Sept. 2021 Readings: "Late September holds onto the summer / like that promise you made / you can never forget."

This month's quote courtesy Kurt Behm.

August was a TERRIBLE reading month for me.

On the other hand, I concocted a number of new short stories for a work in progress.

Just about to finish Matt Bell's APPLESEED, which is very good, very ambitious...it's taken me far too long to finish it (my fault).

Finally finished APPLESEED and apologies to author Matt Bell for taking so bloody long.

It's a bold, sharp book and I should've done better by it.

Similar in structure to something the great David Mitchell might concoct. Timely and prescient.

BLACKTOP WASTELAND by S.A. Cosby.

Cosby has a great back story, a voracious reader, no formal training in creative writing, just someone who learned as he went along.

BLACKTOP WASTELAND is fun--set in rural Virginia, involving illicit drag racing, an escalating series of crimes involving a multi-racial cast of characters.

Cosby sure knows how to write action scenes.

Recommended.

Read Alif the Unseen, a sf novel from a few years ago set in an invented emirate on the Arabian Gulf. The writer is an American who converted to Islam and lived in Egypt. Which probably explains why the invented emirate isn't really convincing to someone who has lived in several countries on the Arabian Gulf. The computing elements of the book are also complete nonsense, and the only bits that really work are the fantasy elements - the djinni and the city of the djinni.

Now rereading Acts of Conscience, although this is a rewritten version self-published by the author. It's been a while since I last read the book (late 1990s, in fact), but I'm guessing the major changes were more sex and more speculation on languages by the main character. I don't think the novel is going to keep the high rating I gave it last time, but it's still very good.

A History of Loneliness – John Boyne
Book on CD performed by Gerald Boyle
5*****

Father Odran Yates has spent thirty years as a teacher and librarian at a boys’ school. He has no real ambition to rise in the ranks of the Church. Although he excelled academically and even served a year in Rome as the Pope’s night attendant, he has been content “behind the high walls and closed gates of this private and erudite enclave.” But just as the scandal of predatory pedophile priests erupts, the bishop moves Odran to a local parish who priest has been removed. That priest is Odran’s best friend from seminary. Odran must come to terms with the ugly truth of a longterm coverup by the Church, and with his own role.

What marvelous writing! Odran narrates the story, but moves from time period to time period, from 2001 back to 1964, then forward to 2010, and back to 1972, etc. Through his recollections he reveals his history of loneliness … the family tragedy that leads to his entering the seminary, the experiences there (good and bad), his obsession with a woman in a coffee shop, his conflicted feelings about his mother, sister and nephews, and his struggles to understand and embrace his Church and his country.

His final realizations about his life are painful to witness. My heart about broke for Odran, and at the same time I was appalled at his willful ignorance.

Boyne gives us characters who are conflicted and run the gamut of human behavior and emotion. Some are angry and lash out, other are cowed and submissive. Some are understanding and compassionate, other defensive and determined to hide. There are times when I just want to slap Odran, and other when I long to comfort and console him.

This is a book I will be thinking about for a long time.

Gerald Boyle does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. He has many characters to deal with and he has the vocal skills to deftly handle this.

A Well-Behaved Woman – Therese Anne Fowler
Digital audiobook narrated by Barrie Kreinik
3.5***

The subtitle is all the synopsis you need: A Novel of the Vanderbilts.

Alva Smith and her sisters are left with nothing but their good reputation after the Civil War. William Vanderbilt’s family is wealthy but not accepted by New York’s premier families. A marriage between the two might improve both families’ spot in society. It’s a false hope, however. But Alva is determined. She uses her husband’s money to build new and lavish mansions, hosts her own grand balls, works to found the Metropolitan Opera House, and to ensure that her children achieved the stature she deemed appropriate.

She was no shrinking violet … she was a Steel Magnolia. Intelligent, cagey, and fiercely independent. Faced with a betrayal, she moved forward with a scandalous strategy. It was a courageous move, but she was determined. Among the causes she championed was suffrage for all women.

I thought Fowler did a great job of bringing this fascinating woman to life. Of course I had heard of the Vanderbilts, but I knew little of Alva’s background or of her political causes before reading this.

Barrie Kreinik did a fine job of performing the audiobook. I found her interpretation of Ava and the many other characters believable. This is the second book set during the Gilded Age that I’ve listened to this month, and I admit that I got a bit confused at times, thinking that an episode in the story of Jennie Churchill was part of Alva’s story. That’s my fault, not the book’s or narrator’s.

Finished Acts of Conscience and I did indeed knock a star or so off its rating. Good, and it does all the things I value Barton's writing for... but my tastes, and criteria for appreciating fiction, have changed since I last read it. The appendices on the history of the novel and universe were interesting, though.

Then read Sweet Harmony, which is typical Claire North. If you've not read her, give her a try. She's good. In this novella, a woman lives beyond her means, spending a fortune on upgrades to her "nanos" which improve her appearance and mood, and so make her successful. But when she finds herself unable to pay off her debts, the insurance company levies "punitive measures" by disabling all her upgrades and then turning off some of her other nanos, so she can no longer smell and sees only in monochrome. Pretty depressing stuff. My only quibble is that the amount of debt was surprisingly low - when students leave UK universities with upwards of £50,000 of debt, and most people live beyond their means, losing everything because you owe £11,000 pounds seems a bit unbelievable.

Now reading The City in the Middle of the Night, which was nominated for the Clarke Award last year. Reads like YA. Nor does there seem to be much point to it at present. Bafflingly ordinary for an award nominee.

MAXWELL'S DEMON by Steven Hall.

