really the book is mainly about why we should read books, the joy of reading etc. Sort of preachy but in a good way. Adults will enjoy this. The publisher specialises in books for reluctant readers, dyslexic readers etc. Also brings out a YA range of exciting, mature books of short length.




The street beneath my feet by Charlotte Guillian and Yuval Zommer (2017)
picturebook
Interesting look at the world under our feet and how it all works. I think this is part of a series where you turn the book on it's side and view double page spread. Great for the inquisitive child.

Towards another summer by Janet Frame (2007)
fiction
The title comes from Charles Brasch's poem The Islands:
…and from their haunted bay
The godwits vanish towards another summer
and the poem is refered to throughout the book.
I listened to the audio cd. This is a posthumous publication, about 3 years after Frame's death. It feels very personal and autobiographical. Reclusive Grace is living and writing in London, she's a sparkling correspondent but extremely socially awkward in person. She's also comparing herself throughout to a migratory bird returning to a New Zealand summer. She accepts an invitation to visit a friend and his wife for a weekend in a small town. The entire time she's there, she's suffering from distinct ineptitude in conversation, dealing with the unexpected two small children, and general social niceties. After a couple of nights, she shortens her stay and returns to London. There is also reflection on her childhood.
It's quite painful to read as it's so personal and Frame would possibly not have wanted this published.

'A migratory bird may fly there, Grace thought, and felt herself immediately there with the touch of airless space upon her feathers; in the skyless world she felt neither leaden nor buoyant; where before in the world the wind curved and ruffled her feathers moulding them into subservience, separating their fronds into trembling fountain-shapes through which the sun, believing them to be the movements of water, hung rainbows; where before the wind guided her flight or sustained her motionless poise, now a surge of nothing enfolded her feathers, as if a cloud were being knitted to enclose her body; yet there were no boundaries; stone-falling, she would fall for ever; the land was for ever.'

Seeking whom he may devour by Fred Vargas (1999)
crime
Commissaire Adamsberg #2. A wolf is killing sheep in rural France, a group of wolves came over from Italy and established themselves in a national park some years before, but one seems to have gone rogue. A local woman farmer has been killed and now rumours have started that it's a werewolf or a werewolf with a wolf. Adamsberg gets drawn in when he sees an old girlfriend on the news, she's living in the village at the centre of the incidents.
Great second installment, I'll keep reading as I find them.

Scarface Claw, Hold Tight by Lynley Dodd (2017)
picturebook

Yes, there's a peek of Hairy Maclary in this new book by Dodd. Scarface Claw is curled up in one of his favourite spots having a snooze, unfortunately it's the roof of Tom's car and when Tom pops down the road on an errand, he's wondering why everyone is waving at him. Poor Scarface is clutching on tight with his claws and doing a great surfing imitation as they drive down the road.


Augustus and his smile by Catherine Rayner (2001)
picturebook

Love this one. Augustus looks everywhere for his smile and then finds it when he's happy. The star here are the beautiful illustrations of Augustus, he's so adorable. Interesting positioning of text on most pages.

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The grammar of spice by Caz Hildebrand
nonfiction
Really think this is a beautiful book, I brought it home from the library today.
a compendium of info on spices, each spice is accompanied by a illustrative reproduction from The grammar of ornament.
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Say zoop! by Hervé Tullet (2017)
picturebook

My first reactions were - clever....but possibly gimmicky. I might have read his Press Here, not sure. Anyway this one is cute, you are introduced to a blue dot and 'trained' to say 'oh!' Loud for a big dot and soft for a small dot. After some fun pages you are introduced to a red dot and to say 'ah!'. etc etc

one came home by Amy Timberlake (2014)
children's fiction

I listened to the audio of this and didn't like the narration one bit though I grew used to it.
Set in 1871 Placid, Wisconsin. When the sheriff brings home the mutilated body of Georgie's runaway older sister wrapped in the memorable blue-green gown, Georgie is convinced the body is not her sister. Georgie plans her own factfinding mission to find out the truth. Overall quite a good read, Georgie is resourceful and determined.
The plot also revolves round the hunting of the passenger pigeons which are now extinct.
https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS366

