Charlotte (Charl08) swims with the penguins (7)

I'm Charlotte, I'm dipping my toe into the Category Challenge for the first time this year after a couple of years in the 75ers.
I enjoy reading a wide range of books, from romance and crime fiction to literary fiction, not to mention non-fiction (although less of that). I try to read fiction from different places, and in 2020 joined an online book group that just reads translated fiction.

I am keen on penguins, both of the publishing and bird kind. Inspired by a recent documentary I'm organising my categories by penguin type - but advance warning, it gets pretty tangential.


Photo by Long Ma on Unsplash

Galapagos penguin (fiction ETA and NF in translation) 47
African penguin (books by authors with links to the African continent, loosely defined) 12
Yellow-eyed penguin (Keeping things interesting i.e. first time authors) 13
Chinstrap penguin (Graphic novels and memoirs) 27
Little penguin (Familiar faces - authors I've read before) 18
King penguin (books with links to feminism) 4
Great auk (histories) 6
Southern Rockhopper penguin (new-to-me authors) 18
Adelie penguin (prize nominees) 14
Macaroni penguin (genre fiction) 124
Emperor penguin (catch all category - everything else) 17

December 34 (Total 300)
November 15 (266)
October 14 (251)
September 27 ( 237)
August 24 (210)
July 25 (186)
June 23 (161)
May 25 (138)
April 31 (113)
March 29 (82)
Feb 29 (53)
Jan 24

All images via wikipedia unless otherwise stated.

Galapagos penguin (fiction and NF in translation)



1. The Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths (France)
2. Sidewalks (Translated from the Spanish, although author now writes in English and is based in the US)
3. London under snow (Catalan)
4. The Eighth Life (German)
5. Zero (Norwegian)
6. House on Endless Waters (Hebrew)
7. Not a Novel (German)
8. Abigail (Hungarian)
9. Paula (German)
10. Bookshops (Spanish)
11. The Book of Jakarta (Indonesian)
12. If I Had Your Face (Korean)
13. Crocodile Tears (Spanish - Uruguay)
14. Nordic Fauna (Swedish)
15. Slash and Burn (Spanish - El Salvador)
16. Snapping Point (Turkish)
17. Havana Year Zero (Spanish - Cuba)
18. The Slaughterman's Daughter (Hebrew - Israel)
19. Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us (French)
20. All Men Are Liars (Spanish: Argentina)
21. Vivian (Danish)
22. Distant Sunflower Fields (Mandarin: China)
23. Childhood: the Copenhagen Trilogy: 1 (Danish)
24. The Gold-rimmed Spectacles (Italian)
25. The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer (French: Switzerland)
26. Fresh Water for Flowers (French)
27. The Library of Unrequited Love (French)
28. Elena Knows (Spanish: Argentina)
29. The Basel Killings (Switzerland)
30. The Blacksmith's Daughter (German)
31. Forty Lost Years (Catalan)
32. Sweet Bean Paste (Japanese)
33. A Bookshop in Algiers (French / Algeria)
34. Eyes of the Rigel (Norwegian)
35. What You Can See From Here (German)
36. Love in Five Acts (German)
37. Winter Flowers (French)
38. Tonight is Already Tomorrow (Italian)
39. Longevity Park (Mandarin)
40. My Name is Red (Turkish)
41. Notes from Childhood (Spanish)
42. To Cook a Bear (Swedish)
43. Shoko's Smile (Korean)
44. Manaschi (Uzbek)
45. Fixed ideas (Norwegian)
46. Yesterday (Spanish/ Chile)
47. The Woman in the Purple Skirt (Japanese)

Books from the shelves to be read

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (Iran)
In the Twilight: stories (Russia)
Ankomst

African penguin (books by authors with links to the African continent, loosely defined)


Photo by Lizel Snyman De Gouveia on Unsplash

1. Adua (Author is Italian-Somali)
2. Girl Called Eel (Author born in Comoros, based in France)
3. Transcendent Kingdom (Author is Ghanaian-American)
4. Lightseekers (Nigerian author)
5.La Bastarda (author from Equatorial Guinea)
6. Speak No Evil (author lives in Lagos/ New York)
7. The Fortune Men (author is British/ Somali)
8. The Promise (South Africa)
9. A Small Silence (Nigeria/Canada)
10. An Island (South Africa)
11. Madness: stories of uncertainty and hope (South Africa)
12. When Trouble Sleeps (Nigeria)

Possible reads from my shelves:
To Hell with Cronje
Kicking Tongues (African Writers Series)
Segu
Occasion for Loving (VMC)
Dust
Homegoing
The Loss Library
This Mournable Body
Orchestra of Minorities

Yellow-eyed penguin (Keeping things interesting i.e. first time authors)


Had never come across these penguins before until I saw the BBC documentary last week.

1. Strange Beasts of China
2. Citadel (Poetry)
3. Keeper
4. Greetings from Bury Park
5. These Ghosts are Family
6. The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney
7. A Dutiful Boy
8. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
9. A Net for Small Fishes
10. The Sweetness of Water
11. The Conductors
12. Missing Words
13. Open Water

Possible reads from my shelves:
Kintu
Love and Other Thought Experiments

Chinstrap penguin (Graphic novels and memoirs)



(Photo by Eamonn Maguire on Unsplash)
Because these penguins seem to appreciate graphic design...
1. Strong Female Protagonist
2. Britten and Brülightly
3. The Golden Age: Book 1
4. Ms Marvel : Stormranger
5. Palimpsest: documents from a Korean adoption
6. Petty Theft
7. Taxi! Stories from the back seat
8. Couch Fiction (2020 edition)
9. Shadow Life
10. I Know What I Am
11. Moms
12. In: a Graphic Novel
13. Teen Titans: Raven
14. Ms Marvel: Army of One
15. Sad Ghosts Club
16. The Secret to Superhuman Strength
17. Hole in the Heart
18. I Parrot
19. Josephine
20. YuanYuan's Bubbles
21. The Village Teacher
22. Bad Island
23. Kinderland: a childhood in Berlin
24. Wake: Female slave revolts
25. Tunnels
25. Adamtine
26. Glass Town

Possible reads from my shelves:
On Ajayi Crowther Street

Little penguin (Familiar faces - authors I've read before)


Saw some of these guys at Phillip Island, about a million years ago now (it feels like).
1. The Haw Lantern
2. More than a Woman
3. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?
4. The Pull of the Stars
5. Deacon King Kong
6. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
7. The Galaxy and the Ground Within
8. The Silver Collar
9. Daughters of Night
10. American Mules
11. Light Perpetual
12. Whereabouts
13. The Constant Rabbit
14. Oh William!
15. A Psalm for the Wild Built
16. A Narrow Door
17. Are We Having Fun Yet?
18. Burntcoat

Possible reads from the shelves: Divisadero
Summer
Rodham

King penguin (books with links to feminism and gender)


King penguin creche
1. Hag: forgotten folktales retold
2. Laura Knight
3. Eileen Agar
4. What Comes Naturally
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

On the shelves
Invisible Women
Voyaging Out

Great auk (histories)


1. The Berlin shadow : living with the ghosts of the Kindertransport
2. The Emperor's Feast
3. Molotov's Magic Lantern
4. A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
5. Stranger in the Shogun's City
6. Last Witnesses
7.
8.
9.
10.

Currently reading:
Burning the Books

From the shelves to read
Endeavour
Black and British
A Handful of Shells
The Bad Ass Librarians of Timbuktu

Southern Rockhopper penguin (new-to-me authors)


1. Interior Chinatown
2. Akhmatova: Poems
3. Blue in Chicago and other stories
4. Hieroglyphics
5. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
6. The Cold Millions
7. Unsettled Ground
8. Incomparable World
9. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
10. Out of the Easy
11. Bright Dead Things
12.The Fat Lady Sings
13. Northern Spy
14. Asylum Road
15. Outlawed
16. Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro Memoirs
17. Stories of your life and others
18. Our Woman in Moscow

Possible reads from the shelves/ library requests:
How Beautiful We Were

Adelie penguin (prize nominees)


1. The Bells of Old Tokyo (shortisted for Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year)
2. The Historians: poetry (winner of the Costa Prize poetry category)
3. A Village Life (Louise Glück won the Nobel for Literature 2020)
4. Luster (Women's Prize Longlist 2021)
5. Piranesi (Women's Prize Longlist 2021)
6. The Vanishing Half (Women's Prize Longlist 2021)
7. No one is Talking About This (Women's Prize Longlist 2021)
8. Detransition, Baby (Ditto)
9. The Night Watchman (Pulitzer Fiction )(2021)
10. Second Place (Booker Longlist 2021)
11. A Town Called Solace (Booker Longlist 2021)
12. The Undocumented Americans (National Book Award Finalist)
13. Great Circle (Booker 2021 shortlist)
14. A Passage North (Booker 2021 shortlist)

Possible Prize winners to read:
Booker 2021 longlist ones I want to read:
An Island by Karen Jennings (South African)
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota (British)
Via
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/27/booker-prize-reveals-globe-spannin...

Macaroni penguin - genre fiction

Macaroni penguins are the most numerous penguin (according to wikipedia!)
For the full list 1-99 see previous threads.

100. The Monastery Murders (c) audio
101. The Newcomer (r/c)
102. Tools of Engagement (r)
103. The Heron's Cry (c)
104. All Rhodes Lead Here (r)
105. The Wall of Winnipeg (r)
106. Savannah Blues (r/c)
107. Clark and Division (c)
108. Miss Miranda Cheever (r)
109. The Night Singer (c)
110. Wait for it (r)
111. The Dead of Winter (c) audio
112. Mistress of the Art of Death (c/r)
113. Babylon Berlin (c)
114. A Rogue in Winter (r)
115. The Invisible Guardian (c)
116. 1979 (c)
117. Emily Noble's Disgrace (c)
118. Accidentally Engaged (r)
119. Quiet in her Bones (c)
120. Dolphin Junction (c)
121. The Layover (r)
122. No Offense (r)
123. Neanderthal (r)
125. Future Crimes (c) (and SF)

Emperor penguin - ruling over everything else



1. A Rustle of Silk (audio)
2. From Crime to Crime (Law, Memoir)
3. I carried a Watermelon (Memoir, humour)
4. All the Young Men (Memoir)
5. Life Mask (Poetry)
6. Being Heumann (Memoir/Disability activism)
7. When We Rise (Memoir/LGBT activism)
8. Many Different Kinds of Love (poetry/ health)
9. Surfacing (nature writing)
10. Pandora's Jar (classics)
11. Algiers: third world capital (memoir)
12. On Seamus Heaney (bio/ lit crit)
13. This much is true (memoir)
14. The Suitcase: six attempts to cross a border (family memoir)
15. The Living Mountain (natural history writing)
16. The Stranger Times
17. Tiny Moons: A year of eating in Shanghai

Happy new thread, Charlotte. As always, love the penguins.

Happy New Thread, Charlotte!

Happy new one, Charlotte! I always love reading through your categories and the entries in them. Such a fun thread.

>12 BLBera: That was quick, Beth

>13 msf59: And almost as quick, Mark.

>14 Crazymamie: Aw, you're making me feel all self-conscious with the kind compliments.