Loved Hall's first book, RAW SHARK TEXTS, and this one is just as good. A literary mystery, with plenty of religious and historical and philosophical tidbits to tantalize your intellect.

Fourteen years between books? How does the dude manage it and stay so sharp? My literary muscles get flabby very quickly when they're not in use.

Moonflower Murders – Anthony Horowitz
4****

Two books in one! A very interesting concept. Susan Ryeland is a retired publisher/editor who is approached by the Treherns, parents of a missing woman, for help in finding out where their daughter Cecily is and what has happened to her. Why? Because before she disappeared, Cecily mentioned that she had read a book by an author Susan used to represent, and that book gave her the solution to a real-life murder at the hotel her family owns and operates.

This is book two in a series featuring this literary detective, Susan Ryeland. And like the first novel, the secret to this one lies in a book Susan edited which featured the master German detective, Atticus Pünd (think Hercule Poirot). So, of course, Susan must re-read the book in question, and the mystery of what has happened to Cecily is interrupted after 227 pages, to allow the reader to experience the Atticus Pünd novel in its entirety, before returning to Cecily’s disappearance (and to the murder she felt she had solved using the Pünd book).

Sound confusing? Well, that’s because I am nowhere near the talented writer that Anthony Horowitz is. I was completely mesmerized by this book (these books?). I enjoyed the difference in style between the two storylines and was equally immersed in each mystery (or really three mysteries … the one that Pünd is solving; the murder that Cecily believed she had solved by reading the Pünd novel; the disappearance of Cecily).

I like Susan as a character, and I like Atticus Pünd. Both are meticulous and thorough and deliberate in analyzing the evidence they uncover. And I love the way that Horowitz plays with words

I haven’t read the first in the series – Magpie Murders - yet, but I definitely will, and I look forward to future installments as well.

Did not think The City in the Middle of the Night worthy of all the awards it was shortlisted for at all. Read like half a YA novel and half a pretty ordinary sf novel. Meh.

Then read Widowland, an alternate history in which Britain reached an accommodation with the Nazis in 1942 and becomes a protectorate. It throws in all the "Nazi UK" clichés, and marries them to an adventure plot to assassinate Hitler on a visit, all tied into as campaign of low-level resistance by widowed women (who are treated like second-class citizens and live in poverty in camps). A potboiler.

Next was Podkayne of Mars, which I'd never actually read before. Very much a Heinlein novel, very much a novel of its time. His prose is always an effortless read, but the characters are annoying, the world-building unconvincing, and the politics misguided at best.

Now reading The Pursuit of Love, and I plan to watch the recent TV adaptation afterwards. Very different to Mitford's earlier novels. Less consciously Waugh-ish comedy, and more of a straightforward memoir-type novel. Still has a cast of entirely upper class Brits, and so provides even more reasons why genocide would be too good for them. A good novel, however - the best by her I've read so far. And I still like her fiction a little better than Waugh's.

KAFKA: LOST WRITINGS, selected and edited by Rainer Stach and translated by Michael Hofmann.

Extraordinary little volume--some of the snippets (they're mainly snippets) have never been published before, Stach discovered them when researching his magisterial 3-volume biography of Kafka.

About halfway through and LOVING it.

September was a TERRIBLE reading month for me--very few books finished, my TBR pile not dented at all.

I am ashamed.

On the other hand, I wrote thousands of words of new prose, so it wasn't like I was slacking.

Still...I have to do better.

(P.S. The book of Kafka's lost writings was sublime, brilliant.)

Lost Children Archive – Valeria Luiselli
Digital audiobook performed by the author, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt, and Maia Enrigue Luiselli.
5*****

A cross-country journey from New York to Arizona gives one family – mother, father, 10-year-old boy, five-year-old girl – an opportunity to explore the history of this nation from two perspectives: How the immigrant Europeans, in the name of expanded opportunities, wrested the land from the native population, and how their descendants are trying to keep a new wave of immigrants from seeking their own opportunities.

As they travel, they sing along with the songs on the radio, play games, stop at various tourist attractions. They encounter people of all walks of life, and differences the parents sometimes struggle to explain to the children. And they begin to hear more and more news coverage of a growing crisis along our nation’s southern border – the many children who are desperately trying to enter the country.

I loved the way this unfolded. Luiselli changes narrators hallway through the book, first giving us the mother’s perspective, and then the son’s. Both parents work to document things, but one is a documentarian and the other a documentarist. I’m still not sure I fully understand the difference, but clearly this difference is important to both the man and the woman. What’s important to the reader is the way they are documenting what is happening, in their family, in nature, in the nation, in the world. And this forces the reader to think about how we remember things. The same photograph of a landmark, or a family gathering, will elicit different memories from those who viewed that same event together. And a child’s interpretation will be far different from an adult’s.

As distressing as the images and stories of the lost children trying to enter this country are, the specifics of this family’s journey had me on the edge of my seat. I could not help but think of the Stephen Sondheim song “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods.

Luiselli’s writing is evocative of time and place. I could clearly picture the changing landscape as the family travels across the United States.

I am so looking forward to my F2F book club discussion of this book!

The audiobook is performed by a team including the author, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt, and Maia Enrigue Luiselli. This was a very effective way of reading this book. However, the text has numerous photographs, drawings, maps, which are difficult to convey in audio format. Though I applaud the team for how they managed this, I’m glad I had a text version handy so I could see what they were describing.

>11 CliffBurns: Loved Stach's Kafka: The Decisive Years!

>14 KatrinkaV: That three-volume biography might be the best EVER. And that includes Ellmann's books on Joyce and Wilde.

>15 CliffBurns: I shall get to them ALL one day!