At the time the Europeans began exploring North America, ornithologists and historians estimate that there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons, constituting 25 to 40 percent of the total North American bird population. Each spring they migrated from the South to the Midwest, making a return journey in the fall, darkening the sky with their passing. A combination of their nesting habits, over hunting, and the clear cutting of forests caused their extinction. The last passenger pigeon, a captive bird named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoological Garden on September 1, 1914.

http://archive.jsonline.com/entertainment/books/amy-timberlakes-one-came-home-se...

The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham (1982)
fiction
Poldark #9. Raced through this as I'm playing catchup. A good read, I especially liked the little escapade at the end of the book. Anyway I've already started the next one so I'll be up to date again with the group read.

The quiet earth by Craig Harrison (1981)
scifi

I'd seen the film years ago and now finally read the book. The narrative differs a lot from the film, I'm now halfway through a re-watch. Anyway a man wakes one morning to silence and the discovery that all other life has vanished, possibly at 6.12am exactly. As he drives around the countryside and back to the city where he lives he comes to understand that there might be a scientific explanation for what has happened
My copy, a Text Classic edition, has an introduction by Bernard Beckett who mentions that Harrison modeled it a little on the idea of Robinson Crusoe.
I'm now quite excited to read a YA that has been kicking around home for ages, The Dumpster Saga, as I had not realised that this was also written by Harrison, it got excellent reviews when it came out about 9 years ago.

The Loving Cup by Winston Graham (1984)
fiction
Poldark #10. Excellent continuation of the series. Can't wait for book #11 though I do know what happens due to reading a spoiler description of book #12. Ross & Demelza's children continue to grow, the older two are both drawn to people that have led them a merry dance over the past few books and this continues here. The younger Bella is just finding her way into her teens, the final book focuses on her.

Kingsman: the secret service by Mark Millar et al (2012)
graphic novel
This is what the popular Kingsman film is based on and I think I enjoyed the film a bit more than this GN. Still an interesting read for the original plot.

Out of the woods: a journey through depression and anxiety by Brent Williams (2017)
graphic memoir
An amazingly honest look at mid-life depression and Williams' attempts to navigate and exit while avoiding prescription drugs. He does this through diet, exercise, massage and finding the right therapist. Later he moves to a more peaceful location and also rebuilds his relationship with his now adult children. This could be considered a guidebook for sufferers and especially family and friends of the depressed. Williams kept a diary through his journey which provided the basis for the manuscript.
Published by New Zealand Educational Resources.
The artwork is by Turkish illustrator Korkut Öztekin and reflects well this emotional journey. Williams found Öztekin on deviantart.com and felt that this was an illustrator who could portray the emotional aspect of the story.
There's a video & review here: http://www.duffthepsych.com/book-review-video-woods/#more-2952
Author site for book which includes resources for helplines and other books on the subject that the author found helpful: www.outofthewoods.co.nz
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'Korkut asked me to design the page and panel layout, give detailed instructions on the action and dialogue, and support this with photo references. I was pleased to do this. Basic storyboards were what I used to do for my video dramas and it kept me involved in the story's realisation.

Korkut could only work in his evenings and he also had to contend with the serious illness of his mother, the birth of his first child, and political and social upheaval in his region. At times this was frustrating, but really, the speed was perfect for both the book and me. I was not strong enough to launch into a busy project, and the time it took meant I could really delve deeper into the content, and like with my journal writing, use it as a way to support my own recovery – not undermine it.'

https://www.outofthewoods.co.nz/creating-the-book/

The Lost Words by Robert MacFarlane, illus. Jackie Morris (2017)
illustrated poetry
Oh wow! This is an extremely large size (huge) book of beautiful poems, dedicated to the lost words of the countryside. An object of beauty, an indulgence of illustration and a collection of beautiful poems for all ages.