I forgot to post the current challenge (for myself) which is to try and shift some of my 'currently reading' shelf, as frankly, neither term (current or reading) has been relevant to most of these books.



I have finished:
A Passage North
On Seamus Heaney

And have picked up again:
Madness (which is a bit of a cheat, because this is the one I bought pretty recently)
The Living Mountain
A Small Silence 118/246pp
My Name is Red

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

>8 charl08: It took me a while to see the penguin Charlotte, I thought it was a plant!

Happy new thread, and hello again penguins! Hope you manage to shift some of those 'currently reading' books.

Happy new thread Charlotte!

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

Happy penguins >:-) Good to see that they are all sitting on some books.

At first glance of the picture in >8 charl08: I thought that the penguin was levitating. Which would have been an interesting development for a flightless bird :)

I hope it wasn't too soon.

Happy new thread! I've had a couple of "currently reading" books on that shelf for literally months, so I can relate to your challenge :)

Happy new thread, Charlotte!

I have two on the "reading pile" residing there since early this year, they should get some attention if I want to finish them this year. All others come and go regular enough.

>17 katiekrug: Thanks Katie. I have been lurking on your thread. It makes me hungry.

>18 Caroline_McElwee: An impressive outfit they wear!

>19 Jackie_K: Thanks Jackie. I am struggling a bit: very much a 'mood' reader, and at present my mood is "I'd rather be on holiday."

>20 humouress: Thanks Nina.

>21 bell7: Thanks Mary. Hope your book group went well.

>22 Helenliz: At first I thought you meant the wire penguins I have on my shelves, and couldn't work out how you knew that!

>23 Jackie_K: It would. I love that picture, so dramatic.

>24 BLBera: Not at all Beth. I was surprised because I didn't realise anyone was up on the other side of the pond. Our clocks went back an hour recently, so perhaps that's why?

>25 rabbitprincess: Thanks for the support. At least I'm not alone, RP!

>26 FAMeulstee: And the support from you too! I think for me, I should be better at just putting them back on the shelf or setting them "free" into the wild.

The Constant Rabbit
I think I've read most of Jasper Fforde's books, and I treated myself to this his newest one, which satirises British political attitudes to immigration. It's all done in Fforde's unique style. After a one-off transformational event some animals (but mostly rabbits) have taken on human characteristics. In response opportunist politicians have used fear of the other to gain power, deny rights and attempt to segregate the rabbit population.
It also made me laugh.

He moved in a single bounce to the drinks trolley, narrowly missing the light fitting as he sailed elegantly through the room. 'Fancy a snifter?'
'Whisky if you have it.'
'Never touch the stuff. Have you tried dandelion brandy? Distilled from root. Makes you piss like billy-o and has the kick of a mule.'
I read something that described dandelion brandy as 'the diabolical three-way love child of methanol, crack cocaine and U-Boat fuel'.
I'd been warned never to even go near the stuff, let alone drink it.
So I said, without so much as a pause:
'Yes, I'd like that very much.'

Happy new thread!

>30 MissWatson: Thanks Birgit.

I forgot that the translated book club (they've changed a few things about their structure, including shorter lists of upcoming books). The next book (for tonight) is a Chinese novel about robots for the elderly Longevity Park and I think this is the first meeting I'll be going to having not read the book. Argh.
Time to order Notes from Childhood for the next meeting, I think.
https://borderlessbookclub.com/programme

Loving all the fabulous penguin pics. Happy new thread Charlotte!

Thanks Mary.

Listening to the book club discussion.

Author of Longevity Park known for their interest in social issues, having also written novels around rural poverty and government corruption.

Translator studied Chinese in the 80s, then ran Mandarin teaching for English schools. Worked on the Chinese education programme at the British Museum. Invited to go to Frankfurt book fair and met a publisher Sinoist books, and was asked to translate Final Witness:The Story of China's First Crime Scene Investigator.

Common theme in many contemporary Chinese novels, rapid pace of change. Expectations, particularly for the elderly, dashed (loss of respect and children move away).

Key role of parks reflected in the choice of the title (not the same as the Chinese original). Key place of socialisation for the retired.

Discussion of the impact of the one child policy - how can one child look after 4 grandparents? (Shifting attitudes to the respectability of the elderly going into a home)
Discussion of internal migration in the book (carer from "the provinces" working with an established, wealthy professional Beijing family), but also in terms of religious/ faith beliefs.

Chinese publisher claims this as the first novel talking about the challenges the elderly currently face. Moving away from "respect" based culture, traditional care for parents (belief that children shouldn't travel if their parents are still alive). Author introducing new way of thinking which might explain why it was so successful in sales terms in China (the British publisher suggests).

Interesting - both the one child family policy and internal migration were among my mum's specific research interests in Chinese Studies. I looked up the translator, James Trapp, to see where he studied and he was at SOAS (University of London), graduating in 1981 so not a student or peer of either of my parents.

Charlotte--Happy new thread!! Love all your categories and penguins.

>29 charl08: I love Fforde! Hadn't heard of this one. : )

>34 elkiedee: He talked about graduating and not being able to find a job, and the difference in the interest level in the UK in China / Chinese language skills now!

>35 Berly: It's relatively new (2020) so maybe suffered a bit from lockdown lack of promotion? Not sure. Recommended though.

Longevity Park
So, again straying from my 'I will just read the ones on my TBR' but I was glad I made an effort to go to the meeting as there were 15 of us (down from 60 at the height of lockdown).

Fascinating opening to the novel, I was reminded of Jeanette Winterson's AI novel - presented as if it was a week's programme of talks aimed at the elderly. The first few days cover 'miracle' cures which promise longer life and an AI nursing assistant. Then a talk begins by a nurse who has been asked to speak about her experiences as a carer for an elderly man. Only it overruns, and the talk effectively becomes a diary. Having travelled in from the countryside to earn money for her family and fiance, our narrator Xiaoyang is young and green when she takes a post as carer to the irascible elderly man Xiao, whose daughter is too busy with her work to look after her dad. His blood pressure is a problem, but otherwise, he's pretty healthy. Initially Xiaoyang has to sneak around following her charge, as he won't accept her help. Gradually though, things change. As mentioned in the discussion above, the book was popular in China, an exploration of the challenges of senior life in a new context (and for the largest population group to experience ageing in Chinese history, with fewer children themselves). Xiaoyang keeps trying to do the 'right' thing, but finds herself in the role of surrogate daughter, as 'Uncle Xiao' is unable to persuade another woman to take him on as a romantic partner, his daughter emigrates, and he gradually becomes more fragile.

One day, when we were having lunch, he said to me, out of the blue: "It doesn't matter how many times a person gets married, if you outlive your partner, you are going to end up alone. Loneliness is one of life's flavours that everyone tastes a little of; its nothing to make a fuss about."

The Invisible Guardian First in Baztan trilogy, featuring Inspector Amaia Salazar. Amaia is in charge for the first time, investigating murders of young girls near where she grew up (Basque country).
Going home opens up a big can of worms, with family conflict and a falling out with one of her colleagues, as she tries to prevent further killings.

This one felt a bit long for me, I think more of a reflection of my attention span at the moment than anything else!

Reading the latest TLS. Tempted by some non-fiction, including The Dublin Railway Murder and To Break Russia's Chains. Forgotten Wives sounds like my kind of thing, but not for 80 quid! Peter Wohlleben's new book (also about trees)The Heartbeat of Trees is a bit more affordable. Two new editions of Mrs Dalloway (both by Norton) and another book about London writers Writing in the Dark promise lots of rich Bloomsbury detail, but realistically? Probably not.

The review of a new play, Zadie Smith's The Wife of Willesden an adaptation of The Wife of Bath, must be delighting the theatre's box office. I wish I lived a bit closer!

>39 charl08: Hm, this reminds me that I have two of Savinkov's books on the TBR...

>38 charl08: Sorry The invisible guardian felt a bit long, Charlotte. I hope you get to the next one in better shape.

>40 MissWatson: The description of Savinkov's books made them sound intriguing (about bored exiled terrorists/ freedom fighters). Have you read any?

>41 FAMeulstee: Definitely me and not the book, Anita. I've picked up a memoir by a comedy actor, so hoping this fits what I'm in the mood for more.

>42 charl08: No, not yet. I bought them because they sounded onteresting and were newly translated. I need to do some digging in the TBR...

>39 charl08: I knew there was a reason I don't buy the TLS Charlotte!

I just bought the annotated Mrs Dalloway, and have the Wohlleban too. Not looking at the rest, turning head away. OK, may have to look at Writing in the Dark. ETA: It tripped into my shopping cart. I blame you!

>43 MissWatson: When you do, I will definitely be interested to hear more. I'm never sure if the reviewer is making them sound more tempting than they actually are when they mention books like this. I am struggling through The Living Mountain because Robert Macfarlane made it sound amazing. (I just find it too dense: but again, probably says more about the reader).

>44 Caroline_McElwee: Impressive work there Caroline.

I went over to Ellen's thread and managed to get hit by a link to a fancy Olive edition of A Woman is No Man. So much for no more book orders until Xmas! That resolution lasted about as long as the rest of my book ones usually do!

Reading has been all but derailed by work and K-drama. Ah well.

Hello, Charlotte! Like Caroline, I am wanting Writing in the Dark - I have a thing about Bloomsbury. It may just trip into my shopping cart, too.

>46 Crazymamie: I'll wait to hear what you think Mamie. The article (which you might be able to access for free: there is an "allowance" of articles) is here:
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/writing-in-the-dark-will-loxley-book-review-s...

Another set of awards lists for you:

Guardian article and awards shortlists - for the Costa awards

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/nov/23/costa-prize-2021-shortlists-highli...

Costa awards shortlists were announced on Tuesday 22 November.

The overall winner (and I think the category winners) are announced on 21 November

The 2021 shortlists in full

First novel

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking)
The Manningtree Witches by AK Blakemore (Granta)
Fault Lines by Emily Itami (Phoenix)
The Stranding by Kate Sawyer (Coronet)

Novel

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (Fig Tree)
The High House by Jessie Greengrass (Swift Press)
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed (Viking)
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (Viking)

Biography

Consumed: A Sister’s Story by Arifa Akbar (Sceptre)
The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War and Everest by Ed Caesar (Viking)
Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston (Viking)
Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi (Allen Lane)

Poetry award

All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus (Picador)
A Blood Condition by Kayo Chingonyi (Chatto & Windus)
Eat or We Both Starve by Victoria Kennefick (Carcanet Press)
The Kids by Hannah Lowe (Bloodaxe Books)

Children’s

Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall (Guppy Books)
The Crossing by Manjeet Mann (Penguin)
The Midnight Guardians by Ross Montgomery (Walker Books)
The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh by Helen Rutter (Scholastic UK)

Wow, lots of new books I've not heard of there Luci! I am tempted to order the fiction and the biographies I haven't read...
(from the library) but I am reading so slowly at the moment I am not sure that I am going to be able to read all the ones I want to before the renewal limit expires.
I really want to finish reading Fugitive Pedagogy, it's fascinating, but it's also dense. And it is due soon! I have Open Water out too, but fortunately that one is much shorter!

I went looking for her new play and instead found this...
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2022/event/zadie-smith-and-the-bbc-symphony...

>49 charl08: I'm trying to avoid having to return more books unread etc to borrow others, and keeping an eye on reservations/renewals etc. I've only just started reading a book I can't renew and that was due back on 15 November, a history of social mobility by Selina Todd, but they're not yet charging fines and I think the previous borrower did the same thing, or was in the middle of reading it. I'm working my way through a list of books to borrow from Islington next before I get distracted by other temptations, though I have succumbed to borrowing a couple of things not on that list!

I've read two of the novels and have a Netgalley of the Elif Shafak and a NG and bought Kindle copy of The Manningtree Witches TBR. And a different book by Jessie Greengrass. I think I heard bits of the Maxwell book on the radio but while I'm curious, I'm not sure I actually want to read the whole thing.

Have just started reading Zadie Smith's short story collection - I've listened to the first couple of stories (good listening) on digital e-audio but tend to just listen to whatever's on Radio 4/R4 Extra. Front Row talked about the play the other night and it does sound interesting.

Char, I am so very grateful for you, my wonderful friend here on LT.

I wish you (and yours) happiness and health on this day of Thanksgiving. And cookies. And penguins. : )

>51 elkiedee: I've just realised I have a book due back today I cant renew. Gah.

>52 Berly: Kim, now I want biscuits (cookies). But thank you!

Enjoying This much is true

They both agreed, however, that I must be educated. They encouraged my reading and studying from an early age. I liked Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories and Miss Blyton's oeuvre in general; I didn't have an elevated literary world. I joined a library; in those days, local councils put money into libraries and the Oxford City Library was magnificent. I used to get through about six books a week. I loved stories set in girls' schools, I think I read nearly all fifty-seven of the Chalet School series: The Exploits of the Chalet Girls, The Chalet School Triplets, Excitements at the Chalet School, A Genius at the Chalet School, etc. etc. etc., by Elinor Brent-Dyer. I especially enjoyed the 'Dimsie' books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce, or The Girls of St Bride's, That Boarding School Girl, and The Best Bat in the School, etc., in her long-running St Brides and Maudsley series featuring Nancy Caird.

Also reading 1979, Val Mcdermid's new one following two young reporters in a Scottish newspaper in the late 1970s.

Allie gave a weak laugh. 'Well, that went well.'
'He didn't give us the sack. And he didn't throw the typewriter out of the window.'
'What are you talking about?'
'When Raymond Blackwood admitted screwing a gangster's wife to get the inside track, Angus was so enraged he threw Raymond's typewriter out of the window. Missed a pensioner's dog by inches.'
Allie giggled. 'That's not funny, Danny.'
'I know. The old woman fainted. The paper had to buy her off to stop her going to the Daily Record with the story. So right now, we're ahead.'

So now back up to 13 "currently reading"!

Yikes, it's really windy here. The garden is covered in rubbish and we've lost a fence panel.

Still reading My Name is Red (about 140 pages to go). Finished 1979 though. In the afterword McDermid talks about how she herself was a journalist in Scotland after she graduated from Oxbridge: and Allie, the main character, has key overlaps with the author's biography. This isn't a conventional crime novel, with the investigation being financial and then political rather than a murder. This being McDermid, 'hidden histories' of sectarianism and lgbtq lives are visible despite the historical setting (Scotland only decriminalised homosexuality in 1981). And of course a workplace designed for men.

But funny with it.

Maybe she was misreading them. Maybe they were all riven with the same self-doubt? Maybe they also looked around the newsroom and thought they were inadequate to the task? Then she paused to consider. Donny Park, who'd once promoted himself to prime suspect in a murder inquiry by walking through the crime scene leaving footprints and fingerprints galore; Lance Brown, who spent the night shift phoning random numbers in New York and had once ended up chatting to Kurt Vonnegut; Campbell Macleod who had answered the office medical examiner's query of, 'What do you drink?' with, 'What have you got?' No, these were men who had no doubts at all that they deserved their substantial salaries and inflated expense accounts.

Allie considered. She should compare herself to her colleagues more often. Set alongside them, she had no reason to worry. She needed a new motto. 'More gallus, less feart,' as her grandmother would put it.

Recommended.

>55 charl08: It was really windy here too in Scotland last night - our bins were dancing quite the jig! (and at one point I was out in the street trying to retrieve all the plastic and cardboard recycling that had escaped when two of our bins fell over). I've seen a few snowflakes this morning, but they've stopped already.

Beth posted the NPR 'best of' list on her 75 books thread. I like the look of the GNs (the only bit of the list I've read so far: it's a long list!)

https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#tags=comics+%26+graphic+novels&view=covers&...

Think I'm going to ask for The Waiting for Xmas. By Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (author), Janet Hong (translator)

>48 elkiedee: Hooray, another list! Thanks Charlotte.

Longevity Park sounds interesting. 1979 also sounds like one I would like. I really liked the McDermid I read.

Longevity Park does sound good

>56 Jackie_K: Jackie I missed your post, sorry. We seem to have missed the worst of the storm here. Frozen bird bath this morning though!

>58 BLBera: Thanks to Luci really. I do like the Costa list, they come up with some interesting ones.

>59 banjo123: I found the discussion about the book really insightful. It had never occurred to me just how rapidly China was having to adapt to new ideas about caring for the elderly.

Reading the TLS list of books their writers recommend...

Migrants in the Mountains sounds like a fascinating travelogue through the Balkans.

Can I cope with another book about the Spanish Civil War? The Frozen Heart by Almudena Grandes

I'm rubbish at reading philosophy, but like the idea of Inwardness: an outsider's guide. The recommender of The Idea of the Brain promises a better understanding of human thinking than the metaphor of the computer. You have not yet been defeated is a collection of the writings of an Egyptian activist now behind bars.
And a reminder that I still have not read A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Or bought Louise Glück's new collected, *and* it's a Penguin...

I still have three pages of recommendations to read.

Emily Noble's Disgrace
A new(ish) novel set in Edinburgh's seamier side. An elderly woman's body has been found in her bed. No one missed her for two years, so the house needs trauma cleaners. Essie is on the team, a young woman who has put her life back together after a childhood in 'care'. Emily is a police officer asked to help with an investigation near the house.
Gradually their stories converge.

This is billed as a modern 'gothic' novel, not a genre I have much knowledge of. I liked this though, and read it in one gulp past my bedtime.
(Hurrah! The weekend!)

Suicides and drug deaths, that is my life now. People found lying in their beds, or sitting in front of their television sets, whatever programme they were watching playing into the void. My world is accidents just waiting to happen. Car crashes. Sometimes even murder. With a hammer. Or tights around the neck. Or a knife that glitters... All of these have happened in Edinburgh. A very safe city, tourists washing in and washing out.

Finally finished My Name is Red.
Mysteriously, still the same number of books in the "currently reading" category. How does that happen?

More TLS books I want to read!
Sarah Moss recommends Burntcoat which I am saving for my holiday. She also mentions Small Things Like These which I was going to order from the library (but forgot) after I read the rave review. Paul Muldoon recommends a book about poet's mistakes (caught by the fact checkers?) (The Poet's Mistake).

Devil-land: England under siege 1588-1688 sounds fascinating. Tempted by a novel too: Daheim set in the "Frisian flatlands".
I am reminded I need to pick up On Freedom - maybe December holidays will give me the chance. I like the sound of The Suitcase, (Frances Stonor Saunders) a book about the author's father's origins. I don't read Patricia Highsmith, but the new edition of her diaries/ notebooks is still tempting. I'm not sure why!

>53 charl08: That resonates :0)

My husband was watching EPL football over the weekend so I saw half of the Manchester City match where the snow was coming down fairly thickly, but I think they did finish the match.

>64 charl08: Hmm, the Muldoon recommendation may fall into the cart. Cancel your subscription please, my floorboards are already groaning. Ouch, hardback is £63 (paperback £16.30). I'll check the London Library.

I did go into Foyles today, but the books that tempted me most were hardback chunksters, so I came out empty handed, and will wait for the paperbacks next year.

>64 charl08: I currently have Burntcoat on my library book TBR, and an ebook hold as back up (I returned it because someone else wanted it and placed a hold - at least with ebook holds I don't have to think of fares and time to go and collect when they come through - but it's too easy - I've now maxed out my ebook limits). And I have the new Sarah Moss among my Kindle TBR. So many books, it's really hard to choose between them all.

There was an interesting radio documentary on Patricia Highsmith's journals, which really made me want to read them. But very disturbingly, I discovered I'd somehow bought this new book on Kindle at £16.99. I realised almost immediately, but I'm still not sure how I did it. If I had Alexa, I would think that had done it and be even more alarmed. My libraries seem to be doing quite well on literary and historical interest biographies, but I can't read everything at once. I will definitely seek out or suggest the Highsmith for purchase next year, though.

It's Frances Stonor Saunders - I have had a book by her about a woman who tried to assassinate Mussolini on my TBR for years, and think I might have another book.

When you mention On Freedom, do you mean the newish book of essays by Maggie Nelson?

I'll have to add quite a few of the books you mention to my LT list Maybe Next Year?....

>61 charl08: I want to read The Frozen Heart. I was reminded about this book because Almudena Grandes died last Saturday :-(

>67 elkiedee: Do you have the Amazon one click enabled? I try not to enable things like that but they do their darnedest to trap you; just last night I ordered something (from a different site) and that site asked if I'd like it to remember my details for a faster checkout. I declined - because that gives me a tiny bit more space to rethink spending money - and then it asked me again after I paid. Earlier this year my kids accidentally (so they tell me) bought a couple of games on their playstation, which shouldn't have been possible. I suddenly got a notification that a payment had been made (for rather more than I would have spent), so I cancelled it (and Sony have now blocked the account). But apparently all the kids did was to put the games in the e-basket. I don't know how it could have gone through and Sony aren't replying to my e-mails.

>65 humouress: They had a local story about a football fan who travelled all the way from Texas to see the Wigan match (it was cancelled due to the weather).
He looked sad. To put it mildly.

>66 Caroline_McElwee: I've not been in Foyles for so long! Impressive resistance there of the chunksters.

>67 elkiedee: I've ordered books on pre-order so far ahead of time that I've been completely surprised by them turning up. Thanks for the spelling correction, I have gone back and fixed that.

I do mean Maggie Nelson, the touchstone was not cooperating!

>68 FAMeulstee: I had missed that her death was so recent, Anita, despite the record I looked at having been updated to reflect it. It doesn't seem much of an age at all.

>69 humouress: Glad you got your money back, Nina.

I was looking at some "ought to finish" books last night and instead picked up Oh William! the latest Lucy Barton novel and read that instead. I found this a really powerful read about the impact of childhood trauma. Here Lucy is looking back at her first marriage in later life, as a geneology investigation reveals unexpected results. For me the temptation is to read this as autobiographical, as so much of the text relies on the persona of a writer who views everything via their writing. For example, repeatedly we are told that she has written about x or y aspect of her life already in the earlier books (actually Strout's earlier books). In particular here she reflects on her mother in law, who seemed to belong to a different social world, wealthy and confident. However, her husband's family history reveals a half sister who pops this bubble. Her MiL's condescension to Lucy, (based on her origins) is revealed to be premised on a lie. Lucy and her ex husband return to Maine, and are shocked by the extent of his mother's impoverished beginnings.