From The Guardian review: 'The acrostic spell-poems are designed to be read out loud. It is a book for adults and children, for adults to read with children. The spells carry the spirit of their subject in their structure. Take the brilliant “Magpie Manifesto: / Argue Every Toss! / Gossip, Bicker, Yak and Snicker All Day Long!” Not only are the word and the bird restored and celebrated, but the spirit and nature and the clatter of the magpie are conserved within its lines.' https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/02/the-lost-words-robert-macfarlane-j...

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The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2017)
crime
Loved this one. There's two parts, first an editor settling down to read the final manuscript of a detective series and then the manuscript itself. The editor is not a fan of the writer, though appreciates the books, they're the main income for the publishing firm. There's a problem with the manuscript and the editor is forced to become a bit of a detective herself.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (1996)
children's fiction
Queen's Thief #1. This is one that I've been meaning to get to for ages as I noticed many other 75ers enjoying the series. Really enjoyed this first book and will definitely read the rest of the series next year. After boasting about how great a thief he is, Gen ends up in chains in jail. Then he's released and taken on a journey by a mage who needs him to steal an ancient treasure.

Death Under Sail by C. P. Snow (1932)
crime
Snow's first book and a pretty good crime read, though he never wrote another crime novel after this. I think you call this a 'locked room' mystery, the murderer has to be one of the six guests on a sailing boat. The owner, Roger, a Harley Street specialist is found dead at the rudder, shot through the heart.
I have several of Snow's Strangers and Brothers novels and hope I can finally find time for them next year.

The Starlings by Vivienne Kelly (2017)
fiction
I received this from Text Publishing as a review copy over on goodreads earlier this year and have kept putting off reading it despite good intentions. It turned out to be a great read about the ups and downs of the Starling family through a 1980s rugby league season, as seen through the eyes of 8 year old Nicky Starling, a boy with no friends but a very vivid and active imagination. The season starts with the death of the grandmother from cancer. Then the young nurse, Rose, who was her live-in carer appears to have formed a rather inappropriate relationship with the grandfather. In the meantime the family must put up with the father's endless passion for his local league team, who might make it all the way to the state finals this time. Nicky is more interested in rewriting plays, reimagined from the Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. Their mother, an English teacher, seems distant, Nicky's older sister, who has her own problems, blames it on the arrival of a handsome new teacher at the high school. Chaotic and loveable, Nicky and his family could survive this season or not.

Bath Tangle by Georgette Heyer (1955)
fiction
Another quite good Regency read. When the Earl dies, he leaves behind his daughter, Serena, and his young wife who is a couple of years or so younger than the daughter. An obscure nephew has inherited the estate so the two young women must move on. Because of the terms of her eccentric father's will, Serena is under the trusteeship of a Marquis that she was once engaged to.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860)
fiction
I mostly listened to this, very slowly over the past couple of months and then read the last 40 or so pages. I was meant to be reading this alongside my daughter but she finished weeks and weeks ago. We were also meant to read Lord Jim together but she made it sound really lame so I don't think I'll pick that one up and go for his The Secret Agent instead. Now she's reading Don Juan.
Anyway Great Expectations is a great read, lots of interesting characters and the story is great.

The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (1928)
fiction
This was a little different from her usual fare, cross dressing brother & sister, hiding out in plain view in London. They've been involved with the Jacobite rebels and if found out could be tried for treason hence the disguises. The opening scene where they rescue a young girl who changed her mind about eloping to Gretna Green with a rather forceful older man is really good stuff. Entertaining read and I've moved on to my last Heyer for the year, Beauvallet which is also a bit different, features a pirate.