...driving down this road and seeing the falling-down houses and the grass by the side of the road and no people around, I had an almost-memory of driving with my father in his truck and me in the passenger seat next to him as a very young child, the window open and my hair blowing in the wind, only the two of us-where would we have been going? But the memory was not one of the dismalness of my childhood. Instead, something in me moved deep, deep down and I felt almost-what can I say that I felt?-but it was almost a feeling of freedom as I rode alongside my ther in his old red Chevy truck. As I rode now next to William I almost wanted to say, with a sweep of my hand: These are my people. But they were not. I have never had a feeling of belonging to any group of people.

I thought Oh William! was wonderful too. What a writer E. Strout is!

>72 mdoris: Yes, a great read: I was lucky to get a copy from the library so quickly.

Now reading Notes from Childhood, for the book group on Thursday. Lots of vignettes of an Argentinian childhood. On of the blurbers describes them as "postcards" which I like.

I finished Wake: the hidden history of women-led slave revolts, the GN of a historian's attempts to document women's resistance to enslavement. The book doesn't pull punches about the horrors of the slave trade, I thought it was an impressive synthesis of some complex information, which hopefully will get (young) people reading more.

Can't say that I like Notes from Childhood but interesting to read this in an article by the translator:

Notes from Childhood was well received and garnered for its author the Primer Premio de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (the Province of Buenos Aires First Prize) and the Tercer Premio Nacional (Third National Prize), and continues to be Lange’s most widely read work in Argentina. But Sylvia Molloy has suggested that the reason Lange’s memoir was successful and enduring was not due to her inventive style but because it allowed readers to identify the unconventional Lange with the traditionally feminine subjects of domesticity and childhood. Lange was an eccentric, and until then some critics hadn’t been sure where to place her—her account of a journey she took to Norway by boat with 40 sailors, for example, was deemed inappropriate for a young woman. By celebrating the charm of the book’s subject matter, critics of the period may have overlooked the innovative nature of Lange’s prose.

https://lithub.com/a-game-of-cutouts-on-norah-langes-unconventional-narrative-ex...

>67 elkiedee: you can just delete ot from your Kindle list and they will refund it if you want the hard copy, or don't want it at all Luci that has happened to me a couple of times. I think it is in manage kindle content.

>75 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, I know that and already did so, as I realised what I'd done very fast. I would like it but not for £16.99! I will see if the library has it next year. I think I've made the same mistake before but not quite so expensively, and also, it was being unable to remember my accidental purchase! I quite often return books and ask for a refund, though most often it's because the price has been cut within a few days of my buying it,

>75 Caroline_McElwee: >76 elkiedee: Yes, it is a handy feature!

Is anyone else doing the Xmas card exchange this year? I have signed up. Although I haven't got any penguins on the cards this year!

I am hoping some of these reservations come in time for some uninterrupted reading over the holidays. (12 working days to go, and then I have three weeks off!) There's only one copy of the Becky Chambers in the library system right now though, so I might crack and see how much a copy costs.

A psalm for the wild-built Chambers, Becky

Death at Greenway : a novel Rader-Day, Lori

The sanatorium Pearse, Sarah

Our woman in Moscow Williams, Beatriz

Who is Maud Dixon? Andrews, Alexandra

The shadows of men Mukherjee, Abir

Dolphin Junction Herron, Mick

Velvet was the night Moreno-Garcia, Silvia

A wake of crows Evans, Kate

The woman in the purple skirt Imamura, Natsuko

We run the tides Vida, Vendela

The lost village : a novel Sten, Camilla,

Quiet in her bones Singh, Nalini,

Small things like these
Keegan, Claire

Real estate Levy, Deborah

These precious days Patchett, Ann

Three mothers : how the mothers of Martin Luther King...
Tubbs, Anna Malaika

Reading A Small Silence: a nightmare:

One night, she dreamt she was walking on the beach alone at night. The whole seashore was littered with books of every kind but whenever she reached for a book, it disappeared...

>79 charl08: Aggghhh ... noooo!

>79 charl08: >:-o

Questions for the book group tonight:

Here are the discussion questions for the breakout rooms:

How would you characterise the familial relationships in this book? How important is the theme of sisterhood?

Notes from Childhood has been described as "Proustian" - do you think this is an accurate comparison? Are there any other writers that you might compare Lange's writing to?

Death is very present in Notes from Childhood. How do you think Lange's treatment of death compares to other writers, particularly contemporary ones?

The text is composed of short fragments which don't follow an obvious chronology. What did you make of this fragmented, non-linear style? Did you find it effective?

>78 charl08: Oooo enjoy those three weeks off when they come!

>80 humouress: >81 Helenliz: Nightmare, right?

>83 rabbitprincess: Covid permitting of course...

Fascinating discussion last night: the translator was really passionate about the author's work, which definitely helps. She described Lange as an innovator, influenced by modernist art trends as much as by Borges, who she was related to by marriage. I think I found the biographical detail more interesting than the book itself though.

Next up is Tilted Axis Press | Manaschi
December 15th 8pm-9.30pm
https://borderlessbookclub.com/programme
Blurb:
In his latest tragicomedy Hamid Ismailov interrogates the intersection between tradition and modernity. A former radio-presenter wrongly interprets one of his dreams and thinks that he has been initiated into the world of spirits as a manaschi, one of the Kyrgyz bards and healers reciting Manas - the longest human epic, consisting nearly of a million verses - who are revered as people who are connected with supernatural forces. Travelling to a mountainous village populated by Tajiks and Kyrgyzs, he instead witnesses the full scale of the epic's wrath on his life.

>85 charl08: Sounds like a great discussion.

>64 charl08:, >78 charl08: So many good books! I have two weeks of class left, then a three-week break as well, Charlotte. I have big reading plans; we'll see how that goes.

The Frozen Heart sounds interesting. I am fascinated by the Spanish Civil War.

>86 BLBera: Hope the last two weeks of classes go well. All those I speak to who are teaching have worked so hard this term, and really hope they and the students get a good break too.

This Much is True
At the beginning she says that she knows many people will have picked up the book because they've seen her being rude (and funny) on the Graham Norton Show. She's the same here, but you get a bit more of the meat behind the jokes*, from her time as an Equity rep to growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust. I was fascinated by her descriptions of being a star voiceover artist: she was clearly in demand.
Someone on Litsy mentioned they are listening to her read this on audio, and I think that must be rather fabulous.

The radio artists I worked with through the years were probably the most skilled in the world. I'd grown up with their voices as a child, and for me they were celebrities. Marjorie Westbury was the queen of Radio in her day. She played Paul Temple's wife, Steve, in the famous detective series. She was small and dumpy like me, but had a clear, warm sound and knew how to use it. She made such an impression on one of her listeners that she was left £42,000 in their will.
So far, this hasn't happened to me.

*As she says at the end, at least the bits the lawyers allowed the publishers to leave in!

>88 charl08: I plan to get to this, glad it was a hit with you Charlotte. She is a funny lady, outrageous at times, but I've watched her change a strong opinion when she has been shown the circumstances of the opposing or unfamiliar opinion/experience, in ways the majority of people would struggle with. She's made some interesting documentaries in recent years.

>89 Caroline_McElwee: Yes, she is clearly very interested in people, and doesn't settle for the easy option. I think in RL I would find her exhausting, but with the book I could just put it down, of course.

Had family visiting (pre-emptive visit in case we all get cut off again by travel restrictions for Xmas). So not much reading, so I am yet to finish To Cook A Bear. This is a historical crime novel set in a rural community in 19th century Sweden. But it's much more than that. It's really good.

The letters were so small, and yet so full of force. These slender, modest lines. With their tiny curlicues in the birth registers, newborn souls were transformed from little bundles into baptised Christian parishioners.

By itself, each letter was frail. But when the pastor taught the young Sami boy to place them next to one another, something happened. It was like lighting a fire; one single piece of wood was of little use, but if you added another, it instantly grew hotter. The letters derived life from each other; in the company of others they began to speak. I and S and Ä made isä, the Finnish word for "father". But it could also mean God, our father in heaven. The letters could do both a waltz and a ring dance; they could take each other by the hand in ever longer rows, and it was hard to understand how. You looked at lines and curves and saw only lines and curves. The letters by them selves were silent. But your lips could blow life into them. Turn them into objects, animals, names of people. And equally curious was the fact they continued speaking even when you had closed your mouth. When you looked at the letters, they were converted into words inside your head. No, not words - bodies.

New acquisitions.
My Body Keeps Your Secrets and Ogadinma (the publisher was having a Black Friday sale, so I caved).

I've also booked tickets to see the Laura Knight exhibition at the MK gallery (so I probably should read the exhibition catalogue/book that's sitting on my shelf): Laura Knight: a panoramic view.

Hello, Charlotte! You got me with To Cook a Bear - adding it to The List, and I love that quote you posted.

>92 charl08: Well, that's lovely.

>93 Crazymamie: It's a fascinating book.

I am in a grump after one of those days at work where I just wanted to go home and hide under the duvet, not helped by the night before when I messed up a job application for a job I was really interested in. Gah.
It's a good job I only have 7 working days left!

>77 charl08: I signed up! I just got assigned my five, and I'm hoping to work on Christmas cards today/tomorrow. I discovered today I need a trip to the post office to get stamps, however. Ah well, I'll get some Christmas packages ready to mail too and do it all at once.

>94 charl08: Make a second application and pretend the first one didn't happen? 😬

>95 bell7: Yes, I just saw my matches, fun. I'd love to send more cards, I really appreciate the friendship and kindness of the community here on LT. Anyone want a card from northern England. PM me.

>96 humouress: Ha! If only. The next one will hopefully be better.

Hmmm. I signed up for 2 cards but so far, haven't had any word about names and addresses.

>98 jessibud2: I saw mine via a link to the completed matches posted by LT on my profile comment wall.

>98 jessibud2: - Thanks, Charlotte! I never would have thought to look there. Usually anything that lands there (monthly ER notices, for example or PMs) always come to my email inbox as well. Nothing did this time. So, I have my 2 now, thanks again!

>100 jessibud2: I was slow last year, so I was keen to get going this year (but they're still not going to go out until the weekend!)
I am not sure how long mine will take to arrive overseas: the other way round, I got one in February last year, which was a nice surprise.

To Cook a Bear
This has had a lot if attention and won awards, and in my view entirely justified. It's a historical crime thriller set in 19c northern Sweden, where a Christian revival amongst the poor (including Sami populations) is causing disquiet. This is not least for those who sell alcohol, as the pastors preach against drinking. A woman is attacked and the incompetent sheriff blames a wild bear: but the pastor is a trained botanist and has found evidence to contradict this theory.

There's also quite a bit about learning a new language and learning to read, which is always a winner for me. One of the narrators of the story is a Sami boy that the pastor and his wife have fostered, based on the author's reading of contemporary autobiographical accounts of their encounter with "western" education and Christianity.

The strange thing about the book is that you can read it backwards, so that Carl starts off good but turns out bad. You can also jump back and forth, and then he is good-bad-good- bad, in a constant state of flux. Between these covers is the long lifetime of one person and I am conscious of holding time itself in my hands. Time that can start, jump to the end, begin again, go back. In real life, time always goes in the same direction, but in a book something else can happen. And it feels quite creepy. On the pastor's shelves I see the books' spines, standing side by side, and all of them are filled with different sorts of time. The time it has taken to write the book, the time evoked in it, and then the time it takes to read it. And with a dizzy feeling I realise that in a given mass on the bookshelf, the books must contain more time than a human life encompasses.

Ooh, I have an overlooked Netgalley of To Cook a Bear. Thank you for making me look. I noticed looking it up that it's published by Quercus translated crime imprint Maclehose, which means at the moment that if it's offered on Netgalley I can usually get an egalley version.

It's also been awarded this year's Petrona Award for Scandi crime fiction in English translation. Petrona was a blogger about Scandi noir who died in 2012 after a long term illness, real name Maxine Clarke, and some friends and writers set up the award in her memory.

>104 elkiedee: I hope you like it as much as I did!

>62 charl08: You got me with Emily Noble's Disgrace but it's basic premise sounded familiar until I realized it was by the same author as the one who wrote The Other Mrs Walker which I really liked. I can't find the Emily book in my library or for sale here though. Maybe they'll get it later.

To Cook a Bear sounds wonderful, Charlotte. I love the title.

>106 Familyhistorian: It's a great read (Emily Noble's Disgrace) and I am keen to read both the one you mention and her first one The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing. Solomon pops up briefly in Emily too.
Thanks for the nudge to pick these other two up.

>107 BLBera: I hope lots of people find this one, it's fascinating. I didn't think any of his other books had been translated, but LT tells me that Popular Music from Vittula was published over ten years ago.

From the LT book page:
"Popular Music from Vittula tells the fantastical story of a young boy's unordinary existence, peopled by a visiting African priest, a witch in the heart of the forest, cousins from Missouri, an old Nazi, a beautiful girl with a black Volvo, silent men and tough women, a champion-bicyclist music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand—and, not least, on a shiny vinyl disk, the Beatles. The story unfolds in sweltering wood saunas, amidst chain thrashings and gang warfare, learning to play the guitar in the garage, over a traditional wedding meal, on the way to China, during drinking competitions, while learning secret languages, playing ice hockey surrounded by snow drifts, outsmarting mice, discovering girls, staging a first rock concert, peeing in the snow, skiing under a sparkling midnight sky. In the manner of David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, Mikael Niemi tells a story of a rural Sweden at once foreign and familiar, as a magical childhood slowly fades with the seasons into adult reality."
LT reviews though are less than stellar!

has Popular Music from Vittula also has quite a few very positive reviews, and some of the two star ones are not ones I'd worry about or be put off a book by.

>109 elkiedee: I always want to hedge my bets when writing about a book I haven't read!

It's listed on Amazon as Popular Music, with a quote from a review as "Nick Hornby with elks, drunks and snow". Hmmm. Published by Flamingo (think that's an old Harrper Collins imprint), Will have to check library catalogues, though if 2010 I suspect they will have disposed of copies if they bought it at all.

>111 elkiedee: I found a lot of copies on biblio.com (although most in the US).

Two books read over the weekend:

Our Woman in Moscow
Despite the cover (half-face woman = top half. Bottom half = obviously photoshopped 'Red Square' cover with fancy hat and coat) in the UK paperback, anyway, this was a much better book than the cover promised. American twin sisters are divided by their attitudes to 'fellow-travellers' in 1939 Italy. Via an (annoying) time split device, we both follow their decisions in Italy, as war closes in, and in the early 1950s, as one heads to Moscow to try and 'rescue' her sister.

The Suitcase: six attempts to cross a border
Fascinating family history, although I think I could have done with a longer book. The author's dad was born in Romania, the son of a much-travelled (but British, er 'passported'?!!) oil-engineer father. He never spoke about his past, and died after years of dementia removed any option of doing so. But he left a suitcase full of papers, which Stonor Saunders is frightened of opening. So she rattles around all kinds of other historical sources, from the Home Office's grim assessment of her grandfather's loyalties when assessing his passport application, to her mother's reports of visits behind the iron curtain to elderly relatives. Sometimes these diversions are fascinating (who knew special branch could find a disgruntled landlady and thought it worth reporting?), sometimes achingly bleak (the long list of men killed by the holocaust machine with the same name as one of her relatives) and sometimes galling (how can two women - her great aunts - just disappear leaving no trace at all?). There's lots of literary references here too, including (of course) Nabakov.
Who still sits unread on my shelf.
Poor.

The dream of my father in the Underground-underworld has immobilised me. I have been deadlocked for months, unable to do anything. Why is he haunting me? Why must I be at his beck and call? I was wrong about the dead they do speak. They prowl the perimeters of our lives and, gaining the weak spot, they come to us in our dreams...

>112 charl08: - Both of those sound good, Charlotte, but I am intrigued by the second one.

>113 jessibud2: Despite sleeping for most of it, I had a good reading weekend.

4 days to go till my holidays!

Now reading Manaschi. I didn't think it would turn up in time for the bookgroup on Thursday.
It turned up today...

>114 charl08: I've got 5 days, 3 this week, 2 next. My reading will be mostly between xmas and early New Year Charlotte.

>116 Caroline_McElwee: That sounds like a good combination to me, Caroline.

Reading Dolphin Junction, Mick Heron short stories. From the opening story:

Joe Silvermann chose a slow midweek morning to do some heavy shifting round the office; clear away the bits of orange peel and chewed pencil ends from under the filing cabinet. So he was wearing jeans and a Sticky Fingers T-shirt, and had built up a sweat, and hadn't shaved was everything, in fact, that the well-dressed private detective shouldn't be when four million pounds came calling.

Hello, Charlotte! Hooray for holidays - has yours started? Or does it begin tomorrow?

>118 charl08: That is such a great homage to the opening lines of The Big Sleep, which, as you know, is a favorite of mine.

You have gotten me with The Suitcase: six attempts to cross the border - sound good, and great quote.

>119 Crazymamie: Mick Heron is amazing. About four pages into this and I was thinking I might reread all the Zoe Boehm novels.

The suitcase is good but sad. Especially about her dad who seems to have dealt with stuff by just refusing to ever even acknowledge it. Even when the family was allowed to go back (to visit) relatives in Romania, the children, because they weren't direct relatives of the house owner, had to stay in a hotel!
My parents are a bit frail around the edges at times and I get anticipatorily (is that even a word?) worried. But then they tell me about the mad things they've got up to whilst I'm at work and I try and calm down a bit and remember we're not there yet, or even anywhere near there.
Wherever 'there' is!

>120 charl08: I have not read any of his Zoe Boehm yet.

I think a lot of the people who lived through WWII have dealt with stuff by just refusing to acknowledge it - they are the mixture of the "Greatest Generation and the "Silent Generation". My Dad served in the war in the Navy as a young teenager, but he did not talk about it. I have a few very rare glimpses into that part of his life. I remember one year when I was a teenager and we were returning home from flood evacuation, he came up from our basement with his Big Navy duffle (I forget what you call those), and it was sodden, and it made him so sad because there were all these letters in there that his Mom had written to him during the war. And I was a teenager at the time, and I thought how scary that must have been to be so far from home at such a young age, exposed to all the horrors of war and truly not knowing what tomorrow would bring.

Hugs to you as you approach the changing roles of parent and child. It's hard. My parents are both dead, now, but I remember those days. You just have to take each day as it comes.

Enjoy your holiday, Charlotte.

I've added The Suitcase to my wishlist, it sounds difficult but important.

The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing made it onto my ever expanding library holds list.

Has your holiday started now, Charlotte? I hope it's a good one.

I'm trying to keep reservations to what I know I'm going to have space for - I have a list of books I had to return to the library unread because a borough library service I use most for reservations (free) cut back an expanded loan allowance really suddenly, and also because other people want to read some. I am returning one on Monday because it has an outstanding reservation so I was going to read it next, then I realisedthat it's actually #2 and made a stock suggestion for the library to get #1 and #3 in the series (all 3 have been reissued in Virago Modern Classics editions in the last 2 years - author is Nancy Spain). I got a very quick and positive answer, so I'm swapping #2 for a collection of classic crime stories associated with books, and Nancy Spain can be a 2022 reading project - 3 crime novels, a memoir and a biography of her from the libraries, and another memoir or non fiction book - I'm not sure - in a 1950s bookclub hardback which I found looking for my other books.

I'm still being profligate with ebook loans and reservations though. There's no risk of being fined or of having to pay bus fares to go and sort out library books to avoid clocking up massive fines - they will go back when they're due if I don't read them first, but it costs nothing to put on a hold. The only risk is having a book disappear when you're in the middle of reading it, and I'm quite careful to make sure I have a realistic time to finish a book in one form or another. In one case an ecopy and a hardback of the same in demand novel became available within a few days of each other, so I started reading the ebook and then was able to switch to the hardback to continue reading to the end.

>121 Crazymamie: I wish there was some kind of campaign to preserve letters of that period. So sad to think of fhow many get lost or damaged or just not saved when someone dies.

>122 BLBera: Thanks Beth! I spent my first afternoon napping. It was good.

>123 Jackie_K: It's relatively quick, but not light, if that makes sense.

>124 Familyhistorian: I am now off until the 11th Jan. Lots of reading in my future.

>125 elkiedee: I have way too many books out, but at the same time I want to read them all. Tough decisions? Or quick reading required!

Off until the 11th! Enjoy!

Open Water

You came here, to the page, to ask for forgiveness. You came here to tell her you are sorry that you wouldn't let her hold you in this open water. You came here to tell her how selfish it was to let yourself drown.

This was one of those books that gained weight as I read it, so that by the end I was almost wanting to go back and start again. A young black man meets a young woman in London, but she's going out with his friend. So at first they're just friends: should they become something more? What seems like a fairly conventional literary romance takes a different turn, it's not a coincidence (I think) that among the many art/music/film/lit references, one is If Beale Street Could Talk. Beautiful writing, and the kind of discussion about art that makes me want to google and buy catalogues and read more about artists and their work.
And this:

The same day, you leave an Uber- the walk from the station to your friend's house was too far in the darkness that fell quick and full. You have taken two or three steps. Your friend's house is in sight. You could throw a stone and it would shatter the window. You're thinking of an evening with a glass of wine, a record spinning in the background. You're thinking of good food and better company. You're in a memory of something yet to happen, when they stop you, like a moving vehicle edged off the road. They tell you there has been a spate of robberies in the area. They say many residents describe a man fitting your description. They ask where you are going and where you have come from. They say you appeared out of nowhere, Like magic, almost. They don't hear your protests. They don't hear your voice. They don't hear you. They don't see you. They see someone, but that person is not you, They would like to see what is in your bag. Your possessions are scattered across the ground in front of you. They say they are just doing their jobs. They say you are free to go now.
You make it halfway up the path to the door.

>126 charl08: Yay, enjoy your break Charlotte. That's a big break (note the green). I work Tues and Weds, then am off til the 5th.

>128 charl08: - Sounds good but lately I feel I have to be in a certain mood for this sort of *heavy*. Though, if I am honest, I have several in the piles on the floor and shelves...

Enjoy your time off! Happy reading!