Moskva by Jack Grimwood (2016)
thriller
Set in 1985 Moscow, intelligence expert Tom Fox is asked by the English ambassador to track down his teenage daughter who has run away from home. Fairly quickly he finds that her disappearance is probably tied to some grisly murders and kidnappings all linking to the upper echelons of power. A good enough thriller.

That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston (2017)
YA
This is an alternate history type read. Back in Queen Victoria's day she made an important change to succession, she made the oldest child the heir rather than the oldest male heir. So then Queen Victoria II made her own changes in order to strengthen the colonial empire she'd inherited, she decided to seek out marriages for her children with the diverse people of the empire rather than with European royal dynasties. In time with scientific advances genetic matchmaking also becomes part and parcel of society.
In Ontario, Helena is about to make her debut, she's always known she'll marry August, just as he's always expected to marry her. Then she gets invited to Toronto, to make her debut season in high society, where unknown to anyone, the crown princess, Victoria-Margaret, is also making an incognito debut.
I enjoyed this, many of the concepts were interesting and I could be critical, but overall I just enjoyed the main characters and the politics etc of the world that Johnston invents.

Malala's magic pencil by Malala Yousafzai (2017)
illustrated story
Malala writes a simple story of her life for the very youngest, a bit earnest but important message. She uses the idea of having a magic pencil, like on her childhood favourite tv show except that now it's her own words coming from putting pen to paper that is creating the magic. Illustrated by Kerascoet Kerascoet.
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Lines by Suzy Lee (2017)
picturebook
I loved this wordless book using skating as a showcase for illustration.
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This beautiful day by Richard Jackson (2017)
picturebook
Illustrated by Suzy Lee. This was also available as an e-book so I took a quick look at it as well. Quite well done, the illustrations use colour really well.
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The Longest Breakfast by Jenny Bornholdt (2017)
picturebook, new zealand
Father starts making breakfast for his children and as each page turns, one more person comes to breakfast, each one wanting a more and more elaborate meal - waffles, pancakes, sausages etc etc. In the end they sit down to a pile of well done toast with butter and all are happy. Illlustrated by Sarah Willkins who mostly does editorial work. I just felt this was dated.



Big box, little box by Caryl Hart
picturebook
Superbly illustrated by Edward Underwood. A fun picturebook that rises above the pack. Cat loves exploring boxes and there's a mouse.

under the cold bright lights by Garry Disher (2017)
crime
A bit like Ian Rankin's Rebus, Auhl is a retired cop brought back in to work in the cold case division of Melbourne/Victoria police. He's separated from his wife who sometimes stays at the house he's inherited from his parents. It's a huge old mansion in the central Carlton neighbourhood and houses, alongside Auhl, his 'never there' student daughter and a motley crew of other interesting tenants including Neve and Pia, a mother and young daughter recently separated from an authoritarian husband/father, a custody case looming. Then there's the cases he's working on, one is solved quickly and the other takes most of the book to solve. Another case from the past revisits him as well. Entertaining crime read.
This was probably a stand alone novel, though I'm hopeful that it is the start of a new series. Auhl is willing enough to dispense his own justice at times and his home is really different, he lets it run almost like a commune or refuge.


200) The necessary angel by C. K. Stead (2017)
fiction
This is the third book by Stead that I've read. He's probably New Zealand's best hope at the Nobel Prize that I can think of. He's a retired Prof of English Lit, prolific and adulated poet and writer of some really interesting fiction.

This book is set in 2014 Paris and the main character Max is an expat kiwi married but now separated from French academic Louise and with two young children. The story revolves around Max and the three women that dominate his life. All work or study at the Sorbonne, his wife is about to publish her breakthrough book, a criticism of Flaubert and Max is writing his own, a comparison between Naipul & Lessing. Change is in the air, both political and in Max's life. He's enchanted by Sylvia and intrigued by the bipolar grad student from England, Helen, but the pull of his dissolving marriage is still strong as he and his wife still enjoy each other as work colleagues.