Napping is good, Charlotte. Great comments on Open Water, darn you. I'll add it to my huge 2022 list.

>129 Caroline_McElwee: I'm looking forward to catching up with the library books!

>130 jessibud2: I loved how he wrapped in so many different cultural references. reminded me of Teju Cole (who he also references).

>131 BLBera: Thanks Beth, I hope you like it. It's not a long book, if that's any help?!

Quiet in her Bones
Crime fiction set in a gated community in New Zealand. A crime writing adult son tries to work out who killed his mother when her body is found in the bush, fifteen years after she disappeared. I wasn't that taken with this one. The unreliable narrator device was mostly annoying and it wrapped up the red herrings a bit too neatly at the end. But your mileage may vary...

Thinking of describing my reading this week as anti-festive.

Finished Shoko's Smile, which is a brilliant, but bleak collection of short stories by an author from South Korea, Eunyoung Choi. The first, title, story features two young women who meet via an international exchange, and have a series of misunderstandings around health. Shoko visits from Japan but the only person who really enjoys speaking to her is her host's grandfather, who studied Japanese as a child. Only years later does Shoko's story become clear, after many misunderstandings and her grandfather's death.
All the stories have a thread of sadness running through them. They feature loss, pressure to succeed or conform and political corruption (particularly, in response to the M V Sewol ferry disaster, which killed hundreds of students and their teachers). Friends lose touch, young adults give up on their dreams, families lie to try and protect each other.
I thought this was brilliant, and hope that the author has more work being translated.

She thought: What was his problem? What did it matter to our lives whether Kim Dae-jung became president or Lee Hoi Chang did? Her mom, just to pay for her school trip, was perming hair for middle-aged women till her hands looked like feet. Her dad remarked at the dinner table that capital was marginalizing the poor, that the collapse of the middle class would accelerate in the future and plunge more people into poverty.

So what? Dad, the culprit for plunging this family into poverty is not the world, not capital, but you. What right did the man have to say such things when his wife stood all day long at a hair salon hardly 250 square feet because he couldn't earn his own living? But she understood her mom even less. After coming home from work, her mom would get changed and ask about her dad's day. Was he tired today? How was the book he was reading? She thought that her mom's overindulgence had enabled him to dream his pipe dreams without settling down in the world. That her mom was being used by the likes of her dad because she didn't love herself enough. That this wasn't love but one-sided exploitation.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

>125 elkiedee: I just celebrated getting the number of items checked out on my library card (ebook & paper) down under 20. Then one of my holds came in and two shipped and I ran across one on Alison Ys list that I just have to have, it's health related . . .

>128 charl08: & >134 charl08: I think I just ran across these two on your Litsy thread, and they're going on Mt. TBR. I don't know when I'll get to them, but they sound good.

>134 charl08: Weird the entry that appeared here was for another thread!

>134 charl08: Your review of Shoko's Smile makes the stories sound similar to the ones in How to Pronounce Knife. Have you read that one?

>127 katiekrug: I missed you Katie. Sorry!

Enjoyment was to have included a treat at inclusive spa hotel tonight but given recent instructions to try and avoid mixing, have nixed that one.

>135 markon: >136 markon: It's always a struggle. I have six books waiting to be picked up, and no spaces left. Whoops.

>137 Caroline_McElwee: It did strike a chord with me, Caroline. I've been watching a lot of K Drama on Netflix, finding cultural stuff fascinating (although I'm sure I'm missing loads).

>138 Familyhistorian: I've not read How to Pronounce Knife. I've heard good things though, did you like it?

And my anti-festive reading has taken a hit from an unexpected source. Reading spy and crime related short stories, a short story collection by Mick Heron, Dolphin Junction. Eight shopping centre Santas made an unexpected appearance.

"There's an elf behind this,' said Santa. 'Mark my words': The elves were not popular with the Santas. They tended to be disruptive and argumentative, and frequently indulged in non-traditional banter.
Santa said, 'Why don't we take our suits off? See who we really are?"
'Which would help how?' Santa enquired testily.
'I was only saying,' Santa mumbled into his beard.
'No, Santa has a point,' Santa said. "We'd soon find out if we had an elf among us, if we took our suits off'
'Nobody is taking their suit off,' Santa said sternly. 'It would be - well, it wouldn't be right!'
'Hmm,' Santa said. "That's exactly what an elf would say, if he was about to be unmasked.'
'I hope you're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting,' warned Santa.
'Everyone calm down,' Santa said. 'It's clear none of us is an elf. We're all far too shapely.'
'Quite,' Santa agreed. 'Anyway, the elves are at their own party. They've gone clubbing.

Occasional appearances by established characters from his novels including Jackson Lamb and Zoe Boehm, but also some creepy twisty stories that manage to take a dark turn in just a few pages. The humour is enjoyable too.

'Unworthy gimmick,' Joe sniffed. 'Besides, you're missing the point. Mr Reeve-Holkham doesn't care about Harry Cudlipp. He's just worried that when he described Harry's murder, he made a mistake of some sort. That what he wrote couldn't actually happen. And that bothers him because he takes great pride in his research. Apart from anything else, when you make mistakes, readers send letters pointing it out. Or pencil snide comments in library copies.'
'Readers actually do that?'
'Apparently'
'What a bunch of losers.'

>140 charl08: Is the Herron story you quoted The Usual Santas? I'm reading this short story at the moment, in an anthology of the same title from Herron's US publisher, Soho Crime. I'd wishlisted this collection ages ago and then foujnd it in Camden's elibrary in audio form. It sounded really good though I'd only listened to 1.5 stories while I had it out (in the summer so it felt a bit odd in August!) Then one day when I tried to renew it, the library rights to lend it out had expired. The same thing has just happened to an audio of The Mermaid of Black Conch. It was very pricy on Kindle and didn't seem to be in any library collections, so I gave up for a while, then on 1 December I checked my wishlist in case anything on it was on offer, and there was The Usual Santas for £1.43. Soho publish quite a lot of writers I like or whose work I really want to read. Sadly the collection has gone up to over £8 again.

>140 charl08: The multiple Santas concept strikes me as full of opportunity for mischief.
The library has a copy as well. hmmm.
Is the rest of it very seasonal, or am I going to feel an idiot reading it in April?
Oh, looks like the answer to that's a yes, sorry, missed >141 elkiedee:

>141 elkiedee: I'm a bit confused, was the story on its own for £1.40? Or do you think it's the same collection with a different title?

>142 Helenliz: The collection I read is Dolphin Junction: just the one Xmas related story, so no need to rush for seasonal reading.

I am reading an anthology (various stories, various authors, intro by Peter Lovesey who also has a story in the collection) from Soho Crime - they publish books set around the world in the US but that includes a couple of UK writers who are published by them in the US but have other publishers here - including Mick Herron and Peter Lovesey.

I generally wouldn't pay £1.43 for one short story. though I have up to £2.20 for the occasional rather short novel/novella. I guess it doesn't cost that much less in time to write and publish such books in print form and to produce a beautiful short book, but I'm not keen on paying £1 for something which must be about 20 pages in print.

The anthology is The Usual Santas - see link or online for more info - and it has also been available as an audiobook, but digtal audiobooks seem t be licensed and the licence expires (not sure if it's after a period of time or after a number of loans), so Camden no longer has a copy and the other libraries I've tried don't have one either.

>134 charl08: That makes sense Luci, thanks for clarifying. It's not always clear with different publications across the pond!

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

"Do you call yourself robots or something else?"
"Robot is correct."
"Okay, well-it's kid stories, mostly. Sometimes, you hear somebody say they saw a robot in the borderlands, but I always thought it was bullshit. I know you're out there, but it's like... it's like saying you saw a ghost."
"We're not ghosts or bullshit," the robot said simply.

I loved Chambers' previous series, and this slight novella has lots of ideas (especially about the environment) that I will be glad to follow in further books.

I hope 2022 is a year with special moments Charlotte.

>147 Caroline_McElwee: I love those decorations Caroline. Are they Russian?

The Living Mountain
This is a classic of nature writing, and I have meant to read it for just about forever (or at least, since a few years back when I read Robert MacFarlane was lyrical about it). I can see (in places) why people might like it so much. There is beautiful writing, and the author clearly knew the mountains and studied them for years. But I found it difficult to get into, only really losing that sense of 'working' to read the book when she moved in the final chapters to speak about the life on the hillside: plants, birdwatching and then the people she had known who worked and lived there.

I have wanted to come to the living things through the forces that create them, for the mountain is one and indivisible, and rock, soil, water and air are no more integral to it than what grows from the soil and breathes the air. All are aspects of one entity, the living mountain. The disintegrating rock, the nurturing rain, the quickening sun, the seed, the root, the bird - all are one. Eagle and alpine veronica are part of the mountain's wholeness. Saxifrage the 'rock-breaker' in some of its loveliest forms, Stelloris, that stars with its single blossoms the high rocky corrie burns, and Azoides, that clusters like soft sunshine in their lower reaches, cannot live apart from the mountain. As well expect the eyelid to function if cut from the eye.

Yet in the terrible blasting winds on the plateau one marvels that life can exist at all. It is not high, as height goes. Plants live far above 4000 feet. But here there is no shelter - or only such shelter as is afforded where the threads of water run in their wide sloping channels towards the edge of the cliffs.

>148 charl08: I really enjoyed that book Charlotte.

Yes, the decs are Russian. My sister got a friend working in Russia to send them a few years back, so she could give them to me for Christmas.

I feel bad for not liking it more. My boss says she cried when she read it. I really hope my face wasn't as expressive as it usually is when she said this...

>148 charl08: Sorry it wasn't a better read for you, Charlotte.
I did read it in January, and liked it better.

>151 FAMeulstee: I think it was partly the weight of expectation, Anita. I still find it so sad that she didn't get to see her book becoming so widely read.

Manaschi

There's a story,' he said, calming down a little once he'd wetted his throat with a bowl of tea. 'In a certain city a sheikh was living. Every day he went out to a hill on the edge of this settlement and stood looking at the city beneath his feet. One day, when he was on the hill thinking his thoughts, a traveller came up to him. He greeted the sheikh and asked him, "What are the people like in that city? I'm looking for a place to settle." The sheikh then looked at him, and asked, "What are the people like in the country you've come from?" "Thieves and liars, robbers and traitors, no use to anyone else, they're brazen scoundrels," the traveller replied. "Thanks to them I've left the country." The sheikh observed him furtively. "In that case, continue with your journey," he said. "The inhabitants of this city are exactly the same." 'When he heard these words, the traveller continued on his journey.

'The next day the sheikh was again on the hill, standing pensively, when another traveller saw him and approached. This man asked, "What are the inhabitants of this city like? I'm searching for somewhere to settle." The sheikh asked him, "What are the people like in the land where you've been living?" The traveller praised his people sincerely, "A generous, hospitable, caring, gracious, child-loving people!" When he heard these words, the sheikh quietly laughed and said, "Welcome to our little city! Our people are just the same"

This was one of those books where I really needed someone to explain it to me. Sadly I slept through the relevant book group meeting (somebody at the Xmas dinner suggested a second bottle of wine) so I only have the occasional footnote to help me out. Bekesh leaves his city job and home to return to a community on the Tajik and Uzbek border. His uncle has died, a shaman whose roles included the retelling of a historical saga Manas, which is quoted throughout the book. While life in a border town has been relatively peaceful in the past, the arrival of a Chinese team of road builders means that one part of the community perceives a future dominated by links to Tajikstan. At the same time, the return of another migrant, now a Middle Eastern trained fundamentalist mullah means there is also pressure to "reform" local practices. Tempers become frayed after a terrible accident during a public event.