It's a delightful literary read as Stead throws in discussion and reflection of many books and it's also a lovely tribute to Paris though Stead also includes the darker edges of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
I think the title comes from poet Wallace Stevens, not sure as the book had to go back to the library the moment I finished it. Stevens wrote The Necessary Angel: essays on reality and imagination.

I also love the cover.

Congrats on catching up! I have both The Road to Winter and, now, Wilder Country patiently waiting for me on my Kindle.

I hope you enjoy those.

The Midnight Line by Lee Child (2017)
thriller
Jack Reacher #22. I enjoyed this one a lot. The subject matter is very topical though I don't want to expand on plot details.

Penguin Bloom: the odd little bird who saved a family by Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Grieve (2016)
nonfiction
I got this out from the library a while ago and picked it up last night and read straight through. Can only call it very inspiring. The storytelling could have been done a little better, but Bloom is a photographer not so much a writer, and it's the photos that sing out to you. The text is fairly brief, just enough to give a context to the pictures.

First up, a very sad tale has to be told. When on a wanderlust vacation in remote Thailand, Bloom's wife almost died in a fall from a viewing balcony, the safety fence had dry rot and she fell 20 feet to a tiled floor in front of her husband and three young sons. After several months in hospital, Sam Bloom returns home in a wheelchair, a paraplegic and immediately sinks into depression and contemplates suicide. Then one of the children finds a baby magpie who has fallen from its nest and is near death with an injured wing. They name it Penguin because it's black and white. The little bird is nursed back to health and adopts the family especially Sam.

Sam has gone on to compete in kayak sprint racing and represented Australia in para-sports.
She writes an addendum in the book, speaking directly to those who have just been on the receiving end of lifechanging spinal injuries.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-17/paracanoeist-selected-for-world-championsh...

>121 avatiakh: I'm so glad you liked The Thief! And the series only gets better!

>134 avatiakh: I've taken a bullet with Penguin Bloom! The local library has it on order, except that here it's titled Penguin the Magpie. Thanks for posting the photography, Penguin looks like a real character!

ETA: The Lee Child book is another bullet! I'm a sucker for Jack Reacher!

>134 avatiakh: - what an inspiring story!

>134 avatiakh: I just picked up Penguin the Magpie from the library. It is entrancing! Thank you for that bullet.

>138 VivienneR: Oh good. I buzzed all day after reading it.

The Twisted Sword by Winston Graham (1990)
fiction
Poldark #11. So amazed at myself that I've read all but one in the series this year. I already have the last book in the set, Bella Poldark, home from the library and will read that in early December.
This one was quite action packed covering the lead up to the Battle of Waterloo and the battle itself. The Poldarks are in Paris in the first half of the book. Anyway another enticing read, both joyful and some sadness.

The Collaborator by Gerald Seymour (2009)
crime
Quite a good thriller about a young woman from a ruthless Naples crime family who turns witness to the police. The collateral damage is the young English guy who loves her and has followed her to Naples when she disappears without notice from London. He's in the hands of the mafia and is the only bait they have to stop her.

Moonrise by Sarah Crossan (2017)
YA
Another beautiful verse novel by Crossan. 17 yr old Joe travels from New York to a small town in Texas to spend the summer visiting his older brother who is on Death Row. The dysfunctional family could be described as 'white trash', but Ed was only 17 when he was pressured to sign a false confession of murdering a cop. He's spent 10 years in jail and justice has always evaded him.

'Crossan was 14 when she watched "Fourteen Days in May", a documentary about Edward Earl Johnson’s final days on death row in Mississippi. "I’ve rewatched it several times and find it so affecting. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind. One of the moments that is particularly disturbing is when Edward is saying goodbye to his family. It's a few hours before the execution and there's a sibling in the background. I always wondered what that felt like, to say goodbye to your brother."

Moonrise tells that story. In the book, Joe hasn't seen his brother for 10 years for the most brutal of reasons: his brother Ed is on death row and an execution date has now been set. The story follows the final 30 days of Ed's life and Joe's determination to spend that time with him, no matter what people think.' - https://www.thebookseller.com/profile/sarah-crossan-im-not-interested-lecturing-...

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (1997)
audio, children's fiction
I've read this before when it first came out and I really enjoyed the chance to reconnect with all the characters. I think my favourite book is the next one, The Subtle Knife, so I'll be listening to that fairly soon. I'm hoping to get through this reread of the trilogy so early next year I can read his The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage which came out a few weeks ago.

Father Christmas and Me by Matt Haig (2017)
childrens
Last in the Christmas trilogy. This has been a fun trilogy fleshing out the Father Christmas story in a rather inventive way. The illustrations by Chris Mould are really great too. Amelia has been finding it rather tough in her first year in Elftown, she's human and everyone apart from Father Christmas and his wife are elves.

Parkland by Victor Kelleher (1994)
YA, Australia
Got this as a library interloan as it's fairly scarce. I found it on a list of Australian YA and thought it might be like an early version of Hunger Games.
All Cassie has known is Parkland, she's human and lives in the fortress-like enclosure with other humans, hybrids, gorillas and chimps. The keepers are mysterious and have bred ferocious leopogs, guard dogs that need to be restrained at all times. One day they capture a feral boy from the wild and Cassie knows she has to talk to him.
So it was an interesting dystopian read about alien gardeners trying to maintain an ecological balance on our planet after humans had taken too much advantage over the other animal life. Cassie, Leon the wild boy, Boxer a human/chimp and Ralph a human/gorilla escape from Parklands and are hunted by a pack of leopogs.

This is the first in the Parklands trilogy, the other two books are loosely linked rather than direct sequels. I'm fairly sure this is the first book by Kelleher I've read, will definitely be checking out more by him.

Silent days, silent dreams by Allen Say (2017)
picturebook

Stunning, evocative imagined biography of deaf, self taught artist James Castle.
I just noticed that the Castle Collection, the artist's estate, have hit this book with a copyright lawsuit as Say has replicated some of Castle's drawings. http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/article181387736.html
An interview with Say about the book: https://bookpage.com/interviews/22061-allen-say#.Wi7udErXbIU

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1914: Riding into war by Susan Brocker (2014)
children's fiction
First in the 'Kiwis at War' series by Scholastic NZ. This follows the exploits of young Billy, who signs up at 17 for the Wellington Mounted Rifles. He ends up training his beloved horse Tui in the desert outside of Cairo and then his battalion is sent minus their horses to Gallipoli.
Exciting and sad as any story focusing on Gallipoli has to be, I'm hoping this series stays in school libraries for a long while.
Others in the series are:
1915: Wounds of War by Diana Menefy - nurses
1916 : dig for victory by David Hair - tunnels and trench warfare
1917 : machines of war by Brian Falkner - Air Corps

Bella Poldark by Winston Graham (2002)
fiction

Last book in the Poldark series and a great concluding volume. I've enjoyed reading these twelve books and amazed myself that I kept up with the group read, though I did get off to a slow start.

Congrats on completing the Poldark series! I have Bella Poldark out from the library but still need to read it!

>149 christina_reads: Thanks. I would never have got going on this series if not for the group read. Hope you can get it done by the end of the month too.

>150 avatiakh: Same here! Or at least, the group read helped me keep pushing forward even when I was tempted to read other (shorter) books!

The Life to come by Michelle de Kretser (2017)
fiction, australia

First up, I got this as a review copy from Text Publishing a few weeks ago. While I really liked de Kretser's Questions of Travel I have to admit to struggling to read this one, I persevered mainly because it was a review copy. The main reason has to be the lack of story, the book is tied together only by a loose linking of characters, really I suppose like real life.
After reading a few reviews and reflecting on the book once I finished I can admire the writing, the style and referencing of the literary community both in Sydney and Paris, though none of this makes me love the book.
The central character is Pippa, a mediocre published writer and most of the book is from different points of view, of characters that have some tie to Pippa herself, either neighbours, house mates, friends or in-laws.
Everyone is a little unlikeable though well drawn by de Kretser, but the lack of actual story makes the book too meandering of a read. I think it would have worked for me if it had been described as a linked short story collection.