My library has the Chambers book, Charlotte, so I hope to read it soonish.

Right now I'm reading Heating & Cooling, which I heard about from you, right? Thanks! It is so good. Some of the vignettes have made me laugh out loud, perfect for this time of year.

Tunnels
Archaeologists fight over a possible treasure trove in this (translated) GN by Rutu Modan. Seeking to prove their father right, a brother and sister are both invested in the project, which may or may not reveal the ark of the covenant. They need to burrow down to find ancient tunnels, but complications ensue as people find out about the illicit dig, all with very different motives.
Plus, there has been some building work since the dig was first planned:

>154 BLBera: Yes, I loved that book Beth. So good!

Or in other words: Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

Charlotte hoping 2022 is a fabulous year for you! All the best.

>157 SandDune: >158 mdoris: This all looks very festive, thanks for the good wishes.

A Narrow Door
My unseasonable reading continues with this gothic story of a school with a murky past. The new head recounts her discoveries from twenty years before, when she was a rare female supply teacher in a traditional male private school.

Even now, after the end of term, when every part of the school is cleaned and disinfected, that familiar smell lingered on; it seemed to have been ingrained into the very stones and plaster.
A school is a kind of time capsule, Roy. For all their new theatres and swimming pools and toilet facilities for girls, schools are stubbornly resistant to change. This was certainly true of King Henry's Middle School cloakroom. After eighteen years, it looked the same. The chapel-high ceiling; the mottled walls; the smooth and age-worn flagstones. The banks of gun grey lockers, scarred and scratched and battered.

>140 charl08: I snorted out loud at the line about pencilling snide comments in library copies! So true. I haven't read Mick Herron... wonder if I should try the short story collection to get a feel for his writing style.

Merry Christmas, Charlotte: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHPS_0vvdMg

>160 rabbitprincess: I'm not sure what other Heron fans would recommend, but you might find it easier to look for his first Slough House book Slow Horses. It's been reissued in the UK so more likely to be in charity shops if you're looking for a bargain. There are quite a lot of Easter eggs in this new book of short stories for people who've read both series, a shame to miss them.

>161 jessibud2: Thanks Shelley. And to you!

I am continuing my non-festive reading.

Although my present to my dad of Mel Brooks's bio has gone down Very Well, so I am feeling quite smug about that, given that he never even mentioned he wanted it.

A Small Silence
By a Nigerian writer who is now studying for a PhD in Canada. A former university professor and activist is released from prison after years of abuse. He's unable to let his mother into his flat or even turn on the lights due to his trauma. A student he once helped tries to make sense of the changes in the man, and make a connection.
I enjoyed reading the descriptions of ordinary Lagos communities, streets and university student life, not so much the plot.

She once told him that the most popular saying in the country was, "Times are hard,' that the sentence may soon become a greeting shared on the streets. It would become the chief compliment thrown around if things went on like this.
He watched out for signs of this as he walked the streets - she had prepared him ahead of time.

Are We Having Fun Yet
Someone here recommended this, and foolishly I didn't tag the book with their name.
Sorry! And Thank you!

I loved this one. I laughed so much I got asked what was so funny by my family. I've seen a lot of references in reviews to the Diary of a Provincial Lady, and I guess like that book it's written from a position of (relative) privilege. Whereas the PL was hobbled by the costs of "keeping up appearances", here the family desperately attempts to juggle two jobs and childcare. And the demands of the PTA.

Thursday, 5 January, Twelfth Night
'Right, time to take all the Christmas decorations down!
'Yes!' says Evie, jumping up and immediately starting to tear down cards and strip the tree of baubles.
'No!' wails Thomas, his eyes filling with tears. 'I don't want Christmas to be over!'
'It is over!' says Evie, flinging cards at the bin. 'It's been over for ages!'
'But I still have a Christmas feeling inside me!' sobs Thomas. 'I want it to stay on the outside too!'
'Let's burn the tree!' says Evie, seconds away from lighting the match. 'It'll be great!'
Richard comes home to find me pinned to the sofa as one child cries on my lap while the other whirls round the room in a frenzy of sanctioned destruction.
'What's wrong with Thomas?' Richard mouths.
"The ineffable pain of life."
'I see.'
'We're taking down the Christmas decorations, Daddy, yells Evie, gleefully. 'But Thomas says it hurts him! He's a wally!'
'No, he's just a romantic,' says Richard. "A porous-hearted being, who cannot help but privilege imagination and the emotional life above mere fact or practicality."
'Can I punch you in the tummy?' Evie says, which is her usual response when she feels matters are getting away from her.
'Yes, not hard - well done. A romantic and a pugilist in the family. An excellent set-up, all in all.'
Thomas achieves emotional closure through the offer of sausages for tea, done with bacon round them like at Christmas.
'If I pretend I'm stupid and that I feel sad about Christmas tomorrow, says Evie, 'can we have them again?'

>164 charl08: I read and reviewed this book via Netgalley - it was published in October. Glad you enjoyed it.

>165 elkiedee: Thank you! I knew it was a review here that made me pick it up. I had been put off after Caitlin Moran's latest annoying me. Mangan is back on my (mental) autobuy list.

Hello, Charlotte! Glad your dad loved his present - very happy making.

>164 charl08: You got me with this one - adding it to The List.

>167 Crazymamie: I was glad, as sometimes in the past I've thought I was onto a winner and he's not been keen.

The library is closed until the 30th, but I think I will be OK.

>168 charl08: Nice! You've got some great reads there. I am really wanting to read the Magician, but I want to read The Magic Mountain first, so it's going to be a bit.

The Reading List is now top of my current reading pile - am reading a library ebook copy on my phone. I've just bought Femlandia as it was on offer on Kindle. Also bought a couple of today's daily deals, including my own copy of Miriam Margolyes' memoir for 99p. Though the library hardback I read was worth getting hold of to admire the generous 3 sections (24 pages) of mostly colour plates (I'm assuming the first few were mostly black and white given MM's age).

>164 charl08: I have to look for this! It sounds hilarious, and I need something light.

>169 Crazymamie: So lovely to have the time to read them.

>170 elkiedee: I loved the Margoyles in hardback but suspect the e version is a lot more portable! The photos were lovely, her childhood pictures were so expressive.

These were our family ornaments this year and, despite COVID, a merry time was had by all. I hope the same is true for you and here's to next year!!

>171 banjo123: I don't know how well it will travel across the pond, but hope it will! She's now the TV critic for the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lucymangan

>173 Berly: Thanks Kim. The pics aren't working on my phone but I appreciate the sentiment :-)

>175 charl08: It's also the topper on my thread, but for example, "Alexa, wrap the presents" and "Santa I was framed." You get the idea. : )

>176 Berly: It's not showing on your thread (for me) either. I think it's my phone ( I don't have fb set up).

Thanks Kim. I appreciate it!

A list! (I think quite a few of these mentioned are already out in the US, so I wanted them already.)

theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/26/fiction-to-look-out-for-in-2022

>180 charl08: No, thank you!!

>181 Berly: I am tempted by the one with the three options!

The Layover
Romance fiction set amongst the stewards of a airline company. Comic in places. Rather fabulously COVID free (as they travel to Belize), but ymmv.

No Offense
I was disappointed in this one. Cabot has written some funny adult romances but this isn't one of them, just rather ordinary. Fine as it goes, but I expected more from this author.

Fixed Ideas
Published by a small British press that just does Nordic fiction. Every book I've read by them is bleak and short, and this was the same. A young couple tell the story of their dysfunctional relationship from their (very different) individual perspectives.

...there is the freedom which he misses, which he has taken for granted for years and not given a single serious or considerate thought before he lost it. And in step with the increased interest in Japanese literature both in Norway and generally in Scandinavia, and with his having read five or six novels about Japanese loneliness, he has felt an almost bestial need to be on his own, to get a feel for who he can be now, without and after her. It's an endlessly returning question and the need to be alone has grown beyond all reason.
‐----‐------------------‐--------------------------------------

There is a rhythm in everything she does, she thinks, like breathing, something machinelike and automatic about the way she appears to other people, a kind of restraint which comes across as cynicism more than shyness, she is angry, so incredibly angry and this is not the first time that strangers have suffered because of it.

>164 charl08: I'm looking for this one.

>168 charl08: I hope you manage.

>183 BLBera: Thanks Beth, I hope you get some time to read your stack over the break.

I am thinking about the challenge for next year. I'm going with women artists, but still trying to decide on the breakdown of categories. Some worked better than others this year. I think I'm going to keep a monthly tally too, as I lost track a couple of times this year and found it less easy to work our if I had missed commenting on some books.

Initial thinking is:

NEW Artist of the month January will be Käthe Kollwitz

NEW Reading my own books (Art I've seen in person, and have photos of... starting with Annie Swynnerton )

NEW Bookclub books & group reads
(Not sure: maybe groups of things/ portraits by women artists?)

Histories & politics (early artists starting with Cathatina van Hemessen)

Graphic novels and memoirs (Well, this one is easy to come up with a link for. Starting with Kate Evans)

Women in translation (International artists starting with Artemisia Gentileschi)

Prize nominees (women artists who have won prizes, starting with Tracy Emin)

Books by authors with links to the African continent, loosely defined
(Starting with Mary Sibande - South Africa)

Familiar faces - authors I've read before
(Favourite artists starting with Eluzabrth Blackadder)

Keeping things interesting i.e. first time authors & new-to-me authors (not sure: maybe artists "discovered" this year?)

Yesterday
A day in the life of the narrator as he encounters the odd and unlikely in a fictional city. Billed as a lost modernist classic, I have no idea what this book was trying to do. Helen has posted a review on the book page.
Nice map though!

That's the thing: the fuzzy depths of a shadowy waist coat pocket. That's the thing: this is where all my observations have led. And there they disappear, there they will devour one other, there they will be lain to rest.

Still, I am not discouraged. It's possible that the mistake lies quite simply in having chosen the wrong method.

I have started with the large - the belly - and fallen into the small - the pocket depths. I've tried starting with the immense, the pot-bellied man himself, and I've seen that approach, as well, is a downhill slope to the tiny. And now there I am in the extreme minuscule, at the very tip of a fuzz ball in the corner of the pot-bellied man's waistcoat pocket. I must use the opposite method and perhaps all will be resolved. From the tiny we move to the large, from the fuzz ball we grow bigger until we reach the pot-bellied man in all his majesty. Little centric ball of fuzz, fuzz universe, I see it, unique and alone, cast sinuously into space, without consistence and beyond gravity. That's how I see it, but why can I not conceive of it like that? I cannot isolate it from the tiniest of breezes blowing through the pocket in which it rests. And as I think of the fuzz, I feel, I touch the distance between it and my brain, I feel and touch the distance like a living thing...

>186 charl08: It was rather strange.