Anyway for a really good and positive review of the book - https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/10/02/the-life-to-come-by-michelle-de-kretser/
'In The Life to Come Michelle de Kretser scrutinises this existential aspect of our lives with wit and aplomb. Set in Sydney, Paris and briefly in Colombo, the novel traces the lives of diverse futures which intersect over the decades, contrasting despair and disillusionment with contentment and smug satisfaction. The author unpacks the eloquent silences that surround us to reveal the issues that we deny, suppress and ignore, exposing our flawed assumptions about other people. And she is wickedly funny about the role of social media in our lives…' anzlitlovers

Dark Hours by Gudrun Pausewang (2006)
YA
I've had this on my shelves since it was newly published so feel very pleased with myself for finally getting to it.
This is the story of German children forced from their home by the advance of the Russian army towards the end of WW2. They are heading to their grandparents' home in Dresden, when they are separated from first their mother, who is left behind at a small train station as she is about to give birth and then their grandmother while they wait in a larger town for another train.
Most of the action takes place as they survive buried in the ruins of the building where they sheltered during an air raid. They happened to all be in the women's bathroom at the time of the hit and so they have a small water supply, some food and the hope that they will be found. While Gisel, the oldest is 16 yrs, the other children are all much younger.
Quite a dramatic read and one that covers the German attitude towards Hitler fairly well.

Final stop, Algiers by Mishka Ben-David (2017)
fiction

Ben-David is ex-Mossad and this is his third book featuring Mossad agents. I wasn't as taken with this one as the other two I read. It's not a page turner like it could have been.
Mickey is an Israeli who is recruited to join the Mossad after his girlfriend loses her life in a terrorist bombing. While researching his cover identity in Toronto he meets up with a girl from his past and they rekindle their relationship.
The Mossad stuff is really good but Mickey has lots of problems and while these drive the story, it is all relationship stuff that doesn't sit well this time with the espionage.
I'll keep reading Ben-David.

Space Demons by Gillian Rubinstein (1986)
YA
Lian Hearn's debut novel, published under her real name. This is the first in a scifi trilogy.
Andrew's father brings the prototype of a new computer video game home from Japan. The game has a sinister side to it, it consumes and thrives on hate and the problems that Andrew and his friends have begin to feel insurmountable.
Very good early story where protagonists enter the actual video game to play. Can't believe that she wrote this as home computers were just taking off.

Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer (1929)
fiction

Not a Regency setting for this one. Sir Nicholas Beauvallet is a 16th century English buccaneer. On attacking a ship sailing towards Spain, he takes on board Dona Dominica de Rada y Sylva and her father and vows to return them safely to Spain. He also vows to the beautiful Dominica that he'll travel to Spain within a year and claim her for his bride.
This starts a bit slow while they are on board the ship, but once Beauvallet gets to Spain, it's a rollicking read.

New boy by Tracy Chevalier(2017)
fiction

This is the second Hogarth Shakespeare series book I've read this year, the previous one was Shylock is my name by Howard Jacobson. New Boy is a retelling of Othello, set in a 1970s Washington DC school playground. Most of the book is a painful contrived story about a bunch of school kids in the playground. The new boy is from Ghana, and he's the first black student at the school, his father is a diplomat so he's had a privileged upbringing living in European capitals. The story is fairly juvenile, though if you read a lot of children's literature then it doesn't ring true. I enjoyed the last chapter, when all the threads pulled tight, though still the book doesn't really appeal. Overall I'd have to say that Howard Jacobson's book is a superior read.

Finished this with a day to spare on my e-loan from the library so that feels good, and I hope to finish The Windup girl later tonight.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)
scifi
This was one of the books that I listed back in January as one I hoped to get to this year. I was meant to finish it in October when I hosted the Nearfuture scifi theme read over in the category challenge group. Anyway it is done.
Set in a dystopian future Thailand, in a world that has been ravaged by severe environmental issues, failed diseased crops, lack of fuels etc etc. Thailand has a secret treasure, a seed bank, something that the global corporations would love to get their hands on.
I found this quite hard to get into, though eventually the story starts making sense and becomes quite intense reading. Overall I enjoyed it, though didn't love it.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (1997)
children's fiction, audio

This is a reread for me, though doing it by audio. The audio version has a wonderful cast doing all the dialogue and a more muted narrator for the rest of the text. An enjoyable way to revisit the book. I hope to get the last book in the trilogy done in January so I can start The Book of Dust in February.

The darkest dark by Chris Hadfield & Kate Fillion (2016)
picturebook

This was illustrated by the Fan brothers (Eric & Terry) and I have to say it is rather an enchanting read about how Chris Hadfield grew up wanting to be an astronaut and actually became one. It's about overcoming the monsters in your bedroom at night and watching the moon landing at an impressionable age. Loved it.

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I loved The Darkest Dark too! Especially as Chris Hadfield is Canadian. You've read some great children's literature this year. I hope you have as many in 2018.

Happy New Year!

My Best of 2017:

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Best ANZAC Reads -
The Legend of Winstone Blackhat by Tanya Moir (2016, NZ)
The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jaock Serong (2016, Australia)
The Easy Way Out by Steve K. Amsterdam (2017, Australia)
Graphic Memoir:
Out of the Woods: a journey through depression and anxiety by Brent Williams (2017, NZ)

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Best other fiction:
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (2002, Ireland)
The Flaw by Antonis Samarakis (1966, Greece)
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach (2016, US)
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (2006, India)
A suitable boy by Vikram Seth (1993, India)
Monsieur Linh and his child by Phillipe Claudel (2005, France)
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish (2017, US)
The glorious heresies by Lisa McInerney (2015, Ireland)

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Fanstasy /scifi
The bear and the nightingale by Katherine Arden (2017, US)
The Power by Naomi Alderman (2016, UK)

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Nonfiction:
The girl from the Metropol Hotel: growing up in Communist Russia by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (2017, Russia)
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story by Matti Friedman (2016, Israel)

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Grahpic Novels:
The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius (1981-88, France)
The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isobel Greenberg (2013, UK)
One hundred nights of Hero by Isobel Greenberg (2016, UK)
A Chinese life by Phillippe Ôtié & Li Kunwu (2009, France/China)
Munch by Steffen Kverneland (2017, Norway)

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Children's Literature:
The Inquisitor's Tale: or, the three magical children and their holy dog by Adam Gidwitz (2016, US)
Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk (2016, US)
Samurai Rising: the Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune by Pamela S. Turner )2016, US)
The Killer's Tears by Anne-Laure Bondoux (2003, France)
Monsieur Cadichon: memoirs of a donkey by Comtesse de Ségur (1860, France)

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Young Adult
the stars at oktober bend by Glenda Millard (2016, Australia)
Shooting Stars by Brian Falkner (2016, NZ)
Superpowerless by Chris Priestley (2017, UK)
Moonrise by Sarah Crossan (2017, UK)
Nothing tastes as good by Claire Hennessy (2016, Ireland)

Most Memorable series read of 2017 - Poldark
12 books read in one year - high achievement for me.

I also finished 3 series - Hal Challis by Garry Disher, Jakob Arjourni's Kemal Kayankaya series and finally David Hair's YA Aotearoa series.

I'm impressed that you read all 12 Poldark books in a single year! Excellent work!