>187 Helenliz: It's off to the charity shop to find its ideal reader (unless anyone shouts from here sharpish!)

The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Odd Japanese story told by a stalker, following "The Woman in the Purple Skirt". We are told that the whole community regards the woman as odd, that they take bets on her appearance. That she has a designated bench in the park, and that children play a game daring each other to approach her. What initially appears to be quite benevolent attempts to direct the woman's behaviour (helping her find a job) soon shift.
But who is really in control here?

>285 Interesting Challenge Charlotte. I'll follow along, and maybe find some new to me artists (there are some already on your list).

Rather ridiculously (because it's not about the numbers, but still) I'm trying to finish off some books before the 1st so that I can get to 300 this year.

Reading Last Witnesses in small doses though as there are only so many accounts of small children being starved, shot at and orphaned I can take at once. Heart breaking. And perhaps even more so because of the acts of kindness and bravery that some of the children experienced.

We sat on a hillock and looked at the fire... We already understood... We didn't know where to go. How would we find another auntie? We had just come to love this one. We even said to each other that we would call our new auntie "mama." She was so nice, she always kissed us before we went to sleep.

We were picked up by the partisans. From the partisan unit we were sent away from the front on a plane...

What do I have left from the war? I don't understand what strangers are, because my brother and I grew up among strangers. Strangers saved us. But what kind of strangers are they? All people are one's own. I live with that feeling, though I'm often disappointed. Peace time life is different...

>191 charl08: 300?!?! OMG! Good luck!

>190 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks Caroline. I've had fun looking back at some catalogues and art books, so already a win!

>192 Berly: Thanks Kim. Some way to go.

Reading Future Crimes and keeping the notes here.

First story is from (?) the 1940s. "Elsewhen" charts the investigation of a murder facilitated by a time machine. Women as annoyance, audience and romantic interest.

"Puzzle for Spacemen" published in the 1950s. Weird cabling connecting ships. Radio messages kept to a bare minimum.
No women in space, that's just crazytalk!

"Legwork" (1950s)
Andromedan visits Earth and robs banks. Couple of women as witnesses. Some pleasing references to the "fingers" of the Washington computer filing system.

"Mirror Image"
Earth-based detective is consulted in a case of 'Spacer' intellectual property theft. No women.
Three robots though.

"The Flying Eye"
Two friends witness a mysterious "eye" floating apparently unsupported in the air. No women. Lots of "!" Author went down with the Titanic.

"Nonentity"
1950s. Seven passengers are in an emergency capsule meant for five, hoping for rescue, after their ship blew up. But rescue is more days away than they have air: if all seven continue to live...
Two women, one pathetic, one who is the first to suggest knocking off one of the others. Lots of gory detail ("globules of blood" floating around).

"Death of a Telepath" (1959)
How do you kill someone who knows what you're thinking?
(On an all-male isolated space station, apparently.)

"Murder, 1986"
PD James story published in the 1970s, set in a future where the world is gripped by a pandemic.
Finally a female character who is more than a stereotype. Except she's dead.

"Apple"
1960s. Similar to the Jean Grey X-Men plot. Grim anti-Romany comments at the end.

"The Absolutely Perfect Murder" (1960s)
Another time travel one. Man tries to escape his awful marriage via new technology.

>140 charl08: Like! What wonderful quotes, especially the Santa(s) one.

I would like to wish you and your family the very best of the season and good health and happiness for 2022.

>195 humouress: I have liked everything I've read by Mick Heron.

And Happy New Year, of course...

300? I was thrilled to get to 150! Do you read in your sleep?

>198 BLBera: ... and I was impressed that I managed 75 for the second time.

>196 charl08: notlisteningnotlistening. My TBR - well, you know how it goes.

>198 BLBera: Not yet, but if there was a way...

>199 humouress: Oh, you definitely want to read Slow Horses. Hopefully there will be a copy on a kindle deal?

7 books to go...

>198 BLBera: and >200 charl08: Audiobooks? Though I don't feel I can count a book if I've heard half a story before I dozed off. There are lots of really interesting sounding audios available in digtal libraries, but I don't count them as a replacement for reading with my eyes at the moment, whether on paper or electronically, more as a complement.

>191 charl08: I also needed to take small doses of Last Witnesses, Charlotte, so many heartbreaking accounts of children during WWII.

>201 elkiedee: I don't count them if I fell asleep either. I go back to the bit I last remember and start again the next night. Although the Borrowbox app is not behaving on my phone at the moment, so I've been going back to old favourites in the audible library.

>202 FAMeulstee: It's not a light book, is it. I had no idea that the Nazis regularly took blood from Russian children. I can't process how matter of fact the adults are talking about these awful things that happened to them.

Burntcoat
I thought this book was amazing, beautifully written, but I can't imagine reading it if I had lost someone to COVID. Hall imagines an artist looking back decades after a virus even worse than "ours". She remembers those she has lost, her childhood living with a mother with a traumatic brain injury, and her training in sculptural methods.

At any given moment the body is simply its state: reformation and decay of flesh, its neutral routes. There was a sensuality - unfrightening, comforting even - of cells altering hour by hour. Not like I remembered, or perhaps exactly the same, and I was being altered, my concept of existence. It is immunity to change that we struggle to accomplish, that seems so inhuman and freeing. Something intrudes, ego, repetitions of the past, or small hard fears, like deposits in the kidney, the breast. The awareness of suffering or desire, hope, an unprovable beyond. I tried these things, but the noise in my head would not stop, would always begin again, on the plane, on the descent from the clouds, every emotion and failing leaking in through the cracks in the air. The body is a wound, a bell ringing in emergency - life, life, life.

>204 charl08: Great quote, Charlotte. I haven't written comments yet on Burntcoat, which I also just finished. I liked it a lot although not as much as you did. I loved the art and stories and how we use them to define our lives. I thought there was a lot of sex for a pandemic novel, which seemed a bit off to me. Not sure that would be my go-to for comfort. But I could be wrong.

>204 charl08: Like the review and the quote and they're both why I am not going to read this one right now. I just finished a book on dying so pass on pandemic reads for now. : )

>205 BLBera: It did strike me as quite a lot too, Beth. I think her previous writing has quite a bit about bodies and animals (often related to farming and rural life).

>206 Berly: That makes sense Kim.

Have read

#295 Glass Town
A GN that playfully explores the juvenilia of the Bronte family, with magical realism.


#296 The Island
Isolated man on an island in an unnamed postcolonial stage is shook from his routine when a foreigner washes up on the beach. Where has he come from? Is he a threat? And how does this relate to the islander's past as a protestor?
The country is never named (and appears to be a composite of several) but the dictator's speeches sound familiar.

"Listen to me if you're hungry, listen to me if you're cold and afraid," he called to them. "I am like you. I know how you feel. Don't let this uniform fool you. Underneath it I am the same as each one of you. We are the ones who fought for independence. We are the ones who fought to have our own nation. We are the ones who lost loved ones, who were imprisoned and wounded. We are the ones who died. Why are we still sharing our country with foreigners after all of that? Let them go back to their own homes and fight for their own freedom. We don't want them here, taking from us, stealing what we fought so hard for. This country is ours, no one else has a right to claim it. No one else has a right to be here. This country is ours alone, only ours. The time has come to make them see that they're no longer welcome. The time has come to make them leave!"

#297 Last Witnesses
Russian children's accounts of their experiences during WW2. Soldiers, partisans, orphaned, bombed, burned out, evacuated, sent to a concentration camp, surviving the siege of Leningrad on wallpaper paste. Shocking. Necessary.

I really enjoyed Glass Town too.

Regarding Sarah Hall, I think you are right. I remember a dystopian one that I read and that also was very physical. I really liked both of them.

>139 charl08: I did like How to Pronounce Knife, Charlotte. That's high praise from me because, as a rule I don't care for short story collections.

All the best for the New Year. Are you staying with a category thread for the coming year?

>208 BLBera: I didn't expect to be as interested as I was in Glass Town, Beth. But the GN I ordered had gone missing somewhere between the computer system and the shelf, so I had the chance to browse. And I do enjoy Greenberg's work.

>209 Familyhistorian: I find short stories really useful for when I only have little chunks of time, but I don't read many. Thanks for the recommendation.

Finished Tiny Moons, a lovely short book about eating in Shanghai.
Two books to go!

Charlotte, I have faith in you to reach 300! I love that giant stack of books in >168 charl08: :-)

>211 susanj67: Thanks Susan.

In related news:

#299 / Africa theme
Madness: stories of uncertainty and hope

At the Monday-morning feedback meeting I am informed by the nursing staff that there are three Mandelas on the ward. They are behaving in a courteous, dignified way towards one another. There is no dispute as to who the true Mandela might be. They appear to respect the choice that each has made to be an eminent and revered figure. There has never been a Jacob Zuma on our ward. The ex-president is currently facing charges of corruption. He is not a popular figure in our refracted world. Some time ago, a very large and fierce black man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo was admitted to the high care unit insisting he was Helen Zille, the premier of the province at the time. This was curious because Helen Zille is a middle-aged white woman. It is also surprising that a recent immigrant from central Africa should have known who the premier is, and that he should have chosen to be her.

Former consultant psych at a Cape Town mental health unit discusses his experiences working with a diverse cast of patients (suitably anonymised, we are reassured). For me this was most interesting when he touched upon the particular challenges of working in Cape Town (and South Africa): extreme poverty, township gangsters, tik addiction and HIV/AIDS. But I felt he swerved a lot of issues, perhaps because they are so familiar to a South African audience, I'm not sure. Lots of short chapters broken up into themes that are disconcertingly similar meant (I felt) quite a bit of repetition. Although he stressed the power of hope, in discussing cases where different men (it was a segregated ward) cycled from home and back to the hospital, there wasn't a lot of hope to be had, I felt, unless the service users' environment changed. His sympathy for patients' families was clear.
As ever, Oliver Sacks looms large here, difficult to match.

#300 (Africa) When Trouble Sleeps
Thriller set in Lagos, sequel to Easy Motion Tourist. Amaka faces the consequences of her campaign against powerful men involved in sex trafficking. Lots of car chases, anxious waits and official corruption.

Hundreds of men had gathered on the road and in between the cars parked in front of Peace Lodge, waving shotguns and machetes. Some of them had liberated campaign posters of the deceased Douglas from walls and were holding them above their heads. Together they chanted a chorus in Yoruba, proclaiming that 'They killed our governor and we kept quiet; now that they have tried to kill another, we will not let it happen. We will kill their entire family including their dogs and cattle.'

Hours before, a police van had charged the crowd and forced its way through the thugs to make it to the gate. Afterwards, word spread that the van had brought Ojo back to Peace Lodge. The party's new candidate had indeed escaped the assassination plot. Police officers and soldiers did little to control the crowd...

Well done! And with hours to spare!

>214 Helenliz: What Helen said :-)

Well done!

>214 Helenliz: >215 susanj67: >216 BLBera: Thanks folks.
Cheers!

Yay. Ripple of applause Charlotte.

Congratulations, Charlotte! You are my hero!

Way to go, Charlotte!

Woo hoo, 300!!! Amazing!

Congratulations on 300, Charlotte!

Happy new year!

Thanks all!

Heading over here for 2022:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/338079#n7700884

Congrats!!!